♫ It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

As I spend my last days in Japan (while still in the year 2011), I feel that Christmas is definitely on its way.  I’ve spent this whole week teaching winter holidays – with an emphasis on Christmas – and everywhere around town, there are light displays, decorations and Christmas music playing in every store (they LOVE Mariah Carey, by the way).

On my way to the grocery store one evening, I came across this Christmas display put together by the local volunteer community garden.  The Santa's a little creepy looking, but overall I thought it was a pretty sweet display.

Over the weekend, I saw some JETs before we parted ways for the holidays at a Christmas Party in Gobo.¹  The restaurant is a Hawaiian themed burger joint, and I have to admit I was pretty skeptical about the quality of burgers at this particular place.  As a Californian, I have been spoiled seeing as I’ve been brought up on In-n-Out Burger, and I had yet to find a satisfactory burger here in Japan.  Case in point, enter Hale Kau Kau.  Hale Kau Kau is a “Hawaiian Paradise” smack dab in the middle of Waka.  The place was really cute, the staff was super friendly, it had Spam musubi all over the place, but the burgers were the scene stealers.  I’m certainly not a big burger aficionado or anything, but without contest, these were the best burgers I’ve had in Japan.  But they could still work on the French Fries.   ;)

An appetizer of Spam musubi, entree of Hawaiian burger with fries, and a collection of sweets for dessert.  Very yummy!

At the holiday party, we also had a white elephant gift exchange.  Our limit was ¥500 ($6.41 USD), and since I knew we were going to be at a Hawaiian restaurant, I decided my gift should follow the theme.  They LOVE Stitch here, so I racked the ¥100 Shop for Stitch-related items.  I settled on making a “Catch the Stitch Game,” which included a banner with Stitch on it, a shooter gun to catch your alien with, and a 2012 calendar and lanyard with Stitch on them.  Hopefully the person who got that gift likes Stitch.  My gift came with a poem:

Dealing with this gift could be rough,

But is it full of hot stuff?

Don’t push your luck!

Two of them suck,

But that’s what you get…in a white elephant love.

So what was my gift?  The first two books in the Twilight series, a beer and package of gummy bears to help me “get through them”.  The poem did say they’d suck.

They haunt me where ever I go...
Photos courtesy of D. Porter

I’ve also “celebrated” Christmas with our Deep South Movie Night crew.  This week was my turn to pick the movie, and my theme was 50 years in the past or future.  Since it was the holidays, I chose two movies for the group to pick from.  The first being the 2000 remake of How The Grinch Stole Christmas starring Jim Carrey (I took my cue from the fact that Dr. Seuss’ book was published in 1957 and the television special was produced in 1966), the second being the film that we actually saw.  For the second film, I cheated a bit and chose a movie from 1964 – Babes in Toyland was the only “Christmas” movie that came out in 1961 and that film has always scared me – but it has the prestige of being one of IMDb.com’s “100 Worst Films of All Time” and was awarded the Razzie for “Worst Christmas Movie of All Time.”  What could this movie possibly be?  Santa Conquers the Martians.  Yep.  It’s just as bad as the title suggests.  Martians kidnap Santa Claus because Martian children watching Earth programs on television get depressed after watching how happy he makes Earth children.  If anyone is truly interested in watch the cringe-inducing awkwardness of this movie, you can watch the whole thing in its entirety on YouTube.  I give it one star: a half star for the creative sci-fi influence on a typical “Christmas flick,” and another half star for its awesome theme song: “Hooray for Santy Claus!”

My students are still boggled by the fact that, in America, Christmas is a holiday spent with family and friends.  Here, it’s largely considered a “couple’s holiday.”  They live for Christmas cake (yellow cake with vanilla frosting and strawberries), whereas the best equivalent we have is fruit cake, most notably used as a door stop.  I’ve gotten some pretty creative questions from the students about Christmas like “How old is Santa Claus?”, “How tall is your Christmas tree?”, “Why was Rudolph born with a red nose?”, etc.  And of the students I’ve had the opportunity to teach – the material was too difficult for younger grades – they were insanely curious about Hanukkah.  Like I said in an earlier post, they liked the idea that Hanukkah is eight days long (and you get presents for each of those eight days) but they also asked rather thoughtful questions like why the Jewish people were pushed out of their land and why the lights burned for eight days.  Since I’m no expert in Judaism, I’m not sure if my answers were totally accurate, but I appreciated their curiosity and willingness to learn about a holiday from a religion that most of them had never heard of before.  Maybe students from the larger cities and prefectures know all about Hanukkah, but I like to think that I was able to broaden the horizons of a few students down here in my slice of Waka.

