Breaking the barriers

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I'm somewhat disappointed in myself that after seven months, my level of Japanese is still very basic. I know I could study harder than I do, and when I get into frustrating situations I desperately wish I had! I definitely understand a lot more than when I arrived last August, and I try to comfort myself with that. For example, today I managed to ask the new school principal (who although very sweet, speaks very little English), permisson to pop out to the bank at lunchtime. Silly, but it took me a good few minutes of building up courage to attempt it and then it was a relief (and a bit of a surprise) when I was fully understood and told it was ok.

The language barrier can be pretty isolating, none more so than at school. It is odd being in a workplace where I am outside of the daily small talk, office gossip and rumour, bitching and petty gripes (I assume it must happen here as everywhere, but it washes over my head). My conversational skills still do not extend much beyond exclaiming on the weather. Outside of lessons I often feel like I have taken a partial vow of silence. I know I'm not the only one of the ALTs to experience this, although in my social group our Japanese skills vary. It can often lead to a bad case of verbal diarrhea when the English teachers get together!

The last couple of days my colleagues have spend in endless meetings that stretch on most of the day. The opening ceremony for the start of the summer term is tomorrow, and with seven new teachers I guess there is a lot to discuss. I accidentally followed the teachers into a meeting on Monday, and after an hour of listening to various announcements I didn't understand and trying not to fall asleep, I was relieved when at the break my JTE took pity on me and told me not to worry about coming into the next session. The downside of this is I do feel a bit left out. The other teachers are all getting to know each other in these meetings, whilst I sit alone in the staff room, trying to occupy myself. This week I have, amongst a bit of language study, taught myself the basics of crochet and created a small origami zoo....the hours just fly.

Anyway, by Tuesday apart from a brief exchange with my new Japanese English Teacher (A youngish woman who seems very nice), I'd still not spoken with any of the new teachers and I didn't even know their names. They had been introduced to the whole office, but I'd found it hard to catch all their names, let alone remember them. Apart from my JTE, I don't think any of them speak much English, so it was unlikely they'd come and chat to me. I was feeling unhappy about this, but not feeling confident enough to just march up to their desks. How to remedy this? That night I came up with a cunning plan. The next day I took in a tub of small Easter Eggs I'd bought back from the UK. At tea break when they all filed back from yet another two hour meeting, I forced myself out of my seat and went to each new teacher in turn, offered them chocolate and asked them to write their name for me. My plan worked and I felt much better having at least exchanged a few words of introduction with each of them. A small victory. Hopefully it will make things easier on Friday evening when I'm going to a welcome enkai for the new teachers. I admit I dread this evening as, yet again, it will expose my lack of communication skills! I've also decided not to drink as I'm hiking the next day, so I can't rely on the booze to improve my evening.....however, I'm hoping that when the others start drinking it will make them less reticent to talk to me.

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Photos

My Zoo
This is how bored I've been this week!