Berry Pocky and Old People

My tantosha was smiling and inquisitive today. With her, this always makes me suspicious. Nick seems to have relegated me to the periphery of his concern. Most things I say to him are neither met with eye contact nor comprehension. A second or two after I finish speaking, he'll usually look at me and say "Sorry. What did you say?". But then when he thinks of something to say, he'll tell it to me with genuine interest in his face. I think our mode of dialogue developed after I became disenchanted with his and Goi sensei's perpetual drone of despair about the school and started to ignore it. Now he's returning the favour.

Hell, at least the school custodian is a mensch. He loaned me a spanner for the weekend to make adjustments to my bike seat during my 16 hour Biwako bicycle trip. Just when I'm ready to dismiss the entire junior high school, someone shows me kindness. Interesting that it always seems to come from people with nothing to lose... the older woman whose an art teacher and whose career is fixed, the older male gym teacher reject (who may well have been coming on to me), and the older grungy custodian. All work physically. All are old and dismissive of the petty politics of Nagahama Nishi Chu.

I just ate a pack of strawberry Pocky. I'm on an eating kick today. I listened to the speeches of 35 junior high school students in the "Lute Plaza" in Biwa-cho today. Mostly I read my book. But the point is the food. We had to bring our lunches and I brought a huge pile of leftover curried vegetables and rice from the dinner I cooked with Veronica last night. It was too much, but after sharing some with Arica I consumed the entire contents of my generous tupperware container (except for one piece of tofu that had turned green. I ate the other green one though). And now I'm eating Pocky. Must be nerves.

berry pocky wrapper

Rain and wind

My pants are wet from riding my bike slowly in the rain, an umbrella held in one hand providing shelter for my upper body. Nick, poor fellow, walked next to me on our errand to fix my bike seat which broke yesterday. I had been cycling to the post office to post some money to Toronto when I went over a small bump, the low curb of a sidewalk, and there was a snap and a piece of my bike fell to the ground. It was a seat connecting piece, and though my seat remained on the bicycle, it was not nearly so shock-absorbent. As I'm going on a 16 hour bike trip around Lake Biwa this weekend I decided to brave the rain (along with Nick my guide and translater) and have my seat fixed.

A new seat sits atop my bicycle, and I now have a bell instead of half a bell casing, which was my imaginary bell. I never actually resorted to saying "Ding! Ding!" as Nick recommended. The seat is at a strange angle, but after asking the bike shop mechanic to change it twice, I felt a third time would be too much. I'll be on that thing for a long time this weekend, so I hope it's ok. I'm sure I'll be in pain on Monday.

A typhoon is coming tonight. Hence the rain and wind now, a foretaste of the coming fury. I'm not sure if Veronica will visit tonight, given the weather, though that was our plan. At the moment she's the only one that reads this, so it's odd that I don't say hi ("hi!"), but that's because maybe other people will read it later, and because it's a journal for myself. I just share it.

Lunch and afternoon school await me...

Another day at Nishi Chu...

Yes, it was a day like any other at Nishi Chu, the junior high school where I "teach" English. But wait, there was something strange about today. I was sitting on my ass in the teachers' room, alternating between reading and staring blankly at Nick, who sits in front of me, when Nick commented that "the battle royale is coming to the palace". I thought this a strange comment, but I assumed he was referring to the raised voices of the bad girls out in the hall, a pretty everyday occurence. Maybe he has a sense for these things, because the group drifted into the teachers' room and the raised voices seemed to be an argument. It was still relatively muted, and I dismissed the intrusion and returned to my book: "The Book of Tells" by British psychologist Peter Collett. But the bad girls spread out in the room, and one girl intentionally slid an umbrella and some books off a shelf onto the floor.
"What the hell?", I asked. "What does she think she's doing?"
Nick gestured to the other corner of the room where three teachers where standing by one of the makeup-covered bad girls. She was arguing heatedly with a tall woman with a long face drawn out in sad, serious lines. She looked serious, but wasn't doing anything about this girl. Nick translated. The girl was demanding her cell phone back, as the teachers had confiscated it. She then began to scream, and would punctuate her demands by slamming her hands down on the counter. She kicked the cupboards. Her two friends stood and watched. One of them took out her cell phone and stated "I still have my cell phone!" in a provocation to the teachers. I was most amazed by the teachers' reactions: nothing. They stood around when she yelled, and gathered near here when she was violent, but did nothing. One or two teachers spoke to her. The principal emerged from his office and walked toward the scene, fear written on his face. As he approached he put his hands on his hips to show he was the authority (a tell which Peter Collett discusses) but when he reached the huddle he paused, then pivoted on his foot and walked back into the safety of his office. He is a principal of pomp and circumstance, but not of action.

Eventually the situation was defused because the girl could tell she wouldn't get her way. She gave a last scream of fury and frustration and stormed out. Nick described the incident as a "show", and that's what the girl's friends seemed to treat it as. In my junior high in Japan, cell phones come in conflict with proper school behaviour but they just don't have the balls to do anything about it.

First Post

I'll post more later, because right now Mae is making dinner two apartments over and I'm invited!

... a few hours later ...

To use that most favourite descriptor of Japanese food conversation, the meal was delicious. I made garlic bread and Mae created a dish of pasta and vegetables that would only be done justice if it had it's own name. I'll call it pasta al Mae. With a base of spaggetti, this dish was elevated with the subtle aromas of fresh basil and a healthy sauteeing of garlic. The texture of the slightly crisp yet soft eggplant was rare to encounter, and entirely delightful. Green pepper, baby tomatoes and mozzarella cheese rounded out this scrumptious adventure in Italian ad libitum. I feel like I just wrote a food column. The dinner overshadowed the conversation, which seemed to be lulled by either sleepiness or unease. I'll chalk it up to sleepiness as I've had good talks with Mae in the past. But of course, I offered to do the dishes. Yet she stoically refused, a number of times, and so I left her with coffee pocky and a sinkload of dishes, just the way she likes it.