Ryan
Chasing greatness

No, I don’t have it. I probably won’t get it while I’m in this country because I am only at a computer when I’m at home, so I might as well blog.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it is actually a pretty neat service, and I’ll probably get it when I’m home and have a shiny wonderful iPhone, but not before that.

This week I’m saying goodbye to a lot of students and classes. The school year ends this month and so naturally there is a lot of change in classes and schedules. I searched my feelings a bit and realized that I honestly don’t care about not seeing most of these kids again.

Its not that they aren’t hilarious and fun to be around, but that I never got to know them outside of being their English teacher.

One exception to that are my Friday classes. Those I really do enjoy and I will not like to say goodbye to.

I’ve written several times about having to finish a project and all of that. Time is wasting and I haven’t accomplished hardly anything. I haven’t got the motivation.

Big news! One of my great friends, John, is going to be a father. I’m still going, “Holy shit!”

It has been a while since I wrote.  I was kind of waiting for something to happen to write about.  Things did happen, but I was lazy and have since forgotten a lot of them.

So lets talk about penis.

I’m not going to give you all the wonderful and varied ways to say penis, you can do that yourself.  It’ll make you smile, promise.

I think a lot of people have seen pictures circulating the internet of giant wooden penises.  There is usually a caption to go with it that argues that the Japanese are insane.

Sure, having festivals and giant wooden penises as the focal point is arguably insane.  However, traveling for around an hour with a hangover, no shower, and being on the verge of crapping your pants at the thought of a 2 meter penis makes me more insane.

I was in the company of about 9 million other foreigners who were either hungover, hadn’t stopped drinking, or were upset that they had already burned a few hours of daylight not drinking (At 10AM no less).

I’ve never seen so many foreigners.  They were unbearably annoying.  I know I am the same way, but there was that added element of wooden penises that just brought out the best in everyone.

When we got off the train, we just started following the herd of people to the penis while we saw the other foreigners run the other way, to a liquor store.  We weren’t sure exactly where the penises were, but eventually we passed a couple of foreigners who caught us off guard.

Her tone of voice was so friendly and casual, it was like she was saying, “Hey guys, what’s up?”

What she really said was, “The big penis is up there.”

This little sentence sticks out as one of the most helpfully awkward bits of help I have ever received.  I can honestly say that this will probably be the first and last time I actively seek a huge penis, but it really warmed my heart to know that someone was there to point me in the right direction.

I have taken pictures of the penis and the activities, but it basically broke down like this.  There was a huge 2 meter penis, and many smaller penises for public enjoyment.  A parade started staring those penises and free sake.  The parade went to another shrine where all sorts of festival type activities were going on.  You could eat food from vendors, most of which was penis shaped, play little games, and go to the temple pray, and write your prayer on a little board with a penis.

We even saw a taiko demonstration.  Taiko is the traditional drumming.  It doesn’t sound interesting or special, but it is a really great experience.  The drums are so loud and powerful that they shake you.  The music is very strong and good, even though it involves only drums and maybe a flute.  The drummers incorporate a tremendous amount of skill in being perfectly in synch as well as dressing up their drumming with choreographed flourishes.

Very cool.

Anyway, it was a long beautiful penis filled day, but Megan and I were tired, so we left pretty early to come home and relax and let the day’s events of penis day settle in our minds.

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I couldn’t remember what I wanted to blog about the past few days.  I knew I wanted too, but I couldn’t remember what about.  I do remember now, and wish I hadn’t written these three sentences in buildup.

So on Wednesday I was having of laughter because all of my attention was drawn away from the children learning, and instead drawn to how much they erase.  Sure they’re writing in a foreign language, sure they can’t spell, blah blah blah.

I timed them.  In a class of 9, the stopwatch never made it past 10 seconds before an eraser was grabbed and a hushed whisper of, “Machigaita,” was heard (“Oops”).  I was tickled by this and also tore the Japanese Teacher away from teaching as well to be mystified by the children’s erasing regularities.

See, that barely registers on the scale of interesting.

Lets lower the expectations further.

