There are some things…

That are very different between Japanese schools and American schools. And there are some things that are the same.

Mostly though, there are things that are “business as usual” in Japanese schools, that American schools would never even think of having, let alone getting the students to actually DO.

These past two weeks I’ve been very busy, as school has started, and I have to actually *work* to earn my salary. (What a crazy concept!) Now being an accomplished ethnographer and anthropologist (coughcough), I have of course been taking this opportunity to do some off the cuff ethnography work, in my unique perspective as an assistant language teacher (read: participant-observation!) Through my ethnography, I’ve been on the idea that, when it comes down to the basics of the basics, and speaking very broadly and in very general terms, the root of most, if not all differences between America and Japan is this:

In America, the idea is that one has to stand out from the crowd, be somehow better, or at least more unique, then everyone else in someway to be able to make it in the world. We want to be, in some cases have to be, different in order to succeed. Americans are individuals. An army of one, if you will.

In Japan, the idea is the exact opposite. One has to blend in, be *of* the crowd, use your special gifts not to make yourself better, but to better the *group*. Team work, doesn’t even begin to describe the focus on being able to wrok together, to move forward not as individuals, but as a single unit of people. If one person fails, the group fails, and any success is the group’s success, not your own. They are the few, the proud, the Japanese.

That’s not to say that both don’t Aim High of course, but they just do it in differnet ways.

(End military puns).

First off, a little on what my job is as a JET. So I work at 7 different schools, 6 elementary schools and 1 junior high school. Mon, Tues, and Thurs I work at my base school, the junior high school. Wednesdays and Fridays I go to a different elementary school on each day. This means I really only go to each elementary school once a month, with maybe like two of the schools twice a month. What I do depends entirely on the school and the teachers. I’ve been to 4 elementary schools so far and my base school. Here’s a brief look at each one:

Junior High:
My main school, and the one I’m at the most. There are two JTEs here, and I work with both of them. One JTE works with the 2nd years (8th graders) and all but one first year class (7th graders). The other JTE works all the 3rd years (9th graders) and one 1st year class. Both are very nice, and I sit next to the one who works with the 2nd years, with the one with the 3rd years sitting behind me. Both are pretty much fluent in English, which is very surprising as that doesn’t happen often. Normally the Japanese English Teachers can’t speak English very well, but know how to read and write it and know the grammar points, if that makes sense. There’s another guy, the social studies teacher, who is also very good at English. The Vice Principle told me that he’s won Best Teacher awards before, and is from Tokyo (he’s the Shintoist I mentioned before). The other teachers don’t know much English, but they’re all very nice. I’ve basically put the teachers into two categories in my mind:
Allies: these are the teachers who have talked with me randomly, helped me out with something when I have the classic forienger (in Japanese: gaijin) *what the cheese is happening* look on my face, and whom I feel comfortable going up to ask a question if one of my JTEs isn’t around. Most of the people in this category are female teachers, with a few males thrown in, like the girl’s volleyball coach, the social studies teacher, and the Vice Principle.
Neutrals: These are the teachers who haven’t been in any way mean or unkind or anything to me, but who also haven’t made any sort of effort to talk to me either, and thus I feel kinda awkward going up to them randomly. Most of the people in this category are male, with the exception of the music teacher, who is female and whom I just haven’t really talked to, and the guidance counseler, who isn’t at the school very often because she has several schools she has to guide, I believe.

There is sort of a third category, which is really more of a sub category of the Allies section, and it has only one woman in it.

She’s an ally, but I’m slightly scared of her.

Again, not because she’s in any way mean or whatever to me, but just because she has that “I’m not gonna put up with anyone’s S.” look about her (Family inside joke: the Yum Syndrome). The fear comes from the prospect of ever getting on her bad side. She’s the third grade teacher leader, and the female PE coach, a fit older woman who is going to become one heck of a ninja obaachan.

She’s been nothing but kind to me, probably because whenever she asks me to do something I jump right to it so I don’t get ninjaed.

Anyway more on the teachers. So all the teachers are separated into three sections: 1st year teachers, 2nd year teachers, and 3rd year teachers, and while some teachers might teach more than one year, they’re responsibility is mostly with that particular year. I forget if I’ve mentioned it before, but one of the big differences between American and Japense schools is the way the class system works. In America, once one gets to middle/highschool, the students move from class to class, and the teachers more or less stay put. In America, the English teacher has her own classroom, and students come and go to that classroom as the period demands, etc. In Japan, the teachers don’t have their own classrooms, they have that big teacher room with their desk and such. The kids all stay in one classroom, and the teachers come and go depending on the period. So when its math time, the math teacher goes to a particular classroom and teaches the class. Then he leaves and the social studies teacher comes in, etc. Also the kids in one class are always together, unlike an Ameican school where you might have be in 3 different classes with completely different students in each class. The classes do get switched around every year, but during htat year the kids get to know the other kids in their class really well, and all the teachers know every student by name (except for me >.>;;; but I’m working on it!!!)

