A Day in the Life

I know I’ve been abusing these Day in the Life/ Ups and Downs type posts lately. Every time I write one, I tell myself it is the last one, but they can be a good release for me, and help to break up the monotony of work, so I hope you’ll bear with me.

A Day in the Life of an Assistant English Teacher in Japan

I was scheduled to teach 3 classes. But one of my Japanese co-teachers was sick, so I only taught two, both elective classes.

The elective classes are a bit of a joke. I didn’t teach any in Ajimu, so when I first came here, I was at first excited about the idea. “Elective English classes? That’s a great idea. That means all the students are there because they elected to be there. I can work with all the students who are really keen on English, and its always great working with enthusiastic students. And if I work hard with them, I can advance their English level, and really get a lot of satisfaction out of seeing my students improve.”

Here’s the rub: most of the students are there not because they like English, but because they had to pick something for their elective period, and they figured English would be easier than Math or science. So it’s not the cream of the crop students by any stretch

It gets worse: the elective classes are purely for the students’ enrichment. They don’t get graded on it. Whatever they do or don’t do in the elective classes has no effect on the rest of their grades. And they know it. So if they decide they don’t feel like doing the activity I prepared, there are not a lot of carrots and sticks at my disposal to motivate them. I just have to shout over them, or give up.

My Japanese colleagues have pretty much chosen to give up. When I’m in charge of teaching the class, they pretty much just sit on the side and watch me either sink or swim on my own. If they’re in charge of the activity, they hand out a worksheet, but then don’t really care if anyone works on it or not.

In the morning I co-taught a 7th grade elective class with a Japanese co-teacher. The kids were pretty out of control, and there are 3 girls in the back that the Japanese teacher gave up on a long time ago. At best the 3 spend the whole class just gossiping to each other. Often they chase each other around the room while the rest of the class is doing (or not doing) the work sheet. On this particular day they ended up wrestling on the floor. Another teacher walked into the room to talk to me, and had to step over two of them who were rolling around on the floor wrestling for control of some secret note one of them had written.

5th period I had to teach the 8th grade elective English class on my own, because my Japanese co-teacher was sick.

Each class at a Japanese school begins with the “Aisatsu” which means “greeting.” The class stands up, greets the teacher, bows, and then sits down. Occasionally uniform checks are thrown into the mix.

Japanese teachers take the “Aisatsu” very seriously. Whatever else they may get away with, students WILL do the Aisatsu. They will stand up, they will greet the teacher, they will bow, and if they don’t do it right, they will do it again. You don’t fuck with the Aisatsu in Japan.

To me, the Aisatsu represents everything that is wrong with Japan: the emphasis on form rather than function that seems to penetrate all levels of society here. Who cares if the student stands up straight and bows at the beginning of the class? And what sense does it make to be rigid about the Aisatsu, and then let the students just read comic books and sleep for the rest of class?

I used to just disperse with the Aisatsu entirely when I taught class by myself. It disturbed some of the students, but the class went on, and I thought it was a good international experience for some of them.

But I’ve since learned that if I blow off the Aisatsu, the students right away get the impression that it’s not going to be a serious class, and then it can be an uphill battle to keep them in control. As much as I hate Aisatsu, a good crisp Aisatsu delivered at the beginning really does set the tone for the rest of the class, and makes it a lot easier to teach.

So, we Aistatsu-ed. “Okay, everyone, sit down. Sit down. Take your seats. Kevin, sit down. Okay now stand up. Bow. Okay, sit down again.”

The boys in this class have given themselves English nicknames: Kevin, Bob, Judy, Mary, Mario, and Coconuts. They did it just as a joke at first, and some of them, like Judy and Mary, even gave themselves female nicknames just to be silly. But it turns out I can remember their nicknames a lot better than I can remember their Japanese names, so I’ve gotten into the habit of calling them only by their nicknames.

They think this is great, and are really happy that I’ve decided to play along in this game with them. The only problem is that the last two, Mario and Coconuts, didn’t actually choose their nicknames, but had the names thrust onto them by the rest of the class. Mario seems resigned to his fate, but Mr. Coconuts still objects to the name.

Ordinarily I think a teacher shouldn’t tease his students, even in a friendly way. They get enough of that from their friends. But I can’t remember his real name, and besides when he is misbehaving, nothing shuts him up faster than when I yell across the room, “Mr. Coconuts, be quiet.”

This week we received new letters from our pen pal exchange in Israel. Last week the newspaper article about us appeared in the Chu-nichi newspaper, complete with a picture of me and the students. They had all seemed really happy to be in the newspaper at the time, and had told the reporter how much they enjoyed the pen-pal exchange. So I was hoping that they would be a little bit more enthusiastic this time, and I wouldn’t have to ride them whole class to get them to write something, like I usually do.

No such luck. Kevin and Bob began wrestling almost immediately. “Bob, sit down,” I said.

“I can’t. Kevin’s got my pencil case.”

“Just sit down.”

“But how can I write anything without my pencils?”

