There's a Lot of Paperwork Involved with Intruding

I don’t think there are very many places on the planet where putting in eye drops during class is considered acceptable behavior, but drinking water is not. Where sixteen year old boys have stuffed bear pencil cases and folders with pictures of their favorite members of J-idol boy bands printed on them. Where ping-pong is a legitimate sport, even for those cool enough to be on the rugby team.

But that, friends, is high school in Japan.

Every day I see these kids, and although many of the things that initially struck me as very odd I can gloss over without noticing now, there are still moments when I think, How has your society led you to this and you think it’s normal?

Students at a tea festival

 Take the very structure of students’ world. They come to school in the morning, by themselves and sometimes traveling great distances. They have been doing this since elementary school, where they are taught how to come and go from school alone and be safe. Although at first this might seem to encourage a level of independence largely missing from American schools, it is immediately tempered by other aspects, like the hour-by-hour record of how they spent their time they are required to turn in to their homeroom teachers every day. In high school. The homeroom teacher is then supposed to evaluate these forms and determine if each individual student is studying enough and sleeping enough in a day. Every moment is accounted for and judged for its prescription to the sanctioned standards.

When I learned of this, I was immediately shocked at the intrusiveness of it, and was further shocked that my supervisor was shocked that American schools did not require students to do likewise.

“So, you know how many hours a day a student studies?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. “We are supposed to tell them if it’s not enough.”

She admits that, mostly, it’s just annoying busywork for the teachers, but in their roles as moral guides for students’ wellbeing, they are culturally obligated to both know and care about literally every minute of their charges’ time.

“Why don’t students just lie?” I continue.

“What?” she exclaims, now the one shocked.

“Yeah, I mean, they can just say they are studying for three hours, but really they study for one and watch TV for the other two. Who’s going to know? They could just lie,” I tell her. “If we had to do this in America…well, first, no one would, but if we did…students would just lie.”

“I suppose they could lie,” she ponders, like the idea has never occurred to her before, that one of her brood could have been untruthful on official paperwork.

Before class

The idea, to them, really is that shocking.

Later, I brought the idea up with students, to see how they would react. We were discussing admission to Tokyo University, Japan’s version of Harvard. Commonly known as Toudai, the university recently started allowing September enrollment as an alternative to April enrollment, in order to encourage more foreign students to come and to make it easier for Japanese students to study abroad. When Japanese students apply, they came opt to begin school in September, but a condition of this is that they provide an account of how they plan to spend the summer in between finishing high school and starting college. What they plan to do – travel, work, study independently, etc. – is a factor in whether they are accepted to the university at all.

“You tell the university what you want to do, and that can affect if you get in, but do they check?” I ask.

“Check what?” students ask.

“Check if you did what you said you were going to do. Do they talk to your boss or your parents about what you did over the summer?”

“Maybe they don’t check,” they say.

“So, you could lie.”

“Lie?” they ask.

“Yes, you could say you were going to do something, get in to the school, and then not do it. If they don’t check, then it doesn’t matter, right?”

They all look at me like they don’t understand. Lie?, their faces puzzle over the word, again like it’s something that has never occurred to them. It’s shocking, even the suggestion of it. Mostly because it’s really not something they’ve ever thought about doing before.

The rugby team making lunch

I don’t think there are very many places on the planet where people have their lives so closely monitored, and yet have never considered the possibility of being untruthful about any of it. That’s an aspect of life here that I both admire and which concerns me. At its most basic level, it’s the result of people who don’t think outside the box that has been prescribed to them, and that, I think, inherently limits Japan. Although their honesty is honorable, I think the extreme to which it is carried out here results in naiveté and lack of imagination in problem-solving. They do precisely as they are told. Never will it occur to one of them to drink water in class – though all of them will put in eye drops.

Originally published at akitaculture.wordpress.com

My Other Blog

Recently, I started blogging with some fellow ALTs in Akita-ken about our beloved prefecture. Our goal is compile not only information, but mainly the cultural activites and oppurtunites that are available here by looking at musuems, restaurants, books, movies, festivals, exhibitions, and culture more generally.

We'd love it if you could check it out, or contribute, if there's something about Akita you'd like other people to know about. Here's the link:

http://akitaculture.wordpress.com/

どうもありがとう!

Rumor Has It You Ain't Got Her Love Anymore

I am sitting in the teacher’s room after school. A few students absently clean the area around me, occasionally exchanging solemn whispers. Everything is peaceful. Then, one of my favorite ninenseis boys comes bounding in and plops violently in the chair next me.


“Jeshii,” he says, “My girlfriend…Divorce!”

Divorce?

Through a series of questions, I learn that although he and his girlfriend had not broken up yet, there was a rumor going around school which he had heard from a few other people that his girlfriend intended to break up with him.

Do you want to break up?, I ask.

Well, I love her, buuuutttt....maybe she does not love me, he says.

Have you talked to her?

No.

Are you going to talk to her?

No, no, no…, and he looks at me like this is a ridiculous suggestion.

I laugh. So you are just going to wait and see?

Yes!

He then bounds out of the teacher’s room in the same manner in which he had entered, the sole purpose of his visit being to tell me about his love life, and I realize…that I am in the know, in the school gossip circle! They now tell me things, rumors, about their lives!

I also realize how much high school really is the same everywhere.



Author’s note: A few weeks later it was reported to me that they had in fact not broken up, and as far as I know, are still together. I asked him if he thought it was "rabu rabu" forever. He thinks maybe not. Ah well.

Korea and My Grandfather

I recently read an article, and it got me thinking. Here’s the link if you’re interested in where this all started:


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=157396344

I also, a little less recently, visited South Korea for the first time. I didn’t think about it much during my stay, but that trip was the first time anyone in my family has been to Korea since my grandfather was in the war there in the 50’s. Presumably, my trip was only the second time anyone in my immediate family has ever been to Korea.

Obviously, Seoul is a very different place now from when my grandfather drove ambulances during the war. Obviously, he wasn’t there as a tourist. I remember when my grandmother died, and as we were going through all the many, many things in her house, we found a trunk of souvenirs my grandfather had brought back from that tour – I want to say there was a jacket, but I could be remembering that part incorrectly. Mostly, I remember the silk scarves printed with famous Korean scenes on them. They seemed paralyzed into the creases and folds the years they had spent buried in that truck, with no one looking at them, had put them in. I was eleven when I saw them, and even then I realized how little I knew about the places my grandparents had seen on the trips their kids, my dad and aunt and uncles, hadn’t gone on and therefore couldn’t tell me about. I wanted to know about the Korea he had seen.

