Risotto and Relaxation

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9

I left work exactly at 4:18 and rushed off to the post office to get my package, as I hadn't managed to get it redelivered. Indy has since offered to teach me how to work the automated call system, so that will be very helpful in the future. I've tried the internet, but my hours have yet to result in a package delivery, even with comparing my forms and the website to Gaijin aids online. I asked Tamora at Nishi to help me once, and it took her about 45 minutes, which made me feel better, but also horrified me. The website has kanji, obviously, but also a few English translations. The kanji on the site, however, don't match up with the kanji on their “Attempted Delivery” notices, which makes it particularly difficult to make anything happen. One question on the website is “type of package.” It's continuously stumped me. It wasn't until I worked with Tamora on the website that I found out that my form doesn't say and “Does Not Say” is one of the options (in kanji, of course.) How am I supposed to figure this out?

On my way out, I bumped into Mischievous-sensei who told me that if the tapes fail during the exams today, he and I will be reading the English sections on the spot. I said that sounded like fun. He didn't share my enthusiasm.

The first thing I did when I got home was mail off the three potential lesson plans to Tamora. We'll see if I hear back from her at all. I hope so, as I actually asked her which she likes best. The goal of the JET program is to team-teach, but there is a wide range of variance in how much “team” is involved in that. Many schools and ALTs just don't have time to put in the extra effort needed to co-plan a lesson.

One of Indy's close friends is a vegetarian who used to live in Japan. So, he got a bunch of her favorite recipes from her and we decided to try a risotto last night. It turned out quite well, though it was incredibly filling. My rice cooker was a bit too small to make it properly, so we had to get creative. In the end, we ended up carmalizing half the onions, rather than just softening them, and that added a lovely sweet flavor. We also added the end of the parsley and Parmesan cheese from the carbonarra sauce last week.

The recipe called for dry white wine (which was part of what the rice was cooked in) which ended up being the biggest challenge for us, as Indy is essentially a non-drinker, and I'm only a social drinker. I do have an intriguing recipe for a carmalized onion pasta sauce that I've been wanting to try, but it also calls for white wine, so this was doubly good, as I can try that out, possibly tonight or tomorrow.

Indy can't handle too much caffeine, especially later in the evening, but as caffeine, at least in tea, appears to have no affect on me, I was just downing it at a very unlady-like pace. It not only calmed me down but warmed me up, which was quite lovely. Indy likes his black, while I repurposed my single (begifted) shot glass as a sugar-stick holder and dumped a stick of sugar into each little glass. Alan would be horrified, but you'd think he would have gotten over it by now.

I managed to get most of my dishes done before bed, which is great because I had had to have my breakfast pains au chocolat yesterday morning on a serving bowl as I was out of all other clean delph. I'd never used the bowl before, so I actually had to wash the dust out of it first. Nearly everything is now done (though my drying rack is overflowing, so the rest had to wait) then it can go away. It's amazing that my dirty sink hasn't scared the poor boy off yet.

In the middle of cooking dinner, it started raining, and I went running out of the kitchen to move my laundry inside. I miss summer when my laundry could dry before the next load was out of the wash. Back then, I was angry with myself for having bought too many hangers. Now, I need what I have and more. I don't have a metal laundry pole like everyone else. I have a hyaku-en garden stake instead. It does the trick although, it's sagging lower and lower under the weight of all the clothes I have hanging out there. I doubt it will snap, though. One day, I'll probably have to replace it, but it's definitely worked just fine and for just a buck. Japan doesn't repurpose. All of my dish rags are technically steam clothes to wipe your hands down with before eating, but they're 1/3 to 1/5 the price of a cloth that's made for dish washing.

Over dinner, Indy DRILLED me on my kimono sentence for the test next week. He DRILLED me on my pronunciation and is definitely my harshest task-master when it comes to Japanese. While my teachers tell me that my pronunciation is perfect and that my Japanese is great, Indy tells me bluntly that I need work and then off we go working on my Japanese “R” in “yoroshiku.” It's good for me, though it ties my tongue in knots.

