The Bat and The Bear: The Bear

Yes, the Bear hibernates. You saw that coming from across the Pacific.  All I’m doing in this post is defining “hibernation.” My version makes me friendless and fat.

This was a month ago, when the cold was just playing

When it is so cold within my home that I can see my own breath, I have the option of turning on the heating unit and paying about 100 dollars to warm a one-room apartment. Though this method may feel worthwhile at the time when I’m all the way over in my kitchen, cleaning, it rarely feels very efficient to hand over such a huge chunk of my change to the electric company every month. The sun seems to be in hibernation mode as well, given that it is in hiding by 5 p.m.  Not only does this mean a colder life for us in the Northern Hemisphere, it makes me feel like I shouldn’t be awake. I start yawning at 3:45, looking forward to the time when I can go home and settle in a cave of blankets.

Even an hour-long bus ride was okay if the sun was shining.

Naturally the solution to both the heating bill and the long night is to sleep. It’s the only time when I can’t feel the cold. During my first Japanese winter I was sleeping on a futon on the freezing floor. I had set the kotatsu (the heated coffee table) over it, placed an extra comforter at the foot to trap the heat, another to pull over my head, and had an electric foot-warmer tucked in the bottom. The rest of my apartment was usually unbearably cold. My routine became the following: (1) Come home from work. (2) Shed materials and clothes. (3) Pull on sweat pants if not already wearing knit tights. (4) Wriggle backwards under the kotatsu and pull computer within reach. (5) Stay there until I had to a) leave for an evening class or b) I fell asleep. On my free evenings, Tuesdays and Fridays, I usually could be found asleep by 8 or 9 p.m. The only things that changed the 2^nd winter were that I had a bed (on which I’d placed the foot-warmer, comforters and an electric blanket) and my rabbit had chewed up the kotatsu cord. I slept a lot.

See how relaxed, happy, and double-chinned I am? Bear: Early stages.

Given that my bed was the always the warmest place in the house, I’d usually eat my meals there. Cooking involved being the farthest distance from the heat, shivering and chapping my hands with frequent washing. It was far easier to buy frozen foods or things that come in convenient portion-sized packages, like cookies. Then I could eat while lying down and freeze my fingers only during that short trip from a blanket-covered snack food bag to my mouth.

That day when I took the wrong bus and alit in Lordy Knows Where

If I wasn’t eating at home then I could be found ordering the most calorie-packed items on the menus of various restaurants. Katsudon—a breaded pork cutlet on a bowl of rice topped with egg, onions, and a special sauce—has just as many calories per serving as the worst foods I consumed in the states. It’s my winter standby here. The warmth of the food and fullness in my belly made my bones feel a little less frozen and comforted me on the walk home.

It rained on me a little, and my extremities were freezing.

I think we all have a little bit of the winter Bear in us. We use the cold weather and holidays as an excuse to eat hot, filling foods, then we go to sleep and don't exercise. Unlike the bear, we don’t fill our bellies and then go to sleep for a few months. There’s no time to let our bodies use all those calories (not advocating binge-eating and anorexia, by the way). No, we repeat this eat-sleep cycle every day, packing on more and more fat cells because some basic instinct tells us that we’re going to need it when the sun has set. Wonder why we never seem to keep New Year’s resolutions about losing weight? I blame the winter.

It was a beautiful walk nonetheless. And then I remembered the real bears.

The Bear is not skilled at multitasking. The Bear lives for immediate priorities and comforts, but with the vague, uneasy sense that there are other things to be done. I’ve been studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). That period consisted of six or seven-hour sessions at the local Mr. Donut because it’s the only place to study and drink coffee that’s open after 7. On weekends I could be found at a Starbucks in Kyoto, usually spending between seven and ten hours eating carbohydrate-laden foods and drinking fattening drinks. I kept forgetting to ask for soy; sue me.

These leaves are mostly gone now. 

If not holed up at a coffee shop with an equally disgruntled study buddy, I was cocooned in my blankets at home. If I had prepare for scheel then I would slide from my bed to the heated pad on my floor, shove all of my body under the kotatsu that would fit without lying down, and wrap my upper body in blankets. My immediate priorities were staying warm, passing the JLPT, getting the ALT Team Teaching Seminar over and done with and not sucking at my job. I won’t find out if I succeeded at my second goal until March, but the others were taken care of. The downside was that everything else that is important, like staying in touch with friends and family, got shoved to the back burner. I apologize, friends and family to whom I never responded. I got your emails and letters, and I read them and felt good, but I was deep in Bear mode.

My favorite part: SNEAK

Just click on it.

Bears may not be completely solitary, but they nevertheless regard social obligations as irritating and exhausting. A Bear will complain about the best friend’s birthday party he “has to” attend. He will tell you later that he had a splendid time, but thinks energy he expended on getting out of bed and being congenial merits him at least four subsequent days of not talking to anyone. A Bear will stop attending an activity that she usually loves during winter. If asked why, an honest Bear will tell you she’s just too cold to leave the house, and that interacting with people is just too draining. All that smiling she has to do, you know.

