Coping with stress

Unfortunately my mother-in-law is not improving in the way we all hoped and things are looking pretty grim.  We are definitely not giving up on her, but it is all pretty worrying right now.  I am discovering that everyone deals with these kind of stresses in different ways.  Some bury themselves in work, some squat on the floor with their head in the hands, some talk about it, others prefer not to.  Some focus on the person in the hospital bed while others turn it around to focus on themselves.  Some spend as many hours as they can at her side talking about any random thing that comes into their head while others prefer to just check in on her and silently stroke her hand for a bit. 

Despite the fact that all of these ways are very different, they all seem to work for the different people involved.  I tend to be the kind of person who can make it through the day in front of people, but then break a little after dark when I am alone.  At the moment I am trying to be strong for my children and my father-in-law in particular.  My biggest way of coping at the moment is to spend the last 30 minutes before sundown wandering around the garden picking peas, broad beans, asparagus and strawberries and huge bunches of sweet peas and filling the house with their amazing smell.  It is a great way to finish of the not-so-great days that are becoming routine here.  I recommend gardening to everyone!

Further break time.....

I know I said in my last post that I would be back after the 27th, but... it looks like I will be taking a break for a little longer.  My "until now very healthy" mother-in-law was operated on on Wednesday for what they suspected to be cancer of the kidney, but has had major complications and is now in the ICU with machines basically doing everything for her.  The hospital is a 45 minute drive away and my father-in-law has been coping well with doing everything for himself for now, but needs some extra love and attention from here on in.  On top of that the lady up the road died yesterday so I am on funeral green tea pouring service among other things tomorrow.  I'm sure you understand, but... I won't be at the keyboard much in the near future.  I will be back soon though, hopefully with a happy, cheerful post.  But for now I'm on family duty!

Visitors

Would you be sitting at your computer writing blog posts when you had someone this cute to entertain all day?  In my case, obviously not!  I will be back after April 27th... unless I decide to kidnap her in which case I may not be back at all!

Teacher transfers

I know I probably write about this every year, but today has been one of those "what were they thinking days".  It was the last day of primary school for the school year and the teacher transfers were announced at the school after all the children had gone home.  Of the 11 teachers/administrators at our school 7 will be changing.... that includes both the principal, vice principal, school nurse and the most experienced teacher in the school.  Of the 4 teachers who are remaining 2 of them have been at our school for only one year, one arrived 2 years ago and the other teacher has been there for 3 years.  So between all four of them they have a grand total of 7 years experience at our school.  I'm not saying that they are inexperienced teachers, but due to the small size of our school there is a lot of input from the community and it is very hard to maintain that when there are no familiar faces around.  

I don't understand the necessity for changing teachers so often and in such large numbers at one time.  I don't understand how a school is supposed to build any real strengths in any area if the teachers are changing so often.  I don't understand why the announcements of the changes can't be made earlier.... although the students officially finished school for the year today they now have to go back on Thursday for an official farewell.  I just don't understand why that couldn't have been done today !

I have already had 6 phone calls tonight from various parents trying to work out who is staying, who is going and what we need to do in order to farewell them properly.  Should we buy gifts as a class, or as a whole school?  Who will do what and when?  And of course there are the phone calls from those who have false information and are thinking certain teachers who are actually staying are leaving... I think I'll just switch off the phone and go to bed!

The next school year starts on April 8th... between now and then the 7 leaving teachers need to clean out their desks and move to their new schools.  The new teachers need to come to our school and all have meetings about which grade they want to teach next year and then prepare themselves for it.  No specialist teachers mean that the 6th grade teacher often becomes the 1st grade teacher the following year.  They have approximately a week to prepare for this.  Crazy, crazy, crazy!  I hate this time of year!!!!!!

Another win!

Last April I wrote about winning a food package in a competition that I had completely forgotten I had entered.  As I wrote then I don't really bother with the zillion competitions that they seem to have here, but I'm thinking that perhaps I should do more often as I managed to win another one the other day!  This time it was through amazon jp and again I really had no recognition of entering it and when the e-mail arrived saying that I had won a prize and could I send all my contact details I actually became suspicious that it was in fact just spam....   But then the prize arrived and although it was probably the least needed prize from all the things on offer I guess I shouldn't complain!  

The prize was a box of 24 packets of pre-cooked rice - not exactly an essential item for rice farmers, but handy for the days when I forget to turn the rice cooker on and definitely better than nothing.  Stay posted for my next win...... here's hoping it is the lottery next time!

Hygiene course

When we built our cottage in 2006 I put in a kitchen which I had visions of eventually using for a business.  Seven years later things are slowly starting to head in a direction where this may be possible.  The first step was for me to attend a food safety and hygiene course.  It was yet another insight into some of the crazy ways things are run here in Japan.... or perhaps just in our part of Japan.

The course itself was in a cold room and was from 9am to 4:30pm, with a one hour break for lunch.  All the seats were allocated depending on when you applied for the course and I was lucky (?) enough to sit next to a very talkative lady.  She never introduced herself, but immediately asked what I was doing for lunch and whether I would like to go somewhere with her.  I couldn't exactly say no, and soon discovered that she had an ulterior motive... she couldn't drive and the course was run at a place that wasn't close to any food joints so she was actually asking if I could be her taxi.  In the end I said that we wouldn't have time to go to a restaurant, but that I could take her to a convenience store if that was helpful.  Of course she jumped at the ride and I got a free coffee for my trouble.

