First Day Of School! First Day Of School!

“Are we different, or are we the same?  We are different, and we are the same.”  This is the final line of one of my students’ speeches to be presented at next week’s contest.  I know it’s a bit obvious, but my time here is going to be filled with realizations of how people are different and the same.  This week was no exception.

The Japanese do school different from Americans.  For those that are unfamiliar with how education works in Japan, here are a few of the observations I’ve made so far:

• I teach in a middle school.  It contains three years of students and is the equivalent of grades 7-9 in the states.  My school, Funehiki Chugako, has five classes of about 30 students each for each grade.  These classes will stay together for all three years of their middle school experience.  These kids get to know each other well; each class develops its own sort of culture.  Already I’ve noticed a difference between the atmospheres of the different classes.  Not only do the classes not change students throughout the day, classrooms don’t change either.  Each class stays in its own room all day, and teachers are the ones that have to change classrooms.  There is one large teachers office where each teacher has a desk to do whatever prep work, lesson planning, grading, etc. he/she needs to do, and they have to carry whatever materials they need to class with them.  (Actually, a couple students will come to the office before class and help the teacher carry materials for class, but the point is that teachers don’t have permanent teaching area – it’s always changing.) 
• School lunches in Japan are really good.  Teachers and students all get the same thing, and it is really good and healthy.  At lunch time a few appointed students from each class don a special shirt, face mask, and hair net and walk down stairs to carry up lunch for their class while the other students rearrange the desks from rows into table groups.  Once this is done the appointed students serve everyone else in the class.  The students wait in their seats until everyone has been served and then let loose a hearty “itadakimas” for the feast to commence.  Each day lunch has some sort of salad/vegetable, rice or soba, milk, vegetable, and soup/curry.  Food in general seems much healthier and school lunch is no exception.  I think about gross school lunches in the states and wonder how hard it would be to get them to the state of Japanese lunches.
• Uniforms aren’t that much of a distinction in a comparison to US schools, but there is one interesting element to them.  Each class has its own color of shoes.  First year students have yellow shoes, second year have red, and third year have green.  Students’ shoes stay with them so next year yellow shoes will indicate second year, red shoes will be third year, etc. 
• Japanese schools have no janitors.  Students and teachers are in charge of keeping the school clean.  Each day at the end of class we have a cleaning period called souji.  Students put on white hats and go sit in silence in the hallway waiting for the signal for cleaning to commence.  As soon as they get the go-ahead they head off to various roles, some students cleaning their classroom, others in the bathrooms, some cleaning the teachers’ office, some in the principal’s office, etc.  Teachers and students clean together, mopping on hands and knees, pushing desks from one side of the classroom, until the job is done. 
• Extra-curricular activities look different too.  In the states you can be involved in as few or as many student clubs or sports teams as you want/have time for.  Not so in Japan.  Each student has to be in one and only one club.  You choose your club first year, and you work at that one thing your entire time at middle school.  So if you are on the soccer team you can’t be in band or choir.  This has advantages and disadvantages.  By focusing on just one activity, students get really good at that one thing.  The choir performed last week at an assembly and they sounded like they could have been a top class high school choir or maybe even a college choir back in the states.  But no boys are in the choir.  And there are only two boys in band.  The boys tend to gravitate more towards the sports clubs which means they can’t do any sort of music in addition to that.  Kids look at me surprised when I try to explain all the different things I did when I was in school.

These are only a few of the things I noticed in my first week – who knows what I’ll see after a month, a year….

Hajimemashite

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that any of this is real.  But I tell myself that it is, that I’ve been in Japan for a week, and that I’m not just here on a vacation.  It’ll sink in soon enough.  

After breakfast last Tuesday we made the four-hour drive from Narita to Funehiki.  Upon arrival I was greeted by a crowd of teachers from the kindergarten, a few of my fellow American English teachers, and some others.  After a brief introduction everyone returned to work and I went out to lunch to start meeting some of the other team members.  But before we left Kawai sensei handed me a paper to write down my name, home town, and a few of my interests/hobbies.  I briefly wrote down that I was from Ashland, OH and that I liked saxophone, biking, and snowboarding.  Little did I know, this paper was to be typed up in Japanese and handed out to every person that I would meet for the rest of the week.  

We went to lunch at a restaurant called Gusto, sort of a Japanese attempt at Denny’s.  The rest of the afternoon was spent at my apartment, moving in, getting to know some of the guys on the team.  That evening was team dinner, Japanese curry, where I got to meet the other team members that I had missed earlier in the day.   Honestly much of these first few days is already a blur because of the jet lag, so I won’t be able to give much more description than this.

