Jamaica Festival

Every year in the town of Innai there is a Jamaican festival. This is my 5th summer in Japan, so it is my 4th time attending the festival. (I missed the festival one year when I went home for summer break).

It is 2 days of ska and reggae music, and lots of Japanese reggae enthusiasts. Pretty much it’s the coolest thing that ever happens out in the countryside. The rest of the year is uneventful and consists of old people out planting rice. For two days only the Innai countryside becomes a hip place.

Seeing Old Students
I just came back to Oita prefecture the day before (see previous entry) so I enjoyed seeing everyone at the Jamaican festival. Since my old town of Ajimu is only 5 one town over, I saw a lot of my old students as well.

Great to see my old students again of course. But as I wrote during spring break, time apart does somewhat break the relationship. They were glad to see me, but I think they thought it a bit weird that I was still around, and they weren’t quite sure how to react. It wasn’t the friendly greeting I used to get when I was still living in the area.

I saw a group of 3 girls who used to be junior high school students of mine, and talked to them briefly. “Let me see, what grade are you this year?” I asked them.

“We graduated,” one of them said. “We’re all finished with school. I’m a salaried employee at a company now.”

“What? Really? But it was only a short time ago you were all in junior high school.”

She smiled. “Time goes fast, doesn’t it?”

I wrote last summer that I knew very few students by name, but most of them by face. Well, a year later, and it’s hard to even recognize them by face. I know, that’s pretty bad. But I never had a homeroom class or anything. I taught all the students at the school, and I was spread out over 7 schools in the town. When I was actually doing it, I knew everyone’s face. But now I’ve been in Gifu for a year, and a new batch of students’ faces have all entered my memory and pushed out the old students.

Two boys came up and talked to me at the Jamaica festival. I did my best to cover for the fact that I had no idea who they were. I just assumed they were former students, made small talk about school, etc. After they left I mumbled to a friend, “It’s a good thing they remembered me, because I had no clue who they were.”

At least the confusion seemed to be somewhat mutual. I ran into a few girls. “Do you remember us?” one of them asked.
After looking at their faces for a few seconds, the recognition did come. “Ah, yes, you were at Ajimu elementary school,” I said.
“No, we were at the junior high school,” she corrected me.
“Yes, but, when I first came to Japan, you were still in the elementary school,” I said.
They talked among themselves. “No, the ALT at the elementary school was different. He used to wear pink bunny rabbit slippers, and hop around the school like a rabbit.”
“Yes! That was me! Those were my slippers!” They looked at me for a while, and then decided maybe it had been me. They also couldn’t remember if I had been gone for one year or two years. “I’ve only been gone for a year now,” I assured them.
“Really? It seems like longer than that,” they answered.

Shiri ni Shikareru

The second day of the Jamaican festival I went together with Shoko. We had only been there a couple hours, when Shoko wanted to go back. “Really?” I said. “OK, if you want to leave, we can leave. But we did just drive an hour to get here. And we paid $25 each for a ticket. Don’t you think it’s a bit of a waste to leave now?”
“If you want to stay, we can stay,” she said.
“No, we can leave whenever you want,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure you thought it through first, that’s all. If you still think you want to leave, we’ll go whenever you feel like it.”
A 3rd Japanese friend observing this conversation said, “Ah, ‘shiri ni shikareru.’”
“What does that mean?” I asked.

Shoko exploded. “Oh no, that’s not true at all. Actually I’m very good to him. When he stays at my place, I do all the cooking and cleaning. I even wash his clothes for him. He just sits on the couch and watches movies all day. He doesn’t lift a finger to help. Isn’t that so, Joel?”

I shrugged. “I’m a man.”

“No!” Shoko replied. “No, that is not an excuse. That’s the way Japanese men think. But you’re an American. You’re supposed to know better.”

“I’m just trying to respect the culture while I’m here in Japan.”

“You’re not supposed to copy the bad things! You’re supposed to learn the good things about Japanese culture.”

“What does ‘shiri ni shikareru’ mean anyway?”

Neither of them would tell me. The Japanese man tried to explain it to me, but his Japanese was too fast and difficult. I was a bit more used to Shoko’s Japanese, but she refused to explain it. “I don’t want to explain it, because I don’t think it’s true” she said. “If you really want to know, you can ask Eoin.”

The Japanese man agreed. “Yes. Ask Eoin.”

“Why do I have to ask Eoin? He’s not even Japanese.”

“But his Japanese is very good. He can explain it too you.”

I hated to ask Eoin. Despite the fact that we both came to Japan at the same time with no prior Japanese knowledge, his Japanese is now a lot better than mine. But I hated to actually admit it by asking him a question. I went over in Eoin’s direction, but addressed the question to the Japanese girl he was talking to.

“What does ‘shiri ni shikareru’ mean?”

There was a moment of confusion before she understood what I meant through my heavily accented Japanese. Then she replied, “It means to be sat on by someone. It means a relationship where the women is stronger.”

“Why do you want to know this all of a sudden,” Eion asked.

“Ah, no reason. Just something I’m curious about.”

Eion started to laugh. “Let me guess. Someone said it about ‘a friend’ of yours? Is that it? This has absolutely nothing to do with you?”

“Right. Exactly. Anyway, the woman wants to leave, so I’m going to be leaving now I guess.”

“But you just got here.”

I shrugged. “The woman wants to go.”

I said my good-byes to Eion and company, and then went back to Shoko and the other Japanese man. “I found out what it means,” I said. “That’s not true at all.”