Christeph: On the Lam

It’s been three weeks. But that’s because I was at the wedding. A Japanese wedding for one of my co-workers, where the bride wore white and red and pink and white. Where the guests laughed but didn’t smile. Where there was karaoke, but a suspicious lack of dancing. Where the guests get presents instead of the couple of honor. Oh yeah, and the cake was steaming, billowing clouds of vapor.

And then I was sick, for like 5 days of mind-altering I can’t even remember my name but somehow I have no visible symptoms sick. That was the week of sleeping and more sleeping.

And then I was in Kyoto, hunting monkeys, jumping from train to train, climbing castle keeps, hoping for cherry blossoms, getting a suntan, a suntan on the beach, sucking every possible drop of goodness out of the kansai region before heading back to Noshiro. A trip I won’t write more about here because, hey, a) and then b) there’s this podcast I’m supposedly contributing to now, where I’m telling everyone, anyone who will listen about the best and strangest parts of Japan that I can find. So I’ve got to keep something up my sleeve for you there.

And now I’m here. Watching spring wrestle with winter for dominance in Noshiro. This means that I wake up to gloriously sunny (if slightly cold) weather, which is followed by snow at some point during the day, and then, inexplicably, more sun. The school year starts fresh on Monday; I’m in a suit for the first time since I began teaching in Japan, required costuming to welcome the new students to school. I just watched my first opening ceremony, which was an odd combination of the sober and the comical. The kids are all outside with their sports clubs in the sun, running through drills with a steady stream of “Gambare!” (”do your best!)”

And tomorrow I’ll still be here. Waiting for my first chance in weeks just to stop and do nothing and breathe, hoping for a weekend where I can lie in peace and revel in boredom.

Some of you may have noticed that the frequency of posts has been slowing of late. We’ve been living here for 7+ months now, and there’s only got so many quirky foreigner moments you can have before this formerly foreign place starts to seem normal. Allow me to catalogue for you a few of the smaller Japan Moments that have come our way:

The Steam Truck
For the longest time, Chris and I could hear this eerie off kilter whine in the distance. And it would creep closer. And very occasionally, we would catch up with this truck on its way through town… steam whistling out the top, with some kind of machinery in the back, like a huge kettle on wheels. But why? Was this person delivering hot water for busted winter pipes? Or maybe making deliveries to more rural areas with an inconsistent water supply? (::cough:: Futatsui ::cough::) Mystery solved as soon as my Japanese skills caught up with my curiosity. I just went out and asked the dude behind the wheel last week… it’s a yam truck. Like, quick, go out and get your piping hot yams. Even though this technically answers my question, I still can’t quite believe that the high demand for yams requires a roving truck.

The Shocker
There’s usually a variety of pools in an onsen: indoor and out, hot and cold, sauna, waterfall, jets, different minerals in different pools, you name it. But I had a new kind of onsen experience last weekend. I noticed the kanji for electricity by this pool, but didn’t think much of it; maybe it meant something different when it’s next to that other thing I can’t read, whatever. We get in, and notice little holes on the side of the wall. When you get close enough to the holes, BAM!, electric shock. I don’t know what this is and why it doesn’t kill you or how it’s supposed to be good for you. All I can tell you is it was uncomfortable and creepy. We got out right away.

Further research indicates that this is a “denkiburo” or “electric bath”. It’s reportedly popular with older folk who have rheumatism.

Illegal Buns
We ran into an ex-pat in a pizza parlour. We discussed how, in Japan, you can have hot dogs on sticks or spaghetti in a bun, but under no circumstances do you see a hot dog actually in a bun. This guy further explained that he had tried to start up his own business to fill this gaping hole in the Japanese economy, and when filing his papers, he discovered to his chagrin that hot dogs in buns are not allowed. He’s can’t even sell hot dogs and buns separately, because what if the customer combined them? What if the officials noticed? Someone would have to be held responsible. His papers were denied. “You really should have known better than to open up a store selling hot dogs and buns. Together. I mean, really.” This story borders on urban legend for me, it sounds so ridiculous. I asked my Japanese teachers about it, who also thought it was silly, but also were unable to explain the dearth of dog+bun. I don’t know if it’s a phallic issue or what. Hello out there, if you know what’s up with this, please fill the rest of us in.

Just So, originally uploaded by chrissam42.

I love this little demonstration of the Japanese Way. The only thing that could make it more perfect is if the photo in the poster had the poster in it.

