Yesterday, in my elementary school, the 6th grade teacher had borrowed four suits of Japanese armor and brought them into the school. I’m not exactly sure where she borrowed them from, but they came with four sets of swords (not sharpened, of course).

In the hallway, we removed the suits from their boxes and then the students got to try them on. Over the course of helping 30 or so students in and out of the stuff, I got a good idea of how it works. And then, when all the students were finished, I got to try it on second to last (just before the teacher, thus the title). I’m sure I looked ridiculous, a foreigner in full samurai gear. But it was still pretty cool.

First you put on the shin pieces, left and right. An apron-like separated segment goes on next to cover your thighs. Next is the arm pieces, which resemble sleeves with armor sewn on. All three of these use strips of lacquered steel plates linked together with threads, so that these parts of the armor are very form-fitting and flexible. Next came the breastplate, hinged on the left side, tied together on the right, and with a linked plate “skirt” attached on the bottom. Two shoulder pieces made of connected plates hung off the sides of this. The final piece was the helmet– it has a neckpiece with interlocking plates on the back, like an armadillo. If you look up, the plates fold together so you can move your head, but if you look straight forward the plates fall down to cover your neck. A cloth belt ties around the waist and holds the swords. The entire getup seems like it should be heavy and unwieldy, but while it was on me I could hardly tell I was wearing it. Mostly this is due to the fact that there are very few solid pieces in the whole suit; the breastplate’s two hinged pieces are by far the largest single pieces of metal, and everything else uses strips of curved plate connected much like venetian blinds or sewn directly onto fabric, and small pieces of mail sewn on to fill in the gaps. It’s complex, yet elegant in its design. I guess several hundred years of wars will tend to refine your armor to a work of engineering perfection.

Here’s a good site with photos that shows the different pieces and how they fit together. The suits we used didn’t have a face mask or neck armor.
http://www.sengokudaimyo.com/katchu/katchu.ch02.html

And sorry, but I am not going to publish photos of me dressed up like

This weekend, I did a bit of touring with Takahashi and his buddies on the motorcycle. We left at 5:30am on a misty morning, with raindrops like little mosquitoes hovering in the air, unwilling to settle on the ground. I cursed the weather as I donned a rainsuit that almost wasn’t necessary. Originally, I had thought this was an obscenely early departure, but due to the complete lack of traffic it was actually wonderful timing.

Originally, the trip was supposed to take us down to Aizu in Fukushima prefecture, where I would follow up with a meeting with Ian, but someone along the way decided that the weather would be better up north in Akita, so we started going north from Naruko into the mountains along route 108. Of course, by the time I figured this out, we were deep into the ravines and out of phone range, so I couldn’t call Ian to let him know what was going on.

Blind curves and twists of every radius and description were par for this course, and the ground was a bit damp. I let the speedy barons drag pegs and scrub off their brake pads, but I just didn’t feel all that great flying into a corner without knowing how tight it was, or what lay on the other side. So I, along with a couple people from the group, decided to hang back and take things at a safer, more leisurely pace. And it was probably best that way, as I still encountered two oncoming cars who didn’t seem to grasp the concept of a centerline — specifically, if you’re in Japan, you’re supposed to stay on the LEFT side of it, not straddle it.

I had started with half a tank of gas, which I figured would be enough to get us to a gas station in whatever town we were eventually going to. So here I was, roaring along in top gear at nine thousand RPM, 120kph on a straight segment through some tunnels, when my ride starts to sputter out. No problem, says I, we have nearly a quarter tank on reserve. Unfortunately, I had forgotten about the reality of Japanese gas stations, namely that all gas stations in Japan are full service. This means that gas stations actually close at night, and don’t open until 8am in some places. The looming prospect of being stuck in the middle of nowhere without gas for awhile gave me a bit of a shock, but during our next break the crew found a gas station that had just opened, and I refueled.

A side road and a detour eventually brought us to… a ranch? Yes, a ranch, selling homemade ice cream. Sheep and goats and a couple Jersey cows. Giant wind turbines on the top of a mountain which otherwise looked like it was plucked right out of The Sound of Music. An enormous volcanic mountain dominated the background. I stooped down to pet their rabbit (named Pyon) while enjoying my ice cream, and by the time I finished some fog had rolled in. Coming down from the mountain was a bit hairy, but the fog was mostly cleared up by the time we hit the next big set of switchbacks. That’s when I got into my groove and started pulling away.

Finally reached the top, where there was supposed to be a nice view of the ocean. Unfortunately, all the clouds covered everything up, so we couldn’t really see anything. I was a bit tired from the strenuous run up, so I grabbed some water and sat down for a break.

