Western Toilet Search: Chapter Three

Interlude
If you’ve ever been in a foreign country where you don’t know the language and the people there don’t know your language, you will know that your conversations will more than likely turn into a game of charades…

Dear friends and family,

I hope you are all doing well and being blessed. Thank you for reading our blog and placing comments. We really enjoy hearing from our friends and family across the world and we're happy to hear you enjoy our stories and adventures.

Please enjoy the next chapter of Derrick's search for a Western toilet at his school and look forward to reading the final chapter in the next post. After that you can anticipate seeing a picture and hearing some adventures of our new and exciting mode of transportation...

Chapter Three: The Demonstration

So at this point we walked back to the teachers’ room, and found that even more teachers had arrived there since we had been out. At this point I think they had pretty much given up on finding a western toilet for me, but that wasn’t enough. They decided to explain how to use the toilets, and the best way for them to explain this to me, was to demonstrate the usage of a Japanese toilet. So my first grade female teacher started showing me how to spread my legs and squat over the imaginary toilet in the teachers’ room (it seemed like she had explained and done this demonstration of this before). But because I was standing there in shock, they thought I wasn’t getting it so the teacher that had given me the tour earlier grabbed my hand and was going to literally show me how to use the toilets. So off we went, but at this point I decided enough was enough, and so I broke away, and tried my best to let him know that I was fine and didn’t need to go that bad. So I went back to my desk, buried my head into my arms, and hid there hoping for this whole episode to blow over, but it didn’t.

interlude and chapter 2 of Derrick's Story

Interlude

If you know anything about Japanese culture, you will know that they will stop at nothing to help you; I wish, for my sake, that that aspect would not have been a part of Japanese culture for the hour during which this story took place. Unfortunately, it was.

Chapter Two: The Great Demise

We arrived in the teachers’ room, and joined the group of teachers that had arrived there since we had left on our excursion. My excursion buddy decided that this would be a good time to ask everyone if they knew of a western toilet in the school. Of course this was all going on in Japanese, all I heard was a bunch of noises and the words “western toilet.” With those two words all of the teachers had immediately looked over to where I was standing, with a puzzled look on their faces. They all began to have this long drawn out talk as to where a western toilet might be, when one of the teachers’ assistants started walking out the door and signaled for me to follow. She led me down the hall at a very brisk pace, and barged into the men’s bathroom without as much as a knock. She looked in the two stalls without success and then went into the girl’s bathroom right next door. At this point I had pretty much lost all hope of this actually being a viable alternative location where I might relieve myself at other times in the future, so I stayed outside of the bathroom until she came to the door and insisted that I come in; to my surprise there was a rather small western toilet that sat about a foot above the floor and about two inches from any of the four walls. I guess I could have gone with door open and my legs hanging out, but I did not think that that would be such a good idea especially in an elementary schools girl’s bathroom. So we gave up and walked back to the teachers’ room.

Scuba anyone?

Hello!

The last weekend (as in one week ago) we had a great time on Saturday with our newly made friends Laura and Nobu and their little almost 3-year old DJ. They are a wonderful family and a ton of fun to hang out with. They took us to a city west of hear called Tsukuba (pronounced like Scuba). There is Mount Tsukuba, which is pretty wellknown here even though I do not think it is one of the higher mountains, there is a mall, there is a yamaya (which is a store with foreign foods) and there is a mexican restaurant. THere is also a space center which we will hopefully get to visit on our next trip to Tsukuba. Apparently you can make reservations to have an English tour. Well, thats all about that for now. That day was a ton of fun and we are so appreciative and thankful to Laura and Nobu and Dj, and Nobu's parents who we got to visit with at their home for dinner, for a wonderful experience. And thank God for wonderful friends!

Here is a picture of the happy family:

Interlude for Derrick's Story:

This is coming...the computer is messing up on me and I have to go to class.

God bless!

Derrick's Story

Warning from Miranda: Dear friends and family, if you know Derrick, you know that he does not mind talking about certain things that others might find inappropriate. This story is such an occasion...he was brave enough to ask a teacher he works with a certain question that was burning on his mind since the day he arrived in that school. If you have traveled to certain countries and have experienced the uncomfortable non-western toilet, you will understand why this question can be of great importance. Please consider this a warning that if you continue reading this story, you will be reading about toilets...however, if you so choose to continue reading this story, you are in for a hilarious treat!
This story will be posted in 3 or 4 different chapters....to keep up the suspence.

