Google Maps!

Who knew it could take such precious photos?

One of the other teachers was cruising around Japan this afternoon on Satellite view, so I thought I'd check out home.

I can name all the junk sitting around in the yard. And is that Nic's new car in the driveway?

Then took a trip up north to the cabin at Brainerd. You can see our dock left in, despite it being.. fall?

And finally over to friend's places. Look at how crisp the right two are!

My heart hasn't raced so much over Google Maps since a year ago when I was looking up my new city here in Japan.

My apartment is the blurry white blob on the bottom left, with the old Yoshino river just to the north.

Summer [School?]

It's the first day of summer break, and here I am sitting at my desk in the staffroom. Not because there's an influx of work to be done, but simply because I work for the government and must earn my salary by being here during the breaks. It's not so bad, though. Hopefully it'll push me to productivity more so than would sitting around for a month at home. And this room is air conditioned, which makes it a win-win on all sides! Coming home to my 5th floor apartment each day is like walking into a blanket of hot air, so I'll take all the cool I can get.

In the morning I spent some time looking over the summer plan. I'll have the next month worth of days to fill. There are a good deal of lessons I can work ahead on, show this new ALT around the school, go to an English Teacher's Conference, study Japanese, and write! There are so many avenues for that last one that I'm not sure where to begin. There's my diary, journal, letters, blog, and maybe playing with different writing prompts to spice things up.

This afternoon some students invited me and Thomas to eat lunch with them in their classroom. "Wait, why are the students at school over break?" you might ask. But do you even have to? It's Japan. They live here! Everyone has three 90 minute periods each day this week because 11 months of school each year isn't enough.

Granted, not all of those many days are spent in constant, hard studying. There are so many half days where the students leave around noon that you could probably add another month of summer vacation if they were condensed. Even when at school, there are plenty of assemblies to remind them of bike safety once again, or prep days for the culture / sports festival, and, you guessed it, ceremonies.

Although there is plenty of studying that goes on at school (and outside of it, mind you), Japanese schools have another function. They teach the students how to fit into the society and be good citizens. Students learn a group mentality by staying with the same 40 peers for 3 years of junior high, and another 40 for the next 3 of high school. They learn to all work together at sports day so their class can win. They fill out daily logs on studying and sleeping habits to have a good life. Counseling is given as much importance as classes to help them onto the right track for college. Sometimes it seems like the school is more influential on them than the family unit. They certainly spend more time here. When there is a typhoon, the homeroom teacher has to call each of their students to make sure they got home alright. And the parents often leave all the disciplining up to teachers.

So, school is a lot different here than in the US. I've gotta say that Japan certainly has a fair many good points. But when I think back to those 3 months of nothing but pure summer vacation, I think I got a good deal.

Air

It's summer, and that means air. Air TV, I mean. It's an anime that I saw for the first time in high school. I was so entranced by the story and beautiful drawings the. at I decided to make it a yearly summer tradition.

If the 33C temperatures are any indication, it's definitely summer now, and time to start the series. The special thing is that this is my first time seeing it in Japan! Everything in it feels so familiar now after having lived here a year. Summer classes, cicadas, furin windchimes, kids hanging out at quiet train stations, impressive sea walls overlooking the ocean, vending machines, walking up steps to temples, sitting at a kotatsu in the tatami room, low mountains in the distance. Everything is so natural and countryside-like.  It feels like the story takes place right here in Tokushima.

Creativity

I loved to hate high school. It was the perfect "system" to pit my teenage sense of injustice against. Common enough that everyone could understand and relate, and large enough that no one had to be specifically targeted as the source of its evil. I never had any terrible experiences there, like bullying or unfair teachers. My main complaint was that it stifled creativity by teaching students to aim only as high as the checklist guidelines to get an A. The real trick to achievement was not in doing outstanding work, but in figuring out people's expectations and meeting them. I was pretty convinced that my mind was rotting away as I sat in classes listening to useless lectures or trying to reason other students into helping with group projects as they talked about last night's tv shows.

Although I still agree that there is a lot of babysitting that goes on at high school, now looking back I'm not so sure about the stifling of creativity. The teachers only ever encouraged me when I stretched the limits of their assignments. My favorite things were the daily bellwork journals. I could be as angsty or silly as I wanted and always get perfect scores and smiley faces from the Language Arts teachers. They even put up with my microscopic writing. Dad inspired a lot of this, telling me to somehow fit flying monkeys into my math project, or use Borax the cleaning man in a World War II comic strip. 

I wasn't the only one who played with the guidelines. One day before class a friend of mine was scratching up her arms with a pen. "What are you doing?" "We have an environmental debate today. I'm against them cutting down the rainforest, so I'm pretending that I was out hugging trees this morning. They have scratchy bark, you know." I think they won the debate. 