The course itself was incredibly long and for the most part very boring.  There were different speakers for each section of the course, but none of them watched the others presentations so they generally repeated each other and generally showed all the same slides.  There was no test or any practical aspect to the course so more than half of the participants used the opportunity to take a nap at some stage during the day.  Of course I was very diligent and even took notes during the lectures - of all the things I thought were a little "different".  Some of my highlights were:

• The first man talked for 30 minutes about something and then proceeded to say that he would talk about it in detail later.... and then proceeded to say that nothing he had said so far actually applied to any of us anyway.....
• The second man asked if filleting blow fish was a part of any of our jobs and when we all said no he proceeded to talk for 10 minutes about it and then said.. but this doesn't apply to any of you.
• The third man covered 15 pages of the manual in 2 minutes and then just told us to read it ourselves.  He apologised for finishing his section 4 minutes later than his allocated time....
• The fourth man had the task of talking at us after lunch and started by saying "please just pretend that you are awake".  Not many took his advice.... 
• The last man could see how pointless the whole day was and spent more time saying "you don't have to listen to this, but I have to say it" than anything else.  His favorite line was "I'm not a specialist in this area, so if you actually want to know anything you should contact a specialist".

At the end we were all presented with a certificate and told that we now have a fantastic qualification that we can use all over Japan.  It makes me wonder about how valid most of the qualifications here are.....

Next step health inspectors visit....

School graduation

6 years ago I wrote a short post about Emily's kindergarten graduation, followed shortly by a post about her entrance ceremony to elementary school.  Now I can add to the theme with a post about her graduation from elementary school.  For anyone who is reading this from another country here is a rundown of what elementary school graduation here in Japan entails (I say in Japan rather than "in our area" because from what I can tell it is pretty universal....).  For anyone who has experienced this just skip to the photos at the bottom!

1. The graduating students entered the gym to the song "Pomp and Circumstance", walking in straight lines, bowing at specific points then sat down facing the front.  The remaining students from the school, all the important guests, parents and teachers are already seated. They could wear whatever they liked, but most chose to wear their junior high school uniform... much cheaper than buying a new outfit that they would only use once!

2.  The students went up one by one to get their graduating certificate (this may vary if the school is very large....), again bowing at specific points on the floor before putting their hands out in very stylised movements to receive the certificate from the principal before bowing again, putting it under their arm and walking back to their seats... with a few more bows at specific points along the way.

3.  The speeches begin... in our case one from the principal, one from the head of the education board, one on behalf of the mayor, and one from the head of the PTA (in our case my husband...).  Probably about 20 - 30 minutes in total.

4.  Introductions of all the important people who are in attendance were made - the head of the old people's association, the head of the local post office, the local policeman etc. etc.... There were about 20 of them and they are all introduced by name and each given the chance to say a few words to the graduates.

5.  Any telegrams that have been sent are read.

6.  The graduating students thanked all the message givers and then thanked the parents for all their efforts in raising them so far and presented us with flowers.  My daughter had lost it by this stage and cried from here on in... most of the teachers cried, but she was the only student to do so.

6.  The students finally got to do something more than just sit there and try to stay awake.  I really liked this part of the ceremony.  The graduating students each said one thing about their school life and then the  students who are remaining at the school replied by telling them all the wonderful things they did for them.   Farewell songs were sung by both groups - with only 11 kids in my daughter's class they did a great job of making themselves heard in the large gym.

7.  A representative of the parents made a speech thanking the teachers and community for their support so far and asking them for further support in the future.

8.  The graduating students file out of the gym followed by the important guests, then the parents.  The total length of the ceremony was about an hour and a quarter.

9.  There is one final class with the teacher and then all the remaining students and teachers make an arch for the graduating children and families to go through.  

And that is the end of elementary school life... until next week when they have to go back and farewell any teachers that are leaving!

My views on the whole thing... far too much practicing, but I am not as against these kind of ceremonies as I used to be.  It seems to be a good way to make the students really feel like they are moving on, growing up and taking one more extra step towards entering the real world. 

Duties in the countryside

One of the things about living in the countryside is that there are not very many young people around.  There are however many "duties" that need to be done, so the young people often have to do quite a lot of the work.  For the last two years I have been the representative responsible for taking birthday presents to all the residents in this immediate area who are over 88 years old.  The city provides the presents (last year it was hard rice cakes, this year it is soap... both probably taste very similar!) and I just have to take them to the birthday girls (no old men around here...), wish them a happy birthday and go on my happy way.  There are 52 residents in our area, more than half of them are over 65 and there are 6 women who are over 88 - the oldest turned 98 this year.  There are only 5 children in our area......

I delivered the above present to a lady who is living alone and just turned 95.  When I was younger I can remember thinking that anyone over the age of 60 could usually be found in a rocking chair, sipping tea and telling stories about how far they had to walk in the cold, without shoes to school when they were young.  This lady is far from that image though - she is incredibly active, no mobility or hearing problems and was incredibly grateful for her present of soap.  If I manage to make it till the ripe old age of 95 I would like to be just like her - perhaps not living alone, but just as active.

A few people have asked where we actually live... hard to find on a map, but we live in Oita prefecture which is in Kyushu.  The blue marker in this google map is where we are.... if the technology is still working!  Nearest station is Usa Station if you want to come and visit!

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