The Darkness within Japan

Flower Power

2008-05-07T23:22:00.011+12:00

So if you read about my exploits in Tokyo over xmas you might possibly recall I was not that impressed. A big part of that is because xmas isn't a big deal in Japan and because Tokyo sucks in general. New years is a bit better with people visiting temples and actually celebrating. There is however one event that Japan has that almost compensates for not having a xmas and it may even top New Years. That event is "hanami."

Hanami is an event that occurs with the coming of spring. As the climate gets warmer the cherry blossoms start to bloom. The phenomenon spreads like a wave across japan starting from the south and heading north. If you watch the weather reports they actually start reporting when the cherry blossoms are expected to blossom in the various areas.

I must say that it is pretty cool to walk around and see all the sakura around town in bloom. The crazy juxtaposition between crummy shack like houses and beautiful pink trees is a sight to behold. The cherry blossoms only last a couple of weeks before all the petals drop off so you really do get the feeling that the sakura have come to make their yearly visit.

While it is all very pretty it doesn't seem to justify the amount of attention that the Japanese seem to give it. Weeks before the cherry blossoms appear everyone will be talking about how amazing hanami is going to be. The reason for which quickly became apparent when I discovered that there are actually two kinds of hanami.

The first kind is exactly as the name implies you go looking at flowers. More specifically though the cherry blossoms. Fortunately for me I happen to live fairly close to the one thing in Fukushima that people travel from all over Japan to come see and that's Hanami mountain. Buses came from all over including Tokyo and Osaka. Considering they travelled all the way to a 'one-horse-town' to see a mountain covered in sakura really does tell how much they like cherry blossusm. I will say that Hanamiyama is quite pretty and standing there and looking at it is more like staring at an easel splattered with various pastel colours but I'm really not sure it is worth a huge trip.

For me it was 30mins on a bike. Everywhere you look Japanese people have massive cameras that they don't know how to use (in some peoples opinions at least), and basically invading the private grounds of the poor people that live on the mountain.

Although they probably aren't too concerned when they hang their washing up in green houses for everyone to see.

The second kind of hanami (and probably the more authentic of the two) is where you sit under cherry trees and get absolutely shit faced. People start from as early as 9am and drink through until they run out of alcohol before moving on to an actual bar. Children run wild and free while their parents get plastered. It really is a beautiful sight to behold. You know you've had a good hanami when you don't even remember if the petals were still on the trees or not. I don't even recall looking at the trees once...

Graduations!!!

2008-03-14T17:41:00.006+13:00

It was graduation day yesterday for the third year students and like everything else in Japan it was held in a dignified, formal and completely overblown fashion. Starting a month before the actual ceremony, the students practiced it like crazy. Hours are spent learning how to stand in a uniform fashion, how to sit in a uniformed fashion, how to bow in a uniformed fashion. Uniform is clearly the key aspect here. The anal-ness in which everything is performed is mind boggling. If you've never seen a Japanese formal ceremony let me give you an example.

The procedure to follow if you must perform a speech:

1) Stand up and walk out from behind the table.
2) Bow to the important people for which the speech is intended (e.g. if your from the PTA, Board of Education, etc and you've been invited to attend the graduation ceremony you would bow to the principal.) The people you have to bow to may be 80m away from you. Completely disregard the distance and continue to bow.
3) Walk to the stage.
4) Bow to the stairs which you will eventually ascend to reach the stage you will give your speech from.
5) Ascend said stairs and bow to the area you will stand when you actually give your speech.
6) Walk to mic, adjust it to your needs, take a step back and then...
7) Bow to the audience.

Then you actually give your speech which is always written out. Learning a speech apparently takes too much effort after having to learn all the bowing procedures. Although it does have at least one advantage. The speeches tend to be written on long paper that is folded up like a fan (this is probably another 'important' procedure which must be followed) and so as they read their speech you can see the heaped side shift from the right to the left and you can tell how much longer the suffering will continue. Oh and once the speech is over, all the steps are repeated in reverse order.

