As we approached the school today, we saw another teacher, Mr. N., walking to school. He is one of the teachers who lives in the apartment building that is just a stone's throw away from school. Today was the second time I'd seen him walking to school, but I suspect he does so rather often. Moto mentioned to me that Mr. N. had spent some time (2 or 3 years?) in Holland and, as a result, has become fairly ecologically-aware. Moto told me another way Mr. N. tries to help out the environment: At lunchtime, he drinks his milk out of a plastic cup that he brings along, rather th
an using the straw that comes with the milk carton, as almost everyone else does. (When I drink the milk, I just open up the carton and drink away. Why the milk company attaches straws to the cartons is beyond me. Such waste!)Talking about Mr. N. with Moto led to a brief discussion of the importance that learning English has for the Japanese. Without English, the Japanese are stuck on their little island. With English, they can travel the world. Which reminds me of a saying I've heard about Dominican (and Cuban?) baseball players: "You can't walk off the island." If the Dominican baseball players want to find out what the rest of the world is like, they have to swing the bat. If the Japanese want to find out what the rest of the world is like, they have to learn English.
Which brings me back to me learning Japanese. I'm certainly spending time trying to learn the language, but I'm not progressing as fast as I want to. But I guess I'm doing great for someone who pretty much knew no Japanese before he came here. And I've only been here about seven months. So I have to be patient. But it's not much fun when you usually barely understand what's going on around you.
Right now, for instance, some of the kids from my school are making short presentations. I listened to one of them and was able to follow along a bit because of the overheads he used. But all I got was the gist. Don't ask me why everyone was laughing.
The other day I met an American guy named Byron. He used to be a JET like me, here in Gokase. He's an amazing character. He plays the sanshin (an Okinawan guitar) and is basically fluent in Japanese. He reminded me of myself when I'm in Germany or Austria, at least as far as speaking the local language goes. You simply get so much more out of living abroad if you speak the local language. So I yearn for the day when I, too, am fluent in Japanese. Think of how many doors being fluent in Japanese will open up for me...
Speaking of opening doors, when I got to school today, the sliding doors at the main entrance were shut, as usual, despite the fact that this is probably the warmest day of the year. When I walked in, I decided to slide them all the way open. I'm happy to report that 2 hours later they are still wide open.
My next door-related goal is to get the other teachers to leave the sliding doors to the teachers' room open, but that will take more work. I'm all for closing doors when it's cold, but it's not cold any more. And there is so much foot traffic coming and going, it would make a lot more sense to just leave the doors open all the time, as they are in the summer. Besides, so many teachers and students close the doors without even looking to see if anyone else is about to pass through. So just as one person closes the doors, another one is inevitably opening them. It's pretty ridiculous, especially since you can see right through the doors.
What's worse is when a teacher closes a door in your face, almost as if he or she is trying to spite you. I was flabbergasted when a teacher did just that to me a couple weeks ago. She was approaching the main entrance just before me. We even greeted each other with the ol' "ohayo gozaimasu" ("good morning"). She slid the door open, walked in, and slid the door shut. I was about 2 seconds behind her.
The same goes for when the teachers are on their way to lunch. One by one, it seems, they go out the door, each one of them closing it behind them, only for the next person to repeat the process.
You might think that the teachers are so obsessed with keeping the main doors closed around here because the heaters are running and they are trying to keep the warmth inside. If that's the case, how come most of the other doors all over the school are almost always wide open?
By the way, I don't feel bad about bailing on those presentations I mentioned earlier. Because more and more teachers are showing up in the teachers' office. Even though the presentations are still going on. As a matter of fact, the entire day's schedule is filled with presentations of some sort or other. Perhaps I should get back to studying Japanese.
No comments:
Post a Comment