Transferring

As I think I've mentioned before, the Japanese school year ends in March and begins in April. (No break for you, students!) At this time every year, teachers, office staff, and administrators may be transferred to different schools. It's not a guarantee but it seems that if you've been at a school for 3 years or more, the odds are good that you will have to move. People seem to get no say at all in where they're sent, though allegedly the higher powers at the BOE take commuting times into consideration.

Quite a few teachers I was friendly with had to go to new schools, unfortunately, and I haven't yet had enough time to get to know the teachers who replaced them, so work feels a little lonelier than before. One of the teachers who left sat next to me and would talk (and talk, and talk) to me every day, whereas now I am abutted by two non-English speakers, so I'm kind of unintentionally antisocial.

I also have new supervisors at both my home school and the blind school--the new guy at the blind school is fun because he's fresh out of college and energetic and isn't set in his ways about teaching at all, whereas the new woman at the high school has very specific (and in my opinion, boring) ideas about team teaching. Something JETs are continually forced to accept is that there is very little they can do to change the Japanese methods of teaching English... we aren't "real teachers" and we aren't in any way a long-term fixture in the system, so we kind of have to tag along and make the best of it most of the time. (The "methods" often involve rote memorization and repetition that I feel does nothing to actually teach English in a way applicable to real life... but maybe that will be another post.)

I think one of the major advantages of this transfer system is that no school will be stacked with amazing teachers where another one gets screwed--something you often see in the States, as seasoned teachers have the leverage to choose high performing schools in affluent areas, whereas newbies get sort of counter-intuitively dumped at failing schools in troubled areas, thus perpetuating the problems of said area. In Japan pretty much any school a student attends will more or less have the same quality of staff as all the others. While schools range from vocational to high academic, teachers can be placed anywhere in that range, regardless of their skills. It seems a pretty egalitarian system, but on a personal level I'd think as a teacher it probably feels really Big Brotherish in its elimination of any control you have over your professional life.

For JETs it's nice because we stay in the same place as long as the school doesn't cancel our contracts, so if we're stuck teaching with someone we hate we know it won't last forever, and we get to try a variety of teaching styles based on who we work with each year. But right now I definitely feel the same awkwardness I experienced when I first came, before I got to know some of the teachers here and the rhythm of each day became more natural--I'm back in the sticking out like a sore thumb mode of being the clueless foreigner who hardly knows anyone.

Special Days

It's graduation season, which has led to a host of "special days" at my school. (My school's name is two words, both of which start with Ch, so let's call it Cha Cha School.)

I've heard the reason that the Japanese school year begins in April is to coincide with the blooming of the cherry blossoms. Can anyone confirm this? I hope it's true, because that's just precious.

Anyway, Cha Cha School had its graduation earlier this month, and despite the jaunty school name, it was one somber affair. Before the ceremony even started, it was dead silent. Seriously, none of the parents were even speaking to one another. Once things got rolling, each student was addressed individually and had to leap out of his/her seat with a "HAI!" And the standing and bowing, oh my Lord. Possibly 20 times we did that, at the start and end of each speech. And before speaking, each person had to bow to: the Japanese flag, the people on the right, the people on the left, and the audience. Of  course I couldn't understand a word of any of the speeches but I'm guessing they all amounted to, "Well done," and "Wasn't Sports Day great?" At the end, the students left by class in a single file line. First the boys (SEXIST!) then the girls, 50% of whom were weeping. Which like... you WANT to stay in Japanese High School? Buh? Strange form of masochism maybe?

Probably the funniest part was the immaculately dressed and coiffed parents with... garishly colored bedroom slippers on their feet. (Indoor shoes required.) This is a hilarious Japanese phenomenon. Dress code is super important, but it's totally cool to wear your power suit with Crocs. Nice shoes are for outdoors.

Today is also a special day: junior high students come to take Cha Cha School's entrance exam. Students have to be accepted to high school, and it's this whole intense process bla bla, but then they often choose which schools to apply to based on their uniforms, so, you know. Very serious stuff. Anyway, the teachers are all UBER stressed out because apparently if they make any kind of mistake with test administration and/or collection, the BOE will have them drawn and quartered. Having nothing to do, the following conversation transpired:

Me: Oh, can I do anything to help? Like, I could grade the English exams or something...
Teacher: Well... if we make any mistake the Board of Education will punish us.

