Frustrating Developments in the Land of the Rising Sun

There are a number of things that any foreigner here will find frustrating, but almost everyone has one or two things that drives them completely crazy. The interesting part about this is that it is rarely the same thing. There are a few things that are almost always somewhere on people’s lists – the inability of anyone in Japan to give a straight answer to a question, the passive-aggressive way people respond to your behavior, the way people cannot fathom that things like chopsticks, rice, and other fruits and vegetables exist outside of Japan – but typically there is one thing in particular that people just can’t handle.

I think this is self-preservation. There will always be things that annoy you, whether you’re half way around the world or just around the block. I think being able to have one thing that you allow yourself to throw a bit of a temper tantrum about is healthy, and allows you to let most other things go. Either that, or I’m just making an attempt to justify my own immature and childish behavior.

Either way, I am no different than most. I will now list my top four most frustrating/anger inducing/mind numbing/bile producing things about Japan.

4. Adults on foot

3. Adults on bicycles

2. Students on foot

1. Students on bicycles

Every day that I walk or bike down the street, I am consistently surprised that at least 40% of the people on the roads – be they pedestrians, cyclists, or motorists – aren’t killed every single day. People have no concept of traffic rules here. Cars drive down the middle of the road instead of the left side and there seems to be no real concept of who has the “right of way.”

As a cyclist back in Denver I never thought I’d say this, but people on bicycles are far worse than those in cars! I spoke to my supervisor about this, and the conversation went something like this, “Yamamoto sensei, are there any rules around cycling in the city? Are people expected to ride on sidewalks or in the street? What side of the street are cyclists supposed to ride on? Are people supposed to signal their turns?”

“Well, there are rules, eh-to, but, eh-to, no one really follows them. When I was younger, I learned rules of cycling, but now no one follows rules.”

It is just a generally accepted fact that cyclists don’t really need to follow any rules! No one signals turns, in fact, no one makes any indication where they’re going at all!

They also carry umbrellas when riding in the rain. They wear rain suits, but they also carry umbrellas. This does not help people’s ability to ride in a straight line or take up only one lane of the sidewalk. The aged folks here struggle to maneuver the one speed steel monsters as it is, and with the addition of an umbrella it becomes a herculean effort.

The only saving grace is that everyone rides single-speed cruiser style bicycles, and does so in such a slow and deliberate manner that unless you make a concerted effort to hit someone you won’t.

Well, I have to put a caveat on that. People do things slowly when on bicycles, but not especially deliberately. If you are riding directly at someone, they will make no visible indication of where they are going. When I was riding in America, if a situation like this came up, I would do my best to LOOK in the direction I meant to go, and typically, the person riding directly towards me would do the same, making it fairly clear and easy to avoid running into someone.

This does not happen in Japan, or at least not here in Tokushima. People don't even get the “deer in the headlights” look, they just stare straight ahead, eyes glossed over. It’s like they’re not paying attention to you, where they’re going, or really to anything at all.

The worst thing is that they do the same thing as pedestrians! People walk, but they walk like someone who has just left the bar at close. No one walks in a straight line. They also do not make any indication if they decide to stop or change direction. This can be frightening when you are on a bicycle, and a pedestrian, with no apparent rhyme or reason, walks directly into the your path or stops in front of you. Flying Spaghetti Monster forbid they look behind them or make themselves aware of their immediate surroundings before making this slow and deliberate move to cut you off.

Much like in the United States, students have the same qualities as adults, but as the majority of junior high and high school students – both in America and Japan – are hormone driven, self absorbed, demonic mutants, all the annoying things they do are just that much worse. Bicycling and walking are no exception. Students will bike or walk three or four across on the street or the sidewalk. This would be annoying anywhere, but here, where the streets aren’t wide enough for two cars and the sidewalks aren’t wide enough for two people, it makes things impossible.

They move slowly and deliberately, paying even less attention and being more likely to jump in front of you emoting a giggling high pitched spatter of Japanese, even as you try to move into the grass to avoid them. They look either like very well dressed groups of tiny Mafioso (in the case of young students coming or going to school), or like sloppily dressed pimps or prostitutes (the casual wear of Japanese youth). They also play on their smart phones just as much as students back home, but often do so while riding erratically on their bicycles.

