The Americans are Here

This week we have been hosting a group of American middle school students from California. It has kept me pretty busy recently, and also caused me to delay my Spring Break plans by a couple of days.

I complain, but actually I love it. Having the Americans over has given me a chance to help translate and show off my Japanese. And that’s really the whole reason why I spend hours studying Japanese, just for those few times when I get a chance to show it off.
Having the American students here has also given me an excuse to get out of the 6th grade graduation, the end of the year closing ceremony, the ceremony for departing teachers, and a whole bunch of other boring stuff. And perhaps most importantly it is just a nice break in the routine and gives me something interesting to do for a couple days.

I’m not sure my Japanese colleagues appreciate it all that much though. Who knows, maybe they are like me: complaining on the outside but secretly enjoying it on the inside. But since I can’t read their minds, based on what they say alone I have to conclude they view the whole exchange program as just extra stress on their already busy schedule. There is also a view that the American kids are out of control and undisciplined.
In my opinion that’s unfair. The Middle School kids from America were extremely well behaved. They got a little talkative and loud when they were all together, but it could easily have been a lot worse. On an individual level they were all very concerned about making a good impression on the school and on their host families. In was frequently approached by nervous students asking me how to do this or that without offending their hosts.

Although I guess the fact that my Japanese colleagues feel comfortable enough with me to complain about the American students in front of me is a good sign. It probably means on some level that I’ve been accepted as a member of the school faculty, and not simply viewed as “The American” anymore. Or it could mean they sometimes forget I can understand Japanese. I don’t know.

It is not that Japanese children are well behaved and American children aren’t. In fact at the elementary school, arguable Japanese first and second graders are much more out of control then their American counterparts. (Can I get an amen from anyone who teachers at a Japanese elementary school?)
But the standards of behavior are different. For instance a Japanese Junior High School Student knows that he or she can probably get away with reading a comic book in class, or talking quietly to a friend during class time. But they also know that during graduation or closing ceremony there is hell to pay if they don’t stand up straight and bow crisply at the appropriate times. An American student wouldn’t know this of course.

In one of my previous entries I wrote about how concerned the school faculty was that the Americans not bring candy into the school. There’s no candy allowed in a Japanese school. Now in my opinion it wouldn’t have been the end of the world if for one day a few American kids brought a coke to school, or were chewing gum or something. But this was one line the Japanese faculty had decided to draw in the sand and had decided to defend. There were a lot of lines like this.
For instance the was a concern (perhaps understandably) that the American students wouldn’t understand proper etiquette for the closing ceremony, so a decision was made to have me just entertain the kids myself for a couple hours in a separate room (more about that later). Also there was a concern that having American students in the classroom would make the Japanese kids more excited and more rambunctious than they usually are. A decision was made to limit the amount of time the Americans spent in the classroom. Again, the concern was probably legitimate, but the result of all of this was to effectively segregate the American students from the Japanese student body, with the exception of the handful of Japanese students who were actually hosting one of the Americans.

I was somewhat reminded of the exchange program in Innai that I helped out with two years ago. A group of Australian students were in Innai for a week. I remember at one point complaining to a Japanese colleague, “Look, all these kids want to do is just hang out with Japanese kids their own age. And our Japanese students would absolutely love the opportunity to meet foreigners. So why are we spending the whole week dragging these kids to temples that they couldn’t care less about, and only having them visit the schools for one day?”
The Japanese colleague (who was about my age) just shook his head and answered, “I know. I feel the same way. But the old Japanese men who plan out these programs don’t understand what the kids want to do.”

This principle was very clearly illustrated on the second day of the exchange. The schedule called for the students to spend the day touring Godo. Now the sight seeing in Godo town itself is extremely limited. Godo is famous for roses, but it’s still a bit chilly over here and the roses aren’t in bloom yet. The only other site of interest is “Hiyoshi Shrine.” Although the people in Godo claim it is famous, Japanese people even in the neighboring town have often never even heard of it. So to say it is “famous” is a bit of lie. It is unique, because it is one of the few shrines that combine both Shinto and Buddhist elements.
Most Japanese are religious pluralists, believing in both Shintoism and Buddhism. But it is extremely rare for Shintoism and Buddhism to be placed within the same shrine, and so in that respect “Hiyoshi Shrine” is an interesting place to visit. Of course all this is a bit lost on American middle school students.

Anyway, Thursday morning everyone arrived at school. We had a leisurely morning in the meeting room. The Japanese staff served coffee to everyone. Then decided to set out. After we had loaded the California students and chaperones into the bus, one of the teachers asked the guide from the town hall, “So, where are you taking them today?”

