Not sure whose children these are, but the important thing is that they’re not mine.

Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, sure it’s only 76 degrees down there.

This is a porthole from which protectors of the castle would throw stones at invaders. Tempting, oh by God, it was tempting…but I resisted.

For the Irish Taxpayer who so kindly pays for our university education, it would be a tragic day for them to wittness the depts to which some ex-patriots have sunk.
I came to Japan armed with a degree, (a fairly mierable one I confess, but still, it took a bit more effort than simply collecting seven biscuit-wrapper barcodes to get through it. ) and a year of teaching in Quebec.
Three years later, as I stand in a classroom, holding myself up with the help of the wall, masking my mind-numbed yawns with my textbook, I am as useless as a used lightbulb in a cake recipe.
I am nothing but a human-taperecorder. My one true value is that I need not be rewound. The teacher also can play with the speed.
This is what this idiot of a teacher thinks team-teaching is.
This lady who I so often chat to about the importance of education, and of incorporating the four elements of language in one class, and of this and of that, draggs me off to class, to stand there. And then she wonders at the end why my look is censured, why I frown?

No more than the American dream now so dissipated and miserable in the eyes of those it has lied to, the Japanese ideal is sure to collapse soon. No other country would take the wonderful language tool that a native speaker is, and leave them standing in silence, circumscribing the students advancement in the English language learning, and hence rendering them incapable of ever leaving japan and discovering that a much nicer world exists elsewhere.

And now she sits sulking, this lady who was annoyed when I declared that there was no point in my coming to her second class, to stand and and survey and frustrate myself even further tot he point of wishing yo furl the book in my hand and smash across something or someone.

apartfrom that though…it`s a grand day.
Good drying.

” like…yaknow..kinda..like…eh….sorta…it`ll be shite…and you don`t have to…like it`s grand if you don`t want to…23rd of June…just with a few of us…like a few pints just…nothing big…ya probably don`t want to but willya come? ”

I saw him down the hall as I stumbled out of the ladies. Today is not a day of coordination. It was a stumble. It was a stumble perfect for day when you suddenly discover you`ve been wearing two tampons all day and wondering why you`ve such an unmerciful headache. I deliberated. It was now or never. I stood my ground, louring in the dark of the doorway for him to enter.
He turned the corner and I spun round.

(When Mary-poohs phones of a Sunday night and she leaves me her message, it is with her “there was an accident. I had a pain in my knee and I went to see Doctor Burke. It`s SuperAids and the blessed Council found out that you got one too many children`s allowances after your graduated so they`re taking the house and this morning after the breakfast your brother murdered Paddy Honeyman with a pitchfork….” voice. Every time she gets me. That part of you that lurches in askance, “oH jesus, they`re gone! Lord, have mercy on them all”…before the “but apart from that, everything here is grand. Father Doyle got food poisoning so we had the priest from Mohill, so there was no sermon , I was back at home with a cup of tea in my hand at five to twelve. grand day, great drying ” assurance that all is fine.)

I went with this style theatrical mourner whisper my mother is oh-so-good at.

“Sensei?”

Part of my plan was to do it in the most discrete way possible. So, with all the enthusiasm of a 22 year old dog with a watermelon-size tumour growing ut of his arse, I invited him to a “drinks thang.” (oh you, you unsuspecting handsome thing you!)

My bludgeoning of his language during my lengthy disquisition of how ordinary and dull this event would be, made him frown, and the frown lasted a good twenty seconds. I thought to panic. Then..with the…” please come “, a benevolent smile appeared. This lasted long enough for me to consider would I ever be able to kiss something with such rancidly coloured teeth.
He nodded that he`d come.

I plodded off, with the swiftness of a catamaran dying to break into a little skip, smiling inside in the manner of a lummox.

He said he`ll come

DA-DA-DA-DA-DAAA-DA
DA-DA-DA-DA-DAAA-DA
He said he`d come-DAA
He said he`d come-DAA!

