Nostalgia Biased

When I first arrived in Japan I remember there were boys in third grade that looked pretty cool and there were some badass judo guys that looked tough and scared me. And there were girls that looked mature and ready to go on to senior high school and be members of AKB48. Nowadays the third grade boys are as hopeless as they were in first grade and the girls wouldn't even make it into SKE48. It could be that a group of fifteen year olds look younger to me because I am three years older. Do the math. Although I wonder if the way I see my current students compared to the old ones is just nostalgia.

My original third graders from almost three years ago where my first students and they set the standard for what classes should be and they just happened to be really cool. That first summer everything in Japan was totally awesome to me, from Shinto shrines to automatic taxi doors. This extended to the feelings I had for my first students, who saw me at my most amateur and vulnerable and who I saw as the fulfilment of the dream of being in Japan. I felt the same way about the second and first graders at that time because I was riding a wave of culture shock enthusiasm.

Then next spring the third graders graduated to high school and got older and maybe I got older with them. My rose tinted glasses started to slip and maybe since then things have never been quite the same, because of a nostalgia I felt for those early days. I loved the second graders just as much but because of schedule changes I barely taught their classes when they moved up to third grade. I spent more time with the new first graders who were fresh out of primary school and they didn't feel like my own students.

Shouldn't I feel the opposite way? I should have a better connection with students that have known me since their first day, but they aren't wrapped in the warmth of nostalgia. Memories of my original students are coloured by the fresh faced perspective I had at the time but now I see most children as the next products of the Japanese education system that we JETs often like to criticise.

Bullying

Last year I bullied a second grade girl at Izumi called Emika into auditioning for the English Speech Contest. The contest is held once a year with city, prefectural and national finals. My job is to help the participants at my schools practice. Emika had no special interest in English and the other English teachers were bemused by my audition pick. 

Of the six that auditioned Emika was easily the best and she was chosen along with another girl to represent Izumi. I got all the credit for finding her, the teachers said I'd "found a new star."

Emika was a member of the choir so it was easy for her to delivery a speech in a strong voice and she seemed smart enough to develop her English skill over the coming months. But I spend just a few weeks at Izumi every term and I couldn't practice with Emika during summer. I only saw her a few times before the actual contest, despite the fact that I bullied her into auditioning and promised to support her. 

At the speech contest Emika did better than she thought she could possibly do when I first asked her to audition - having one of the strongest voices and not making any mistakes. Unfortunately she didn't place but she felt proud of herself and I did too. A modest second grader who stepped up to the challenge and did a damn good job. Emika told me that she might try again next year and that made me happier than anything. 

I gave her a giant novelty pencil as a prize and months passed and there was a massive earthquake on March 11th. 

For the first time since the earthquake I'm back at Izumi and the speech contest auditions are tomorrow. Emika won't be there. Her family evacuated to the south after the nuclear plant explosion and I probably can't bully them into coming back. 

After Earthquake and Return to England

There was thick black mud where the tsunami had been. Destroyed cars were thrown all over the place. I found a bible lying open on the promenade. 

About 200 people queued for water at the town hall and there were other similar queues around town. The supermarket was well stocked and full of people. The Japanese snacks were untouched, proving once again that no one likes them. I bought lots of frozen food and some sugary drinks. 

I defecated into a black bin-bag because there was no water to flush the toilet. It was pretty heavy. Chie and I went to her family's house because they had running water. We took all our frozen food and our bags of turd. Good family atmosphere. 

Then the nuclear power plant started exploding. Chie and I went back to Onahama to get some stuff and I gave bottles of water to Liam for him to give to the other Onahama JETs who were holed up watching Naruto or something. 

Everyone at the Chie's family's house ate the food I brought. I woke up and I didn't want to get up but I did and went out with the family to find fuel. People were queuing at petrol stations that were empty and had closed for the day. The nuclear plant exploded a few more times and I decided to flee to England with Chie. We already had plans to leave on March 23rd but bought tickets for March 17th. British Airways, naturally. 

Big aftershock as I bought the tickets online. It sounded like other JETs were having a nightmare getting buses to different places. Somehow 14 people ended up at one person's apartment for an orgy. Eventually the majority of Iwaki JETs left Iwaki. 

I quickly packed a rucksack of essentials and warm clothes, in case things went to hell and we ended up stuck in a cold evacuation centre. Chie took half an hour packing everything she owned for our England holiday. My good friend Liam had a flight to Australia the next day. Chie and I brought him to the family house before he ended up stuck at the orgy. 

