Why are you yelling?

June has officially begun, and I am constantly seeing updates from my teacher friends back in the states on how the school year is over and everyone is ready for summer.  If only I were so lucky.  The school year in Japan runs a little differently.  Classes start in April and go till March the next year.  We do get a summer break, but it’s only about three weeks in August.  But I’m not here to complain. 

When school started in April this year all the new seventh graders had to choose clubs.  It’s a big deal, because when you choose a club you are also choosing how you will be spending your time afterschool and on weekends for the next three years of junior high.  So at the beginning of the year there is a lot of advertising done by the clubs, trying to get new kids to join.  We even have an assembly where all 18 clubs get to put on a five minute presentation to try and get the newbies to sign up (not the most thrilling afternoon for the teachers). 

At a kendo tournament.

During this time the clubs will invite seventh graders to watch practices to get an idea of what it looks like.  Some kids were heading out to practices one of these days, and one of my students invited me to join him at kendo practice.  (In case you aren’t familiar with the martial art, it is essentially Japanese fencing.  The pictures I'm putting in dont necessarily reflect what I'm writing about, but if you've never seen kendo before it will give you an idea what it looks like.)  I followed him to the kakugi-jo (kendo/judo practice building), joined the seventh graders sitting at the back of the room, and watched the upper-classmen start practice.  Eventually they handed bamboo swords (called shinai) to the seventh graders and got them started on some basic exercises.  I watched my new friends awkwardly swing their new tools, but after a few minutes a student came over to me and motioned that I should grab a shinai and join them.  To make a long story short, I eagerly took advantage of the offer and have been going to kendo practice ever since.  Later this month I will be taking a test to get a sort of pre-certification called i-kyuu (pronounced “ee-kyoo”).  If I am successful, I can take another test in September to get the first level of official certification, 1-dan. 

So that’s where I am right now with kendo, but how did I get there?  I could write a ton on all I’ve learned so far, but I want to try and explain why I got into it in the first place.

It comes down to the yelling.  You almost never hear a Japanese kid with a raised voice.  Kids here seem to be mellow most of the time.  Sure they get happy, but not really super-excited.   Yes, they get frustrated, but I’ve never seen a kid visibly mad (maybe they are angry or ecstatic on the inside, they are just good at controlling what they show you).  Japan is just a quieter place – no cars blasting stereos, no cop sirens at all hours of the day, and here in the country the sidewalks roll up around 6 (except for the kids going to their cram schools).  It is hard for me to see passion in the kids here for what they do, at least you don’t see it the way you might in the states.  For the most part, personal expression and individuality takes back seat to fitting into what the culture expects of you.  I’m used to kids being crazy, running around, screaming at the top of their lungs from time to time, getting mad from time to time, maybe even getting in a fight.  In the states, that’s part of what it means to be a kid.  Not here though.  Except at kendo.

Last year I watched the city-wide kendo tournament in the fall.  I had never seen kendo before, didn’t know what it was really.  I knew my dad did it when he was a kid growing up in Japan, so I wanted to see what it was all about.  So I watched the tournament all day, trying to figure out the rules (with only mild success).  The thing that really got my attention was all the screaming.  I didn’t know Japanese kids had it in them.  Let me try to explain what I saw:  kids wearing tricked out catcher’s uniforms, stomping their feet, screaming at the top of their lungs, trying to whack each other on the head with bamboo sticks.  I didn’t really understand the rules.  But I did know that I was seeing a very different side of my students.  I was really happy to see the screaming side of students, but I wanted to learn more.  Why were they screaming anyway?  What was it about kendo, a culturally traditional activity, that got kids acting in a way that seemed contrary to everything else I’ve observed in the culture here?  I wanted to find out.

Learning kendo has been on my mind ever since I went to the tournament last year, but I didn’t really know how I could get started.  I mean, I’m in Japan, what better place to learn kendo?  But my Japanese isn’t too good, my schedule can be unreliable, and other such excuses crowded out the idea of actually any sort of class.  When school ended in March, I made a sort of new year’s resolution to find out how to learn kendo in the next year.  So you can imagine how happy I was to accept the invitation to attend kendo practice after school.  Yay!  I did it!

