Izu Trip

   Last Friday was the Autumnal Equinox which is a national holiday in Japan.  I decided to use the three day weekend to do a bit of traveling, so I went to a peninsula just to the south of me called Izu.

Izu was its own province before the Meiji era, but for the past hundred plus years it has been part of Shizuoka Prefecture.  It is mostly famous for having nice scenery and a lot of natural beauty, and being the setting of "The Izu Dancer," a short story I read in college by Kawabata Yasunari (the first Japanese author to win the Nobel for Literature). 

I spent most of Friday and Sunday traveling, stopping in Ito and Atami.  I had planned on taking a bus to Shuzenji which I had been assured was possible by an empolyee of the bus company, but it turned out that bus only ran once a day, so that was a bit unfortunate.

I spent all of Saturday in Shimoda, which is a port town on the southern tip of the peninsula.  It served as the inspection port for ships during the Edo Period (1603-1868) but is better known for its role in the opening of Japan to the West.

In 1853, Commodore Perry sailed into what's now Tokyo Bay with a small fleet of steam ships and demanded that Japan open up ports at which U.S. Whaling ships could resupply themselves.  He returned a few months later in '54 and the Shogunate directed him to Shimoda, where he signed the treaty opening that port to American vessels and established a consulate at a different temple in the town.  A couple years later, Townsend Harris arrived and set up the embassy in Shimoda where he stayed until he was able to bargin for a better location for his embassy, which he was granted about a year and a half after he arrived.

So, here are a few highlights of the trip.

A street in Ito.  There wasn't much to do here, but it was a nice city.

A model of Perry's ship outside the station in Shimoda, with a small frowning samurai statue next to it for no reason.

The temple where the treaty opening Japan to America was signed.

This is the temple where the treaty opening Japan to Russia was signed, which I did not know about until I got to Shimoda.  I knew that the great powers of the day (England, Russia, France, etc.) were all given similar treaties to the one with the U.S. but I didn't know that while the Russians were in port at Shimoda, a tsunami destroyed their ship.  They built a new ship in a nearby town with the help of local Japanese workmen who became the shipbuilders of Japan's modern navy, which defeated Russia in a naval battle in the Russo-Japanese war fifty years later.  Funny how that worked out.

A view of the Pacific to the south.

Monument to Commodore Matthew Perry

The bay, with a sightseeing boat made up to look like one of the "black ships."

Gyokusenji, the temple which served as the first American consulate.  A monument to Townsend Harris has a quote from his journal the day they raised the U.S. flag commenting on how their presence was the beginning of the end for the Shogun and complaining about the size of the mosquitoes.

The graves of five American sailors from Perry's expedition at the same temple.

Again, graves of sailors at Gyokusenji.  This time, Russian sailors who died during the Tsunami.  Apparently, this temple was also where the Russians were quartered during their stay, a year before Harris set up shop there.

A monument to the gent on the right, Shimooka Renjou.  A local man who took an interest in photography and learned everything he could about it from Harris's Dutch interpreter.  He went on to be the father of Japanese photography.

Monument to commemorate the great friendship born the day Perry threatened to bombard the coast if they didn't deliver his letter to the Emperor featuring quotes from Perry, "I've come here as a peacemaker" and Harris "My mission is a friendly one in every respect."

And a random monument next to the previous one commemorating Jimmy Carter's Presidential visit to Shimoda  on the 125th anniversary of the signing of the treaty.

Well, that's all for today.  The trip was a good time, and a nice rest.  As of tomorrow evening, all of my schools will have had their Undoukai, so I should be back to a full schedule next week and I may have less to write about, but I'll try to come up with something or other.  Until next time.

運動会 - Undoukai

Undoukai is a yearly sports festival that every elementary school in Japan holds.  It is a sort of track and field day with other types of performances mixed in.  In junior high, they have the 学園祭 (Gakuensai) which usually has both a sports day and a culture day.  As far as elementary schools are concerned, this is the biggest event of the year.  My home school hosted its Undoukai last Sunday, the eighteenth.  Regrettably, I am not allowed to post pictures of students or staff, so this will be a pretty visually dull post.  Gomen nasai.