I also remember a photograph of my grandfather positioned in the front seat of one of those ambulances, knees drawn up because he was very tall, wearing his uniform. It was a beautiful picture, and I remember looking at the trees in the background behind the ambulance, visible through the windows of the drivers’ cockpit.

Thinking back on what I saw of Korea myself, I can imagine that photograph superimposed over the scenes I witnessed. Even in the city there are patches that seem quite rural, and there are such trees there even now. Did he visit the Secret Garden while he was there? I did – but I don’t know how much our experiences overlap, even sixty years apart, if they do at all. A soldier then and a teacher now, sharing even a little of the same experience. That I, eleven years after being eleven and looking at those old trifles in a chest, would go there myself. I wouldn’t have thought it. I would have liked to talk to him about it, to share.

So even though he wasn’t buried on Korean soil, his gravestone has the mark of his war – like all the gravestones in that cemetery do, a cemetery for veterans. I had never thought much of the fact my grandfather was a veteran. Because I hadn’t needed to. He died when I was eight, and his war experience was far removed by both time and space from when I was part of his experience, singing songs in a rocking chair, not thinking about death. But, now, having been there and having a better understanding of the nature of that war and the nature of war in general, I wish he and I could have talked about it – for him to see it then and me to see it now, and across all those years between our times and between the last time I saw him and now, he is still an intrinsic part of my experience – an experience I am only partly alone in.

In the article I link to above, families talk about going to a certain cemetery in Korea because their family members had died in the war. Mostly, these families are Chinese. In a way, I understand that sentiment – a connection to someone gone and far away, someone you still love and wish you knew more about, and their intrinsic connection to a place far away. So my Korea is just that, also my grandfather’s. My visit there was more than just a weekend – it was a red thread around a finger sixty years old, to always remember and to never forget.

Kids Say The Darndest Things : Part 2

These are more quotes from student essays that have come through my desk. Each quote is from a different essay by a different student, and original syntax and spelling have been maintained for the sake of authenticity.



On Love:

• “Love is danger word…”


On Staying Healthy:

• “[I do] Nothing. Is it about time I should worry about health? On the contrary, what about you?”


On Population Control:

• “In order to improve environment, I want to reduce number of people. If it falls down to half, we’ll use less electricity, fossil fuels, and so on. So I’m not going to get married in the future.”


On Forms of Words that Should Exist But Don’t:

• “No I amn’t.”

• “So it should be compulsory to learn English early…so we can learn it easilier.”

• “In terms of health, what importantest in food a day is breakfast.”


On Future Plans:

• “He wants to be farmer. His dream is to get married to a woman of matchless beauty.”

• “He has no hope for the future.”

• “She want to go to a college to learn education. She want to be a elementary school teacher because she likes children. Also, her dream is to marry. She will do her best.”

• “Her dream is an intercultural marriage.”


On How to Carry Large Pieces of Fruit:

• “A furoshiki is a one piece of square cloth. It’s very useful and environment-friendly. It’s up to your imagination how we use it. For example, we can wrap and bring a watermelon with it easier.”


On Hanafuda:

• “Hanafuda is one of Japanese game using cards with flower designs. There are twelve kinds of flowers that represent the twelve months of year. It’s like a nervous breakdown of cards in Europe.

The rule is very simple. So why don’t you play once?”


On False Impressions:

• “My brain works very actively. And my brain is very useful for studying. But I don’t use my perfect brain. So I am often said that Mr. Mizunoe is very fool. I think that I am a genius boy. So I want to say that I don’t use the all brain. I use a portion of my perfect brain. This is very mottainai. You had better not try to fool me.”


On Why You Might Bike Instead of Drive:

• “First, if he goes to his office slowly with a bike [instead of car], he can look around him. It makes him some exciting discoveries, so he likes it.

Second, he was swindled out of his money under a false promise of marriage. So he doesn’t have enough money.”


On Travel:

• “I want to go to Europe because rowing sports come from there…And also, I want to have real Italians.”

• “Reckless adventures ruin you.”

My Eco-Friendly Year : Trains

Last week marked the end of my nearly 400 days without a car. It was a day that should have come about 400 days earlier.

Before I came to Japan, I had visions of riding trains everywhere I needed to go, of the convenience of them all, of me with my nose buried in a book while scenic green rice fields rolled past in the background, surrounded by students and businessmen so plugged in they wouldn’t notice me stealing surreptitious glances in their respective directions.

But then I came to Japan.

And I realized that this romantic vision of train-as-primary-transportation really doesn’t work in reality, because the reality is that trains don’t drop you off in front of where you want to go. They take you to areas, towns, but not specific locations. Even if I took the train, I would still have to walk, bike, or bus to where I actually want to go, and, besides maybe a lovely ten-minute walk beside a river in the balmy autumn air, which never actually happened in reality either, these methods of completing journeys are not romantic and are not convenient and really just cancel out whatever enjoyment I may have gotten from the train ride itself. On which I never actually read a book anyway because there was too high a chance of me getting distracted and then missing my stop, and they don’t run often enough in my area of the middle-of-nowhere to make quick returns practical or timely options.

Akita is not Tokyo, and I don’t live in a movie.

I must always remind myself of these rudimentary facts.

Further, there’s the reality of not living all that close to the train station in my town, which requires a too-long walk or a bus ride to get to. And frankly, I really hate buses, I have always hated buses –  despite the zealous attempts of my grandmother during my childhood to convince me that, really, they are great places to meet new people – and I will continue to hate buses, and on trains I never know where to look. Out the window awkwardly behind me? At the people sitting on the bench across from me? Certainly not eye-level with the people standing up and facing me!…which leaves an uninteresting spot on the floor to study, and even then I usually can’t affect that practiced, glazed over, Japanese stare into nothingness, and it’s more like me, making everyone else on the train uncomfortable because the gaijin girl can’t keep her eyes to herself. It’s just unpleasant for everyone involved.

So, generally, the train situation could have been better, and again my naïve ideas about life in Japan shatter into a million pieces upon actual execution in real life. It wouldn’t be the first time, and even 400 days into my ex-pat existence here, I doubt it will be the last.

It's Debatable

In the last month or so, my JTE has given me the task of teaching students how to debate. At first, I was like, Yeah! This is gonna be so fun!, because, ya know, I did debate in college, and knew that the particular group of kids we were going to be working with were smart, good students, and had strong English skills. I had heard success stories of Japanese students doing terrific debates under the tutelage of ALTs with less experience than me, so I figured with some instruction my little chickadees would be able to soar proudly on their own!


