I have an idea for a new series of topics. Rather than trying to think of “fun” or “unusual” things, I’m going to focus on Domestic Differences. That is, I’m going to write about everyday activities that are subtly different between Japan and the U.S. I’m going to start with one that I think Japan gets “right”—something U.S. cities and states could learn from Japan.
Trash
By trash, I’m referring to the way trash pickup is handled. In the U.S., at least where I’ve lived before, each person puts their trash out on the curb or throws it into a dumpster themselves; for people living in independent houses, trash pickup is usually is typically once a week. Each person is later sent a bill (either from the apartment owner/manager, or directly from the disposal company for house owners/renters). The problem is that this bill is, as far as I know, assessed strictly based on the property for houses or sometimes per person in apartments. This means that, regardless of the amount of trash you use, you pay the same amount. I know that in some areas, for house residents, the fee is based on the number of trash cans you put out, so that means there’s some scaling, but it’s a very rough scale. As such, there’s no particular personal incentive to minimize your trash creation—a person who cooks at home and reuses items can easily pay the same amount as someone who gets pizza delivered in those massive boxes every day.
In Japan, the payment system is handled on the front end, rather than the back end. That is, each city/disposal company sells special trash bags at local stores (typically grocery, drug, convenience, and some big box stores). Each bag costs between (approximately) 15 and 50 U.S. cents each, depending on size. Now, that’s of course, far more than the actual cost of the plastic bag. But that extra cost is the fee you pay for trash pickup. That is, after we buy the bags, we pay no more fees. In this way, we are incentivized to use less trash, as the less we create, the fewer bags we need to use, and thus the less we pay. Furthermore, efficient users are never indirectly supplementing those who produce large amounts of trash. There are several different colors of bags, into which we have to separate different types of trash—in Fukuoka, that’s burnable, recyclable, and non-burnable/non-recyclable; in other cities that don’t do trash burning, burnable is usually separated between paper and other non-recyclable. For large objects, like appliances, trucks regularly drive around neighborhoods on weekends, and there is a set fee for each item (I believe from $10-$100, depending on whether it’s a toaster or a heating unit).
Here, a simple difference in the way fees are assessed leads to a (in my opinion) more equitable system. Not necessarily true with all topics I’ll cover...
Friday, July 2, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Is it about an assignment, or about an argument?
I used to say that I needed a deadline to get anything done. I claimed the pressure produced by a looming deadline was necessary to enable me to do my best work. Recently I’ve come to think that there’s more to it than that.
As I’ve mentioned before, the Japanese fiscal and educational year begins in April. In addition to the transfer of teachers from one school to another, there is also transfer of responsibility within each school. In general, most teachers focus primarily upon a single grade of students (the allocation to a grade year also controls which tests a teacher prepares, which school excursions they participate in, which classes they are a homeroom teacher for, etc.), and this grade often changes each year. This leads to small but noticeable changes in the way classes are taught each year.
In the past, my primary work in the second semester (September through December) has been on Oral Communications classes with first-year (sophomore) students. The new teachers in charge of the first year English classes wanted to significantly change how classes with me worked. As such, my supervisor and I have been developing a new type of curriculum that will be acceptable to everyone involved. Fine and great. The need to present this in writing, and the need to go through a complex process of creation, negotiation, and development of these lessons has allowed me to focus on detailed writing in ways that I haven’t had to in a while.
So, my first thought when I sat down to write this post was that it wasn’t so much the need for a deadline that was pushing me to write, but the need for an assignment.
However, as I thought about what I’d done, I think that it was actually the desire to argue that drove me to write. The part of the work that I liked the most, and that pulled me through the rest of the work was not the curriculum itself, but the “Manifesto” I wrote that sets out what I (and, to a large degree, my supervisor) feel I can bring to classes, and how that is beneficial for students. This Manifesto was designed within the rhetorical context of needing to defend what I view as important in an ESL classroom against what others in the department see as necessary. The need to precisely set out what I believed in was not only enjoyable, but critical in helping me shape the lessons themselves—that is, by continually reminding myself of what I had set out as my position, I kept my lesson more clearly focused and less happenstance.
And I thought more about my daily “writing.” I actually do write quite a bit, but the majority of what I write are short commentaries, primarily argumentative comments, for a variety of online sites. I answer questions on Yahoo Answers, try to refute blatant idiocies in comments on news articles, and engage in discussions on a variety of blogs about politics, religion, Japan, Magic, and a variety of other topics. I think that in each case my motivation to write is the desire to cleanly and persuasively argue.
So...what compels you to write?
As I’ve mentioned before, the Japanese fiscal and educational year begins in April. In addition to the transfer of teachers from one school to another, there is also transfer of responsibility within each school. In general, most teachers focus primarily upon a single grade of students (the allocation to a grade year also controls which tests a teacher prepares, which school excursions they participate in, which classes they are a homeroom teacher for, etc.), and this grade often changes each year. This leads to small but noticeable changes in the way classes are taught each year.