In other words, they won't let me help because they think I'm likely to eff it up. Since I'm a native English speaker and all, I'm much likelier to make an error grading the English exams than the Japanese teachers... oh, wait.

So yeah, today is test day and tomorrow is grading day, also known as Two Days of Bullshitting Around Online and Getting Paid For It for me. Not too bad!

Another cool thing about special days is that we can order special bentos. Now, I have no idea where these come from, but they're way awesomer than our usual bentos, and if I wasn't too embarrassed I'd have taken a photo of the one I just probably grossly consumed. Maybe there's a Special Bento Shop that eagerly awaits Cha Cha and other schools' events so they can bestow upon them their wares, I don't know. But they're definitely the best thing about special days.

Kanji lesson from a complete Japanese novice

I'm really impatient with learning grammar and have a much better memory for vocab, so with my ample down time (students are taking exams now and don't need my foreign clown services) I've been studying kanji. I enjoy this for a few reasons: it feels sort of like art, albeit within very strict parameters, and therefore something even a simple drawing-impaired person like me can do. Basically just like cooking--if you can follow recipe instructions, you can make something regardless of how uncreative you are in the kitchen. I've also been meeting with the calligraphy teacher here and doing a lesson exchange (she teaches me calligraphy and tries not to laugh, I teach her English and try not to laugh) and learning kanji in a very "JAPANESE CULTURE" sort of way.
Another study incentive is that I am tickled by seeing how Japanese words are built with kanji. Sometimes it seems really simplistic and silly, as in:

大人 (otona) -- This means adult, and has the kanji for big (大) and the kanji for person (人). So, adult = big person.

火山 (kazan) -- This means volcano, and comprises the kanji for fire (火) and mountain (山).


But then sometimes words are made of kanji combinations that I find quite poetic, as in:

空想 (kuusou) -- Daydream; fantasy. 空 means sky and 想 means idea.

里心 (satogokoro) -- Homesick. 里 means village or one's parents' home; 心 is heart.

赤道 (sekidou) -- Equator. 赤 is red and 道 is road.

It makes me wish I could somehow read Japanese novels or poems in the original, to see how having metaphor built right into the very words of the language impacts the authors' choices. I've noticed in the few translated Japanese books I've read that the writing seems straightforward to the point of being almost stiff, but I wonder if that's just a failure of rendering already-descriptive and evocative kanji words into English. You know what I mean? Maybe Japanese writers feel less compelled than, say, your average American MFA student to aim for particularly brilliant lyricism in their sentences because it's already right there in each word (sky idea, red road, etc.) Maybe someone who actually knows Japanese and isn't a total poser like myself can enlighten us.

I leave you with my (so far) favorite poetic kanji compound: 無口 (mukuchi) which means laconic and is made up of the kanji 無 for un- or without, and the kanji 口 for mouth.

I am definitely with mouth, though.

Quick thought...

One of the children's shows I watch in the morning as I'm getting ready for work is called "You Gotta Quintet" (I know) and features puppets playing classical instruments and singing songs. Today, one of the puppets covered Sinatra's "My Way," in Japanese. But since "doing it [one's] way" is totally not how things work here, and since I still don't really speak Japanese, I was left to wonder how the puppet version of the song might translate...

"I did it in a way that would preserve group harmony"? "I did my best to fulfill the goals we have collectively decided upon"? Or simply, as Jonathan suggested, "I did it our way"?

Another pop culture-y thing I wonder about is J-horror films, which allegedly are uber-scary. But I can't imagine Japanese ghosts are all that vicious... like, there's no way they lose their intricate system of courtesy and respect for others just because they died. I imagine a Japanese ghost wandering into a room, startling a living human, and responding with a bow and a "SUUUUMIIIIMAAAAASEEEEEENNN..."

Hence I'm not too concerned about hauntings in my apartment, even though it's super old and creaky. American ghosts--now those are something to worry about.

Kawaii Culture

Most people know that Japan is obsessed with cuteness, considering its major exports are Hello Kitty and girls dressed like Victorian dolls. But having lived here for going on six months now, I think I'm beginning to understand some of the complexities behind it.

First, make no mistake--the cuteness thing is not an exaggeration. I haven't found any vending machines of schoolgirl panties yet, but when I graded class papers on New Years resolutions, I found that easily 50% of the female students wrote, "I want to be very cute girl." And even though I'm hardly a novel presence here, almost every time I say hello to a group of girls passing in the hallways, I hear them squeal, "KAWAIIIII!" as soon as I'm out of sight.

