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.
Showing posts with label School culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label School culture. Show all posts
Sunday, March 7, 2010
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.
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.
Becky Goes Out to Dinner
February 26, 2007
For practically all of February, I have spent weekends at home. This was due in part to my cold, due in part to a lack of a social calendar.
The only thing I’ve done socially has involved dinners. Two weeks ago, on Friday, I went out with the English-speaking staff at Nogyou for a Shinnen Enkai—a New Year’s Drinking Party. Granted, it mid-February, really too late for anything but Chinese New Year—but better late than never.
I don’t know how much I’ve mentioned Drinking Parties, but they happen quite often at my schools. The name actually makes it sound wilder than it is. Basically, the staff of a school (this can be the whole staff or just a part of the staff) goes out to a really nice restaurant, which serves all-you-can-drink alcohol for two hours. Rest assured, the alcohol flows quite freely, but it’s no college binge and no one gets really out of hand. The party usually begins around 6:30 and ends at 9:00. It’s a good chance to socialize and get to know people you normally wouldn’t talk to very much.
I’ve been to 6 of these since the school year began (two for Nogyou, two for Kushira Shogyo, and two for the office—none for Kogyou). I look forward to them because I like to socialize with new people. But I also like that there’s a time limit. I can leave after 2 and a half hours—I don’t have to stay forever and all night. As far as drinking goes, it honestly depends on what alcohol they serve. If they’re serving nothing but beer, sake, and shochu straight, I drink juice or tea, because I don’t like straight alcohol. If they have mixed drinks, such as chuhais (shochu and fruit juice), I have two drinks. Usually two drinks won’t do anything more than get me slightly hyper.
Anyway, back to the very late New Year’s Party. Now, I like Nogyou’s parties, because they’re smaller and more intimate—six people as opposed to, say, 50 in Kushira Shogyou’s parties. As such, I also have more say in what we have to eat. I had mentioned that I’d never had shabu shabu, and so they arranged to have the party at a shabu shabu restaurant.
Shabu shabu is cook-your-own-food restaurant where you boil pieces of meat and vegetables. These kinds of restaurants are tremendously fun (and expensive). If you’ve seen Lost in Translation, I’m pretty sure the characters got into a fight at a shabu shabu restaurant.
When I went in, there were already two giant pots of water and two platters filled with vegetables, tofu, and udon (thick white Japanese noodles). The stove was built into the table and the fire was on. I fiddled with the range until the fire was hot. When everyone gathered, we ordered our drinks. They had chuhai in this restaurant and I ordered a peach one. It was very good. I couldn’t taste the alcohol at all.
After our toast, the waitress brought in platters of meat: raw pork and beef, cut into thin strips. The water was already boiling nicely, so we stuck the meat in. We moved the meat back and forth underneath the water, swish, swish—or, as the Japanese say, shabu, shabu—and soon the meat changed colors. We dipped them in a tangy sauce and they were delicious.
We ate the meat and vegetables and kimchi appetizer. I had my second chuhai, grape-flavored this time, good but not nearly as nice as the peach one. After we had eaten all the meat and most of the vegetables, we added udon and ate that too. The waitress then took our cooking water and made a rice and egg porridge out of it. For dessert we had mochi ice cream, pieces of persimmon sliced up, and coffee and tea.
All of this added up to a heavy price tag: 4200 yen each. (About $42.00.) That is, of course, the downside to Enkais—they’re expensive. But I had fun and enjoyed myself.
This weekend, on Saturday, Rachelle and I went out to Nero for dinner, since neither of us felt like cooking. Nero is a very nice local restaurant that I’ve been to—let’s see, this was my third time. The very first time I went was my first night in Kanoya.
At the end of the restaurant, the walls are glass and there are a few trees or vines on the outside of the building. At night, when the trees are in shadow and Christmas lights sparkle, it feels a little like eating inside an enchanted forest. For 1200 yen you get a main dish, an all-you-can-eat soup/salad/appetizer/desert bar, and an all-you-can-drink (non-alcoholic) drink bar.
First we got our drinks. I always get apple vinegar. Always, always. Apple vinegar is either a very light vinegar or else vinegar and apple juice mixed together. In the case of Nero, I think it’s the former, because it was very pale, almost white. To me, it tastes like apple juice with a bit of a kicker: a little sour, a little sweet, a little zingy.
