Happy Birthday to ME

I’ve only ever had to celebrate my birthday outside my home country three times.  All three of those times happened in Japan, and only one of them do I actually remember.  Last week I turned 24.  One of my coworkers told a few students at school that it was my birthday, and by the end of second period it seemed like the whole school knew.  So every time I stepped out into the hall or saw a student I got a “Happy Birthday!” in passing.  A lot of the students wanted to know how old I was, so I turned the situation around and gave them a chance to practice some of their own English: “How old do you think I am?” or “Guess!” were two expressions most students were fairly unfamiliar with, but they all picked up on it sooner or later.  Three different times students started singing happy birthday to me in the hall, and one group actually made it through the whole song.  The rest of the week students continued to wish me congratulations.  Keep in mind there are around 450 students at my school; it almost felt like they were waiting to ambush me with a “Happy Birthday!” by Friday. 

Another birthday surprise was a visit from my Uncle Steve.  He just happened to be in Japan on a business trip and was able to take time to stop by Funehiki for dinner one night.  It was great to get a chance to celebrate with family.  I don’t know when I’ll have another out of town visitor, but I look forward to it.  It’s always nice to see a familiar face.

I also celebrated a bit with the other Wakakusa teachers here.  They made what is probably the coolest birthday card ever for me:

Place meat here ^^, and enjoy.

Friday night they surprised me with a trip to Koriyama to have dinner at a yaki-niku restaurant called V-Brian.  We didn’t go there just because the place was obviously named after me; the food was amazing too.  The waiters placed a few mini charcoal grills on the table and then brought plate after plate of delicious raw meat.  Yaki-niku is pretty easy: grab whatever meat you want, put it on the grill until it reaches your desired doneness, and enjoy.  And it was all you can eat.  I think I ate enough meat for a month.  V-Brian – definitely not vegetarian friendly. 

I’m still getting used to life over here, but the adjustment is going well.  This place doesn’t quite feel like home yet (I don’t know if it ever will, really), but I’m getting used to the notion that I’ll be here for a while.  And if things keep going the way they’ve been going, I don’t think I’ve got much to worry about.

Streets and Squares

This past weekend I took a trip to Sendai and got a small taste of what life looks like outside rural Japan.  So forgive me if this post becomes something of a ramble, but here are a few things I noticed in comparing villages and cities in Japan.

Life in Funehiki is pretty calm.  Until a few years ago, Funehiki was its own entity, a small village among other neighboring small villages.  Funehiki still feels like a small village, but now it is technically a district of Tamura City.  Tamura was formed when Funehiki and four other villages decided to combine into one municipality.  So even though I technically live in a city of 40,000 (still a small city, but twice the size of my hometown of Ashland, OH) it still has the feeling of a small village.  There are two shopping centers within walking distance of where I live, so shopping for groceries and other general household needs is pretty easy.  Not much in the way of entertainment exists in town.  But four years of living in the middle of nowhere Western New York (aka Houghton) taught me lots of ways to find diversion when the locale is less than bustling.  They tend to roll up the sidewalks here just after sundown (which is pretty early here, compared to the states).  I’ve found one cheap diner open 24 hours, but that is definitely the exception to business in Tamura. 

I’m not that far away from diversion, if I ever feel so inclined.  The city of Koriyama is only a 30-minute train ride away, and a round trip ticket only costs about $10.  I haven’t done too much exploring in Koriyama yet, but I have made it to a couple of malls.  Book stores, coffee shops, international food stores, music shops, gyms, and even a bigger and better version of Dave and Buster’s can all be found within a 20 minute walk of the train station.  Koriyama is by no means a big city; it feels about the same size as Buffalo (my last city of residence) with a population of just over 300,000. 

That's a bowl of tail soup, fyi.

This past weekend I got my first taste of a big Japanese city: Sendai.  Lots and lots of people.  I think this was the first time I really got a chance I got to see other foreigners out and about since I’ve been here.  Meeting a stranger that doesn’t speak Japanese is rare in in Funehiki and Koriyama even, but I heard people speaking all sorts of languages in Sendai.  Sendai has just over one million residents, and the streets are wide and always full of people.  This past weekend was a holiday weekend too, so I probably experienced the city at an especially busy time.   

Moo.

 Sendai is known for its cow tongue, so I made a point to give it a try.  It was good, but still weird.  Isn’t it strange that eating other bits of a cow doesn’t give me the slightest pause, but when I start chewing a tongue I wonder why I’m not a vegetarian?  Anyway, tongue will not become part of my regular diet, but I would definitely get it again if I ever return to Sendai.  

One of the few places you can't be on a bike in Sendai.

