Born – 1971
Hometown – Southern England.
I moved house a total of 14 times during my childhood, no we weren’t on the run from the authorities. My father, an architect, was playing the property market, renovating old buildings for resale. Maybe that transitory existence gave me my ‘wanderlust’, making moving to Japan not such a big deal.
The Italian Connection
I was raised in and around a fairly non descript town but it did have the distinction of having the highest population of Italians per capita in the country. Like many Britains my childhood was laced with the experience of living alongside other cultures but I guess that of Italy was always strongest.
Among these:
I) Little grey haired Italian ladies head to foot in black (they seemed to spend their whole old age in mourning!) walking down the street carrying big bags of groceries.
II) Going to the cinema with my Italian friends older brothers and watching them try and sweet talk a girl in the row in front like something from a Fellini movie. I’ve never since seen anybody so energetically woo a member of the fairer sex with less hope of success.
III) Going to an Italian friend’s house to play. The family were owner/cooks of a big Italian restaurant and the mother would whip up a huge bowl of pasta for us that we were allowed to eat in the empty restaurant since it was off hours. That huge half lit space seemed magical, devoid of customers except us.
IV) Going to the pizzeria with my friends after a night on the town. We always seemed to end up there. Just long bench tables with cheap plastic red check tableclothes, you never knew who was sitting next to you and we were usually too drunk to care. There was sure to be a few old timers in the corner, dark suited sicilians sipping their grappa and watching the Italian satelite tv.
V) Same place, the Sambuca we drank. This aniseed liqueur came with a coffee bean floating in it and on fire so the flavour of the roasting coffee bean permeated the drink. The trick was to blow out the blue flame and quickly down it in one, without swallowing the bean. Too slow and the glass would scorch your lips. Too slow and ‘Big John’, the Irish guy we hung out with, would probably clout you anyway. We practiced our technique without fail each week!
VI) The barber I went too. Tony and Tony and sons. I kid you not. No matter what haircut you requested you always walked out looking like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. When they weren’t busy they would line some chairs outside in the street and sit out there playing cards just like in Sicily. The brothers always talked in Italian while they cut hair and most times it seemed to be a fight. Some occasions the customers had to sit and wait while the 2 brothers sized up to each other, or else one of the younger Tonys would step in. While sat in the chair it was fun to watch how things were progressing behind you by looking in the mirror.
VII) The deli across the street. It was a real Aladdin’s cave with salami and prosciutto hanging from the ceiling and always a few bowls of antipasto like ‘insalata di funghi’ on the counter. Of course since we weren’t Italian I wasn’t familiar with most of the stuff but around my teens I started to study a bit of Italian, talk to the shop owner, Maria, and do a bit of cooking.
So what does this all lead to and what’s it got to do with the farm ?
Well even now I have a love of good Italian food and being in Japan a desire to make it for myself and introduce it to the Japanese.
A lot like Britain’s gastronomic journey from the 70’s the populace of Japan is slowly becoming more knowledgeable and discerning about foreign food. 10 years ago when I first came to Japan it would have been unimagineable to find olive oil, parma ham and pesto on the shelves of the supermarket. So much has changed.
This globilisation of the Japanese palate seems to be gathering speed. And so my aim in short is to produce some very genuine premium Italian products for the domestic market.
This is the core idea.
We’re going to play around with producing everything on a trial basis and enjoy our own gastronimic journey with it all. Both of us being in employment while limiting our time allows us this luxury.
On the cards are:
Vegetables
San Marzano tomatoes
and the subsequent Passata, sun-dried tomatoes, tomato paste.
Baby salad leaves.
A cornucopia of herbs.
Italian varieties of pepper, courgette and aubergine.
Fennel, chicory and artichoke.
Pork Products salume
salami
bacon
Dairy Products
Ricotta
Pecorino
natural wool
Duck eggs.
Olives and Olive oil.
A Nature Rich Education
Members of my year in design school made a ‘Person most likely to…’ list of all the course members on graduation. My description ?
‘Person most likely to be on the verge of international success in architecture
then suddenly decided to jack it in and start a pig farm in Devon.’
Chillingly accurate ! Except for the international success part.