Chapter One: The Beginning

It was a regular Monday morning, except I had to go poop… the hard thing was that in my school all of the toilets that I have ever seen have been these squatter toilets. What I mean by squatter toilets is that it is a toilet that is basically just a depression in the floor that you have to stand over and do a squat to poop in them, and it’s super hard!!! Anyway, I like to relax while I poop, and so nothing is better than having a nice clean western toilet to poop in (some of the western toilets here have heated toilet seats). So I’m sitting in the teachers room with nothing to do besides think about the pressure that is building up inside of me, when I decide that it’s about time that I ask one of the male teachers if there is a western toilet in the school that I could use. So I went up to him and said “sumi masen” (excuse me/help please), he looked up and I asked “is there a western toilet?” He thought for a second and then replied with “maybe one in school.” So I thought that this was a good sign, and hoped that maybe he knew of a hidden restroom that I had not yet strip-searched. So he gave me the sign to follow him and I followed him in and out of one restroom up one set of stairs, into another bathroom and then up another set of stairs to explore the two bathrooms on the third floor. He basically gave me a guided tour of all the restrooms that I had already searched when I had decided to look for a western toilet the week before. After the fourth bathroom I finally told him that I had already looked in all of the restrooms in the main part of the school and that there simply was not a western toilet. After about five minutes of explaining, he finally understood and we went back down the flights of stairs to the teachers room; he apologized to me, and for the moment it seemed that he had given up and that we could not find one and would not find one.

Can I wear a short sleaved shirt yet?

Hello friends and family!

First of all I want to apologize because I did not realize earlier that I had the comments set to where only blogspot members could write a comment. Sorry if you are not a member and tried to post a comment. Now you should be able to post as anonymous. Just remember to somewhere put your name on your comment so we know who you are.

Well, it feels like summer has been coming and going for the past month. We have had some pretty hot days and some very rainy days all month. But pretty much every day is very humid. And from what we hear we can expect the heat and humidity to rise to a near unbearable level....so as much as I'm looking forward to summer, I'm not sure yet how I'm going to handle the temperature.
I titled this post as I did because in Japan there is a certain time for short sleaves and a certain time for long sleaves. It does not matter how hot April and May are, you really aren't allowed to wear short sleaves until the end of May. It can get pretty warm up to that day, so you need to learn to deal with long sleaved shirts during that time.

Now, sorry I havent written in a long time, but I have been waiting to be able to post a funny story that happened to Derrick at school one day. But I keep forgetting to put it on my flashdrive to bring it to school, where I have internet. So you will have to wait a little longer for that.

In the meam time, I will write about our bike tragedy...

Every Sunday, we ride our bikes to the nearby train station (10 minute ride....30 minute walk) to take the train to the central Mito station, one stop away, to go to church. Last Sunday, after church we had lunch with some friends and then went home with Leah, our wonderful Canadian friend, to bake cookies. (sidenote: she also introduced us to a lovely Canadian tv comedy, Corner Gas...absolutely funny!) After baking cookies we went to the Sunday evening soccer activity that happens nearly every week ( we have to pay to be able to play soccer because there isn't enough land to have free soccer fields, unfortunately). After soccer, it was late and we were tired and Leah was very kind to drive us all the way home. We went to bed and all was well, right? Wrong.

We got up the next morning and went through our regular routine and walked out the door to leave for school at the regular time and realized that our bikes weren't there! Stolen? Nope. Still at the trainstation....30 minutes away...the opposite direction from both of our schools.

We started walking to the trainstation and calling our schools to let them know we will be late. Derrick got through to his school and they decided to come pick us up and drop me off at my school. So that bit of misery was over...but that's not the whole story...

I was at school. It was still mid afternoon. Apparently they let Derrick leave early. He took the train from near his school to our train station and found a surprise. I got a call from him saying that our bikes have disappeared. There is a bikeparking nearby (where you have to pay to be able to park your bike) and I told him to go talk to the people who work there. Since they spoke no English, I had one of my teachers talk on my phone to the bike parking people who were using Derrick's phone. We found out that they confiscated our bikes because they sat for such a long time in an apparently no bike parking zone. Now, we had parked our bikes under the stairwell at the station because it is closest to getting inside and because there are always a ton of other bikes there. We figured it would be ok because the Japanese people did it too....

So to end the story, on a happy yet sad note....we got our bikes back, they weren't stolen, but we had to pay $20 each. Needless to say, we do not park our bikes under the stairwell anymore....we found a free place around the corner where people park their bikes and scooters. We have looked and have not yet found any type of sign that might say bikes are not allowed.

Ok, well that is all for now. Sorry this story was more about our misery and less about Japanese culture, but hey...it ended up being a very interesting day.

Have a great day!

Pictures of our first few weeks

Well, this time I took longer than a week to update this. Still no internet in our appartment. But, I now have pictures to give you. And we were finally able to call home because we went to church early on Sunday morning and brought our laptops so we could use the church's wireless and use Skype on our computer to call our parents. That was really nice. By the way, to all the mothers, Happy Mother's Day!!

Ok, now for some pictures.

This first picture is at a pottery place in a town called Kasama. Kasama is apparently very famous for its pottery. There are a ton of pottery galleries. A lot of it is very cool and unique, however we also learned that its very expensive.