“To the Hiyoshi Shrine.”

“What? You can’t take them there. That’s where there spending tomorrow morning.”

“Oh. Okay, well where else can we take them?” Again, like I said the site seeing options in Godo are limited. Everyone pulled out their brochures and started making suggestions.

Now dig this scene: They’ve had a whole year to prepare for this day. Now, with the all students and chaperones already loaded up on the bus, they suddenly realize they don’t know where to take them. “The rose gardens?” someone suggests.
“They’re not in bloom yet.”
“They could look at it anyway.”
“We could take them to the library,” the town hall guy says.
“What? These are Americans. You can’t take them to a library.”
“I know they couldn’t read the books, but they could see what a Japanese library looks like.”
“These are American students. They don’t know how to behave properly in a library.” Suddenly no one knew what to do with the American students.
I tried to help out. I thought, if I were a middle school student, what would I want to do?
“There’s a video game arcade down the road,” I said.
“Come on, be serious. We need to think here,” they told me.
“No, I am serious. There’s a video arcade, and a big shopping mall, and a 100 yen shop. The kids would love it.” My idea got shot down very quickly.
In the end they decided to just go to Hiyoshi Shrine, and just do it for two days in a row.

The kids put up with it reasonably well. But I said to a Japanese colleague later, “Look, these kids have just spent 3 days seeing temples in Kyoto. Now they’re going to see this shrine for two days in a row. They would have absolutely loved the video game arcade.”

“I know,” he said. “But we’re public school teachers. We can’t take students to a video game arcade.” And I guess I can dig that. But still…

So that was Thursday. Friday came around and the school had closing ceremonies, which they didn’t want the American kids coming to. Since the 9th graders had already graduated, the plan was for the 9th grade students to take the Americans to Hiyoshi Shrine again.

It was the same temple for the second day. But the kids handled it well. They were happy because this time they were going with the 9th grade Japanese students, so it would be time for interaction. Plus it was snowing that day. These kids were from California, so some of them had never seen snow. And it was a really beautiful kind of snow, falling in heavy sheets on the ground. The temple would look really beautiful in this weather.

Although the California students did have their own chaperones with them, these chaperones had taken the day off to go sight seeing elsewhere. While all the other teachers were running around getting ready for closing ceremonies, I was put in charge of keeping an eye on the California students, and the Japanese 9th grade students.

I had assumed that when the schedule said “9th grade students” it meant all the 9th grade students. But as usual, that only referred to the five 9th grade girls who were hosting an American student. The rest of the students were, as usual, separated from the Americans. Anyway, I was in the meeting room, with the 5 Japanese students and the California students, trying to keep an eye on things. As I was talking to one student, another one ran up and told me she had accidentally written on the corkboard.

The meeting room had a corkboard next to the chalkboard for posting announcements. Because the meeting room was an official looking room, they had painted the corkboard green to make it blend in with the rest of the room more. Since the green corkboard was right next to the green chalkboard, it was an easy mistake for these students to make to think it was part of the chalkboard. Well, it was and it wasn’t. It was a stupid move, but it was an honest mistake.

I came over. “Bunnies are cute,” was written all across the corkboard. We tried erasing it, but it turns out chalk does not erase off of a corkboard as easily as it erases off a black board. After making a couple attempts, I just shrugged my shoulders and said to the student, “Don’t worry about it. Either it will come off later or it won’t, but don’t worry about it for now.”

The five Japanese students in the room however seemed to realize that a grave offense had been committed, and ran off to get one of the Japanese teachers. The Japanese teacher came into look at it, and was absolutely horrified. She gave me a death glare as I sheepishly explained, “I’m sorry, I was talking to another student at the time. I didn’t see this happen.”

“This isn’t good,” she said. “This is a very important room. We can’t have, ‘Bunnies are cute’, written here.” Some soap and water were fetched, and with a bit of elbow grease from the students the chalk came off. Still, the incident sparked off another round of complaining in the teacher’s room about how out of control these American students are.

The 5 Japanese 9th graders and the California students got ready to set off for the temple. We had gone by bus the previous day, but the temple is actually walking distance from the school. As they were getting ready to leave, one of the Japanese teachers asked me, “So, you’re okay to chaperone, right?”

“Right, no problem,” I answered.

“And if there were any problems you would call me of course,” she said.

“Of course,” I said. “I don’t think there will be any problems.”

She suddenly thought of something else. “Wait, what if there was a traffic accident or something?”

“It’s okay. I know the phone number for the ambulance. And I would call you.”