First, a word on why undoukai exists.  Modern Japanese education started in the late 1800's as part of the Meiji government's attemtps to build a strong and modern nation.  For this purpose, they opted for a military education which you can still see the effects of in their school uniforms and things like undoukai where the kids compete in a variety athletic events that help foster a competitive nature and good teamwork, etc.  Of course, since the war Japan has been a pacifist nation and now undoukai is just a school festival which now has events which the founders of the Meiji state would probably not approve of, not to mention the music selection.

For the competition, the school divides into teams.  Because Iwade is so small, it is divided into red and white teams.  Larger schools have a blue team, and my Friday school has a yellow team as well.  At Iwade, they had the red team subdivided into pink and orange and the white team subdivided into blue and green.  For each competitive event they got a certain number of points for first through fourth place and then these were added up and added to the overall red-white score.

At 9:00, the opening ceremony started.  First, the students paraded in to place in the traditional militaristic style.  Next, there were speeches by the principal, PTA president and student body president before we sang the school song.  Somewhere in there, we had one of my favorite Japanese school ceremony activities: the introduction of every member of the PTA.  Much like at events in America where people are introduced individually and the applause peters off after a while, everyone bows to each member of the PTA as they come forward to bow after being introduced.  Makes you wish they would ask the audience to hold their bows until the end.

After this, everyone stretched (students, staff, and even the PTA) before the morning activities.  First, the teams lined up opposite one another and had a chanting war, taking turns chanting first about how they would win and then about how the other team would lose.  Then, they started the events, which included a relay race for the lower three grades, a race where four people were strapped to two by fours, and a strange type of tug-of-war where there were five ropes and the kids were allowed to pull at whichever one they chose and switch ropes at will.  Each team was awarded two points for getting a rope all the way to its side and one point if the rope was closer to its side than its opponent's.  Between these things there were other events.  One involved next year's first graders had to race for grab bags.  Three others involved parents and students playing together, one was golf themed, another involved passing three soccer balls tied together with strings back and forth, and the last was a race where the pairs had to run to a cone keeping a balloon between them, popping the balloon between them at the cone, then one giving the other a piggyback ride back to the line.  It was very entertaining.

Then the morning portion closed out with the younger grades (1st-3rd) doing a dance with pom poms to a song by AKB48, a very popular J-pop group.  This is chiefly what I meant when I was talking about the Meiji founders being disappointed in their descendants.  It was very fun to watch, though some of the second grade boys seemed less enthusiastic about how shiny their pom poms than others.

After the lung break, the festivities resumed with a Taiko performance, Taiko being traditional Japanese drums.  This was followed by a strange relay where three students had to weave through cones while holding on to a bar which they then had to bring back to their line, run it under their jumping teammates, then back to the front of the line over their now ducking teammates.  That one had “tempest” in the title.  After this, the older grades competed in tug-of-war, followed by the lower grades.  Then the older grades did a traditional dance where they mostly mimed bringing in fishing nets.  Then the lower grades had a competition where they had to throw beanbags into a basket eight feet or so in the air.  The last competition for the fourth through sixth graders and was a relay race which was really close.  

The score between the red and white teams had been close all day and was tied before the relay, but by taking first and third in the relay White came out ahead 52 to 50.  The day wrapped up with another speech from the principal before the school flag was presented to the white team captain.  Then they marched out the same way they came in.

That’s about all I have for this.  It was a lot of fun and the kids seemed to enjoy themselves.  Three of my other schools will hold their festivals tomorrow (tomorrow is a national holiday here) and the fifth will be next Saturday, so after next week I should be back to my normal schedule.  I had very few classes in September due to all the practice that went into these festivals, so I hope they enjoyed themselves.  They certainly seemed to at Iwade.

Well, that’s all for this week.  I plan to travel this weekend, so hopefully I can post more about that next week

The Car Situation

  So, after finally getting through the schools, I suppose I should mention the transportation.  Only one of my schools is what I consider walking distance for a daily commute (less than an hour on foot).  So rather than bike over an hour occasionally in the snow several days each week in winter, I had to get a car.  In Japan, there are two types of cars that you see on the road every day which you can differentiate by the license plate.  Normal sized cars get white license plates while smaller “kei cars” get yellow plates (Different prefectures do not get different plates like states in the US).  The main difference in the actual cars comes down to engine size.  A kei car’s engine must be smaller than 550 cc to be classified as such.  The advantage to having a kei car is pretty much restricted to cost.  Buying price, maintenance, taxes, and shaken (we’ll come back to this) are all cheaper for a kei car.  So I was looking for one until I found this car advertised on the Yamanshi English Teachers International (YETI) forum.