At the appetizer end, Nero has some of the best fresh tofu in Kanoya. It’s very soft and on Saturday it was served with an ume plum sauce that was mildly sour. I also had edamame, a slice of pizza (too late I realized that it had tuna on it), bread, cheese and bacon fries, and two cups of soup. This may sound like a lot, but you have to think in Japanese proportions. The pizza, for instance, was no bigger than a personal pan pizza, was thin as paper, and had been cut into at least 20 different slices. My portion was only slightly bigger than a splinter. The bread, too, were the size of croutons. I’m not exaggerating.
The main dish was bigger. Rachelle ordered eggplant spaghetti with meat sauce (one of the more normal Italian dishes—no I’m not kidding either), and I had bibimba. Bibimba is a Korean dish. They serve it in a stone bowl that’s sizzling hot. Inside was rice, meat, bean sprouts, kimchi (spicy pickled Korean vegetables), dried seaweed, and the raw yolk of an egg. I mixed the ingredients together, letting the stone cook the egg, and ate it. It was actually pretty good and a lot less strange than it sounds. Rachelle didn’t find her pasta quite so appealing. Let me tell you, finding good Italian in Japan is hard.
There was a small desert bar with coffee Jell-O and whipped cream (a modern Japanese staple in buffets), tiny, tiny cream puffs (slightly bigger than the head of a Q-tip), and vanilla wafers.
You know, to me, Japan is not an exotic place anymore. It’s real, normal, and boring at times. But the food never ceases to remind me that I’m not at home. Even things that are normal are slightly off. It’s an endless source of fun and amusement.
For practically all of February, I have spent weekends at home. This was due in part to my cold, due in part to a lack of a social calendar.
The only thing I’ve done socially has involved dinners. Two weeks ago, on Friday, I went out with the English-speaking staff at Nogyou for a Shinnen Enkai—a New Year’s Drinking Party. Granted, it mid-February, really too late for anything but Chinese New Year—but better late than never.
I don’t know how much I’ve mentioned Drinking Parties, but they happen quite often at my schools. The name actually makes it sound wilder than it is. Basically, the staff of a school (this can be the whole staff or just a part of the staff) goes out to a really nice restaurant, which serves all-you-can-drink alcohol for two hours. Rest assured, the alcohol flows quite freely, but it’s no college binge and no one gets really out of hand. The party usually begins around 6:30 and ends at 9:00. It’s a good chance to socialize and get to know people you normally wouldn’t talk to very much.
I’ve been to 6 of these since the school year began (two for Nogyou, two for Kushira Shogyo, and two for the office—none for Kogyou). I look forward to them because I like to socialize with new people. But I also like that there’s a time limit. I can leave after 2 and a half hours—I don’t have to stay forever and all night. As far as drinking goes, it honestly depends on what alcohol they serve. If they’re serving nothing but beer, sake, and shochu straight, I drink juice or tea, because I don’t like straight alcohol. If they have mixed drinks, such as chuhais (shochu and fruit juice), I have two drinks. Usually two drinks won’t do anything more than get me slightly hyper.
Anyway, back to the very late New Year’s Party. Now, I like Nogyou’s parties, because they’re smaller and more intimate—six people as opposed to, say, 50 in Kushira Shogyou’s parties. As such, I also have more say in what we have to eat. I had mentioned that I’d never had shabu shabu, and so they arranged to have the party at a shabu shabu restaurant.
Shabu shabu is cook-your-own-food restaurant where you boil pieces of meat and vegetables. These kinds of restaurants are tremendously fun (and expensive). If you’ve seen Lost in Translation, I’m pretty sure the characters got into a fight at a shabu shabu restaurant.
When I went in, there were already two giant pots of water and two platters filled with vegetables, tofu, and udon (thick white Japanese noodles). The stove was built into the table and the fire was on. I fiddled with the range until the fire was hot. When everyone gathered, we ordered our drinks. They had chuhai in this restaurant and I ordered a peach one. It was very good. I couldn’t taste the alcohol at all.
After our toast, the waitress brought in platters of meat: raw pork and beef, cut into thin strips. The water was already boiling nicely, so we stuck the meat in. We moved the meat back and forth underneath the water, swish, swish—or, as the Japanese say, shabu, shabu—and soon the meat changed colors. We dipped them in a tangy sauce and they were delicious.
