Continuations

This morning I was asked to grade the performances of the third-year students as they recited outloud the story about the victims of the bomb in Hiroshima. There were two things to which I would assign an A, B, or C: pronounciation and emotion. Most of them were excellent in both (relatively speaking) and only one recieved a B instead of an A for emotion.

The kids seem to have adopted me as their role model here in this farming town. Besides the few that are too cool for school and have been somewhat disrespectful to me (and other teachers) there are two boys that even acquired glasses of the same style as mine. One even found glasses with the same tint in the frames as mine. Clever little guy.

This past week I took a vacation. It was very nice to take a break from the busy office atmosphere. I had a special guest visit and I got to show off the town in all its glory (of which it has ample) and then I traveled to Amakusa island of Kumamoto prefecture where the water was comparable, in temperature and appearance, to Hawaiian water and the beaches were peaceful despite it being a three day weekend for everyone. The sun was shining on both the beach where we camped the first night and on the waterfall that we went to on the second night. The "we" refers to the three JETs that I drove with (a Canadian, an Aussie, and an American all around 26) and the many JETs that came for the "waterwheel" party on Saturday night that is famous for its drunken, sleezy guests (almost all JETs). It was a good opportunity to be reminded of how drinking is done by the youth of the west. I went to sleep early after chatting with a nice Chilean guy named Alex and my friend Steve from Colorado. JETs are the strangest, most disliked foreigners in Japan, unfortunately (from what I've heard and seen), but they can also be loveable guests who shy away from the stereotypes (and some of them even move here and become respected citizens).

The events that happen here exist in the vaccum of this place. It seems like when I leave I will never see many of the Japanese people again (unless I visit, of course). But I may run into the interationalists that I have met here. To see society here is to admit to the huge variety of cultures and experiences of human societies that exists out here in the world and in the air. Coming to Asia, as opposed to Europe, challenges me even more as I must except the contingencies of my own alphabet and the neverending variety of those that I can never fully know (like the Chinese characters used in Japanese writing). The luxury of travelling and seeing is traggic: only the most priveleged few can go and see all those things that help us understand life a little better.