Wednesday morning I got all dressed up in my new suit jacket and met the Board of Education.  I met Encho sensei on the drive over there.  He’s the guy running the show over here, the reason I was able to come over at all.  (To my friends in Buffalo, imagine him as a sort of Chuck Massey figure, except a little older.)  While in the car I told him how I had been in Japan as a baby, a story which he has already repeated many times as he introduced me to various people in town.  Most of the meeting with the Board of Education consisted of me sitting and smiling as everyone spoke around me in Japanese.  (My time in Japan has already given me a new appreciation for the refugees I worked with in Buffalo and the difficulties they face in trying to learn a new language and culture.)  Someone brought out some cold tea for us to drink.  It was made from roasted barley and tasted delicious.  I understand that it is a summer specialty around here.  I’ll definitely be getting some to have at home.  The board members had a couple of questions for me, which were thankfully translated into English.  One of them asked me how much Japanese I knew, and I responded that I mostly knew kid’s songs from when I was here as a child, which of course prompted a request for a performance.  So I rattled off the first few lines of “Zo-o-san, Zo-o-san” much to the general approval of the audience.  We said our goodbyes, and then it was off to Funehiki Jr. High (Fune-Chu) to meet with the principal before lunch.  Unfortunately the Principal was out of the office, but I was able to meet the Vice Principal.  It was similar to the meeting with the Board of Education, down to another cup of cold barley tea.  I sat and listened to their Japanese as the Vice Principal read my introduction sheet, learning that I like saxophone, biking, and snowboarding.  Lunch that day was out at a different restaurant where we had cold soba and tempura.  And the soba was freshly made.  The rest of the afternoon is a bit of a blur, that’s when the fog from jet lag starts to set in.  It involved some shopping, a trip to the bank to get money changed, etc.  We did make a special stop at a shop to get some daifuku.  Ever had those bean filled mochi-type balls you can get at Asian markets in the states?  It was like that, except they were filled with cream and fruit and all sorts of other goodies, and they were fresh.  Changed my life.

Thursday was my last big introduction before starting work: the mayor.  Seems like a really great mayor; he was happy to have me in the city.  The intro went pretty similar to my other introductions, except we got a picture and he gave me some of the special water they bottle out of one of the nearby caves. 

Me shaking hands with the mayor.

That afternoon some of the guys on the team took me out to the gorge, a little swimming whole just outside town frequented by us Americans, and no one else, it seems like.  They had just set up a rope swing, and we spent a couple hours swinging and swimming and dodging horseflies (rather unsuccessfully).  I’m sure I’ll be spending a lot more time out there as long as weather permits swimming.  

Friday was a pretty relaxed day with nothing official scheduled for me to do.  A few team members showed me around town, and we went to lunch at the new conveyor belt sushi place in town.  I don’t know when I will cease to be amazed at the food over here, but it will probably be a while.  Let me describe this place.  So there is a constant stream of different sushi plates making their way by the table on a lower conveyor belt.  If you see one that looks appetizing, you just grab it off the line.  If you want anything in particular there is a touch screen to place your order.  When your food is ready, it comes on a little train that runs above the main conveyor.  You take your food off the train, push the button, and send the train back to the kitchen.  When you are ready to go, you tap a button on the screen, and a waitress comes by to count up your plates.  It’s pretty simple: each plate is 100 yen, so however many you grabbed from the line and have sitting next to you empty dictates your bill.  I’ll be back there again soon.

The fast food of Japan.

Koriyama is the closest big city to Tamura.  They’ve got a couple of shopping centers, Starbucks, and an international food store.  So Saturday Celeste and Hope showed me how to use the train and gave me a brief tour of the high points of the city.  We went up a sky scraper called the Big-I next to the train station where we could see the mountain that is right next to Funehiki, so that was neat.  At the sporting goods store I found a bike I will probably buy, but I didn’t have the cash on hand to do it then.  I really really miss my old bike; I hope it is enjoying its new life without me.  On the train ride home Celeste offered her seat to and elderly lady who graciously accepted it.  The lady spoke excellent English, and we talked with her all the way back to Funehiki about her travels around the world, how Japanese schools have declined in the past few years, and the recent Buddhist festival.  Celeste said it was really surprising to run into anyone that spoke that level of English, especially someone that old.  There was one funny miscommunication, though.  She was asking where I lived, and I said just down the street from Celeste.  But she misunderstood, and responded, “Oh, you’re like me, homeless.”  I guess she thought I lived on the street, not down the street.  I will probably never see her again, but I am glad I was able to give her some company on the train and a chance to practice some English. 

Today was my first chance to go to Funehiki Evangelical Church.  I think I counted 10 Japanese in attendance, which meant that all the English teachers present nearly doubled the congregation.  At the end of the service they surprised me with a request to say a few words about myself in front of the group, but I’m starting to get used to being asked to do these sort of things last minute, so it wasn’t so bad.  School starts tomorrow, and it will be a day full of more introductions and who knows what else.  Fingers crossed.

