judgement day

many hearts in nagasaki prefecture were broken yesterday.

granted it was still pay day, but yesterday, my experiences in japan were once more expanded.

first, you need to understand a little something about the education system in japan. every year just before the end of the school year in mid-march, there is this mad shuffle of teachers all over the place. whereas in the states, the same teacher can be at a school for 30 odd years, in japan, there is a limit to how long you can be at a certain school. how long you stay there is dependent on how some really high up person decides to dish out your fate.

nagasaki prefecture is also unlike any other prefecture. whereas in other places in japan where they notify you about a month in advance whether or not you're moving, in nagasaki, they tell you the week before you need to report to your new schools. just to give you an idea of how little time they have, this is the timeline:

- monday, march 19: principals are told which teachers are leaving and coming in
- tuesday, march 20: notify teachers starting at 3:30pm
- wednesday - sunday: the time you have to pack up your desk, cancel all your bills, find a new home if you're going to the mainland or somewhere significantly far away, move allll your stuff to your new home, and say goodbye to all your friends
- friday, march 23rd: last day of the school year
- monday, march 26th: report to your new school in the morning

insane, no? you get LESS than a week to pick up your life and go somewhere you may not even want to go.

now, nagasaki is unlike most prefectures in that it has many, many islands:

the only way to make things fair is that people who are from the mainland have to go to the island at one point (because you'd figure there wouldn't be enough teachers to teach on the islands). generally, teachers stay at a school between 3 - 6 years, but if you're from the mainland and you're out at an island, you have to do 4 years on the island. if you're from the island and want to stay on the island, you have to serve 4 years on the mainland (that may be wrong, but you have to serve mainland time at least once, and afterwards, you can return and keep rotating around the island). you can stay at a certain school for up to 6 years.

the thing is, this system is arbitrary. even if you've only been at a given school for 2 years, you can still be moved to another school for another 2 years. and if you've been at a school for 5 years, that doesn't mean you'll automatically be there for 6. the boogey man will find you and tell you you have to move to a new school. bottom line: no one is safe from the lottery.

which brings me to yesterday. i was at my favorite school (a junior high). i can honestly say i like both teachers and students equally there, whereas at other places, i like teachers more or students more.... i have truly become attached to this school. which is why when 3:30 rolled around and the principal was walking nervously around the teachers room, i knew it was coming.

he first tapped the kyoto-sensei on the shoulder, who everyone knows, is my favorite kyoto-sensei ever. i always end up having really awesome conversations with him in japanese and in english, and we always walk away learning something really crazy about one another's culture/country/people. since he's in a higher position, his job says that he has to rotate every 3 years as opposed to 3-6 for the teachers. which is why when he was tapped first, i KNEW that meant he was leaving. *sigh*. you have no idea how bummed i am about that. he is truly an awesome person, and i really really respect him.

he followed the principal into the principal's room, and afterwards, the kyoto-sensei came out and tapped 3 teachers on the shoulders, and led them all into the principal's room. remaining in the room were the school nurse, the tea lady, the clerk, the history teacher, and me. if only you guys could have seen the looks of sheer shock and disappointment on their faces. they kept whispering, "uso..." which means, "it's a lie...."

of the 4 people leaving the school, you could kind of predict that 3 of them were at the end of their stay on the island (they're all mainlanders), but the 4th teacher, the music teacher, who i've come to realllly like because she realllly tries hard to speak with me in english, was the total surprise. no one expected her to leave. she's into her 5th year at that school, and she's from tsushima now. everyone just thought she'd stay for 6 years, but instead, some higher up decided to mess around with her fate, and she's moving to a smaller school in the neighboring town... at the exact opposite end of that town. it'll be about a 30-35 minute drive for her, but add in her 2nd grade daughter who will still be going to school near home.... and you get panic, resentment, indignation, you name it.

20 minutes later, the principal took off for the BOE, and the rest of the teachers returned from 6th period classes. the kyoto-sensei then hung up a poster that had all the leaving teachers' names and all the names of the incoming teachers. all the teachers in the room at that point gathered closely to the poster, which meant standing in front of my desk.

please try to picture this: the poster is hung up behind you. you're still sitting at your desk which is in a line of 3. all the teachers in that school are standing in a line surrounding those three desks and gawking in resentment at this poster behind you. you peer up at the teachers surrounding you and all you can see are their hearts breaking for their leaving friends. they all start to discuss what they think the newbies will like. "judging from his name, he sounds like he's from tsushima..." "that name sounds like he's a little older, doesn't it?..."

i cannot begin to explain to you how bad and out of place i felt sitting at my desk with all the teachers around me trying to fathom what their school will be like next year with the loss of their loved colleagues.

experiencing all this has given me a lot more perspective. i now understand why the JET Program operates the way it does. last year in may, all incoming SF JETs got emails at the same time saying where they'd be placed. in my case: "Nagasaki-prefecture, Tsushima-city." after that, oh man, the mad scramble to scour the net for any at all info on where in the world tsushima is and what it was like. i can remember clearly the months of panicky waiting to find out where i was blindly agreeing to pick up my life and move to. i wish i could i say i understand my teachers' disappointment, but i really can't. i didn't have less than a week's notice to move. i'm not committed to 3-6 years of my life at a single school in the middle of nowhere. and i'm not the homeroom teacher for who knows how many students. very different indeed.