A few things have been keeping me busy since returning from the Sapporo Snow Festival a few weeks ago. I’ve been working with a senior student at the high school for a speech contest that was held on Feb. 16th. The theme was, amazingly enough, “internationalization”. For most of the 15 year olds participating, this meant talking about their experiences as or with exchange students. Two of the speakers had spent some time in America… the take home message about that country was two fold:

1. “Americans are very religious and will hang a flag on anything”

2. “Some rude American boy addressed me as ‘Hey, Chinese!’ instead of
‘Hey, Japanese!’, or even, God forbid, by my actual name”

I have to say, I’m not exactly thrilled that this is the extent of what our country has to offer Japanese exchange students. Maybe the nicer fuzzy stuff doesn’t make for as good a story…?

Anyway, I’ve been preparing with my student, Tomatsu, for like a month and a half. We discussed ideas for his speech, which he wrote and translated into English pretty proficiently all by himself. We edited, worked on pronunciation, speed, inflection, emotion, and general public speaking skills. Not only did he work on these points, he worked on them every day. We would go over particularly difficult words or vowel sounds that don’t exist in Japanese, and I would see obvious improvement the next day. He has a great ear, and I am so impressed with his work ethic and desire to speak English well.

That’s why is was particularly great when he came home with a trophy. Third place, baby! Not bad, considering he was up against experienced competitors, many of whom go to the advanced English school in Akita city. I am so proud. Give it up for Noshiro, WOOOOT!!!!

The week after the speech contest, I worked all week at Junior High #2, where I had two astonishing moments in class. You’d think that the word “sweater” is fairly innocuous, right? We were teaching this word to a room full of 8th graders, when my co-teacher stops to discuss sweat, and sweater, and were they related?… a natural enough tangent. Then we start discussing the Japanese drink, “Pocari Sweat”, and my thoughts on the appropriateness of the name (um… a sports drink? Yum?). Then, in Japanese, this conversation, unbeknownst to me, takes a screaming 90 degree turn, and I hear the word “animal” in Japanese, and I’m thinking “what the heck…” and then I get this:

“Stephanie-sensei, do you know the Japanese drink, Calipis?”
<hesitant nod>
“Do you think that drink sounds like “Cow piss?”

Fabulous. How exactly does one professionally answer that question? The worst part was, in the States, class would have been over at that point. Talking about cow piss with 13 year olds in class would have been a great way to ensure mayhem. In my school, they just sat there politely and discussed it. Maybe “piss” has a different ring to it in Japanese?…

Later that week at the same school, I ran a class by myself, as my co-teacher had to go hunt down a missing student. We began with a game where every student (9th graders) had to think up a question to ask me; it could be anything, and points were awarded by difficulty of question. Usually for this kind of activity, students will parrot questions from dialogues in the book, like “What do you want to be in the future?” and “Which do you like better, dog or cat?” Then I get this gem:

“Stephanie-sensei. You look like you are in shape. How many times a week do you exercise?”

For a split second there, I swear I thought I was being hit on. I have to say, this question was a side splitter for me, as a) it was coming from a 14 year old girl that I see maybe once every other month and b) there is no way that she got that from the book, and that just tickles me pink.

I wasn’t sure how I would respond emotionally to coming back to work after vacation. Upon returning to Noshiro, I had a week left until school started, which meant sitting in the office from 8:30 to 4, wiling the hours away in a meaningless fashion to pacify parents (yes, I’m at school, yes, I’m “working”, thanks for providing my paycheck).

However, there’s enough down time here that the timbre of this vacant week didn’t feel very different from a normal work week. As a surrogate for being home for the holidays, I used the home ec ovens to bake coffee cake for all the teachers. This is one of the foods I bake in America for the holidays, so I wanted to bring a little piece of that here to share with others. Japan doesn’t really have specific “breakfast foods”, and certainly no one’s ever had this mystery substance “coffee cake” before. It was a pretty big hit, except for those inexplicable individuals who have a low tolerance for cinnamon (how can you not like cinnamon???) I also tried to untangle the deeper mysteries of karate by attending practice a few times in the school dojo.

Shortly after school started, one of the English teachers approached me during a quiet moment in the teachers’ lounge. She asked if we had a dress code in the US. This was, of course, prompted by a student flouting the dress code at my current school. What had this juvenile offender done to rock the boat? Her hair was now a Little Less Black.

