Sports Day Part One: Rehearsal

The Japanese school year begins in April, so when the children returned to classes on September first they were already half way through their school year. It didn’t seem like much of a break for them, because during vacation they still had homework to complete and they had club activities almost every day at school anyway. Japan doesn’t seem to really believe in a true vacation.
The start of school also meant the start of regular Sports Day practice. Sports day is a national holiday in Japan. It happens during Silver Week, which is a week that has a few other national holidays like Respect for the Elderly Day and so on. The point is it is nationally required time off for the over worked salary men of Japan.
Sports day, however, is not a day of rest for the youth of Japan. In fact it is something that requires copious preparation. Upon the students’ return to school I was informed that starting that week we would be having Sports Day preparation, so we would have a special teaching schedule for a while. A normal day consists of six, 45 minute classes. Instead we would have four 45 minute classes and the last two periods would be used for practice from the first week of September to the third. Furthermore, I would need to buy a track suit for sports day itself and the last week of preparation for our two all day sports day practices, in which two school days would be dedicated to a full dress rehearsal of sports day and a second day would be all day practice and the setting up of the field for the event itself.
Of course, I was not immediately informed of all this, and so one day all of a sudden everyone just disappeared from the teacher’s room. I turned to my Vice Principle and asked her where everyone when. She told me that the students were having dance practice and the teachers were helping run the practice. All the female teachers had gone to the gym to help the girls with their dance. Then she says to me, “Maybe you don’t have to go because you can’t really understand what is happening.”
Now, if I had never been to Japan before I would accept this at face value. They were letting me off the hook because I wasn’t here in the previous semester when they organized the dance so I don’t know what they are doing. Furthermore, even if I DID know, I’m not really supposed to use Japanese on the students and telling them what to do in English would just be painful. This is a super reasonable idea. BUT, because I have lived here before, I knew that the use of the word MAYBE means that they aren’t saying what they really mean.
In this case “maybe you don’t need to go” is Japanese for “You should go because it shows the teachers and the students that you are a team player and you want to really be a part of our school, and frankly, it’s just expected of everyone to go.” So after my vice principal said “maybe” I replied, “But, it would be better if I do, right?” At last I got the direct answer of “yes”.
Since that first day, I must have seen that dance at LEAST 100 times. For the Japanese, if you are going to do something, it is better to do it right, and if you can, it is even better to do it perfectly. When the boys and girls were not practicing their respective dances separately they were out on the field together learning to march. When they weren’t marching they were running from point to point in different formations, prompted by a whistle. March, march, march, run, run, run , all in the blaring shadeless heat for two hours every day.
I think the worst part of it all is I COULD understand what was going on. Previous to sports day, the month I had spent in the teachers room had given me the impression that my teachers all super sweet. But put them in charge of large groups of children, and a few of them in particular turn in to super strict monsters. Three in particular were just outright mean. A kid would be slightly out of line with his row and it would earn him or her a savage yelling at in some of the rudest Japanese I’ve ever heard, ever.
When it was class time there would still be sports practice during their gym periods. Other things were practiced during that block of time. Teachers who didn’t have classes had their free periods assigned to standing outside more in the blistering heat, overseeing the gym practices. I was mercifully spared this duty. They just didn’t even put my name on the schedule.
So what was my duty in all of this? All I had to do was stand at the side of the field and watch. In that blaring Japanese sun I would burn in about 15 minutes, so I began brining sun block to school. Even so, during longer practices I still managed to get a little singed, so I began shamelessly standing in the shade. No one seemed allowed to sit down, so I stood, and watched, stood and watched and stood and watched. Occasionally I would sidle over to one my equally bored looking English teachers and they would complain about how those three vicious teachers were way too strict with the kids, but don’t say anything because it’s a secret.
The whole school became fully engulfed in this physical activity celebration. Children ceased to wear their school uniforms and wore their gym uniforms to school instead. Teachers gave up wearing real clothes to school and changing into sportswear and just came wearing their track suits. Kids and teachers all became tanner and tanner after hours of vigorous practice outdoors. And then one day, they went too far. (as if they hadn’t already)
I was sitting at my desk putting nametags together when I heard a crack. I looked up and out the window to see children running around the freshly laden track outside to the cheers of other students sitting at the sidelines. “No.” I thought to myself, “No it couldn’t be, that would just be too crazy.” I turned to my English sensei and asked “Are they practicing the relay races?” Sure enough they were. They were actually practicing the relay races during class time. I guess if you want to do something perfectly, you have to practice.
Our full day rehearsal came and went. The day before Sports Day was upon us and the students had just finished their last set of practice. They were called over for their inspirational speech from the gym teacher running the event. He would give them a talk and then they would rake the field and lay fresh lines down for the morrow.
He began (in Japanese of course), “How many of you thing you’ve tried your best?” Almost every hand went up, and frankly I agreed with their assessment. “Oh no. Here it comes.” I thought.
“You may think you’ve tried your hardest, but I don’t think you have. Your marching really isn’t energetic enough and you don’t run to your positions fast enough.” Etc etc etc. And then he drew some comparison to the famous Japanese baseball player, Ichiro, who apparently always gave 100% and sent them on their way to set up the field for the next day.