And then we got to class.

I split the students into larger groups, because, despite my admittedly out-of-proportion-with-reality expectations, I was still grounded enough to know it was going to be a difficult task for them to speak in English and wanted to break them in slowly. I presented the topic and asked them to brainstorm reasons for their assigned positions with their groups.

Me: This is what we’re going to do. Okay, now talk about it in your groups.

Students: *silence*

Me: You can use Japanese if you want!

Students: *lookatpapersilently*

Me: Does…anyone…have any…ideas?

Students: *morepaperlooking*

Me: For God’s SAKE, say anything at all!!

Students: *moresilence*

After two class periods of pulling teeth to get anybody to say anything (mind you, this had nothing to do with them not understanding or not having ideas – when I asked them to write down their ideas by themselves, they did just fine), I realized something fundamentally obvious about the situation that I had missed before – the students didn’t understand what to do with debate. They had no cultural background in it, they’ve never seen one, it’s not really used in the Japanese political system and even less so in the Japanese educational one. Yes, speaking in groups is difficult for them in its own right, given that they are taught to be listeners in classes and not initiators and it’s using a foreign language, but moreover, they legitimately didn’t know what kinds of things they were supposed to be saying or what their end goal was.

Mostly, this was my fault. If I had spent more time explaining what the hell they were working towards and how to get there and why and basically everything that I assumed they already understood but didn’t, then I’m sure the outcome would have been moderately less noiseless. Fortunately, I have another shot. Next week I’m putting on a three day English camp for eleven of these same ninenseis, and using a six-class debate curriculum made specifically for Japanese students that I hijacked from the Internet, I hope that the students are able to learn what I forgot I needed to teach them. It will also allow them to generate their own topics to talk about, which I hope will also illicit more of a response, if they are given opportunities to discuss what interest them instead of what interests me. Always learning…here’s to second chances!

Fear & Respect - A Class Profile

Generally, I would say the students I am closest to are my ninenseis at Kita Ko, my base school. I am at my base school the most and have lessons with the six ninensei classes (A-F) there the most often.


So I would say I know these kids pretty well. I have actual relationships with quite a few of them, and I know things about their lives, and we talk. But really, my favorite class as a group is the class that all the other teachers dislike teaching.

These kids don’t always pay attention, they talk during class and sometimes over the teacher, they misplace handouts and fail quizzes. Although they act much like an average class in America, maybe even like a better behaved one, they are little terrors by Japanese standards, especially in a school as prestigious as Kita Ko. Teachers balk at having to teach them, and the only subject they all do their homework for is math (they belong to the science track, so math and science are more their interests than English or…school…).

I love having class with these kids though, precisely because they don’t maintain the silent, model Japanese classroom. They make a rote lesson plan more interesting by being more interactive and showing more personality, even if they aren’t always interacting with the material at hand. I like joking with the girl in the back about how she never has her handouts and always responds with “Kami nai!” when I ask her about it. I loved when I congratulated one of the boys on his quite high writing test score, and he laughed and showed me his quite low reading test score. I think it’s hilarious that the two boys in the back always talk when they are supposed to be practicing reading, and then whip back to their papers whenever I walk by, even though all three of us know what’s going on.

However, I maintain a healthy fear of them. They kind of scare me because they are all little pranksters. Once, one of my favorite boys tried to get me to take a piece of gum from him. I was suspicious a) because they aren’t allowed to chew gum during class, and b) because Japan doesn’t sell packs of stick gum. I didn’t take it and told them it was scary, and later he showed me that it would have flicked my finger if I had taken it. And that is exactly the kind of behavior that endears them to me and makes the other teachers dislike teaching them. Straight up cheek.

The only thing they seem consistently interested in is pronunciation, and one of the most hilarious class incidents was when they were all trying to say “Ethiopia” correctly. My JTE has said they pay more attention when I am there, and I think part of that is because they are interested in my pronunciation. They will listen silently to my reading of a boring textbook story they have heard ten times when they will talk through things my JTE explains to them in Japanese. They are always asking me to pronounce words for them, and they’ve been struggling over “anxiety” for two weeks now. To my constant amusement.

These kids show more personality in class than the other classes (not that they have more than the other students…they just show it more), and that is why I love going to class with them. They are different. In a place that molds kids into perfect rule-followers, there’s the class that doesn’t conform. They once told me they wanted me to teach class by myself, and when I told them that would mean no Japanese at all, they seemed fine with it. But I’m pretty sure that’s because they had some kind of ulterior motive – which is exactly what makes them so fun.

Cow's Trip Across the U.K.

I recently returned from a trip to Scotland and England. Instead of boring descriptions, I have put together a photo chronology of the trip, featuring Cow, my new best friend. Cow is a stuffed highland cow (new second favorite animals, after owls). He is attached to my purse.

 Cow's first appearance in my life, in the wild of Edinburgh Castle

Cow in front of Edinburgh landscape, from South Bridge

Cow on the dashboard of the car, on our drive from Edinburgh to Inverness

Cow and me and a real highland cow, besides a Scottish castle

Cow in front of Cawdor Castle (yes, that's the Cawdor from Macbeth)

Cow in front of Loch Ness. No, I didn't actually see Nessie. That lifegoal remains unfulfilled.

Cow in front of the B+B in Penrith, in the Lake District

Cow on Hadrian's Wall, in the north of England

Cow in Oxford

Cow on the London Eye, with the Parliament Building and Big Ben in the background.
When I took this picture, this British dad beside me laughed, and so I explained that it was "Cow's Trip Across the U.K."
He appreciate it.

Cow at Odeon cinema, before we watched Predator 3D. I took several of these pictures, and the guy in the row in front of me finally turned around and said, Got a good one yet?, to which I responded, YEAH, Wanna see?
 I doubt he appreciated it.

Cats Outside the Classroom

The last few weeks at school have been exam-making/exam-taking/exam-grading time. This means that students are not allowed to come into the teacher’s room at any point, and the teachers must go outside into the hall to talk to students..

Usually, when students want a teacher’s attention, they will come partly into the teacher’s room, bow in the general direction of the room, say the magic room-entering word, and then ask for/find whatever teacher they are looking for.

Not so during all-events-surrounding-exams weeks.

