Oops...

Today some people form the Board of Education came to school to observe the classes. At the end of the day, there was a big meeting with all the teachers and the people from the BOE. The English teacher told me I didn't have to go, but I wanted to. I am always left out of these sort of meetings, I think mostly because I won't understand what's said anyway, but also because it doesn't really matter if I'm there, because I'm a secondary member of the staff. Well, this has kind of been bothering me, because I want to be seen as a team player, and an integral part of the faculty (to whatever extent I can). So I said I'd like to go to the meeting. I only had to fend off a few Oh, but you don't have to's, and so I went to the meeting. As I walked in before the meeting started, the Vice-Principal told the English teachers I should go back to the office. He said I didn't have to be at the meeting. I feel like they're still treating me as a guest, and they don't want to trouble me by making me take on any responsibility. It was a bit tricky, but I managed to insist that I wanted to be there. 

The meeting was an hour long, and about five minutes in, I had that Oh, no, feeling. I couldn't keep my eyes open. I was on an uncomfortable backless stool, and it was a bit warm in the room, and I was bored because I didn't understand what was going on, and my eyes wouldn't stay open. I actually did that thing where you start to doze off, and you feel your body sway, and that you kind of startle yourself awake. It was bad. But I thought, at least I'm in the back, maybe no one will notice. Then, in the middle of one of those slipping away moments, while the man form the BOE at the front of the room was droning on about I have absolutely no idea what, I heard "ALT," and jerked awake to find him staring right at me! He said something something ALT, something something Miriam, isn't it? (in Japanese). I kind of replied on auto-pilot, Yes, Miriam, that's right. I think he asked me if classes were fun, and I had to pretend I hadn't been sleeping though his speech when I replied that they were. Luckily he returned to his speech quickly. I breathed a sigh of relief, and prayed none of the other teachers had noticed. Then in the staff room after the meeting, the English teacher said to me "Oh, you must be tired, you were sleeping when he called on you," or something to that effect. I really can't do anything but laugh. It was such an ironic situation. I basically forced my way into the meeting, and then slept through it. My life has become very bizarre.

Kobe

This weekend, I went to Kobe. I don't feel like writing all about it, but I've put up some pictures, so take a look. 

Kobe Trip

Washiki

When I first arrived in Japan, I was a little worried about the fact that I would regularly have to use washiki, or squat toilets, which are far more common (at least in public toilets) than Western style toilets (what we'd call a "normal" toilet). I even had the thought that maybe I'd be able to just never use the bathroom at my school. Obviously that was stupid. Well, I got used to using the washiki at my school, and in public bathrooms, and for the most part it doesn't bother me anymore. Then, last week, after being at my school for almost two months, I made a discovery: in the very same bathroom I've been using every day, there is, in fact, a Western style toilet, in what I thought was a storage cabinet. I was so surprised! I had no idea it was there. So I was thinking, this is great, now I don't have to use the washiki anymore. The next time I went to the bathroom, I headed to the Western toilet; then I thought, "no, the washiki's easier." This kind of logic makes absolutely no sense, but its something very Japanese that I suppose I must have picked up form experiencing the realities of daily life here. For some reason, the washiki seems like the more convenient choice. I'm not sure why, but if nothing else, it's because when you're in a dirty public bathroom, you don't actually have to touch anything. I guess it's like why men use urinals? Maybe? I don't know.

Car Accident

Friday night we had some excitement in Shiso (for a change), but not the good kind. My friend Lee, another JET, was on his way to my house when he got in a car accident about two blocks away. Luckily he was fine, but his car was pretty banged up. I was surprised when I got there, because he sounded so casual on the phone, but it was a pretty bad crash, there was glass everywhere, and a metal post on the street corner was bent. The streets in my neighborhood are small, and there are no sidewalks, and lots of blind corners, and a woman ran a stop sign at a blind intersection and slammed into Lee's car. We had to call our supervisors at the Board of Education to come down and help, because we had no idea what to do, and don't understand much Japanese. Still, it could have been a lot worse. The woman hit Lee's car on the front right side, the driver's side, so the right headlight and the tire and the side of the hood were really messed up, but if she had hit him a few feet further back, she'd have hit the driver's side door. Pretty scary.

