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!