Spiders Continued

I’ve never really liked spiders. They are creepy, gross and just well….ug. But, I can handle American spiders for the most part, and the ones I can’t I can easily vacuum away. In short, I did not live in fear of spiders the way I do now.
I always knew I had an illogical fear of spiders but I never realized how bad it actually was until I was forced to face the creepy crawlies on an everyday up close and personal basis. It became most obvious to me how deep this fear ran on a Sunday evening when I was invited to one of the other English teacher’s apartments for an evening of junk food and movies. My apartment building has an elevator that stops at the first, fourth and seventh floors, but for whatever reason hers did not……and she lives on the top floor. That meant there were seven flights of insects between me and a pleasant evening.
I got to the apartment building and started up the stairs. The spiders were in mass, but most were overhead, and a constant ducking position was all that was needed to avoid a collision course with their webs. I rounded the corner to start up the 5th flight and came face to face with six or seven spiders who had built their webs across one of the apartment entrances and directly across the main stairwell path.
I could have slipped by the webs by scooting sideways around them, but it would be a close call, and failure would earn me a vicious attack by five or six writhing, wriggling, potentially deadly spiders. Okay, they probably weren’t deadly, but they sure look it.
Face to face with my enemy, I stared them down for maybe a full five minutes, broke into a cold sweat, clenched my fists and turned around and went home. I walked back breathing heavily and started to loosen up the muscles I had worked into a serious knot of stress just thinking about braving the spiders.
At home I picked up the phone and called the girl I was supposed to visit. “Tina, I can’t get to your place. There are too many spiders and they are blocking the stairs.” The response I got was a fit of laughter from the other end. Not really what I was looking for. “Well knock them down with something then. Use an umbrella or a broom.” “Oh, okay”, I replied. Right, like I can just knock down an army of killer monster spiders. Piece ‘o’ cake.
After hanging up I probably sat on the couch for a full 20 minutes working myself into a tiz over how on earth I was going to get by those spiders. I didn’t have a broom, and an umbrella was certainly not long enough to risk it. Plus I’d have to clean them off, I couldn’t just smash them with the umbrella.
I forced myself to get off the couch and I made my way back through to stairwell and reached the nest of creepy crawlies. Have any of you seen the movie Entrapment with Catharine Zita Jones? She is trained by Sean Connery to acrobat and bend her way through this impossible web of laser beams so they can steal something really awesome. Well I felt like her. I observed the near invisible webs, changing my angle to use the light like these super thieves would use an aerosol can to detect their obstruction. Then I bent and slid past those menacing spider’s webs like I was Catharine Zita Jones. Once I got past, I booked it up those stairs. Thankfully I had past the worst of the spiders and I reached my friend’s door safely. Once there I pounded on the door and entered hyperventilating, soaked in sweat and tears welling up in my eyes. They took one look at me and burst into laughter. “We didn’t think you were going to make it!”
Needless to say, after our movie I made someone walk in front of me so they could knock the spiders down and I could wait at a safe distance.

