USJ

Since we ended up cancelling our Universal Studios Japan plans a couple of weeks ago, we decided, on Friday, to get bus tickets for Sunday, when the weather looked okay. Unfortunately this meant getting up at 5.30am to get the bus at 7. On a weekend!

 Now, this is my third time to USJ in the short three years I've been to Japan. The first time, it snowed for six hours and all of the outdoor rides were closed. The second time was scorching hot. Between these two times I'd already done almost everything there is to do at USJ. Really, it's possible to do everything in a single day - especially if you get an express pass booklet which lets you skip a large part of the queueing process. Still, there are a few good rides and it's nice to hang around somewhere that's so totally artificial every once in a while. Plus, since the last time I'd been there they'd removed the E.T. Adventure ride and replaced it with something new, so I was curious how that would be.

Though Em and I splashed out on express tickets, the wait times for the rides never seemed to get as long as I had seen in the past. We went to the Spider-man ride as soon as we got in the park, and seeing that the wait was only about 25 minutes, we decided to join the regular queue and save the express ticket for later. I'm not sure if the park was less busy than it usually is, but we were able to ride stuff more times in a single day than I'd managed the previous two times. We rode Jurassic Park with the express pass once, then later went back and queued regularly (in my opinion, the ride is only worth it for the final drop, but it is quite a drop) for a second go. Then there was Space Fantasy. Ah, Space Fantasy.

This is what they replaced E.T. Adventure with. Now, E.T. Adventure was undoubtedly the worst ride that they had express ticketing for. I'm not sure what's worse - spending extra money for the chance to get on it faster, or actually having to queue for 50 minutes for the privilege. On entering a small foyer at the end of the initial queueing area, you would be greeted by a video of Stephen Spielberg (dubbed into Japanese in our version, of course) telling you how you had to help E.T. save his home planet. Or whatever. Then after a second queueing area during which you would give your name to a receptionist-type and get a 'passport', you would board a vehicle that looked like bicycles welded together which was suspended from the ceiling. Then you would move through a set of scenes that were straight from the climax of the movie, before moving onto E.T.'s planet, where you would be greeted by a bunch of animatronic aliens dancing around in an LSD-inspired landscape. It was like a lot of so-called 'dark-rides' you get at Disney theme parks, but the animatronic characters looked really lame and the ride's only redeeming feature was that E.T. would say (or try to say) your name as you left the ride - that's why they took your name at the reception desk.

So I was quite intrigued to see that they had replaced the mediocre E.T. ride with. When we got our tickets at the main entrance of the park, we were given complimentary express tickets for Space Fantasy (they replaced the E.T. express booklet ticket with one for Backdraft...which I'll get to later). When we got to the ride we were told we had to exchange these tickets at some other building to get the actual express ticket. When we gave our exchange pass over, we received something like a fast pass at Disney Land - you come back at a specific time and then you can skip the line. The time on our ticket was about fifteen minutes from the current time, so we waited around until they let us in.

The first interesting thing was that we had to lock our stuff away in a locker. I thought this seemed promising. During the queue, you have your photo taken on a green screen, though this is just to sell you a picture on your way out of the ride. After that, you come to a room with a sort of robot thing suspended from the ceiling that looked and moved like the ship's computer from Flight of the Navigator:

 This, along with a cartoony star princess inside a crystal (who explains that it's your mission to rekindle the dying sun) made me think the ride might be a little child-oriented and therefore dull, but this expectation was happily confounded.

Space Fantasy could so easily be described as a rip-off of Space Mountain. It's an indoor rollercoaster where you fly around in dark with stars on the walls. Actually, Space Fantasy isn't as long as Space Mountain, but it's better in a number of ways. Instead of sitting two to a cart and facing forward the whole time, the carts in Space Fantasy are vaguely circular in shape, with two sitting in the front facing forward and two in the back facing backward. The cart rotates as you rise and drop, spinning around planet with beautiful colors, so that sometimes you're whizzing straight ahead watching the comets and the stars coming at you, and sometimes you're watching them disappear as you're dragged backwards. I actually found myself shouting out "Wooooow...wooooooohooooooo!" in spite of myself. The best bit, however, is when these two buttons on the console light up, and the princess tells you to press them to activate the stardust power (or something) and so you're jabbing away at the button, not sure if it's actually doing anything, then you dive into a huge room with shiny, mirrored surfaces, meant to be the inside of the dying sun, and you keep pressing the buttons and the whole room explodes and lights up and you're sent zooming off to the end of the ride. I couldn't help but smile as a result of all the sensory input, which is rare for me.