The Arrival

I made it.  Well, almost.  Right now I’m looking out the window of my sixth floor room of the Narita Crowne Plaza Hotel.  After breakfast we still have a three and a half hour drive to get to Tamura, but that’s not so bad.  Sunday morning I woke up around 7am EST, hastily shoveled some oatmeal down the gullet, and was driven to Cleveland Hopkins International by dad and sister.  There we met Adam and Hannah Hange, coordinators for the US side of operations for the program, at the Delta ticket desk.  After checking my luggage it was time for my final goodbye before heading through security.  But not so fast – I quickly realized I had left my phone in my pocket.  It’s not going to do me much good overseas, so I gave dad one last call; he came back and I got one more chance at goodbye, but then we were off and through security without a problem.  

I don’t understand why they tell you to get to the airport so early.  Three hours for international flights, is what they tell you.  So we were there three hours early, and we spent two hours sitting around waiting at the gate.  At least we didn’t have to worry about missing our flight.  The jump from Cleveland to Detroit went smoothly.  I sat next to a friendly veteran who spent four months in Japan back in the 70’s and was jealous of the adventure I was just beginning.  At Detroit we had a couple more hours before the next leg of the journey commenced so we took our time finding some lunch.  Adam and Hannah asked me what I wanted my last meal in the US and all I could think of was a burrito.  I don’t know why I thought Mexican would be a good idea before getting on a 747 for 13 hours, but we went anyway.  The burrito was really good, though, and I didn’t suffer too many adverse effects on the subsequent flight.  

Waiting to board the 747 in Detroit

Before boarding the flight I started to get excited about my journey.  Up till this point there had been a lot of nervousness – I was so focused on saying goodbye it was hard for me to look ahead and get excited about where I was going.  But being in front of the gate, seeing a crowd of Japanese all eager to get home, it gave me an image of something to look forward to, what I’m going to be seeing and living with for the next couple of years.  There was a large group of Japanese students returning from a rowing competition, if I read their matching t-shirts correctly, about the same age as the students I’ll be working with.  I think the hardest thing about this trip has been the sense of stepping out into the foreign, the unknown, but by shedding some light on what things will look like I’m able to get excited about what is coming. 

Our 3:30 flight began boarding around 2:45.  It takes some time to get 400 people situated on an airplane.  But then they realized that one of the light bulbs on the plane’s exterior was burnt out, so we all had to sit and wait while they replaced it.  How many flight mechanics does it take to change a light bulb?  I don’t know, but we obviously didn’t have enough of them – the repair took almost an hour.  I just felt bad for all the folks who missed their connecting flights in Tokyo just because of a light bulb. 

After the light bulb was fixed we were underway.  Two rows behind us was an American mom and her three small children.  You can imagine how that went.  I let you know it was an American family, because there were other children on the plane as well, but they weren’t nearly as loud and rowdy.  Other than that, there wasn’t much special about the flight.  We were flying west, so the sun was up the whole time, only just starting to set when we landed just after 6pm in Tokyo. 

Driving from Tokyo to Tamura, feeling "Happy Refresh!" with a Calpus I got at a rest stop.

Upon arrival we were met with a couple of small surprises.  First was immigration.  Adam and Hannah went through first just fine, but when I went through they pulled me aside into a small room with benches, took my documents, and told me to wait.  It wasn’t a big deal; they were simply making my gaijin (foreigner) identification card, something I was planning on doing later this week in Tamura.  After the machine spit out the card, they let me go through to baggage claim and customs.  I found Adam there pretty quickly, but Hannah was nowhere around.  I guess they got a little worried when they saw me pulled aside at immigration, and Hannah had gone looking for me.  She came back soon enough, so we got our bags through customs and met Okubo-sensei outside.  Normally they drive straight back to Tamura after picking up teachers at the airport, but since it was so late they decided to put us up in a hotel at the airport.  We got situated in our rooms in the hotel and freshened up before going down to dinner.  A quick word about the room, though.  The toilet was one of the most advanced pieces of technology I’ve ever sat on before.  It took a little guesswork and experimentation to figure out how it worked.  After a quick shower we met downstairs at the hotel restaurant for dinner.  I could get used to the food over here: Shrimp tempura with udon.  Oishi!  Sleep was next on the schedule (I think I almost nodded off once or twice during dinner).  I roomed with Okubo-sensei, and he showed me the complimentary Japanese pajamas provided in the room, so I had to try them out.  They worked great.  I only woke up once during the night wide awake, but luckily I had trusty David Copperfield next to my bed, and I was snoozing again in no time.  Now it’s 7:25 and almost time to rendezvous for breakfast before making the final leg of my journey and arrive at my new home.