Some of the girls had questions about their letters, so I went over and tried to answer. “What is sudoku?” asked one girl. Her Israeli pen pal had written about the game.

“I think it’s a Japanese game. Do you know it?” She shook her head no. “Then just write back that you don’t know what it is.”

Sudoku apparently is a Japanese game. It must be becoming popular abroad, because when I was back in America during Christmas break, I saw a lot of Sudoku books at the local Barnes and Nobles. And our Israeli pen pals wrote about it also. But no one in Japan seems to have heard about it. Shoko simply stared blank faced at the Sodoku books in America, and told me she didn’t know what they were. And my junior high school students also don’t have a clue.

Kevin and Bob were up wrestling again. I wasn’t really angry. I put up with a lot worse in that class usually. But it occurred to me that it might be strategic to blow up early in the class. I yelled out “Boys SIT DOWN!”

There are good yells and there are bad yells and usually I never know which one it is going to be until it leaves my mouth. For instance you don’t want the yell to sound strained or screeching, because then it looks like you’re desperate, and the kids don’t respect that. And the last thing you want to do is have your voice crack when you yell.

But this was a good yell. Deep, booming, and it really froze the boys right in their tracks. The entire room got quiet, and they sat down. Some of the girls whispered to each other about how I had frightened them, but there were no more problems for the rest of the class. Kevin sat sulkily in his seat for a long time and refused to work on his letter, but he didn’t cause any more problems.

I was pretty proud of myself. One good yell, and I had solved all my discipline problems for the whole 50 minutes. It was like magic. The Japanese teacher, when she teachers the class, can never do that. She always ends up trying to talk over the chatter for the whole class. I was doing a better job of controlling her students than she usually does.

Of course, even if they’re sitting quietly, getting the students to write something is always a challenge. Half the students really get into the pen pal exchange, but the other half just write down 2 or 3 sentences and then sign their name. “I’m done. Can I talk to my friends now?”

“You’re not done. You didn’t answer any of his questions. Look, he asked you want books you like.”

“I don’t like any books.”

“Well, write that down then. And he asked you want movies you like.”

“I don’t like any movies either.”

“Okay, well just write that down too.”

I had told the newspaper reporter that I usually try and send the letters exactly as my students write them, but that was a lie. Often my students will completely blow off the questions from their pen pal. In order to keep the exchange going, I have to re-write them so that they answer the questions, and then ask some of their own.

After class I headed back to the teachers lounge. The teacher who had been in the neighboring class struck up a conversation in a hesitant voice. “Were you teaching that class by yourself?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so. I heard some yelling.”

“I had to yell in the beginning. After that it was no problem.” I was half-waiting for a compliment about how well I had handled the situation, but all I got was a bit of a worried look and a shake of the head.

But so far I’ve only talked about the two classes I taught. In an 8 hour day, most of the rest of the time is spent at my desk in the teachers lounge trying to occupy myself.

In the old days I would have spent almost all of that time diligently studying Japanese and trying to memorize Kanji. But I gave up on all that about a year ago. I’m trying to study French a little bit now because I’ll need it if I ever apply to graduate school, but it’s hard to motivate myself to study French in the middle of Japan. My new project recently has been to try and get back into the habit of reading regularly. For a long time when I was studying Japanese I hardly read recreationally at all, but now I always have a couple books with me.
And of course blogging. If you’ve ever wondered where I get the time to write all those long monster posts (like this one), it’s all in the teachers lounge.

Most of the stuff I write on my laptop, and then copy to the blog later when I go to an internet café. There is a computer at school with internet access, but I’m not supposed to use that for personal use. I do though.

Usually I’ll get on in the morning maybe to check my e-mail, or post something on the blog that I’ve already written. I figure it is a waste just to go to the internet café just to hit “post” on the blog, and everyone should check their e-mail once a day. Maybe I’ll sneak a look at a few friends’ blogs at the same time.

Then in the afternoon, I’ll start to get really bored, and look at some more blogs. Most of my friends never update enough though. (You know who you are).

Mostly I just get bored in the teachers lounge. And depressed. And feel linguistically and culturally isolated. These are the times when I feel like if I don’t get out of Japan soon, I’m going to loose my sanity. And I don’t say that as a figure of speech. There are times when I really do feel like I am slowly loosing my mind at school.

After school I always feel like a good stiff drink. If I were a drinking man. Which I’m not. So instead I turn to my drug of choice: junk food. I’ll grab a couple donuts and candy bars and maybe a coke from the nearby convenience store and have it as an after school snack.

They also have what are called “health drinks” or “vitamin drinks” in Japan. Actually if you read the label on these things, they are anything but. It’s mostly caffeine and, believe it or not, nicotine, dissolved in the water. I’m not even sure you could legally sell these things back home, and you certainly couldn’t call them health drinks. But the average Japanese person honestly believes these things are good for you. It’s amazing what the power of a label can do.

But good for you or not, they certainly do perk you up after a boring day of school. I usually grab a couple of these as well. “The last time,” I tell myself. “I just need a little energy boost for the afternoon. After that it’s nothing but health food, real health food, for the rest of my life.”