The trip back down into civilization was slow and uneventful. The fog rolled back in just as we started down the other half of switchbacks; I slowed way down and eventually wound up following an even slower car I couldn’t pass for lack of visibility. We pulled off for lunch (by which time it cleared up again) and I finally got a phone signal to call Ian. By that point, it was about 11am, and it would take me 2 and a half hours to even get into Fukushima city by expressway (not including time I’d have to stop for gas and breaks). So I just rode back home with the crew.

Finally decided to start cleaning out this disorganized heap of a desk, the “ALT desk” they call it. Yet another archaeology dig. Didn’t anyone ever clean this desk out? I guess since most people only stayed here for a year, they figured it was the next person’s problem. Well, if I’m staying another year I might as well make use of the space.

Plans for old lessons about New Zealand. Coins from Thailand and England (even a 1 pound coin, who would leave that behind?). Dozens of keychain holders. A stuffed Snoopy (which I will use in a presentation). An old love letter addressed to a “Young-kym” from “your Drunken Gong-Ju”. A library card for King’s College, in London (Founded 1829, by the way). Business cards for a Dr. Abel Moreno (Biomedical Sciences Professor, Institute of Chemistry, UNAM, Mexico) and a Mr. Nakayama at the Mugen sake distillery here in Nakaniida. Folded-up flags of New Zealand and Australia (I can never remember which one has 4 stars and which one has 6). One half of a tamborine. A metal Coca-cola pencil case, in immaculate condition (I think I’ll use that as a prize). A compendium of Oscar Wilde’s Complete Shorter Fiction. Lesson plans and ideas left to rot in a drawer. And on and on, like the attic of the crazy old woman down the street from you as a kid, who kept every odd thing she thought might be of some use.

I think I’ll be at this for awhile. Stuffed Garfield the cat. Five cards from a trading card game… Glitter paint… Christmas stickers… Four glue sticks…

I suppose I should explain why I disappeared for a week without notice. I was at the JET Tokyo Recontracting Conference. (Why do they insist on spelling “program” like “programme”? Program me? Are they computers, or are they French? Maybe French computers, that’s it.) Anyway, the conference was an interesting experience, to say the least.

Monday was Chapter 1: in which George realizes he left his wallet on the shinkansen just as he steps out the door. To make a long story short, he turned around just as he got off and tried to get back on to get his wallet, but the cleaning guy wouldn’t let him back on. Then the doors closed automatically, and nobody in the station had the power to open them back up, and by that time the wallet had mysteriously gone “missing”, undoubtedly tossed into a trashbag. George was a bit pissed off, and rightly so. I told him that if a similar situation should occur in the future, he should simply pull a “Gaijin Smash”; i.e. push his way past the cleaning guy, save his wallet from the maw of gaping doom, and then face the consequences afterwards. As things actually turned out, he was flusteredly embittered for the rest of the day (see, I can make up words, too) but I helped him place a police report and all that jazz.

Oh yes, the conference. I almost forgot.

We checked into the Keio Plaza Hotel a bit later than anticipated, but still in plenty of time for the inevitable Opening Ceremony (without which nothing in Japan would ever begin). Amazingly, the speeches didn’t last nearly as long as I had expected. Next came a choice, two of the five workshops run by CLAIR representatives. Now I’ll admit that I didn’t really have a very high opinion of CLAIR. They have a reputation among many JETs as being rather useless, as they constantly remind us that have almost no control over, well, anything really; how we are employed by the local boards of education and not by JET, and other statements that make us wonder exactly what it is they DO. I expected pie-in-the-sky antics about how our lesson plans should include interaction (me? plan a lesson? hah!) or how we should use modern team-teaching methods with our JTEs (Japanese teachers of English) or some other vague hogwash. On the contrary, the workshops I attended were fantastic. They actually acknowledged and addressed the issues most of us face; issues like JTEs not being able to speak English (more common than you’d think), teaching methods that weren’t even close to the “proposed guidelines” published by the Ministry of Education (yes, they exist, but nobody reads them), JTEs that are too busy or disorganized to plan out lessons in advance, and battling with entrance exams that don’t actually test their communicative ability. This nod of the head toward practical concerns and away from bullshit scored some major brownie points with me.