Some Musings on Teaching

This morning after first period, the first year English teacher came back from her lesson in tears. I don't know the details, but apparently she had a really bad time with the students. I really admire her attitude and her teaching ability, she is only a few years older than me, and she manages, as far as I can see, to be both a respected authority figure and a "cool teacher." She seemed to have the whole thing down, that balance that I've been struggling to find, so seeing her so upset by the students really made an impression on me. I realized even the teachers who seem so together can be hurt by the students' attitude, it's not just me. It made me feel a little better, because I still get upset when the students are disrespectful or slacking off in class. But she always gets along with the students so well, and seems to really like them and care about them, and logically I know that is not going to change from just one bad class. So it made me think, even if there's a bad day, when the students drive me crazy or I feel like they hate me (or I hate them), it's just the inertia of the middle school universe, and the students' attitude is indicative of nothing more than how worked up a class is on a certain day. The next day I can get right back in the saddle, and like the kids again. In other words, misbehaving students are not bad students. The way students act in a group is dictated by many social factors, and I shouldn't take it personally. That's obviously easier said than done, but it gives me something to keep in mind. 

Tea and Taiko

Saturday evening we went to a public tea ceremony held at the Yamasaki cultural center. I'm not really sure what the purpose of it was. Lana got tickets from a student of hers. We got to watch them make tea and then we drank it, which was an experience. I hate green tea anything, and a lot of things here are green-tea flavored. But drinking actual green tea is another experience altogether. It's very bitter, and it's kind of room temperature. Lara and Lana both loved it, but I had to literally force myself to drink the entire bowl, because, as it was part of the tea ceremony, you had to drink the whole thing. I took a few sips and then put the bowl down, intending to finish it once I had gotten up the courage, but apparently this was the wrong thing to do, because the women serving the tea came over and were like, "oh, are you not drinking?" so I gathered you are not supposed to put your bowl down, or it means you are done. So I had to choke down the rest of the bowl of tea in a few gulps, and physically restrain myself from grimacing, then assure the woman who collected my bowl that it was "oishikatta" (delicious). Despite the tea itself, I really enjoyed seeing the tea ceremony, and participating in a local event. I saw a few of my students and one of the women who works at my school. It really is a very small town.

On Sunday we went to a Taiko drum concert at a store called Wakon in Yamasaki. We stop in there to browse a lot, especially after our ritual Saturday morning sushi run at the kaiten sushi restaurant, and we got to talking with the women who work there, and they told us about this concert. It was small, maybe 40 or 50 people on folding chairs in a corner of the store, and three drummers and a shamisen player (a shamisen is a traditional Japanese instrument which, if I understood what the boy who was playing it told us, costs about as much as a car. See here.) I had been feeling down the past few days because of the bugs and the second year students (see September 19th post), and then yesterday was really rainy and gross, and I spent the entire day scrubbing my house from top to bottom, and STILL there were a million fruit flies, and the place is still a mess. But the concert really put me in a better mood. It was very intimate, so it was a real experience. The musicians were chatting with the crowd, and they were really good. They even had people come up from the audience and play the drums. As the token gaijin, of course got pulled up on stage. It was a lot of fun. 

Sports Festival Pictures

Pictures from the Sports Festival are now up, but for reasons of the students' privacy the album is unlisted. If you want to see the pictures, email me, or comment on this post, and let me know, and I'll email you the link. 

:)

I'm at school, and it's the most interesting time of the day right now, so I'll comment on it. Every day the students clean the school, from vacuuming the rugs to dusting the bookcases. The school is like one loooooong box, with a single long hallway running down each floor, and one of the things the students do is take rags and sweep the floors. But how they do it, a few of them (boys) line up at one end of the hall, making an inverted V with their bodies, with the rags on the floor, and then they essentially race down the hall, pushing the rag in front of them, with their legs like propellers behind them. It's one of those things that is so amusing to me, because there is absolutely no equivalent in America. 

Oh, also, at this time of day, after classes end and before sports begin, the sound system pipes relaxing plinky music through the school. It's like lullaby music, and the students are supposed to reflect on what they've learned, or at least that's what the English teacher, Yanagita-sensei, told me.

