Pre-Hokkaido Business

Early August 2009

From Friday August 7th until Saturday August 15, I will be on vacation in Northern Japan. My first stop is Hokkaido, which is the second largest and northernmost of Japan’s four main islands. In the old days, it was a rough and wild land, and even now, Hokkaido is known chiefly for its agriculture and delicious food. I will spend one day in the main city of Sapporo (famous for beer and ramen), and then move down to Hakodate, which was the site of a famous battle, for two days.

After that, I will move to the Tohoku region, which is the northern area of the main island of Honshu. My first stop will be Sendai, which is one of the larger cities in the region. Then I will move down to Aizu-Wakamatsu, the site of a famous rebellion and suicide tragedy, for two nights. Finally, I will end in Tokyo, where I will do some research at one of the museums for a short story I’d like to get published.

So, that will be my summer trip. Naturally, I will give you more details once I actually do my traveling.

But in the days before my vacation, I find myself unexpectedly busy. On paper, it looks like I should be winding down with the arrival of summer. Not so. Classes ended at the third week of July, and I found myself just getting busier. Technically, these days are filled with “office days” which usually means going to the Board of Education, sitting in an air conditioned room, and doing whatever they can find for us to do. Usually that’s nothing. Usually.

Except, that with the end of July comes a change in ALTs. The old Assistant Language Teachers go home and the new ones arrive. And this year, the two other ALTs in my office, Rachelle and Vickie, were both leaving. And, in fact, I was changing schools so I had my share of goodbyes.

Someone decided that rather than having us waste time going to the office, it would be better for each of us ALTs to report to a “base” school, which could relay information to us. These base schools would be Kanoya High, Kanoya Kogyo (Technical), and Kanoya Nogyo (Agricultural)—in short the three Kanoya schools. All well and logical—except two of those schools were mine. To make a long story short, I had to switch Kanoya Kogyo (technical) for Koyama High, a smaller school further from my house.

So, in the last few weeks, I cleaned out my desk, wrote instructions for my successor, and prepared a goodbye speech (in Japanese). Every time I went to Kogyo (admittedly only three times in July), I was struck with a heavy emotion, a mix of sadness and stress. I really hadn’t expected to leave any of my schools, and I had a special affection for Kogyo, my nearly all-boys school. I had started off having almost no classes and ended up averaging four classes a day and actually preparing lessons. Kogyo was the only school where I felt like a real teacher. And that was the school I had to leave.

So, after I said goodbye to Kogyo, I had about a week and a half to say goodbye to Rachelle and Vickie. The two of them were even busier than I was. They had to clean, pack, and say goodbye to everyone. Still, we found some time to spend together. We went to see Harry Potter and I took them out to dinner. The Kanoya girls met one last time for Shirokuma: shaved ice with condensed milk and fruit. Of the six girls present, I was the only one staying.

Yesterday (was it really only yesterday?), Rachelle and Vickie left Japan. I woke up early that day, not only because I had to be at the office before 8:00, but I was also a little restless. July 29th had been wedged in my mind like a splinter. The day my friends were leaving. The day the new ALTs were arriving.

Rachelle brought some friends with her to the airport, including Noriko, a teacher from her school, and Masako, a friend who was a volunteer English guide. They reminisced while we waited in the airport. Before long, Rachelle and Vickie were waiting in line to go through security. All this time, I had been with my two friends, wondering why I didn’t feel sadder… or really anything at all. It didn’t really hit me, until I saw Noriko with tears streaming down her face and Masako wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. And then I just felt heavy.

But this tender moment was broken by a bit of comedy—well, to me it seemed as such. Jinnouchi-sensei—a teacher Kushira Shogyo, my school, and her daughter Yuana were coming to say goodbye to Rachelle. But they hadn’t told anyone until Rachelle and Vickie had given everyone hugs and were about to pass through security.

What made this event funny to me was that Jinnouchi-sensei had only spent time with Rachelle maybe four or five times—she was more my friend than Rachelle’s. But if you knew Jinnouchi-sensei at all, you would know she’s a hyper-social butterfly and she really loves making friends with people. Plus, she’d had Yuana call me and ask me about Rachelle’s departure time a few days earlier, and so I suspected something like this would happen.