So what’s up with the yelling anyways?  Well, I’m still very much a beginner at kendo and have a ton to learn, but here’s what I’ve noticed so far.  In kendo there is the idea that the sword, body, and spirit are all supposed to be acting together as one entity.  When you make an attack against an opponent, you are not just trying to attack with your sword, you are attacking with your body and your spirit too.  So when you attack, the moment your sword touches your opponent, your foot should be pounding the floor as though you were trying to put a hole in it and you should be screaming like a banshee.  Kendo is a wholistic martial art.  It isn’t just about trying to improve your skills with a wooden sword to level up or do well at tournaments; it is about becoming a stronger, unified person, being able to put your all into whatever you are doing and without holding anything back.  I love seeing kids learning how to do this, and now I get to learn with them.

Sakura

Cherry blossom (sakura) season ended a while ago, but it was one of the most spectacular things I’ve experienced in Japan so I figured I’d put up some pictures to give you an idea of what it is like.  The thing is, sakura trees are everywhere in Japan.  When the trees start to bloom, it’s like the whole countryside is exploding in blossoms.  They last for about two weeks, then they blow away to make way for the new green leaves.  

The river that runs through town is lined by cherry trees.  Here's the river before the blossoms:

And after:

You really can't get away from them.  Here are some pictures outside my school:

Some cherry trees are very famous and attract tons of tourists.  Here is a tree that isn't famous, but looks to me as beautiful as the tourist sites I visited:

This is the big one.  "Takizakura."  It is over 1000 years old.  It is one of the three most famous trees in all of Japan.  And I live only seven miles away.

And the tourists:

 
The symbolism of sakura in Japan is very interesting.  Yes, the sakura represent beauty, but they represent mortality -- something here one day and gone the next. During sakura season you have to be careful to appreciate each look out the window, because tomorrow the blossoms might all be gone. 

Reboot

 When I first arrived in Japan last August I decided to start this travel blog to tell you all about the strange new things I was encountering in my journey.  As you have noticed, the blog hasn’t seen much activity in the last few months.  The thing is, I am no longer a traveler in Japan – I live here.  The strange and incomprehensible things that gave me something to write about when I first arrived are still as strange as they ever were, but now they are familiar.  You can’t write a travel blog about the place you live.

So I need to reboot this blog, give it a new purpose.  I got an idea from a fantasy novel I recently finished.  In the book a girl runs away from home and ends up living in a temple in a foreign city.  The priest agrees to feed, clothe, and educate her if she will commit to joining the temple.  One portion of her education involves her going into the city during the week and selling clams from a cart.  At the end of each week she reports back to the priest three things she learned during the week.   It doesn’t matter what the three things are as long as they were new to her.  Maybe she learned some new gossip around town, maybe she learned where to find the best clams, maybe she learned how to do a cartwheel – if it was something new, the priest was satisfied.

And that’s my idea for the blog.  It doesn’t matter what I write about, as long as it is something I have learned in the past week.  (You should never stop learning, right?)  So what can you expect?  Less posts about Japanese culture or events, but more posts on more general things that currently interest or intrigue me.  Maybe this plan won’t solve my problems, but at least I’ll have one less excuse for neglecting the blog.

I might as well get started right here with this new plan.  And what is the new thing I have learned about?  A little thing called “blog etiquette” (insert snarky comment here).  I (obviously) didn’t give it much thought before; I didn’t realize that such a thing existed, or if I did realize it I never thought it applied to me.  Here is my blog, my own personal journal of a sort, and I just happen to be putting it on the internet for any interested party to view.  But I was reading a different blog the other day and was surprised by a post the author made.  He made a post just to say that his next actual post would be a week late, but he wanted his audience to know that he was still there, still writing for them.  It made me think of the way I’ve treated my audience (whoooops).  I mean, I have a handful of websites on my toolbar that I check for regular updates (mostly webcomics, but a couple of traditional blogs too), and I appreciate the regularity and punctuality of their posts.  And if they aren’t able to make a post, they take the time to let me know that they are still there for me, they are just running a little behind.  I just never thought to apply the same concept to myself as a blogger, but that’s what I am now, eh?

