Lost in Gunma

Minami Chu...see you!

2006-07-20T20:44:00.000+09:00

Well, it finally happened. My last day at Minami Chugakko has come to an end. I had four classes, one of which was wonderful, three of which were pretty fun. Makie had a mini-meltdown because I gave a student she didn't like a sticker. But then we kissed and made up (not literally, although Miki, another English teacher, was having fun telling us we were lesbians). I got about ten "love letters" from the girl students who really liked me, three homeade keitai straps (if you are from Japan, you'll understand what those are), 2 friendship bracelets and a huge bouquet of beautiful sunflowers and bluebells. I have three thousand pictures on my camera of (some random, some not) students giving the peace sign and running away from me. I said "see you," "adios," and "goodbye" probably a grand total of 1000 times. I gave a short and sweet speech in bad Japanese (translated by Negishi san, the darling). After school, Makie, Miki, and two other teachers made me a delicious dinner of cabbage-wrapped hamburger, potatoes gratin, salad and fresh Japanese peaches. And my teachers are having a farewell party for me this Saturday (of course, they just told me today, but this is Minami chu, after all).

I do feel loved, and I'll miss this crazy place - for all the crap, Minami Chu will be in my heart forever. But through it all, I never once regretted not recontracting. It has been a crazy, wonderful, frustrating year, and I truly am a different person then I was when I hopped off the plane at Narita. But its time to go home.

Sayonara, Minami Chu. I'll never forget you.

Pooped!

2006-07-19T20:58:00.000+09:00

Only one more day, four classes, and one speech in bad Japanese...

Today I had a four hour nap. Now I am watching Seinfeld instead of cleaning. Lily is parked on the couch. Last night she slept for an entire hour in her cat carrier with the top closed. Let's hope that she is just as sweet and relaxed in the airplane.

Night, night kids.

My adorable kids (from my second job)

2006-07-19T12:28:00.000+09:00

Kawaii soo!

Clarification; or, getting wasted in Nozomi

2006-07-17T17:43:00.000+09:00

Hi all, so for those of you who were confused about my last post, I was referring to my co-teacher Makie, she wanted to see if I wrote anything in my blog about her (which I had) and while I was showing it to her, I decided to memorialize her craziness in print. She is wonderful and truly a gem to work with...plus, the other day, she asked me out of the blue, "do you want some cock?" Of course, she meant "do you want some coke." But that didn't keep me from laughing for about twenty minutes while she looked at me queerly and said, "nani? nani?"

Anyway, I spent this weekend camping with Tomomi, Yoshi, Yoshi's friend Hishi Hishi, Kate and Ossian. Needless to say, fun was had by all. I drank a ridiculous amount - a bottle of wine, a bottle of plum wine, and a can of beer - and was thus completely ridiculous all night. We went to an onsen and had to change our clothes behind just a towel. I couldn't stand up straight and was thus rolling around the rocks stark naked in front of like thirty people (thank god it was dark). I also remember a certain incident where I had to pee outside the car while everyone laughed hysterically inside. Not exactly my best moment here in Japan. The best, though, was that I was feeling a bit "amorous," shall we say (in drunken people talk) and passed out on poor Hishi Hishi's shoulder (who was by the way, married and like 40) and at some point I woke up and I was holding his hand. I am officially a hand whore, and Gary is planning on dumping me within the week (gomen nasai, baby!). The next morning I woke up thankfully with no hangover but immensely embarassed - thankfully Hishi Hishi was a good sport and did not resent my drunken molestation.

Besides the completely embarassing drunkenness, it was such a fun night and spending time with Kate and Ossian for the last time was sad but, as usual, always fun. They have been such good friends here, and I will miss them (well, ok, I'll miss Kate, I can take or leave Ossian, he's a pip ;-).

Only two more weeks. Strange. Crazy. Sad. Wonderful. I'll update with more soon.

Makie is crazy

2006-07-11T15:32:00.000+09:00

But I love her!!!!!