But back to Christmas, this whole week was dedicated to Christmas with a slideshow presentation of Christmas pictures and vocabulary, Christmas carols, puzzle activities and – my favorite game in the whole-wide-world – Jeopardy!²  After asking my JTEs if we could use more technology in class, I was able to show them in real-time that, when planned out, technology can be used to our advantage.  All we used was a simple PowerPoint presentation and some sing-a-long videos saved from YouTube, but it made all the difference in the world, especially at the school I was at this week.  They are extremely active, and if you lose their interest for even a millisecond, it takes the whole rest of class period to bring them back at attention.  Being in a different classroom automatically grabs their attention just by being in a new environment, and they know the lesson will be more unconventional than me just reciting paragraphs from the textbook, which piques their interest.  Besides, this particular school has a fully furnished media room decked out with computers and a giant flat-screen T.V., but they never use it.

I used this video in class to play "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," which in Japanese is Akahana no Tonakai.  The Abominable Snowman was always their favorite part.

The PowerPoint was pretty basic, but it was the Jeopardy game that got them really excited.  Not only is it a way to check their listening comprehension from the presentation, but also gives them a chance to work together as a team to come up with the answer and lets them use up their energy.  Even the more “difficult” classes participated and tried.  There were four teams in each class, and five questions per category ranging from 10-50 points (three in total: Santa Claus Facts, Christmas Decorations and Christmas Food).  While there were of course some students who took the lesson as an opportunity to catch up on their beauty sleep or to act out for attention, I was pleased to see most of the students’ competitive natures take over as they participated and worked with one another to come up with the answers.

            “This yummy dessert can be made into cookies or into a house.”

            “Houseo?  Houseo!”

            “Chiga! Ginger nani-nani.”

            “Ginger pan…?”

            "Eigo...?  Gingerbread!"

In short, Jeopardy was a wild success, I think even impressing my JTEs who were more reserved about the game idea.  One of the best moments came from one of my third grade classes (American equivalent to ninth grade) for the Jeopardy question: "Santa Claus brings us presents on this day."  One of the students immediately threw his hand up in the air, and looked quite pleased with himself to have come up with the answer first.  His answer?

            "ERUFU!"

In the months that I've been here, I don't think I've ever seen my JTE laugh so hard.  How the student determined that December 24th meant "elf," I'll never know.  But he was positively outraged when his team lost 20 points, and even more outraged when another team answered correctly. 

            While I could quote something from every lesson, one of the other funny conversations was between me, a few students and one of my JTEs:

            “Why do you have Christmas?” – Student

            “Because that was the day Jesus was born.” – Me

            “What do you call Jesus Christ in Japanese?” – JTE

            “Santa San!” – Student

            “Chiga.” – JTE

            “Santa Clausu…?” – Student

I have to give the student credit for effort.  Although, as another ALT pointed out to me, I shouldn’t be too surprised; he’d once seen a crucified Santa in a city around Christmastime.  And considering how we personify Easter with bunnies and Peeps, it’s no wonder the Japanese have generally confused ideas regarding western religions.

So as I finish my last load of laundry and pack my bags for my first solo international flight back to the U.S. for Christmas and New Year’s, I’m really excited to just be home.  I know that while I’m home I’ll have to make some tough decisions, but for now I’m looking forward to spending time with my family and friends, and munching on a California burrito from Roberto’s on the beach.

Seriously, I’ve been having dreams about Mexican food for about a month now.  I wake up extremely disappointed when I wake up and there is no carnitas is sight.  At this rate, I would settle for some nachos from Taco Hell.

Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Happy Kwanza! Happy Boxing Day! Happy New Year’s!  Succinctly, Happy Holidays.   :)

 

¹Fun Fact: Gobo is apparently where the yakuza (Japanese mafia) stow their money.  But you didn’t hear that from me.

²For those of you who don’t know, I live for Jeopardy like hardcore.