We ate the meat and vegetables and kimchi appetizer. I had my second chuhai, grape-flavored this time, good but not nearly as nice as the peach one. After we had eaten all the meat and most of the vegetables, we added udon and ate that too. The waitress then took our cooking water and made a rice and egg porridge out of it. For dessert we had mochi ice cream, pieces of persimmon sliced up, and coffee and tea.
All of this added up to a heavy price tag: 4200 yen each. (About $42.00.) That is, of course, the downside to Enkais—they’re expensive. But I had fun and enjoyed myself.
This weekend, on Saturday, Rachelle and I went out to Nero for dinner, since neither of us felt like cooking. Nero is a very nice local restaurant that I’ve been to—let’s see, this was my third time. The very first time I went was my first night in Kanoya.
At the end of the restaurant, the walls are glass and there are a few trees or vines on the outside of the building. At night, when the trees are in shadow and Christmas lights sparkle, it feels a little like eating inside an enchanted forest. For 1200 yen you get a main dish, an all-you-can-eat soup/salad/appetizer/desert bar, and an all-you-can-drink (non-alcoholic) drink bar.
First we got our drinks. I always get apple vinegar. Always, always. Apple vinegar is either a very light vinegar or else vinegar and apple juice mixed together. In the case of Nero, I think it’s the former, because it was very pale, almost white. To me, it tastes like apple juice with a bit of a kicker: a little sour, a little sweet, a little zingy.
At the appetizer end, Nero has some of the best fresh tofu in Kanoya. It’s very soft and on Saturday it was served with an ume plum sauce that was mildly sour. I also had edamame, a slice of pizza (too late I realized that it had tuna on it), bread, cheese and bacon fries, and two cups of soup. This may sound like a lot, but you have to think in Japanese proportions. The pizza, for instance, was no bigger than a personal pan pizza, was thin as paper, and had been cut into at least 20 different slices. My portion was only slightly bigger than a splinter. The bread, too, were the size of croutons. I’m not exaggerating.
The main dish was bigger. Rachelle ordered eggplant spaghetti with meat sauce (one of the more normal Italian dishes—no I’m not kidding either), and I had bibimba. Bibimba is a Korean dish. They serve it in a stone bowl that’s sizzling hot. Inside was rice, meat, bean sprouts, kimchi (spicy pickled Korean vegetables), dried seaweed, and the raw yolk of an egg. I mixed the ingredients together, letting the stone cook the egg, and ate it. It was actually pretty good and a lot less strange than it sounds. Rachelle didn’t find her pasta quite so appealing. Let me tell you, finding good Italian in Japan is hard.
There was a small desert bar with coffee Jell-O and whipped cream (a modern Japanese staple in buffets), tiny, tiny cream puffs (slightly bigger than the head of a Q-tip), and vanilla wafers.
You know, to me, Japan is not an exotic place anymore. It’s real, normal, and boring at times. But the food never ceases to remind me that I’m not at home. Even things that are normal are slightly off. It’s an endless source of fun and amusement.
Soba Party
December 14, 2007
On Saturday, December 8, I was invited to make soba at school by one of the teachers at Nogyou. The teacher’s name was Shinkawa-sensei, which means New River.
I said I would come. I was actually very excited about receiving the invitation. I told Rachelle, and she became excited as well—and asked if she could come. I was a little hesitant to agree, but eventually I shrugged my shoulders and said it would probably be fine. After all, it was a casual social gathering—the more the merrier, right?
We came a little before 10:00 AM. I had thought that we would make soba right away, eat it for lunch, and have the afternoon free to go Christmas shopping. Well, it didn’t exactly work out that way.
Shinkawa-sensei had casually dropped that we would be making soba, but he hadn’t pointed out that this was goodbye party for Aket, a Malaysian exchange student who had arrived earlier that week. Rachelle and I came right in time for the opening ceremonies, which included a song, a couple speeches, and a self-introduction from everyone in the room, including me and Rachelle. (Fortunately, we were both well versed at introducing ourselves in Japanese.) Openning ceremonies ended at about 11:30. It was easy to see this was a longer event than originally thought.
We socialized with the students and some of the adult sponsors while we waited for lunch. Lunch was late. After lunch there was bingo. Rachelle and I, while we were having fun, were beginning to get impatient, because we really needed to do our shopping. We decided we would leave at 3:00. And just as the clock hit 2:45, Shinkawa-sensei announced we’d make soba now.
Soba, in case you don’t know, are buckwheat noodles. In Japan they’re common and cheap, but in America, they’re a little harder to find. Everyone was led into what looked like a lab, complete with a stainless steel steaming, sputtering pot in the corner. We put on lab coats and washed our hands.