I am SO READY to leave Minami Chugakko

2006-07-10T14:21:00.000+09:00

Ishimatsu sensei cancelled all of my classes this week. For the second week in a row.

Kanbe sensei teaches the advanced English class even though she is the worst English speaker here. Why, people, why?

I CAN'T WAIT to be challenged and intellectually stimulated again!!!!!!

The Jew in Gunma, Part 2; or, You can't go home again

2006-07-06T22:59:00.000+09:00

So I found out who my successor is in little old Gunma-machi, and who would have guessed - its a Jew! Some might attribute that to chance, but after my dreidel party in December, I know the truth - Minami Chugakko loves them some Yehudas. I mean, with Christmas you get some big fat Santa in red, some red and green decorations, some bigs socks and chocolate chip cookies....but people, this is the land of Pachinko - they want gambling! And dreidel is the deadliest gambling game of all...insert dangerous yet nasal laugh here.

In all seriousness, my successor is really everything I hoped he would be. I may be a crap ALT but I love these crazy teachers and students (although I have no idea what their names are) and this ugly little town and my wonderful Tomoko and the nice people at the electronic store across the street who give me bags of corn when I come to visit...and its nice to know that they will have a good teacher, a respectful neighbor, and, most wonderful of all, a Japanese speaker in their midst. So Aaron, mazel tov on being the coolest new ALT in the Gunma gang, and take care of my (our!) people!

On a side note...I went to Tomomi's house tonight and we spent a few hours planning Hiroshima and Kyoto (I'm going to Hiroshima by myself and meeting up with her in Kyoto). I was thinking to myself, what will life be like in Buffalo without Tomomi - she has been the light in my life all year, not just because of her support but because, damn, the girl is hysterical and intelligent and witty and caring and overall just an amazing friend no matter what her nationality. I will miss her more than I can possibly conceive of right now. Too bad that she won't agree to leave Yoshi and come and live with me and Gary (I told her I could fit her in Lily's carrying case, but unfortunately she didn't believe me). What will "home" be like without my crazy "baka nihonjin"?

My toilet

2006-07-04T09:11:00.000+09:00

So I have had some people ask me why I included a picture of my bathroom in my apartment pics. First of all, the toilet plugs in - there is a heated seat! Mine is actually pretty tame compared to most of the toilets here, which have a whole bidet on it that will make a flushing noise when you go to the bathroom (so no one can hear!) and a little squiggle of water that you can spray up your you-know-where for cleanliness. Plus, there is a sink attached to the top of the toilet. Either way, just for you dippy people out there, that's why. My toilet is the bomb! :-)

Life, stand still here

2006-07-02T22:37:00.000+09:00

Watching fireflies dance in the dark amongst the trees...
Sitting in an onsen and watching the leaves of autumn fall around me...
Driving through towns whose houses are covered to the roof in pure white, glimmering snow...
Picnicing by the waterfall in Mitsudera Park as cherry blossoms fall...
Walking through the Nikko Matsuri as different tunes and colors clash against and with each other...
Camping by the fire as only a flashlight lights the dark...
Fishing for the giant orange fish that somehow always evades our pole...
Harvesting rice with a scythe, big rubber boots on my feet and rain in my face...

Some experiences can't ever be captured by a camera.

(Long belated) pictures of my apartment (and my ball and chain)

2006-06-25T21:49:00.000+09:00

Even I am speechless

2006-06-15T00:12:00.000+09:00

So once in a while you happen on something on the internet that just makes your week. Or your year. And this is seriously one of the funniest, funniest things I have ever seen. Ever.

I pasted the photos here for those un-techno saavy people that read my blog (dad), but you can get the source here.

By the way, the language that its being translated to (in case you don't know) is Japansese....so perhaps I can teach my kids how to say "Don't mess with that biotch." What do you think?

Turns out a British girl from a small town called Norfolk found this in her local bookstore. Why can't I have the good fortune to come across a treasure like this??

