MooshiMooshi Part 11


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May 14th 2008
Published: May 14th 2008
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MooshiMooshi!
Last time I wrote, I had just returned from a whirlwind tour of central Japan, the cherry blossom season was coming to a close, and I was beginning a new chapter in my life here having been relocated to a different prefecture. My new schools are much busier than the last, and my new apartment comes without internet (I’m in such an isolated location that there are no Internet providers) so it makes keeping in contact a bit more challenging.
But the scenery out here is worth the inconvience. My apartment is nestled between the sea and one of the tallest mountains in Western Japan, Mt. Daisen, a famous ski spot and a great challenge to climb this summer. Surrounding the area are tall white windmills. In fact, the tallest windmill in Japan is just a short walk from my front door. Gazing out from the balcony, you can see the silent structures turning away as the sun casts its glow behind the sea. The only downside is that, well, its really windy here. But you know what they say; have lemons, make lemonade. And so Chris and I have been making kites. Mine is a bamboo kite fastened with a salvaged tarp. Flying a kite is a lot harder than I remembered when I was a child. Small adjustments have a huge effect on the way it flies. So far, I can’t get mine to fly very well. Even if I did get it high into the sky, the only ones around to see it would be the few who pass through on their way home from one of the local factories, and maybe a yeti smiling up on top of Mt. Daisen. Having a mountains and not cities is an interesting change in my life. Every morning in a city, the environment appears to be about the same, the changes are in the details; road construction, garbage. But within the environment of mountains, no two days are ever alike. Every morning, new faces and new hues of the mountain are displayed, and my memory cannot plot any two days that ancient mound has looked the same. In a way, it casts a sort of magic over the land. Perhaps what makes it seem magical is that it goes on of its own free will, without human intervention, a rare occurrence these days.
In contrast to my living environs, my new schools are located in the biggest city of the prefecture, a city of about 300,000 called Yonago. I was originally supposed to be placed in the schools where I live, but in another bonehead move from my company, I have to travel over 25km on the expressway each morning instead of enjoying a leisurely 5km ride through the fields. But other than the distance, my new schools are wonderful. I now get to spend an entire week out of each month in elementary school, and I love it. Japanese children, in my opinion, are extremely thoughtful of each other and well-behaved compared to their, ahem, American counterparts. Janken (rock/paper/scissors) is the law of the land, creating peace and fairness amongst the children. Anything from deciding who won the game in a tie to who gets the extra fruit cup is decided by the almighty janken. There are times when the weeuns get a bit loud and I have to reach for the asprin, but most of the time, they’re so adorable that I want to sqeeze them in my palm until they shrink small enough that I can carry them on my keychain. My favorite time of the day is, of course, recess, when I can run around outside with the kids, playing dodge ball and feeding the pet rabbits. The staff at elementary level do not speak any English, so it is a little hard to get the job of teaching done. But you can have a lot more fun not being serious. Today at elementary the principal had me climb into the chicken coop and collect one of the newly laid eggs, which I then took around the corridors telling children I had just laid it.
Children here, from a young age, have larger a sense of responsibility in my opinion. I eat lunch with a different classroom each day (we all eat communal school lunch) and each student puts on a tinny facemask and spoons out equal portions for each class. None of us can eat until everyone is settled in their seats. One student is assigned to lead us in the Japanese form of saying ‘grace’; we clap our hands together and say “ittedakimasu”, a ritualized phrase stemming from shintoism to reflect on everything that went into bringing this food to you. Then, we can eat. The kids janken for any leftover food, and when finished, must separate all of their wastes into different containers. They have to show their tray to the teacher that they ate all their food, and then they can go play. After recess is, of course, is cleaning time when the school, well, gets cleaned as well as a group of seven year olds can manage.
As for junior high, where the majority of my time is spent, it’s incredible just how different my new schools are from the old. In Shimane-ken, both teachers and students were very formal. When I met with a teacher for lesson planning, I always had to say, “yoroshiku onegai shimasu” when we where finished, meaning “Thank you for helping me now and in the future. I will do my best for you”. But here, these expressions are waived. One teacher always omits it for, “Thankyouverymuch”, in an accent that makes him sound exactly like Elvis. The students don’t have to bother with the formalities of bowing and saying “onegai shimasu” before each lesson, and when they come into the staff room, they casually stroll in, whereas in Shimane, students had to stand in the doorway until a teacher granted them permission to enter.