internet ga nai. (I have no internet)

So you may have noticed that I haven't been posting much. I actually have an arsenal of posts I've written stored away on my laptop, because some things are too good not to write down. But the truth is I have a severe case of lacking internet. It is a long story which will make an excellent post when enough time has passed to the make the story funny, but until then, please don't expect regular posts until October. Hopefully by then I will actually have the internet. The Japanese have very different ideas about customer service.

Thank you all for reading.
Eliza

Monster Bugs

So when I found out my placement in Japan when I first got this Job I was really excited because I was placed in a city. Sometimes cities and prefectures (prefectures are similar to States) have the same name, but I was positive I was going to live in a city because the name of the city was followed by 市(shi) which translates directly as “city”. There was no mistake. I would be living in Kobe City. Right? ……wrong. 

Japan has a very different interpretation on boundary drawing. Officially I live in Kobe-shi, but the truth is I live in the countryside. The CITY part of the city is on the other side of the mountain. (It can be reached in 15 minutes or so by a train that goes through the mountain.) However, the major downfall of living in the countryside is not the inconvenience; the need to take the train to get daily essentials or the long walks……it’s the insect life.

Everything in Japan is tiny. The houses are tiny, the people are tiny, the cars are tiny, but the bugs are #%$&ing HUGE!!!!  AND, they come in every shape size and type. I’ve seen beetles with pincers and spiders the size of my palm (minus the fingers).

Apparently there are these five inch long centipedes that roam around the countryside, and if they bite you, your skin rots off that area and you have to go to the hospital. Awesome. Needless to say I do bug checks in my apartment every night before I go to bed, and make sure the tub is plugged so those suckers can’t crawl up the drain pipe. 

The cicadas are psychotic. They play dead on path, little legs sticking pathetically and they wait for you to approach. Just as you are about to step over them they spring to life, screeching an ungodly screech and fly full throttle into your face repeatedly until they give up and fly off. They are harmless, but they are huge and really ugly looking. The average cicada is maybe 1 ½ to 2 inches long and maybe ¾ of an inch thick. When they fly they are about the size of a small humming bird, and they make a SUPER loud noise. I’ve never experienced anything like it.

Their sound correlates to how hot it is, so when it clouds over they die down to a reasonable level, but when the clouds pass, if you are outside with your friends and you are near a group of cicadas, you’ll actually have a hard time hearing each other. 

The worst part of all is all of these critters like to hang out in hallways and staircases, so the 5 stories of outside staircase standing between me and my apartment is INFESTED with these lovelies. They are on the floors, ceilings, and the spiders (which are the creepiest spiders you with EVER see, black with flecks of yellow, or big bulbous bodies with gray, spindly little legs.) love to play, “how low can you go?” 

This is a game in which the spiders build the biggest possible web in the stairwell that they can, so big that even a short 5’ 4” individual like me will run into the webs, face first, if I’m not paying attention. The process of getting to my apartment is god awful. I take the outdoor elevator to the 4^th floor (it only goes to floors 1, 4, and 7) so I only have to deal with one flight of stairs. Then I check out the web situation before I get out of the elevator. I duck and make my way up the stairs, head covered until I reach my apartment on the 5^th floor. The ceilings are high enough outside the apartments that I usually don’t have to worry, so I fish my keys out of my purse, look around to make sure there is no airborne insect incoming and then quickly burst into my apartment so nothing gets in. Then I check the entrance to my apartment to make sure that nothing followed me. If you all don’t believe me, I hear you can go to this site, JapaneseBugFights.com. I would post pictures, but looking at these bugs in real life is bad enough. I’ll let you do your own research.

