At any rate, I paid for another year of Flickr, and I will continue to occasionally dump massive amounts of photos over there. Keep an eye on that! Twitter also will remain more or less active.

This weekend I actually did something interesting.

Photos will be forthcoming once I hear from my friends – and the photographers – that took them. In the meantime, if you ever find yourself in Hagi, I highly recommend the Kimono Style Cafe!

EDIT: Durf, I forgot this:

A friend of mine chose to spend his spring break with me in my corner of Japan. Check out the albums Chris in Hamada and Chris in Hiroshima to see what we got up to. The Hamada stuff is particularly interesting, as we visited several incredible temples, including one that dates from 1382.

The beginning of April brought cherry blossoms and spring festivals. We experienced lots of both when the Shimane ALTs converged in Matsue for a training seminar that happened to coincide with the Matsue Castle parade, and then we visited a cherry blossom festival in nearby Kisuki. Check out this album for both!

I did my own special cherry blossom viewing at a shrine I’d always wanted to visit, just off the highway out of Hamada city but hidden behind a lumbermill. My very unprofessional photos are here.

ALTs met up again for the famous Yabusame (horseback archery) tournament in Tsuwano, known as the “Little Kyoto” of western Japan. My fellow roadtrippers and I visited this enormous Inari shrine along the way. My photos and video of the archery itself aren’t up yet due to being located on a separate camera, but when I remember to download them, they’ll be with the rest of the day’s photos here.

Two weekends ago, Hamada had its own castle parade and spring festival, the 浜っ子祭 (Hamakko Matsuri, Hama-children festival). The parade was full of preschool and school children as well as elderly folk dance groups, kagura monsters, and City Hall employees. Next year I’ll apply early to ensure I can participate. For now, you’ll have to settle for my sideline photos here.

Phew! There’s my giant photodump. Except, this week is the wonderful convergence of public holidays known as Golden Week, and tomorrow I’m headed to Hiroshima… this time is a shopping holiday, but I’m sure I’ll emerge with interesting photos all the same. And like I said, I’ll try to provide blocks of text for each of these events (plus a few I don’t have massive photo albums for) later on. For now, enjoy these albums while I enjoy my vacation!

It’s Spring Break at the moment, so I have plenty of downtime to get myself back together and prepared for the new school year. Or I will, rather; I’m in the midst of a 10-day visit from a hometown friend of mine, and after he leaves Hamada is looking forward to two new private company ALTs arriving next weekend. Hopefully everything will go smoothly, but just in case…

Anyway, expect sporadic batches of photos on Flickr, and I’ll try to do posts summarizing the adventures once I get back to regular office hours next week. Maybe a little more on the Twitter in the meantime, if I can remember to.

Having signed on for another year here, I’m preparing to take the test to obtain a Japanese driver’s license. The test consists of (from what I hear) a confusing ten-question paper test in English, a long interview about your license test in your home country, and then – for those of us from right-hand driving countries – a course driving test.

All of this sounds scary and challenging, but it also sounds nothing like the actual driving I’ve been doing here for the past year.

Staying to the left was definitely not the hard part of learning to drive here. Most roads, even highways, have one lane each way, so as long as there’s other traffic around you’re fine. In more rural or older areas, roads aren’t big enough for lanes, and you can drive wherever you want. The hard part is meeting another car on one of these roads, but one of you pulls over as far as possible and lets the other through. Japanese speed limits are usually low – even most highways are only 50 km/hr, about 45 mph – so it’s not too bad to slow down and pull over. Easy.

Turning is a different story. Japan is aware of the turning arrow on the traffic light but seems skeptical of its use. Only a few major intersections around Hamada have them, and usually only for one of the two intersecting roads. Elsewhere, you may or may not have a turning lane, but you definitely don’t have a special signal. Instead, when you want to make a turn across traffic, you pull out into the middle of the intersection and wait. This scared me when my bosses were first taking me for driving practice, so at the Shimane JET orientation in Matsue, I asked a police officer giving us a traffic safety lecture. “Am I doing this right? Isn’t this dangerous?” “No, that’s right,” he told me. “There’s a few seconds’ delay before the next light turns green, so you can finish turning during the red light.”

WHAT. WHAT. When I’m pulled out into the intersection, two or three cars pull up behind me, so that’s three vehicles trying to get through in three seconds. Never mind that drivers here regard the yellow light as a “hurry up and get through!” signal and often run red lights anyway. The turn lane really only has one or two seconds to get through before obstructing traffic.