Dying one’s hair is expressly forbidden for students at my school, as are crazy piercings, jewelry, makeup, untrimmed fingernails, nail polish, skirt hems too high, pants too low, or non-school issued shoes (with shoe trim color coded by grade, of course). However, this creative student had only bent the rules… she had not dyed her hair, it had not been bleached; it was simply lighter than the day before. And the day before that. And the day before that. A subtle enough change over time for her to deny that she had done anything unnatural at all (though the school apparently has pretty straightforward before and after pictures). Nevertheless, non-black tresses (not mine) could be easily spotted amidst a sea of otherwise uniformly black hair.

Wanting to genuinely know the answer, I asked the teacher as innocently and politely as I could: “What’s the worst that can happen if one girl has dark brown hair?”

And neither I nor my colleague really know what to say. We both understand that hair color is in this case a proxy for a more complicated and less tangible issue: personal autonomy vs. institutional authority. As a homeroom teacher in a Japanese high school, it is the teacher’s duty to look after her students and make sure they are respectful during and after school. Unlike American schools, teachers as well as parents take their kids’ behavior very seriously, and are responsible for their actions.

My colleague is so stressed out because her options seem to be:
1. confront the student’s parent, basically calling her kid a liar, or
2. fail her duty as a homeroom teacher.

The parent has also gotten involved and threatened to take the matter to the school board. In a country that values group harmony, I don’t envy my colleague’s position. All I could do was tell her that I came from a country where, when I was 15, one of my best friends had a nose piercing, pink hair, and wore lingerie as outerwear to school. And she didn’t turn out to be a sociopath. I hope that helps, sensei.

Good luck, whatever you decide to do.

Have you ever noticed this striking similarity?

I’ve been going to Japanese class for about 4 weeks now. It is a struggle to get myself to go; it’s never fun to feel stupid, and this is inevitably part of a sharp learning curve. However, I feel like I’ve been getting a lot out of class, and it’s at a good pace for me. In addition, the class is full of kids who come with their families, and there is a real sense of camaraderie that you don’t get with the usual college student foreign language class. We’re all there learning Japanese because we have to make our way through this confusing country day after day.

Several of the other English teachers in town make a regular appearance, and we’ve taken to going out to dinner afterwards. This is a great time to hang out, because we are all busy with our different schedules and don’t always get a chance to see each other. Plus there’s the bonding experience of just having survived Japanese class together.

So imagine my surprise when my Japanese teacher pulled me and Frank (British ALT) aside last class and basically forbade us from going out after class. “Promise me you will go straight home on Tuesday nights after class,” she said. Before any of you get too mentally creative, let me stress that drinking is not the main focus of our excursions. I never have more than 1 glass of beer, and I am always home by 11pm to prepare for teaching the next day.

This is a totally perplexing situation to me. The complaint’s premise was that the Japanese class is a family environment, and we may upset others, they may get the “wrong idea”… what idea, you ask? That we are in class only to play around afterward, and will not study hard. We give the class a bad name by being social after our studies. There was also something about how Japanese women must not carouse after 9pm (which is ridiculous, because I see my students out all the time). We tried to get a little more info with some Q&A:

What if we go straight home and go out again half an hour later? (no)
What if I want to go out with someone who wasn’t in Japanese class? (no)
What if we remove the female equation, and only the guys go out? (no)
What about cultural exchange? We can teach others that this is common social behavior in America/Brittain! (no)
What if we don’t drink, we just go out and eat? (no)
What if I go out by myself to eat alone and have absolutely no fun whatsoever? (no)
What if I have come straight from school and haven’t eaten and there is no food in my house? (no)

I am so upset, more upset than I should be. Especially because our Japanese friend Reiko has been out with us twice already. If this was such a universal social faux pas in Japan, why would she have come with us? The message I am getting is… if you want to socialize after class on Tuesday nights, don’t come to Japanese class. I feel like there is no respect for the fact that I am foreign and do things differently, that is it not good enough to study Japanese and take an interest in the culture and try to communicate… I must act Japanese. Which is ridiculous. I’M HERE FOR CULTURAL EXCHANGE, DAMMIT! Plus I just hate to be told I can’t do something, especially something that is fun and is so harmless. I live in a small town. Let me socialize. It’s one of the few diversions we have here.

So, what to do? I can say screw it, and do what I want, and openly defy my Japanese teacher. But I have to live here in this community, and I don’t want that kind of reputation. Do I suck it up and do what I’m told? That doesn’t go down too well either, and results in me resenting class and my teacher. Perhaps we’re going to have to work on some Underground solution.

