Sweet Dreams!

Where do I start? It’s been a while since my last blog post and quite a lot has occurred in the last month. The days are flying by and I have sunk into a pretty good routine. I’ve fully adjusted and now feel comfortable where I am mentally and physically. I love my new apartment and the area I am living in and feel at peace with the decision I made to come here, I love my job and have yet to begrudgingly trudge to work. I find myself laughing at times when I think back to my job at Free The Children, sitting at a desk for hours at a time jamming on my keyboard, never again! “The now” is good, and tomorrow seems to be getting better. Learning new words... I started asking my students to teach me new Japanese words that I can use on a daily basis. It seemed like a good idea at first, free Japanese lessons...this was obviously a naive thought. This lasted a few days when I realized they were not the best at helping me... I asked my students how I would say “have a good night.” They gave me a simple phrase to use and I eagerly wrote it down, said it a few times in my head and used it that evening when I left the gym and the store. I started using my new word and felt quite proud that I not only learned something new but can now show my gratitude and friendly demeanour to those I come across. Back home in Canada I would usually wish a store clerk a good night or have a good day after I leave a counter; I figured I could do that here. So I started saying “Oyasuminasai” to the guy behind the counter at the gym, the liquor store clerk and the ladies at the grocery store. All this time I thought I was saying Thank you and have a good night. I reported back to my students that I had been using the new word they had taught me. When they found out I was saying “Oyasuminasai” to the people at the grocery store they burst out laughing and they were quick to explain that that phrase is used only before you go to bed as if you were laying next to someone, the literal translation was sweet dreams. As they told me this I was laughing and running through my head that facial expressions of all the Japanese people I had said this too, especially the guy at the liquor store, a ponderous look on his face, he probably thought I was a psycho waving goodbye to him and telling him to have sweet dreams. I have quickly erased this word from my vocabulary and sheepishly just say thank you now. Lesson learned. Thanksgiving weekend in Japan: My trip to Hakone. Hakone is a beautiful mountainous region full of hiking trails, hot springs and good eats. My cousin, his wife and I left early Saturday morning for Hakone. The most notable event of this trip was our hike. We took an extensive route through the hills reaching 3 major site seeing peeks as we trekked along the spine of the mountains. The trails were lined with thick walls of grass stretching at least 10 feet in height, the grass was so dense you could not see more than a foot in front of you if you dared to try and stick your head through it, you could not see anything around you only the trail that was laid out ahead. Along the way we would stumble out to open areas where we would be fixated by the epic view of the mountainous area and the outline of the small town we left below us. The trail it self was incredibly rough. It looked like an old river bed, a variety of oddly shaped rocks were thrown throughout the trail making it very hard to navigate, climbing down boulders or stumbling over small rocks that hadn’t yet found its place in the ground yet was a common occurrence. Along the path from time to time we would pass other hikers. Aside from the view the most spectacular part about this trek were the other hikers that we met along the trail. They were not young, they were elderly at times appearing to be closing in on at least 60 years of age. These elderly hikers were in amazing shape. Most elderly people in Japan seem to be still highly mobile at a very old age. This was no easy trail for an older person, it was hard enough for myself I imagine it must have been tough for them. At one point during the hike we had stopped to take a short water break. Close to us were another group of hikers. They were elderly and obviously much wiser than us.... Let’s step back here to our pre departure... a few hours earlier we had stopped off at a small shop to get a few snacks before out hike, we bought water but for some reason thought it was a good idea to grab some of the fried chicken that was for sale in the hot food section of the store. It looked good at the time and to be honest I thought it was going to be a tasty snack to eat at the top of the mountain. It wasn’t...instead it was pretty much deep fried chicken fat....so there we were drinking our water and disgruntled about our choice of snack. We stood there on our short break and watched a group of elderly people enjoy some fruit, a smart choice on their part. It’s pretty safe to say that I learned my lesson here, friend chicken is not the best snack for a long hike, bring some juicy fruit instead...who knows maybe these elderly people had the same life lesson in their younger years. I believe one of us mumbled under our breath, “I’d kill for a slice of that apple pear.” We all had the same thoughts, it did look pretty good. I’m not sure if they heard us, maybe they thought we were going to kill them for their apples, nonetheless as per usual the kindness and hospitality of