In the past, my primary work in the second semester (September through December) has been on Oral Communications classes with first-year (sophomore) students. The new teachers in charge of the first year English classes wanted to significantly change how classes with me worked. As such, my supervisor and I have been developing a new type of curriculum that will be acceptable to everyone involved. Fine and great. The need to present this in writing, and the need to go through a complex process of creation, negotiation, and development of these lessons has allowed me to focus on detailed writing in ways that I haven’t had to in a while.
So, my first thought when I sat down to write this post was that it wasn’t so much the need for a deadline that was pushing me to write, but the need for an assignment.
However, as I thought about what I’d done, I think that it was actually the desire to argue that drove me to write. The part of the work that I liked the most, and that pulled me through the rest of the work was not the curriculum itself, but the “Manifesto” I wrote that sets out what I (and, to a large degree, my supervisor) feel I can bring to classes, and how that is beneficial for students. This Manifesto was designed within the rhetorical context of needing to defend what I view as important in an ESL classroom against what others in the department see as necessary. The need to precisely set out what I believed in was not only enjoyable, but critical in helping me shape the lessons themselves—that is, by continually reminding myself of what I had set out as my position, I kept my lesson more clearly focused and less happenstance.
And I thought more about my daily “writing.” I actually do write quite a bit, but the majority of what I write are short commentaries, primarily argumentative comments, for a variety of online sites. I answer questions on Yahoo Answers, try to refute blatant idiocies in comments on news articles, and engage in discussions on a variety of blogs about politics, religion, Japan, Magic, and a variety of other topics. I think that in each case my motivation to write is the desire to cleanly and persuasively argue.
So...what compels you to write?
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Kagoshima 2
More pictures from our Kagoshima trip:
From downtown Kagoshima. 3 years after coming to Japan, I still get struck now and again by the chaotic panoply of electrical, telephone, and data wires filling the air above Japanese streets.
One food specialty of Kagoshima is kurobuta or “black pork,” so-named because of the color of the pigs, not the meat itself. Here, the pork (bottom left in the top picture) is placed in boxes with other meat, along with a second box of vegetables, and steamed for about 10 minutes. It was served with several dipping sauces. Excellent food.
To get from Kagoshima to Sakurajima island (where the volcano is), we took a car ferry, which runs about every 15 minutes. Above you can see a distance shot of a crossing ferry, middle you can see me standing on deck with the volcano in the background, and below you can see our car nestled below deck. The ferry system is a more interesting—and probably more efficient—choice than building a massive, cross-bay bridge.
Yoko’s guidebook directed us to this restaurant, “hidden” atop the warehouses and docks of the area’s fishing port. They’re only open for about 3 hours a day for lunch, serving three set lunches, focusing on kampachi (great amberjack), both raw and braised, the fish the area is most famous for.
We’re standing at Cape Sata, the southernmost point of “mainland” Kyushu. We’ve been to the southernmost, northernmost, and easternmost points in Kyushu; at some point we’ll have to drive out past Nagasaki to get to the westernmost point.
And, finally, a view of Sakurajima from the other side, in the setting sun.
From downtown Kagoshima. 3 years after coming to Japan, I still get struck now and again by the chaotic panoply of electrical, telephone, and data wires filling the air above Japanese streets.
One food specialty of Kagoshima is kurobuta or “black pork,” so-named because of the color of the pigs, not the meat itself. Here, the pork (bottom left in the top picture) is placed in boxes with other meat, along with a second box of vegetables, and steamed for about 10 minutes. It was served with several dipping sauces. Excellent food.
To get from Kagoshima to Sakurajima island (where the volcano is), we took a car ferry, which runs about every 15 minutes. Above you can see a distance shot of a crossing ferry, middle you can see me standing on deck with the volcano in the background, and below you can see our car nestled below deck. The ferry system is a more interesting—and probably more efficient—choice than building a massive, cross-bay bridge.
Yoko’s guidebook directed us to this restaurant, “hidden” atop the warehouses and docks of the area’s fishing port. They’re only open for about 3 hours a day for lunch, serving three set lunches, focusing on kampachi (great amberjack), both raw and braised, the fish the area is most famous for.
We’re standing at Cape Sata, the southernmost point of “mainland” Kyushu. We’ve been to the southernmost, northernmost, and easternmost points in Kyushu; at some point we’ll have to drive out past Nagasaki to get to the westernmost point.
And, finally, a view of Sakurajima from the other side, in the setting sun.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Kagoshima
About 3 weeks ago, Yoko, her mom, and I took a trip to the Kagoshima, the southernmost prefecture among the 4 main islands of Japan. Here’s some random pictures from the trip.
I’ve seen these kind of cars before. They’re called Dekotora—per the Wikipedia article, they’re “a kind of loudly decorated truck most commonly found in Japan and the Philippines. “ I’ve seen before at night time, when they’re all lit up, but I didn’t have my camera at the time. You can see pictures via Google.
