Fishing the Seto Inland Sea

I spent my evening gutting the fish that have been in my freezer for a month.

The pink-and-green wrasse is marinating in soysauce and vinegar in my fridge for the night, while the long scary tachiuo (sablefish) is in my belly. There's something exhilarating about catching your food in the wilderness, prepping it with your own knife, and boiling it on your own stove, with your own sake and soysauce and sugar. The rice I ate the fish over was a gift from my 6th graders at Kawamo, planted and harvested from their own paddy behind the school. The tomatos and cucumbers I made a salad out of were a goodbye gift from the second grade teacher at Mitani. A whole local meal, caught or picked by me or my friends, in Yakage or the Seto Inland Sea.

I caught these fish back in early June, when I went out on the Inland Sea from Kasaoka harbor. I was invited by my friend Morikawa-san, the fisherman-librarian from Okayama Public Library who took me fishing for octopus last fall, and his young friend Nakayama-san, to spend the Saturday afternoon fishing on Nakayama's boat. Morikawa-san met Nakayama at a fishing shop where they both buy bait, when the owner introduced them as guys he thought would get along. Ever since, Nakayama's been offering to take out "Morikawa-sensei" (he used to be a middle school teacher) with Nakayama's two young boys, Umi 海　and Kouga 海旅. The kids names mean "Ocean" and "Sea Voyage."





We ended up catching some twenty fish, all species I'd never caught before. I was most excited to catch a bright green-and-pink fish that I recognized as a wrasse, the tropical fish I'd seen once snorkeling with Danny's family in Hawaii; I looked it up on my Wordtank and sure enough, it was a べら "bera". We also caught these freaky long thrashy fish called tachiuo ("sablefish" in french; scabbardfish in English) that are really common in Japanese supermarkets, and a translucent silver fish called "kissu". The guys gave me a bag full to take home with me, but my sister was coming to visit hte next week, so I put them in my freezer and didn't touch them again until tonight, a month later, when I've finished teaching and I've got a solitary weekend in Yakage by myself. The fish were beautiful to catch, fun to dissect, and tasty to eat.

I hope the next fish I catch come from the James River.

My Workplace

Summer vacation begins next week, and with it, the end of my teaching. These are photos from this week's lessons, my last at all four schools in Yakage.

Me with the Oda second graders and the origami they taught me on our last day together.


My lunch tray from the last day at Nakagawa, with my new Ryoma fan.

Kenshin the "evil daimyo", me and my samurai, with the Ryoma fan I bought in Nagasaki.

Me and a second grader at Nakagawa, handing me her class' photo and goodbye letters.

Yui-chan at kyushoku, school lunch, in her second grade classroom at Mitani.
Me with the faculty at Mitani Shogakko as I was leaving on my last day.

Me and the Kawamo 5th graders playing "Taylor Tiger" (They're meat, I'm the tiger).

My desk in the faculty room on a typical day; the manga is about Ryoma, from the school library; the characters I made for a review board game we played this week, based on our English class pals Toru-chan the Koala, Spiderman, Cow-chan, and Mario.


The third grade at Oda Shougakko after our clothing lesson, with Mario characters.


Me with Ryoma

Ishida-sensei's 4th grade class after our last lesson. Ishida, a 25 year old drummer who graduated from a music academy and studied in Germany, is the best teacher I've taught with, and we've taught together, three separate classes at two schools, for two years. I really look up to him, and I've learned a ton from him about persuasion-- how to appeal to children, get them to look up to you and channel their energies into what you want them to learn. Ishida is wildly enthusiastic about English, and has always helped me. His is the one class where, these last few months, I told the kids I hit my head in a bicycle accident and forgot all my Japanese, and from that point on conducted the whole class in English, with him occassionally translating what I said, and helping me to mime things.

If the kids look a little mopey, it's because all of us-- this entire class of 4th graders, Ishida and me included, just finished crying our eyes out. It was the most emotionally intense moment, my last day in Ishida's class. Every single one of the home-room teachers I teach with had their kids (400 of them total) write me a personal thank-you note, some with photos attached, or drawings or pop-up picture books the children made for me. But Ishida also had his kids decorate the entire class for me-- drawing pictures of me and notes to me on the blackboard in colored chalk, putting their drawings of me up on the wall-- and then he had the kids sing a song to me, called "O-wasure" (Parting), about how they'd never forget me, and then stand in a line and read to me, one by one, their personal letters to me in Japanese. Ex: "Te-i-ra sensei, I did not like English before you came. But every week when I saw your smile, I wanted to do my best, and now I can talk to foreigners. Now that I will not see you again, I am very sad. When you go back to America, please remember us. I will never forget you." One or two kids got through reading their notes to me before the tears started. About the third kid got choked up on his second sentence, and from that point forward, I had to hold the hand or pat the back of almost every kid to help him get through, telling him that it was ok, I was only moving to Kyoto, I'd be back. When the kids finally finished reading their sweet notes, my eyes were a little wet. But then I looked over at Ishida-sensei, who was about to give his own goodbye speech to me, and saw that he was sobbing, his face streaked with tears. I couldn't watch this role model of mine, dabbing at his eyes with his rolled up sweatshirt as he tried to get through telling me how much it had meant to him to work with me these two years, more than a second before I was crying too. The speech ended with me and Ishida throwing our arms around each other to a crowd of howling, weeping 10 year olds.

Needless to say, it was dramatic. Afterwards we calmed the children, and ourselves, down by getting them to sing one of our favorite English songs, the Rainbow song, while pointing to colors in the classroom ("red and yellow and green and blue, purple and orange and pink. I can see a rainbow, see a rainbow, see a rainbow now"). Then I asked them to pose for this last class photo.