This seems so dangerous to me, but it’s apparently the law, and I’ve learned to handle it. Another thing I’ve learned to handle that probably isn’t legal, or at least shouldn’t be, is cars stopped at arbitrary points along the road.

For a country that is a leading producer of cars and a pioneer of automobile technology, you’d think they’d have parking down to a T. But no, they only have pay-to-park lots down. Those can be quite nice in big cities, especially the ones where you pull onto a platform that, once you’re safely out, hoists your car into a high-rise that looks like one of those Hot Wheels storage boxes on the inside. Those are special and fun. The most common kind of lot in a smaller city like mine is the “monthly rental” lot, where you pick a space and arrange a monthly fee. Instead of having their own parking lots, most restaurants and small businesses rent two or three spaces from a nearby lot. Many employers won’t even let their staff use their parking lot and make them rent a nearby space if they have to drive to work.

The lack of designated parking has led the Japanese to a lax attitude about temporary parking. If you’re running into a store to drop something off or to have a quick chat with someone, there’s nowhere to pull in, so you just pull over and put on your hazard lights. Fine, except that, as I mentioned, Japanese roads tend to be one-lane and narrow. And I’m beginning to think that Japanese drivers have a sixth sense for finding the worst possible spots to pull over. You’re supposed to simply pull around these cars, but oncoming traffic is almost always an issue. Sometimes even the traffic behind you is an issue, especially when there’s a yellow light (a.k.a. “go faster!” signal) around.

I’ve encountered cars pulled over just at the exit of a tunnel on a tight curve. I’ve encountered cars pulled over in the left-turn lane. I’ve encountered cars pulled over on a barely-wide-enough two-lane road during rush hour. I’ve encountered cars parked in the pull-over space on tiny mountain roads. I’ve encountered cars pulled over and parked in the exit of a parking lot. (!!!)

My wishlist for the improvement of Japanese driving includes the following:
- more turn arrows on traffic signals
- slightly less gunning through yellow lights (I’m terrified how many people follow me through an intersection even when it turns red on me)
- higher speed limits on highways
- more shoulders/sidewalks for scooters (lots of people ride them, but on roads with speed limits higher than their max speed, you have to treat them like pulled-over cars) and crazy hunched-up old lady pedestrians/scooter riders
- TEACH PEOPLE TO PULL OVER IN SAFE PLACES INSTEAD OF ENDANGERING OTHER DRIVERS

On the other hand, things I like about driving in Japan:
- mirrors around tricky corners on narrow mountain roads
- smaller vehicles easier to maneuver and park
- one-lane roads mean less passing maneuvering (until someone decides to make a right turn…)

In honor of the occasion, I made certificates, which the teachers filled out while I finished up running the board game that I spent so long with the laminator to make. I hope the kids are really proud of them even if (especially because) they can’t read them. (I didn’t get to point out to the teachers which certificates were for which schools, so some may have gotten switched. Oh well, it’s one word… I hope they don’t spot it…) In exchange, I got a hand-made card from each of the sixth graders, and from two of the fifth graders. I got pop-up cards from the fourth graders too. This on top of getting books full of thank you notes from yesterday’s two sixth grade classes, a memory board from Friday’s school… I think I need a memory box of some sort to store all this stuff. It’s amazing.

I am really excited about the kids who, next month, become fifth and sixth graders. Although, it sounds like we won’t be doing a combined class anymore, so I won’t be able to rely on the rising fifth grade boys to improve the maturity of the rising sixth grade boys. Damn!

I’m staring at a foot of snow piled up on the structure just outside the window. Hopefully I can get my car out of here when the time comes; I almost couldn’t park today due to a particularly bad clump within a snow drift. I’m super tired, but at least keeping out of sitting around the house is forcibly improving my mood. I had a good time at calligraphy last night, and I’ve had a great couple days at school. Tomorrow’s schools will be good too; I’m going to surprise them (teachers and students) with the certificates. Tonight I have to undertake some major cleaning though. My house is awful, and it has to be extra-livable for the company that’s coming Saturday night!

Later:
Found out on my way out of school that one of my favorite teachers is leaving. It’s strange; he’s a young guy, and I had thought this was his first year teaching, at least at this school, but people don’t get rotated until they’ve been in one place for a few years. It’s a shame because his inexperience put us on a slightly more even footing, and he gave me the most freedom and responsibility in terms of lesson planning and material preparation. He’s moving to another town within the prefecture, so maybe we’ll meet again, but I hope our collaboration gives him more confidence in teaching fun and interesting English lessons. Having the materials I made for lessons with him has allowed me to show other teachers that my creativity is a good supplement to the regular textbook activities. Maybe some of them will be inspired to ask me for more materials!

