Friday, March 09, 2007

An Obvious Down of Being 外人

Generally, the term for foreigners is 外国人 but mostly people just say 外人 for short. But if you can read kanji, it directly translates to alien or outsider. I never took the word so literally but overtime, it's hard not to.

Morning, it's just before the starting of the graduation ceremony at my base school and all the teachers look a little nervous. All except me. I guess it's because nothing is expected of the foreigner. Yes, I feel so outcasted. I feel outcasted in a lot of places in Japan but never as unbearable as when I'm at this school. I'm not sure if it's me or if it's them. I feel like no matter what I do, it's the same thing. I've learnt to deal with it though. I sorta just ignore it and count down the days that I still have to deal with this sort of thing. 4 months and 11 days. But really about 3 months because by then, I'd be too busy to even notice it. And actually, I'm assuming there would be a turn-around because because they know I'm leaving so it won't be difficult to try to be nice to me for just another couple weeks or so. I hope so anyway. It would be really sad if they don't bother trying at all.
Graduation is always a very big deal with Japanese people. I didn't feel this way last year but it's finally gotten to me. For my kids' graduation, I decided to burn CDs for all of my 238 students from my 2 major schools. I became pretty good at being a one person assembly by the end of it. But my BOE co-workers (namely Okada san) and my good friend Kyoko helped a lot. Kyoko wasn't very good though and was honestly quite slow hehe.... She was talking to her boyfriend and fooling around for the most part. But she tried and her company kept me sane. So... YOSHI!!! it's all done now.


4 Comments:

At 11:21 PM , Blogger Laura said...

I think you are secretely addicted to being a one-person-assembly-line!

 
At 10:03 AM , Blogger DiVa said...

lol... no way!!! it was teamwork. you guys did the brainy work and I did all the mindless stuff. i think it's what's been keeping me sane from living here!

 
At 11:12 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

129 days to go. i know this because i tally off the days on my arm with a compass.

 
At 11:13 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

btw, let me know what you're doing for golden week

 

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