Category: Life in Japan

I really wanted to take a picture of the old woman who came to the gym today wearing a maroon velour shirt and tastefully matched maroon leather pants.

This week at my school there are no regular classes. Instead, we’re teaching a combination of demonstration classes and special interest classes.

The demonstration classes are part of our fall “Self-Study Campaign,” which encourages students to purchase additional materials to study at home. This helps make money for the company and assists students in their studies. It’s not such a bad thing; I’m lucky to work at a school that doesn’t really push a lot of the business and hard-sell responsibility on teachers. The self-study materials end up selling themselves to those students who are interested in doing more studying outside of class, which is always important.

We’re also teaching special interest classes this week, which is really just a way of saying we can teach whatever the hell we want. “Come up with something interesting,” they told us. I must not have heard the “interesting” part, because I decided to teach HTML. “Building a Web Page,” I called it. “HTML is a language like English or Japanese, but it communicates with web browsers.”

Surprisingly, people signed up.

My first class—yesterday—was not so successful. I learned that it’s very difficult to fill 50 minutes with talk of HTML in a class of low-level (we’re talking LOW-level) English speakers. My two classes today were much better better, mostly because they were with intermediate students who could understand a few of the things I said. But still, it was a lot of time lecturing to students with blank looks on their faces.

For each class, I did some basic web vocabulary, a very basic review of HTML language, and then asked the students to write a profile of themselves. We took pictures, entered the photos and information into some HTML templates I’d created in advance… and then previewed the finished product (until the last part of class, we only saw the web page in HTML/text format).

For a look at some students who didn’t realize they were going to have their pictures taken, go here, here and here.

One woman (the one who wants to be bilingual and trilingual), came up to me after class and said for security she didn’t want to have her name and photo up on the internet. If she’s in the witness protection program, she’s got a great disguise. She was content with me removing her name from the profile.

Another woman made me shrink her head in her photo (“Is this enough?” “No. More.” “Is this enough?” “No. More.” “Is this enough?” — A small head is considered attractive in Japan, and I must say that I’ve had more than one compliment on my petite pate.)

I have two more beginner classes this week (groan…) and one more intermediate class. That’ll teach me.

It’s still a bit of a shock to see little old ladies wandering through men’s bathrooms and locker rooms on cleaning duty. I came face-to-face with one in full monty mode (me, not her) in the locker room at my gym the other day. I had to work to be nonchalant about it.

More than a decade ago, while I was visiting Prague in what was then still Czechoslovakia, I was thrilled to find escalators that whisked people along at speeds at least twice as fast as those found in the U.S. Shooting up from the depths of the subway system, I always visualized riders being launched into the air at the top, like human cannonballs. That’s my kind of escalator.

Of course, high speed escalators don’t fly in safety-conscious (and litigious) America. Nor are they found in Japan. But other mechanized dangers do lurk in the land of the rising sun.

Take automatic sliding doors and elevator doors. In this country, the former petulantly refuse to open until you’ve come full stop about two inches from the door. The latter, on the other hand, should be nicknamed the “jaws of death.”

No elevator I’ve ever ridden on here has had an electric eye to stop the closing of the doors if a person steps between them. So the only thing stopping the doors once they’ve started closing is a warm body (or, if you’re lucky, a quick button-pusher who’s already made it safely inside).

Automatic sliding doors are a danger of another sort. There’s no walking into a building without breaking your pace, no Starship Enterprise “whooosh” as a door slides quickly open. It’s more like a border crossing where you have to stop and show your passport. I remember an incident in Japan when my family (including my grandparents) visited in 1981. My grandfather walked right into a glass door, mashing his nose in the process. Whether it was because he expected it to open or because he didn’t see the door I don’t remember. But I think of that incident every time I find my nose bushing against a door that should have opened five seconds earlier. I’ve taken to waving my hand in front of me in an effort to trigger the door just a moment earlier, which must make me look slightly batty—another crazy foreigner.

Not so long ago ago, I did a fair amount of complaining about how hot and muggy it was here in Nagano.

Different season — different complaint. It’s cold!

The temperate fall season here was tragically short-lived. This past week has brought temperatures not normally seen in this area for another couple weeks. Snow fell in towns not far from Nagano the other day, and one ski resort between here and Tokyo is optimistically pumping out artificial snow.

Speaking of snow, I just entered my name in a lottery for a cheap season snow pass to all ski areas in Nagano Prefecture (that’s a lot of options). Two hundred lucky people will be allowed to purchase this pass for ¥30,000 (about $250). I’m not holding my breath, but I am practicing a few basic Japanese phrases that might come in handy should I get a call.
In the meantime, the air conditioning unit in my apartment has been switched over to heating duty, and my favorite knit wool socks (thanks Tama!) have been pulled out of summer hibernation.