(Wrote this two years ago for the local website)
Wellington-boot throwing competition. Cock fights. Standing with a vegetarian friend and gaping at an atrocious parade of slain moose mounted on the back of pick-up trucks. Sleeping rough in St. Mark’s Square, with nothing but a box of tic-tacs for nourishment and torn pages of a magazine for warmth. Up until the last weekend of May, I was content with my repertoire of absurd experiences. Not bad, ne? I hadn’t expected to add to the list. Well, not in Japan, and certainly not whilst living in my new adopted home called Kashima.

But, as a recent importee to this fair town, locals were persistent in their attempts to explain all that Kashima has to offer. The Yutoku Shrine (the third largest in Japan), the onsen and many pachinkos for the gamblers. I’d heard mention of an olympics of some kind and immediately thought “agggggggggg!” There’s nothing like the hint of a participatory sporting event to put the fear of God into comatose muscles.

“Oh, Tatami-san, I can barely contain myself until the end of May. A sports day! And in the sweltering heat, bring it on (?)! Dehydration; sweat-saturation, (linguistic) frustration, isolation, exasperation, (shogakusei) inundation. Don’t make me go!”

It had slipped my slippery mind to inquire as to what gata meant. Gata, blah, potatoes. Lie low, they’ll forget about it.

Well, gata, I discovered, means mud. And olympics is fairly obvious: images of leaping ensembles of finely tuned muscles triple-vaulting, steeple chasing, playing chess. What in the name of shrouded Afghans has mud got to do with all this?

Let us fast-forward ourselves to the day of the spectacle. Suitable attire? Nothing you’d deem valuable or ever hope to wear again. Setting? The shores of the Ariake Sea (any beach scene works; imagine the collection ground of the excesses of a diahorea epidemic and you have the picture). Mud took the place of sand.

The list of events to be considered: surfing, 100m swim, lady’s wrestling, tug of war, cycling, Tarzan jumps. The 100m mud swim could be equated to those dreams where you’re trying desperately to run but whilst tied to a burdensome hundred pound weight. You’re going nowhere fast. Able-bodied men mounted bicycles, looking out to the mud-soaked subversive fifteen-inch wide ramp of danger they must attempt to orienteer. It’s an achievement to manage one full pedal rotation before veering into the chocolaty waters. The mud’s subliminal urge to derail contestants could neither be subdued nor defied.

Six hours later, none of the participants were recognizable. A menagerie of sea-urchin-like athletes posed for pictures under a crepuscular sun whilst waiting to be hosed down by firemen.
I just can`t do the regality of the day justice .I pledge though that it toppedthe yardsticks for harebrained and hilarious of events. I think the photos speak for themselves. (of which there soon will be more, I promise)

This year I was entered under “yakuza fighting” unsuspecting this this in fact translated into ladies wrestling. I did the wrestling last year and did frighteningly awful, lasting only a mere two seconds on the podium before my previously delicate and smiling opponents all ganged up on me. I did a wee bit better this year, but GOD! the photos are embarrassing. I fear one too many fights with big bro over the remote control left me skilled in this kind of combat.

I mentioned yesterday about the man at the pool who came to my front crawl`s rescue with his internet-achieved swimming excellence.
He just dropped by school today with a print-out of what he had been trying to explain.

So here`s how to do a flip:

In both hands, pull a jaw at the same time as moving to the head from the position of the hip and bring a head close to the chest. This movement be sharp and let`s do. Here the important thing is to be slipped under the leg to bend only the upper part of body, turning a body.

(how many bodies you got? Then, choose one and turn it, ok?)

It bends a body from the place of the stomach.
It puts a leg to the wall.
It refuses a wall. ( best to kick the gift-wall in the mouth by all accounts)
It changes into the posture of the turning-down which strikes the posture of the looking-up.

Without being flurried, it does each operation surely.
When giving going wrong, too, isn`t flurried.
Indeed, never a truer word said.

It`s all so much clearer now. let me just have a whirl at it now…..

BANGWALLOPBOOOMOUCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Goodneess, WELL, that`s a whole lot better judging by the clapping of my colleague on the right of me who is seated at his computer.