Anyway, this had a happy ending, because Jinnouchi-sensei and Yuana got there just in time. They appeared right before Rachelle was about to disappear through the metal detector and had about three seconds to say goodbye. For this they had driven two hours to the airport and would drive two hours back.

Rachelle and Vickie passed through security. We all—in true Japanese fashion—stood by the glass window, waving, until we could no longer see them at all.

By now it was about 11:30. Everyone but Noriko decided to go to lunch. Now, the silent figure in all of this drama—the person I haven’t even mentioned yet—was our supervisor, Shibahara-sensei. As the only male and the person with the least English, that really wasn’t surprising. But this is how much of a social butterfly Jinnouchi-sensei is. She had never met Shibahara-sensei before, so she immediately set about getting acquainted. We went out to lunch, and the restaurant was busy, so we had to break into two groups. Jinnouchi-sensei volunteered to sit with Shibahara-sensei.

Volunteered nothing. More like, she told us how it was going to be. They sat chatting, while Yuana, Masako, and I talked about castles in Saga prefecture. Of course, Jinnouchi-sensei paid for our lunch. This did not surprise me in the least; whenever we go out, she pounces on the bill. I don’t even try to stop her anymore; just make a note in my head and try to get her a treat later on.

After lunch, Jinnouchi-sensei, Yuana, and Masako left, but Shibahara-sensei and I stayed at the airport. The new ALTs arrived at 1:30. I had the laminated signs Rachelle and Vickie had made. I was anxious. I was waiting for people I had never seen before who I would hopefully make friends with. It wasn’t just me either. Half of all ALTs coming to Kanoya were on this same flight, so the people from the Boards of Educations from all over the prefecture were gathered together with signs of their own.

The flight emptied out, and out came all the foreigners. Matt, Vickie’s replacement, was the first one we saw. He was tall, with reddish brown hair and glasses. Since he was getting Kogyo, I had emailed him a couple times before. I knew he was a year older than Vickie, from New Jersey, and liked taking photographs and sports.

Andie, Rachelle’s replacement, took a lot longer to come out. Andie was short, petite, and black. I can’t say African American, because she’s from Jamaica. All I knew about her at the time was where she was from and her age (one year older than Rachelle).

So, there we were. As soon as I saw them, most of my anxiety left. I don’t know why, but knowing what they looked like was a big relief. They were both nice and polite and wanted to know a lot about Japan. So I told them. Whatever I could think of. About halfway through the car ride, we stopped at a convenience store for drinks. I remembered how my boss had bought us ice cream the first day, so I decided to do the same.

We went to the office and the ALTs made their self-introduction speeches in Japanese. Both Matt and Andie had, oh I’d say maybe a year’s worth of Japanese, and so they could manage that just fine. But when the boss made the speech in Japanese, I was the one to translate it into English. In my two years I’ve risen into the position as the unofficial translator, a post I hold with some pride.

I offered to take the new ALTs grocery shopping after work. Then we went out to dinner and I showed them around Rina City, a shopping center near our house. By the time I got home it was 8:00. For all intents and purposes, it was a 12-hour day. And by no means was I finished.

Today, in the afternoon, we went to the bank and city hall, while I explained the two hundred ways Japan makes us sort garbage (I’m only slightly exaggerating), helped fill out forms, and did more translation in general. I don’t begrudge the extra work or the enormous amount of information that must be passed down. I actually like feeling helpful, like an older sister. At the same time, I know these are adults (both of whom are older than me) who want to be independent as soon as possible. I feel like in a few weeks I’ll be obsolete and they’ll know more about Kanoya than I will. There are already so many things I don’t know, questions I can’t answer.

They both seem nice, but I haven’t had much of a chance to get to know each other. We’re still on polite, information gathering mode. I’ve been talking and talking, but all of it practical: how to tell soy milk from normal milk, where the coin laundry is, the way ATM cards work in Japan….