The red steps and the dolls on them are part of a display of dolls for Hinamatsuri, or Girl’s Day. Traditionally, each family with daughters would have their own set of dolls, which would only be brought out during the time around Girl’s Day. Even small sets can be extremely expensive. Personally, I think that, as a kid, I’d be sad to have a “toy” that was packed away for 90% of the year and that I couldn’t even really play with when it was out (look don’t touch).
Our hotel the first night was perched above a little river, complete with fish and ducks. I really liked sitting next to the window and seeing/hearing the water run by. I’m the kind of person who likes falling asleep with neutral background noise, like an air conditioner or washing machine, so the river sounds were wonderful.
We went to a spectacular open air museum, which featured large-scale outdoor art pieces. These pictures are a sequence showing my favorite piece. It’s a little hard to tell the scale, but that’s a metal “tunnel” projecting out into the air from a high hill, probably about 20 meters long. There’s small slats in the side letting in some—but not much—light. The far end of the tunnel is covered in glass, on which is inscribed in English, Japanese, and Hebrew, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.” The words are just barely visible as you gaze out over a big valley filled with natural and man-made things.
Two pictures of Sakurajima, the active volcano that sits in the middle of the bay in Kagoshima. The first picture gives a good view of the overall volcano, and the second highlights a new plume of smoke coming off the mountain. Some teachers told me that living in the shadow of an active volcano has historically given the people of Sakurajima pressure and drive, the desire to constantly be working and improving.
I’ll put up some more pictures in a few days.
I’ve seen these kind of cars before. They’re called Dekotora—per the Wikipedia article, they’re “a kind of loudly decorated truck most commonly found in Japan and the Philippines. “ I’ve seen before at night time, when they’re all lit up, but I didn’t have my camera at the time. You can see pictures via Google.
The red steps and the dolls on them are part of a display of dolls for Hinamatsuri, or Girl’s Day. Traditionally, each family with daughters would have their own set of dolls, which would only be brought out during the time around Girl’s Day. Even small sets can be extremely expensive. Personally, I think that, as a kid, I’d be sad to have a “toy” that was packed away for 90% of the year and that I couldn’t even really play with when it was out (look don’t touch).
Our hotel the first night was perched above a little river, complete with fish and ducks. I really liked sitting next to the window and seeing/hearing the water run by. I’m the kind of person who likes falling asleep with neutral background noise, like an air conditioner or washing machine, so the river sounds were wonderful.
We went to a spectacular open air museum, which featured large-scale outdoor art pieces. These pictures are a sequence showing my favorite piece. It’s a little hard to tell the scale, but that’s a metal “tunnel” projecting out into the air from a high hill, probably about 20 meters long. There’s small slats in the side letting in some—but not much—light. The far end of the tunnel is covered in glass, on which is inscribed in English, Japanese, and Hebrew, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.” The words are just barely visible as you gaze out over a big valley filled with natural and man-made things.
Two pictures of Sakurajima, the active volcano that sits in the middle of the bay in Kagoshima. The first picture gives a good view of the overall volcano, and the second highlights a new plume of smoke coming off the mountain. Some teachers told me that living in the shadow of an active volcano has historically given the people of Sakurajima pressure and drive, the desire to constantly be working and improving.
I’ll put up some more pictures in a few days.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Sleep, Coffee, and Learning—an Interactive Approach
Last year, the JET program had an essay contest for all current and previous JET participants. They've since canceled it (I imagine for budgetary reasons). I had submitted an entry, but was not accepted. That's not really that surprising, as you'll see in a minute--the essay really wasn't the type of thing they're usually looking for. But I decided I want to get it "out there" into the world any way, at least to a few people. So I'm posting it here. It's quite a bit longer than my usual posts; apologies. In any event...
A few days ago, I woke up at 4:00 am, and couldn’t go back to sleep. The night before, my breathing had grown thick and labored; when I awoke in the middle of the night, it had become so heavy that I couldn’t sleep anymore. This has happened occasionally before. I don’t know exactly what’s causing it—allergies, or asthma, or some sort of nocturnal beast that clutches at my throat to suck away my life force.
--
At an enkai, I saw a teacher fall out of his chair, asleep. And he hadn’t even had anything to drink.
--
The other day in class, I saw a student struggling to keep her eyes open, going through the cyclical pattern of “eyes droop...head tilts forward...neck suddenly snaps upright.” After the closing bell rang, and the students did their kyootsuke, rei, bow, I watched her sit down, move her lap blanket to her desk, and drop her head onto the blanket—all in a single, fluid motion—to sleep for the ten minutes of the passing period.
--
Students at my school have 6 mandatory periods every weekday, plus a mandatory 7th period 2 days a week, plus mandatory half-days on Saturdays once or twice a month, plus nearly-mandatory 0th period classes for two-thirds of the year. 70% of them are in clubs, and a large number of them go to cram school until late at night. Twice a year they put on massive festivals (sports festival and culture festival) that they spend months preparing for. No wonder they’re tired.