Emily and I decided to go back on later, and it was even better the second time. It never feels quite the same any two times. I know because we went on a third time, when we saw that the line was only 35 minutes after getting off the second time. We might have gone on again, but the park was closing by then so we didn't get a chance.

I had one other noteworthy experience at the park. As I said before, the replaced the E.T. Adventure express booklet ticket with one for Backdraft - quite a cheap move when Backdraft isn't even a ride, isn't particularly popular and, due to only one group being able to go through it at one time, can't be skipped-ahead in the same way you can skip lines for other attractions. Anyway, we went there because we had the ticket and we thought we might as well do everything there was to do. Your group is led into a room set up to look like a warehouse, and you get an intro video from Ron Howard who tells you about making the Backdraft movie. Then you move into another room where they simulate a building catching fire, as seen from outside. Then they show you another film where actors from the film talk about their experiences. It was around this point that a toddler in the walkway behind us started bawling his eyes out. He only seemed to get louder when Kurt Russell appeared on screen. (Funnily enough, during the third and final room, where the whole place explodes with fire and you can feel the heat on your skin, and the roof above you starts to collapse, didn't seem to bother him at all). Anyway, while watching dubbed Ron Howard and dubbed Kurt Russell, I thought about maybe watching Backdraft when I got home. Except in my head, I was thinking home meaning Scotland. For a few seconds I forgot that I lived in Tokushima, and will be for at least another month and a half. I've had this sort of experience before at theme parks like this. Despite the fact that everything's in Japanese, the sheer Western-ness of everything can make you forget where you are.

Anyways, after our third Space Fantasy adventure we left the park and (after a stop-off at the new Shonen Jump store that opened in Universal City on Friday) got the train to Osaka, then the bus to Tokushima. I got back to my apartment around midnight, after some uneasy sleep on the bus. Then I slept through the night, most of the morning and some of the afternoon. Sleep is great. I should do it more often.

Chinese Gong-fu

In this evening's 30-minute post-tai chi kung fu class, we learned that you need to hold tightly to your opponent's wrist so they can't get away while you're elbowing them in the face. ELBOW!

Also, if you hold their wrist close to your waist, it's easier to force them to lose their balance (with the application of force to the elbow (ELBOW!)) than if you're holding them away from your body.

Failing to understand this second point initially, I ended up pulling a muscle I didn't know I could pull. It's in a weird place somewhere between my chest and my side. Feels okay now.

Alfie Hitchcock says...

This is up in the elevator in my apartment building. It asks us to keep the elevator clean of pet pee, empty cans and cigarettes.

Special needs in mainstream classes

I'm by no means an expert, so I hope I don't offend anyone with my meandering musings.

In some of my classes at both schools I've had some special needs students. Apparently in Japan it's up to the parents as to whether to put these students into regular classes at mainstream schools or not. This year at Kagikou I have one class with a student who has ADHD, and another with a student who I was told was autistic. So far, lessons have gone quite well in both classes. The ADHD boy has difficulty with English, but there are many students who have similar difficulties and aren't said to have special needs. The autistic boy is very friendly and, while he has a tendency to ask questions more than other students and says things that make the others laugh sometimes, he's very bright and is better at English than most of the others in his year.

But things aren't always this harmonious. Two years ago, in the last year before Higashi Kougyou closed, I had another student with autism. This student was not friendly or outgoing like the one in my current class, and he was the repeated object of mockery and bullying by his classmates, at whom he would lash out verbally and physically. Most of the teachers treated him like any other student, and punished him accordingly. I remember one stand-off in the staffroom, where he had been told off repeatedly for playing with his phone during class, and the teacher told him they would be calling his parents. He wailed repeatedly at the teacher, trying to persuade him out of this plan, shouting loud enough for the whole staffroom to hear. The other teachers whispered to each other about how ill-mannered and selfish the boy was. I was quite surprised to hear them talk that way. Before that point I had assumed there was a level of understanding among the teachers about what it means to have a condition like autism, one that was clearly lacking.

