I signed the contract to stay for a third year last week. Staying one more will allow me to see the students who came in the same year I did graduate; it’s an opportunity to see a full educational cycle from beginning to end. My studies, my personal connections with these kids, my growing comfort with life here–everything seems to emphasize that staying is the right thing to do.

Still, the job itself is no challenge, not anymore, not really. And if I’m going to put in another year, I’m going to need a challenge. So I’ve decided to take learning Japanese completely seriously this year. I have low intermediate proficiency, but I still feel barely literate most of the time. I want competency. Competency, according to all the truly fluent foreigners, can take years and years.

And so, in the spirit of hell-for-leather, needing-a-challenge endeavor, I’ve gone full immersion. I’ve gotten rid of all English books, movies and music. I’ve started taking my research notes in Japanese. I’ve purchased a monolingual dictionary. It’s not exactly cold turkey; I still conduct conversation classes and communicate with friends and family back home in English. But it’s damn near close. I’ve ramped up the study, and cut off the flow of escapism. I’ve got one year left in this country. I’m going to throw everything I’ve got at this language and see how far I can get.

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Headed out to the Thailand tonight, so I’ll be offline for a few weeks. Latest update says they’ve arranged sleeping mats on an open-air houseboat for all the volunteers during their time at the orphanage. How cool is that?

I was going to do this epic, doing-good-and-taking-names post before I left; I had it all planned out. But I’m not in the mood this morning. So I think I’ll write about the new yogurt Pepsi flavor instead.

Saw Pepsi White for the first time in the convenience store last night. The “ice cucumber” flavor Tripp talked about back in January is long gone by now. Japan is serious about keeping things seasonal, and cucumber is a summer flavor. Besides, I’ve noticed that when they say “limited edition” here, they mean it. Not like in America, where corporations often change their stand on temporary/permanent releases at the drop of a hat according to consumer demand. Mountain Dew LiveWire comes to mind; I seem to remember that being a limited edition flavor when I was teaching in Baltimore, years on years ago. But there it was, still on the shelves when I visited home this summer.

But hey, Pepsi White. It was okay. Not bad, not great. I definitely liked the cucumber flavor better. But by now my palate has adopted cultural relativism; I’m no longer any sort of judge. So for a more solidly western perspective (and a picture), you can find the AV Club review here.

The bit that made me laugh the most, aside from the “Jim Crow” line and a few of the quotes at the bottom:

There was little to no cola taste, which is surprising, since it’s billed as “Pepsi & yogurt.” (Unless in Japan, that translates to “no Pepsi and no yogurt.”)

For the record, it does.

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We got our re-contracting papers this week. I’ll have to decide in the next several weeks whether I want to extend for an additional year here in Kochi, or leave once my contract expires in August. It also means that it’s open season for students, parents, colleagues, and friends to start asking me about my plans to go or stay, and quiz me about the status of my life in Japan. In other words, the pressure’s on; until I do make an official decision, I will need to be very careful and polite in my responses to questions on this subject.

Last year I had no hesitation, and I’m very glad I extended for a second year. A third year? I just don’t know. (Hell of a time for the “Magic 8-Ball” to be out of commission, actually.)

I truly love the kids I’m working with, and would very much like to see them graduate–something I could do if I extended. Living here is continually interesting and energizing. My cost of living is minimal, and the opportunities I have to explore and travel are legion. But the job itself is not much of a challenge. I am, in effect, creating work for myself on a regular basis so that I have something new to work on. In addition to this work, my regular responsibilities have increased over time, as has my reputation. But it’s still pretty slow going at times. I miss having full control of what I can do in a room, being able to attack an idea head-on in my own way; I miss the sharp back-and-forth I can have with students in my native language. It seems totally insane to be talking about missing 70/80-hour work weeks, but I do. I do miss them. And I miss the more regular contact I had with my friends Stateside, as well.

We leave for Thailand on Friday. I’m thinking it’ll be a good place and time to think things through, a way to (literally) get some distance and try to figure out where I stand.

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For one reason or another, I’ve taken a ‘Magic 8-Ball’ with me to every new workspace I’ve occupied, foreign or domestic, since the age of 20. I’m pretty sure it started with a gift, as a joke, although I couldn’t tell you the particulars now if I tried. But at this point it’s no laughing matter; it’s tradition, to the point that the damn thing actually makes it onto my packing list, every time.