The combination of ignoring anything but face-to-face contact and shirking of social events makes Bears unpopular. We appear self-absorbed and uncaring; the blunt reality is that we can’t think anywhere past what is happening now or what we can’t avoid. I’m writing this on an empty stomach, because even though I was awake early enough to Skype with my sister and eat breakfast, and didn’t think far enough ahead to remember that I’d need to bring my own lunch today. I can barely concentrate on finishing this post before catching the 3:11 bus home (the earliest one I could take) because my brain is occupied with planning what to shove in my maw once I get home. That, and wondering how early I can get to sleep tonight without waking up at five o’clock tomorrow morning.

A rare moment of fun: watching my friend Tamon's taiko group.

Speaking of bears, there had been some real bears venturing out of the mountains all over Japan. Most elementary students walk to school—some have up to a 30-minute trek—so they’re all wearing school-issued jingle bells on their backpacks. There’s nothing more off-putting to a bear than an adorable child in a yellow hat with a matching backpack that sounds like a Christmas song.

The Bat and The Bear: The Bat

 It’s cold. It’s wear-tights-under-my-pants cold. It's runny-nose cold. I have a long grudge against cold weather. In October when all the folk at home were celebrating the advent of sweater season, I was grumbling as I dragged out my heavy blankets and switched my sheets to jersey.

This will be my third winter in Japan. Anyone who talks to me has heard me bemoan the lack of insulation and the inescapable frigidness. I was discussing this with a teacher the other day. I had decided that maybe I was being melodramatic. The new ALT is a Minnesotan, and she once went trick-or-treating in a blizzard. In Oklahoma a foot of snow stops life for a week.

My teacher said, “My friend from Hokkaido—you know Hokkaido, the farthest north prefecture in Japan?”

Japan’s Minnesota. “Sure,” I replied.

“My friend said that Kyoto winters are worse than Hokkaido’s!”

“What?” I exclaimed.

“Because you say, the buildings in Kyoto are built, not for winter,” he explained. “The houses are not warm. Kyoto and Kameoka, we call them bonchi. It means they are low cities surrounded by mountains, so the cold air stays. So winter is easier in Hokkaido.”

I responded with some noise and facial expression reminiscent of an angry housecat. No wonder.

We have had some beautiful sunsets. This was even more vibrant from my kitchen window.

Among the municipal ALTs in Kameoka, Kim-Chi and I seem to be most adversely affected by the cold. We talk about it at great lengths, and by “talk about” I mean “complain.”

Kim-Chi and I have discovered that we hold similar postures when we’re at our schools in winter. We pull our sleeves up to cover our hands or (despite what well-meaning teachers tell us) wear our fingerless gloves in the office. We sit or stand with our elbows in and our hands clutched to our chests. We hunch over our desks, writing with crabbed hands. Our expressions are sour—upper lips curled, brows drawn, runny noses wrinkled. Kim and I have termed this “bat face” because it clearly says, You want to talk to me? I’ll give you rabies.

The Bat is a crabby soul. The sour mood brought on by Seasonal Affective Disorder is pervasive and subtle, and the Bat is the unwitting result of not recognizing how severely being cold affects one’s psyche.

I was at an elementary school a couple of weeks ago, and I was pissed off. The object of my wrath was the English supporter, a Japanese woman who does my job but at only five schools and only with the 5^th and 6^th grades. I should preface with that I’ve had a couple of issues with this woman in the past. It has never been anything big, just small things like hearing her teach incorrect English. Or that the teachers who used to try to talk to me directly now wait for the supporter to show up and translate. Or how she seems convinced that I can’t communicate with Japanese teachers on my own. The previous Friday the supporter, who shall from henceforth be known as Mrs. Westmouth, had deemed it necessary to explain BINGO to me. It went something like this:

I have italicized the parts that were originally in Japanese.

W: Okay, Ryan, okay.

Me: Yes?

W: Today’s lesson, sixth graders, play a BINGO game.

Me: Yes. It’s lesson 7.1 in the manual.

W: Okay, Ryan. Mm. Um, sixth graders cut the cards. Have cut cards. Student have cut the cards, and put on.

Me: Yes. Just like regular BINGO. We played this last year. I often play BINGO in class.

W: Okay. Students a put on card, on the paper, and Ryan say a card. Ah, pyramid!

Me: Yes. We have played this before.

W: Students, ah, [in growly voice] “pyramid” and put the card. Take off card.

Me, glancing at the sixth grade teachers watching us: Yes. I know. I understand

W: And Ryan, “Germany,” say “Germany,” and students [in gravely voice] “Ah, okay, Germany.” And, take off Germany’s card.

Ms. Miyoshi, 6^th grade English coordinator: Er, the students haven’t cut those cards out yet.