A faint glimmer of light

At the end of this terrible week, and this supremely awful day, there was a faint glimmer of light. I am helping some of the third year students prepare for an English speech competition, and from now until mid or late October I will be staying after school to help them study. They have to write a speech and then recite it from memory at the competition. The first girl I helped today was really quiet, and her pronunciation was pretty weak, I had to work a lot with her on the "th" and "w" sounds, and especially the l/r difference. I've never really taught phonics before, and it's hard when those sounds don't exist in Japanese. I was a little discouraged. 

Then the second student came in. I'll call him TM (even on a personal blog, I need to be careful about the students' privacy). I worked with him a bit yesterday, we went over the first paragraph of his speech, and practiced reading it a few times, and I pointed out a few errors and pronunciation issues. After the first girl, I wasn't expecting much. But when I asked him if he could do any of it from memory yet (mind you, he JUST got the final copy of the English translation yesterday), he covered up the paper and recited the entire first paragraph perfectly. I was literally almost in tears, I was so happy. After such a bad week, and such a terrible class today with the second years, and feeling like the students are all slackers, I was so happy to see how well he did, and how hard he must have studied last night. He's such a sweet kid too, he's got such a sweet smile. He really made my day a whole lot better.

The most supremely awful day

This week has been a long string of irritations, culminating in today, the most supremely awful day. 

Last weekend, we had some miscommunication about a plan some of the Shiso JETs had to go to Osaka, which led to us not going anywhere, although we had three days off. It was because I prefer to have a plan, like a hotel reservation and a departure time, when I go on a trip, while the others prefer to be more spontaneous. Thus, miscommunication. 

On Tuesday afternoon I started feeling under the weather, and by the following morning I felt like I had a knife in my throat every time I swallowed. 

On Wednesday I finally got around to cleaning my house, and almost the minute I started, I found a HUGE infestation of maggots living in, on and around my kitchen garbage can. That same night I found another cockroach by the back door.

Thursday morning I found a giant poisonous centipede crawling into the house under a crack in the front door. I sprayed it with bug spray and luckily it ran back outside and died. I am also worried about the possibility of ticks living in my tatami mats. I know its possible for that to happen. You have to air and spray them to protect them. The problem: I have a huge house and the floor is almost all tatami. Plus, I'm scared of what I might find underneath.

Today, Friday, I woke up with my throat still sore. It was garbage day, which I was feeling icky about because I had to figure out a new regimen because my old way of doing it (keeping the garbage in the kitchen all week until garbage day like I did back home) caused the maggot problem. On my way out back to get the garbage from the new outside bin I installed, I cracked my head on the metal bars outside the bathroom window, hard enough that I was bleeding. I dumped the garbage, but I was late for work, so I biked there, in the rain, bleeding, feeling icky. 

Lunch today was by far the worst I've had. The school lunches are never to my liking exactly, although sometimes they are bearable. I agreed to eat them a) as a show of solidarity with the other teachers, who all eat it, and b) because if someone else prepares my meals I'll be getting some vegetables in my diet (especially here--Japanese food is very healthy, comparatively). But today's menu really was the worst so far--a bowl of rice with some weird purple flavor flakes sprinkled in it, and a bowl of vegetable-laden miso-like soup with tofu. Those of you who know me well will be surprised to hear, the tofu was the most enjoyable part of the meal for me. And that's saying something. Oh, and the ubiquitous Japanese cold tea, that is served with everything, and which tastes, to me, like dirty water. 

Despite all this I tried to rally my spirits, but the final nail in the coffin was this afternoon's 2B English class. This is the class with the boy who has ADHD. I prepared a lesson that included a game where the students had to go around and ask each other questions in English. Supreme FAIL. Seriously bad idea. That boy, and three or four kids sitting around him, did not pay attention the entire class, he was facing backwards the entire time, they were all carrying on their own conversation, three or four other kids in class were sleeping with their heads on the desk, and the rest of the class was really quite and didn't want to participate. Of course, once they were told to get up and walk around, they didn't speak any English. I was so frustrated, if a student back home was being that disruptive and disrespectful in class, they would be in so much trouble. But the teachers' attitude here is to just let it happen. They know its a problem, they don't like it, but they seem not to know what to do. They kids don't get in trouble, so they walk all over the teachers. I've tried to be very accepting of the cultural differences I've experienced so far, but this one is the first one where I seriously want to scream "why the hell are you doing it that way, that's stupid, do it differently." I guess the trade off is that the students here view the teachers more as friends, but then there is a complete lack of discipline. I'm quite afraid of the students when they get rowdy, because I know there is no mechanism to reel them back in. 