At this time of year, students must remain on the other side of the teacher’s room door. They don’t get to say the magic room-entering word, because they are not allowed to enter the room. Instead, they must stand outside and meow like cats for whomever they want to talk to. Because they must remain outside, they are further away, and some of the quieter students have to stand there for quite a while, howling the name of their desired sensei until someone takes pity on their plight and delivers the message. The students don’t actually stay outside the classrooms. That title was chosen for purely alliterative reasons.
The other day, a girl was in just such a situation. However, she wasn’t meowing for any teacher in particular; she just kept repeating, Sensei…Sensei…Sensei…Sensei…, over and over again in a quiet little voice, while all the teachers looked at each other like, Does she mean you or me?
Eventually, someone asked her to clarify who exactly she was looking for, and the meowing stopped. Until the next student came. These cats in matching uniforms will be able to enter the sacred space once again in a day or two, so they will again sound less like little lost kitties and more like their regular selves. Although I did find meowing rather endearing while it lasted.

A Boy at a Bus Stop

Sometimes, when I take the 4:15 bus back from Araya, the bus pulls over for a young man and an old woman at a particular bus stop in front of a white school. More accurately, I suppose, the bus pulls over for the old woman only, because the young man never gets on with her. I’ve seen them maybe three or four times.

He holds her arm as she steps into the door way of the bus, and he watches her as she pulls a ticket from the machine and finds a seat inside. He is young, and she is very old. He must be out of high school, or else he would be in school himself at the time, or at least be wearing a uniform, although his face looks like he still could be seventeen. I assume her to be his grandmother.

After he watches her safely seated inside, and the bus pulls away from the stop, he waves to her. They are not shy waves, but big ones, like he wants to ensure she knows that he’s there till the last possible second. She waves demurely back at him with frail hands. His smile could leap off his face at any moment.

Once I saw him lean over and pick up a small dog off the ground in between letting go of his grandmother’s arm and waving goodbye. He held the brown puppy in one arm and gestured happily with the other. I wondered where the two of them lived, and where she was going. I watched to see where she got off the bus, but my stop apparently comes before hers. I assume she rides all the way to the station.

Although I am curious about her, the old woman riding the bus alone, I wonder more about him. Young and good-looking, I’ve never seen more care be taken for the short moments between the passing of one person from standing on the ground to being seated on a bus. He always looks so committed to the moment, to his care of her, and to how much he loves her.

Maybe because this is Japan, and the elderly are treated with more care and concern than they generally are in America, but I would think most young people would be more embarrassed about having to accompany their grandmothers to the bus stop than so plainly showing their joy and enthusiasm.

So every time I see him, I wonder about them, their relationship, and the simple beauty of it. I wonder about him, and that although neither of them know I’m watching, they’ve made an impression on me. Just because he smiled widely. Because he cared. It's not the kind of thing you see everyday.

Differences : Doors, and How They Open

The other day I was walking up to my apartment. I live on the fourth floor of a walk-up, and although I never notice all the stair climbing until I get to the third floor, by the time I get to my door, I don’t want to climb stairs anymore. On this particular occasion, my hands were full of mass mailings I didn’t want, a grocery bag, and all the things in my purse I had had to pull out while rummaging for my keys. Everything was precariously balanced in my arms while I struggled to put the key in the lock and turn it, and then…it hit me. The thing that had been unsettling me for the last ten months I have been living here. The thing that strikes me as odd every time I come home and which I had not been able to put my finger on.

I realized that every time a similar, hands-totally-full scenario had happened in the States, once I had managed to unlock the door, all I had to do was open it with my shoulder, walk in, dump all the stuff on the nearest surface (and then leave it there for the next five days), and let the door close behind me. However, as the culturally-conditioned instinct was about to take over now, I remembered what had been throwing me off about Japan –

The doors don’t open in. They open out. In order to get into my house with my hands overflowing, I had to not only unlock the door and turn the door knob, but pull the door towards me, prop it open with my elbow before entering, and also struggle out of my shoes before I was able to reach an open surface on which to dump all of my stuff (and then leave it there for the next five days. Or week, since I live alone now, and no one tells me what to do with my junk!).

In America, doors open in, allowing for simpler entry (physically forced if need be, like in the movies) and a generally more welcoming vibe. Oh, hello, let me open this door inwardly, and gesture you into my home! However, here, doors swing out onto the landing (in my case), which makes it awkward any time I need to sign for a package or pay the pizza delivery man, because I have to hold the door open with one hand while receiving the package/pizza with the other, and then either throw it on the floor next to the shoes (gross, and would probably illicit strange glances from Japanese person making said drop-off), or continue to hold heavy package/hot pizza while signing for the package/paying the pizza man.

Now, I understand why the houses do it, because you can’t have doors swinging in when there is a mountain of shoes on the concrete landing that is culturally required to be there, since you absolutely must remove said shoes before making the baby step up onto the actual floor of the house. Always, always shoeless. An inwardly swinging door would get snagged on all the shoes, and then I would have a further awkward situation with the package/pizza delivery man, because then the package/pizza I was receiving wouldn’t fit through the small open space, blocked by the shoes. It’s a bit viciously circular if you think about it.

Also, doors here tend to be heavy and close on their own, while most American doors need a bit of a push to close. This means that no matter whether door swings in or out, you are still having to hold it open with your arm/body during any package/pizza transaction.

So, I get it. Doors are different here. What really surprised me, I suppose, was how I went ten months without being able to name the difference that had been bugging me for so long. That is really the root of this lengthy explanation of door-opening dynamics, though it really is the worst to have to set down a bag on the landing outside your door, far enough away so that the door can still open outward, of course, and then picking it up again once you have the door propped against your hip or shoulder or some other body part. I have yet to think of a good solution to all of this, besides maybe making sure my keys are easier to find.

Youth is Like Diamonds in the Sun, and Diamonds are Forever

Most of the time my job is really fun. I get to interact with great teachers who are very kind to me, and my students make everyday new and exciting. As if this needed any more proving (although I feel like the rest of this blog does a pretty good job of covering the fact that my students are awesome), this morning when I walked into class with my ninenseis, one of my favorite rugby boys let out a loud, Oww, OWWWWW, as soon as I walked in, and then spent part of class trying to decide if the Tanaka family lived in the house or on the house.

However, despite all the constant awesome, the fact remains that I:

Spend everyday in high school.

I am surrounded by kids who are trying to figure out where they want to go to college, what they want to do, how their families will feel about everything, while also facing an incredible pressure to study and perform well on tests that is, frankly, unknown in a vast majority of American high schools. And some colleges. And then I think about when I was seventeen, really only about five years ago, and how at that time I really didn't have a clue that I would be living and working in Japan and, generally, have a pretty epic life that is about as close to what I would have wanted as...what I could have wanted.