i'm still torn as to whether i think the japanese system of rotating around schools is good or bad. i can definitely see pros and cons to their system compared to the states. in japanese, you guarantee that teachers are always challenging themselves, and that they're reforming the way they do things. in the states, if a teacher has been teaching the same class for 30 years, they tend to be out of date, and inflexible when it comes to how they teach. then again, i think it's charming how in the states, the same teacher can teacher a whole family over the years, and even multiple generations of a family. i also like the thought that teachers can create a new class, and be the one who nurtures it for years and years. in japan, you can't do that because you have to move in 6 years anyway.

the one thing i definitely disagree with in japan (at least in nagasaki) is the amount of time you give a teacher to move. they're professionals teaching us and our kids how to think. you'd think they deserve the respect of at least, i dunno, 2 weeks to prepare for their departure. we're talking about 5 days to get your life sorted, and start all over again. ridiculous.

i have yet to find out about how my other schools are going to look next year teacher-wise, but here's hoping the new bunch are a group of cool people [like my kyoto-sensei =P].

--evelyn

ps. i appeared on prefectural television with my bf on the evening news and didn't even know it. what are the chances??

new pictures site

my everlasting quest to find the perfect [free] photo storage website continues. my lastest attempt: Picasa. i'm testing out this program at the moment, so i've posted some pictures. i'm plannning on posting random favorite pictures here, so check back every now and then if you need someone to laugh at.

See pictures here.

does anyone out there have a suggestion for a photo storage site that fulfills all the following criteria:
- FREE
- can go to a homepage/main page that shows all my albums
- can display pictures at a decently large size
- significant amounts of storage capacity (obviously unlimited is ideal...)
- slideshow capability
- viewers can download fairly high resolution pictures
- fast upload

till now, i've tried/looked into the following photo sites, but found pitfalls with all of them...


Yahoo

I like how you can see someone's albums from the main page, but the pictures are too small when you view them individually.


Sony's Imagestation

The slideshow function is very nice, and i like how you can change the album's background color. Unlimited space is also a plus. however, you have to pay in order to view the original image at full resolution, which is kinda unfortunate. Till now, this is my most frequently used photo site. however, i'd really like the ability to allow everyone to see all my albums without giving out my password.


Flickr

I've never actually used this myself, and it looks a lot like what i'm looking for. high resolution picture downloads for viewers... just about the best site i've seen in this category. however, Jayne tells me you have to pay to have unlimited storage. the thing that makes me nervous about paying is that when i decide to stop paying, do all my pictures disappear?...


Photobucket

All the ALTs in Tsushima are using a photobucket account at present, and they even let you store videos. while it has a lot of storage space (1GB i believe), i feel like the design is a bit too simple... I'd also like to see an album cover picture for all the albums, but instead, they only have radio buttons (so no thumbnail album cover).


Facebook

Facebook got it right with having a ton of sponsors and allowing users to make a ton of albums, being able to display fairly large pictures (though bigger is better in this case), and unlimited storage space. however, i doubt my parents feel like setting up a facebook page.... the goal of this whole photo site search is so that anyone can view and download my pictures.


Picasa

Picasa would seem to be the answer to my prayers. quick upload, ability to upload from the program on my computer directly, captions that stay forever with my pictures... they even have the whole main page with thumbnails to my albums function. however, it's slightly depressing that i only have 250 mB of storage on there. we'll see how picasa turns out.


yeah.... i know i'm super picky, but this search has gone on for years now. it gets tiring to keep downloading uploading tools only to abandon these photo sites in the end. and i HATE the whole starting over again and again thing. each time i use a new site, i end up uploading the same old fav pictures all over again, but that still takes time to do you know. *sigh*. i'm very open to suggestions if anyone has any.

the ULTIMATE fortune cookie

as a gift for helping out with some English, the music teacher at one of my junior high schools gave me this bag of fortune cookies. except it's not your regular american fortune cookie. rather than slips of paper with fortunes on them, they're filled with little toys. toys!!! you see the pictures on the package? that's what you find inside!!! insane!!!! this is one thing the japanese definitely got right.

sick sicker sickest

last sunday night, just after watching a movie, i suddenly started shivering like crazy, but my body was totally burning up. come monday, i have a nasty cough, but thankfully no fever. this continued through tuesday. the nasty cough that is.