We also discussed kanji. Some gaijin get kanji and it's required if you become a Japanese citizen. Often you pick kanji that sound out like the Japanese version of your name. I learned that you can get fortune tellers to select kanji for you, as some parents do. They'll also tell you which names or characters are most auspicious. This is why, Indy says, the car brand “Toyota” is was founded by Mr. Toyoda. In hiragana (phonetic alphabet) the only difference between “TA” and “DA” is two little apostrophes after the character that make it voiced. The fortune-teller said that those lead to an inauspicious number of strokes. So the brand was named “Toyota” (which apparently still can be said with the same kanji.) I'd say that the company is doing just fine.

While anyone who knows Japanese can give you kanji, there's something so much more interesting about being able to say that “a fortune-teller in Kyoto gave me my kanji,” rather than “a teacher picked some for me.” The question is how much do fortune tellers charge and it is worth the bragging rights? (Probably not.)

There is conveniently a button on the discount ticket machine for a ticket back to Indy's home station, so that makes things easier for him, and cheaper! I sent him home with two pouches of non-vegetarian spaghetti sauce and told him not to starve himself. His parents are arriving this weekend, so he's bracing for all of the cleaning that that will require. My own honorable parents and little brother won't be arriving until May, but I'm already dreading the cleaning that their visit will require. Once I know my schedule for next year, I can better start planning their visit. At the moment, though I have a few ideas. With my parents willing to fund things, we should all have some pretty amazing experiences here.

I actually made it to school several minutes before the bell. The ride in is much faster, when I don't have to worry about bowling over students. The only students walking in today were junior high kids here to take their entrance examinations. I said good morning and wished them good luck. They replied with “goodbye.” Despite it being Wednesday, there was no teacher meeting. I do not understand teacher meetings.

The teacher's room has been very empty as everyone else scuttles about because of exams. I'll be at Kogyo grading exams tomorrow, but Koko hasn't asked me to do anything with exams. Meanwhile, I've been assigned to “lesson plan,” which is the default task for the ALT if you need to be here but have no work. My lessons are planned, though, so I don't have anything there to do. I suppose I could start looking at next year's classes, perhaps this afternoon. The difficulty being, of course, that I don't really know what they want yet. Just one more hour until lunch.

Education funding is all tied up in budgets in the government at the moment. This is causing Indy problems with knowing if he has funding. This is also probably contributing to issues with the JET program and shifting for next year. It's possible that I'll be moving base schools or have my schedule change next semester. I'd really like to know how and we were supposed to find out at the end of February, but it's late this year. Mustache-sensei sat me down last week and (in a probably unintentionally accusatory tone) stated that he thought that I knew stuff about the situation and wasn't telling him. I denied it, saying I'd heard nothing – I hadn't even talked to Edmund, though I said I'd try – and turned the question around asking if he'd heard. He also hasn't. I hate being patient.

I'm so bored, I'm biting my nails off in a terribly unprofessional and unladylike way. I've done some Japanese studying, but am getting frustrated with the terrible textbooks. I brought my Genki books home last week and now wish I hadn't.

All of the teachers are getting special bentos today. It must be because of entrance exams, though I'm not sure. They are all the same. Often teacher bentos are pretty cheap, but the fancy ones that they order in for special occasions can be about $25. Which is kind of expensive for a cantered lunch in a plastic box. The gym teacher next to me has just opened his. In true Japanese fashion, everything is nicely laid out in little containers, giving you lots of different foods. There's some rice, and tempura, a bunch of meat, some egg, and some pretty pink looking flower thing. I'll be just fine with my whole grain bagel and granola bar, thank you very much. It's also significantly cheaper.

The teachers next to me are already eating their lunch, but my lunch hour doesn't technically start until 12:15, though the times listed in my contract appear to be known exclusively by me. I need to figure out how to make my lunch take longer to eat. The longer it takes, the more justified I feel in taking my full lunch break. If I'm sitting at my desk just reading, even if my contract says I still have 10 minutes left in my lunch break, I feel like I'm slacking and also get some comments from my supervisor about “not wanting to disturb my reading” which seems to have a second layer under it.

This weekend is Sagicho, in Omihachiman. A festival of making giant floats, parading them around, battling them, and then burning everything. Sounds pretty awesome and almost like the basis of a Japanese video game. Elizabeth is organizing a dinner on Sunday night, so my weekend sounds like it should be pretty nice.