Japanese Punishment

There are many ways to live in Japan. Some people marry into the country, while others find employment through their company. However the path many choose is that of the English Teacher. Being hired as an English Teacher almost inevitably requires some sort of orientation program before you shift into the duties of your Job, no matter what company you choose. The truth is, many who enter through the instructor profession have never been to Japan before nor do they speak the language, so the week of “how to survive in Japan 101” is ultra necessary. So as you’ve might have guessed, as a future teacher of English, I too had to endure the “orientation”. 

If there is one thing the Japanese truly love, it is ceremony. Ceremony ceremony ceremony! There is an opening and closing ceremony for EVERYTHING whether it is important or not. As a result, our orientation was filled with ceremony. There was an opening ceremony in which half a dozen little old Japanese men were escorted on stage by white gloved butlers in meticulously pressed suits, so they could give their inspirational speeches to the incoming teachers all in broken English (dubbed Engrish due to the Japanese’s’ inability to pronounce L). 

These little old men ranging in importance (and seated in corresponding order) oversaw parts of the orientation, and as a result of their presence, certain topics regarding the Japanese educational system became embarrassing to explain for the foreigners in charge of the orientation. One topic in particular stood out, as I watched Caucasian speaker after speaker bring up the Japanese disciplinary rules for students and then quickly skirt around the issue. Let me give you an example of how the speeches about culture shock usually went.

“When I first started my Job teaching in my local middle school certain things were hard to get used to because of cultural differences, especially in regards to how the Japanese deal with discipline. You almost feel like you’re going crazy when you see it, because no one else seems to notice the problem with what is happening. Just remember they handle things differently here, and it isn’t your responsibility to discipline students, so just stay out of it.” Subject dropped. The term “feel like you are going crazy” and “I still don’t really get it” permeated the speeches that attempted to tackle the issues, but never were specific examples raised, nor advice dispensed except “just stay out of it”.

I was truly puzzled. What are the Japanese doing to their children? Are they boiling them alive or something? Luckily, upon arrival to my town my question was answered. 

The other thing the Japanese love is the learning experience, especially when it comes to tragedy. The area I’m stationed in suffered a catastrophic earthquake back in 1995 that destroyed the city completely and killed over 6,000 people, so of course a museum was erected to teach the Japanese all about how they fell out of harmony with nature and that’s why so many people died. But thanks to the tragedy they were reminded of the importance of working with nature so they were able to re-build the city with buildings that won’t fall down. 

After about an hour or so of graphic footage, life size walk through displays of earthquake devastated cityscape, and photo after photo of the reconstruction effort, I began nearing the exit and was waiting for my orientation group to catch up for me. (Nothing makes you want a one way ticket back to the states more than watching footage of the very city you’re living in get leveled over and over again). I was loitering near the exit when a little old man in charge of that area of the museum hobbles over to me and initiate conversation, all in Japanese.

Curator: Hello, Where are you from?

Me: I’m from America.

Curator: America is very big, what state are you from?

Me: Connecticut

Curator: Connecticut?........That really doesn’t mean anything to me.

Me: Oh, sorry, it’s near New York.

Curator: Ah, Near New York…..Why have you come to Japan?

Me:  I’m going to be a, English teacher

Curator: An English teacher? What school?

Me: XXXX Middle School.

Curator: Ah, that’s nice isn’t it. Is this your first time in Japan?

Me: No actually I studied at Kansai Gaidai University in Hirakata for one year before this.

Curator:  Ah, that’s nice…….(awkward silence…..I look around at the photos) Are there earthquakes in Connecticut?

Me: No, not at all. 

Curator: Well, Japan has lots of them so don’t be surprised when everything starts shaking!

Me: Ah, that’s so scary!

(long pause)

Curator:  Well…If the kids give you any trouble, you know…(he makes a hammer motion with his fist and utters “Bon!” the Japanese onomanipia for hitting something and grins ear to ear). Okay? Please try your hardest!

Me: I will! (with a bow)

(He hobbles off the attend to his duties)

Disciplinary question answered. 

Arrival in Japan: July 26th

Posts to come sometime in early to mid-August!