So, in the spirit of irrepressible youth, I give you this song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQi8wEHMm5Y

BOY STAY, and Other Classroom Mysteries

Things at my agricultural school are always a good time. I am going to be planting rice with the ichinenseis later this week, and so during one class period I consulted my all-girl sannensei class for advice. Mostly, they told me ways to avoid getting splashed with mud, that I’m supposed to put the baby rices about two inches into the ground, and also some cryptic suggestion, “BOY STAY,” that I’m not exactly sure the meaning of.

These students always surprise me with what surprises them and how they react. One girl gave me a dango (a sweet dumpling snack) stick (which is usually served four on a wooden skewer) after I said that I never ate breakfast. She actually tried to feed it to me at first, but then I took it from her and ate it myself. Another made me an origami bow out of scrap paper. They asked me if I like Lady Gaga, and then told me to sing her songs to them using the stick from the dango as a microphone. Dango Girl spent twenty minutes trying to remember the name of her junior high school ALT from three years before, whose name was apparently close to the word ‘Christmas.’ She kept saying “Merry Kurisumasu ja nakute” (rough translation: It’s not Merry Christmas, but…) over and over again and still couldn’t remember. My suggestions met with no recognition, so that remains a mystery.

They also asked what I wanted to do whenever I went back to America, so I told them grad school. Origami Girl freaked, and kept saying, “Ehhhhh, studying diakirai!” (translation: Seriously?! I hate studying!). Trying to set a good example, I told her that because I had studied hard, I got to come to Japan. She paused, looked at me, and then said “Nice fight.” (translation: You win, Sensei.)

Kanano will also start selling packaged pancakes that they have made at Lawson’s, one of the ubiquitous convenience store chains. Although the campaign starts on Friday, today all of the teachers were given a package, which has a cute little chicken wearing a hat on the front and kanji I can’t read. I didn’t know that businesses in Japan did the grassroots product thing, so it’s cool the school (and students) get this opportunity.

On Friday, I plant rice, and I’m interested in seeing how that happens. It’s been raining for a week here, and it’s cold, and I have to trudge around barefoot in mud for a while. But it should be a good time, and I doubt I will ever have the chance to plant a rice field again, so I’m going to take advantage. I’m hoping to also help harvest it in October, to lend a kind of symmetry to the experience. Ganbarimasu!

The Newbies

I’m sitting in the office drinking coffee on the first sunny day in a week. The quality of the coffee at this office has gone downhill since Coffee-Sensei got transferred God knows where at the beginning of the new school year about a month ago. My first day back after spring vacation I didn’t see him, and I was worried but thought it was possible he had just taken the day off. The next day I didn’t see him, and I knew that he was gone – moved to another school to make coffee for some other desperate, caffeine-addicted ALT, and never again for me. Alas.

In addition to the unforeseen disappearance of Coffee-Sensei, I also have a whole new round of ichinenseis. Since it’s the only grade I teach here, everything kind of changed around me (except my desk position, which is in a prime location to watch everything else that goes on in here…including when a fresh pot gets made). I have new (to me) JTEs to teach with and all new students. The ichinensei class, at this school and my others, has surprised me with how immediately genki they all are. Nearly all the classes have, of their own accord, asked me questions, wanted to chat in English, and are generally less shy and more confident in their English than the ichinensei class last year (they are now my badass ninenseis, and they have improved a lot since nine months ago).

I think part of it is due to the fact that I’m not the new kid this time around, which means that the students don’t have to put up with me not having any idea what is going on and not understanding anything they try and say to me in either Japanese or English. I can now confidently answer questions like, Do you watch anime (Sometimes), and, Who is your favorite Japanese artist (Arashi). I know what One Piece is, and I know that Chopper is everybody’s favorite character. I also sing AKB48 at karaoke. These new kids have the advantage of not only possessing more English ability than last year’s models, but also having an ALT who is not fresh off the plane from America and has way more shared cultural knowledge with them. Now, I (most of the time, at least) know, when they repeat an English question back to me in Japanese, whether it is what I am asking or not. It’s a lot easier for me to help them say what they want to say in English because I know what English words in a Japanese accent sound like, I know what kind of things they generally want to know, and I understand a lot more of the chatter in Japanese that fills in the spaces while they struggle for English translations. We are both doing better, I think.

I’ve already had a couple instances of students being really excited that they could make themselves understood to me in English, and that is what makes me happy too. They already understand quite a lot, and I’m excited about having a full year of classes with them to get even more confident.

How I Learned to Love a Cherry Blossom

Hanami. An entire word created to express the very specific act of viewing cherry blossoms. Because, for Japan, cherry blossom viewing is the highest and most pure form of flower viewing, partly, I'm assuming, because the window of opportunity every year is so narrow. In Akita, I would say the peak cherry blossom viewing time lasted only about four days. Nothing had happened with the trees on Saturday. By Thursday, when the rain set in, the blossoms were all mostly gone. But for those few days, Akita really was glorious.

My hanami-ing was limited to an afternoon in Senshuu Park, the prime location in the City, and a day in Kakunodate, one of the main tourist destinations in the prefecture. Due more to coincidence than anything else, I saw Senshuu in all its glory on Monday, but by the time I got to Kakunodate on Friday, it was drizzly, and most of the trees were bare and had dropped their blossoms on the paths and puddles beneath their branches.

Apparently, it is good luck if you get hit by a falling blossom. In Senshuu, a blossom did fall on me, but I mistook it for a bug and tried to shoo it away. However, it still touched me, so I'm going to continue to think it was lucky.

Japanese have this idea that people need to look at trees during all seasons. Although I can understand hanami, because it doesn't last very long and we don't really have an equivalent in the States, hanami's autumn sister, fall color viewing, just never made sense to me. I'm from Portland. Fall colors are my life. I mean, they are pretty and all, but fall colors last a lot longer than cherry blossoms, and there isn't really the accompanying festival propaganda that goes along with hanami-ing. Cherry blossoms at least make an appearance on my Japanese visa, so you know they are a big deal. I've never seen "fall colors" on anything.

Anyway, hanami was pretty, though I was unprepared for how fleeting it would be and how at the whim of nature the event would put me. I will have a better mindset next year. Here's some pictures.

                                                   Senshuu Park on Monday

Kakunodate on Friday

Annyong ha se yo.

First off, it's hanami season now here in Akita, so the cherry blossoms are blossoming, and everything is warm and sunny and beautiful. As I was walking home last night, I realized that a mere month ago, the same streets had been coated in ice, and now I wear only a light jacket. It's worth putting up with the winter for how lovely everything is right now.