Two years later, I'm no longer teaching his class, but I was made to think about the situation when I spotted him on my way out the school gate yesterday. It was lunch time, and most of the students were either in their classrooms or in the cafeteria. He was standing by himself behind the sports clubhouses. I watched as he wandered around a little, grabbed a tree branch, let it go, wandered around a little more. It made me sad to see him so isolated. If it really was his parents' decision to put him through mainstream school, I'm sure this is not what they imagined. It's so understandable to want a normal life for your child, and you would think by letting students have contact with a student with difficulties and vice versa, you would foster an environment of mutual respect and acceptance, but clearly this isn't always the case.

I'm beginning to think that it's not always in the child's best interests for the parents to decide what kind of school to attend. Parents are always going to want the most normal life for their children, and while mainstream education can work out for the best in some cases, in others it leaves special needs students isolated, vulnerable, and unready to challenge the next stage of life. High school is the time when everyone is worried about fitting in. Those who don't are bullied mercilessly. Why would anyone subject a vulnerable person to that?

I don't think special needs children should be excluded from mainstream education. However, I think there should be advice for parents from experts in the field before any decision is made. Moreoever, in cases where a student with special needs is put in a mainstream class, his classmates should be educated about it.

Why teaching at tech high can be better than academic high

Mrs Underwood and I were chatting yesterday about how good the first years have been so far this year, and I asked her how she would compare the experience of teaching here to teaching at Johoku High, the academic school she was at before. I was quite surprised by one of the things she said. She told me that in academic schools, you can't severely punish students who exhibit bad behaviour because the principal will blame you, the teacher, for not doing a good job instructing them. She told me of a case where an academic school boy attacked another boy and hit him so hard (presumably with an object of some kind) that it left a dent in his skull. The attacker wasn't expelled.

Apparently, expectations at technical high are different to the extent that teachers aren't blamed so much for their students' behaviour. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It suggests that students who aren't as smart as others are naturally bad seeds, and if an academic student misbehaves it's a "nurture" problem.

Another thing Mrs Underwood said was that she could never get activities to work at Johoku because the students were sleeping all the time. To some extent this is understandable; many students, in addition to club activities and after-school supplementary lessons, attend "juku" (cram schools) to try to give themselves the best chance they can to get into university. This leaves them understandably exhausted. It's by no means unacceptable to sleep in class in Japan. Particular teachers may stop students from doing it in their own classes, but it's so common as to not be a thing to get angry about. In technical schools, however, because it's easier to fail students in a subject for their behaviour and attendance, they are often more willing to participate, especially if they are motivated to pass the course but their test marks are low.

I used to complain about not being placed at any academic schools, but I think I've probably been blessed with my position. It hasn't always been a barrel of monkeys, but it's been a generally worthwhile and rewarding experience.

INTRUDER ALERT!

Funny thing. Earlier today, the Principal comes into the staffroom and cries out, "Fushinsha!" (dubious person!) which in this context was the equivalent of calling out, "Intruder!". He called the teachers who are part of the seito-ka (student affairs division) to arms, to go and check out the situation. I was alarmed to find that my desk seems to be placed in amongst the seitoka, so that the ten or so teachers in my immediate vicinity - including Mrs Underwood, the English teacher who sits beside me - got up and marched out of the staffroom. The Principal stayed inside. Some of the other teachers gathered around the monitors that are rigged up to the CCTV cameras placed around the school, though apparently there was nothing to be seen.

A few minutes later, the teachers came back. I asked Mrs Underwood about the fushinsha, and she told me it was a blond girl (which of course means she was worthy of the label, since only those on the fringes of society bleach their hair), found hanging about the girl's sports club changing rooms. Later, I was told that it was a student of nearby Chuo High School, which is like the last resort of Junior High students who can't get into a better high school. The story was now that she had come to bring lunch to her younger brother at our school. Either way, I find the fact that ten teachers were mobilised to deal with this situation rather ridiculous.

Tattooey

My tattoo is done. At least I think it is. I had two hours today to darken the background at the bottom so there would be more of a contrast with the top half. The tattoo men took lots of lovely pictures of the tattoo, and of me standing with the artist and the owner, then with the artist and another customer who has tribal tattoos on his face. They said they would call when they had a hard copy of the picture, and I asked if they could email it to me as well, though I got the impression the artist wasn't very familiar with the process, as he questioned whether there should be an http before the start of my email address. Email prospects probably not good.