However, recent events have given cause for concern. The mystery liquid in my ‘Magic 8-Ball’ has, of late, become so dark and cloudy that I can no longer see the answers to any of my questions. My students are as disappointed with this turn of events as I am, mostly because they’ve made a habit of coming over to my desk to ask the ‘Magic 8-Ball’ if they’ll be passing their entrance exams. But it can’t be helped. The future is no longer ours to see.

Could it be the simple old age of a gadget past its prime?
The chilly winter weather?
A subtle hint from [deity of choice] that it’s time to move on?
Or an evil omen of terrible things to come?

Only time will tell.

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In the summer of 2007 I applied to join a volunteer group during the winter holidays that does a yearly “working vacation”, spending a few weeks helping out at an orphanage in rural Thailand. But I was waitlisted for the trip last year, and by the time somebody canceled it was too late to change the other plans that I’d made. It was a bit of a bummer, but I ended up having a great time here in Kochi with no regrets.

Accordingly, this year I submitted my application extra-early, and four of us here in Nankoku got accepted into the 2008 Christmas outreach program. We’ve had to send in deposits, pay for our plane tickets, work on donation fundraising, create lesson plans, and the like–most of it has been settled for ages, and I’ve really been looking forward to the trip.

Since then, the situation in Thailand has deteriorated, to say the least. After the protests started in Bangkok, we all got a reassuring email from the program organizers–the program is still on, and we’re all still supposed to go. I’m sure the orphanage is reluctant to cancel the outreach; from what I understand, they rely heavily on these ‘volunteer vacations’ to keep the place up and running. And after all, the money’s been paid.

My principal and colleagues are actively campaigning for me to cancel outright; but somehow, I just can’t bring myself to do so. And though I’m getting freaked-out emails all the time from the other three Nankoku girls on the shortlist, it looks like they won’t be stepping back either. But of course, now, all bets are off. The Japanese airlines are making special trips to domestic airports in Thailand, but only to evacuate their own nationals. We’re supposed to leave for Bangkok in three weeks; it’s looking less and less likely by the minute.

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It’s 勤労感謝の日(kinrou kansha no hi) today, and a national holiday. The English translation in my happy little planner says “Labor Thanksgiving Day”, and essentially that’s what it is: a celebration of the year’s work and/or production, and a time to ritually thank others for their contribution to that work. [Ancient tradition says that the holiday came from the annual rice harvest, when the emperor would hold a ceremony to bless the year's crop and thank his people for their hard work. This baffles me just a little, because the rice harvest here in Shikoku happened back in May, and again a couple of months ago.]
It occurred to me when I woke up this morning that due to the fact we’ve all got the day off, I would be wholly unable to ritually thank any of my co-workers today for all the hard work they’ve put in this year. The thought brought a smile to my face, helped me ignore the cold outside my bed long enough to turn on the space heater and get the tea going.

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This being my second year on this job, it’s becoming more and more easy to notice trends. Last October as well as this one, I was feeling pretty miserable and pointless. It’s a time when my colleagues and students are so busy and preoccupied with preparing for school festivals that the help I can offer never seems to be worth the extra time it takes to explain things to me (in English or Japanese, sadly). And though I’ve gotten much better at being able to just jump in and help without explanation, it’s still a lonely world when you can’t really be part of the team.

Looking at all this has made me aware of just how much I depend on feedback, verbal or nonverbal, to establish a sense of accomplishment. And how important a sense of capability, of having done things well, has become to my sense of self. I’m not talking about compliments, even. I’m talking about a certain vibe you get when you’re talking shop with someone, a sense that the person in question knows what your job is and knows that you can and will do the job you are given to do. It’s a sort of respect, that faith in your competence. Something I have apparently taken for granted up to now.

When my day is full, and the responsibilities I have are mine alone, I can see for myself how things are getting done. But when my job is to help other people, the picture becomes less clear. It’s standard procedure in Japan to compliment foreigners a lot–it’s thought that compliments are a way to make people feel welcome–but these compliments often have little to do with real performance feedback. Even now my colleagues still compliment me at least once a week on my ability to use chopsticks and make my own lunch, but no one will ever say a word about how one of my classes went. I can’t brainstorm freely with anyone to improve my teaching, and I can’t offer too many observations on what I see outside of a formal evaluation meeting. I find, especially in October, that I really miss that kind of idea exchange.

I was talking to an Australian friend of mine about this not too long ago. He said that it’s a cultural thing. People, especially in the workplace, are very careful not to comment on other people’s performance or lack thereof. He worked in a position like mine for over three years before he received any sort of actual feedback about the job he was doing. Still, I’m glad all the festivals are over, and November is here again. Things are already looking up.

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