--
I feel like I’ve won when I can make it through the day on just three cups of coffee (one at home with breakfast, one in the morning at school, and one just after lunch). I feel vaguely bad, almost morally impure, when I have to go to five. Still, though, when I worked as a paralegal in the U.S., I routinely went to 5 or 6. Reduced caffeine intake is one way my life has definitely improved in Japan.
--
I find it difficult to fall asleep when my wife’s not at home. I usually stay awake very late, intentionally making myself so tired that my eyes droop closed in between turns of my online games, so that I can sleep immediately upon hitting the bed.
--
At graduation, a few teachers had their eyes closed and heads tilted forward for much of the ceremony. I saw parents and students doing the same thing. Remarkably, none of them ever failed to rapidly rise when the call to bow was made.
--
About 30 minutes after lunch, I almost always collapse (mentally) into a thick haze of food-induced somnolence. It’s as if my body is using every last ounce of energy to digest what I’ve just eaten. I can get by when I have class after lunch—doing something enjoyable and intellectually stimulating gets me through. But when I have no class, and I’m just studying Japanese, browsing the internet, or typing an essay on my computer....
--
I think I’d better make another cup of instant coffee.
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Actually, the “70% of students are in clubs” only applies to ichinensei and ninensei [ED: 1st and 2nd year students]. 0% of sannensei [ED: 3rd year students] participate in club activities—they are forbidden from doing so, because they must devote all of their time to studying for university entrance exams. They must bear down. They must endure. They must put their noses to the proverbial grindstone. They must sink or swim. The stress, combined with the denial of stress-relieving activities, must be nearly unbearable.
--
One thing that causes me stress in my life in Japan is speaking in Japanese at a level beyond my ability. If someone starts to talk to me in Japanese, I become nervous. If the conversation goes on for more than a minute, I get panicky. If it goes on for more than two minutes, I literally break out into a sweat. My body starts doing all sorts of things to push me away—hopping, stomach pain, hot flashes. How many of our students feel the same way? If I could teach myself just one thing about how to be a good language teacher, it would be to always think about how much our emotions effect our ability to learn language. My own emotional response should be a constant reminder that I have to do everything in my power to lower affective barriers when teaching English.
--
This morning, for variety, and to get myself into the mood for editing this piece, I bought a can of coffee from a vending machine on my way to work.
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My school has free green tea, but that just won’t work for me. I’m nervous about making it. I wonder how many times the tea should be re-used, if I’m wasting it or looking cheap. And, of course, green tea simply doesn’t provide as much life-giving caffeine as coffee does.
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When my wife isn’t home, I usually leave the light on while I’m sleeping. I didn’t do this in the U.S. I think that this is at least partially out of fear of Japanese ghosts (yuurei). I’m worried that the spiritual protection I felt I had against ghosts in the U.S. may not serve me well here, in much the same way that my cultural conditioning may not serve me well when interacting with daily life in Japan.
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Last year there was a scandal in Oita prefecture, in which it was alleged that some teachers’ families bribed local officials to help them pass the test to become public school teachers. One of the teachers at my school wondered why, nowadays, someone would do this—teaching isn’t at all the easy job people might perceive it to be from the outside. It is true that teachers, along with other government employees, have benefits far and away superior to those working at most private companies. But are such benefits worth it?
--
My breathing problem notwithstanding, any lack of sleep on my part is usually a consequence of my own behavior. Not so for my supervisor—she has 3 and 5 year old children, and, as is inevitably the case with children, they get sick. Sometimes that means long nights of little sleep. Does that make her tiredness the next day easier, or harder?
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My school also has a “coffee club,” in which people chip-in each month to get real (i.e., not instant) coffee, which is made by hand pouring hot water over a drip filter (usually by the teacher’s room’s dedicated office assistant). But I’m too uncomfortable to join. How many cups per day is a fair amount to drink? What if there’s only one cup left in the pot—would it be rude to take it? My Midwestern Protestant conditioning keeps me far too worried. This is the upbringing, for those who aren’t familiar, that makes me feel that I should never take the last helping of anything, and compels me to decline any offer at least twice before accepting, and only then under protest. I bet that if I did join, I’d hardly ever feel comfortable enough to partake.
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Why are there no vending machines with hot canned drinks in the U.S.? Having access to hot coffee anywhere and everywhere, for the same price as a soda, with no lines and no hassle, seems like a no-brainer. But I guess that it’s part of the greater vending machine culture of Japan.
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Teachers, for the most part, work 10-12 hour days, 5.5-6.5 days a week. While they don’t appear to take work home like U.S. teachers do, they do clearly work quite hard. That’s why when I see them worn out and fighting or acquiescing to sleep, I’m not surprised.
