a day in the life

take yesterday as an example...getting out of bed is always the hardest part, but it wasn't so bad yesterday because i knew that i had made a particularly delicious bento lunch the night before and that the only way to enjoy it would be to get up and go to work and wait for lunchtime. so i got up and walked down the hill to the board of education. you see, i work as an english teacher/token foreigner in a small town (pop.5,500) in southern japan. i came here in august of 2001 as a participant on the jet programme as a means of a)paying off my college loans, b)gaining experience living in a foreign culture, c)trying my hand at teaching, d)avoiding the bush years, or e)all of the above. anyways, i came here originally on a one year contract to assist in the teaching of english and all things foreign in the local junior high school and elementary schools. as i became accustomed to life here in the sticks (or should i say bamboo?), i decided that there were worse things i could be doing with my life and i signed up for a second year. my lovely girlfriend, raw bone, soon joined me (in japan, at least, though she had to live on the opposite side of kyushu for a year or so) and we decided to stay for what would be my third and final year (her second). having completed her contractual obligations to aeon eikaiwa, she has since joined me (for real this time) down here in yokogawa town and we are passing our final days and months tending to the garden and eating and screaming at the sight of the many-legged "geji-geji" that sometimes crawl over us as we sleep. trust me, you would scream too.

but i digress...i wanted to write about my yesterday as a representative day in the life of a small town assistant language teacher in rural southern japan. so let's see...yes, i walked down the hill to the office, shot the shit with tokunaga-san and nakagawa-san, then walked over to yokogawa shou gakkou (elementary school). i taught four classes, starting with the first graders where we talked about the numbers 1 through 10 and their favorite animals, then moved onto the fourth and sixth graders where we discussed the various sports and fruits we enjoy. i like banana. at 12:30, i ate the aforementioned bento with the fourth graders (a delicious blend of an island miso paste and aloo masala on flat noodles with vegetables and tofu and a side of brown rice and beans), shot the shit with the students at my table, and then it was time for dodgeball. seeing as i'm not such a big fan of this game, i kinda went through the motions for a while and then snuck away to go play basketball in the gym with some of the older students.

at the end of the lunch recess, every student is compelled to put down their soccer balls and unicycles (yes, unicycles) and pick up a broom or a dust-rag for compulsory cleaning time. i usually sneak away from this, too. i bumped into the principal, kamiya kouchou sensei, a very sweet and intelligent man in his early fifties, and he explained to me that he had just received a letter from miss jinjay, a chinese "yankin" (a beautiful hammer dulcimer-type instrument) musician who had recently toured around the area and had given performances in yokogawa and makizono (where the broken winds had the pleasure of sharing the stage with her at the mayor's residence). he wanted to reply to her, but he knew no chinese and his english was rusty. so he wrote out a letter in japanese which i translated for him, and then he drew me a map of how to get to his favorite spot for viewing takachiho no mine.

i taught one more class after compulsory cleaning time. this one was full of squirmy second graders who asked me lots of questions including "why are your eyes blue?" and "why is your nose so big?" ah, precious. after class, i walked back to the board of education where i spent the rest of the afternoon trying to avoid the overly jugemental glare of the superintendent. he doesn't approve of my beard.

well, that should serve to give you a decent idea of what my life has been like over here for the past few years. in my free time, i play covers of tunes by ween and the scud mountain boys with the makizono town coordinator for international relations as the dynamic duo "the broken winds". though it may not be apparent at this point, my adventures in japan, at the schools, with the broken winds, and as the solo artist "rick barrs" have laid the foundation for the next logical step in the evolution of the species: tepid industries. but more on that later...