Read this article

2006-06-06T22:14:00.000+09:00

http://www.theotherjournal.com/article.php?id=97&cview=1#cmt

You know how I said that I had a hard time explaining my travels - in particular, my travels in Gambia? This wonderful writer, who is a friend of Kathy and Haali, has taken so many of those unspeakable moments in Gambia and put them into words, with the added depth of his own experience.

Whenever I think I am forgetting, writing like this brings me back.

I'm being adopted

2006-06-01T16:26:00.000+09:00

Ok, so I have an absolutely mushy heart when it comes to cats, as you all know after I said I wouldn't adopt Lily and then proceeded to - what? - adopt her. So now there is this cute black and white stray, all skin and bones, who keeps coming up to me and meowing plaintively and staring up at me with these big green eyes. She even comes up the stairs to my second floor apartment and scratches at the door to be let in. I definitely can't adopt her, and I won't. But in order not to tease her, I have been keeping my distance - that means no petting, no loving, no feeding. The poor little thing comes up to me with smooshy eyes and I have to lightly push her away.

Lesson learned: Never go outside in Japan. There are too many stray cats to break your heart.

In other news, Tomomi saved me from a night of depression last night by showing me pictures of her and Yoshi when, to quote her, "he was skinny!" Its his birthday this monday, and I am going to buy him something soccor-y. Also, today my lesson plan centered around teaching the parts of the human body - face, eyes, neck, legs - to my second graders. I told my students that I had a boyfriend, and that he was very cute - in fact, I suggested, let's draw my boyfriend. Well, these were the directions I told them to do:

Draw one big face
Draw one neck
Draw two shoulders
Draw four arms
Draw four hands
Draw one big stomach
Draw eight legs
Draw eight feet
Draw five eyes
Draw three noses
Draw four mouths
Draw four ears
Draw two hairs

Lets just say, Gary might not have appreciated 120 kids drawing him like a freaky alien. However, the kids loved it, and so did I. So this goes out to Gary: Baby, I love your four arms, no matter what anyone says...

Anti-Americanism

2006-05-29T14:49:00.000+09:00

This past weekend I went to visit my friend Stephen in Tochigi. It was a nice weekend - we actually went to a Western style mall with a food court, my first in ten months! Instead of traveling or doing anything exciting, we mostly just sat around and talked (and, of course, he subjected me to British Television - some good, some horribly bad). Anyway, on Saturday night he invited his friend Chris, a German guy, to meet us for dinner. From the moment this guy met me, he had it out for me, and all because - horror of horrors! - I was American. Everything I did, he would say it was because I was American - "You drink cheap wine? How American." "You like Guiness? How American." "You eat food? How American." Ok, not the last one, but you get the picture. Anyway, he was so blatantly rude to me all night that by the end of it I was just barely not slapping him - I mean, I am the first one to make fun of myself of being "American," but it is all in fun and I put no value on stereotypes of any nationality, German, American, Japanese or otherwise, if they are used in a derogatory way. This guy was just being mean.

So finally, after a while of just shrugging things off, I just countered by saying "Its nice to see that you don't have any preconceptions of people, how openminded of you." I really wanted to mouth him off, but I didn't want him to have the satisfaction of being able to say "You get mad and break your cool? How American." So it left a sour taste in my mouth about the entire weekend, not just because of him, but because Stephen (who is very proper and non-confrontational) didn't stick up for me at all and just let it happen. Oh well. The one lesson I have learned is that I won't ever blame my nationality for my personality traits or my choices - we are who we say we are, and shoving ourselves into a small, national box is only ever limiting.

On a funny note, the train station in Nishinasuno had a mural painted on the inner hallway - children catching butterflies, a sun beaming in the sky, flowers blooming everywhere, women and their daughters in summer dresses....and, of course, a man smoking a cigarette. Which makes complete sense.

Only in Japan.

