2001-11-13 - 11:18 p.m.
Lately I’ve been, as we say in junior high school English parlance, “so-so.” Lela and I were talking last night how we came to Japan because we didn’t want to be those Vassar graduates who sat around in New York complaining about their lives and longing for their college days... but here we are sitting around in Japan, complaining about our lives and longing for our college days. It’s our best friends we miss the most -- being surrounded by people who know us inside and out. We are undoubtedly very lucky to be here in Japan and have great apartments, easy jobs, and a high salary. But it’s easy to get tired of being a stranger all the time. And things like “why don’t the schools have heat?” spiral into “why don’t they have heat in this stupid country?” I’m trying to stop that negative logic at every turn. (Did I mention that I saw my breath in the hallway yesterday?)
On top of it all, I have to teach Christmas songs. Yesterday the 2nd grade teacher sprung this on me on the way to class -- “So please ask the students which Christmas song they would like to sing, and then you will teach it to them later this week.” “Hmm, that might be difficult,” I said, trying to employ the Japanese method of skirting around confrontation. “I don’t celebrate Christmas, so I might not know the words. But if you give it to me ahead of time I can learn it.” Of course, growing up in America I know every Christmas song there is, but that Jewish defense mechanism kicked in immediately. Realistically, to these kids the Christmas chapter is just another boring chapter in the textbook. They certainly aren’t jumping out of their seats asking me to tell them about Christmas. But then again, the dialogue, which begins with “Tell me how you celebrate Christmas in America” passes itself off as some kind of lesson in American culture. Secular, consumerist Christmas (American style) is spreading like wildfire in Japan -- and I have to say that it’s one of my least favorite aspects of American culture (along with Valentine’s Day). I think part of my visceral reaction to having to teach Christmas comes from my public school upbringing, where teachers were so careful to couple each “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” with “The Dreidel Song.” I channeled this potentially negative energy into creating a Christmas and Hanukkah worksheet, which maybe the teacher will decide to use. I think I now know how Austrailian JETs feel when they are constantly asked to explain American culture as if they were American.
Speaking of America, I was awoken at midnight last night by a frighteningly familiar call from Lela -- “Something bad is happening in America, don’t freak out, but there’s a plane crash and a lot of smoke on TV.” For a few seconds I considered just forgetting about her call and going back to sleep. I was going to try to have a good night’s sleep last night -- the previous night I’d had another disruptive nightmare about the war (my third such dream). But I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, so I got up and turned on the TV, which was carrying live coverage from ABC, but of course dubbed in Japanese. I logged onto the Internet and found at 5-sentence AP article, then ten minutes later it was a little longer, and then ten minutes later, a little longer. I figured that this was in the early stage and there was no sense in waiting up all night for more news, so I read for a while and went to sleep. I didn’t have a nightmare but at one point I woke up in the middle of the night and sat up straight with a paralyzing fear that something terrible was happening at that second -- and then of course fell right back to sleep a minute later. Then again, last week I woke up in the middle of the night and RAN out of my bed, dragging all of my blankets to the bathroom because I had a very realistic dream that I was inside a giant spinning toy that was about to tip over. When I was awake enough to realize what I had done, I laughed out loud and tucked myself back into bed.
Tomorrow I have a very long day at an elementary school -- teaching from 8:30 until 3:30 straight. The teacher I met with was very apologetic about the schedule, so I got her to cut out my dodgeball playing at recess. (Always trying to get out of gym). It’s a 35 minute bike ride, and hopefully it won’t rain tomorrow. I have a lot of Christmas songs to teach and I’d like to arrive there dry :)
