Rotting Daikon, Empathetic Students, Pura, and Bears

Have you ever smelled rotting daikon? Something was stinking up the kitchen. We looked everywhere, even moved the fridge in case something had fallen behind. Then we found the culprit: a daikon radish that we only had for a few days, in the cabinet, fermenting in its own bile. It was too hazardous to even appear in a photograph. Summer in Japan can be quite harsh on produce.

Speaking of vegetables, another productive (as in produce) gift was dropped off at our door: watermelon and (more) tomatoes (a fruit, not a vegetable), with a sign: "I'm happy to get you to eat this." If you read my previous post about the correlation between tomatoes and weight loss, this note makes even more sense.

In class today I taught the 二年生 (ninensei - second grade middle schoolers) from hell. (I changed the font to hell-vetica for emphasis.) This class is a nightmare. Students get out of their seats in the middle of class to do random stuff. There is a boy who makes faces at the JTE while her back is turned. During their self introductions last week, about five of the "bad boy" students refused to give a full introduction, testing their limits with the JTE. They would just say, "My name is ____," and sit down, with obstinate looks on their faces. One boy does no work throughout the entirety of class, instead trying to catch flies that land on him.  Okay, it's not that bad, but some of these kids are starting to piss me off.

After class last week, the JTE said that their behavior was because they weren't interested in English (I don't think that is the root of their misbehavior), but this week she just said "sorry." Later in the day, the JTE told me that a female student had expressed concern about me. She feared that I would get angry at their behavior and never come back to the school, because she had an ALT in elementary school do just that.

Fortunately, I have been around children enough to have learned a +1 Barrier of Patience spell. I also have a spell in my wizard's book which can cause enemies to become stunned, called "Disappointed Glare." I used it today and it was SUPER EFFECTIVE. It is my personal mission to win over this  二年生 class. My final and most powerful spell is "Charm person," which is a spell that takes a little while to cast, but it has a large area of effect and persistent and quite powerful effects. To cast this spell, I must play soccer with students after lunch, befriend them during our five minute morning run around the track, and go out of my way to be kind to them at every opportunity. I'm cool. English is fun(ner than your other classes). Seriously, don't be little pricks during class. I swear I'm not angry.

Anyhoo...my birthday was yesterday! I was happy to get 2 packages in the mail, from mommy and mommy-in-law (having two mommies is double sweet). And extra sweet were the SIX pieces of mega fancy Japanese cake that my husband got me. By the time I got the camera out, the chocolate strawberry ones had disappeared. I don't know what happened.

Here are some other random anecdotes:

Most prepared food in Japan is bite-sized. However, to my chopstick-fumbling dismay, some things are not. For lunch today, we had a fish about the size of a small steak. Cutting things with chopsticks is hard. You have to like pinch 'em together, with force, but with enough control that neither a chopstick nor food goes flying once the pinch off is complete. Sometimes it's okay to take a stealthy bite of something that's too big to put in your mouth all at once (unless you're the bad boy that I sat next to at lunch today who just eats like a savage before we've even said itadakimasu).  My hands are becoming more nimble, but jitsu wa, sometimes I just can't cut stuff with two slippery wooden sticks. And now that I'm thinking about it, it's rude to stab things with chopsticks, and most people do not eat much food with their hands...so try picking up a baby tomato with chopsticks. I dare you. If you can, try holding it for 10 seconds. It's taxing!

And another thing, Japanese trash: there's the pink bag for PET plastic bottles, the green bag for glass bottles, and a red bag for cans. There is a blue bag for burnable trash, a yellow bag for non-burnable trash, a clear bag for paper recycling, and a clear bag for pura. I asked my husband to describe pura just now: "Pura is basically whatever doesn't fit into the other categories. At first, I thought it would be plastic, but it turns out it's like all the things you think of as garbage. Imagine in your mind a garbage dump: all that is pura. Any food packaging is pura." Pura is recyclable plastic.

Based on the sheer volume of pura we produce, my husband's new catch phrase is, "It's all comin' out PURA!" (based on the phrase, "Everything's comin' up roses.") But America could take a page out of Japan's book here, and recycle that page. Because somehow Japan's food companies package food with a type of plastic that their recycling centers are equipped to recycle! There may be some kind of mysterious communication and coordination between these entities. How can this be!?!?!?

Hold on to your britches for this announcement people: tomorrow, I will post pictures from our exploratory adventure to discover what lies beyond the random path entrance that we discovered from the road. It had a small pavilion and incomprehensible sign in Japanese. Bringin' bear bells just in case, but I kind of want to survive a bear encounter so I can tell all these people who think they know what to do in case one encounters a bear the howdy-doody. "Hit some pans together! Pretend you are dead! Run away really fast! Walk away slowly. Chase the bear. Yell. Use pepper spray. Try to be intimidating, like stick your chest out." I will try all of those simultaneously and see what the bear thinks of THAT! Ha!