I'm full

2006-05-25T14:18:00.000+09:00

This afternoon I stir-fried (in Pam, not oil, of course!) ninikume (this long, delicious Japanese green vegetable kind of like a green bean), long mushrooms that look like they're props from the smurfs, and hamburger meat, all in this delicious spicy sauce. I ate almost the entire thing. I want to throw up (but in a good way).

Why I love Tomoko

2006-05-24T21:51:00.000+09:00

For those of you who don't know, Tomoko is my downstairs neighbor, the one who took care of Lily when I was in America. She is so sweet, but she speaks no English, and as my Japanese is not exactly fluent, whenever we see each other we smile and laugh and say "konnichiwa, genki desu ka" but that's about it. Well yesterday her daughter was over to visit with her two children; I saw them and invited them upstairs to see Lily. I have had a bitter cold, so when I saw Tomoko I asked her if she had a thermometer (I had to look up the word in a dictionary beforehand, no, I don't suddenly know Japanese vocabulary). She asked me if I was sick, and I said I was. She lent me a thermometer and left with her daughter and grandchildren to go somewhere.

About one hour later I hear a knock on my door. It's Tomoko, bearing water, vitamin juice, banana yogurt and a lemon fruit jelly (kind of like jello). Can you believe that? What a sweetheart! I am going to bake her some peanut butter cookies next week.

The beginning of the end

2006-05-23T12:47:00.000+09:00

So it is May 23rd, and I have only two months left until my contract in Japan ends. This has been perhaps one of the most difficult if not the most difficult experience of my life. I have had to confront an entirely different set of values, ideals, aesthetics, social norms, not to say a completely different language system. I have also had some of the most memorable experiences of my life and have been immeasurably changed, if not in my tastes for seaweed then in almost every other way.

It has not been easy to keep this blog updated - I have always been the kind of traveler who gets so caught up in the world that I am in that it is difficult to seperate myself intellectually and account for those experiences in words and pictures. From my trip to Africa, I have only 20 random pictures, all taken on my last day in Fosse; I never really explained my European tour to anyone, and the pictures lay languishing in a photo album which I have never really shown to many people. Is this because the experiences aren't important to me? Obviously not. It is just that the richness of experience is for me untranslatable into an easily understood paragraph or a photograph. I will never be a writer because I can't (and have no desire to) "trap," so to speak, the immensity of life onto the written page. At first I used this blog to talk about the interesting facets of life here - the green tea chocolate, the revolving sushi restaurants, the Japanese matsuri. It made people laugh at how different life here in Japan was, at how interesting cultural exchange could be in a foreign land. But after a few months, it was hard to keep that going. These were no longer weird, Japanese eccentricities to me but part of my life, part of my own sense of normalcy here in Gunma-machi. I still noticed new and interesting things everywhere, but they were part of my home, and it almost felt superfluous to write of them as if they were special or unique.

Experiences reminded me of other experiences, and I found that suddenly I had a network of sensory connections - a parking lot famous for cherry blossoms made me think of lovely plants set in the middle of a yard full of rusted metal made me think of my student's obsession with glittery stickers on dull notebooks made me think of the endless row of concrete fences and man-made rivers that are completely surrounded by the highest and darkest of mountains...How can I explain what these things mean, how they are linked together, how a serving of pickled cucumbers can remind me of a legend about cherry blossoms? If I were a writer, I would write these things for you. I would tell you the story of my life here, from one image to another. I would capture those times here when, like Virginia Woolf, I have stood in awe and said, "life stand still here," if only for a moment.

But I'm not a writer, not really. When I go home, I will come back to Japan for a visit once in a while in my memory, and thats where the true story will live - in a new web of images and people and inventions that I had never even imagined before I came to live here. Some of you might be a little resentful of this - I know that I leave many of you frustrated when I tell you that I can't put these experiences into words. Just know that I will try to keep writing, I will try to keep translating. I will try to keep talking even when the words are stuck under my tongue.

Decision made!

2006-05-18T16:17:00.000+09:00

I'm off to Buffalo!