I attended one of the practices at Ootori junior high school just to see what its like since I wasn't going to be able to attend their graduation as I had to attend Yon chu's. My favourite moment was when one of the teachers was explaining the timing to sit down. After maybe 20mins deliberation, it was decided that the students were to sit as soon as his head began to dip as he descended the stairs. The original plan was to sit the moment his foot touched the first step but the students in the back couldn't see the stairs so that idea was abandoned.

I wish I could have taken pictures of Yon chu's ceremony but it was pretty formal and I didn't want to look stupid and whip out a camera and start taking photos. There was a film crew from NHK news and I really hate stupid looking foreigners on Japanese T.V. so there was no way I was gonna be one of them. If I could have, there would have been lots of pictures of kids crying. The first kid I noticed was when they were getting their certificates. Each student had to stand up, walk on to the stage, after their name was read say 'hai' and then get their certificate from the Principal. And bow a couple of times in-between all that. It took about 40secs to process each kid. And I do mean 'process' cause it really did look like a factory. If people could only speak the truth like Jim Carey did in that horrible movie, the Principal would probably say something like:

"Hey kid here’s your certificate. Despite how cool it looks, it has absolutely no value to it. Yea you finished junior high and have technically graduated but this isn't going to get you into high school. You still need to pass those entrance tests. You did pass them right? Oh well anyway we won't see you again and your no longer our concern. If anything this certificate should really say: 'They managed to get rid of me.' See ya later... chump." - Your old school.

So one kid went to get his marvellous 'certificate' and he was crying his eyes out. And I mean really crying. His eyes were screwed up and there was snot dangling out his nose and his head was jerking back and forth. It really did look like his face had turned inside out. He couldn't even say 'hai' he just said 'eeeeeegggghhh.' I don't even remember if I had a graduation at elementary school. I don't even remember if we had one in high school. I do remember a prize giving at high school and I especially remember not attending and forfeiting some certificate I was supposed to get (which shows how much I didn't care about school) thus making me much cooler than anyone that did go. But I don't remember anything like a graduation. Oh and I'm not a prick. I still see people from high school well after the fact and still enjoy seeing them. I just didn't want to go to some stupid event. Clearly for this kid it was a big deal though. I bet some people were incredible moved but I was busy thinking how it was kinda pathetic. The first thing that popped into my mind was "Oh man this guy is definitely gonna be on the news. Japanese people love this shit." And you know what happened? About 10mins after the ceremony on the 12pm news, there in all his tearful glory was that sad looking kid. I actually thought it was a well contrived ploy to get on the news in the first place and almost congratulated him on it.

After everyone gets their certificates they march around the gym and let all the parents and everyone who came observe them in all their glory followed by more speeches, bowing, sitting, singing, bowing, crying and then everyone gets to go. Finally. It only took about 2 hours for the whole ceremony but I had to be there earlier and it was just flat out boring so it seemed like an eternity.

After the ceremony the third year students go back to their classrooms and the parents pile around to watch something. I'm not entirely sure what because at this point I had retreated back to the teachers’ room. They got flowers and words of wisdom or something.

While all the 3rd year students are doing that everyone else gets ready for the only cool part of the day. The part of the day that actually makes going to the ceremony bearable in the first place.

All the first and second year students form two big lines that weave from the school door way and go all the way to the school gate. Then the third year students leave the school for the last time and walk through the lines of people. Kohei's exchanging presents, words of encouragement, goodbyes and best wishes with their senpai's.

At this point it's an actual farewell event. Millions of pictures with teachers and friends are taken. I think I could bare the ceremony if I knew that something like that was to follow.

Sorry Sorry Sorry..

2008-02-24T15:22:00.011+13:00

I've been a combination of sick and just plain ol' to lazy to update anything. It was only till I got some emails that I noticed people actually looked here.

