Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Jane

Jane deserves a post all in her own. Jane is an awesome person in my life in Japan and we always have lots of adventures together. It seems whenever we are bored or have some time, we go exploring. It works out good. We have a system, Jane is Korean-American so people mistake her to be Japanese. I am unquestionably foreign. Sometimes, Japanese people are taken back by a foreigner entering their restaurant, small shop or whatever business it is they run. Well, Jane and I are curious - more curious than cats are. Our strategy is that Jane enters first to keep the shopkeeper calm, then when I enter they still remain calm because they still think Jane is Japanese. I usually do the talking - asking the questions about the particular shop. Usually, they listen to me, look away from me and respond to Jane. I then respond to their response to Jane. After a while, they come to realize, Jane also is a foreigner. But, by this time, we've somewhat calmed them down that I can speak some Japanese. This is how the system works.

Jane and I don't go everywhere together, but when we go exploring, it's with eachother. It's always an adventure. I always remind Jane that she will miss me when I am gone next year. She reminds me the same - that my life is going to be dull and listless when I return back the USA. It's true as far as adventure goes - I won't have much of an adventurous life back in Plattsburgh. I will, but in such a different way.

Today, it was really windy but a nice spring day. I asked Jane to go for a walk with me up to this park on a hill that gives awesome views of our city. We took some stairs down the opposite way because we didn't know where it led to. Coming out, we saw tennis courts. Jane likes to play and has been looking for hard courts. We saw a little court house so she wanted to get information about the courts. Implementing our strategy - Jane enters first and then I. He knew me. He reads this blog! One of my adult students passed this address onto him. It was very surprising to me. He studies English once a week at an adult class in the city. We ended up speaking with him and his wife joined us for over an hour. While he was walking us to the main street, he let us see his home which was a log cabin - that he built by himself. It was fantastic.

It's interactions like these that make me really love my life here. I am here on the JET Programme. Certainly, the outlying motive for this programme would seem to be for English teaching. However, the main initiative of my programme is more for grassroots internationalization rather than to teach English. It's hard to see that since our main job is to teach English. But, if you came here on another program - you are only expected to teach English, that's it, the end. In my job description, it's expected of me to get involved in the community and do cultural exchange type activities. This is not a measurable aspect of my job and it's totally up to each person to do these things. I think that is one part of my job that I do excel at even though it's not measured. I love the interactions and I love exploring with Jane.

It was only a week ago when we went to a restaurant for dinner and the man sitting next to us talked us up a storm and bought us beers. That was by pure chance but only with Jane would something like that happen, it seems. :)

2 comments:

Lisa Marie said...

i cant wait to see you sissy!!

Unknown said...

i wish i got a chance to meet jane! she sounds awesome!! maybe one day.. maybe... hopefully you can meet my friend jayne (with a Y) we have adventures too and i know you'll just love her!! i miss you hunnie and i can't wait until august!