Besides all this saying goodbye and saying hello, I’ve been keeping busy with other tasks, which include studying Japanese (from 1-4 hours a day), finishing a chapter (and trying to write another one), taking a medical exam (but first translating the questionnaire into English), making dinner (hoping the food doesn’t spoil too quickly in this heat), fighting insects (they’re winning), reading reviews from fans of my fanfiction (some are threatening to kill me if I don’t write another chapter), and viewing a rare once in a lifetime eclipse (which I couldn’t see at all because it was cloudy). I might go see fireworks on Saturday. I definitely have to clean my house by Sunday.

To put it succinctly, lately I’ve been just a little stressed.

So, I’m looking forward to this vacation. A break from studying Japanese. Long train rides to read in. Beautiful scenery and good food with no cooking and no washing dishes.

A New School Year

April 25, 2008

First and foremost, the beginning of the new school year has hit me hard. In Japan, school ends in March and begins again in April, with two weeks of break in between. The beginning of a new year means that my classes get jumbled around. New first year students enter, and I’m forced to do my self-introduction all over again.

But it’s not just the students that are new. The teachers are different too. Apparently, in Japan, teachers are forced to switch schools every few years, seemingly at random. And it’s not just going from Kogyo high school to Nogyo; this shuffle is widespread and can be anywhere in the prefecture. From Kanoya to Kagoshima City, from Kagoshima city to one of the islands.

I’ll give you an example. One of my new English teachers in Nogyo, Dai Uetani, worked in Shibushi high school, maybe an hour from Kanoya. Shibushi High School is an academic high school. Now he has to get used to Nogyo, my agricultural school, and most definitely not an academic high school. He’s still adjusting.

I think that this shuffle can be good for the schools, as it injects new blood and insures that students get teachers with a wide variety of experiences; at the same time, this April shuffle is very hard on the actual teachers. Another teacher from Nogyo, Nakamura-sensei, stayed at the same school, but her husband (who’s a teacher) was transferred to Kagoshima City, some three hours away. They set up separate households: he lives with their oldest son in the city, while she lives with her daughter and younger son in Kanoya. And this splitting up of households is a common occurrence. I really don’t understand why schools intentionally put strain on families like this. I don’t think we’d stand for it in America.

I was fortunate in that my schools stayed the same. I still go to Kogyo, Nogyo, and Kushira Shogyo. (The person who can tell me which school is which gets a cookie.) However, I’m not entirely unaffected by the April shuffle. I have three new English teachers: 1 in Nogyo (Uentani-sensei) and 2 in Kogyo. Kushira Shogyo had no change in JTEs and remains my most stable school. Incidentally, it’s also my least busy school. I’ve had four classes in all of April and I’ve only done my self-introduction once.

In contrast, Kogyo underwent a dramatic change. Last (school) year, it was my least busy school. Two of the 4 English teachers never took me to class and 1 only rarely. That left pretty much 1 teacher who took me to class at all. Now, however, I have two new teachers who are willing to use me, and the teacher who took me to class last year is still here. I’ve had 12 classes and done my self-introduction 8 times. In fact, it’s because my old JTEs never took me to class that I’m doing so many self-introductions now. I’ve been primarily introducing myself to second and third year students.

Well, that’s my school life. Compared to March, I find myself rather busy.

Graduation

March 7, 2008

If I had been a foreigner watching an American graduation ceremony, I wonder how it would look to me? To see the students, who chose their own styles the entire year, suddenly wear archaic robes, funny-looking hats, and wreaths of flowers across their neck. To see them walk in wobbly lines to Pomp and Circumstance, to see them receive their diplomas, to see them take out the beach balls as the speeches commenced. What would I think of a group of people, so clearly unused to ceremony, trying to execute a set of rigid graduation rituals?

The reason, of course, that I’m bringing it up, is because I saw the graduation ceremony for Kogyo High School last Monday. As I sat down in the auditorium to watch, I had no preconception of what to expect.

