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.
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