The other first-year ALTs in my city have all decided to stay as well, but I realized, in my discussions with them over why and how long we were thinking of staying, that I have a distinct disadvantage as the elementary-only ALT. Junior high schools and high schools have three grades each – within each school they’re called 1-2-3, but they’re equivalent to our 7-8-9 and 10-11-12. ALTs at these schools can therefore stay three years and see a particular group of students all the way through. Convenient, since renewing up to three years is fairly easy; after three years, you supposedly have to have stellar performance evaluations or change jobs to stay another two, although I hear that varies from place to place.

I, on the other hand, teach 11 schools with 6 grades each – first through sixth. Granted, I don’t teach all grades at most of those schools – but at most schools, I take turns eating lunch with all the different grades, and smaller schools sometimes invite me to school-wide activities. I’ve definitely bonded with the fourth graders at a couple of smaller schools, and saying goodbye to the sixth-graders is alleviated by welcoming my new class of already-friendly fifth graders. Anyway, I guess the point is, it’ll be difficult to know when to quit based on my students. There are other things that will make it much easier – Japan is not an easy place to live, especially as a young woman, especially when you live in the middle of nowhere. But that’s the balance. Life is tough, and the kids are what make my job great.

I’ve spent most of my free time today looking through Ojisan Jake’s blog. I’m sure I’ve linked him before – he lives out in the wilds of Iwami and takes beautiful photographs of less-appreciated aspects of Japan. Today I noticed he has a listing of shrines he’s visited, many of which are in Iwami, if not Hamada itself, if not my neighborhood! Some of them are places I pass quite often on the way to and from work and have wondered about visiting, so it’s nice that someone else has pioneered the way. Shinto mythology is expansive, complex, and hard to study outside of Japan, and shrines are some of the most beautiful locations. I’ve now got a list of places I want to explore in Hamada once the weather gets a little warmer.

Incidentally, browsing Ojisan Jake’s descriptions of these shrines revealed one story of how the Iwami region got its name. I’ve been complaining to people that the western half of Shimane, Iwami (石見 “stone-looking”), has a much less cool name than the eastern half, Izumo (出雲 “rising/exiting (from the) clouds”). It’s somewhat comforting to see that Iwami might have more to it than the obvious.

And speaking of shrines, I finally paid a visit to the biggest shrine in the region, Izumo Taisha, during last Thursday’s national holiday! Izumo Taisha is dedicated to Ookuninushi-no-mikoto, creator of Japan, who ruled the islands from Izumo until he granted his country to the grandson of Amaterasu the sun goddess. Izumo Taisha is one of the most significant Shinto shrines; it was originally the largest wooden building in Japan, larger even than the Great Buddha’s Toudaiji, before revisions shrunk it to the current size. The main building that serves as Ookuninushi’s house is currently under reconstruction, as most major shrines are rebuilt on a 60-year cycle.

I received a fantastic fortune at the shrine, promising me success in anything I choose to undertake provided that I honor my ancestors. It’s the best fortune I’ve gotten at a shrine so far. Considering Ookuninushi is also enshrined at Jishu-jinja in Kiyomizudera, which I visited earlier this year, I think I’m developing a positive relationship with a very important kami. I’ll make a point of visiting shrines of his in the future, as well as shrines to Susanoo-no-mikoto, hero of the Orochi story, who is apparently Ookuninushi’s father-in-law!

I’m no linguist, but a couple semesters of phonetics and using the International Phonetic Alphabet have really helped me understand why my students can’t make certain sounds, and what I myself might be saying wrong in Japanese.

Native English speakers, pronounce “rock”. Now do it again, paying close attention to your mouth movements. Most of you will feel the tip of your tongue curl slightly back. This is the alveolar approximant, written in IPA as an upside-down r, [ɹ]. The sound is alveolar because your tongue is reaching for the alveolar ridge, the hump in the top of your mouth just behind your teeth. It’s an approximant because, rather than actually touching the ridge and restricting airflow, the tongue is only slightly changing shape.

Half of English speakers depress the tip of their tongue slightly instead of curling it. This is not connected with any accent and sounds exactly the same. I find I’m about 50-50 myself, depending on how much I enunciate.