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Another way that my Midwestern upbringing makes it difficult for me to interact with Japan occurs when I’m sitting, tired and not busy, in the teacher’s room. I’ve gotten over worrying about looking like I’m doing schoolwork—it must be obvious to everyone that I’m not always able to do something school-related, especially in summer when I only have a few classes a week. But I still can’t bring myself to sleep in public like I see some of my Japanese colleagues do. My hesitancy arises mostly because it feels unethical to be sleeping on the clock. Sleeping in the staff room must be acceptable, because in slow times I regularly see others teachers do it, but I can’t alleviate my feelings of discomfort so that I can relax enough to sleep. I think I’ve actually slept only once or twice, and that was when I was sick.
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How can vending machines possibly be profitable in Japan? They constantly suck electricity for heating in winter and cooling in summer, cost labor to fill and capital to manufacture...but they are everywhere. Their very ubiquity is what makes me wonder how each one individually can be profitable. I once counted and found that on my trip to work (two 15 minute walks separated by a 7 minute train ride) I see 37 drink machines, plus 3 supermarkets and 4 convenience stores. When the Revolution comes, the Japanese will have a big enough supply of bottled and canned coffee and tea to last for decades.
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On the train, I must look odd to the other passengers—I stand, grasping the overhead strap, and lean my head into the crook of my arm, eyes closed, resting for my 7 minute ride. I see others sleeping, but not while hanging from a strap, using their arm as a floating pillow. For once in Japan, my Caucasian height proves to be an advantage.
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My method for choosing canned coffee in Japan arises from the interaction between my predilection for black coffee and my inability to read Japanese well. I usually (although not always—see my comments about Viennese coffee below) want my coffee without sugar or milk. The problem is that it’s not always obvious when reading the name of a can of coffee whether that coffee is mixed with anything. One of the earliest ones that “tricked” me was a can labeled “Extra Bitter Coffee” that was inexplicably mixed with milk. So when I really care about having coffee the “natural way” (I’m referring here to what is “natural” to my Midwestern sensibilities) I make sure to purchase it from a convenience store, rather than a machine. Why? Not because I can read it any better, but because I can check the nutritional/ingredient section, and search for a “kcal” number—since black coffee has no calories, I know I have found what I was looking for when I find a “0.”
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One of the greatest drinks I have found thus far in Japan is Viennese style coffee. The coffee is ideally brewed in a vacuum coffee maker (also called a siphon maker), which looks like an hour glass and is heated from the bottom by a small gas or sterno flame. The coffee is poured into a mixture of warm milk in which a small amount of chocolate has been melted; the lot is topped with stiffly beaten whipped cream. Served only in kissaten, the hot smooth coffee (not too sweet) covered by the cool whipped cream is outstanding.
---
What’s up with the having to come to work when sick, anyway? I understand that disease still has a strong link to moral impurity in Japan (think of how many daily and religious rituals in Japan are linked to cleaning). I get that working hard is critically important. But I don’t grasp how the Germ Theory of Disease (the now ubiquitous belief in industrialized countries that many diseases are caused by infectious microorganisms) seems not to have penetrated the interaction between work and health in Japan. In the U.S., people who work when sick tend to be hourly employees who can’t afford to not work. In Japan, even full-time salaried employees with sick leave come to work. It seems to be necessary that people come to work as long as they can at least slightly function, regardless of the fact that they may be infecting others, or that the stress of work may be prolonging their illness.
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If I could get just one lesson across to my students about how to successfully learn a foreign language, it would be to look for the can with 0 kcal. That is, when you’re trying to communicate in a foreign language, use every available technique, because the only thing that matters is getting the message across. Proper grammar and pronunciation are irrelevant...just do whatever it takes to convey and receive information. Formal correctness is nice for a test, but communicative competency is the most critical thing in conversation.
--
The ichinensei look like kids. By the time they become sannensei half of them have bags under their eyes and a scratchy depth in their voices.
---
I lied when I said Japanese people have to work even when sick. I did so because that’s what our supervisors and our JET advisors tell us. But I have to tell you it’s not true. My wife (a Japanese native) tells me that while such an attitude may have been common thirty years ago, it’s not true now—at least not in most private companies. If I could get ALTs and other transient residents of Japan to learn just one thing while they’re here, it’s that our experiences in Japan—our jobs, our co-workers, our houses, our lives—are not necessarily representative of all of Japan. Japan is not nearly as homogenous as it is made out to be. Fukuoka life is different from Osaka life, city life is different from country life, and traditional school life is different from modern private life.
Sleep, Coffee, and Learning—an Interactive Approach
Warning: The following is not a traditional Western narrative. Instead, it is something of a cross between a postmodern multi-voiced narrative and a cyclical Japanese essay. It is designed to convey meaning at the intersections and divergences between multiple overlapping streams of thought. A few days ago, I woke up at 4:00 am, and couldn’t go back to sleep. The night before, my breathing had grown thick and labored; when I awoke in the middle of the night, it had become so heavy that I couldn’t sleep anymore. This has happened occasionally before. I don’t know exactly what’s causing it—allergies, or asthma, or some sort of nocturnal beast that clutches at my throat to suck away my life force.