Two funny photos from Sunday.

I just heard from a friend working abroad in Honduras. She’s had a difficult time adjusting, and has just started to feel acclimated, now that she is beginning her second year in the Peace corps. I am trying to heed her advice, “don’t sweat the first year and a half”.

My experience in Japan definetely reminds me of dating someone new. It is all smiley faces and rainbows to start out with, but now the realities are sinking in, and I am trying not to feel trapped in a job where I sit sometimes for days doing nothing when I could be out helping someone else, all due to inefficient planning.

This is such a weird job… I signed up for JET to do teaching and the ever ephemeral “internationalization”. After I’m hired, the JET office is out of the picture, and my fate is determined by a local Board of Education, which often has limited vision about what a JET is and can do. “Teach English in my city when and where I tell you to” is a pretty common interpretation. Understandably, they’re worried more about the scheduling of their school districts, and using my time well can be more of an after thought. I am constantly asked to be flexible, as schedules change at a moment’s notice, or teachers ask me to put in some extra time after school to help them out with whatever. Which I do gladly… it’s usually fun… I just wish I could ask for the same flexibility in return to allow me to expand my role as a JET. This is definitely an area in which the JET program has been struggling for years, and will continue to struggle.

For example, several JETs, including one from my town, are going to India for winter break, to participate in a volunteer English camp for orphans. I am unable to participate, because I would have to miss 3 days of school. When I suggested that I could make up these one-shot elementary school visits on one of the 10 Mondays between now and then, when I have no class and nothing to do, I was told that the schedule is not flexible. I know that this is not strictly true, because my school visits have already once been changed around to accomodate the BOE’s schedule.

Later in the year I will have large swaths of time when the kids aren’t in school, but I am required to show up to work anyway. I know that there will be opportunities to teach at English camps during this time, and I am worried that my two choices will be taking vacation time to teach (of which I have very little when you take travel time into account), or else getting paid to go to work and mindlessly surf the Internet. Some lucky JETs are allowed to teach at English camps as part of their jobs, in the name of internationalization, but many must use up their vacation time to participate. It all depends on the point of view of your employer.

Upon my arrival to Noshiro, I didn’t even realize my boss was my boss, because the employer-employee relationship in Japan is so different from what I’m used to. As a foreign resident who is not proficient in Japanese, I initially needed a slew of favors; my boss made sure my utilities were set up, two of his co-workers lent us bikes to use, and he picked me up for work every morning for the first week. Though not strictly necessary, he went with me to the train station to acquaint me with the transit system, checking fares, and giving me detailed route and transfer information. He drove me to Aomori to retrieve my stolen wallet during the workday at a moment’s notice. Last weekend, he took my car papers somewhere to get the ownership transferred so I can someday drive the beast. I am tremendously thankful for his efforts, as they have made my transition to Japan much easier. Now that I am settled in Noshiro, he pretty much only calls when he needs me to do something, or he’s turning down a request of mine. This is the extent of our interactions, because we don’t even work in the same city, let alone the same office.

So I need to ask myself… do I try and fight these ideological battles that I am probably going to lose, to try and create awareness here for a JET’s breadth of purpose and inch toward an environment which is better for my successors? Or do I suck it up and roll with the system, and be thankful that I have cushy job, that I’ve got my best friend here to back me up, and chalk the rest up to culture differences?

Even though issues like these can be frustrating, if I take a step back, I can see that this is not a huge problem in the Grand Scheme, and that I ‘ve already had so many great experiences here in the last two months, JET is worth it. Even if the program still needs a little fine tuning.

• You find yourself trying to teach your supervisor how to use the phrase “Out like trout” or “shotgun”
• You get paid to surf the internet, but you’re forced to take time off to actually teach English and promote internationalization
• You get laughed at in the school cafeteria for ordering the *wrong* noodles (silly gaijin)
• You do nothing all day, only to be asked to plan tomorrow’s lessons as soon as you head home

Or maybe I’m just grumpy. Is this the dreaded Culture Shock they keep telling me about?

On the plus side: my wallet was found… the NEXT state over, in Aomori. I got a call from my supervisor first thing on Monday morning. He had been contacted by the police and we had to drive to Aomori to pick up my wallet ASAP. You cannot imagine my surprise. All the money was, of course, gone, but at least I got my foreigner card and driver’s licence back.

Happy ending? You decide.