Angelic Obi

MONDAY, OCTOBER 18

Woke up and nearly froze to death struggling to crawl out of my futon. It was a mere 60 in my apartment. It was rough.

I'd finished my leftover rice with the curry last night, so I had to get up quickly because I needed to put more on the hob for lunch today. While the rice cooked, I got settled and chatted with Lonn and Olivia. I can't find my comb today, so I swept my hair up in a clip and called it good.

The bike ride to work warmed me up a bit.

I spent the 20 minutes before class photocopying with Sheila, who was also tired today. I taught my first class with Aimee. When I was getting ready to come to Japan, I was told that if you weren't five minutes early, you were already late. This panicked me as promptness isn't always a strong point of mine. Kogyo, especially does not seem to follow this rule.

I called off students names when I gave back tests. Once again, they were quite amused by my attempts at their surnames and whichever students got called “Kanji!” for writing their names in kanji rather than Romaji.

I've also learned that my writing of numbers, particularly 7 and 6 confuses my students, so we had to do a mini-lesson on handwriting variations of numbers. Now, generally, I'm considered to have fairly clean handwriting, so I was surprised. I learned that in Japan, students are taught to make a big loop in their sixes, so, mine, where the loop my recontact at the bottom of the six confuses them. My sevens, which sometimes have a horizontal cross also confused them. So, I went through all the numbers and wrote all the variations I could think of for the students. It was quick and, I think for them, informative, though perhaps a bit mind-boggling. They handle my type-script lowercase “a” okay.

I then had some time off to lesson plan, eat lunch, and sort papers. See, my desk is a mess from me having just thrown papers in haphazardly. Today, I organized to make sure that I had a whole and complete record of all of the lessons I've taught in my file. I also found useful things like a listing of the Kanji to Romaji names of teachers, which would have been really helpful earlier.

For afternoon classes, I got inspiration and got a bit creative. See, I'm teaching the students about injuries. Usually, I act out stubbing my toe (which gives me an excuse to kick a desk, which wakes up any sleeping students.) early in the lesson to demonstrate an injury. Today, when teaching the phrase “My ___ hurts,” I started acting out various ways to hurt myself and the students had to raise their hand and say, “Magda's _____ hurts.” They were a bit startled at first, but generally became quite enthusiastic as I acted out stubbing my toe, dropping books on my hand, punching myself in the face, eating too much ice cream, and running my nails over the board (for real!) to hurt my ears. Really, my job is 1/3 teaching English, 1/3 acting and 1/3 making a fool of myself. The later two being the easier ones.

I repeated this for the later class. I hope they realise that, while I come back from every class and immediately wash my hands because I can't stand having the chalk on my hands, I, during class, write on my poor hands with chalk to teach them. (Red chalk, to act out a “cut,” often with red paper “drops of blood.”)

I don't think they know what to make of me, but I think they enjoy it nonetheless.

After classes, I spent some time fiddling with Open Office, trying to get it to run Japanese language packs. I haven't succeeded yet, but have a headache, so that's enough for today.

I biked home and had wanted to nap, but I had things to organized. As I'd tried on my kimono for Oliva, I hadn't yet folded it up yet, and I needed to do that before class. There is a proper way to fold a kimono (including a proper side of the kimono to sit on while you do it.) I couldn't entirely remember, so I pulled out my book to look at the pictures. I also needed to fold the under-kimono which, conveniently, isn't folded the same way.

By then, it was time to get going. I arrived to class in decent time, having started a new audio-book along the way. I'm attempting Silas Mariner. I decided after Pollyanna that I needed something less fluffy. Anyway, I remember liking this book's Wishbone episode.

I had bought new obi....somethings. Ties to hold the obi in place while you tie the knot. At the store, the saleslady had told me to buy the lace ones, as they were the same price as the standard ones. My teacher, seeing these in my bag asked for my receipt. She's returning them for me for the plain ones, telling me it's harder to tie the lace ones.

Today, we spent the first half, as usual putting on our kimono. Yes, that's right, an hour. Typically we put on our kimono before class, then we'll take them off and go through it as a group. It's good practice and a good review. Attempting to put it on for Olivia was also a good review for me. I got so confused. Each week, we highlight some other little detail, like a special tuck on the inner left side, or pulling the back taught this week that we never did before. Which is good, or it'd be overwhelming.

Today, we learned to tie a kimono knot shaped like a butterfly. It's big and elaborate and I haven't been able to find pictures online yet. It's gorgeous and might possibly be my favorite obi knot. With how pretty it is, I can't imagine why anyone would want to tie the boring drum design (which is the ONLY knot you see in modern Japan.) Perhaps the issue is that we practiced by tying it on our partner. My partner was the kind woman who gave me the yukata (whose name I listened carefully for during attendance, but it was said in too much of a blur for me to understand.) I was kicking myself the entire class, trust me, for having forgotten my camera yet again. (I'll also attempt to tie it on myself at home. It could be a disaster.)

I now have an obi in my possession, rented for 350 yen, which isn't bad, given that it's probably worth several hundred dollars.

After class the women gathered around me to talk and ask questions and see how much I understood. It makes it difficult to pack up my things. I think I did surprise the assistant teacher by how easily I folded up my kimono and yukata properly. The practice did me well.

There are several assistant teachers who help with the class, one of them is about 16-18 years old and very cute. She speaks a bit of English, perhaps because it's still fresh from High School classes and often has an electric English-Japanese dictionary. She was especially sweet after class saying that talking with Katie is a highlight of kimono classes, which touched me.

On the way out, she showed me and the main teachers a picture on her cell phone of a young child who she said was five. I told her she was cute and she corrected me: the picture is her son.

Wait... what?!

So, it turns out she's 25 and that's a picture of her five year old son. Exclamations and curses abound! She really, really looks like she's in high school. Her mother, for the record, is 50 and looks 35-40. I wish I had Japanese forever-young genes.

I had a headache when I got home, so I had a bit of rice and it seemed to help. I chatted a while with some people, including a new acquaintance from home. I learned a lot, including a few snippets that didn't affect me the way I might have expected a year ago. Perhaps I'm growing up.