Lara messaged me this morning about possibly doing dinner tonight, but I haven't heard back from her yet. We'll see. And the teacher next to me just checked his cell phone. I plan to be extra careful, but will definitely keep my cell on me. It's currently tucked carefully into my pocket where I can feel it vibrate.

I took a nice, long break for lunch, stretching my bagel as long as I could, which is apparently considerably long. I read a fair bit in my book, “Shogun,” which is a massive novel I found under my desk when I moved here last summer. This edition dates back to before I was born, but it moves at a fast pace and is quite entertaining. The only difficult part is keeping the many characters straight. I'm slightly fuzzy on who everyone is and who is scheming against whom, but, as there will be no test, I'm mostly just letting it all settle over me and enjoying it. We had our first ninja attack today.

Toward the end of my lunch, Mischievous-sensei came by, asking if we could practice the English test script at 1pm, just in case the tapes failed. I said that was fine, and wrapped up my meal. At one, I followed him to the calligraphy room, which I've only been in once or twice, and where half a dozen teachers were chilling. We went into a small back room and sat down across from each other to read the script. It's just basic questions and two short dialogues and one monologue for me. It's not too difficult, though the language is so simplified that it's borderline unnatural.

In the second dialogue, I read it with Mischievous-sensei, then read the two follow-up questions. He was directing me to read the dialogue a second time, when I stopped and started talking about the question. He didn't undrestand at first, but we had to switch roles. He was currently reading A and I was reading B, but in the questions, person A was referred to as a “woman.” So, we got that straightened out and went on from there. There was an added benefit that role A has fewer Japanese placenames, which I was stumbling over to the point where both Mischievous-sensei and Kyoto-sensei (who had wandered in to listen) were snickering. I only have to say two now, one in the dialogue and one in the questions. Michievous-sensei says the biggest problems will be his Japanese accent when he speaks his English lines and my American accent when I try to say these two Japanese words.

Odds are the tape will work fine and we won't even need to perform.

Mischievous-sensei had asked me to stay in the Teacher's room, then came and fetched me before the bell rang into the small recording room. We sat there while the bell rang than talked quietly during passing time. He explained to me that the reason Kyoto-sensei was so tense and kept coming and checking in on us was because if something when wrong in the giving of this exam, it'd make the papers, and the school would get in huge trouble with the education boards. Suddenly, I felt under much more pressure. We all breathed a sigh of relief as the tape started broadcasting successfully and Mischievous-sensei was met with glad looks from his coworkers upon his successful return. He thanked me for my efforts and I feel comfortable enough with him to respond that it was not important; I have PLENTY of time today. I think he understood.

I chatted a bit with Ottawa-sensei afterward about the scandal at Kyoto University during their entrance exams recently. A student posted the answers online during the tests and now everyone's been talking about it. The student is unnamed, because he's underage. Apparently, he had passed the test, but because of his subsequent arrest for cheating, he's not being admitted. Obviously. As Kyoto University is the second best university in Japan, this is a huge scandal and everyone's talking about it.

The other thing everyone's talking about is the earthquake in New Zealand a few weeks back. New Zealand is a popular study abroad location for Japanese students, so many Japanese students died in the earthquake. Perhaps it's because the US is so huge, but we don't seem, in my opinion, to make as big of a fuss about when it's an AMERICAN that dies abroad. Perhaps because it's just so common, but it's never THE topic of conversation, like here, that Americans got caught up in some natural disaster abroad.

I'm torn about dinner tonight. I've got a strong craving for French toast, though I'd also like curry, and I should use the wine to try that onion recipe at some point, too. Although, I suppose Lara is still possibly on the table. She's also invited Elizabeth, though I know Elizabeth's annoyed that Lara stood her up (it seems Elizabeth had Lara's old number, which caused problems.) so I don't know if that'll happen or not. I do adore the spicy garlic spaghetti at the Italian place, which, pathetic as it is, is always my vote for dinner in restaurants. I just haven't figured out how to make something quite like it myself. Though, perhaps I can just invite Lara over and we can cook at home. In which case, I would vote against curry. I have only a limited supply, see, and I'm terribly selfish.