From school life to Sport's Day to giant penis statues

I’ve now been teaching at school for a couple of weeks now. A typical school day at a Japanese junior high school is certainly very different from high school back in Scotland. Probably one of the biggest differences is the fact that the kids and the teachers actually clean the school themselves. There is usually a period of about 15-20 minutes each day known as cleaning time where everyone will get out the brushes, dustpans, mops and hoovers and will each clean a small section of the school. I literally couldn’t believe it the first time it happened; the kids were so working hard at cleaning, barely even talking to one another due to their complete concentration to the task at hand.

Similiarly, the kids also each the same lunch, known as kyushokuu, in their respective classrooms. Each kid has a job at lunchtime to carry up all the food and trays and arrange them out on the desks. They even don aprons and those white masks that you will undoubtedly have seen Asian tourists wearing. Contrary to popular belief, they don’t wear these because they are scared of “Western germs”, but because they are thoughtful enough to prevent the spread of their own germs when they have a cold. Kyushokuu differs greatly from typical Western school lunch in that it is exactly uniform, everyone has the same and everyone has to eat what they are given. Usually it consists of a soup or curry of some sort, a small bit of salad with something else that changes each day, a carton of milk and a gigantic bowl of rice. I am amazed at the fact that the kids always finish everything since first of all, it is quite a lot, and secondly, whenever I ask them if they like it they generally reply with “So so”. This just makes me realise how spoilt for choice we are in the west, and how we don’t even give a second thought about the notion of wasting food.

Another huge difference is that the kids all stay on after school until at least 5.30 doing their club activities. EVERYONE does a club activity and they usually involve something sporty. These past 2 weeks the kids have been practicing for their sports day, which is definitely a very big deal here. This has meant that they have been practicing literally all day out in the hot sun some days from 8am until 5pm (even though school ends at 4). And not only that, but they have then been doing their club activities afterwards until 6.30pm. Now I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t actually managed to stick around until that late since I’ve been too tired or had things to do after work. I honestly applaud these kids because I don’t know how they do it. On Friday though I did notice that quite a lot of the kids were injured or just overly exhausted from all the extra practice, so perhaps it is too much for a lot of them. I know it would be too much for me. I’ve barely been joining in with much of the sports day and I’m tired, but by the end of the day the kids are sweaty and covered in dirt. The sports field isn’t exactly the most pleasant thing to practice on, since it’s just made of dirt, which by the way, is absolutely blinding when the sun shines on it since it’s far too white.

Sports Day itself was another spectacle. Japanese sports day seems to be pretty uniform at least around Ehime from what I’ve heard. To me, it basically epitomises Japanese culture as it’s a strange mix of precise, military style marches and then some of the wackiest (and downright dangerous) team games I’ve ever seen. One example is when kids makes groups of four, with three kids on the bottom forming a support for the fourth person who climbs on tops. They run forward towards a metal box on a table. The person on top swings a big rope that is weighted at the end and the aim is to knock the metal box off the table. Of course I’ve seen many of the teams collapse on top of each other mid run, people getting the rope wrapped round them, being hit in the head with the rope and all sorts. Needless to say it’s not a game that namby pamby overprotective Western parents would approve of.

Another game that seems to result in a lot of injury is the appropriately named “mukade”. A mukade is a poisonous centipede that lives in Japan. Although I have yet to come across one (tap wood), they are the bane of JETs’ lives since a bite from them can cause a lot of pain and even hospitalise you. Anyway, the game is basically just a gigantic three-legged race in which around 15 kids are tied together by the legs and have to race to the finish line. Hilarity ensues (at least for me) when the kids all topple on top of one another, but it has actually resulted in some pretty bad injuries.

At Sports Day I was able to join in the girls wavey scarf dance thing and do the folk dance. A lot of the 13 year old boys seemed both thrilled and terrified at the idea of dancing with a foreign white girl. Some of them held me quite literally about a metre away from them in case they caught cooties or whatever the Japanese equivalent is, while others threw me all over the place. The boys also had to do this performance thing were they got into groups and climbed on top of each other to form shapes such as pyramids and planes. I stood terrified with bated breath watching this performance as the shapes were sometimes 3 tiers tall (standing up), with only the dirt ground to break the fall if the top boy was to lose his balance. Luckily I never witnessed any such accidents.

In Japan, cheerleading is seen as a boys sport, however for the purposes of Sports Day all students joined in. The school was divided into two teams, with the third year students actually making up some rather elaborate dances and cheers themselves. The kids worked on these dances every single day since it was a competition between the two teams. I’m not sure if the kids actually won anything apart from their own sense of pride, but it was a really big deal. The cheerleading itself is different from Western style, in that it is much more traditional and Japanese looking. There was no music, but instead the students move along to the beat of the Taiko drum.