On the stage there was a podium and a huge, beautiful vase of flowers. The people were arranged in the same seating arrangement I had seen for Culture Day, with the 1st and 2nd year students in the center, the teachers to the sides, the guests and parents to the back. The chairs for the seniors, in the front, facing the stage, were as of yet empty.

Then music began to play. It sounded like a classical Western piece, and it was pretty and unobtrusive and full of violins. The seniors walked in from the back, in straight, smooth lines. They had practiced the week before. They’d also practiced walking during Sports Day and practiced lining up for every Monday morning assembly. When the seniors walked past their parents, there was polite applause. The seniors wore a flower pinned to their usual uniform.

After the national anthem, the principle called the student’s name in their row and one by one the students stood. Then a representative from each class walked up to the stage. The principle made a short speech. The representative took all the diplomas for that row from the principle and bowed to his or her classmates. They did this for each row.

Then there were several speeches and the school anthem was sung. The seniors walked out in their straight, even lines and this time the applause was a little more enthusiastic.

The ceremony was…unsurprising. It was another formal ritual in a place where I had already seen Orientation ceremonies, Sports Day ceremonies, Culture Festival ceremonies, drinking party protocol, and strict morning assemblies. I had never seen the graduation ceremony before, but I had seen variations of it hundred times.

Sports Day

September 22, 2007

Schools all over Japan have been celebrating Undoukai, translated into English as Sports Festival or Sports Day. A more literal translation could be “Exercise Meeting,” and, indeed the games the children play are more fun-and-easy exercises than organized, competitive sports: there are races, relays, tug-of-wars, obstacle courses, dances, and cheerleading.

Different schools have their own special touches. For instance, Kanoya Nogyou, the agricultural high school, has a parade of animals, followed by a chicken-throwing event. Live chickens are literally thrown down from a truck and flutter to the field below, whereupon members of the audience (usually parents and friends) go into a frenzy trying to catch the chickens. They get to keep the chickens they catch and eat them later.

Kanoya Kogyou, on the other hand, has a special dance they do called, I believe, the E Sa Sa. I suppose it helps that, as the technical high school, their population is mostly male. The boys (and there are no girls in this dance) wear blue shorts, no shirts, and form different groups. When the taiko drummer begins the beat, they line up in row. Kneeling down at first, they raise their fist up with a cry. Still kneeling, but with head and chest held erect, they begin to swing their hands, shouting loudly, “E Sa, E Sa, E Sa Sa.” Their cry and the taiko’s drum keeps a steady, pounding rhythmn. I asked an English teacher what “E Sa Sa” means and she said it translated into “Hooray,” but I don’t think the word quite fits. Hooray sounds wimpy. E Sa Sa is a battle cry.

I enjoy relay races and tug-of-wars, but my favorite event I probably the cheerleading. Or I suppose cheering would be a better word; it’s quite different from American cheerleading. In the first place, the entire population of the school participates in these cheers, boys included. The outfits they wear are hot. Temperature hot, I mean: shirts, long pants, long-sleeved jacket buttoned up, and sometimes gloves. Actually, the uniform is very masculine: if you’ve ever seen the boys’ winter uniforms for schools, it’s the same thing. The girls, more often than not, wore these uniforms as well. Rather than pom-poms, the students use their hands or fans or (I saw this for the farming section of Nogyou) giant daikon radishes. They don’t do the same sort of stunts cheerleaders do, but seeing 100 students yelling together and moving together is quite impressive.

The First Week of School

Early September 2007

In case I haven’t told you this, I would like to state for the record that I have three different high schools I help teach at: Kanoya Kogyou (the technical high school), Kanoya Nogyou (the agricultural high school), and Kushira Shogyou (the commercial high school). As you can guess from my use of parentheses, none of these schools are academic; they try preparing their students for a vocation rather than from college. In addition, Kogyou and Nogyou are mostly filled with boys. There are just 24 girls in the population of 600 at Kogyou. Plus, I don’t have a car, so for Kogyou and Shogyou at least, I had to take the bus.