Today I was on a weird coffee high.  For those of you who don’t know, I generally avoid caffeine.  I do this because I suck at sleeping.  Unfortunately avoiding caffeine makes me more prone to it when I do take it in.

When you have to teach 7 classes that are 15 minutes a piece and involve dancing and singing, you need caffeine.  Trust me.

So anyway, I was a bit retarded on the juice and did ridiculous stuff all day.

I told the children to translate sentences like, “I must eat Mt. Fuji,” or, “I must lick a wall,” or, “I must drink a jacket.”  I did this because I couldn’t be normal.  The children were either completely freaked out in a good way, or freaked out in a bad way.  Whichever the case was, I don’t think they’ll forget the grammar.

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Hina Matsuri is a festival for girls celebrated on March 3rd.  I’m late writing about it because I totally missed it, and I couldn’t get any first hand information on it really.

Essentially it involves really ornate and expensive traditional dolls, puffed rice snacks, and sushi.

Boy’s day is next month and will probably be just as lackluster.

I’m in a bad mood today because it is Wednesday.  The classes I teach on Wednesday erode the happiness away from my soul.

First class of three involves 9 5 year old children.  They are insane and have no discipline.  Everything I try that works in other classes fails miserably here.  Its the bizarro lessons.  I consider it a good lesson if there are two or less instances of crying.

This isn’t the most corrosive of the classes, but it does eat my defenses away.

Second class is one student.  Thats right, one.  Me and him.  A teacher’s dream maybe.  Just have all of your attention and devotion available to one thirsty mind.  Problem is that this kid is not a thirsty mind, but an asshole.

I’ll say it again, he’s an asshole.  If I saw this kid ride a bicycle and flip end over end onto the pavement, I would laugh without remorse.  If he were choking I would wait a little before I saved him.

I have 45 minutes with him.  I played a board game with him for 20 minutes.  Then he got all pouty and obnoxious and put his head down.  He got so wound up at the idea of losing that he started crying silently and refusing to participate.  Let me reiterate, he got this idea from the idea he was losing.

Of course, the Japanese teacher is really nervous by a kid with their head on their desk crying silently and so she started to coddle him.  I forced her to stop.

Then I played Solitaire.

I realize that I’m really leaving out a lot of information and I sound like a terrible teacher or person for doing this, but let me give you some more background.

This asshole has a sister.  Megan teachers her.  She is an asshole just like he is.

That means that they are assholes because of their parents.

I cannot fight how their parents have raised their children.  It isn’t possible and I am not that talented.

All I can do is hope that he makes the conscious choice to try or to learn.

I’m letting him make these choices now, maybe for the first time in his life.  I’m not protecting him from failure, I’m letting him see the consequences.

I played Solitaire to stack the decks of his decision making process.  Curiosity is a powerful thing in people and I thought that certainly when he heard me playing a card game he would look just to see what I was doing, or even watch.  At which point I could engage him again.

He never raised his head, and in doing so, let me know that he chose not to try.

This class is the most erosive one of all.  I am empty and defeated afterwards.

That sucks because my third class is excellent and I am too burned out to be great for them.

Today was my big Yu-Gi-Oh lesson.  Before we talk about that though, lets cover a few things.

First, poker night went really well.  I think we’ll have another one sometime.

Second, I’ve been playing Perfect Dark with Jim a bit and it is a great game.  Even if it is all in Japanese.

There is no third.

So today I taught a lesson using Yu-Gi-Oh.  Again, its one of those card games that you throw lots of money into so that you have more cards so you can have a better chance of winning.

I decided to use this because the kids know that they don’t have to do anything in class anymore, but they do want to play games.  I bribe them.

I made a deal with them that went along the lines of them giving me 20 minutes of pure English, and they get to play 25 minutes of Yu-Gi-Oh.

I did this because the class is nearly over, and they have given up.  It was a shot in the dark.

The weird thing is that it worked.  Not perfectly, but the kids quietly and completely agreed to the 20 minutes of English and all of that.  They participated beautifully, and played the game.  I asked questions about cards, and the kids did a pretty good job of explaining them in half English and half Japanese.

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