the Japanese people was shown. The elderly man from the group came to us and offered some over some of his fruit. I had a slice of the apple pear and that pretty much picked me up for the rest of the trip. The trip took us just over 3 hours, powering through the hills we must have walked at least 10 km’s, it was intense and I would say my legs almost gave out a few times on the way down. We hobbled back to Tokyo the next day, exhausted but eager to have a day of rest back at home. Thanksgiving Monday I decided to have a few people over, my cousin Kristen, his wife Kathryn, my friend Loy and Shanna were able to cram ourselves into my apartment and enjoy a thanksgiving feast. I had made a trek earlier that day to a gaijin supermarket where sure as you’d have it there was a special display full of Canadian Thanksgiving treats, I was able to find stoughing, cranberry sauce and turkey gravy! I wasn’t about to miss out on a feast, Turkey or not I was going to cook up something. I had a craving for a good food coma that comes with the tradition of any Canadian Thanksgiving feast. I had one burner and two frying pans, there was no way I could cook a turkey, instead I made chicken cutlets on the frying pan. I made mash potatoes, gravy, and stoughing. It all turned out pretty good for what I was working with. Sure enough after about a good 45 minutes of eating I was sitting on my floor barely able to move, ahhh, it felt like I was home, there’s nothing like a good old Canadian food fest on Thanksgiving. Some tid bits about my class. I don’t know what it is about being a teacher, I could be extremely tired, but as soon as those kids walk in the room I seem to gain momentum. This is obviously my first year teaching, I have only seen really a few classes back home but my class seems to be bounding with energy, I am feeding off it and enjoying it each day. Each student is just bursting with charisma, witt and eagerness to learn, it keeps me going and on my toes, they always want to test themselves with something harder. We just started a new science unit on light and sound, they were just bursting at the seams the day I told them we had our first science experiment, I advised them to listen closely to instruction and follow along and they did so as if they were adults, I was extremely proud of them. I have a few running jokes with the students, one student in particular using the phrase easy peezy lemon squeezing all the time. Whenever I give him something challenging to do I tell him that it should be easy pizza lemony treatza...he laughs, and tells me that I must be really old because I forgot how to say things that kids usually say. On that same day, one student asked me my age, I told them I couldn’t tell them and she said, “well you must be at least 40”...haha I laughed, then another student piped up and said, “no way he is not forty,” thinking that this student might catch on to my youth I was a little relieved...he continued to say, “there is no way Mr. Montgomery is 40, but he’s at least 35”...still way off, but nice try. I also had the class believing that I lived in a secret underground house, the door to this place was underneath the classroom carpet. This was kind of funny as I really think they actually believed me. I caught one of them lifting up the carpet one morning when I was out of the room...haha, maybe they were looking for me. I had them going until I walked out of my apartment one day and one of my students was passing by. The jig was up and sure enough the next day I had all my students in my class telling me they knew where I lived...ugh...I hope I don’t have to move again. Soccer baseball... Kathryn (my cousin) teaches my class P.E, she invited me out on Friday afternoon to play soccer baseball with the kids. It was pretty fun watching them play this game, it was their second time playing and they were still getting used to it. It’s fun to watch them outside the classroom setting like this, they get pretty competitive and you see some real intensity light up in a few of them. I played along with them and was trying to go easy on them. I was actually really worried I would just kick the ball and nail one of my students in the face. Every time I was up to kick the ball my team would beg me to kick a homerun, I wouldn’t instead I would kick it pretty softly and let them catch it or try to tag me out. This was a bad game plan...my team fell behind by 7 points. It was closing in on the last two innings and two of my most competitive male students were begging for a miracle...as luck would have it, bases were loaded and Mr. Montgomery was up. We needed to score, I figured oh well let’s have some real fun, I blasted the ball out of the park, grand slam! I felt pretty bad for the other team as my team rounded the bases... we had just won the game...I really wondered if I should have done that, that was until one of the kids from the other team came over to me at the end of the game and said, Mr. Montgomery, that home run you had was the coolest thing I have seen all week. He lost the game, but he didn’t care, he just couldn’t believe a “35” year old could have a kick like that. Lesson learned son. I will try and keep my blog more up to date so that I don’t have to post huge posts like this. That way I can include shorter stories with more detail and likely really take a good look at the grammar before I publish them. Hope this one was ok. I will write again soon!