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