Anyway so that’s a brief overview of the teachers at my JHS. Now for the classes.

Unless the JTE is just handing back and going over tests, I assist in every English class. Sometimes this means I only have one or two periods a day, sometimes it means I have a class every period. When I don’t have class, I’m still busy because I need to use the time to prepare for the next lesson, or to prepare for elementary school lessons, or there’s Sports day practice (which I’ll get to in a moment). Both JTEs will tell me what the general lesson plan is (aka what the topic of the lesson is, numbers, colors, a particular grammar point, etc), and then I come up with a game or something to help teach it. I discuss the game with the JTE, it becomes tweaked with the JTE’s suggestions, and then we go off and do it. Both JTEs have their own way of doing things, so while some things I might be able to use in both sets of classes, mostly its different stuff.

Sometimes I get to know the new lesson plan before the day I have to do it, often though it’s the day of, and I have to make the plans and the preparations during my free time.

All last week though was pretty simple, as the lesson was based around my introduction, so it was the basic same stuff with both JTEs. I made up a little speech about myself, the places I’ve lived, and my family. I show them where I’ve lived on the map, and pass out photos and little trinkets or whatever from said places. (All of this is in English by the by, though sometimes the JTE will translate a couple of things in Japanese). Then we play a quiz game about my introduction. The 3rd year JTE hands out worksheets that I created that ask a series of multiple choice questions about my little speech. The kids answer the questions, then we go over them. After that we play a general question game, where a row of kids stands up. I ask a question in English, and if a kid answers correctly they get to sit down. When there’s just one kid left standing, his/her column has to stand up, and I ask more questions. The last kid standing has their row stand up, and so on and so forth. With the 2nd year teacher, the kids split up into groups of about 4 or 5. I ask the question about my speech and, as a group, the write the answer on a sheet of paper. I go “5 4 3 2 1” and on 1 they have to show their answer. If they write the correct answer in English they get 2 points, the correct answer in Japanese they get 1 point. The winning group gets stickers or something.

The second week has been more real lessons, with me having lessons based around colors, numbers and sentances like “the dog is behind thebox. The dog is infront of the box” etc. We haven’t been able to play a game with that yet, as it took a while for the kids to sorta get the concept, and they had worksheets to do and such, but I still try to make every class fun.

And I do that by pretty much acting foolish.

Let me explain.

When I’m in class, I make over exaggerated gestures and mouth movements, I do sound effects, I bounce around class, I give off high fives, and anytime I have to stand still for a bit, like if I’m waiting for a student to answer a question I do a variety of jigs.

As odd as this sounds for a sensei (teacher) to do (and believe me, it IS odd. You definitely will not find any of the Japanese teachers jigging down the rows of students), I believe its actually really helpful. It makes the kids grin and laugh first of all, even if their kinda sorta laughing at me (though not in a harsh kind of way). But more importantly I think it relaxes them. JHS is a touch age for any kid in any country, but in Japan especially the kids are really really really afraid of answering something wrong and making themselves look foolish. They’re so afraid of it that they just won’t participate at all, so as to not make a mistake.

But if I’m already bouncing about and such well, there’s no way they could make a bigger fool out of themselves than I am already haha, and if I’m making a mistake or still doing jigs and dancing about even if they make a mistake, then it puts them more at ease. Both of my JTEs have already said (in slightly awed voices) that they can’t believe I can be so cheerful throughout the class, and how I’m always smiling at the students, and how much fun the students seem to be having in English class. There was one day where all the kids were really tired, as they had sports day practice all day yesterday (again I’ll explain sports day soon), and the JTE warned me before hand that the kids probably wouldn’t be very responsive. But by the time I was through with them, I had kids laughing and calling out responses and such, and at the end of the class my JTE was like “whoa.” More and more kids will say hello to me in the hallways, or give me enthusiastic waves, boys and girls, and several students when they walk by the teachers room, will jump up and down and wave to get my attention just to say hello.

The trade off though is that I’m less of a SENSEI sensei, and more of a….I dunno amusing distant realitve? Like I don’t have the authority over the students that other senseis have, and its shown in the way the kids treat me. Like the kids aren’t rude to me or anything of the sort, but they talk to me a little more as if they were taking to one of their own, rather than to a teacher. So any discipline power I might had (which I don't think would be much to begin with haha) goes down all the more.