I got stacks of pictures from my trip to Tokyo during Christmas. I delayed putting them up because I went again to Tokyo to watch sumo so I thought I would just write about them at the same time.

I can't be bothered to write about Tokyo though. Tokyo is massive. There is probably a store/place/thing to accommodate any strange interest that you may have so long as you have the money. That being said you pretty much can't walk around Tokyo and see cool things. You have to research what your interested in (probably on the Internet) and then go find it. Being a massive city means more bullshit stores to look through to find the good stuff. On my own with absolutely no agenda I probably found one place in Tokyo that seems really awesome.

I always ask people what there is to do in Tokyo and they always respond shopping. I don't know why. Tokyo is mostly full of overpriced stores and thanks to the Internet even if you do find something really cheap in Tokyo... you can probably order it online and have it delivered. I'm sure there are cheap things in Tokyo but you probably have it in your town unless you live in the middle of nowhere.

So here's some pictures and you can write your own story to go with them...

JLPT

2008-02-06T23:01:00.000+13:00

I've haven't written anything lately because I couldn't be bothered to write about Tokyo and then I went to Tokyo again for a second time to watch sumo so I thought I might as well knock them out at the same time. Then of course I got sick so can't be bothered.

So when I can be bothered I'll stick random pictures up of Tokyo but more importantly...

I PASSED MY TEST!!!!!!!!!!!!

So starting with no Japanese and 4 months of studying I got 3級 !!!!!!!!!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

School Festivals

2007-12-17T21:47:00.001+13:00

Some time ago all junior highs had a chorus festival for their students. So after school all the kids spend their time practicing their singing and making props for their stage plays. Some schools even go to the extreme and drop periods of study so that the students have more time to prepare. One school I went to even took off the last 2 periods for over a week. It's no wonder that all the students have to go to a cram school. Well I'm not complaining cause it was a change from seeing them attend their club activities. For the 3rd year students it tends to be a really important festival because it's the last one they will have while they're at junior high. If it was me personally I wouldn't even care about it. I didn't even go to my final prize giving at high school even though I was supposed to get a certificate on stage.

So anyway something like 60% of the students actually work all day and night on the festival preparations and the other 30% just kind of piss around. When they actually go on stage during the festival you can tell which students don't know the dance steps and which ones are just making shit up on the spot which reminds me of what one teacher said to her class after their final last minute practice...

"Now there are going to be cameras and people watching you. So don't shy away, hide your face or laugh because if you do, you will look like and idiot. And if you look like an idiot everyone will say 'oh look at that idiot! That kid’s parents must be idiots too.' And then you'll cause problems for your parents. So don't look like an idiot."

So over the past two weeks I went to 3 school festivals.

Noda chu.
Yon chu.
Ootori chu.

Sadly Noda chu was the least interesting of the festivals. At one point I was struggling to stay awake. At that school it was a real chorus festival. Every class had to sing about three songs so there ended up being 45ish songs. They also had school plays and some English speeches (which I cringed at since I had to practice those speeches with the students for the English speech contest so hearing them again was painful).

Although that was the most boring festival experience I can't complain too much because the school bought me a lunch (which wasn't exactly to my taste because it was a bento fill of things that have that disgusting 'things from the sea' flavour but the gesture itself was much appreciated) and they also invited me along to drinks after the festival which the Principal paid for. There were lots of moments of impressing the principal by pouring his glass and extrapolating on my vast knowledge of Japanese sake but we can just skip that.

Being invited to go drinking with work is a big thing if you’re a foreigner. It really does mean your part of the team. Japan is a country that drinks. If you don't like alcohol I'm sorry to say that while they will respect your choice you will inevitably be kept even more outside of the circle than being a foreigner already makes you. You can always drive and use that as an excuse since the legal blood alcohol limit in Japan is 0 if you really don’t want to drink.

One of the new JET's clearly came straight out of uni from a 'locked in the library 24/7' environment and he wants to drink all the time now. When he told some Japanese people that he started drinking too much since he came to Japan they said

Wow do you drink every night?!