In the end, I bought this Honda Civic on the cheap from a guy who was about to return to the states.  It was only \80,000 which is pretty cheap for a white plate (normal car) and it drove well if you ignored the slight rumble it occasionally gave you as it changed gears.  After driving this car for a few months, the rumble was less slight and less occasional but as it happened slowly I didn’t really notice how bad it had gotten.  Eventually, it was pointed out to me by a friend who I was giving ride to.  After consulting a mechanic, he said that it might last a couple months or it might last a couple years, though it was “the worst he had ever felt.”  Then in July, it was time to have shaken, the government inspection that every car must undergo every two years.  The shaken for a white plate is around 80,000 yen.  Also, the vehicle tax which is around 30,000 yen for a white plate does not transfer owners, so to my understanding if two people own a car in a year both have to pay for it.  So, keeping my car would have cost 110,000 yen.  I mentioned the possibility of just getting a new car to my mechanic, and he told me he was trying to sell a kei car for 130,000 yen.

Note:  10,000 yen is roughly $130, though it was more like $125 last July and more like $120 last March.

So, I opted to pay a little more for a car that was not dying the death.  This new one is a Suzuki Alto, a popular model here in Japan though most don’t have a turbo charger.  The nice thing about said turbo charger is I don’t notice that I’m driving a car that would fit easily in my apartment, which is pretty small itself.  So, now I have this tiny car which I barely fit in that I love.  Hopefully it will handle ok in the winter, but I guess there is no way to see about that until December.

That’s all for now.  I’ll talk about the driver’s license process for foreigners at a later date.  Next week, Undoukai.
 

Friday - 日川小学校

Finally we come to Hikawa Sho, by far the largest school I deal with.  There are 236 students at Hikawa, so I share it with another ALT.  I teach 1^st, 4^th, and 6^th, grade.  The 1^st, 2^nd, 5^th, and 6^th grades all have enough students to be split into two sections, so I have five classes total, though in all honesty I’d rather have six.  The 4^th grade has 41 students, which is kind of hard to control.  Luckily, the homeroom teacher spends her time keeping the kids in line which is nice because she can do it well, but less nice in that I have to run the entire lesson which is difficult as I am supposed to be doing everything with her approval which I can’t really get at a moment’s notice if she’s reprimanding a child for being inattentive.

I covet that map on the wall.  I've always liked raised relief maps, and this is a really nice one of Yamanashi and the surrounding area.

Unlike my other schools, Hikawa is in the valley...

...which is a nice change of scene...

...but it is always noticeably hotter here than any other school.

Also of note, Matsumoto Tetsuya, one of the current Yomiuri Giants (The J-league equivalent of the Yankees) went to this elementary school.  They have a small shrine to him in the entranceway with a bat and square of cardboard both signed by the man himself.  He’s apparently won rookie of the year in 2009, so I suppose that’s something to write home about.


So those are all of my schools.  In a side note, we had a typhoon in Japan that prevented me from climbing Fuji last Saturday.  Soon it will be too cold to climb unless one is serious about mountain climbing so if I don't go this weekend I might have to wait until next summer.  Hopefully that will work out.

Next will be a report on the automotive front.

Thursday - 三富小学校

Taken from the top of the entrance ramp underneath the gym.

And now on to Thursday’s school, Mitomi Elementary School, which is about tied with Maki San for being the most remote.  This one feels more out in nature, probably due to the fact that it looks like Mitomi Sho is built into a mountain.  Also, this is the only school where I’ve seen any wildlife (a couple deer and a monkey) aside from giant insects.

All of my schools have swimming pools, which is apparently common if not universal for Japanese elementary schools.  Mitomi, however, is the only one that has an indoor pool, pictured here.

There are 59 students at Mitomi, 19 of which are in the 6^th grade.  I think the incoming first graders won’t have more than ten students, so it will be a smaller school next year.

I am always surprised by the artwork that seems to find its way into every school here.

Wednesday - 岩手小学校

Well, after that brief interlude of an entire month, here is my Wednesday school, Iwade Sho Gakko (Iwade Elementary School).  This is my “home school” so this is where I spend days if a different school doesn’t have school or there are no classes on a particular day.  This is also where I have been going during summer break.  That being said, I actually share this school with another ALT.  Up until now, I have had fourth through sixth grades, but the old ALT just finished before break and the new guy doesn’t arrive until mid-September, so I don’t know if they’ll want me to add a couple classes until he gets here.  There are 50 students exactly here and it also has a specialized English program.

