At the moment, I have a few small updates to share. None of them are long enough to merit their own post, so this one will be sort of a mix of random details. Bear with me if I seem to be jumping from topic to topic.
First of all, I think today was the first day that I felt like I really knew the names of my students at TJHS. I've been trying to learn their names since I started there, and despite the fact that there are only 22 of them, it has been very difficult. Part of the challenge: there are two Harukas, two Kazukis, a Yusuke and a Yousuke. Fortunately, none of the double names are in the same class. The trouble I have now seems to be that I want to mix up Yusuke and Yoshiki. Their names don't sound that much alike and they don't resemble each other, but I have a tendency to forget which is which. Still, I'm at the point now where I can look at a name on the class roster and picture the student's face in my mind. I'm still pretty slow at calling up the names from memory, and I like to refer to the class list so I know I'm using the right name, but I finally feel like I'm getting it.
In other news, I've run into the creeper again. This time I was using an ATM near my house. At this location, there is a row of four ATMs in a small lobby at the entrance of the bank. The main part of the bank was closed because it was after 5:00, but the ATM area was still open. While I was withdrawing money, I noticed someone in my peripheral vision. He was standing maybe 10 or 15 feet away. I wouldn't have thought much of it because he wasn't intruding on my personal space, but the strange thing was that he wasn't standing at an ATM. He was just standing over at the side of the room, doing nothing. That made me rather suspicious, so I sort of kept an eye on him while I was finishing my transaction. Then I heard a small voice say, "Hello." I looked over, and sure enough, it was the creepy guy. He wears glasses and looks somewhat nerdy, and seems to be in his twenties (so far as I can guess). He had apparently followed me into the bank to talk to me. Although I don't entirely remember the face of the person who followed me into my apartment building, I'm fairly certain this must be the same guy because really, how many people would follow me into such incredibly inappropriate places? Anyhow, just before I went to leave, I pretended to call someone and started talking into the phone so I wouldn't have to speak to him. I was somewhat concerned that he might trail behind me all the way to my apartment building (it wasn't a long walk), but he didn't. Thank God for small miracles...
The strange thing was, when I got to my apartment, I started to wonder if the guy who followed me into the bank was actually someone I knew. His face had seemed familiar. Was it the 24-year-old male teacher from TJHS? He also wears glasses and has a slightly nerdy look to his face. Was it possible that I hadn't recognized him outside of school? Because if that had been the case, I had been incredibly rude by ignoring him, and I needn't have been creeped out in the first place. I was still about 70% certain that it had been the creeper and not the teacher from TJHS, but there was a lingering doubt. Today, though, I was at TJHS and had a chance to ask the teacher if he had seen me at the bank that day. He said that he hadn't; he had still been at school at that time. On the one hand, I was incredibly relieved that I hadn't inadvertently alienated one of the two other young teachers at TJHS. I'm pretty sure he's the only guy I work with who is under the age of 40. But on the other hand, this means that the creeper is still out there and will still follow me if given the chance. He seems harmless enough, but I'm going to have to be a bit more self-aware from now on. On the plus side, I haven't seen him skulking around the apartment building, so I'm pretty sure he's not actively stalking me.
On a more positive note, I've been talking to Takashi on instant messenger recently, and he said that he might be coming to Kochi again in May. He said that he'd like to meet up again. That made me happy. I'm a little confused and frustrated, though, because he never starts conversations. If I want to talk to him, I have to send the first message every time. I started to wonder if maybe I was getting on his nerves, but whenever I do start a conversation, he seems very happy to talk to me. And he's the one who volunteered the information about coming back to Kochi; I haven't ever asked when he would be back. So as far as I can tell, he's still interested in staying in contact with me, but it's up to me to make the first move if I want to talk to him. I'd ask him why, but I'm not sure he'd understand it in English and I don't know how to say it in Japanese.
Though I don't like having to initiate every conversation, talking with Takashi is pretty fun. I think it's also handy for learning, because I get to practice reading and he'll usually correct me if I spell something wrong. One thing that is a bit of a challenge is kanji; although I think he makes an effort to use fairly simple Japanese when he talks to me, he still types some things in kanji, which I mostly can't read. I brought this on myself because I try to use the kanji that I do know, so he sees that I can read a few kanji, but he has no way of knowing which ones. So it happens pretty often that I have to ask him to restate what he just typed, but in hiragana (phonetic script). One thing I find entertaining (and rather endearing) is that he always types my name in romaji (the English alphabet). It's always "andy". I don't really like to see my name in katakana (the phonetic script used for foreign words) because it's very harsh and angular. Take a look for yourself:
"Andrea" in hiragana is あんどりあ. The letters are nice and rounded.
"Andrea" in katakana is アンドリア. Note how the letters are all pointy.
Also, a fun thing about writing my name in katakana is that despite it being purely phonetic, my name is misspelled on all of my official documents. My supervisor never bothered to ask me how my name is pronounced, so it's written everywhere as アンドレア (ahn-do-ray-ah) rather than アンドリア (ahn-do-ree-ah). It seemed like too much of a bother to make them go back and redo all of my paperwork, so I let it slide, but I still try to make people say my name correctly and I spell it my own way on all unofficial documents.
Anyhow, I'm starting to ramble, so I suppose I should wrap things up. Those are my random bits of news for the time being. Coming up in my future: the weekend after this one is a three day weekend, so I'm going on a road trip to Takamatsu with a few other ALTs.
No comments:
Post a Comment