Oh, and at the end of the class, my JTE (Japanese Teacher of English, the teacher I work with), who is a really sweet, soft-spoken woman, went ape-@#$& one one girl who held up a note she had written during class that said "I don't understand English" (in English). The teacher started screaming at the girl, and STILL the class did not get their act together and say, "woah, the teacher is really mad, we should probably respect her authority." It's not that I think they're bad kids. It's just that the way the system is here, they are given no sense of consequences for misbehaving. When you hand out worksheets for them to do, some of them just ignore them and sleep or talk to friends. It's really like working and paying attention are optional. That is so completely different from my experience in school, I don't know what to think.

今日の歌 (Song of the Day)

Current music: L'Arc~en~Ciel, 瞳の住人

The mysteries of the teachers' room

The teachers brush their teeth in the teachers' room. Many of them keep electric toothbrushes on their desks that they whip out every day after lunch. I've also seen them do such things as clip their nails and walk around barefoot. It's a very relaxed environment. 

Monkey Park and Touring Shiso

Today our Japanese conversation class teachers took us on a trip to the Monkey Park, which is like a little monkey farm, up in the hills, where the monkeys basically roam around free and you can walk around and see them. You can get right up close to them, but you have to be careful because they will attack if provoked. 

We also went to see a pretty waterfall, and waded in the water a bit, and then drove up to Haga Castle (Haga is one of the four towns in Shiso-I live in Yamasaki, the biggest one) which was on a sort of bluff and was absolutely gorgeous. 

Pictures

I also added five new videos, check them out:

YouTube

Ok, as I'm sitting here writing this, I get a knock on my door. Guess who? A Jehovah's Witness. I kid you not. Here, in Japan. Go figure. 

Yamasaki Minami Sports Festival Preparations

Although the new term has technically started, school is not yet in full swing, as the sports festival is coming up in a week, and the entire school is devoting all its energy to getting ready. It's a HUGE deal apparently. All the girls are practicing a traditional dance, and the boys are doing something, I'm not sure what. Here are some pictures from around the school this week. 

Yamasaki Minami JHS

First Lessons

I had my first lessons yesterday,  and they went pretty well. I taught one third year and one second year class yesterday, and one second year class today. The third years were really quiet, but the second year class was pretty fun, they seemed really into it. I was doing an "introduction class" where I had to tell the students about myself. 

The second year class I had this morning was a real challenge. There are about 30 students, and one boy in particular who everyone is convinced has ADHD. He refuses to work in class, and is incredibly disruptive, yelling out while the teacher is speaking and talking back. For the entire 50 minutes he was doing his own thing, talking to his friends and yelling out randomly. The other English teacher had warned me about him before, but I didn't expect it to be that bad. She got into a shouting match with him at one point, telling him to shut up, and he yelled right back at her. Back home if a student had pulled half the crap this kid did, he'd have wound up in the office right away. The kid even got up at one point and wandered out the door onto the balcony that runs along the outside of the second floor of the school, and was kind of just hanging out there for a few minutes. After class the teacher was apologizing to me and explained that this kid is a problem for all the teachers, but no one knows what to do, since his parents won't admit he has ADHD and get him help, and in fact blame the teachers for not being able to get him to focus (in Japan, a kid's teachers are considered almost or sometimes more important than the parents as a shaping factor in a kid's life). She asked me what would happen if a kid behaved this way in the US, so I told her they'd be sent to the office. She said here they're not allowed to send the kid out, because they are considered as having "a right to be there," and the Board of Education would get angry. But then the downside is that the other kids are distracted. It was really awful, I spent the entire period trying to talk to the other students, who were pretty quiet (probably because they didn't want to try to compete with the constant noise from the one boy) and at the same time get that one boy to focus, which I basically gave up on after the first five minutes, and then the rest of the period was just trying to carry on and ignore him, which was nearly impossible. It was kind of a disaster. I feel like if I could speak to him in a common language, I might be able to make some headway, if I read up on dealing with ADHD students. But I can't talk to him, because I don't speak Japanese and he won't speak English. I don't like that the automatic reaction to ADHD in the US is always medicating the kid, but sometimes it helps, and admitting there's a problem is the first step to fixing it. If the parents won't do anything about it, there's not a lot the school can do. It's a pride thing, I think. Mental differences aren't accepted here as much as they are in the US. There's another kid I'm working with, an elementary schooler, who might also have ADD or ADHD, and the teachers don't really know what to do with him, their solution is just to kind of let him do his thing. But there are only two students in that class, not 30. 