--
At an enkai, I saw a teacher fall out of his chair, asleep. And he hadn’t even had anything to drink.
--
The other day in class, I saw a student struggling to keep her eyes open, going through the cyclical pattern of “eyes droop...head tilts forward...neck suddenly snaps upright.” After the closing bell rang, and the students did their kyootsuke, rei, bow, I watched her sit down, move her lap blanket to her desk, and drop her head onto the blanket—all in a single, fluid motion—to sleep for the ten minutes of the passing period.
--
Students at my school have 6 mandatory periods every weekday, plus a mandatory 7th period 2 days a week, plus mandatory half-days on Saturdays once or twice a month, plus nearly-mandatory 0th period classes for two-thirds of the year. 70% of them are in clubs, and a large number of them go to cram school until late at night. Twice a year they put on massive festivals (sports festival and culture festival) that they spend months preparing for. No wonder they’re tired.
--
I feel like I’ve won when I can make it through the day on just three cups of coffee (one at home with breakfast, one in the morning at school, and one just after lunch). I feel vaguely bad, almost morally impure, when I have to go to five. Still, though, when I worked as a paralegal in the U.S., I routinely went to 5 or 6. Reduced caffeine intake is one way my life has definitely improved in Japan.
--
I find it difficult to fall asleep when my wife’s not at home. I usually stay awake very late, intentionally making myself so tired that my eyes droop closed in between turns of my online games, so that I can sleep immediately upon hitting the bed.
--
At graduation, a few teachers had their eyes closed and heads tilted forward for much of the ceremony. I saw parents and students doing the same thing. Remarkably, none of them ever failed to rapidly rise when the call to bow was made.
--
About 30 minutes after lunch, I almost always collapse (mentally) into a thick haze of food-induced somnolence. It’s as if my body is using every last ounce of energy to digest what I’ve just eaten. I can get by when I have class after lunch—doing something enjoyable and intellectually stimulating gets me through. But when I have no class, and I’m just studying Japanese, browsing the internet, or typing an essay on my computer....
--
I think I’d better make another cup of instant coffee.
--
Actually, the “70% of students are in clubs” only applies to ichinensei and ninensei [ED: 1st and 2nd year students]. 0% of sannensei [ED: 3rd year students] participate in club activities—they are forbidden from doing so, because they must devote all of their time to studying for university entrance exams. They must bear down. They must endure. They must put their noses to the proverbial grindstone. They must sink or swim. The stress, combined with the denial of stress-relieving activities, must be nearly unbearable.
--
One thing that causes me stress in my life in Japan is speaking in Japanese at a level beyond my ability. If someone starts to talk to me in Japanese, I become nervous. If the conversation goes on for more than a minute, I get panicky. If it goes on for more than two minutes, I literally break out into a sweat. My body starts doing all sorts of things to push me away—hopping, stomach pain, hot flashes. How many of our students feel the same way? If I could teach myself just one thing about how to be a good language teacher, it would be to always think about how much our emotions effect our ability to learn language. My own emotional response should be a constant reminder that I have to do everything in my power to lower affective barriers when teaching English.
--
This morning, for variety, and to get myself into the mood for editing this piece, I bought a can of coffee from a vending machine on my way to work.
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My school has free green tea, but that just won’t work for me. I’m nervous about making it. I wonder how many times the tea should be re-used, if I’m wasting it or looking cheap. And, of course, green tea simply doesn’t provide as much life-giving caffeine as coffee does.
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When my wife isn’t home, I usually leave the light on while I’m sleeping. I didn’t do this in the U.S. I think that this is at least partially out of fear of Japanese ghosts (yuurei). I’m worried that the spiritual protection I felt I had against ghosts in the U.S. may not serve me well here, in much the same way that my cultural conditioning may not serve me well when interacting with daily life in Japan.
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Last year there was a scandal in Oita prefecture, in which it was alleged that some teachers’ families bribed local officials to help them pass the test to become public school teachers. One of the teachers at my school wondered why, nowadays, someone would do this—teaching isn’t at all the easy job people might perceive it to be from the outside. It is true that teachers, along with other government employees, have benefits far and away superior to those working at most private companies. But are such benefits worth it?
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My breathing problem notwithstanding, any lack of sleep on my part is usually a consequence of my own behavior. Not so for my supervisor—she has 3 and 5 year old children, and, as is inevitably the case with children, they get sick. Sometimes that means long nights of little sleep. Does that make her tiredness the next day easier, or harder?