The attitude toward English education in the schools is also very different. Whereas in Shimane, the teachers always had a strict curriculum to follow, showing more concern for completing the textbook and passing examinations, the teachers at my new school simply told me that students find the textbook boring, so they would rather make the lessons original and creative. The point of having foreigners incorporated into the school systems here is supposed to be about displaying correct pronunciation, yes, but it is also supposed to be about cultural exposure to these students. In Shimane, my role as an ALT was usually limited to students regurgitating target sentences over and over to the tune of my voice. But at these schools, the teachers have enough wisdom to understand how to fully utilize an ALT, and they want to create as much verbal communication between me and the students while I’m here. The results of these differences are interesting. In Shimane, most of the students used excellent grammar, their reading and writing skills achieving perfection. But they hated English, and the sentences they used were always generic textbook answers, and I found that they couldn’t express themselves in an original way. At my new school, students are much more outgoing and willing to communicate. They enjoy English, and can be very original, but they have very poor reading and writing skills.
I didn’t realize just how hard our language is until I experienced others trying to learn it. When my students write words, they make all the common mistakes of a first grader. Lowercase b’s are confused with d’s, verbs lack conjugation, nouns lack “a” or “the” before them, and words are spelled out the way they are pronounced. But whereas we grapple with all these hurdles early on, these students aren’t introduced to them until they are in their early teens, and at that age, it can only be learned through painful memorization. Japanese, in comparison is actually a very easy language to learn, because it has only a few universal rules. I could imagine what my students must think. Here they have a very simple native language that makes sense, yet they are forced to learn a very complicated system that can’t even justify its own contradictions (ex: read and past tense read are spelled the same but pronounced differently).
But I will stop being a teacher for now and continue with this entry.
And so, I find myself in a more enjoyable environment at the moment. Everyone is friendlier and less conservative, there are actually young people around (my previous location had the highest elderly population in Japan) and the other ALTs in this area are really friendly. There always seems to be something going on. One weekend, its an Ultimate Frisbee tournament, the next its Karaoke Idol.
With all the great weather we’re having, a few of us did a 60km ride around the lake this month. The ALT who organized the event used to be a semi-professional bike racer in Vancouver, and showed up for the ride decked out in gear. Being the practical girl that I am, I preferred to go with a dress. We met up in the parking lot of a local onsen, munching bananas and pumping our tires before setting out. I had wanted to do this ride when I first arrived to the area, but hesitated because of the lack of riding room. The route that encompasses the lake is a sidewalk less, shoulder less narrow one lane highway, and as the main road for the area, its congested with cars and trucks until the wee hours. But riding in numbers gave us more leverage to fight for room on the road, although at times it was nerve wrecking. The best part was the reward that came after the ride; a soak in the onsen and a hearty lunch of grilled eel and hot tea.
Last weekend, families and friends all over Japan enjoyed golden week, one of the only times during the year that everyone is granted a break from work. Unfortunately, the whole country taking the same week off makes it very difficult and expensive to travel. So the local ALT community organized a camping excursion to the group of islands, which can be reached by ferry from our area. The Oki Islands are almost as close to Japan as they are to Korea. As we took the ferry out over the sea, you could see large patches of bright orange floating on top of the water. One explanation we heard was that is was sand that the wind carries over all the way from China. Another explanation was that it was plankton, whose numbers had risen sharply due to global warming. We also learned that this extra plankton is increasing the jellyfish population, which is in turn choking the population of other marine life and putting a squeeze on the fishing industry. I was disappointed to find that the beaches on the Oki Islands were unswimmable due to the dense inhabitation of the jellyfish.
While swimming was out of the question, we did enjoy exploring the mountainous island, its strange rock formations and many waterfalls. I brought my bike on the ferry only to discover the island was ridiculously mountainous, as is most of Japan. I tried hiking out to some of the waterfalls marked on my map, and it turned into a 3 hour ride because of the 3 mountains I had to go up and then down on. When I finally got to the waterfall, though, I really felt like I earned it. Many cars of tourists passed me on the way there, and when they came to the waterfall, ornated with a tiny shrine, they usually lingered for 5 minutes, took a photo and left. When I got there, after working so hard, I felt like I had discovered atlantis. Things are a lot more special when you have to work hard for them. I lingered until there was a break in the flow of tourists, and then I climbed over the slimmy green rocks and into the flow of the waterfall. I let it pour over me like a baptism, and skipped back down the trail to my bike, blowing dandelions into the air like I had just been born.
And so, my new life is so far feeling more full than the lonely days in Shimane-ken. The locals in this area are also much more friendly and committed to getting to know foreigners. The free weekly Japanese class in town has more volunteer teachers than it does students. Last time I went, I was blessed with having four teachers all to myself! Another group organizes a weekly cooking class, hosted in the mansion of a quiet eccentric character. (Last time we went, he ushered us into his private movie theater, where he had us watch Madonna, live in concert). But at the cooking class, I am finally finding out how to use all the weird ingredients they sell in the local grocery stores. Another group is the the prefectural “friendship task force” consisting mostly of retirees, which throw monthly social events, such as this weekend’s tea party, where they can get to know the foreigners living in their community. It's a bit sad that I am just now starting to feel really involved in everything, but it will be time to go soon. But maybe it’s a good thing too. If I settle down too much, I might never leave...


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