the brothers crow

I realize that, looking at the title, many of you will wonder why I’m mentioning the New Year when it’s April. But, you see, the New Year actually does start in April, in a manner of speaking, at least in Japan.

April is a time of rebirth and renewal, largely because of Cherry Blossom season. These beautiful trees have a knack for blooming suddenly and abruptly near the end of March, showering everyone with a flurry of pink and white petals, only to once again return to an unassuming state.

I’m sure countless papers have been written solely on the influence of Sakura on Japanese culture, about their symbolism as a harbinger of death and rebirth and the fleeting nature of life within the Japanese psyche. But that’s a little dull and academic, which I get my fair share of when working at a public school, so let’s move on.

In a more concrete and practical sense, April is when employees at various companies are officially transferred, the new fiscal year starts, the new school year starts, and when a ridiculous amount of boring but necessary paperwork and meetings become necessary. Arguably in response to this, the number of work-related celebratory drinking parties increases fourfold (no seriously, I have five scheduled for this month alone). For the average foreign English teacher, this isn’t necessarily a bad situation, as we tend to be exempt from the more mundane responsibilities of regular teachers yet can still partake of the nightly festivities.

For example, I have no classes this week. There are simply too many things that need doing, such as testing, introductory classes and procedural explanations. Much as I’d like to think my influence is a necessary part of English instruction, the cold hard truth is that more classes are taught without me than with me. So when I speak of procedure and acquainting students with this year’s policies, those polices are designed around my absence.

Sadness.

But, on the bright side, this does give me more time to do other things, such as write a long overdue update on this blog. Which is (coming full circle to the title whose significance I neglected to fully explain), I’d like to think, something of a resolution. I say “something”, as I’m hesitant to make it a full fledged resolution, because then I’ll feel worse when I inevitably break it. But, until that day, please look forward to me writing again!

And so goes another block of time without me writing a damn thing. Whether that speaks to my tremendously busy life or my tremendously irresponsible lifestyle, I don’t know. I can say, though, that it doesn’t speak to my lack of things to write about.

In particular, there’s one thing I’ve been aching to talk about, both physically and mentally. Almost three weeks ago I had a wisdom tooth pulled. Now I know you must be thinking that you know what I mean, and that there’s no further need to continue.

You’re wrong. Painfully wrong.

So, from what I hear, it’s commonplace for dentists to first administer a powerful shot to the roof of one’s mouth, essentially numbing the patient’s head. I had also heard, much to my concern, that Japanese doctors had radically different ideas regarding anesthetic. Before the procedure, I was a little comforted once I received the first of many, many shots. I mean yeah, the needle was plenty long and I felt quite numb, right?

When I started to feel it wearing off before the operation even started, I became concerned.

The first half of the procedure was difficult, but not unbearable. It involved the dentist sawing off the exposed portion of my tooth. This, of course, hurt. However, additional shots to the area nullified the pain fairly well, and I thought I could handle it.

And then he began to remove the roots.

—

Days later, when I returned for a follow-up examination, I learned that this method was necessary because the roots of my tooth curved inwards, which made simply pulling it out impossible. I also learned that, due to this method, the roots started to sink deeper into my gum line after the upper portion had been removed. This would explain why I heard my dentist complaining, several times, that he “couldn’t see it.” Let me stress that this was not a comforting thing to hear at that time, because I sure as hell could feel him looking for it.

—

This portion of the procedure, which was as long or longer than the first, was easily the most painful experience of my life. There was a point at which I stopped requesting extra shots because a) they stopped helping and b) they only slowed things down. At least the final twenty minutes were performed with me feeling every sensation with pure clarity.

I especially remember a moment where my whole body began to tremble and shiver, as if my blood pressure was dropping due to excessive blood loss. I remember thinking that this must be like what it is to go into shock, and that I was certain to pass out any second.

At one point, my dentist asked me if we should give up on the second root, as it was very difficult for him to locate it. I remember looking into his eyes and imagining him as a young college sophomore who had screwed up a major project only to say, “eh, let’s go grab a few beers and sing some karaoke.” I then pictured myself as some half-assed, discarded jaw made out of paper mache and cardboard.