For me, Japanese Sports Day and school in general really allows me to see how Japanese society works and how the Japanese mind set comes about in the first place. The kids put their all into absolutely everything. There is none of this crap about trying to skive that is so prevalent back home. Everything is based on respect and community, from the cleaning to the school lunches to all the team games during Sports Day (I didn’t witness any game that didn’t involve teamwork in some way). The teachers base their whole life around school, coming in early and staying until God knows what time. I even heard from some other JETs that their teachers apparently stay until as late as 10pm. How they manage to make time for their family is beyond me… While the work ethic in Japan is certainly refreshing, it is definitely something that I’m glad I never grew up with since the students and teachers alike seem to be under an enormous amount of pressure. As a Westerner, I am exempt from this extremely tough work ethic to some extent, as I’m sure I would never be expected to stay anywhere near as late as 10pm!

Actually teaching the classes has been fun so far due to the strange questions and comments I have received from all the students. So far I have only been doing my self-introduction, which involves showing a lot of pictures of Edinburgh and Scottish things. So far most classes like to ask if I have a boyfriend, and I even had a 9 year old girl ask what my “type” is. I also often have 13 and 14 year old boys following me around proclaiming their love for me, while the girls walk behind me and shout “Kawaii”, giggling non-stop. It’s great that they show so much interest in a foreigner as I doubt back home anyone would really bat an eyelid at a new foreign language teacher.

One day school was cancelled due to a typhoon. I ended up basically walking up a waterfall to get to school that morning, only to receive a call as soon as I arrived saying that I didn’t actually have to go in. Luckily the rain subsided and the teachers said I could go home as the students wouldn’t be in until after lunch that day and I didn’t have any classes scheduled for that weekend anyway. Rain during a typhoon is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. 10 seconds in that rain was enough to give me a shower. I doubt I’ll be complaining about Scottish rain again any time soon.

In my time outside school I have tried ikebana, traditional Japanese flower arranging. The class was held in a temple by an 80 year old Japanese woman, who is the youngest looking 80 year old I have ever met. She was able to sit in the seiza position for a long time, while I could only do it for around 15 minutes before my legs became utterly dead and I was in pain. This just involves sitting on your knees with your feet tucked under your bum. It doesn’t sound difficult, but believe me, when you try to stand up again after 15 minutes and the blood starts returning to your legs, then yes it is very difficult! We were able to look around the temple and even take pictures, which I will post later when my laptop stops being so crap.

Yesterday I also went on a daytrip to Uwajima, a bigger town in Ehime. We visited the castle, but more interestingly we also visited a fertility shrine complete with a giant 9 foot stone penis and a sex museum. Don’t worry, there are lots of pictures of the giant penis on my Facebook. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures in the sex shop, but let’s just say I saw some creative uses of the phallic form, such as being incorporated into Pinocchio’s face and the animal form, as I saw some rather interesting elephant and camel statues. And this is only for starters. Where they managed to acquire this amazing range of penis statues is beyond me. It was certainly a once in a lifetime thing… I’m not sure how many other giant 9 foot stone penises there are in the world.

And on that thought, I’m going to leave you here. 

Japan: A Country of Baffling Paradoxes

I just had my first day at school! However, I’m not going to write about that until I’ve finished my first week, instead I’m going to be writing about my super duper Japanese weekend involving onsen, karaoke and yakiniku, as well as a few other things that have cropped up in the meantime.

Since my last blog I have done loads of nursery visits, each time being surprised by the fact that the children already seem to know a small amount of English, despite the fact that they are 5 and under. I’m jealous of the fact that the Japanese now get to learn a foreign language right from the beginning of elementary school, a chance that I never got.

One of the nursery visits was particularly memorable as a couple of little boys were yelling out “Kirei” (beautiful) and actually grabbing our hands and kissing them. Well, they’re certainly starting out young. Finishing the nursery visits was rather sad, as they are so young that they are full of curiosity and self-consciousness is a foreign concept to them.

Other highlights in the past week or two include the Uwa lantern festival: a beautiful festival in a small town, with different kinds of lanterns being lit up all around the streets. This included lamps being arranged in the shape of a bear face from a bird’s eye point of view and lamps being hung from a play park.

Another highlight was the cooking class I took. Or rather, that I observed since everyone else seemed to know what they were doing and I would have been a hindrance as the clumsy gaijin. It seemed to be less a cooking class and more like a cooking club for people who already know what they’re doing. One embarrassing moment occurred when everyone in the room started cutting onions at once. My eyes happen to have a very strong reaction to onions, so I basically looked like I was bawling my eyes out for about an hour. Some of the people in the class looked a tad concerned, despite my reassurances that it was just the onions.