I’ve been talking about this with some of the other JETs here, and we all have differnet opionions on things. H is about 10 years older than the rest of us, and her job before this was as an English teacher for high schoolers in the states. So she’s like a TEACHER teacher. She’s a bit frusterated with the system, as she doesn’t have her own class to just teach, and both she and B prefer to be thought of as TEACHER teachers, and I can see the value in that, but I dunno, I like my way. We’ve been told that the whole point of the JET program is less about really teaching English, and more about making foreign language, foreign customs, and foreigners less intimidating and all around scary, so that if someday in the future, these kids are presented with the opportunity to learn more about foreigness, they will not run screaming or give it the horse-to-tiger-stare, but will instead remember fondly back on their English class, and remember that it really wasn’t so bad, and perhaps give it a try.

That’s my two yen on the subject anway.

Moving on to the things that American students would never do, and to what is also a rather awkward time for me, lunch.

So all teachers will eat with the students. Homeroom teachers eat with their homeroom, teachers without a homeroom will eat with a class of their grade. While I sit with the 2nd year teachers, I’m not really of any grade, and so every day I eat lunch with a different class. I have to ask the homeroom teacher for permission first of course, but so far no one has said no.

Though I’ve also so far only asked my allies if I could eat lunch with their classes, but I’m fast running out of allies to ask and there are still classes I haven’t eaten lunch with yet, so I’m just gonna have to suck it up soon.

Anyway so here’s the thing about lunch. First off there isn’t like a big cafeteria room where the kdis go to eat lunch in, and lunch isn’t at different times depening on the grade. Lunch is the same time for everyone, and the classes eat separately, in their classroom, with the homeroom teacher. But here’s the kicker,

The kids take turns serving one another!

Elementary and JHS both, a small group of kids will run off to change into their aprons and to put on their little cloth masks over their mouths, and a hair net. Then they wheel in on a cart the pans or buckets or whatever that have the food in it into their classroom. Each kid will pick up a trey and form a little lunch line in the class room, as the students with the aprons will dole out an equal serving to their classmates, before serving themselves, taking off the apron and such, and sittingdown at their desk to eat.

….I can’t get over it. Like I try to picture that happening at an American school and just can’t. There would just be so much destruction, demise, and general hassel, it just wouldn’t work.

The food fights alone would be catastrophic.

Anyway the awkwardness for me comes in trying to make conversation. I dunno what it is, but kids that were all energectic and excited in the hallways or during class are suddenly very quiet and shy during lunch time. Maybe its because of the close proximity and the extended time that I’m there without a clear purpose, or maybe its just that thye only have 30 minutes to eat the food damn it, and they can’t wait time on the silly foreigner!

Either way they’re also always fisniehd way before me and I’m always the only one who ever has food left over lol.

They’ve also turned me into a milk hoarder. Like schools in America, every lunch comes a milk carton. But the thing is I don’t like straight milk. I’ve never liked straight milk. I blame my brother. And this milk isn’t only just staright up MILK, its also like whole thick straight from the freak’n cow milk. This junk is THICK. I can’t choke it down, no matter how thirsty I am. And there’s absolutely nothing that can be done with a half full carton of milk. The schools just aren’t equipped to deal with it. EVERYONE finishes their milk, and then folds it up and sticks it in this little box. When I asked what to do with a half full carton of milk, they looked at me the same way I look at a Calculus problem.

The brain just can’t handle it. It tries to comprehend, overloads, and shuts down. Finally the nurse was like “you can put your milk in the fridge and finish it later….” And I just said okay and then when no one was looking poured it out.

And don’t try to suggest bringing something else to drink. I asked once, and it was like I’d just announced the apocolyspse, closely followed by several asteroids striking within 5 feet around me.

So now its come to this. Every day I eat lunch, and just don’t drink anything. I never touch the milk. I turn in my tray and covertly slip the milk carton into my pocket. Then I walk down the hallway to the teacher’s fridge, and slip the milk inside, hoping someday someone will drink it.

There’s 6 milk cartons in that fridge right now. All of them mine.

But at anyrate…I think I’m gonna end the blog here for now. I know I still have a lot to talk about and explaining to do, but its late and I’m tired haha and tomorrow I have sports day, which I’ll explain about….later >.>;

And believe me its worth the wait. Sports Day is basically the reason why Japan was so sure they’d win WW2. Its why they don’t have to be worried about the fact that they don’t have a military. Sports day, is a concept that, to the unexpecting and unprepared gaijin, could probably cause internal brain damage and emotional tramatization.

And its also a great deal of fun!