Saturday Night Out
Alternative title: Conversations About the State of English Education in Japan
Another week, another Saturday night out in Oita city. I ended up driving in by myself, and then calling Greg once I arrived. He was in a Karaoke place close to “Jungle Park”. (Somewhat misnamed because it looks nothing like a Jungle, but the central park in the nightlife district of Oita city). After Greg gave me terrible directions, and I was unable to locate the Karaoke place, I ended up just meeting him and the rest of the gang in jungle park after they finished at Karaoke.

As we crossed the park, we saw four tall white guys standing around and looking confused. The foreign community in Oita prefecture is a fairly tight circle, and most of us are used to knowing most of the other foreigners in the area. Since no one our group seemed to know who these four people were, we speculated briefly among ourselves about who they might be and why they might be in Japan, and then just ended up introducing ourselves.

It turns out they were all from the Netherlands. One of them was a player in the local Oita soccer team. (Japanese professional soccer teams, being a relatively new phenomenon, tend to import a lot of European players). Another was the son of the coach for the same team. (Japanese professional soccer teams, being a relatively new phenomenon, tend to import a lot of European coaches). The son was on holiday visiting his father, and the other two were friends along for the trip.

“I’m Dutch too!” I said, introducing myself. The four of them regarded me skeptically. Greg, who was well aware of which country I possessed citizenship in, also pressed me on the point. “Oh yeah, then let’s hear you speak some Dutch, Joel.” And of course at this point I was forced to clarify that I meant I was of Dutch descent, and proceeded to inform them about the Dutch community in West Michigan.

To my surprise, they were completely unaware about it. Nor did they really seem to care that much. Perhaps I’ve been in Japan too long. Japanese people, possessing a very strong sense of racial identity, are fascinated by the subject of Japanese communities abroad. Dutch people, apparently, are not.

“So I suppose you guys are looking for a place to see the soccer game tonight,” someone said. (The European soccer championships are going on right now. I would never have known it either except for the company I’ve been keeping recently). They said that they were, and so we took them to the sports bar with us.

As we started walking towards the bar, Greg commented to me, “You know, I read somewhere that the Dutch people are now the tallest people in the world. And it’s easy to believe looking at these guys. They’re all giants out here in Japan.”

We went to the bar. The soccer player ended up buying drinks for everyone in our group. “Wow, you’re friend is really a nice guy,” Greg exclaimed to the others.
“Of course,” one of his friend replied. “He’s Dutch.”
“I’m Dutch too,” I said. Silence.

In the course of the conversation, on of our Dutch friends asked me what I did in Japan. I replied I was an English teacher. “Really? Do Japanese people study English in schools? We were just wondering that. No one around here seems to be able to speak English, so we just figured they didn’t study it.” He then went on to talk about how they had been at a restaurant, and the restaurant staff seemed to want to communicate with them, but were unable. The restaurant staff wanted to ask them where they were from, but were unable to do it. They had concluded that since Japanese people seemed unable to ask such an elementary question, English language education must not exist in the Japanese schools.

On the contrary, I informed him, the average Japanese adult has 8 years of English education. (3 years in Junior high school, 3 years in High School, 2 years in University).

He couldn’t believe it. I was somewhat at a loss to explain it myself. It was one of those things that had amazed me when I first came to Japan, but that I had gotten used to and somehow it no longer seems so incredible now.

The conversation was made more interesting by the fact that my Dutch friend did not speak English as a native language, but had learned it for 6 years in school. Now granted Dutch is another European language and shares some similarities to English (not to mention the same alphabet), but, even after admitting this, he still didn’t understand how a Japanese person could endure 6 years of English education and not be able to ask, “Where are you from?”

I tried to explain it to him as best I could. How the Japanese educational system is all built around tests, and how the students don’t have to learn any material, they just have to memorize it for a test and then they can forget about it. How many Japanese students sleep through class and hand in tests that are blank, but somehow keep getting moved up through the grades anyway. How many Japanese students don’t care about learning English, and just do the bare minimum to get by in class.

But in the end I admitted I was somewhat at a loss to understand it myself. And I added, “What really gets me though, is that every English class is started by the teacher asking the class, ‘how are you?’ and the students respond, ‘I’m fine thank you, and you?’. That is how they start every English class every day for 6 years of their life. And yet when I meet a high school senior, and I ask him, ‘How are you?’, the response I most often get is a confused look and ‘eigo wakaranai’ (I don’t speak English). I just want to strangle the kid after hearing that. ‘You’ve been saying this everyday for the past 6 years of your life! How can you not know it?’”

In the end we had to leave it as it was: a mystery. We chatted some more. He asked me how long I’ve been in Japan, and how good my Japanese was. I said I’d been here 3 years, and that my Japanese probably wasn’t as good as it should be considering how long I’ve been here. “I think I’ve made better progress in my Japanese than my students have in English during the same time,” I said. Then after thinking about it for a while, I added, “although granted I live here.” Eventually I got pulled into another conversation, and ended up talking to other JETs.

I talked to David briefly. “Boy I really feel small tonight,” David said. “I mean I always feel a bit short, but tonight….Who are all these tall people?”
I explained they were from the Netherlands.
“Ah, that would do it,” David said.
“You know I’m Dutch too,” I mentioned.
“Yeah, I know. I know."