I even made actual Japanese friends in the cooking class! (Hannah nae mates) One of them messaged me, saying that her friend who speaks some English is in town and I just have to meet them. So I was taken out to an Indian restaurant (interesting experience, a really small but tasty bowl of curry accompanied by the biggest piece of nan bread I’ve ever seen) and they rather enthusiastically got me to pencil in dates until the end of 2013 as to when they are going to take me to various places around Japan. And when the Japanese make plans, they sure do stick to them, weather permitting of course.

This brings me to the non-existent typhoon that everyone had been fussing over all week. Or rather, the typhoon appeared in the form of lots and lots of rain. Which is nice, because it’s significantly less hot and sweaty. I am typing this without the fan on or without windows open which is a nice change! However, when it rains in Japan, well, it RAINS! So a couple of beach parties had to be cancelled during the last two weekends.

The main thing I want to talk about is my extremely Japanese weekend, and more specifically the onsen part of it, since it’s something that foreigners generally tend to worry and wonder over upon coming to Japan. For those of you who don’t know what an onsen is, it’s basically a Japanese hot spring, also with cold pools that you can jump into. With one catch: you’re completely naked, along with everyone else at the onsen. However, the onsen are at least divided by sex, so if you're a girl there won't be any creepy Japanese men leering at you and vice versa, since I've heard many Japanese girls have a thing for Western boys. 

Now I’m quite a shy girl, so the idea of this did completely freak me out at first, particularly when I thought about the fact that Japanese people stare at me walking down the street and I’m actually fully clothed when this happens. It still freaks me out a little even after having done it, but I suppose the feeling will subside the more I do it. What happens is that you go through a curtain to your changing room and get undressed and put everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) in a locker. Then you walk out (naked) into the room with the hot springs. You then go to the side of the room where they have showers and sit on the little stool and make sure you’re completely clean. Then (still naked) you actually get into the onsen and try to ignore the old Japanese women staring at you. Though once in the water it’s easier to relax since you’re covered up, not to mention the fact that you’re in a traditional Japanese hot spring.

It is very relaxing since you are essentially completely free, but that feeling can shatter for a moment when an old Japanese woman walks towards you stark naked while you’re sitting down in the water so that you just happen to be right at eye level with parts of her that you really don’t want to be eye level with… I suppose Japanese people of this age have been onsening their whole life and don’t really think anything of it, or think about the fact that it might freak the poor Western girl out. However, I have heard stories from both Western males and females about Japanese people commenting on “how big” particular parts of their anatomy are. I have to say, it completely baffles me how a society that is generally seen as very modest and shy has no issue with walking around naked in a hot spring full of strangers. Of course, you just have to keep in mind that everyone else is also naked, and you can bet a lot of the foreigners also feel the same way as you do and so aren’t going to be staring at you. Then there’s the fact that, hey, we were born naked!

Despite various anatomy being alarmingly close to my face at times (and I’ve heard this is a lot worse coming from the men’s side), it was relaxing and I would do it again. Besides, it’s not so scary once you’ve taken the plunge once. It's just a little odd to meet someone for the first time and then them basically say "So hey, wanna get naked together in a hot spring?" Only in Japan... the country of strange paradoxes.

That weekend, before the onsen we (all the JETs from the Nanyo area) took over the café of one very enthusiastic Japanese guy with a great music collection. This resulted in a sweaty midday dance sesh in the middle of the café. Then we all drove to Nametoko Gorge and went “hiking” (a small stroll) amongst some lovely scenery and went paddling in the river. We were even greeted by the sight of a red-faced monkey in the car park. Yep, just a casual monkey in the car park.

This was followed by the aforementioned onsen, which was really great after such a sweaty day. That night we had nomitabehodai yakiniku (all you can drink and all you can eat grilled meat, a combination that would be absolutely lethal in the UK). The spin on yakiniku is that you actually grill the meat yourself on a little grill in the middle of the table. I’ve found that barbeques always seem to bring out that caveman instinct in men (MEAT! FIRE! OOH!), and yakiniku is no different.

We then headed out to karaoke, which is another decidedly Japanese past time. In Japan, you are always given your own private room to do karaoke. I’m not much of a singer myself, and I do prefer dancing in a club, but I did enjoy garbling unintelligibly down the microphone along with everyone else. There were of course actually one or two decent singers who put the rest of us to shame. Just like onsen, karaoke is another Japanese pastime which doesn’t quite fit in my opinion. I also thought it was strange that the Japanese aren’t too self-conscious to sing in front of others since they never seem to like to draw attention to themselves in everyday life, but someone pointed out to me that perhaps karaoke is the only time in Japanese society when it is fully acceptable for someone to be completely self-centered and have all the attention focused on them for a moment.

I’ve waffled enough now, but I hope that sheds a bit of light on onsen for those who are considering doing it for the first time. Next installment will be about my first week at school!