Another difference in the big city was bikes.  In Tamura and Koriyama, bikes are not too common.  Sure, there are designated bike parking areas at the grocery stores, but they are always pretty empty, at least when I’m there.  This was not the case in Sendai.  Bikes are everywhere, which is a little strange because the streets are not bike friendly in the least.  In fact, bikes aren’t even allowed on the big streets and have to be ridden on sidewalks, which make for pretty slow biking because of the crowds of pedestrians.  But still you see bikes parked everywhere, and even small underground parking areas with special ramps for bikes.  But wherever you see a bike parked, there is usually no more security on it than a simple wheel lock.  This brings me to a similarity between cities and villages in Japan, and one of the biggest differences between Japan and the States.  Japan is very very safe.  I was told this before I got here, but wow.  It took two nights in Buffalo before we learned the hard way that you need a super heavy-duty lock if you are going to keep your bike on the porch overnight.  I wouldn’t ever leave my bike alone without securing it to something sturdy with a big U-lock.  But now I live in a town of 40,000 with a security force comprising of four unarmed police officers.  Of course, the police forces in Koriyama and Sendai are a little bigger than that, but the cities still feel just as safe. 

I look forward to getting to travel throughout Japan and get a better sense of the differences between rural and urban life here, but I still have plenty to learn about life in little Funehiki yet.  It will be interesting to look back after I’ve been here a while and see if my initial impressions were at all accurate to how things really work.

Sports Day!

Once a year, Japanese junior high schools have a sports day.  It’s a sort of school-wide Olympics.  All academic activities are canceled for the day, and each class bands together to compete in the four events.  The competitions are only within grades, so you don’t have any 9^th graders competing unfairly against a seventh grade class.  In my school there are five classes for each grade.  Each class gets its own color headband to be worn throughout the day’s events.  We began the day with a brief assembly to kick off the competition, the principal giving the student body a hearty “Ganbatte!” (Do your best!).  Students then dispersed, checked the schedule posted on the wall, and headed off to their various events.  

Headbanded students stand at attention waiting for the competition to begin

There were four different events: soccer (boys), dodge ball (girls), basketball (boys), and volleyball (girls).  Due to limited gym space, only second and third year students were able to compete in volleyball and basketball.  Three soccer fields were drawn out on the dirt sports area next to the school.  At first I struggled to figure out which grade was competing on which field since students were no longer wearing their color-coordinated indoor shoes.   But I figured it out soon enough by looking at the goal posts on each field.  The first field had nice white full-sized soccer goals, clearly the home of the third year students.  Field two also had full-size goals, but these were old and pretty rusty – second year.  And the goals on the third field were composed of two small rusty practice goals pushed together for the first year students.  Not exactly egalitarian, but it does represent the idea of hierarchy that is so prevalent in Japanese culture.

Dodge ball was probably the most interesting event for me to watch.  First of all, since when is dodge ball a girls’ sport?  In America this is the sport that sees most of the girls cowering in the back, invariably ending up as the last students in play, shrieking as they get pelted by the strongest boys on the other team.  But such is not the case in Japan.  Here the girls really get into it.  And the rules are very different as well.  The game is played with a single ball.  The court is a chalk rectangle drawn on the dirt field.  If you get hit by the ball, you are out.  If you catch the ball, nothing happens.  But when you get out, you do not sit at the sideline waiting for the game to end; instead you go and stand somewhere out of bounds on the opposing team’s side of the court.  If the ball ever rolls out of bounds you can pick it up and try to throw it at an opponent.  If you hit an opponent, it not only gets the opponent out, but you get to come back in.  I like this way of playing; I think it’s more interesting than standard American dodge ball.  There’s a lot more strategy and teamwork involved.  For example, instead of just trying to hit someone with the ball, you might pass the ball to your teammate who already got out and is standing right behind the crowd of the opposing team.   It’s hard to describe exactly how the game works, but if you ever come and visit I would be glad to play a round or two with you!

Dodgeball in the foreground, with the soccer field in the distance

Basketball and volleyball were pretty standard, but still had some great competition.  Some officiating was done by teachers, but for the most part students held roles of referee and scorekeeper.  That’s something I’m coming to learn about school in Japan: everyone has a job, everyone pitches in and helps out.  Students had good sportsmanship, and although there were some tears after a particularly close volleyball match (on both sides of the net, interestingly enough), everyone worked well together.  

At the end of the day students cleaned up the sports equipment and headed back to classrooms to await the announcement of the winners.  I sat at my desk in the teachers’ office and strained my ears to pick out the standings, as the announcement was (obviously) done in Japanese.  As each event was announced I could hear the cheers and clapping reverberate down the hall from the various classrooms.  

I like this tradition of Japanese schools.  It reminded me of the annual Olympics held by my dorm in college.  I remembered how the competition brought us together and solidified our identity as a community on campus, and I think the same thing happened last week with the students at Funehiki Chugakko.  Yes, it was a day at school without any academics.  But what it achieved was equally important, and I bet students will do better at school because of it.  Maybe American schools could take a page from the Japanese book and hold a sport’s day from time to time.  Maybe if students identified with the community of their fellow students it wouldn’t be so hard to get them to come to school.  School is about more than just test scores, and I’m glad that I got a chance to see what else it might be.

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….