In the later half of my schooldays I ummed and erred as to whether to pursue my love of biology or go into art and design that had always played a big part in my childhood.
Sundays in my youth had often been spent at my grandmother’s, an ever enthusiastic artist,sketching in the garden or house if the weather didn’t allow. The old wood box crammed withpencils, sketchpads and pastels she used to take down after the hearty breakfast she alwayssupplied me with was imbued with wonder. I still remember the smell of the waxy crayons now.
As previously mentioned my father, was an architect and with his office in the front roomin the house I spent my childhood surrounded by mountains of plans and driving him crazy by dismantaling his Rotring draughting pens. So artistic pursuit was always around me.
My love of nature came from family holidays taken in a cottage along the Norfolk coast.
From an early age I would escape over the fields much to the disconcertion of my parents since I was still a tiny tot. Bird-watching would later give me a reason to be outdoors and later still field archery and mountain walking, whatever got me out in the land to
feel alive. The quality of the mountain walking in the nearby Brecon Beacons was a majorreason in choosing to study in Cardiff in South Wales on leaving school.
I was lucky enough to go to a school that had a nature reserve to practically teachconservation and for field study. Every Wednesday afternoon the ‘conservation club’ made upof about 15 mainly ‘draught dodgers’ went by minibus to the reserve. You see the alternative to these cosy little Wednesday afternoon clubs (such as the croquet club with the church reverend) was the army corp, they drilled up and down the school and seemed to get shouted at a lot. We on the other hand spent most afternoons whacking the crap out of trees with mallets and saws or else dredging the lake in the boat. Once a year in Autumn we did a real major slash and burn on the place and were allowed a small can of shandy after work was
complete. Fun times.
Subconsciously it’s this experience that forms the impetus for my proposals for the teaching side of the farm.
I’ve been teaching in the state schools of Japan for around 4 years now. IncreasinglyI’ve come aware of the lack of contact with nature that kids now face, by that I mean nature with a capital N, the big wood that you walk in and feel a bit scared, the sheep that nibbles your sweater, getting dirt under your fingertips and sand in your hair.
Japanese schools I feel, make an noble effort to engage the students in nature but with the majority of schools being situated in the ’suburban soup’ that makes up a large part of Japan opportunity and resources are limited. Typically primary students will grow some flower or plant in the classroom, take a walk along a road to a local park, collect some
acorns or such from it and maybe capture some bugs for the classroom which always seem to end up very poorly cared for.
I am of course a teacher of English but our present location also allows us to offer the kids much more.
My dream is to create a holistic school environment by which I mean the experience of using English is centred around real experiences and challenges.
In practical terms this means the kids come and explore nature, the land, animals, farm produce or craftskills and learn and use the English they need for the day’s task.
Central to this approach is addressing the question,
“What is language anyway ?”
Essentially it’s a means to communicate, of course. So as a teacher don’t I actually need to create a situation in which communication is neccessary? Anything other than that can besaid to be practice.
This methodology is nothing new and is known as ‘task-based’ learning in edu-speak.
When it works (and I would say it has a good hit rate) the language the students study is cemented by the experience of the task that they did while using it.
A positive attitude to the language is accomplished by them realizing they accomplished the task with the aid of the language. This presupposes that the students succeed in their task but another question I’m always asking myself as a teacher and trying to ensure the answer is a resounding ‘Yes’ is ‘Am I setting up my students for success ?’
We are still having a lot of fun working out the particulars of the school but so far:
I’m a great admirer of Kenji Miyazawa, the Japanese naturalist/educator/spirtualist who has inspired some great independent schools such as this one along the lines we hope to pursue.
Kids playing in the giant hammock at ‘Mori to Kaze no Gakko’, an independent school in Iwate.
The school will have both regularly weekly classes and activity weekends in which kids take part in bigger projects certain times of the year.
Everytime we think about this the ideas just seem to flow but here are a few we’ve had:
Home made Jam making
Sausage making
Cheese making
Pizza making (with our home produce)
Insect hunts
Bird Spotting challenge
Story telling in the garden.
Maze making (in the hay field)
Easter egg painting & hunting
Halloween pumpkin carving
Competition for naming new farm animal births/arrivals
Autumn Firework night and camp
I tried some farming work, back breaking bale stacking during the harvest. I think I couldn’t have been much bigger than the bales themselves.