Second, I got a chance to spend last weekend in Seoul, Korea. Korea is only a two hour flight out of Akita airport, so I went there with my supervisor from my base school.

Now, prior to visiting, I couldn't have cared less about Korea. I have never seen a Korean drama. I cannot recognize Lee Min Ho at a glance. I had to look up what the alphabet was called. So, I wasn't expecting much out of the trip or that I would care much either way. However, upon driving into downtown from the airport, I instantly liked the look and vibe of Seoul. The light was different somehow from Japan. More like Seattle if anything. And as far as the level of development of Korea, it lies somewhere in between Thailand and Japan, and you can see the differences and intersections of where the infrastructure is transforming from one to the other.

There were lots of things I liked about Seoul. Here is a brief list:

a) Korean fashion. Minus whoever okay-ed the neon running shoe, hose, and mini skirt combination that seemed so pervasive, the Koreans I saw, especially in some of the trendier neighborhoods we trolled around, looked like they had walked straight out of some epic magazine editorial.

b) Korean driving. Korea drives on the right side of the road, like the States. That fact was oddly comforting.

c) Korean men. In the day and half I was in Seoul, I saw some of the most beautiful men I have ever seen in my life, lounging around on train platforms and haunting cool restaurants. They were so attractive it hurt my eyes a little.

d) Korean won. It's like paying for everything with Monopoly money! Which is an okay impression to have, because stuff is really cheap. The euro also has this feel, but unlike Korea, things are actually really expensive in Europe, and you shouldn't pay for things like life is a board game.

e) Koreans. My JTE has a friend who is an English teacher in a high school in Seoul, so we met up with her, and she showed us around, how to use the metro, took us to dinner, had the ability to speak and read Korean, etc. I told her that I was interested in Korean authors, so she gave me her English translation of this really popular Korean novel. What a champ!

We also met up with one of my JTE's former students, who graduated from my base school (before my time there) and has been studying at a university in Seoul for the past year. The four of us went to dinner, and thus I experienced one of the most linguistically bizarre experiences I have ever, well, experienced.

There was:
- My JTE. Fluent in Japanese and English.
- Her student. Fluent in Japanese and Korean, with a little (though functionally useless) English.
- Her Korean friend. Fluent in Korean and English.
- Me. Fluent in...English, with functionally pretty useless Japanese.

During dinner, we were speaking three languages, without one common one between all of us, so there was loads of translating in between anything that anybody said in order to get a point across. But it worked. Sometimes the lines between 'language' and 'communication' get blurred for me, even living in a country where I can't speak the native tongue, but that dinner was all about communication and had little to do with language. It was fascinating and eye-opening, and more than a little made me feel how little we value being bilingual in America. That's a problem, people. Learn something.

So, all in all, I really enjoyed Korea, even though I expected not to, and I have every intention of going back, staying longer, and seeing, now, my friend there. Maybe I will learn how to say Thank You in Korean for next time.

Words That May or May Not Exist

A couple weeks ago I was leaving school. My supervisor’s homeroom was responsible for cleaning the downstairs hallway and the principal’s room that day (the kids clean the entire school every day after classes finish), through which I must go in order to exit school. A few of them saw me, yelled my name, and then stood around me in a circle all talking at once. Every time a kid came out of the principal’s room, it was, JESSIE!, and the circle got bigger. There were about fifteen chattering ichinensei girls by the end.


Then, one of them says, Jessie, new Japanese word!

New Japanese word?

She continued. Do you know ‘tehepero’?

Tehepero?

Ahhhhhhahhhh, kawaii! Yes, yes, she said. Do you know?

I had never heard this word before. What does it mean. I asked.

They all looked at each other. Hmmm. It means…

She put her hand against the side of her head, tilted her head, and made a high-pitched, anime character-like squeak. Eh-heh.

I blink my eyes.

They repeated the gesture. It means, Eh-heh.

Eh-heh? I asked, and tilted my head in like fashion.

Ahhhhhahhhhh, kawaii!

I roll my eyes. Okay, girls, what does – tilt head, Eh-heh – mean?

They all look confusedly at each other again. Hmmm. It means…Very Shy!

Very Shy?

Yes, yes, they say.

I blink my eyes again.

Eh-heh – repeated gesture – means very shy?

Ahhhhhhahhhh, kawaii! Yes, yes. Very Shy! New Japanese word!

Uh, okay, girls. I’ll see you tomorrow.

Exit Scene.
----------------------------------
Next Day, after class, different classroom with different group of girls.


Two other ichinenseis, whom I swear had not been there the day before, come running up to me after class.

Jessie, Jessie! Do you know tehepero?

Yes, I do! It means – tilts head, Eh-heh – very shy.

Ahhhhhahhhhhh, kawaii! Yes, yes!

They run away giggling.

My JTE looks at me and says she has never heard that word before.

That’s because I'm pretty sure they made it up.

-----------------------------------
UPDATE: I have since done some re-con about this word. It, apparently, is a real word, but I was told by a seventeen year old boy that it is a word only fifteen year old girls use. Eh-heh.

Kids Say the Darnest Things

The following are all quotes from student essays from my various schools – all sannensei and ninenseis (juniors and seniors). A lot of these came from essays they wrote about various social issues in regards to Japan, and I have arranged them based on topic and have included helpful topical headings. Please note, original spellings and grammars have been maintained for the integrity of the authors’ intentions.

These kids are brilliant.

• On the aging population:

 “Old people should be kept by their children. If some of them have no child, I think they invite their own misfortune.”

• On the nature of love:

 “I’m for the plan for two reasons. One is that we can probably do everything for our own favorite person. The other is that we are alive because of love.”

 “But I think ‘love’ is important. However it’s easily beaten by vice.”


 “I think, at least, love is stronger than money. But, love is weaker than friendship. If I must choosed love or friendship, I would choose friendship. Friendship can break love. However love can’t break friendship.”

 “I think love is useless our lives and money is stronger than love. First, although we have a lovely feeling or love someone, love doesn’t any affects our lives. We can do without love. The other, I think money is much stronger than love. We can do without love, but we can’t do without money.

• On foreign policy:

 “You should refrain from recommending many Japanese cultures to her simultaneously and pretend to respect American culture.”

• On Marx:

 “It is impossible to make everyone in the world have the same amount of money. There are poor people and rich people.”

• On saving the environment:

 “The word ‘mottainai’ is used so many in Japanese life. The word means, ‘Let’s save more energy.’ If a man keeps water running, let’s say him, ‘Mottainai!’ and he would stop the water soon. U.S.A. is very large country, so you [Jessie, the American ALT] are the first person that use the word ‘Mottainai!’”