The entire attitude towards discipline here seems to be very different. In some ways they are very harsh with the kids, but in other ways they are very permissive. Right now the entire school is preparing for the sports festival, and this involves the kids marching in formations and practicing drills and things, very militaristic. When they do it wrong (which by American standards would be fine, like their snap to attention wasn't quite in unison), the teacher leading the drill will shout "wrong! do it again!" Sometimes the teachers will smack the students on the head (not hard, but if a teacher in the US did that they'd be in trouble). The boys here also hit each other and don't get scolded for it, which brings us to the permissiveness. It often seems like the students just kind of run free, and the teachers don't really regulate them. But this is so at odds with the rigid ceremony associated with formal school activities, it is totally different from an American school. In assemblies, the kids stand in columns by grade, facing the stage, a column of boys, then girls, then boys, etc. They do things like stand at attention, then at ease, then are asked to sit and all take the exact same position, drawing their knees up to their chests. Of course they also all wear uniforms. It's like being in another world, I'm still trying to figure out how everything works.

Stuff White People Like #58

Check it out (incidentally the rest of the list is hysterical too). The best part is, it is a completely dead on, accurate depiction of white people. Enjoy!

Stuff White People Like #58

Just Another Side Note

I just saw this article that made me happy. Scottish schools are starting to give girls the HPV vaccination. 

From the BBC

Meanwhile, America in its infinite stupidity is locked in a political debate about the efficacy and appropriateness of the vaccine. Fact: the vaccine is preventative. It protects against cervical cancer. There are no known side effects. It is approved for girls as young as 12. It does NOTHING but SAVE LIVES. So why are some Americans up in arms? In a classic case of American idiocy, some people are against giving the vaccine to young girls because, get this, HPV can be transmitted sexually, and these people believe that vaccinating girls will make them more likely to have sex. You know how you can prevent kids from having sex? Yeah, definitely by withholding life-saving drugs, that's a fool-proof plan. 

A Brief Political Commentary

I was looking into Sarah Palin a little bit today, and I found something that really pisses me off. She is anti-abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, and has said that she has faith that every baby is created for a reason. Basically, God controls life, and there is a greater reason that we can not understand because we are not God. 

Well, that position hardly surprises me. What makes me mad is the fact that she (and many others who share her views on abortion) is also in favor of capital punishment. Her rationale is that we have a right to know that someone who rapes or murders a child will never do it again.  How is that not insanely hypocritical? A baby's innocence by default makes it worthy of life, but a murderer or rapist it's ok to kill? (I happen to think that a murderer or child rapist deserves to die; but that does not mean I think we have a right to kill him). Isn't the question not one of circumstance, but of the value of human life and our qualifications to decide it? 

I can't stand listening to the hypocrisy of conservatives who will fight tooth and nail to preserve the "sanctity of life" when it comes to abortion, but fail to see how they're contradicting themselves if they argue that it is ok to take a human life if that human has committed a crime. The question is not whether life should be taken in a certain situation, but whether we as humans ever have the right to decide questions of life and death (hint: we don't; we are not qualified). You can't have it both ways. 

I also find it incredibly cold (and incredibly unlikely) and a clear case of political calculation for Sarah Palin to say that if her daughter were raped, that she would not want her to have an abortion. Even if she were to follow through with this plan in the event of it occurring, there are many other mothers who care more about their daughters than their high and mighty morals, and would want the ability to choose. Pro-choice supporters are not pro-abortion, they are pro-CHOICE.