W: Ah, Ryan, sixth graders, have—

Me, to Miyoshi-sensei: That’s okay. We have a lot of [those] country [flag] cards.  Please using just those. Those only are fine.

            For the record, I did mean to say, “we can use” instead of “please using,” but I am not good at this language.

Miyoshi-sensei: Ah, okay. Thanks. Is it okay if the students just write the country names into the BINGO blanks?

W: —not cut cards. So, Ryan, ah, what should we do, I wonder?

Me: Yes, to write also okay.

W [to Miyoshi-sensei]: What should we do? We could use the country cards. There are a lot of those.

Miyoshi-sense, gesturing at me: Oh, uh, yes. We’ll just use those and write the country names in the blank.

W: Okay, in Japanese?

Ms. Miyoshi looked at me.

Me: In Japanese is okay.

Miyoshi nodded.

W: Okay, Ryan, okay, Ryan will use country card. Westmouth made, country cards, do you remember?

Me: Yes, we used them last year. Thank you.

W: Mm, not so (translation: Oh, no problem). Okay, Ryan will use Westmouth’s cards. Germany, Ghana, Swiss, Canada, Ryan will use BINGO’s game.

Me: Yes.

W: Students not use, will not use cards. Students will write name, country name, in BINGO sheet. Ryan will…

I shan’t recount the rest. Westmouth proceeded to tell me in what way a student might achieve a BINGO, and how to play a game called “What’s this?” which involved me showing the students part of a picture and asking them to guess what it is. The whole conversation, or whatever you call it when two people talk but one doesn’t listen, lasted for at least five minutes. My part was mostly saying “Yes, I understand. I have done this before,” and “Yes, it’s right here in the teacher’s manual.” Westmouth did a lot of gesturing to the cards that hadn’t been cut and country flag cards, confirming with Miyoshi-sensei, and demonstrating how I should call BINGO cards.

Woman, I wanted to say, BINGO is an American game. I know how to play it. I’ve been playing BINGO in classrooms for the last two and a half years. Don’t presume I need a crash course in BINGO For Dummies, especially in front of the other teachers. I may be smiling, but Imma bite yo face off.

Some of my outrage might be merited. It’s never fun to be treated like a stupid child. However, Westmouth is an incredibly nice woman, and she bends over backward to make sure that her schools have everything they need for English classes. She often drives me home, and once when I was going to bike home and back during recess (I’d left some materials at home) Westmouth followed me home in her car, and then drove me back to the school. Still, this BINGO explanation drove me nuts. I grumbled about it all weekend.

A portable shrine featured in the Kameoka Festival

When I woke up the following Tuesday, I was cold. I didn’t want to put my feet on the cold floor. I didn’t want to get out of my warm bed. My nose was frozen and my fingers were stiff. I dragged myself out of bed and made sure I got on a bus on time. I had reviewed the plan for the day’s lessons (the school had given me a detailed outline of when each grade would be studying what part of the textbook) so I walked into the elementary school feeling prepared.

I entered the teacher’s office, said a cheery Ohaiyo gozaimasu, and sat down. The office manager came to my desk. She held a clear plastic file that contained one piece of paper. She said something like “The other teacher, what’s her name again, left this note for you.”

“Westmouth?” I suggested, taking the file.

“Yes. She left this for me to give you.”

I thanked the lady and resisted crumpling that note in my hands. I won’t retype what Westmouth had written. Let is suffice to say that it was information that I already had available, and without which I would have done just swimmingly. This note really bothered me. I fumed the whole day. At one point I sent Kim-Chi a text message that simply said, “I’m like to murder some folk.”

She replied, “Is it the coming of the cold? I’ve been like to kill people all week.” Then she inquired after the potato soup I’d made the previous night.

I pshawed. The cold? What would the cold have to do with the idiocy with which I was surrounded? It was that woman’s fault, what with her micromanaging and her notes. And the teachers who walked out of the room when I was teaching. And those dumb kids with their yapping and telling me that my hair was weird and making fun of me. And the stupid school lunch sitting on my desk until it got cold while I waited for the students to get their act together and come get me. And the stupid school with its open windows in the staff room that made my nose was cold and runny…Ah. Maybe I was cold.

The Bat. It is an ugly creature.

The Costume

I was so lazy, it turned into "The Broadway interpretation of a lion." I bought materials to make a tail, but never made one. It was all in the makeup.

From L to R: Teresa (new ALT), Jen (new JET Prefectural Advisor), Kim-Chi

I've been in a funk when it comes to blogging or leaving Kameoka, so maybe I'll just transfer some of my school notes here to give you an idea of what live has been like these past couple of weeks.

Also, I planned an entire Thanksgiving menu. I feel like I may be living up to my mother's legacy of Incredible Hostess, save for that Turtle Hill's Thanksgiving is more of a cultural exchange event, it's not at anyone's house this year, and we may not even have tables. More about that as I learn the details.

And I'm off.