then wednesday, i was on the recovering side of the cough. i didnt have so many coughs where all the air in your lungs have been expelled, and when you try to inhale, something gets stuck and forces you to cough out what little air you:ve sucked in, leading to this vicious cycle where you just CANT breathe in. wednesday, however, started with this dull headache, and after the 45 min ride to my school, it turned into full blown headache. the first 2 periods of the day i thought i was going to die i was in so much pain. i really just wanted to put my head on my desk and start crying it was so bad. i popped 2 tylenol and went on with my 3 classes. by the time i got home that afternoon, i was fine, but oh what a miserable morning that was. not to mention the runny nose i had the WHOLE day, and in case you dont know, it:s a no-no to blow your nose in the teacher:s room. i can:t even tell you how many times i ran to the bathroom just so i could whole-heartedly blow my nose. *sigh*

then came thursday. yesterday. i woke up fine. trace amounts of coughing. no headache. excellent. but then 4th period rolled around. i was at my first elementary school of the day, and in the middle of my 3rd class of the morning. it was only 10 minutes into the period, and as i stood there in front of the 3rd through 6th graders, one teacher, and the vice principal, i realized all of a sudden, omg i feel like i need to puke. luckily, i didn:t. i trudged on through class, prayed that i could make it to lunchtime, and continued with class as planned.

i almost made it through the end of class. 5 minutes before the end of class, i start telling my kids to clean up, when i realize that my head is beginning to black out, and i feel that familiar feeling of my stomach wanting to spit out whatever:s in there. i whisper to the teacher that i feel like throwing up, quickly say to my students "i:ll see you in april! goodbye!" and scurry off to the bathroom, students and teachers alike staring at me in puzzlement as i run away.

i made it to the bathroom stall just as i was getting to my saturation point of blackening-out vision, and let my body get that vomiting action out of my system. nothing actually came up; figures as all i had was some toast at 7:30 that morning. i was definitely not a happy camper though. a minute or two later, still hunched over the Japanese toilet just in case i felt the need to throw up again, i hear an adult woman:s voice asking if i:m okay. it was the school nurse.

figuring i was in the clear, i followed her back to the nurses room, where she put me in bed for the rest of lunchtime. for once, i had NO desire to eat or drink ANYTHING (and those who know me well know i NEVER refuse food). so i skipped lunch completely. unable to fall asleep, all i really did was just lay there.

around 1:20, the nurse comes back and tells me that the principal and vice principal were worried, so they called the branch school i was supposed to go to in the afternoon and told them i wouldn:t be able to teach that day, called my supervisor at the BOE to tell him i:d be taking paid leave, and called me a taxi so i could go home and rest.

it was my favorite taxi driver who came and picked me up too. such crappy luck that of all days, i can:t really talk to him. and he could tell that something was up if i was going home so early, so he was driving faster than usual so i could get home faster. except he failed to realize that the girl in the backseat felt like puking earlier, and she gets carsick really easily on these roads.... it got to the point where the last 5 minutes of the ride, i was clutching for dear life onto the barf bag the nurse gave me. thank god i made it home without puking. thank god indeed.

i slept the rest of the afternoon and felt a lot better when i woke up. jayne called me asking to be picked up from the hospital (he:s not doing so hot himself). since i didnt have the stamina to drive, i asked aaron to pick him up, and afterwards to bring me some soup. and wonderful people they are, they bring me a lot of soup, ginger ale, and yummy fancy bread. mmm.

today, i:m doing loads better. a little bit of coughing here and there, but for the most part, MUCH better. so good that i think me and the guys are having a bonfire tonight. more accurately, a book-burning party at the beach. a what you say? a book-burning party to finally rid our apartments of all the outdated textbooks and retarded books that our predecessors left behind. i:ve been helping aaron clean out his apartment the last few weeks, and goddang all the crap that his predecessors combined have left behind... that apartment has been rented out to the town ALT for at least the last 16 years. that:s a lot of shit that builds up over the years. anyway, he has a whole box of books to burn. i have at least 11 textbooks to set ablaze. man is this party gonna ROCK. muahahha. and i could use the good time after how lousy i:ve felt this week.

next week will be a better, healthier week. *nod*

zhang ziyi

so i can admit when i:m wrong. and i was wrong about zhang ziyi.

the first time i really heard about this chinese actress was back in the summer just before senior year in high school. i went to see Rush Hour 2 with the guy that i liked (who didn:t at the time know that i liked him), and the whole movie he just went on and on and on about her... to the point where i just hated her simply because he was obsessing over her. that and the fact that she didnt smile the whole movie truly irked me. i find it very unattractive when people never smile. hence, i had issues finding her as "hot" as my friend did.

over the years, i:ve watched a handful of her films. she was still kind of annoying in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but then again, her role was the young naive girl.

despite seeing so many of her movies, i still disliked her. that is, until i saw House of Flying Daggers. OMG what a good movie. i was duly impressed by her acting, and would almost dare to say, started to respect her.

and then this past weekend i finally saw Memoirs of a Geisha. i:ve been torn over this movie since i first heard she was being casted in it. i LOVED the book, but totally DISLIKED who was playing the main character, if you catch my drift.

at any rate, this was the final straw. i have been defeated. she is a good actress. and damn, props to her english accent. i was extremely impressed by how well she could pronounce English words. i didn:t even really detect an underlying chinese accent. that:s talent.

what i guess i:m trying to get at is, i know a lot of the time, i tend to be stubborn, and that i stick with what i know and what i believe pretty firmly. but that:s not to say i:m never persuaded differently. i can admit when i:m wrong.

zhang ziyi, you have my seal of approval. now folks, go watch Memoirs of a Geisha.