A view of Fuji from just outside the main entrance.

The shoe closet at the main entrance.  I'm unsure what type of
bird that is on the Iwade crest.

The English Room.  We line the tables up on the left side of the
room for classes for the kids to use during "writing time."
They sit in the center of the floor for the rest of the class.

Apparently the Yamanashi City BoE is using Iwade as the guinea pig for introducing “English as a foreign language” which seems a strange way to iterate the difference.  Basically, all they are trying to change is how often the younger grades have English class and how early writing is introduced.  The old system, which all of my other schools are on, teach the alphabet just at the end of sixth grade before they graduate to junior high.  Here, however, they teach lower case in third grade, upper case in fourth grade, and have them writing very simple phrases and sentences in fifth and sixth grade.  By simple, I mean things like “I’m hungry” and “It’s on the box” in fifth and “I have a headache” and “I get up at 6:00” in sixth.  So, in theory these kids are the cream of the crop when it comes to English, but it seems the system was implemented too late for the fifth and sixth graders.  The fourth graders, on the other hand, are way beyond any of my other school’s fourth graders.  Also, they are probably the most attentive class I teach.

The English room from where I usually stand.

Traffic safety day.  They spray painted some fake roadways on the playground and set up some traffic lights.  After this day I knew why all Japanese school children crossed the street with one hand in the air.

Tuesday - 牧丘第二小学校

The school from the parking lot.

Next, Makioka Dai Ni Elementary School.  This school has an impressive hill on the way up to it which I do not look forward to taking on in the winter.  This one has 53 students, usually around 6 per grade, except the fifth grade which oddly has 16.  It's a fun school.

Strange artwork behind the unicycle rack in the genkan (entrance way).  Every elementary school in this city seems to have a pool and an impressive unicycle collection.

Trophy case.  The pictures above are aerial shots of students on the playground in a formation that spells the school's name.  I wish I had gotten a closer picture.

The second floor.

It says 英語コーナー (eigokoonaa-English Corner).  I'm not sure what to do with it yet, but behind the railing you can see the view the school commands of the valley that makes up the majority of Yamanashi Prefecture.

Again, the window to the teacher's room is right next to the entrance, though usually people come to the outside window to the teacher's room at this school.  I assume this will change in the winter.

Well, that's all for Makioka Number 2.  I neglected to take my camera to my Wednesday school this week, so it will be another week at least before I can post pictures of that one.

In other news, I take my test to get a Japanese Driver's License next Wednesday.  I've been told to expect the written test to be easy and to be failed on the driving test at least once.  I had a lesson last weekend, so hopefully I'll get it on the first try.  頑張ります (ganbarimasu - I'll do my best).  Until next week.

Monday - 牧丘第三小学校

So, finally here is my Monday School, Makioka Dai-san Shogakko (Makioka Number Three Elementary School). It has less than 29 students and no first graders this year. Apparently the board of education is perfectly content to let the school continue to operate with so few students.

In Yamanashi City, the fifth and sixth grades have 35 English lessons a year, which translates into once a week, while the third and fourth grades have 20. I believe the first and second grades have 15 or so, which means I have fifth and sixth grade classes every week and the others every other week, give or take.

The genkan, or entrance-way where you change your shoes as you enter and exit the building.

The slippers on the right are for guests and the teacher's shoes are behind those doors. Above the cabinet is a small window to the teacher's room so guests can announce themselves without having to take off their shoes and come to the door around the corner.

The teacher's room door on the left. I didn't manage to get a picture of the teacher's room unoccupied, and I am not allowed to post pictures with students or teachers in them.

The section devoted to English is the bottom right part of the wooden shelves. Groups of flashcards rubber-banded together. Also a few large children's books on the second to lowest metal shelf. (So far we've only read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See? and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, both in the second grade class).

Since Maki San has no first graders, we were allowed to convert the unused first grade classroom into an English room and put various things on the walls, like the alphabet for the kids and classroom commands for the homeroom teachers for when they forget.

The English room, from the back.

Well, that's all for 牧三小 (Maki San Sho, as it's abbreviated). Tuesday's school will be coming soon.