One of the last things you expect to hear from your middle-aged male JTE during an example self introduction to a class of four high school students:

Hi, my name is ____________. I am from Shunan City. I like listening to music. For example, I love Lady Gaga.

He could not understand why I couldn't stop laughing for a good five minutes.

Oh, and we listened to Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" at the end of class.

My life is hilarious!

More Firsts

Today was another first visit of the new year to one of my schools. I teach at this school every Friday.

So, as you might expect, I was again surprised by the changes. Gone is the adorable old lady vice principal who was always so excited to practice English with me. She left me a Burberry hand towel as a goodbye present. In her place is a male biology teacher. During first and second periods today, all the other teachers vanished to conduct health checks on the students. The only people left were me, VP, and another older bio teacher. We bonded over microscopy images. Swoon.

Also new is a fresh-out-of-school English teacher. Finally, someone more nervous than me! He's 25, and friendly, so I suspect we will become good friends. The first year class is enormous - 26 students! Normally my classes at that school are between 12 and 17. They're a lower academic school, so the kids can be pretty wild.

Today I went around and asked all of their names, and then shook hands and said nice to meet you.

Quote of the day goes to this kid:

CMT: Hi, what's your name?

Student: My name is... Capybara.

--cue class erupting into laughter--

For those of you who don't live in Japan, Capybara is the little stuffed animal up there ^^^.

He's an adorable "character" as they call these things (everything from Hello Kitty to Choruru is a "character").

I knew of capybaras before I came to Japan... they're the world's largest RODENT. Why Japan has chosen to cute-ify something so gross is beyond me, but hey, this is the country where you can find glitter stickers of steaming piles of poop.

First Visit of the New Year

Today I visited one of my special needs schools for the first time this term. Though I knew and was prepared for teacher changes at my base school, it still surprises me when visit schools have changed.

My old supervisor has been promoted to some kind of dean position, so I have a new supervisor who seems nice enough. But I got to school and my old supervisor said "Ah! I will introduce you to your new supervisor!" And I said "WHAT?! You're not my supervisor anymore?!"

See, Japan sucks at giving any kind of notice that your life will abruptly change.

Though I only teach at this school twice a month, I consider Old Supervisor to be one of my best friends here. I arrive each time around 9 AM and don't have class until 10:50, but each time we've just talked to fill the 2-hour gap. He's one of my favorite people. Now he sits only 3 seats away, but he's much busier. So I am sad.

At this school, I usually help teach a two senior high school classes of 3-5 students each in the morning before lunch. Then I eat lunch with a random class of kids who don't normally have English with me. They're always super excited to ask me questions about myself and about America, and they always prepare really hard before I come so that they can tell me their name in English

. It's adorable. After lunch, I teach a junior high school class of around 35 students who are amazing and adorable. Whenever they see me in the hallway they fight to be the first to run over and say "HELLO! How are you!" Even when they haven't seen me in a month and a half, they remember me. :) After that, I have class with one student, whose nickname is Kattan. I believe he has cerebal palsy, and he can neither move his body (minus his head) nor speak, but me and the JTE (and his personal aide, who is another awesome teacher) show him pictures and tell him about America.

I tell you all this to tell you that the English teacher I teach Kattan with was transferred to another school. So I am extra sad about that. One time, she gave me four People Magazine issues - in ENGLISH. English magazines are completely non-existent in Yamaguchi-ken, so this was awesome. Also, we both ag

ree that Robert Downey Jr. is the hottest man on Earth. So you can see why I am distraught about her departure.

But today was not all sad! We had a big opening ceremony where the first years great the older students. This was followed by a gym-wide game of True or False.

The last question was "Although we have many new teachers this year, one of them is a karate world champion. True or False?!"

After the votes were tallied, the announcing students said "(name)-sensei, please come out!"

And this world champion karate artist came out in full karate uniform and perfomed a karate routine to the wild cheers of the kids. Yamaguchi is sponsoring the national sports event in 2011 - of which Choruru (green haired dude on the left) is the mascot. So this karate champion is spending a year teaching karate at a Yamaguchi special needs school possibly because of the 2011 sports thing.

A note on Choruru: His name comes from the Yamaguchi dialect of Japanese. In standard Japanese, verb endings change to te-iru to indicate an ongoing action or state. Yamaguchians change te-iru to choru. So "doing" is normally Shi-te-iru. In Yamaguchi, it's Shi-choru. Thus, the mascot of Yamaguchi is Choruru. I think Yamaguchi dialect is freaking awesome, by the way. I choru as much as I can. :)

I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello

In Japan, the school year ends in March and begins a few weeks later in April.

And every year in Japan, teachers face the possibility of being transferred to another school in the prefecture, or to the main prefectural board of education. They have little say in the matter, and most people seem to not last more than 5-6 years at any given school before changing. It's a really strange process, actually. On

the day the transfers are announced, Kocho-sensei (the Principal) comes into the teacher's room with a single A4 sized piece of paper which he attaches to the front board via magnet. Shortly following this, everyone rushes to see who made the "list." It's hard to believe you find out your coworkers and friends are moving to another school via a list posted on a blackboard, but that's how it goes.

So this year, we lost maybe 6 or 7 teachers. I knew four of them fairly well, so I was really sad to see them go.

The teachers on the "list" continue to work for a few days before going to their new workplaces on April 1st. At the same time, the new teachers came to our school for the first time.

Even teachers who stay at the same school don't necessarily get out of the odious task of cleaning out their desks for the new year. Every teacher has a homeroom - a first year, second year, or third year homeroom - that they stay with throughout high school. When I got here, my row was full of "first year teachers", which doesn't mean it was their first year teaching, but that they were in charge of first year homeroom classes. As their homerooms became second-year homerooms, they became second-year teachers. Which means they move to the second-year teachers' row.

So you may be thinking, what? So they pack up their desks and walk a few feet over and unpack?

No, because that would be logical. Instead, every single teacher packs up some of their things... but only to make their desks lighter... so that they can push them across the teachers' room. Every teacher has an identical desk. But for some reason, no one has ever thought to just move the contents. They move the entire. thing.

My seat didn't change, so I was free to stand there, mouth agape, watching everyone rearrange the entire teachers' room over the course of a half hour. In the end, it looked exactly the same, but everyone seemed out of place. I really m

iss my old row-mates, but hopefully over time I'll adjust to my new neighbors.

As for leaving teachers, the English teacher who sat next to me was transferred to a special needs school for the deaf that Steff works at. A really nice teacher who sat behind me has been transferred to Kencho, to work at the Board of Ed. When he visited a week later, he told me that now he works from 8 am until midnight every day. He also started wearing glasses, and looks considerably older than he did at the end of March. A nursing teacher who used to sit across from me moved to a high school a few cities over, but also invited me to her son's birthday party next week, so we'll keep in touch.

We gained two new English teachers, one of whom lives a four-minute walk from my apartment. We also got a new swimming coach who used to work at one of my special needs schools. I used to sit in on his two-period long class every other week, so seeing him at Hofu High School was a pleasant surprise. And where my supervisor used to sit, directly behind me, now sits a geography teacher who used to work at my OTHER special needs school. So the new batch of teachers was actually not so new for me!

Next time: graduation/Japan's obsession with ceremonies, work drinking parties, and a weekend of camping and horseback archery...