The recipe was simple and fun: buckwheat flour, regular flour, and hot water, sifted, mixed, and kneeded together. After rolling the dough flat and flipping the dough ontop of itself, so it remembled a flat burrito, we began cutting noodles with a sharp knife. We were supposed to cut thinly, but I was worried about it coming apart, so I cut my soba thick. Afterwards we joked I had made soba udon. (Udon is a thick white Japanese noodle.)
Shinkawa-sensei stuck the noodles in the stainless steel vat of hissing water and boiled them until we were cooked. We got to taste our noodles, but unfortunately, Rachelle and I had no time to eat them. It was 4:30 and we really had to get going. We said our goodbyes and left—feeling happy for our experience.
The Inconstancy of Work
October 19, 2007
There are those of you, who, when I tell you this, will hate me, but the fact remains: there are days when I go to school and there’s nothing for me to do. I sit at my desk, writing stories, or letters.
“It’s not fair,” you may complain, and be well justified for it. “It’s not fair for you to be in Japan (lucky devil), sitting on a nice salary, and doing no work for it.”
Of course, it’s not as if I don’t work; even when I have no classes to go to, I try to make lesson plans or help the teachers in any way I can. Still, there are only so many lessons I can plan, so much English I can speak, so much I can do before I have nothing left to do. And this is fairly universal among ALTs.
For most of October schools were preparing for midterms. Well, when teachers are busy creating tests, administering tests, grading tests, and handing tests back, they don’t have as much time to talk to me or even much time to bring me to class very often. After all, when students are taking exams, they don’t exactly need me to be speaking English to them. I think that would be considered cheating.
I’m not really complaining about my free time. I have a novel to write, so having blocks of time where I can sit down and write is very useful. Besides which, I’m usually very good at finding ways to keep myself amused. But at the same time, I feel a little guilty. It feels like the schools aren’t getting their money’s worth.
The reason for my ambiguity has to do with American culture, I think. In America hard work is a value, and no one wants to be seen as lazy. There’s also a strong sense of competition in work. I can’t say all Americans feel this way, but I know I do. Even when I would prefer being lazy, in America, I kept at it, pushing myself to meet and then exceed the standard. Sometimes I hate this, but that’s how it is.
In Japan, it feels very different. I feel as though I just don’t have to work as hard all the time. And I don’t know why it is. I know many Japanese people work hard, or, if not hard, then long. Although I’ve never left the office later than 4:30, many Japanese employees stay at work until 8:00, 9:00 P.M or even later.
Besides, what do I have to compete with? Certainly I don’t get grades. I don’t even think I get a written evaluation. I’m not even quite sure what’s expected of me, besides the basics: get to work on time, go to classes, get along with your peers, dress appropriately, etc., etc. What is the standard? What is the goal? I don’t know and therefore feel at a loss.
Also, in Japan, I think the value of efficiency is somewhat watered down. Efficiency: squeezing the most work out of your time. In America, this is key. Do you ever see supervisors letting their workers do nothing? No. If you’re, for instance, a sales clerk, and you’re not helping a customer, you’re usually cleaning or folding or trying to look busy. If you have no task, your supervisor gives you a new one. And at the end of the day, you go home at a reasonable time with your well-earned money.
Well, in Japan, from what I’ve heard (and mind you this isn’t much), workers stay late, but they don’t always get more work done. Sometimes they just play solitaire. The attitude is that it’s not so much the work you accomplish, but the fact that you’re there, you’re available, you’re showing your devotion to your company. And this, I think, waters down efficiency, because you aren’t squeezing the most work out of your time. Instead you’re squeezing the most time out of your work.
Am I wrong? It’s really hard to label my own experiences as the general trend. After all, I didn’t really work in America, and in Japan, I am a foreigner and occupy a sort of precarious position. Who knows how it really works? But these are my own observations as well as the observations of others handed down to me.
There are those of you, who, when I tell you this, will hate me, but the fact remains: there are days when I go to school and there’s nothing for me to do. I sit at my desk, writing stories, or letters.
“It’s not fair,” you may complain, and be well justified for it. “It’s not fair for you to be in Japan (lucky devil), sitting on a nice salary, and doing no work for it.”
Of course, it’s not as if I don’t work; even when I have no classes to go to, I try to make lesson plans or help the teachers in any way I can. Still, there are only so many lessons I can plan, so much English I can speak, so much I can do before I have nothing left to do. And this is fairly universal among ALTs.