Chie's parents took the three of us to Mito and we got a taxi to the airport. Liam left the next day while Chie and I stayed in the hotel for three calm and somewhat guilty nights - with hot showers and a breakfast buffet. We ended up saying goodbye to Chie's parents four times. Once at the taxi in Mito, twice at the airport and again at the hotel. It got less dramatic each time. 

On the plane I knew that I would return one day. Not out of loyalty or charity but because it's my job and I live in Iwaki and I left my laptop behind.

March 11th Earthquake

Earthquake alarms sounded on our phones in the teachers room and I didn't think much of it because I'd had alarms before and they were only ever followed by small earthquakes.

We went outside and maybe a minute passed and the ground shook and then it shook harder and harder still. Three of the women held on to each other and they started crying and there was a sound like horses stampeding, horses from under the Earth which still shook and it was getting harder to stand.

Everyone crouched to the ground as we could no longer stand and I looked around and saw on my left one man standing stoically with his arms folded and on my right the three women crouching together crying as though they were grieving for something.

People evacuated from the coast because the tsunami was coming. Not knowing what was happening beyond our school on the hill was frustrating. The unfolding March 11th disaster seemed to be happening somewhere else. My girlfriend, Chie worked in an aquarium next to the sea and I assumed and hoped that she had evacuated somewhere.

A line was drawn under all the things that mattered ten minutes ago and they were forgotten. People talked about a 7 metre tsunami hitting the coast of our town and I didn't believe it because I couldn't imagine what that would look like or what it would do and I didn't want to. An big aftershock scared everyone and shook everything and these would become regular. Teachers started to drift off to do different things and I was still standing in the same place I was during the earthquake.

Me and three other JETs hung around in the gym for a while and asked if there was anything for us to do and we were told no. Feeling more out of place and useless than usual I went home.

There was no water in my flat or anyone else's and every TV channel was talking about the earthquake and there was a map of Japan warning of tsunamis pretty much across the entire east coast. Me and the other JETs, now four, decided to head up to another school on a hill to be safe. I took some bread and a pack of grated cheese with me. The road up the hill was cracked and the pavement on the other side had collapsed into the hill.

We were greeted warmly at the school because we all knew teachers there and a third year girl called Mika who had just graduated junior high school that day was there and she didn't know where half of her family was. I tried the school phone to call Chie but it didn't work. Mika helped me by talking to teachers and telling me what was going on.

I sat in the gym and used someone's iPhone to facebook my brother and tell him I was okay and he called my parents to give them the good news. The JETs, Mika and I sat in the gym for maybe an hour talking.

The teachers said the tsunami threat had subsided so I went home again. On the way back we went to a convenience store and it was completely empty apart from cigarettes and Japanese style snacks like rice crackers and seaweed. Which proved my point once and for all that no one likes those Japanese snacks, not even Japanese people.

My phone rang and it was Chie. She was already back in my flat. I got home and I opened the door and she was sitting on the floor and she looked up and it was anticlimactic. There was a pile of wet and muddy items salvaged from her destroyed car on the floor and they were of no value and my floor was a dirty mess but it didn't matter. There was no water and little food and neither of us had a helicopter or a time machine.

Heavy Rain

Heavy Rain is a difficult game. It's not hard to play, it's just hard to describe and to judge, and hard to enjoy but also hard to dislike. For all the times that I admired the effort that's gone into making this game "cinematic", I just as often found myself wondering, "Isn't this supposed to be fun?" Heavy Rain goes to such lengths to be serious and dramatic and to break the mould of a video game, that it ended up losing something along the way.

Every character in the game is so dull. Take Ethan for example, the protagonist, the hero, the man on a mission. He is totally lacking in charisma and personality. Maybe this was an effort to make a lead character that didn't fit the Nathan Drake model of video game leads, but Heavy Rain goes too far. Ethan is so dull that by the end I didn't care what happened to him.

The problems with the characters might be the result of poor acting. Simply casting actors as though you are casting a movie does not mean you are going to get high quality cinematic performances. Using state of the art motion capture techniques does not guarantee that the characters in your game are going to be totally believable. The performances are all very dry, and seem restricted by the seriousness that looms over the entire project. I really believe that no matter how well you capture facial expressions, you're not going to get anything natural or entertaining out of those poor guys sitting in a booth with balls stuck in their faces. Technicalities aside though, I don't think any of the actors involved were any good to begin with, which is a problem for a game whose big selling point is human drama.