The second day was a series of workshops run by current JETs, going on their third year. One in particular was quite useful: a guide on how to stay sane your second year in Japan. Things like throwing out your predecessor’s old crap and buying a few things to make the place your own, making Japanese friends and doing stuff with them, and starting a project at school are some things that none of the manuals tell you but that make all the difference in making the last year more enjoyable. Some of the workshops that day were not so useful, particularly the ones that avoided concrete examples in favor of abstract concepts (like the lecture on workplace relations), the workshops that were poorly planned (like the cooking workshop), or those that gave facts that were just plain wrong (like the guy trying to sell the idea of graded readers, who claimed that more Japanese people are becoming fluent now because of better education standards; anyone with any modern experience will tell you that teaching methods outside top city schools haven’t changed at all, and in fact the improvement is directly attributable to a higher number of Japanese studying abroad).

The real fun came on the third day, which was given over to MEXT (the Ministry of Education) for their take on things. If you remember from the paragraph above, MEXT is the organization that came up with a list of guidelines and goals for the JET program. First came a presentation by a third year ALT and her JTE, who work in a high achievement senior high school. Of course their methods worked well for their eager, brilliant students, but their situation was so different from the norm that it was difficult to see the point of such an exhibition. The JTE spoke English very well, and there was an oral communication component that was actually planned. I think there was quite a bit of resentment among the watching JETs, and a lot of eyes rolled.

Next was a short break before a “Q&A session”. MEXT burned off time reading off some questions they had collected from some questionnaire I had never received; from the sound of things I think they picked off 8 questions at random without actually reading any of them in advance. The panel consisted of the JET and Japanese teacher from before, a MEXT bureaucrat and his interpreter, and a British man employed by MEXT (acting as moderator). Many of the questions dealt with issues far too specific for a national forum, such as, “How do I get students to talk to me at lunch?” In other cases the MEXT bureaucrat representative completely failed to address the question, or changed topics completely, as in the case of a question about JETs in many positions being replaced by less expensive private language teachers (he instead decided to talk about his new set of plans for elementary schools). The MEXT guy kept reiterating the goals of the English language program in Japan: an emphasis on conversational ability, in textbooks, and classroom curriculum, and entrance examination methods. After that, they opened up the floor to questions for the next 20 minutes or so.

George and I had decided during the break that we wanted to ask these guys a really difficult question to cut through the bullshit, the one question all of us were thinking but nobody had the wit to ask. We wrote down the question, and I waited for the real Q&A to start. One of the people with microphones saw that I had a question written down, and so I was second to step up to bat, in front of a room of a thousand people. I started out with a compliment: “The goals outlined by the MEXT representative in the last presentation were very positive. They show a real understanding of the requirements of English teaching in Japan. However, from communicating with ALTs [assistant language teachers] in many different areas, none of these plans are being implemented or even acknowledged. What actions will MEXT undertake to make these plans a reality, not just telling JTEs and their supervisors, but actually convincing them and checking that they implement it?” I hadn’t even finished the last part and the entire audience burst into applause. George later told me the look on the MEXT bureaucrat’s face at that point was that of a deer in headlights. He started going on about how memos would be distributed and people would be notified about the changes in the elementary school curriculum. Huh? He was changing the subject! He was completely dodging the question! A murmur started to rise in the crowd as everyone realized this. The interpreter finished by asking if that response had answered my question. I stood up again: “No, I’m sorry. HOW are you going to make sure the CURRENT rules are implemented? Like I said before, the guidelines you have drawn up for junior and senior high schools already are very good goals, but HOW are you going to implement them?” He continued to BS about issuing memos and plans, and mumbled some nonanswer about “looking into methods” or something. At that point the moderator, Huw Oliphant, stepped in and stated that the solution seemed to be further and better training for JTEs, a point with which I had to agree. If nothing else, he indicated that he at least was aware of the issue, and I suppose that was the kind of solution I was listening for. I sat down, content with the knowledge that George and I had knocked down the MEXT guy from his tower of BS for a moment. Who knows, maybe that bureaucrat will take back to his office that some actual action needs to be taken, and shake things up to get stuff done. More likely he’ll issue a memo and form a committee to look into the matter. It’s not very inspiring. But I guess now I know how their bureaucracy works, and that at least the national guys can’t take any sanctions against me if I do something obnoxious like introduce phonics.

Right now a construction crew is pounding sewer pipes into the ground using a tall machine. The machine lifts up the pipe and lowers it over the previous pipe, and then presses down a bit to make a secure fit. Then an internal “hammer” pounds the whole 15 meter segment in with a series of hard whacks, like driving a tent stake. Not only is this rather loud, but it makes the entire ground shake.

The last piece they drove in made a resounding “GONG” each time the hammer struck, like a clock tower that had gone haywire. One hundred twenty-nine o’clock. The whole teacher’s room staff dropped what they were doing to go look out the window. I think we’re all really bored.