Now let’s try making the Japanese r. Native English speakers, pronounce “city”. Now, say it at normal speed without overenunciating. Try putting it in a sentence like you’re speaking to a friend. “Let’s go to the city.”

You’ll probably find that, at slow speeds, your tongue makes the t sound by hitting the front of the alveolar ridge, just behind the teeth, and cutting off air for a second. But when you go faster, this stop becomes more of a flapping motion. And rather than hitting just behind the teeth, you’re probably moving further back, touching the lowest part.

This is basically the same sound as the Japanese r. A native Japanese speaker unfamiliar with English might transcribe your native speed “city” as シリ- “shi-ri” (“si” doesn’t exist natively in Japanese either). The consonant in either case is an alveolar flap or tap, written in IPA as a fishhook, [ɾ]. It’s the same sound that makes the short r in languages like Spanish. A rolled or trilled r (IPA upright r, [r]) happens when this flap is repeated, which is why the manliest of Japanese men will often roll their r’s.

So where does the l fit in here? Native English speakers, pronounce “lock”. You’re probably touching your teeth with your tongue, if not putting it between them and sticking it out a little bit. l (written the same in IPA) is the alveolar lateral approximant. It happens somewhere in the region of the alveolar ridge or the teeth, it involves only the tongue changing shape rather than cutting off air (like with the English r), and the lateral part means that it’s actually the sides of the tongue controlling the airflow. You’ll feel them depress slightly in the middle as you make that l.

Actually, English has two types of l’s. l’s at the beginning of a word involve only what I described above and are called “clear” or “light” l’s. If you pronounce the word “call”, on the other hand, you’ll feel the front of your tongue move back slightly as the back of your tongue, the root, moves up toward the roof of your mouth. This is the “dark” l, written in IPA as l with a tilde through it, [ɫ]. Dark l exists in English only after vowels, so we don’t distinguish it from clear l. In other languages, dark l and clear l are totally separate sounds that have to be distinguished just as much as b and d in everyday speech. This would be a problem for most English speakers, especially those few who only use dark l’s – if you’ve ever wondered why Tom Brokaw’s speech is so distinctive, it’s because his l’s are always dark, even at the beginning of a word where an average speaker would pronounce a clear l!

Japanese doesn’t have any sounds involving the tongue touching or projecting through the teeth, so sounds involving teeth are the hardest for Japanese English speakers to make. Things like “th” (both kinds – isn’t there a difference between “the” and “teeth”?), “l”, “v”, and even “f” are difficult. There is a sound transcribed “f” in Japanese, but it’s actually closer to an “h”, as I’ve learned while improving my Japanese pronunciation. English speakers, pronounce this series: ha, hee, hoo. Your mouth feels most open at ha, and as you move to hoo, it tightens, yes? You also probably rounded your lips at “hoo”. If you pronounce “hoo” with relaxed lips instead of round ones, you’re making the Japanese ふ, usually transcribed “fu”. It’s a similar sound, but English speakers saying “foo” (as in Fighters) would touch their upper teeth to their lower lip and blow air through the gap, while Japanese speakers simply blow air through narrow lips.

There’s your crash course in English versus Japanese phonology, everyone! Again, my disclaimer is that I’ve only had two semesters of this stuff, so I’m no expert, just using my own notes/memory from the class plus the Internet as a reference. I am probably off on some details – for example, Wikipedia tells me that the Japanese r is classified by a Japanese linguist as an alveolar lateral flap, just that Americans hear it as the alveolar flap (since we have that in English). The point of pointing any of this out, though, is not to strut my stuff linguistically speaking. Understanding the mechanics of these sounds – where the tongue goes, how the lips are positioned, and so on – is key to teaching them to people whose native language doesn’t include them (like l in Japanese) or doesn’t recognize them as distinct (“clear” versus “dark” l in English; also rounded “oo” versus unrounded “oo”, which we experimented with but didn’t explain). I have some friends studying Japanese in America who will probably find it useful to practice れ versus re and ふ versus hoo or foo. Friends teaching English here in Japan may also find the mechanical explanations here useful in improving the pronunciation of their students, maybe even their teachers. And if any native Japanese speakers out there are とくい enough at English to have made it through this, you can now practice some very difficult sounds. 頑張りましょう！ Let’s give it our best!

Thanks to Macquarie University’s Linguistics department for having some excellent phonetic cross-sections of approximants easily accessible from Google Image Search.