So what are the criteria for being kawaii? From what I can tell, the principal element is silliness. Specifically, the kind of innocent, helpless silliness associated with youth. Things I've done that are considered kawaii include wearing mismatched socks and mistaking the Japanese word for cheap (yasui) for the word for vegetable (yasai). Clumsiness is kawaii, to the extent that girls will often pretend to trip and fall in front of boys, and there is even a word for such imposters (which I unfortunately forget), who are generally recognized only by other girls. Wearing oversized clothing so that you appear extra small seems to be a kawaii thing to do. On our daily walks to the train station, Jonathan and I have noticed a young woman who rides an absurdly small bicycle, who is always cutely hunched over it and wearing extremely high heels. And when we visited Osaka, upon exiting the subway on a particularly cold and gusty night, a group of Japanese girls proceeded to run spastically into the wind, shrieking, which set off additional groups who presumably saw this as an excellent and very kawaii idea.

Kawaii behavior falls into two camps: unabashed silliness, and intense, straight-faced seriousness which is applied to being silly. In the former, I'd place the girls who ride the same train as Jonathan and basically go into giggling paroxysms of joy every time they see him. He reports seeing their heads collectively bent forward as the train pulls in so they can stare out the window at him. And when he gets off at his stop, they wave frantically, again clustered at the window, until he is out of sight. Extremely cute! In the serious camp, I'd place Hunchy, who pedals her teeny bike in her precarious shoes with an expression of deep focus and determination. Also, very cute.

So what are the roots of kawaii? It seems to be designed for men, although it has expanded and morphed to the point that girls can be seen acting like this all the time, whether or not a man is near. But we are talking about a country where not too long ago, women were expected to walk ten paces behind their husbands, a country with a commercial of a baseball player watching TV and grunting "o-cha" at his hovering spouse, who duly obeys him, and that isn't even the point of the commercial. Jonathan and I have noticed a kind of pigeon-toed walk many of the women here do, which upon some investigation I've discovered is based on how girls had to move back in the kimono-wearing days to keep their garment from flapping open in the front, and is now considered a cute and demure way of moving. Many women also tend to cover their mouths when they giggle, and giggle at every attempt at humor that a man makes, regardless of how feeble, since supporting their egos is pretty much the universally done thing--which may explain why so many Japanese men seem downright afraid of me, because I wouldn't know better than to just look at them blankly when their jokes fall flat.

All this leads to a slight conundrum for me, because I'm aware of the outrageous sexism upon which kawaii-ness is likely based, but I nevertheless am very entertained by it! Every day, I see Japanese girls doing something adorable and hilarious and I can't help but laugh and want to pet them on their heads. And, I am regularly rewarded for my own apparently kawaii nature without even trying. So, here I am, benefiting from and enjoying the fruits of a system that to American eyes is terribly outmoded and offensive. My sisters, is it time to turn in my feminist card?

Re-Entry Shock (not a pornographic term)

When I first came to Japan it was like a dream for quite a while, to the extent that I became a bit uneasy that my life was going to feel like Inland Empire for an entire year, which, while the film is quite lengthy--a year is a long time to more or less not have your head attached to your body. But the unfamiliarity-induced depersonalization wore off gradually until I realized I woke up crabbily to my alarm each morning and dragged myself down the familiar route to the train station just like any American working stiff (albeit an American working stiff with a regard for the environment that prevents car ownership.)

What I'm saying in an extremely overwritten (or maximalist, for DFW fans) way is that even though I still can't say much more in Japanese than "Cold, eh?" I got used to Japan. Which also means used to bowing for pretty much everything, ranging from "thanks for selling me that gum" to "I'm deeply sorry for killing your child." (I haven't killed a child.) Used to (actually, quite fond of) the massive black crows that fly overhead in the morning, cawing, "HEY! I'M A BIG FUCKING BIRD!" Used to politeness to the extent that true feelings are rather pleasantly unreadable... as far as I can tell, everyone thinks I'm just great! And so on.

So the first thing that happened upon my brief return to America, literally, in LAX, was that someone was really rude to me--an airport worker, who just could not deal with my confusion about which line to wait in at customs. And then, in the airport waiting room, I looked around at the overweight, tired, mostly-recent-immigrant crowd waiting for flights to come in from Mexico and the Philippines, and I thought: "This is a country that does not take care of most of its people." That's not new information, and though the Japanese do look uniformly more healthy and purposeful than Americans, they also have one of the highest suicide rates in the world, so, but I was able to see things through more Japanified eyes than before, and the scene was quite jarring. Also, filthy--this also is a country where people don't care much about clean public spaces, either.