“Yeah, but there should probably be someone else with you. Just for official reasons. I mean you’re not officially a faculty member of this school, so if something were to go wrong it would look bad on us if you were the only one supervising.”
By this point most of the other teachers were already at the closing ceremony. But she got on her cell phone and called them up during the ceremony, trying to figure out who could afford to miss some of the ceremony to help me chaperone the students. All this was taking a bit of time, so I suggested, “I should probably go tell the students to wait for us a minute while we sort all this out.”

She looked at me with a blank expression. “Well I think the students probably left a long time ago, don’t you?”

“Well I should probably go catch up to them then, don’t you think?”

“Are you okay on your own?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’ll be okay,” I answered.

Absolutely bizarre. In the time we spent debating whether one chaperone or two, they had been perfectly content to let the students walk to the shrine completely unsupervised. No, I’m not exaggerating. No, I don’t understand it either. I’ve given up a long time ago trying to understand everything that happens in Japan.

I walked at a brisk pace and did my best to catch up with the students. They had taken a different route than I did, so although I did end up catching up the time, I met them just as they were arriving at the park. The California students were impressed. “Joel, how did you get here? We left before you, how did you get here before us? You’re like a wizard just appearing everywhere.”

It had stopped snowing by this time, but there was a playground next to the shrine that the students went to. One of the California students said to me, “The Japanese 9th graders say we have to leave after 3 minutes.”

“You misunderstood,” I assured her. “I’m sure they meant 30.”

At this point one of the Japanese students said, “No, we have to leave in 3 minutes.”

I assumed this was a mistake with her English. I switched into Japanese. Still three minutes.

“Three minutes? Three minutes? Wait a second, what do you mean three minutes?” I asked.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “We have to go back to school for the departing ceremony.”

I realize all of this is bit confusing if you’re not familiar with the Japanese education system. There were two ceremonies that morning: the end of the year closing ceremony, which did not concern the 9th graders, because they had already graduated. But there was also the ceremony for departing teachers. 9th graders were expected to return for that ceremony for a final good-bye to their old teachers.

“It’s okay,” said another 9th grade student. “They saw this shrine already yesterday anyway.”

“Yeah I know,” I said, “but it took us 15 minutes just to walk here. We’re not seriously going to leave again after 3 minutes, are we?”

I put up such a fuss that eventually the 9th grade students said to me, “Okay, okay, we told a small lie. Actually we have 10 minutes before we have to leave. But we told them 3 minutes so that they wouldn’t complain when we have to leave in 10 minutes.”

Amazing. It was just like talking to my parents. As upset as I was at the situation, I couldn’t help but admire the leadership skills of these 15 year old girls. I guess in Japan students really do mature faster.

In the end, however, even the short time we spent at the shrine was apparently too long. On the way back I got a call from the school. The ceremony was already to begin, and they were waiting on the five 9th grade girls I had with me. I needed to tell those girls to run back to school.

Now, at this point we were already trying to get the students to head back to school. But getting middle school students to go anywhere is a bit like herding cats. Some of them took off down the road for the school, but some of them were straggling behind, and some of them got halfway back to school and then realized they forgot something at the temple. When I got the phone call I was in the back of the group trying to round up the stragglers. The Japanese students, who I needed to talk to, were in the front of the group, which was easily a half a kilometer ahead. I couldn’t even see them at the time. So I had to sprint that half a kilometer to make up the distance. As I ran, the California students took the opportunity to take action photos of me running, or to comment on my running form. By the time I caught up to the 9th grade students they had just about reached school anyway.

The 9th graders made it to their ceremony, and I herded the California students back into the meeting room. Because the school didn’t know what else to do with them during that time, they scheduled a “Learn Japanese with Joel” time. I thought that was a bit silly. First of all I’m no teacher. Second of all I wasn’t given any notice on this, so I didn’t prepare anything. And thirdly, these kids did not come all the way to Japan to hang out with me.

Nevertheless the school didn’t want them anywhere near the closing ceremonies, so I had to entertain them for the hour. “Look, it says on the schedule I’m supposed to teach you Japanese,” I said. “But we don’t really have to do that if you don’t want to.” To my surprise, they wanted to do it.

I didn’t have anything prepared, but fortunately the kids had a lot of questions. The questions started out related to Japanese language, but soon spilled into all sorts of topics related to Japan. I would barely finish answering one question, and two more hands would go up.
After 4 years of teaching very passive Japanese Junior high students, it was a nice change to teach some very active American students. They asked a lot of questions and generally seemed interested in what I had to say. And I enjoyed playing the role of “Japan expert.” We actually passed the time very easily.