I don't speak Japanese, Are you SERIOUS?!

So she acts as the translator between myself and the teachers who don’t speak English (so, basically everyone I have to work with), because I STILL DON’T FUCKING SPEAK JAPANESE right.

So today she comes to ask if I’ve talked to some of the pre-school teachers about organising a Christmas party.

How I would have gone about doing this given we use none of the same words is a mystery to me, but apparently CIRfromHell thinks that maybe we’d have talked about it in person.

So CIRfromhell is the unofficial “translator” for emails between myself and all the pre-school and elementary school teachers who don’t speak English.

Except she is useless af, so she cc-ed me in on an email replying to someone to inform them that they had my email address wrong.

But the email is in Japanese.

So to me it seems like she’s sent me a “translation” that is still completely in japanese.

The only reason I know it’s not, is that I sent it onto someone else all exasperated like “what does this say?!”...

I’m still 9 months away from leaving, but I’ve been investigating anyhow, I’m fairly certain that when Ieave Japan the cellphone that I bought when I came here is in fact not going to be able to be used in New Zealand, but instead just a very expensive brick.

Of course, this is NOT what CIRfromhell told me. She told me it would cost me around 3000 yen to get it unlocked when I cancel my contract.

So she’s got this dumb Halloween Party coming up that I have to help at.

Now, I’m not from a country that does Halloween. Sure teenages and twenty-somethings get all dressed up and go drinking for “Halloween”, but I would have no idea how to put together a Japan-friendly presentation on Halloween.

If we go back to the neighbour-town Halloween party debarcles, CIRfromhell has a fantastically high standard for what she wants her stupid party to be. Costumes, games, presentation, learning, peversely over-controlled “fun”, etc.

So when I gave the above reason for not putting together a presentation for an event that I have no personal investment in, she accussed me of being lazy. Said I needed to learn how to do it.

Now, why would I need to do that?

I’m never going to be involved with another Halloween party like this again.

Certainly I see the merit in try-fail-try-again learning. But not if there’s no point.

She goes on and on about how busy she is, ignores that I offer to do the crappy behind the scenes stuff for her, and then makes a big deal when I try to explain why her idea is a waste of time.

So apparently I have to plan a Halloween lesson, because Japan is trying to get really big into Halloween but no one really gets it.

Problem is; I’m from New Zealand.

We don’t do Halloween in New Zealand.

So I asked CIRfromhell if she could flick something over to me for guidance, and now she decides that she doesn’t know much about Halloween.

...

HOWEVER.

After town-next-door’s Halloween party, the girls asked for her feedback right, and she sent them 5 pages of criticism and her opinion on what she’d do better.

Today I asked CIRfromhell to please not put things she’s leaving on my desk in under the weird plastic cover that Japanese desks have on them.

So she tells me that she does it in case someone opens the window and they blow away.

I’m using my work computer to write this post, right, and it’s got a keyboard, as most computers do, and the keyboard is, of course, on my desk.

I’m sure the keyboard would also make a fine paperweight.

If people were opening windows.

Which they’re not.

Because it’s October.

Fucking shambolic.

Asks me if I’ll come back to the town office on a day I’m not scheduled to so that “we” (she) can sort something out that “we haven’t had time to do” (she hasn’t done yet), and then she doesn’t even turn up to her own meeting because she’s “too busy”.

Now this seems like a minor annoyance, but this is Japan right, so everything is floopsy-mental.

So if i have to go to more than 1 school I have to park my car at the town office and borrow a town car to get to whichever school I’m meant to be at.

Unless that school is less than 1km from the town office/ In that case, I just have to walk.

In the cold.

Because it’s October and I’m in Hokkaido.

And then when I refused to do the same again she got all stressy as shit because “we still haven’t done this” and I seriously don’t care because I’m not walking in the cold again like a peasant because her time management is so shit.

It’s really clear that her grip on English was never particularly good, because she could not understand why  not saying “sorry I couldn’t answer, is everything ok?” when I blew my fuse box that time made it seem like she didn’t want to help...

But she tried to have a heart-to-heart anyway.

I just dug in my toes and refused to be in any way understanding of her opinion.

I’m not normally like this, but when I’m dealing with someone who tells me that a sick stray cat is more important than my quality of life, I find it a bit hard to come around to their way of seeing things...

At the end of it, when she decided we were closer to agreeing about things (we aren’t), she told me that as long as I “know exactly what (I’m) asking for” then she can help.

I, of course, will never know this because I am not the one who has lived in Japan for 10 years.

It gets better!

Obviously, my preference is to get the next-door-neighbour-town girls to help me with stuff, because they don’t suck at life, and I said this to CIRfromhell (I didn’t say exactly that, I just said that they seem to understand better what I’m trying to ask because they all arrived pretty recently, and since I won’t ever know EXACTLY what I’m asking for, it’s a no-brainer for these ladies to help instead. Also they’re genuinely happy to help. I didn’t say that. I’m not trying to deliberately wind her up anymore...), I said this all to CIRfromhell, and now she’s packing another big sad...