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My school also has a “coffee club,” in which people chip-in each month to get real (i.e., not instant) coffee, which is made by hand pouring hot water over a drip filter (usually by the teacher’s room’s dedicated office assistant). But I’m too uncomfortable to join. How many cups per day is a fair amount to drink? What if there’s only one cup left in the pot—would it be rude to take it? My Midwestern Protestant conditioning keeps me far too worried. This is the upbringing, for those who aren’t familiar, that makes me feel that I should never take the last helping of anything, and compels me to decline any offer at least twice before accepting, and only then under protest. I bet that if I did join, I’d hardly ever feel comfortable enough to partake.
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Why are there no vending machines with hot canned drinks in the U.S.? Having access to hot coffee anywhere and everywhere, for the same price as a soda, with no lines and no hassle, seems like a no-brainer. But I guess that it’s part of the greater vending machine culture of Japan.
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Teachers, for the most part, work 10-12 hour days, 5.5-6.5 days a week. While they don’t appear to take work home like U.S. teachers do, they do clearly work quite hard. That’s why when I see them worn out and fighting or acquiescing to sleep, I’m not surprised.
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Another way that my Midwestern upbringing makes it difficult for me to interact with Japan occurs when I’m sitting, tired and not busy, in the teacher’s room. I’ve gotten over worrying about looking like I’m doing schoolwork—it must be obvious to everyone that I’m not always able to do something school-related, especially in summer when I only have a few classes a week. But I still can’t bring myself to sleep in public like I see some of my Japanese colleagues do. My hesitancy arises mostly because it feels unethical to be sleeping on the clock. Sleeping in the staff room must be acceptable, because in slow times I regularly see others teachers do it, but I can’t alleviate my feelings of discomfort so that I can relax enough to sleep. I think I’ve actually slept only once or twice, and that was when I was sick.
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How can vending machines possibly be profitable in Japan? They constantly suck electricity for heating in winter and cooling in summer, cost labor to fill and capital to manufacture...but they are everywhere. Their very ubiquity is what makes me wonder how each one individually can be profitable. I once counted and found that on my trip to work (two 15 minute walks separated by a 7 minute train ride) I see 37 drink machines, plus 3 supermarkets and 4 convenience stores. When the Revolution comes, the Japanese will have a big enough supply of bottled and canned coffee and tea to last for decades.
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On the train, I must look odd to the other passengers—I stand, grasping the overhead strap, and lean my head into the crook of my arm, eyes closed, resting for my 7 minute ride. I see others sleeping, but not while hanging from a strap, using their arm as a floating pillow. For once in Japan, my Caucasian height proves to be an advantage.
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My method for choosing canned coffee in Japan arises from the interaction between my predilection for black coffee and my inability to read Japanese well. I usually (although not always—see my comments about Viennese coffee below) want my coffee without sugar or milk. The problem is that it’s not always obvious when reading the name of a can of coffee whether that coffee is mixed with anything. One of the earliest ones that “tricked” me was a can labeled “Extra Bitter Coffee” that was inexplicably mixed with milk. So when I really care about having coffee the “natural way” (I’m referring here to what is “natural” to my Midwestern sensibilities) I make sure to purchase it from a convenience store, rather than a machine. Why? Not because I can read it any better, but because I can check the nutritional/ingredient section, and search for a “kcal” number—since black coffee has no calories, I know I have found what I was looking for when I find a “0.”
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One of the greatest drinks I have found thus far in Japan is Viennese style coffee. The coffee is ideally brewed in a vacuum coffee maker (also called a siphon maker), which looks like an hour glass and is heated from the bottom by a small gas or sterno flame. The coffee is poured into a mixture of warm milk in which a small amount of chocolate has been melted; the lot is topped with stiffly beaten whipped cream. Served only in kissaten, the hot smooth coffee (not too sweet) covered by the cool whipped cream is outstanding.
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What’s up with the having to come to work when sick, anyway? I understand that disease still has a strong link to moral impurity in Japan (think of how many daily and religious rituals in Japan are linked to cleaning). I get that working hard is critically important. But I don’t grasp how the Germ Theory of Disease (the now ubiquitous belief in industrialized countries that many diseases are caused by infectious microorganisms) seems not to have penetrated the interaction between work and health in Japan. In the U.S., people who work when sick tend to be hourly employees who can’t afford to not work. In Japan, even full-time salaried employees with sick leave come to work. It seems to be necessary that people come to work as long as they can at least slightly function, regardless of the fact that they may be infecting others, or that the stress of work may be prolonging their illness.
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If I could get just one lesson across to my students about how to successfully learn a foreign language, it would be to look for the can with 0 kcal. That is, when you’re trying to communicate in a foreign language, use every available technique, because the only thing that matters is getting the message across. Proper grammar and pronunciation are irrelevant...just do whatever it takes to convey and receive information. Formal correctness is nice for a test, but communicative competency is the most critical thing in conversation.
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The ichinensei look like kids. By the time they become sannensei half of them have bags under their eyes and a scratchy depth in their voices.
