miscellaneous-ness

In the same way that Terry Gilliam shouts “Bring out your dead” in Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail, a grizzled old man driving a beaten-up ramshackle truck drives through the streets every once in a while with megaphone attached to the top of the vehicle that does the shouting for him. Only in this case, “your dead” happen to be old appliances and mangled bicycles.

Also, it’s rather pleasant living among the rice fields in the country…smoke from burning fields wafts through the school almost constantly…if feels more like camp than school…the gym smells like old wood and there are windows around the entire circumference of the school, bordering each and every hallway…the students run and jump and tear about the place, yelling and singing unabashedly while the staff talks and laughs among one another…it’s a really quite a relaxed atmosphere…still, it would be nice to understand more of what my fellow coworkers are saying…I can pick up bits and pieces and answer questions when they are asked directly to me, but my conversation skills are still quite jumbly and incoherent …I am the infidel in the holy land, the linguistic thorn in everyone’s side, the king of the carnival creation. An alien, doing alien things in alien ways, trying not to alienate everyone around me, yet succeeding, here and there, at integrating myself into the greater matrix of Japanese society. Should I continue with my language studies I may be able support myself with a real job in the Big T (T for Tokyo) next year without the assistance of the J.E.T. Program. But that is still a ways away…

To bow respectably requires a deep, low bow and complete almost 90 degree arch in the back. In order to bow with such respect to the English teacher about to instruct him in the ways of English Number Bingo, one of my little 3-graders smoked his head of the desk in front of him. He was really trying hard, but he bowed too low too fast and WHAM! bashed his face on the desk. I tried not to laugh, but it was completely impossible