Ten reasons why the next 2 months are going to fly by

10. I'm going to see sumo in Tokyo this weekend, and after I will thrust myself into work so I won't have to remember the fat, half-naked men who look like my dad in his underwear....ah, its already grossing me out! :-O
9. Stephen and I are going to a love hotel in Tokyo (not in THAT kind of way, its a purely intellectual exploration - Gary and I didn't have time to go!)
8. Gary is sending me pictures of my new apartment tomorrow!
7. I bought Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory, and it singlehandedly makes my free time at my desk interesting.
6. I'm teaching with Makie this semester and she is the best - students actually participate in her class! They actually raise their hands and shout out answers! They actually laugh!
5. I'm going to Yokohama with Manami (Tomomi's sister) and am visiting Tomomi's wonderful family again in Hakone.
4. I am ALSO driving to Tochigi to visit Stephen and have more wonderfully horrible british food.
3. I am ALSO finally going to go to Hiroshima.
2. The countdown towards wheat bread, gardenburgers and cranberry juice has begun!
1. Tomomi and I will go on a big trip after my contract is up, so I can spend my last days with my best friend here.

The toughest decision of my life

2006-05-06T00:59:00.000+09:00

So here goes...I was accepted into Brandeis University for the PhD. The one school that I said could vie with Buffalo for being my school of choice. And now I just don't know what to do. Brandeis in some ways seems like the better choice - in other ways, Buffalo seems like the best choice. I am so confused. Too much of a good thing, in this case, is just leading to a lot of trouble. I think the decision will thankfully come down to money (because judging on programs would be too difficult) - I think that Brandeis would be just too expensive to attend. I am waiting to talk to some grad students about it. I feel so stressed out about the whole situation - I can't imagine how Gary feels about it, our futures are both on the line. I'm not sure what is the right decision for both of us. We'll have to figure it out soon.

Gary does Japan

2006-04-30T22:01:00.000+09:00

Dum da da dum....drum roll please...

2006-04-22T23:48:00.000+09:00

So for those of you amazingly excited about what Debra Goodman's future holds in store for her (hi, mom and Gary), here's a list of the schools that came through (and the ones that fell flat on their face)...

Acceptances

Buffalo
Maryland (just found out!)
Tufts
Amherst
Rochester

Waitlist

Brandeis

Rejections (try any school in the top 20!)

Washington
Cornell
Illinois
Michigan
Rutgers

School that has not yet let me know (so probably a reject)
Penn State

I feel pretty damn good about myself now. Getting into Maryland was an amazing coup, as they have one of the top programs in the country for the areas I am going into. However, I am almost 100% sure that I am still headed to Buffalo. Maryland's financial aid package isn't competitive (for that matter, neither is Buffalo's, but it's so damn cheap to live in Buffalo as compared to Maryland) and I have really grown excited about the UB English Department in a way that I am not as excited about the Maryland program. So, staying in Buffalo, folks, call me when its spring.

On a side note, I am officially ADDICTED to Spooks, this British show that is kinda like 24. Ossian burned them for me, and needless to say, in between reading about phenemonology and hermeneutics, I have been glued to my laptop screen. I am in LOVE.

And then there were none...

2006-04-21T10:23:00.000+09:00

Top ten best things about Gary's trip to Japan

10. Raj Mahal, it might have taken us an hour traipsing through Shinjuku to get there, but the mulag mahal was oishi, ne?
9. Inwardly gagging as Yoshi and Tomomi ate fish...with heads! They say kawaii, we say KOWAI!
8. Being the sugar mama for a week (what, you think yen grows on trees!) and making my baby look all sexy in new Japanese gear
7. Onsens with starry bottoms, snow glittering all around, and fresh night air
6. Nikko walks and late night talks...
5. Observing the genius of a chopstick master, level 15
4. The Ramen restaurant on the way to Minikami that is alternately dedicated to Japanese popular culture and the phallus (there was an actual penis room!)
3. "This kind of certainty comes once in a lifetime." Ugh. I prefer Trey and Matt
2. Gary in a yucata - SEGOY!
1. The entire week, complete with shinkansen meltdowns, testy karaoke, chicken sandwiches aplenty, and so many little moments that will keep me going for the next three months.