 “Mottatnai is used when


Oh, sorry, I don’t know.”

• On perseverance:

 “On New Year’s, I’ll visit Grandfather, but next year is very important for students because we have an exam. That exam is in order to enter the gate of university. So, next year may kill us.”

Graduation Day

I think winter might actually be starting to melt away here. The snow banks are smaller, the wind less biting, and the temperatures rising a little at a time. Also, the sun doesn’t set at 4:30pm anymore. Now it’s more like 5:30!

Yesterday was the graduation ceremony for the sannenseis. Although I don’t know many of the sannenseis at my base school (I know, like, four), I went to that ceremony, because it was my base school’s, and I had been warned that it would be a rather dull affair. Graduations in America are loud, and there is a lot of clapping and yelling. In Japan, the students wear their regular school uniforms, they march into the gym to clapping, and then no one claps or makes any noise for the next hour. Each homeroom teacher reads out every student’s name, the student yells “hai” back, stands up, and then sits down when their class list has been read. A few speeches happen. The gym is very cold. The students all file past the teachers on their way out of the gym, and though most kids looked like they were trying to hide grins, several girls were very obviously in tears and trying to hide those behind their long hair. At least, they don’t have to wear ridiculous square hats which serve no purpose other than to hold a tassel.

It all made me think about when I was in high school and graduating. American graduations are far more “Yatta!” kind of affairs, in which everyone is happy to have finished. There is a lot of clapping and yelling and speeches where people make stupid jokes that everyone laughs at. Japanese graduations are somber, times to reflect on the great weight of the future and show appreciation for the people who have made it happen. They are very different kinds of things.

I was told graduation parties do not exist here, and I find that to be a gross misfortune. Do students not know that parties are when you get lots of money?! Apparently not. If they did, obviously they would have graduation parties. Additionally, the ceremony was on Thursday morning, and on Friday there was regular classes for the ichi- and ninenseis. I had assumed that the sannenseis wouldn’t be at school, because, obviously, they had graduated. But no. A lot of them were at school today, in their uniforms, running in and out of the teacher’s room with essays and homework all day. And I’m sitting here wondering, What the hell are you people doing here?!? Go home. Go to college. You’re done. Graduation ceremonies mean you are done, and you don’t have to come to school anymore.

Again, apparently not. I have no idea what they are studying for, because as far as my understanding of the system goes, all of them should have gotten into university already, and if they haven’t, than they are fat out of luck until next year. I could be wrong. I tend to wrong about these things pretty often.

But either way, congratulations to my kiddies who are moving on life! At other schools, I know I am losing some of my favorite classes and favorite students, and I’m already thinking about how difficult it will be next year when I lose my ninenseis, whom I am much closer with at all four schools. However, these thoughts are sad. Let us dwell on the badass futures these kids have. Oi.

This Blog is Not About School.

2011 ended. I get it. But with the rush of recommendation lists which appeared towards the end there (even Urban Outfitters had something to say), and my mad purchasing of said recommended albums and wishlist-ing of Kindle editions, I am still in the process of sorting through all the good stuff that happened last year. Mostly music, some books. Here's some of the 2011 stuff I liked.


A Lover's Dictionary - David Levithan

This is a bit in the vein of Buechner's Wishful Thinking. Every "chapter" starts out with a word, presented in alphabetical order, and a definition. In the explanations of each word, the plot of the novel comes through - that of two anonymous lovers (their respective genders are also left unspecified...TWIST), and how they come together and break apart. The story is all bundled together by something of a meta-commentary on how words come together and break apart as we do. It's simple, but effective. Art imitating life, indeed.

Zazen - Vanessa Veselka

This is all the post-apocayltpic poetic prose one needs for the year. The novel leaves the specific circumstances of the world a bit vague - all you really know is that things are bad and that they are only getting worse - but amid pseudo-terrorism, vegan restaurants, and minor characters with names like "Mirror," a heartbreaking narrator desperate for truth and significance out there in the harsh, harsh world comes through. Zazen is stream of consciousness meets hipster freedom fighter meets post-modernism's baby sister. If that sentence isn't enough to convince you, nothing will.


Civilian - Wye Oke

There really wasn't anything I didn't like about this album. The title track hit it big there for awhile, and was on numerous compilations and such, but the whole album is definitely worth getting. NPR liked it. You should too.

Zonoscope - Cut Copy

My perusal of the "Best Albums of 2011" lists revealed one main thing to me - that people were really into their ambient rock this year. And Adele. Everybody loves Adele. I mean, I enjoy a good ethereal downbeat (and Adele...although I do think she should appear in photos standing a lot more often) as much as the next person, perhaps even more so, but I can only take so much before I want to scream at the song, Please, sir, I would love some consistency, and maybe even a chorus! Enter Cut Copy. This album was the best I could find that balanced those two things - the ambient rock everyone is so fond of these days, and the comforting structure of a "regular" album. There are choruses, as well as ethereal peals of sound. The best of both worlds.

Of course, there are plenty of other things to say about 2011. It was a good year for me. I graduated college and then moved to Japan. I would say that's substantial. So please enjoy some of my choice art. Let me know what you liked. There is plenty of goodness to be had out there, from this year as well as last.

m/other : ALT Edition

Last week I had my classes at Kanaashi, my agricultural school. For those of you who have been paying attention, you will remember that I adore this school. The kids are exceptionally friendly, and something(s) hilarious happens every time I have class.

Here's what happened in 2B.

Last month when I was there, we did a Jeopardy-style game in a bunch of the classes. So this time, wee had trivia questions in five categories, but instead of the worth of the questions being pre-decided, the kid who answered rolled a die and got fake money for whatever amount s/he rolled (a cartoon picture of me was on the $100 bill).

The category: People.

The question: Who is the prime minister of Russia?

The first guess: Jackie Chan.

Now, this albeit creative answer really confused me for a minute until my JTE wrote out the word "Russia" on the board, and then "Rush Hour" underneath it. Apparently, the class was a little confused about the difference between these two similar-sounding things (the Japanese pronunciation is nearly identical). I give them props for even knowing about the movie, seeing as it came out in 1998 when most of them were only three or four years old.

And this mistaken identity - which we cleared up, don't worry - was followed by one of the answers to the question, "What is Jessica-Sensei's favorite color?," (Yes, I was also one of the five categories) being "You're beautiful," and me giving out a stack of fake money for flattery. This is something I have done before and will shamelessly do again. At least they are flattering me in English. I think half the boys in that class are also on the baseball team, and I have yet to meet a baseball player here whom I don't like (unlike in the States, where most of them are asses). My JTE is the baseball coach, and I know he runs a pretty tight ship with those boys. He has had me start class by myself once or twice because he was busy scolding some of them in the hallway. But they are good kids, and they have a lot of respect for him. So it's all good.