Every night? Ummm no... but on Fridays and Saturdays.

Then they just kinda looked at him strangely and did the Japanese polite nod and "aaaahhhhhh" thing. I have no idea what an alcoholic looks like in Japan but I'm very curious now.

So alcoholism is important to Japanese. Anyway, Ootori chu is all the way out in Iizaka so it's a 30min train ride. Their festival was probably better than Yon chu's but Yon chu is my second home so I can't rate it higher than Yon chu. This school has a lot more going for it than the others. They have a long history of taiko drumming and kenbu (sword dancing) since their students participate in the Iizaka festival.

That alone was enough to make it better than the others. One of my favourite students wasn't there because he had an important soccer match to play and he's being scouted. But the school gave him a little tribute since he couldn't be there which was pretty cool. This also had this really cool piece of art that they had made by getting a picture and cutting it up into segments and each student got to paint their segment on an A3 sheet and they connected them up again. They did a huge unveiling thing and had Metal Gear Solid 2 music cranking. After that there was just more singing and school plays.

Yon chu was probably the most fun. At that school I like all the teachers and there are lots of students that come up to me and talk to me about all kinds of things. “When would you like to get married” has been a recent topic for discussion. Most girls seem to want to get married around the 21-25 mark in case you were wondering (cause I know you were). You know when you were young and you were asked “what you want to be,” the normal things were doctor, fireman, astronaut, veterinarian, etc. Well in Japan housewife is a heavily sort after 'profession'. That and to work at McDonalds. That’s right some kid's life ambition was to work at McDonalds. I didn't bother to enquire any further.

At Yon chu there was a section where the 2nd year students got to do a dance on stage. One class choose to do a dance to Avril Lavigne's Girlfriend. That was incredibly painful. For 2 weeks solid I heard that song everyday while they were practicing. I have heard that song more times in Japan in 2 weeks than I had when I was in New Zealand and I had C4 on all the time...
I would say the highlight for me at Yon chu's festival was when I went on stage and screamed into the mic to introduce the 3rd year students act. When the curtains were raised and I was standing on stage wearing a kimono the kids went mental. After I screamed a few words into the mic they transgressed mental and went completely ape shit. It was pretty cool to see.

One thing that pissed me off about the festivals was the parents. I asked one of the teachers at Yon chu how many parents they were expecting, he said "10 people have said they would be coming." Seriously WTF!!! 500 odd kids and only 10 parents said they would come. Naturally more did show up but everyone strolled in at the leisurely time of 12. I on the other hand had to get up at 5:30, get ready and walk to school IN THE RAIN to watch their kids do things which I can't even fully understand. It seems in Japan that if you pop a kid out. Once they're about 6 and going to elementary school. You don't have to see or worry about them every again. I mean they don't even feed their kids. At lunch they have school lunch (which for the millionth time is awful) and for breakfast and dinner the kids eat rice and miso soup. Thats it. Rice and miso soup. Rice you put in the rice cooker and BAM you got rice. To make miso soup you take your packet of miso soup and add boiling water BAM miso soup. That does sort of explain why in Japan it’s perfectly normal to pop a kid out at 20 or so. After 5 years or so you don’t have to worry about them and life continues as if it didn't even happen.

I’m glad I went to their festivals but I’m possibly gladder that they’re all over. Maybe next year some festivals will clash so I don’t have to go to all of them again.

FIRE!!!!!!

2007-12-06T14:46:00.001+13:00

So some time ago I took the chance to see the Sukugawa fire festival. There was a whole heap of the usual assortment of festival booths selling takoyaki, yakisoba, yakitori etc. So we pigged out a bit and headed to the event area.

