On the Word "Demolish"

Last Sunday a friend took me up to Akayu to attend a concert given by Futenma Kaori, a singer from Okinawa.  I'm not sure when the connection between my friend and Ms. Futenma originated but it goes back a little while.  The concert was held in the Akayu Civic Hall which is an aging structure which houses an auditorium and probably meeting rooms and a few offices.  I remarked that the building looked like it could use a fresh coat of paint and I was advised that it will soon be torn down.  If I'm not mistaken, it was erected in the 43rd year of the Showa era which was 1968.  I would hazard a guess it's replacement is being erected using government funds earmarked for replacing civic buildings.  The new Yonezawa library is another project funded that way.

During the following week I mentioned in a couple of classes that I had been up to Akayu and visited their civic hall.  My first challenge was trying to get students to understand what I was talking about.  In one class I resorted to finding an image of the building using my iPhone and showing that to the students.

My Friday night beginner's class seemed to grasp the idea of what a civic hall is when I pointed in the direction of the area where the Yonezawa Civic Cultural Centre (re: auditorium) stands.  I mentioned its location next to a former public square and that seemed to do the trick.  Where I lost them was when I said the counterpart in Akayu was being demolished.  I wrote the word "demolish" on the board and made motions with my hands to indicate two walls of a building falling inwards while trying to impress upon them the phrase "tear down a building".  That got me a couple of very puzzled looks.

I didn't want to resort to using Japanese so I tried to think of something the two students could relate to.  One is a young woman who is works in the Kanaike neighbourhood and the other is a junior high school student.  I glanced at the junior high school student and then I hit upon an idea: mention the fate of Yonezawa Fourth Junior High School in Kanaike.  That school's main building and gymnasium were found to be structurally unsound after the March 2011 earthquake.  Both were demolished and right now construction of the main building is nearing completion. 

As soon as I mentioned that school building and its replacement my student's eyes lit up.  Okay.  They got the concept.  Once I clarified that "demolish" was in reference to the old building which is no longer then things were okay.  I don't want to think about what I would've had to resort to if I hadn't thought of that school.


Post script:  The pace of construction over here can sometimes be frustratingly slow.  I used to have a student who attended Yonezawa Fourth Junior High School.  He graduated this past March.  I had asked him last winter "When will they finish building your school?" and he just shrugged his shoulders.  He replied "Yes" to my follow-up question of "...After you graduate?", which turned out to be the case.  So almost all of his time at the school was spent attending classes in two temporary structures.  The structures are three story buildings made of steel girders and corrugated steel walls.  They're probably cold as heck inside in the winter and hot as heck in the summer.  But I suppose they're a better alternative than the modular wooden mobile home-like buildings employed when I was in high school in North Vancouver.

Small Surprises

The past month or so has featured a couple of small surprises.  The first one came from the realization that young children can have crushes on their teachers.  It popped up in front of me when a six year-old girl drew a likeness of me on the board next to a princess (who I presume was supposed to be her).  Add all the little hearts she drew in to fill up the empty space and yes, I got the message.  Luckily her mother was there to keep an eye on her that day so that drawing had a short life.  As things turned out, the mother had already planned on bringing her daughters to our school on a different day so after the switch I no longer have that situation to deal with.

The other one came about last week.  The father of one of my junior high school class students came by one evening to pay his daughter's monthly lesson fees.  I was teaching at the time so I wasn't there to overhear the conversation he had with our office manager.  After I finished teaching our office manager mentioned something from the conversation she had had with him.  She had asked him how his daughter was doing in my class.  His answer was positive but he went on to mention what had happened to her at school.  Apparently her English teacher, who our manager discerned is Japanese, had admonished her by remarking that her English pronunciation was too good in comparison to the rest of the students in that class.  So now the girl has to put in the effort not to sound out of place when using English at school.  My office manager opined that she couldn't believe that such a comment would be uttered in this day and age.  Likewise it caught me off guard too.  I had completely forgotten about the expression "The nail which sticks out gets hammered down".     

A Small Writing Assignment

The company I work for distributes a flyer each month to students which features a written contribution from one of the teachers.  That contribution is entered in the "Global Talk" section.  The articles usually focus on various aspects of life back in each teacher's home country.  The recent exception was an article written by my co-worker James about his experiences when he first came to Japan as a high school exchange student (if I recall correctly, he graduated from a high school in Shiga prefecture following three years of study there).

Two weeks ago I was asked to provide a Global Talk article.  Initially I was stumped as to what to choose as a topic.  The requester suggested that I use one of the articles I have written for a series of lunchtime lessons I teach.  My response to that was a "Well..."said with a tone of voice which didn't hide the fact I thought that was a bit of a cop out.  She kindly responded "You have an interesting one coming up about the Stanley Cup.  How about choosing hockey as a topic.".  Okay.  She had me there.  She asked if I could have the article ready in two weeks and I said I could have it ready the next week.  It wouldn't take me two weeks to write a three hundred and fifty word article.

My first thoughts about the article were focused on how to introduce the topic to my audience.  I thought of my sport spectator experiences in Japan.  On my past trips here I took whatever opportunity which presented itself to go watch sumo, specifically the grand tournaments which are held every two months.  I've yet to watch a baseball game in person in Japan.  The closest professional team is based in Sendai and I'm not one to take that much time and trouble to watch a baseball game.  I will travel to watch soccer matches.  So I'm content to drive up to Tendo and watch the local team, Montedio Yamagata, struggle to gain promotion to the top level J1 League.  After watching Montedio win their latest match I struck upon the idea of drawing a quick analogy between Japan's two national sports, sumo and baseball, with Canada's two national sports, lacrosse and hockey.

So I put that idea to paper...so to speak.  Actually, I typed it up on a computer in a word processing document.  I had gotten started on the second paragraph when I had to set the article aside to teach some classes.  Upon completing those I returned to the article...and didn't like what I saw.  It was a bit convoluted and dry.  Really dry.  The contents amounted to a tenuous comparison between two cultures and their favourite sports plus some historical facts.  It lacked life.

I leaned back and thought for a moment; what makes a game interesting as a spectator?  For some odd reason "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" popped into my head.  The logical connection to that for a hockey fan...of course...!   I quickly typed in the words to the chorus of Stompin' Tom Connor's "Hockey Song" at the head of the article.  Voila!  It was the blast of fresh air the article needed.

The rest of the article was written up quickly.  Out went the history lesson.  The description of the game was boiled down to "people on skates using curved sticks to try to put a round object, it's called a 'puck', into a goal".  Due to space constraints mention of Foster Hewitt had to be dropped but the anecdote about Danny Gallivan, where a university professor complained to him that "cannonading" wasn't a word, stayed.

I closed off the article with the chorus from "Big League", a song recorded by Tom Cochrane and Red Rider.  I had chosen to write about a moment at a hockey game which I thought was special.  I've been to many games over the years so there were plenty to choose from.  I ended up choosing the Vancouver Canuck's 2008-2009 season home opener.  Before that game a memorial tribute ceremony was held to honour Luc Bourdon, a young member of the team who had died in a motorcycle accident in May 2008.  Tom Cochrane and, if I'm not mistaken, Red Rider band mate Ken Greer performed "Big League" as part of the ceremony.  For me, it was a haunting and powerful moment.  I don't suppose my little article did it justice but I hope I managed to convey an iota of its impact to my audience.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed on that one...