So, for those of you that enjoy reading what I write here, thank you.  For those of you that checked here in the past few months hoping for a new post, thank you, and I’m sorry I left you all in the dark for so long.  I’ll do my best for weekly updates (maybe by Sunday each week?), and if I don’t have new material I’ll try to at least let you know I’m still around and to expect a new post before too long.  Since the topics I’ll be writing about has significantly expanded now, feel free to leave comments of things you want me to write about.  No promises, but maybe your idea will spark my next post.

Double points if you get the reference.

Squeaky Wheel

There are approximately 450 students at the school where I teach.  And I, at some point or another, will teach them all.  They are split into three grades of 150 students each, and I do two-week rotations through each grade.  Even though I’ve already been at it for six months now, I still only know a fraction of their names.  And when I feel like I start to get to know a student a little bit, it is another four weeks before I will see them in class again.  Now, if I was the only teacher in the classroom, or even the main teacher with an assistant, it wouldn’t work.  But I am the assistant; I am there to supplement and aid the main teacher.  It’s a weird place to be, and it has taken some time for me to even figure out what my goals at work should be since my goals cannot be the same as a normal teacher.  That being said, I do feel that my job is important and I make a significant contribution to my students.

But this isn’t a post about my goals as an assistant; I want to focus on that fraction of kids whose names I somehow remember.  Why do I remember them?  Why do they get my attention in class?  Why are there still students that I greet in the mornings that I do not remember ever seeing before in the school?  What does a student need to do to make sure he/she gets the attention he/she needs from the teacher? 

First of all memorable students (not surprisingly) are the trouble makers.  This makes sense.  Their names are the first ones to be learned, and their images get burned on your mind from all the stress they cause you.  But hey, I remember them.  I remember what they are good at and where they struggle.  During class I always have an eye devoted to them, mostly to make sure they aren’t getting into trouble, but along with that comes a greater attention to how they are doing academically and otherwise. 

The next group of memorable students are the brown-nosers.  These students are well behaved, active in class, and always ready to go above and beyond to prove to their teachers how happy and grateful they are to learn.  No one likes a brown-noser, but the thing is, it works.  You do get noticed, and remembered.  Maybe brown-noser is a harsh term, but it will have to suffice for what I am trying to get at.  These students make their teacher’s life easier and maybe even more rewarding.  And the teacher will remember that. 

The third group for me gets remembered because they remind me of something else in life, maybe they have a familiar face, maybe their mannerisms match those of someone else I know, who knows.  They don’t really have any control of this, but they stick out in some way, and usually this way is particular to me.  And they get noticed.  And since I remember them, I want to keep track on how they are doing.  Week after week I want to check in with them, and the only reason they got lucky enough was because of something interesting in their appearance.

And then there’s the rest of the kids – the ones that get forgotten, fall through the cracks, left behind, whatever you want to say.  It is hard for me to admit that kids like this exist for me, but when I consider that I will only spend three months out of the year teaching these 450 kids their existence is unavoidable.  In class I try to look at all the kids’ faces and see which ones I can immediately identify, if not by name then at least by “oh, that’s the one I sat next to at lunch last week.”  So many kids here fall into this category.  They don’t cause trouble, but they don’t particularly find any joy in learning English either.  They turn in their homework, repeat their exercises, and get lost amidst the trouble makers and the brown-nosers.  The squeaky wheel gets the grease, eh?  I do my best to watch out for all the wheels as much as I can, but the student that demands attention is the one that will get attention.  It isn’t fair to the other students.  And it isn’t fair to me, either.  I want to know all my students, but it looks like this might be as good as it will get.  In six more weeks the school year turns over, and 150 of those students I was trying to get to know will move on, and 150 new ones will come in and take their place.  Maybe I’ll be able to do better with the new batch.