There isn't much that can be said about the festival except it has fire. They set up 20 or so of these giant pillars that are about 60ft high and then set them on fire. Thats about all there is to it. For an hour or so you just stand there and watch a blazing inferno. It was awesome. I'm sure there is some real significance behind it all (I hear they're trying to recreate some war scene) but in my eyes it was just pure chaos. Crazy Japanese people climbing up ladders with torches in their mouths, fire, junior high school kids chanting, intense taiko drumming, fire, people getting thrown up into the air, shit loads of smoke and fire. It was definetly a step up from hanging out in Steves backyard with a fire on the old bbq.

YAY!!!!

2007-11-19T12:03:00.001+13:00

YAY SNOW!!!!!!!!!

Friday 2nd of November

2007-11-11T23:15:00.000+13:00

Yeah I said I would have a lot of great pictures of the school festivals I went to but it was the 2nd of November so instead I just got incredibly trashed. What can I say, when it's all you can drink for $10, you've got to drink all you can. So towards the end of out allotted time I topped it all off with several shots of whisky.

So the next day when I was supposed to report back on all the amazingly crazy things that happened at my schools during their festivals... just didn't happen. In fact it was such a magically Nov 2nd I spent the next 2 days recovering. I even didn't get to eat the cake people were nice enough to buy me.

Well they are JETs so they gave it to me a day after buying it and since it was made with fresh cream it tasted sort of funky then and the next day it tasted worse.

So I was gonna do it the next weekend but.... again with the drinking and the next day we made a last minute decision to go to a festival in Sukagawa. It was an amazing time. Basically they put up about 20 60ft tower things and set them on fire and we watched them burn for an hour. It was brilliant. I basically have 100 photos and minutes of footage of fire... burning. Had to be there. I'll put that stuff up later... along with the other stuff... one day.

The day after the festival was the big kimono event and while not much happened I managed to make a number of observations about the 'greater' points of the Japanese which I'll mention in full next time.

Right now I have to type up a whole lot of junk to take to work tomorrow and get back to studying (OMG THE STUDYING!!!!!!!!!!!! I still can't get over the fact that Japanese uses the same word for 'asking' and 'listening'. WHY!!!!!!!!!!!!)

insert tumbleweed here

2007-10-29T01:03:00.000+13:00

Unfortunately I haven't had time to put anything up. It's the time of the year when all the junior highschools have a big festival. It's the last one for the 3rd year students so some schools spend weeks preparing for it. So the last couple of weekends I've had to get up at 5:30 on Saturday and Sunday and drag my tired ass to school. Hopefully I'll find time to put something up in the next few days about the school festivals. I'll leave you with the awesomeness of eiken which is what Japanese people take to test their english abilities similar to the JLPT.

The entire poster is hilarious. I spend ages staring at it and laughing my head off. The kids just kind of stare at me but I don't really care. I'm currently in the process of negotiating for the poster. If that doesn't work out I'm just gonna jack it.

Iizaka goodness

2007-10-08T13:23:00.000+13:00

So I was kindly offered the opportunity to take part in one major festivals that occur around the prefecture. Since a lot of my students from ootori (big bird) junior high wanted me to go and I really had nothing better to do I went along. Turns out there were to be 50ish foreigners gathered to carry a shrine around the town for the rotary club. Of course being JETs the actual number that turned up didn't quite turn out to be what was expected. As you can imagine the opportunity to get paid and work in Japan with little qualifications is temptation for the most useless of people to apply. Retards that sign up to do something, fill up the last so others have to be turned down and then decide the morning of the event they can't make it. The excuses ranged from the plain "stupid"

A: "It's on Sat. Ok Sat. When was it? Sat?"
(and on Sat)
"Oh I thought it was Sun. I can't make Sat I'm already going elsewhere"

to "you really weren't even fucking trying were you..."

B: "Oh I can't go. I hurt my foot"

I really don't like dealing with a lot of JETs. This kind of stuff really doesn't go down with the Japanese people. I really don't know how people couldn't possible know that and they fuck it up for every other foreigner in Japan. For years to come they will always remember this moment when they're about to deal with foreigners.