Wednesday is Japanese tutoring sessions down town. My tutor and I are working are way through a textbook, but after reading all day in the teacher’s lounge the last thing I want to do is pore over tiny Kanji characters in a book. So I leave the textbook at home, and just tell my tutor I want to do conversational practice instead. My tutor is actually pretty talkative, so this works well for her also. “I’m sorry, I always hog the conversation, and you never get any practice,” she usually apologizes to me at the end of the lesson.
“It’s okay. I got a lot of listening practice,” I answer.

My Japanese tutor and I talked about the movies we had seen. We had both seen “Munich”, so we talked about that.
“There’s a lot of politics and history in that movie,” my tutor said. “Americans like that, but we Japanese just find it confusing. When I was in America, I was surprised by how clearly everyone voiced their own opinions. They weren’t shy at all. We Japanese are very shy about saying our own opinions.”

I agreed that was a difference.

“For instance,” she continued, “My American friend told me Japan needs a real army instead of the self-defense forces, because North Korea is a threat, and Japan needs to be able to defend itself. I thought ‘that’s an American opinion. They’re always thinking you can solve everything with war.’ What do you think?”

Actually, although Japan’s armed forces are labeled “Self Defense”, Japan’s army has the fourth largest military budget in the world, behind America, Russia and China. (Although it is worth noting that the combined military budget of Russia, China, and Japan still does not equal what the US spends each year). Not a lot of people know this and most Japanese certainly don’t know this, but Japan is already spending more money on it’s military than North Korea. I tried to correct this, but got tripped up in the linguistics, and I’m not sure my tutor understood. We ended up returning just to the subject of the difference between Japanese and American communication.

“I usually say my own opinion straight,” I said. “And I haven’t had a lot of problems in Japan.”

“That’s because you’re foreign,” my teacher responded. “Japanese people are always polite to foreigners. But a Japanese person couldn’t get away with the same thing. Like my student who committed suicide.”

My tutor teaches at a high school for her day job, and apparently this past year one of the students had killed himself. I didn’t remember hearing about this before, but apparently my tutor had mentioned it, because she got upset when I asked about it. “I already told you. Don’t you remember?” I didn’t remember, and it didn’t seem like the kind of thing I would easily forget, but it seemed like a touchy topic so I let it go.

“He spent a year in Texas as an exchange student, and when he came back he had a hard time dealing with Japan. He would always speak his mind, and his friends didn’t know how to deal with him. Eventually he was really isolated from everyone else. He talked to me, because I had lived in America too and I understood. He talked about how much he wanted to go back to America, but he ended up killing himself instead.”

My tutor also complained about how Japanese who spend too much time with foreigners get made fun of by other Japanese people. I had noticed this as well. Then she asked, “Is there anything else about Japanese people that you don’t like?”

I hesitated slightly before saying my usual complaint. “It seems that there are a lot of Japanese people who don’t know anything.”

She pointed at me excitedly. “My student said the same thing. Exactly the same thing. He said in Texas everyone talked about politics and world issues. Even at the high school, where no one was old enough to vote, the students had formed opinions on issues. In Japan, no one talks about that kind of stuff.”

I admitted that I had been accused, even by my foreign friends, of talking about politics too much. But it was a noticeable difference. You couldn’t talk about anything deep with most Japanese people. There was just no interest.

“One thing I don’t like,” my tutor said, “is there are a lot of Japanese people who think they’re really cool. That bugs, even though I’m Japanese myself. I just can’t stand the attitude of people who think they’re so cool.”

“That’s not just Japan,” I said. “We have those people in America also. In fact more of them in America.”

“Really? All of the foreigners I meet in Japan are so mild-mannered.”

This was true actually. Most of the people I knew in Japan were pretty laid back as well. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe “cool” people don’t travel abroad as often. Maybe they’re happy in they’re own comfort zone where they know they’re cool. Or maybe, as I suggested to my tutor, Americans living abroad don’t know the local customs or language, so they loose a lot of self-confidence.

Of course on the other side of the coin there is the “Charisma Man” syndrome. Caucasian men who come to Japan, get a lot of attention from girls, and suddenly have an inflated self-image of themselves.

For whatever reason, I started telling the story of “Sukabe Kurisu”, who had been a legend in Ajimu once upon a time for the number of girls he went through. “Sukabe” is Japanese for pervert, and “Kurisu” is Japlish for Chris.

The person seated at the table behind us was also named Chris, and he thought I had been talking about him. I had to clear everything up afterwards.

We went to the local bar, where one of the girls there was returning to England and was being given a rather tearful farewell. I only knew her a little bit, and so wasn’t really sure if it was appropriate for me to join in the “hug line” that was seeing her out the door. I ended up just shaking her hand. She was crying so much she didn’t notice.

Once she left, things calmed down a bit. As I was in the bar, I suddenly felt like I could stay in Japan forever. I enjoyed the international interaction between the foreigners from all different countries, and I remember Greg’s words that it is hard to find these kind of international groups back home.

Link of the Day
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