That Sunday night I had restless nightmares about missing the bus, and I awoke at 6:00 AM, filled with nervous energy. I got on the right bus, thanks in part to a kindly old man whose job seems to be to direct people at the Kanoya Bus Center to the right bus. I got to school all right, and almost immediately after that, I had to give an introductory speech in front of the whole 600 students and staff. I got through that short speech and had nothing to do for the rest of the day. But doing nothing was almost worst than giving the speech. I was awash with anxiety.

After lunch, both students and teachers must clean, so one of the English teachers took me to her classroom. On the way, we passed through the hall and the students peered at me through the window and called my name. Now imagine walking through the hall and having thirty or forty teenage boys who you don’t know all calling your name in a half-friendly, half-leering sort of way. It was intimidating. I mean, I’m used to being sort of invisible, tucked-into-a-corner-with-a-book. The sort of “instant celebrity” status I had, just from being a foreigner and a new teacher, was unnerving.

In fact, I was so unnerved that, when I got home from school at just after 5:00, I immediately called Rachelle, another Assistant Language Teacher from my office, and asked her how her day was. We decided to have dinner at Joyfull, a cheap, chain restaurant. (I wanted to go there because it has a cheap drink bar with unlimited refills—a rare thing in Japan—and I was parched.) I vented my anxiety out to her for at least a couple of hours. It was 8:00 when I got home, and I sank into bed shortly after.

The next day I woke up at 6:00 again and went to Nogyou. I didn’t have to give a speech in front of an assembly, thank goodness, but I did have to give introductory speeches to about 3 classes. I felt nervous and awkward, but I tried channeling that energy into something productive, a technique I learned in drama. I don’t really remember much of that first speech, to tell the truth, but at least the ice had been broken. I had taught in front of a class.



I went to Shogyou on Wednesday, taking a long bus ride (half an hour) to get to the school. Here I had to make a speech in front of the school, again. I didn’t have to do anything else because the school had a Sports Day coming up and had to practice. I watched the school march across the field in slow columns. I asked the teacher about Sports Day and she said that the students would perform racing, cheering, six-legged races, etc. Sports Day is, apparently, an important school wide event all over Japan.

The week went quicker after that. I had to make my introductory speech to classes at Kogyou on Thursday and make my speech to more classes at Nogyou on Friday. The result of this was that I’m now getting very good at introducing myself. I know, for example, how loud I must speak and when to write on the board. I’ve also gotten to see the teaching style of the English teachers. Some, after I speak, ask questions to me and the students, so that the conversation is continued. Some translate every word I’ve said into Japanese, so that I wonder what the point of me speaking was. Some make the students take a quiz. Some dismiss me after I’ve given my speech, others make me stay and read the textbook loud. Some English teachers have avoided me altogether.

As I’ve gotten more used to being in front of a class, two major frustrations have already emerged. First, in all the orientations I’ve been to, in all the speeches that have been made towards me, people say, English is bad in Japan, please try to help improve it. Whether they make this request in earnest or not, I’m taking this seriously. I remember taking five years of Spanish in High School and Junior High. I remember getting a 1 on my Spanish AP test, and worst of all, knowing in my heart I couldn’t speak or understand it. I don’t want the students to feel that way. But I feel restricted. How can I improve English when I’m so inexperienced? And again, how can I even get to know the students (let alone have an impact on them) when I see them so little? (I think some classes I’ll see as little as 2-3 times a semester.) Plus, I’m not in charge of the classroom: the English teacher decides what we will or will not do. Sometimes I feel like I’m no more than a tool to them, like a flexible tape recording or a talking textbook.

Which brings me to my second problem: What is my role supposed to be? That’s tough to figure out. If I’m no more than a teaching tool, does that mean when I’m not in use, I can do whatever I want? Or should I be walking around, making myself seen? I feel like I’m part-teacher, part-ambassador, part-English-speaking-native-brought-to-Japan-to-improve-pronounciation, part-novelty, part-tool, part-in, part-out. My official role is as a teacher’s aid, but I haven’t figured out what that means. I’m above the students, below the teachers, and in a limbo that’s all my own.