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.