For most of October schools were preparing for midterms. Well, when teachers are busy creating tests, administering tests, grading tests, and handing tests back, they don’t have as much time to talk to me or even much time to bring me to class very often. After all, when students are taking exams, they don’t exactly need me to be speaking English to them. I think that would be considered cheating.
I’m not really complaining about my free time. I have a novel to write, so having blocks of time where I can sit down and write is very useful. Besides which, I’m usually very good at finding ways to keep myself amused. But at the same time, I feel a little guilty. It feels like the schools aren’t getting their money’s worth.
The reason for my ambiguity has to do with American culture, I think. In America hard work is a value, and no one wants to be seen as lazy. There’s also a strong sense of competition in work. I can’t say all Americans feel this way, but I know I do. Even when I would prefer being lazy, in America, I kept at it, pushing myself to meet and then exceed the standard. Sometimes I hate this, but that’s how it is.
In Japan, it feels very different. I feel as though I just don’t have to work as hard all the time. And I don’t know why it is. I know many Japanese people work hard, or, if not hard, then long. Although I’ve never left the office later than 4:30, many Japanese employees stay at work until 8:00, 9:00 P.M or even later.
Besides, what do I have to compete with? Certainly I don’t get grades. I don’t even think I get a written evaluation. I’m not even quite sure what’s expected of me, besides the basics: get to work on time, go to classes, get along with your peers, dress appropriately, etc., etc. What is the standard? What is the goal? I don’t know and therefore feel at a loss.
Also, in Japan, I think the value of efficiency is somewhat watered down. Efficiency: squeezing the most work out of your time. In America, this is key. Do you ever see supervisors letting their workers do nothing? No. If you’re, for instance, a sales clerk, and you’re not helping a customer, you’re usually cleaning or folding or trying to look busy. If you have no task, your supervisor gives you a new one. And at the end of the day, you go home at a reasonable time with your well-earned money.
Well, in Japan, from what I’ve heard (and mind you this isn’t much), workers stay late, but they don’t always get more work done. Sometimes they just play solitaire. The attitude is that it’s not so much the work you accomplish, but the fact that you’re there, you’re available, you’re showing your devotion to your company. And this, I think, waters down efficiency, because you aren’t squeezing the most work out of your time. Instead you’re squeezing the most time out of your work.
Am I wrong? It’s really hard to label my own experiences as the general trend. After all, I didn’t really work in America, and in Japan, I am a foreigner and occupy a sort of precarious position. Who knows how it really works? But these are my own observations as well as the observations of others handed down to me.
Please and Thank You
October 7, 2007
There is a little ritual in Japanese schools, which American schools don’t have. At the start of class, the students all stand up. One person (they know who they are) will say, “Shisei, rei.” I know the word “rei;” it has three meanings: “polite,” “gratitude,” and “bow” (the action not the ribbon). In this case it means “bow,” for as soon as the student says, “rei,” the class all bows. The teacher bows, too. This ritual is repeated at the end of class.
I caught onto this ritual fairly quickly, but what I didn’t immediately catch was the words the students and teachers all mumbled in unison when they bowed. For a while I bowed quietly. But I caught on soon enough. When class starts, everyone says, “Onegaishimasu.” When class ends, they all say “Arigatou gozaimsu.”
“Onegashimasu” means “please.” “Argatou gozaimasu” means “thank you.”
It’s interesting that even in high school, every class is an opportunity to practice the basics of manners: saying please and thank you.
There is a little ritual in Japanese schools, which American schools don’t have. At the start of class, the students all stand up. One person (they know who they are) will say, “Shisei, rei.” I know the word “rei;” it has three meanings: “polite,” “gratitude,” and “bow” (the action not the ribbon). In this case it means “bow,” for as soon as the student says, “rei,” the class all bows. The teacher bows, too. This ritual is repeated at the end of class.
I caught onto this ritual fairly quickly, but what I didn’t immediately catch was the words the students and teachers all mumbled in unison when they bowed. For a while I bowed quietly. But I caught on soon enough. When class starts, everyone says, “Onegaishimasu.” When class ends, they all say “Arigatou gozaimsu.”
“Onegashimasu” means “please.” “Argatou gozaimasu” means “thank you.”
It’s interesting that even in high school, every class is an opportunity to practice the basics of manners: saying please and thank you.
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.
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