I know a JET that had to go to his school on a Sat for a special event and looked up the weekend train times and caught the train as he should've. Unfortunately, this turned out to be one of the very rare times when the train wasn't running on time. He was 45mins late and tried to explain this to the teachers. When your late because of a train you have the opportunity to receive something from the driver to prove that you were late. Of course you need to go get one for yourself and since the JET didn't know that he didn't get one. They reminded him that the train schedule was different on the weekends and that pissed him off. So he was late from no fault of his own and he was pissed at their condescending tone and probably a little angry cause they didn't believe him. I personally don't think I wouldn't have been as angry as he was. I probably would've used my brain and phoned the school as well but I will say he was probably right to be a little peeved.

A fellow JET commented in that situation that even if he's on time everyday for the rest of his stay here there will be always one Japanese person that will say: "Omg!!!! your actually on time!" That would probably piss anyone off. But life goes on. He couldn't be fired for something like that and he still had the chance to make right on every next occasion. So what does he do the very next school day? He turns up 2 and a half hours late. GG noob, end game and all that shit. His credibility was completely shot and now he has no right to whinge at least in this country. That plus one other little comment he made about a Japanese teacher giving Japanese lessons during a weekend seminar was enough to give him a bad reputation. More ammunition that Japanese people will use when complaining about western people.

So like I was saying 50 tangents ago, in Iizaka we carried this shrine around town for 3hrs.

This bad boy was fucking heavy. And being one of the tallest didn't help. There were times when we had to launch it up in the air and when it came down it would stop halfway through my shoulder. So we walked around and followed a bunch of other heavy things being carted around the city.

This guy here was kind of interesting in the whole tengu get up. If you look closely at his shoes there's only one stick of wood at the bottom so you can imagine how much of a bitch to walk in those it would be. While his shoes were interesting more interesting was the giant penis he had for a nose which is sadly not visible in this picture. Which lead on to a conversation about a penis shrine located near Iizaka. I contemplated the journey to see it but quickly gave up as it would take a couple of hours to do so.

Eventually like all good festivals it took a break outside the local Sunkus and people chilled out, ate food and drank alcohol.

So after carrying the heavy shrine around all day we went back to a little hotel place and had lunch and drank with all the old boys from the rotary club. We also had a couple of people play the shamisen for us.

Turns out the boy was one of my students and the man next to him was his father. So I had a chat with him and all the rotary people were really excited that somehow I had already engaged somewhat with the town. So up to then everything was ordinary and it was only afterwards that the "robo" like experience kicked in.

Turns out that all the old boys on the rotary club are all presidents of various companies around Japan and are basically multi-millionaires. One of the guys invited us back to his hotel to enjoy his onsen. Turns out his hotel is the biggest and nicest one in all of Iizaka. Which is saying something when the town is know as a tourist spot. In Iizaka there are around 70ish small hotels around so to have the biggest and best is quite an achievement.

After having a hot bath and getting naked with a bunch of Japanese men, we went to one of the rotary club members houses to watch the parade on the main street. It was a cool feeling for me when a whole heap of the kids that were marching turned around and started calling out my name. Everyone was turned and said: "Man your fucking famous in this town. WTH!!!"

After that we went to the shrine for the main event. I wish i had some good pictures of that but it was night and i don't have a million dollar camera or anything. Basically people carry the float like things as pictured above and ram into each other with them. It sounds stupid but its kind of exciting. There's a float for each town they duel each other. The floats weigh a shit load and they get launched up in the air a great deal. When they come down the momentum sometimes carries it out towards the audience. I'm surprised people didn't die that night actually. After that we had to take the train home and relax cause were were all tired and in pain. We had to rest up for the festival in fukushima the next day .

The Olympics Fukushima Style

2007-10-01T21:10:00.000+13:00

Two months in Japan and all I've said is that I don't do any work. The truth is I've done
a lot of things and to catch up now would entail to much work on my part. So I'll slowly
catch you all up when I have the time. So I'll just mention one REALLY exciting thing I've done
recently.