Fancy a dip anyone?

Tall and smiling.
Seemed like a nice man, a really nice man.
Despite the language barrier you could tell from his smiles and efforts to communicate that he cared.
I didn`t know him really. Just a few brief exchanges over the past year. I culd barely remembered his name, so when the news came that a Mister Nakahashi had suffered a brain haemmorage at work last Thursday, I had to make sure I had the right face for the name.
He rang the ambulance himself apparently.
I find that errie.
“so what seems to be the problem Sir?”
“Erm…I think my brain is bleeding. ”
“Oh, we`ll ve there in five.”

Last Sunday was the infamous Mud olympics which my town hosts. I organised a team of ALTs to go which was why I was down in the city hall offices several times in the past week. I`d pop in to ibd cordialities to my boss and the gand at the board of Education.
I chatted about the mud games to Mister nakahashii. He told me to have fun. I assured him that I would.

And I did. It wasn`t until Monday morning that the news arrived that he had passed away on Sunday morning, his last few words to pass on the message to all his colleagues who would volunteer at the mud games, to go ahead with the event.

The wake was on Tuesday. The irish are obsessed with death as far as I can see. I don`t know how many funnerals and removals I have been to, but it`s a lot. More than I can count. And I`ve see a lot of corpses, kissed them even. Dead people lying there don`t freak me out. So, I was interested in how the Japanese conduct such a ceremony.

Everyone wore black for a start. Conversation was a no-no. Little or no exchanges took place. Mourners took an envelope with 3,000YEN and signed a book. We received some kind of a “present”.
There was chanting, which I took talked of his life. Somewhere in my warped awful mind I couldn`t get the song “born slippy” out of my mind, the “larger, larger, larger” bit. It turned and turn around and round in my mind. I studied my shoes and thought of startved Ethopian children.

57.

May he rest in peace (or float with the wind as the case might be.)

I should confess. The reason behind my stagnated posting is this. I don`t actually know my password for this blog. Every so often this computer at school and my own laptop log me on automatically and this allows me some tapping time. Otherwise, I`m confronted by a big red “enter your password” intimidations. Yes, I have tried several times to log on as a different user but it doesn`t seem to work. Something to think about before I hit the high seas.

The progress resport on semi-to-demi hot teacher is that we haven`t spoken since my return from Bangladesh. About five weeks of silence, going on six. It might actually make for an ideal relationship. The nerves borne of knowing that there`s only two months, out of a total of thirty-six to go, are making me desperate. He must realise that I stare at him. a lot. And boy, does he look good in a fitted shirt and tie. If only those trousers were a size smaller, and then you could…

Have to see what`s under there, must…once….see…glimpse…hair….gasp!…free…HELLO DOCTOR!

I did get to hold hands with a Japanese boy yesterday.
Ok, so truth be told, he was no boy. He belongs to that fifty-to-one-hundred-years-old group-who really cares how old they are once they get to that age. anyway…the random intimacy took place in the pool.
And the hand holder was someone who took me aside to critique my strokes.
I appreciated his interception as it is hard to know where you`re loosing speed, and good to know why exactly your shoulder cracks every time you move your arm thesedays.
So, I`m sure you`re wondering, just as I wondered of him, if in fact he once was a swimming coach, maybe in charge of a school swimming team?
OH NO!
He learned to swim three years ago.
OH!
Well, I (and the first time I`ve ever used this expression, and it scared me to hell once I said it) “I first started swimming twenty years ago” (TWENTYFUCKINGYEARSAGOSHHHHHHHHHHHIIIIITE! she exclaims to self. surely such expression should be reserved for people looking forward to retirement, or getting nostaglic about a grandchild…not for me…) back to the original stream of chat.
“Did you take lessons dear sir from a retired Olympic coach to warrant your confident critiquing of others` styles?”
“erm…no…i-ta-ne-to…kara.”
Pardon?
“from Interneto”.

Did y`all hear at the back?
He learned to swim sitting on a chair, on dry land, reading from a computer screen.
How big is your bath Mister?