Anyway, do you know the difference between Meiosis and Mitosis? Well, let my 9th grade self tell you!

Dissension in Cell City!!!

By Rochelle Holmes

   Cell City was a very harmonious place since the day it was made. All of the cells and processes lived happily together, helping and reproducing, healing and creating. Every week the cells would get together and have a city meeting to discuss current issues and to put in checkpoints to make sure that everything was running smoothly.

   One week at the city meeting, Me Meiosis brought up an issue that he thought needed to be addressed. "I feel that my process of cell division is superior to that of Mi Mitosis's process!" At this Mi jumped up from his seat with a look of disbelief. They had lived in harmony for years! Me went on. "Because Mi here only goes through one process and creates identical cells to itself, I don't think that he is an asset to our society. We don't need replicated new cells running around the city. I think that we should disband Mi from our city meetings and not let him go through his process anymore, but rather use my unique way of creating new cells to provide for the whole community.
   Mi was very indignant at this time and stood up to put down Me's claims. "What blasphemy is this?!?! I have always produced more satisfactory cells. Mine have 46 chromosomes in them and are diploids! They may be identical, but I am much more efficient. I only need to go through one stage of Mitosis to get the same numerical result as Meiosis does in two stages. If anything, we should ban Meiosis from its cell division processes," Mi said in a huff.

   The other members of the council were slightly confused at this outbreak, having never had to deal with personal attacks on other members. They did, however, find Mi's point that he only needed one process to go through convincing, but the argument still seemed like a waste of time. “Why is it that we can not use both of your processes as we always have in the past?” asked one of the other cells. “We need both of you! Mitosis is good at dealing with the somatic cells and Meiosis has always dealt with the sex cells. Neither one of you would want to take up the other's job, would you?”

   Both Me and Mi conceded that the cell who had just spoken was correct in that, and that they wouldn't want to have to do each other's duties. The two stared each other down for a while until Me professed that he would let the issue go for now, or at least until he could bring up more evidence against his former friend Mi Mitosis. The council was dismissed that day, but not without hostilities made. 

Saying Goodbye

Well, it's official.

Come 2nd Semester, I'll be taking Thomas' position at Kitako, the academic school. That means I'll be going there every day of the week and getting all of his 1st grade classes. There have been whispers about this happening ever since February, when we learned that Thomas wouldn't be staying on another year. Each time someone brought it up, I put in an "I would prefer not to," in good old Bartleby style, but it didn't seem to change the mind of the guys in charge.

However, it still came as a bit of a shock. It wasn't that I didn't expect it, but I thought they would at least have some kind of meeting with me about it and formally discuss the matter. Instead, I came in one day and the vice principal called me over. "Next semester, you're coming to Kitako every day. Will you tell your supervisor at Kagiko, or should I?" It felt like a real blow, but what could I do? Throw a gaijin fit and demand my individual right to choose? That's totally out of my character.

Their decision does make sense. The main ALT there should be familiar with the school and procedures, because they must head up the planning of big events like English Day and English Camp. The fact that they think well enough of me to want me 5 days a week instead of 3 is a mark in my favor, but I wish it weren't so.

This means I'll have to give up Kagiko, my tech school. I have to say goodbye to my many sweet, lovely English teachers here. I won't get to see the happy, energetic faces of the many boys here, or the quiet, clever glances of the girls in their midst. No more military style politeness in the hallways. No more Aikido practice, or beautiful rides across the river as the sun rises. I won't walk in in the mornings to be impressed by whatever new creation the students cooked up in their classes, like playjims, benches, and plants that grow without sunlight. I'm really going to miss it here.

Street view. Reminds me a bit of Moos Tower at the U.

It's so temping to be bitter toward the guys in charge at Kitako for taking my school away and not even bothering to consult me about it. What good will that do, though? It can't change the situation, and will only make me unhappy as a result. Instead I guess I can just be happy that I had this one year here at this fun school.

Something hit me when I was giving the end of term speaking tests to the students last week. I realized that, as long as I take the right spirit with me, everywhere I go can be as precious as this.

The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it."               
-Charles R. Swindoll

Rather than mourn Kagiko for the next year, I'm determined to take my love for it and double that toward Kitako. I'll have new students, see teachers more often, and get to play a bigger role in the school, and maybe even not lose my voice from yelling over people.

That being said, I'm still sad. It's bittersweet to see the students swarming through the hallways, make smalltalk in the kitchen, or buy snacks at the school store. Next Friday I'll make a farewell speech at the closing ceremony. That will end my time here at Kagiko.

Kagimaru-kun, the school mascot