You must defeat Hoikuen to stand a chance

Since mentioning my trips to Hoikuen in the last post I thought I should elaborate on what a visit to these places are like , and each visit for the first month went roughly like this.....

I arrive at nine in the morning and was given cold black coffee. You need the caffeine hit to be able
to handle over 50 hyper kids!

It's like the movie Kindergarten Cop on fast-forward

At playtime I was chased by an army of five year olds on stilts, and I found out I'm not as good at Janken (Rock, Paper, Scissors) as I thought. When the kids are finished climbing all over you it's class time.

The CD player didn't work (or the CD I made didn’t work more likely), so I had to sing the alphabet, numbers and Halloween songs in my lilting Irish brogue.

During colouring time I gave the kids a choice of two pictures, a witch or a pumpkin. Only one child picked the witch. I had to ration the colour orange.

At lunch time they feed me like I'm a sumo wrestler who has just appeared after a month in the wilderness. In my first month I wasn’t as good with chopsticks as I am now, so it takes me ages to finish. Plus the kids keep talking to me about random stuff. It’s all hilarious to them, but for the most part I’ve no idea what’s going on. I always manage to eat all my lunch though, despite some of it not looking like anything resembling actual food!.

After lunch I put on my witch's hat and went around handing out Halloween candy to all the students. The one year olds were a bit wary of me with the hat on, so I took it off.... and they started crying their eyes out!

After trick or treating I high fived every student (twice!) and left the hoikuen to a chorus of ABC.

Just another morning for Garry-sensei! Then, a short rest, and off to Shogakko (elementary school). ing time I gave the kids a choice of two pictures, a witch or a pumpkin. Only one child picked the witch. I had to ration the colour orange.
At lunch time they feed me like I'm a sumo wrestler who has just appeared after a month in the wilderness. I managed to eat it all though.
After lunch I put on my witch's hat and went handing out candy to all the students. The one year olds were a bit wary of me with the hat on, so I took it off.... and they balled their eyes out!
After trick or treating I high fived every student (twice!) and left to a chorus of ABC.
Just another morning for Garry-sensei. Now, short rest, and off to shogakko.ing time I gave the kids a choice of two pictures, a witch or a pumpkin. Only one child picked the witch. I had to ration the colour orange.
At lunch time they feed me like I'm a sumo wrestler who has just appeared after a month in the wilderness. I managed to eat it all though.
After lunch I put on my witch's hat and went handing out candy to all the students. The one year olds were a bit wary of me with the hat on, so I took it off.... and they balled their eyes out!
After trick or treating I high fived every student (twice!) and left to a chorus of ABC.
Just another morning for Garry-sensei. Now, short rest, and off to shogakko.

Rudolph the Senpai Reindeer

Happy Christmas Everybody!

I teach in four Hoikuens (kindergartens) and in the middle of the month I have a meeting with the four principals where we hash out my lesson plan for the following month’s classes. Through some elaborate hand gestures and excited over-acting I show them how I am going teach the kids the alphabet or numbers or whatever. These four old ladies are really nice; they try and ask my lots of questions despite not having much English and me not having much Japanese.

I can usually make an adequate response to all the queries they have for me, but this month they asked me something that had me stumped. What age is Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer?? I just couldn’t satisfy them with an answer.

Age is very important in Japan. Children are thought to respect their elders. In companies the older more senior people are looked up to by the younger more junior members, because with age comes wisdom right? The longer you are doing a job, the better you are supposed to be at doing it, yes?

I have been asked my age on numerous occasions, perhaps it is the easiest way to place me in the hierarchy? And people will offer you their ages, even if you have only just met them. I was at a bar the other night and the barman asked me my age (not because I looked too young to be drinking whiskey unfortunately) and after I had answered he told me his age. The whole thing was bizarre, but it happens all the time.

So in the story of Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, if Rudolph is going to be leading Santa’s sleigh tonight, he better be the oldest reindeer! I hadn’t the heart to tell them that Rudolph is more than likely the youngest reindeer. He should never have been anywhere near the front of that sleigh, but needs must I guess and when the weather turned foggy on Christmas Eve, then the real leader of the pack made the call to put Rudolph in that position, we shouldn’t lose sight of that. But these four ladies didn’t want to know this and were obsessed with finding out the age of Rudolph.

As I visit each Hoikuen I dress up as Santa and we sing Christmas songs, but as of yet, no one has asked me how old Rudolph is. I presume it has just become the elephant in the room when the song is played on the CD player. The oldest, most senior elephant.

Onsen It Begins

Why has it taken so long to put up my first blog post here in Japan?

Well, you see, I wanted to wait until I had done something truly Japanese, something I could never do back in Ireland. Now for a moment, it was almost the time when I was sitting in a restaurant and I was handed a fork, then all of a sudden I thought to myself, ‘How the hell am I supposed to eat with this?’ It quickly passed, but it was a bizarre feeling to have as I struggled to grip this basic utensil in any fashion that would have enabled food to get to my mouth.

No. Something that I could never do back in Ireland (or never thought I would do anywhere) was strip naked in front of a load of Japanese businessmen and enjoy a hot bath. Now you can bring a little towel into the Onsen in order to cover whatever it is you feel like covering, but I felt like meh! I’m naked now, might as well just embrace it. I was also convinced that if I brought in a towel I would just somehow end up losing it or leaving it behind. It’s probably hard to mislay the only item you have with you while you’re wandering around naked, but I wasn’t going to take that chance.

It only cost about 500yen to go the Onsen and you can pretty much stay as long as you want. Once inside, just strip off, put all your clothes into a basket and onto the shelf, then off to the bathing area where you can shower, sauna, and hot or cold soak to your heart’s content. You see guys young and old here, but there does seem to be more old guys enjoying the soothing waters than others. After you have given yourself a good scrub in the shower area, and don’t forget to clean down after you use it! You are free to just take on all the hot and cold water you want. Free and easy.

The Onsen I went to had a large outdoor pool, you could get a good fifty men in there at a push I’d say, and a less rocky, not as deep, indoor pool. There was a small icy-cold dipping area and a sauna with a TV and a twelve minute clock. There was figure-skating on the television, and I didn’t find out what happens if you stay in there longer than twelve minutes, I had to get out as it was just too damn hot! I stayed for around an hour and a half and being honest after about two minutes you don’t even care you’re naked, and in fact you probably think, ‘why haven’t I thought of this before?’

So you finish up and head back to dry off in the changing room. At this stage you are oblivious to all the nakedness going on around you, or even that you are naked yourself (well at least I was). Until… I turned around at one stage, in all my ‘glory’, only to be facing the cleaning lady who had just come in the door. Suddenly as this sixty-odd year old woman is passing me with her mop, I am hit by the notion that I should probably get dressed. She muttered a general ‘thanks for your custom’ greeting as she passed me and went about her work. Then I realised, it’s nothing she hasn’t seen before, probably a million times before. She’s probably seen more old man penis than I ever will.

I get dressed and walk towards the restaurant, all this nakedness is hungry work, and they do a good ramen with onsen egg I hear. While I’m not about to turn going to the Onsen into a daily thing (even though it is pretty cheap….), I will definitely go back. Plus I would encourage everyone else to give it a try. I mean, if you can’t get stark naked with a bunch of other hardworking people every now and then, why are you even getting up in the morning?