Closing my eyes I said, in my most polite Japanese, that there was no way in hell I was letting him stop at this point. I then tempered it with an encouraging, “I know you can do it.” Which was a damn lie but hey, it’s not like I wanted to finish this at a later date. He got it, but not before subjecting me to another ten minutes of blind poking, prodding, and metaphorical crotch-kicking.

Before I came in that day, the longest procedure ever conducted at that clinic was one and a half hours. I broke that record by a good solid hour. My dentist jokingly congratulated me on the new record, and I could only flash a brief blood-soaked, cotton-packed smile.

I still have three wisdom teeth left.

Let’s talk about school. I’ve not talked about school for a minute.

So yes, I teach at a junior high school. I also teach at an elementary school on occasion. However, these occasions are hardly regular. Much like the rain during Japanese Junes, it comes in great big merciless chunks. What’s more, I usually have to take on full teaching duties in these classes, because the elementary schools tend to not have anyone qualified to teach English with me.

On one hand, I don’t like to complain too much because it’s not as though I have to work with elementary students all the time. I’m sure that the regular Japanese teachers must experience all sorts of exhausting, frustrating situations. On the other hand, they’re a lot more experienced with that environment. People can be pretty resilient and, with enough exposure, can acclimate to even the most ridiculous of circumstances. This isn’t necessarily a good thing of course, as the countryside is filled with old women who walk with their backs at a constant 90 degree forward bend due to planting rice by hand. But I digress.

No matter what the level, no matter what the responsibility, familiarity can make things far easier. There’s a perception (justified on occasion) that ALTs are overpaid and underworked, that they complain needlessly and demand special treatment. What people forget, though, is that it’s no small feat to walk into a classroom of students you barely know and teach them in a language they don’t understand.

I recall a Spanish teacher from my elementary days. I barely learned anything, and I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for her to feel productive. I then try to imagine what it would be like to be a substitute for said teacher, to not even have the slightest connection with those students whatsoever.

Yeah, this job has really made me respect substitute teachers too, simply because they have to go into classrooms without knowing the students.

This week I will visit roughly twenty classes. Those classes will have, on average, twenty to twenty five students each. These are children that I see, at most, once every two months. I don’t know any of their names. Some of their faces I recognize, some of their personalities I recall, but it’s hardly enough to make adjustments aside from “this class is quiet, this class is loud, this class has discipline issues, this class has the homeroom teacher who shouts “shaddup!” in a bad American accent, etc.”

And yeah, while I could just blow this off and not make a concerted effort to teach well, it just bugs me too much when things go wrong. A language barrier doesn’t prevent you from seeing a kid in the corner of the room who’s completely confused and about to give up. It doesn’t make you blind to the frustration and disinterest which can take root at the worst times. And it doesn’t let me ignore when I’m doing a bad job.

So yeah, if I’m coming home tired and happy this week, perhaps I’m doing things right. If I’m coming home tired and sad, well, at least I tried. But I can guarantee one thing: I’m coming home tired.

RIP, my old laptop hard drive and everything that was on it.

Last Saturday I came back home from Tsutaya with a stack of rented CDs, intending to do what everyone else who rents CDs does. After finishing that business, I attempted to check my email and was mildly troubled by the slow speed of my computer. So, since I had left the poor guy running indefinitely as usual, I decided to do a rare restart.

Unfortunately, it never got back to windows. I decided to run a diagnostic on startup. As I feared, my hard drive failed its DST test. On a whim, I decided to restart the computer just to see if anything would happen. I was greeted with this gem:

“Hard drive failure imminent, please back up all data.”

A little late on that one, I’m afraid. I’ve been neglecting to back up data, as my old computer’s hard drive has lasted so long without any problems (I still use it as additional storage). There’s a lot of stuff I wish I could recover from this drive, but god only knows if that’s even possible at this point, short of paying an arm and a leg. I don’t even know if I could find someone who could do that around here, even in the city.

I decided to suck it up and buy a new hard drive, as I’d rather fix this quickly than try to jump through Dell’s hoops to get a replacement overseas with only ten days left on my warranty. I’m also not looking forward to starting over from scratch, but perhaps it’ll be for the best. There was too much junk on my old drive anyway.

I suppose I’ll have to be satisfied with my work laptop until then…