Here we are walking up Azaelea Mountain in Kasama with Leah. Unfortunately we came about a week or two too late to see new and perfect spring blossoms, but it was still very beautiful. This is Leah. We've been having fun getting to know her.
Here we are at a church activity: Yakisoba and games! Yakisoba basically means grilled noodles. They mix cabbage, meat, noodles and a packaged spice mix together to create a wonderful meal.
Here our friend Shizuka and other church members are making our group's yakisoba. There were four different groups so it would go faster. Here some of our own boys (gaijin = foreigners) are attempting to create this delicious meal. To Derrick's left is John Smith and to his right is Jon Nossaman.Here is the main missionary couple in the church: Mark and Mayumi Hancock. Here they are explaining the rules to and leading the games to go along with the Yakisoba party.This game is called Janken. In English we call it "rock, paper, scissors". This is probably one of the most popular games here and also a very popular way to decide who has to do something...or who gets to. I never really got into it as a child. Japan might change this part of me.

This is one of my classes at Tsumasato elementary schools. This room is my English room, so I get to teach in a really big carpeted room where there is plenty of space for fun and games!It is comment time. At the end of the class the students all write down their impresssion about the class in their little booklet. The teacher picks out some students (or I do)who will stand up and say their comments out loud. Its pretty cool, but unfortunately I never understand very much because they do it all in Japanese. Sometimes the teachers will try to translate for me, but that probably only happens not quite half of the time. And when they do, they probably on get about half of the comment translated. Ahwell.Hey! Its recess time! Let's play! These girls tend to look me up before recess and say "let's play?" and then they pick a game, like "jumping rope" or "dodgeball". Then I play with them. That is about the extent of our communication, lol. I still have yet to completely figure out the rules they use in dodgeball.

Second week of work and the beginning of humidity!

Dear friends and family,

I want to apologize again that these first few weeks in Japan we have not been updating our blog or keeping in touch very well. It has been difficult because we need to live without internet the first month or two. It does not necessarily make it difficult for us to live. We get along fine without it. Its just difficult for us because we have not yet been able to call home, unless we wanted to pay a lot of money, and we never have very much time on internet to send emails or to update this blog.
Anyway, I'll give you a bit of news about our life here in Japan. When we first arrived, it was different than I expected. I expected to feel like I was dreaming and I could wake up at any moment. But honestly, I felt like things were completely normal. Maybe its because Ive traveled so much in my lifetime that a flight to a different country starts resembling a car ride to a different state, or maybe its because I was mentally prepared, or maybe its because culture shock decided it would hit me completely differently and I have a hard time to look forward to, I don't know, but hey, I felt pretty normal arriving here in Japan.
That first week here was more for our adjustment, training and paperwork than anything. That was a great and exciting week. Unfortunately I was semi-sick the whole week, so i could not enjoy it quite as much as I would have liked to. The first week of school was awesome, uncomfortable and tiring. Awesome because we got to meet our teachers and students, who are all very cool. It was uncomfortable because of learning to adjust to Japanese school life, workplace, relationships and language....I have a feeling it will continue to be uncomfortable most of the time for a while. And I'm sure you know why its tiring to work at an elementary school in a foreign country.
For those of you who do not know exactly what we are doing, I will explain it to you. Our title here is Assistant English Teacher (AET). So basically, we assist a home room teacher in their English class. For some of us, that means going into the children's homeroom classroom during their English period and for others it means waiting for the class to come to your designated English Class Room. Fortunately, both of my schools have an English Room, so I kind of have my own territory in the school. For some of us "AET" means following a lesson plan that the teacher prepared and just helping the teacher out, and for others it means taking control of the plan and class. So far, all of my teachers prepare the classes, but some give me more control and some take more control. I am hoping that at some point most or all of them will let me plan the classes, or at least have more of teamplanning where I get to help.
Both Derrick and I go to two different schools during the week. I go to Tsumasato on Mondays, Wednesdays and Friday mornings (which is about a 15 minute bike ride) and to kaminakazuma elementary on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Friday afternoon (which is a 5 minute walk from our place). Both of Derrick's schools are about a 30-40 minute bikeride (Koibuchi and Uchihara).
I have to go soon, so I will quickly just describe some of the difficulties we have been encountering with the culture. First of all, obviously the language barrier. This is difficult. Its not like being in France where I can pick up most of what they're saying, or like being in Rwanda where I can pick out some words because they mix in French. Most of the time, I just cannot even pick out any words that sound familiar....even if its an English based word. For example, when the guy came to our palce to turn on our gas, we used mostly just gestures, but at one point he seemed to want to start some small talk and said something that sounded like Kantori. He said it as if it were a japanese word, so it took me a minute to realize that he was saying the word "country" to ask us where we were from! Also, the other day, I was learning some Japanese words from some teachers and another teacher who I think was listening says to me a few minutes later "your accent is very queer to us". I thought he was trying to say that my Japanese accent sounded funny and weird....but of course it was weird to me that a Japanese person would be so straightforward. I replied "Ah yes, it is different for you". He looked at me like I had misunderstood him and he said it again. I looked at him with a confused look because I thought I understood, but obviously I did not. He then says "When you speak English we can understand you well". I realized that earlier he was trying to say CLEAR, not QUEER!!!

Ok, sorry to you who are not readers that this is so long. For those of you who read until the end, Thank you! Please post comments and questions and let us hear from you!

Also, we got cellphones that have email on them, so if you feel like sending us an email that we can actually receive right away, here is mine: mirandalogwood@ezweb.ne.jp