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I lied when I said Japanese people have to work even when sick. I did so because that’s what our supervisors and our JET advisors tell us. But I have to tell you it’s not true. My wife (a Japanese native) tells me that while such an attitude may have been common thirty years ago, it’s not true now—at least not in most private companies. If I could get ALTs and other transient residents of Japan to learn just one thing while they’re here, it’s that our experiences in Japan—our jobs, our co-workers, our houses, our lives—are not necessarily representative of all of Japan. Japan is not nearly as homogenous as it is made out to be. Fukuoka life is different from Osaka life, city life is different from country life, and traditional school life is different from modern private life.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Fading Food Fads
I've written before about food fads in Japan. On the positive side, it's great fun to be able to try out all sorts of varieties of various snack goods all the time. Every day that I walk into 7-11, there's a strong possibility that some new sandwich, bag of chips, or soda will be waiting to offer its tantalizing possibility to my mouth (pay no mind to my stomach, however, since most of this ever-changing array of food is somewhere between unhealthy and anti-nutritious). Today I saw a new brand of wasabi flavored chips and a mixed tomato and chicken sandwich.
But the flip side is that, in order to keep the new tastes coming, the old tastes are continuously eradicated, doomed to float back into some food chemists closet, probably to be recycled again a few years later. And I feel like a lot of the flavors I like tend to be the temporary rather than the permanent ones. I miss the natural sweetness my cold rooibos tea, the olive-oil chips that crunched like no other chip I've ever had, the original flavor of my egg-ham-katsu sandwich (I think of these things possessively, as if I own and am thus entitled to them). The loss of seasonal items, like Shiso Pepsi and the various KitKats, is hard enough, but at least the foreknowledge that they will be gone in a few scant months makes the loss easier to bear. But the “new” products, whose duration on the shelves I can't predict (I've seen enticing things for as little as two weeks, while the horribly unappealing Las Vegas Barbeque Rib flavor of Ruffles potato chips have been around for about a year), leave me shocked, especially when I go to the store specifically to get one, only to find it replaced by a poor substitute.
This is, of course, a ridiculously privileged thing to lament—no matter what is on the conbini shelves, I'm getting fed, and clothed, and loved (not from the conbini…but you hopefully guessed that).
I’ll leave you with a picture of one of the more fun fads—KitKat. Not only does KitKat Japan produce about 4-6 seasonal varieties per year, they also produce special regional varieties available only in limited cities/areas. For Christmas, Yoko ordered a special set containing seven regional varieties. They're pictured here:
Reading clockwise from the upper right, the flavors are yuzu (a citrus fruit) and chili peppers, miso (like the soup), kinako (soy flour), corn, soy sauce, macha (thick green tea), and sweet potato. Sorry for the rotation--Blogger's insisting upon rotating the picture, no matter how I save it.
But the flip side is that, in order to keep the new tastes coming, the old tastes are continuously eradicated, doomed to float back into some food chemists closet, probably to be recycled again a few years later. And I feel like a lot of the flavors I like tend to be the temporary rather than the permanent ones. I miss the natural sweetness my cold rooibos tea, the olive-oil chips that crunched like no other chip I've ever had, the original flavor of my egg-ham-katsu sandwich (I think of these things possessively, as if I own and am thus entitled to them). The loss of seasonal items, like Shiso Pepsi and the various KitKats, is hard enough, but at least the foreknowledge that they will be gone in a few scant months makes the loss easier to bear. But the “new” products, whose duration on the shelves I can't predict (I've seen enticing things for as little as two weeks, while the horribly unappealing Las Vegas Barbeque Rib flavor of Ruffles potato chips have been around for about a year), leave me shocked, especially when I go to the store specifically to get one, only to find it replaced by a poor substitute.
This is, of course, a ridiculously privileged thing to lament—no matter what is on the conbini shelves, I'm getting fed, and clothed, and loved (not from the conbini…but you hopefully guessed that).
I’ll leave you with a picture of one of the more fun fads—KitKat. Not only does KitKat Japan produce about 4-6 seasonal varieties per year, they also produce special regional varieties available only in limited cities/areas. For Christmas, Yoko ordered a special set containing seven regional varieties. They're pictured here:
Reading clockwise from the upper right, the flavors are yuzu (a citrus fruit) and chili peppers, miso (like the soup), kinako (soy flour), corn, soy sauce, macha (thick green tea), and sweet potato. Sorry for the rotation--Blogger's insisting upon rotating the picture, no matter how I save it.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Married Life
Yesterday I was waiting for Yoko downtown near the subway. One of the students from my school saw me and started to chat. She asked me what I was doing, and I told her that I was waiting for my wife and we were going out to dinner together. We kept talking, and later on she told me that, as far as she could remember, that had never happened. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant, so I asked her; she told me that she could not remember her mother and father ever going out together for dinner, just the two of them.
Marriage seems to be pretty different in Japan. This is, of course, just one report from one person, but, on the other hand, it doesn’t really surprise me, either.
Marriage seems to be pretty different in Japan. This is, of course, just one report from one person, but, on the other hand, it doesn’t really surprise me, either.
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