I carry your heart. I carry it in my heart.

Update, update!

2006-04-02T23:20:00.000+09:00

For now this will have to do...

The yakuza and me, Fin

2006-03-10T10:21:00.000+09:00

So now the news you have been waiting for...my eyewitness account of the yakuza...prepare to be shocked...

Or not. Because its not eyewitness. However, I'm as good as the next English major when it comes to narrative, so I hope you'll enjoy. When my friend Tomomi moved to Gunma, she got a job in a flower shop. Well, it turns out that said flower shop is quite popular with the local yakuza. On the birthday of the yakuza leader, everyone would send him a certain arrangement of flowers - really big and bold, the yakuza aren't known for their subtlety. Tomomi was hired to deliver flowers, many of which went to men's mistresses (she thinks) and yakuza houses (she knows). Men would be guarding the gate with guns, and it was a long, irritating process before the flowers could be brought into the house. In fact, Tomomi told me part of the reason that she was hired was that she was a woman (you will remember from my previous entries that women are not allowed to be in the yakuza). Before Tomomi had her job, there was a man working there who was secretly a yakuza member. As he was delivering flowers one day, he opened up the flower box and - suprise - there was a machine gun! A story right out of the movies, but it really happened in good old Gunma-machi!

So there you have it. My in-depth, up close and personal dealings with the yakuza. Perhaps they are not as close as we would all like them to be (even though I have volunteered to tattoo my entire body with yakuza tattooes and spike up my jew fro, they keep rejecting me...for some reason). For a funny yet pretty realistic take on the yakuza, check out Juzo Itami's Minbo, or the Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion. It de-romanticized the yakuza and portrayed them as a bunch of loud, obnoxious petty thieves rather than the dark and dangerous anti-heros that they would like to be known as. In fact, the yakuza were so disgruntled with their depiction in this movie that there was a knife attack on Itami a few weeks after the film opened (Itami survived, but had a slash on his jaw ever after as a reminder). Itami supposedly committed suicide in 1997, but there were some suspicions that perhaps the yakuza were behind his death, although nothing has ever been proven.

On a completely unrelated note - for a very short time, my grad school acceptances (Tufts, UB, U of R, and U Mass at Amherst) outnumber my rejections (Michigan, Cornell and Rutgers)! Yay! Can't wait until I can make some decisions and figure out just where the heck I will be going next year.

Borne back ceaselessly

2006-03-03T14:18:00.000+09:00

Today was the celebration of the third grade students' graduation from junior high (here in Japan the school year ends in March) and they screened an American movie for the entire school - The day after tomorrow, with Jake Gyllenhall and Dennis Quaid. I was watching it with my students, and (there's a spoiler coming up if you haven't seen the movie)I began to feel this hammering in my stomach just as soon as New York City was flooded - children stuck in cars, lifeless bodies laying in the water, people stuck in one location with no place to go, animals trapped in watery cages...and suddenly, even though this was a stupid disaster movie, I began to shake uncontrollably. The landscape was exagerrated but familiar. I walked out of the gym and went back to my desk to have myself a silent cry behind the computers. A few teachers came up to me and asked me what was wrong, but how could I explain it to them? How would I be able to convey to them, whose country had been through the Tokyo firebombing and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that a hurricane that killed only a few thousand people is the cause of my tears. They looked at me with blank faces and said, "but it was only a movie. It's fiction." They didn't know what to say.

I don't know if I ever felt so alone as this moment, mourning the destruction of a city and having no one around to say, I know, I understand. Its funny how a stupid disaster movie can ruin your afternoon. Its funny how you can feel stupid crying even though you're not ashamed of being upset. Its funny how you can know that America has been incredibly lucky in its lack of disasters and yet, at the same time, be overwhelmed by the horror and just the immense sadness of Katrina and what it has done to New Orleans.