The director pushes so hard for the dark realistic tone that it overwhelms and swallows whole everything else in the game. It's admirable to try and maintain a harrowing tone for an entire two hour movie, but maintaining that tone for a 10+ hour video game is misguided. I felt sympathy for none of the characters, all of whom seemed depressed, bored, confused and lonely. The aggressive effort to deliver an involving dark cinematic experience went so far that it pushed me away.

And I don't care what anyone says, the gameplay is nothing but quick-time events. There's no other way to describe it to anyone.

Hot Taxi

The Rock's promo on Raw last night was so awesome that it inspired me and I thought about channelling some of that energy and charisma in my class. I have some dialogue to read out and a vision of The Rock appears in my head and starts to take shape and it is warm and close enough to touch but The Rock fades out of focus and dissolves and is gone.

I settle for reading louder than usual and the students follow but by the end we are not so loud, which the other teacher notes. Was that because I dropped off or did the students lose interest? Maybe both. Sitting down hurts my thighs and my knees and my back and standing back up is so hard that it hardly seemed worth sitting down in the first place. Everyone is enjoying the Pokemon trump game I printed off (but did not create) and walking around seeing the children smile and laugh reminds me of something that was once lost that might one day return but the memory is now too weak and it slips away.

Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's movie podcast entertains me on the taxi ride home. As cold as it is outside, all trains, taxis and staffrooms are just as hot inside. The contrast is too shocking and it makes me sick and everyone is wearing winter clothes anyway so it doesn't need to be so hot inside right? I roll down the window just to breathe and the driver turns off the heater. Nothing is said.

On my bike on the way to the post office to pick up my books which couldn't fit in my post box a little seven year old girl is in the middle of the path swinging her school bag around and she stops because she recognises me but she is mistaken because I have never seen her before. Her pink t-shirt looks like a rag draped over bones. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed she starts to form a word "Ja... Jan..." and her big wet eyes follow me as I ride past almost hitting her. The image is like something out of a movie about poverty which doesn't fit because my movie is about alienation, anxiety and gaining wisdom through loss.

The woman at the post office speaks Japanese. She says that the books have not yet returned but if I am home between seven and nine they can be resent to me and I say okay. During this she attempts some English words because she maybe thinks I don't understand even though I am nodding my head and responding in Japanese. It doesn't annoy me because the woman is just being considerate and I do not look lucid and smiles are not coming easily.

Lunch and Interculturalism

I finally built up the courage to tell one of my teachers this fact: The more Japanese the school lunch, the less delicious it is. The best school lunch menus are curry rice day and cream stew with bread day, which are Indian and, what, English? The worst is the mushrooms that coagulate the soup, which tastes like crap. That’s Japanese.

One day someone found a bit of seaweed or a mushroom and discovered that it was edible, so they decided to eat it - but only because there was nothing else available. Time passes and food that people originally ate out of necessity is then called “traditional” - like the fish that is covered in putrid sauce and is mostly skin. I would only eat that if I were desperate or in a war. If you put Caesar salad and smoked salmon in front of someone they wouldn’t turn round and say “Actually I was thinking about putting mushrooms and seaweed in a bowl of water.”

What I want is more screening of the food that reaches my school lunch tray. At the moment the screening process seems to be –
Is it safe to eat?
Yes.
Stick it in.
And this leads to people eating crab, for which you need a special fork to scrape out the edible parts. A special fork to scrape out the edible parts. Not worth it. In a perfect world the screening process would be –
Is it safe to eat?
Yes.
Is it tasty?
Maybe.
Would I ever choose to eat this over any of the food that is freely available today?
No.
Then forget it, get rid of it.

With this system things that look like erasers and soggy paper would definitely not make the cut. The Japanese style lunch menus appear to be people doing the best with what they’ve got, like making a lawnmower on Scrapheap Challenge. But outside of Scrapheap Challenge, the contestants will most likely just buy an actual lawnmower when they need a lawnmower. We don’t need to scrape together a meal using whatever edible things the Earth has to offer. Why am I eating fish eggs? Why is that happening? There are at least four proper delicious kinds of fish available, isn’t that enough? Let’s just make the tasty ones extinct first and work our way down.