On the 30th of September Fukushima hosted the annual ( I'm guessing it is atleast) yakitori olympics!!!!!!!.

People from all over Japan come to cook various "meats on sticks" and charge somewhat ridiculous prices for them. Yes it was exciting as it sounds. Atleast the food was pretty good although I believe that it's impossible to screw up "meat on a stick." The best I had was some chicken from Aizu (the same place where the festival I went to that I haven't told you about was). From what I understand the meat they used was from the chickens ass. I had always considered myself a breast man but I can definetely say I'm now an ass man through and through.

And of course no yakitori festival would be complete without various stands dedicated to shitty Japanese beer and sake. One stand in particular caught our attention cause they were the only ones willing to give out free samples. So we stood there and drank their sake and chatted and displayed are foreignness and of all things they gave us all a copy of a DVD they had produced. I haven't watched it yet but I'm sure it has all kinds of interesting tidbits about the brewing of their sake through many generations. I was kinda baffled as to why they would hand out DVD's to a bunch of foreigners they just "stole" their booze but heh whatever.

Quickly we left the sake stand and ran as fast as we could to the center stage to watch the yakitori girls sing. No thats not my clever name for them. I'm not that impressive. That was the name of their actual band. I didn't quite catch the name of all their songs but the one song they were kind enough to bestow upon us twice was called "the yakitori song." My Japanese abilities
weren't quite up to deciphering the complex lyrics but from what my friend said, the song was all about yakitori. Some lines including; "I walk around with my boyfriend eating yakitori" and "When I feel like yakitori, I ring my friends and we go eat yakitori." Score 1 Japan.

Anyway after the event we did the usual. Got drunk, played wii till early in the morning and then called it a day.

Work in Japan

2007-09-24T10:29:00.001+12:00

ok so a lot of people want to come on JET and live in Japan so I'll start by telling you what working is like. Unfortunately the everyones situation is different so basically your stay will be good or bad. If your like me you get really lucky and you end with an 'OMG THIS IS TOO FUCKING GOOD TO BE TRUE" situation. And I'll explain how fucking good 'too fucking good' really is.

For me work comes in two flavours. I have "Office days" and "School days." During school days... , well no shit, I'm at school. At school I basically show up and a min before the class starts the teacher will tell me what we're gonna do. I go to the class. Stand and smile. Sometimes I like to smile and stand to mix it up a little. Occasionally I have to read some words off of cards and thats pretty much it. I normally have about 3 classes a day and the rest of the time I just sit at a desk. I spose my real job is to just talk to students and hopefully get them to try and speak english to me. And not being a complete prick I do that during lunchtimes and afterschool.

Office days are a little bit more complicated to explain. I'm employed by the city to work in schools. I get assigned to schools at the start of the term and then just go to them when I'm scheduled. Sometimes there are no classes scheduled so I don't have a school to go to. Now the city doesn't want me to just sit at home and do nothing so they make me go to this office somewhere. The thing is the office I go to doesn't contain anyone who has anything to do with my employment. So basically I'm going to 'work' at a place I'm not employed. So on office days I rock into 'work' at 9:30ish which is really late in Japan. I sit in a room with a few of the other JETs and do absolutely nothing. At 12 we go out for a 2hr lunch break. Get back at around 2. Chill out till 4 (multiplayer DS comes in handy here) and then go home at a time which is early for Japan.

Thats it. And I get paid stupid amounts. So anyone that decided to get a real job.... screwed up big time. I spose I've made it sound mind numbing but its kind of fun. The kids make it so if you don't like kids then it would suck. I teach junior high and they are a lot of fun.

This was a class that, for the whole lunchtime, just sat in the class and talked to me.

Well maybe just cause people seem to like me its fun. The person before me was an asshole even to the kids so I'll I have to do is show up and smile and they treat me like a star. So if you don't like work and need a change, try JET before its too late. I recommend it.