Then working alongside a gamekeeper. Wow, what an education that was ! So many memories;
Taking his 2 labradors for a walk, though who was taking whom for a walk was certainly up for question.
Feeding the foxhounds that were really like a pack of wolves in a big steel enclosure out back.
The bizarre site of a sea of pheasants descending from trees and half flying half running towards the gamekeeper as he entered a copse and called them for feeding. Like some rich brown carpet weaved before your eyes.
He was a champion fly fisherman too who’s delight at the end of the working day was the half hour of twilight in which he could work a river or lake for fish. He lifted those fish just as easily as he was fishing them from a bucket. He passed me the rod a few times to enjoy reeling them in. I wouldn’t start fly fishing myself for another good 15 years but I still
remember the excitement.
So it was a close thing but I went into design and graduated as an interior architect, which by definition means a designer who specialise in the extensive renovation or change of use of an existing building. Didn’t use it much though, and looks like my own home will be my first completed project.
I completed the TEFL certificate in teaching in England. The classes we taught to on the course were an amazing mix of nations, and were a dazzling display of cultural difference. The middle eastern students, would argue about anything, even the weather, throwing all hope of decent grammar out, meanwhile the asian students would look stunned and scared at
these outbursts as if they wanted to run out of the room.
It was quite a battle to keep all parties involved and happy.
After this I took my first teaching post, going straight to Japan.
Ironically my plan at that time was to save money in Japan for 2 or 3 years in order to buy a small farm in France.
I was lucky enough to be posted to a school in Hokkaido, Japan’s wildest Northern island where I learned to snowboard and enjoyed the Hokkaido people’s easy going nature and wondeful landscape.
Rishiri-yama an island mountain at the far north of Hokkaido I was lucky enough to climb
I then moved down to the centre of the main island of Japan, taking a position in the head office of the area, doing some teacher support and training.
I met my future wife a few years later again ironically not far from where the farm we bought is. I quit the privately owned school conversation scene and started working as a teacher in the public sector something I’d been longing to do for a long time.
For those contemplating teaching in Japan I would say while the private language schools may offer a well structured, secure job, from the teaching perspective schools are much more satisfying. In an increasingly competitive market teachers often find the needs of education and profit make teaching in private schools difficult. For example teachers are often pushed to sell books or more classes to their students juggling the hats of salesman and teacher.
You have to accept that you are a company worker in a business and that the decisions of the company are not always going to be for the benefit of your students learning.
Now as a state teacher I enjoy working in an environment purely involved in the task of educating young minds and the kids enthusiasm constantly feeds my own as well as giving me fresh challenges everyday.
Through working in Japanese Kindergarten, primary and secondary schools I’ve had a great insight into how the minds of Japan are shaped. The kids are just like kids all over the world, fun loving, curious, energetic. In primary school these natural innate characteristics are feed with teaching styles that let the children discover and play with the knowledge.
But even now the kids are bombarded with instructions and they come in time to expect it.
Ask the children to take out a colour pencil and it will not be surprising to hear a student ask ‘Any colour? Is green ok?’ Janken (rock,scissors,paper) is routinely used to decide all that cannot be decided by explanation such as who will go first or who gets something there is not enough of. Japanese kids stand aghast when I say ‘Janken’(rock scissors
paper game) is rarely used in the UK.
Using Janken avoids conflict but also discussion and reason to and I wonder what important lessons in communication are being lost.
Come secondary school and you will be hard to find a teacher who is able to incorporate the fun of discovery and opinion giving into their class. The kids are the same but the objective is now success in the barage of tests, sometimes referered to as ‘test hell’, that the kids will face in their next 6 years of schooling. Learning at worst becomes knowledge for it’s own sake. The teachers fighting to get through the curriculum in time.
I’m painting a grim picture here because I’m highlighting those things that I feel are wrong in the education and I want to better in the teaching environment I create, there is, of course, a lot to be praised too. I don’t remember my school to be such a happy, positive and energised environment as any school I’ve worked in.
I’m looking forward to continuing to work with Japanese kids in my own school and setting up a framework for their education that I hope feeds their innate curiousity, energy and creativity.