In other news, it has been snowing loads here the last few days. A couple weeks ago we had a heat wave, where it got above 40 degrees for a couple days! That, however, made everything a slushy mess, which has since turned into a frozen, slippery mess. It has also screwed my bus-to-station schedule - buses basically show up whenever they feel like it now, and the time-table has gone to hell. This has in turn made catching trains a bit of a nightmare. One morning last week, I just gave up on the buses and grabbed a taxi that was going by instead because I refuse to be late for school ever again.

Hope everyone is well! Seattle, I have zero sympathy for your weather conditions. I'm looking out the window and thinking, if it was snowing like this in America, I would not have left the house. And yet I do. It's a whiteout right now, and we continue to press on. I am perpetually cold here.

All my love!

If Only Every Classroom Had a Kissing Machine…

And now for something a bit different…

Common Misconception About Japan #1: That Everyone and Everything is Technologically Savvy and Up-To-Date
False.

Maybe it was all those travel shows I watched or the fact that half the appliances in my American house had Japanese names or maybe I just watched Lost in Translation too many times (okay…I only saw it once), but before coming here I had this idea that the entirety of the country of Japan had fancy, fancy techy stuff, that even the common man walked around perpetually plugged in. I didn’t think that the whole country looked like the pictures I had seen of Tokyo, all lit up, shiny, and eternally flashing advertisements for ramen and karaoke, but I did think that, at least, government-run facilities (i.e., my schools) and the people who worked in them would utilize technology like they utilized chopsticks – with skill and efficiency.

I have come to discover, however, that not really any of this is true. None of my classrooms, even at my top school, have computers or projectors in the classrooms. There are separate technology rooms and computer labs, but even these do not have anything as fancy as Smartboards or document cameras or things that seemed pretty much vital for my classrooms in America. I haven’t been able to locate a color printer in any of my schools. The computer the school lets me use is running Windows 2000 (granted, the full-time teachers do have nicer computers). Most of my teachers can barely handle transferring files via flashdrives, and for all those spiffy Japanese cellphones, most people are still rocking fairly basic models (they do pimp them out with ginormous stuffed animals and wacky colors, however). After talking to Rick and Martha in Kyushu, I think this is pretty much the state of affairs everywhere. Students don’t take or use computers in class – which I think has more to do with an inbred need for homogeny than lack of resources – and I have only seen one sensei use a computer and projector in class for something other than what I was doing.

And yet…some of the hottest tech is coming out of this place. In a way, the Japanese mindset would say that if one school had those resources, than every school would also need those resources, and I can see how that could be a pretty daunting if not unattainable goal, since technology is always improving and consequently going out of date. But the inclusion of technology into classrooms, and even daily life, doesn’t really seem to be on the radar for most Japanese. Students freaked when they saw my iPhone. Teachers want to know everything I can tell them about my Kindle. And these things are as common as driver’s licenses in the States.

So, all this to say, that despite your (and my) preconception that all of Japan is booming with endless access to out-of-this-world technology, that’s just not the reality that I have seen. All of Japan is not Shibuya Crossing, despite what Sophia Coppola would like us to believe.

In their defense though, I doubt the life of anyone would be much improved by creepy things like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PspagsTFvlg

あけましておめでとうございます!

Back from Christmas!

After being out of Akita for almost two weeks, I am back at the office and back to the snowglobe that is my city. Although I missed it terribly, it was nice to get out of the snow for a while, to Miyazaki for Christmas and Tokyo for New Year’s.

I do believe I had a right proper Japanese New Year’s. I was at Sensoji Shrine in Asakusa (one of the most famous-y shrines in Tokyo) at midnight when the bells rung 108 times, which took almost a half hour due to the long pauses, the much bowing, and the old men who rung them. At ten in the morning on January 1, we beat mochi with the guys who ran the hotel we were staying at. Mochi is a traditional Japanese food eaten on New Year’s. You put the rice paste stuff in this hollowed out tree trunk-like container, and then smash it with giant mallets resembling Thor’s Hammer. You do this for a long time. Then you can eat mochi balls in several different ways. There was a plate of sugar and brown granules of some kind (I don’t ask questions), or the mochi dipped in soy sauce and then wrapped in nori (which was surprisingly delicious…and nori is seaweed), and then mochi added to soup. All drunk down with beer and sake. At eleven am!!

We also visited Meiji Shrine on New Year’s Day to wish our luck for the next year. The first shrine visit of the year is a really important part of the Japanese New Year, and Meiji Shrine being the other famous-y shrine in Tokyo, it was flooded with families coming to start the year off right. The organized chaos of the massive crowd was a testament to the efficiency of these people – if that many people assembled anywhere in America, the line would be out to the street, and people would be getting tasered. But guards with nice signs featuring a cartoony animal and ‘please wait a moment’ let people up to the shrine in waves to throw in money, bow twice, clap twice, and bow again, before praying and then making their exit. Even with the surge of bodies, we were only in line for thirty minutes, a feat which would easily have taken a few hours in America.

I had visited Udo Shirne when I was in Miyazaki with Rick and Martha before Christmas, and the place had been covered in rabbits, since 2011 had been the year of the rabbit. Meiji and Sensoji shrines were instead covered in pictures of dragons! And arrows, and all kinds of imagery I didn’t really understand. I asked my Japanese teacher to explain some of the things to me, but it’s still a struggle to look at Asian art and architecture, and to understand the images and the concepts and the worldviews that are going on there. In Europe, I understood how cathedrals and churches worked, because I understood the imagery and the worldview that made them work. Here, I don’t, and I am beginning to appreciate how much worldview affects how a society is built up, both ideologically and physically. Architecture has nearly as much to say about what a society believes as its laws and customs do. Everything I see is something I need to learn, and very little by very little I am putting pieces together that make Japan make more sense to me. The Japanese want foreigners to understand their culture, to ask questions, and to think about it. I’m trying to get better about understanding and asking those questions.

A big thank you to everyone who sent me a package or a Christmas card or a letter (I had a whole pile waiting for me when I got back to my apartment, and it was like second-Christmas!). I hope you all enjoyed your holidays!


For your edificiation:
How to write "Happy New Year" in Japanese - あけましておめでとうございます

How to say "Happy New Year" in Japanese - Akemashite omedeto gozaimasu