Because I’m fairly certain she forgets every massive fuck-off lie that she says to me.

Like how she said that I would meet the JHS teachers before my first day at school (wrong), or how she said that her or my supervisor would be at each of my schools on the first day that I was there (also wrong), how she said all the resources I would need were under my desk (wrong), how she said she’d help me sort out my Japanese drivers liscence (I gather she 100% had zero intention of ever doing this).

But if I ever quiz her on any of these things, no recollection. She actually tells me I’m wrong.

I’m not wrong.

When I first arrived and CIRfromhelll was overloading me with information she told me about her idiot pre-school curriculum and how she’s created all the resources of my wildest dreams for all the lessons. 

It’s actually just sets of different sized flash cards for different topics. But whatevs. She don’t dream big anyhow.

Turns out she hasn’t, so I’m meant to be “teaching” a class today but there’s no equipment available to teach it with.

By “equipment” I just mean laminated pieces of paper with fruit printed on it, but when you can’t do words, these laminated pieces of paper become your lifeblood.

So about 6 weeks before I came to Japan I got a message from CIRfromhell asking what my name was in Japanese, or what I preferred my name to be, or something such.

Since I don’t have a Japanese name, I said to her that [so-and-so] was how I pronounce my name, and could they try and write it to match as closely as possible, but I was happy for them to make the decision.

It was for my Hanko (or Inkan) which is the stamp thing that Japanese people use instead of a signature.

Now, because paperwork in this country is a nightmare, having a weird Hanko is basically a guarantee that no paperwork will ever be accepted. I only learnt this yesterday, after trip number htree ot SoftBank...

So, after asking the BoE to make the decision on Hank for me, via CIRfromhell, what I ended up getting was an oval stamp with my last name as it is in English. Which also arrived three weeks after I did, well after I needed it to set-up everything required for life...

Apparently she deliberately advised my supervisor to get me an Inkan that would never work.

and that I’m just ridiculously unappreciative.

I finally just snapped and told her that she is ridiculously condescending and that her “advice” has never been welcome, and boy-oh-boy did that go down like a fart in a spacesuit.

I was really really angry, and then she said “well, good luck then” as though I was not going to survive without all the help she hasn’t been giving me for the last two and a half months and then I wasn’t as angry because she’s obviously an idiot and lol.

Hopefully this means she’ll stop butting in to my life with her unwelcome opinions.

The Halloween party today was rad. The games were cool, the kids enjoyed it, it was a good event.

And kids, being kids, yealled and ran, and shouted, and jumped, and just generally did the thigns kids do when they’re enjoying themselves.

Of course, CIR from hell had something to say about it; “At our Helloween party I don’t like the children to run around like this. We start off with a proper session, with vocab and stuff, so that they at least take something away from it.” Yeah, ike how you’re boring as fuck and [next door town] is awesome.

Maybe this is why 150 kids went to today’s party, and only 6 have RSVP-ed to hers.

I say hers, because fuck me I wouldn’t make it boring like she does.

Sometimes education needs to be fun. And she’s too stupid to realise that you can actually structure fun, you just have to have more contingencies. I’m a way better teacher than she is.

So today we’re helping out at the Halloween party in the town next door.

The girl who’s been put in charge of organising everything posted the location for all the helpers, since pretty much all of the people who are helping are new to Japan and weren’t here for last year’s party.

So CIR from hell comments “So the same place as last year right? :P” as though the post wasn’t necessary. Even though it was, because none of us were bloody here last year.

What.

The.

Fuck?!

Today I asked her to email me a file, because the file sharing programme she uses suddenly started asking me for a login. I don’t have one, and I don’t particularly want to create one. The internet is japanese on my work computer (everything is japanese on my work computer...) until I login to anything I have an account with anyway, so even if I wanted to make a login, I actually couldn’t.

But anyhow, I ask her to send me this file for the above reason, and instead of sending me the file SHE EMAILS ME THE GD LINK TO HER GD FILE SHARING SERVER AGAIN.

I got to work today and there’s a note from my supervisor that there was a mistake at Toyota and they need me to sign some more things and pay the first month of my insurance in cash.

Of course CIRfromhell told me everything was sorted and the first month would come out of my bank account on automatic payment.

And now I realise that everything that she helps with actually doesn’t ever go right the first time.

Phone company somehow has the wrong bank account number, so the automatic payments don’t go through and I get a letter telling me correct it or they’ll cut me off.

Internet installation couldn’t be completed on the first date because she was a retard about asking for a key.

She must be stupid. Not only does she not retain the fundamentally important not-speaking-Japanese bit, but it’s like she actively blocks out every exchange we ever have.

I said that I would ask the Buddhist pre-school is storybook time was ok instead of Halloween, and then the following day she asked me to a) come up with a lesson idea for the non-halloween class and b) email the Buddhist pre-school to see if it was ok.

The way she asked me though, it was honestly like we had never broached the subject ever before.

Our conversation before she asked me a) and b) went along the lines of me asking her if she thought storybook time was a good idea, her telling me that it probably was but to double check with the Buddhist pre-school, and then me telling her that I would do it on a certain day.