Basically, things run less smoothly, something I unthinkingly tolerated before, like for instance when the 7 train would just stop between stations and sit there for like 15 minutes, which was a bit nervewracking since its an elevated train bobbing in the wind over Queens Boulevard, etc etc. It makes sense that that's what happens in a country with a much more individualistic, every-man-for-himself, murder and devour the person on the ladder rung above you and don't feel guilty about it because you must be your own first priority in this cutthroat society, live the dream ethos. Whereas Japan is all about the group harmony--for example, when people go on vacation they statistically spend far more money on omiyage for their office mates than they do on souvenirs for themselves. And that's just one instance among, like, infinite ones. I'm not even saying Japan's way is better--like I said, pretty high suicide rate, because what do you think happens if you don't fit in with the group and don't at least have recourse to a culture that actually admires and venerates outsiders, outlaws, rebels without causes, etc.? It's just noticeably different, that's all.

Also, the food in America is embarrassingly huge. Exhibit A:

My stomach, for the extent of the trip, kept screaming "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME???"

Not to say it wasn't a nice time. Well, it was a weird time, because, L.A., and I yearned a bit for New York and its precarious and inefficient subway system.

Upon returing to Fukuoka (route: LAX to Narita, airport bus from Narita to Haneda, Haneda to Fukuoka, subway from Fukuoka airport to Hakata, train from Hakata to Futsukaichi station, cab from Futsukaichi station to home sweet squalid home) I was aware in a strange way that everything had been continuing to happen as usual in my small Japanese town all along, and that despite the hellish travel the world is actually pretty small. It seems obvious but I think one of the benefits of travel is how it reminds you in an immediate and hard-to-define but very sharp way that life goes on.

Otenki

So, it's been a while and I have about a month's worth of anecdotes to share, which I may do in separate blog segments because I am lazy. First up, we must contend with...

THE COLD. Fukuoka is not actually that cold, relatively speaking--so far temperatures have been hovering around the low 50's most of the time, 40's in the morning and at night. Problem is, Japanese housing does not have central heating or insulation. The reasoning behind this, from what I've read, is that homes are designed with the blazing Japanese summers of death in mind, to let air and breezes in, since one can always just bundle up in winter. But anyway what happens is, it's the same temperature indoors as it is out. 50 degrees may not sound so bad, but come talk to me once you realize YOU CAN NEVER GET WARM.

There are inventions that deal with this: one is the kotatsu, which is in fact delightful. It's a table with a heating unit underneath and a space to put a heavy blanket that traps the heat. So people kind of burrow under it and get nice and toasty. There's also clothing you can buy at Uniqlo called Heat Tech (pronounced "heat-o tech") that supposedly is made of magical fibers that keep you warm. There are also kerosene heaters, which I've decided not to go for since I'd probably burn down the building if I used one.

Luckily, my air con unit also functions as a heater, and keeps my living and bedroom warm enough. Unluckily, if I get up in the night to pee, there's a thirty degree drop once I leave the bedroom, and the toilet seat is without fail freezing to the point that I'm afraid my butt cheeks will stick to it, like Jim Carrey's tongue to the pole in Dumb and Dumber. Waking up and noticing a need to urinate leads to an inner battle of wills, as I try to ignore the urge and go back to sleep, knowing that if I don't, it will be some time upon returning to my futon before I warm up again enough to drift back off.

Another issue is that Japan is so annoyingly environment-conscious (or perhaps stingy with electric bills) that the prefectural Board of Education would not let Fukuoka public schools turn on their space heaters until December 1st. Because we know it's cold by the date, not the temperature. And, my vice-principal insisted on leaving the windows in the staff room open because the Japanese are morbidly afraid of influenza (more on that some other time, maybe) and think that, I guess, uncirculating air will lead to mass infection and the school shutting down, and, horror of horrors, A DROP IN PRODUCTIVITY. So before I left for a trip to L.A. (more on that later, maybe) working hours were sort of like being a nomad living in a yurt on the snow-covered Mongolian steppe, or something. No amount of heat-o tech could save me.

But now it's December 7th, so we know it's cold, and the heat is on.