The one exception (in my opinion) to annoying Japanese people on bicycles is the elderly. Old people on bicycles do…not…give…a…fuck. This is awesome. They will ride directly into traffic, straight through unruly groups of Japanese teenagers, and take up the entire sidewalk while riding more slowly then you think could be humanly possible. I don’t even mind when they carry umbrellas, because they’ve earned it. The aged folks here struggle to maneuver the one speed steel monsters as it is, and with the addition of an umbrella it becomes a herculean effort, but they do it, and good for them.

They also seem to get “the fear” when there’s any possibility of colliding with someone. They will literally jump off of their bikes if you or anyone else looks like they might run into them. I’ve never seen anyone do this until I came to Japan, and it’s awesome.

My wife tells me that I have to let these things go. She’s absolutely right. She’s smarter than me, more together than me, and her logic surrounding this “problem” that I have is beyond reproach. There are far more important things to be angry about or concern myself with, but after four months this seems to be the one thing I just can’t get over.

In case anyone’s reading this and wants to comment, what’s the thing that annoys you in Japan or otherwise?

Good Morning!: Or, How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Japanese Social Structure and Gender Inequality

This is something I should have talked about earlier, but I’m not sure I would have been able to write about it with the clarity I have after being able to observe here for the last three months.

There is a very clear and easily delineated social power structure in Japan. This is evident the minute you walk you arrive in the country, but the longer I am here, the more it becomes evident in every aspect of life. School is no different. Just like in the United States, schools are a reflection of the society they’re created in. Of course you can’t walk into a school and immediately understand the entirety of a society, but I think it’s a great place to start.

The power differential shows itself not only across rank, but also gender. Japan is old school in nearly every facet of life, which can be at times equally fascinating, comforting, surprising, or infuriating. From my perspective, this aspect of Japanese is disappointing, but to many women, especially those coming from a feminist perspective, this ranks somewhere between infuriating and impossible.

I would be lying if I didn’t point out that as a male, this inequitable treatment is often advantageous to me. I don’t like it, but I take advantage of it. I’ll let you make your own decision about whether or not that makes me the bad guy or part of the problem, but traditions and cultural norms in Japan – good and bad – run deep. Things change here over the course of decades or centuries rather than weeks, month, or even years. As I see it, my purpose here is to observe and reflect rather than try and change the social and culture structures in place in this country. If I can take advantage of something without stepping on someone else’s toes, that’s what I’m going to do. Anyway, back to some examples of school reflective culture.

In Japanese schools, saying good morning to coworkers is less about actually wishing them a good morning than becoming involved in a cultural norm. When teachers see each other in the morning or walk into the teacher’s room for the first time, you will hear an echoing chorus of, “ohio gozaimasu,” or, “good morning.”

However, just like in the United States, this becomes a rote response rather than an actual spoken phrase. For example in America, “good morning” becomes, “morning,” becomes, “an unintelligible version of a word that may or may not start with an m, but is generally understood by everyone.”

It is the same in Japan. “Ohio gozaimasu” becomes “gozaimasu” or “zaimasu.”

What I think is most interesting is the way the phrase has developed along the lines of societal and gender norms. When I say good morning to almost every female teacher that works at my school, I hear at least a semblance of the original phrase. The first word is usually at least partially audible, and the “gozaimasu” is usually understandable even to my foreigner’s ears. If I don’t get a full, “ohio gozaimasu,” I at least get something like, “hio zaimas.”

However, I rarely hear the first word from the male teachers, and often only get a monosyllabic, garbled response. It also seems that the longer a male teacher has been tenured at the school, the shorter his response will be. These are the awesome cases where “ohio gozaimasu” becomes “zaimas,” “mas,” or even just “su.” It’s an easy thing to laugh at, but I think it reflects the social and gender hierarchies present in Japanese culture.

Another place the structure is immediately evident is in student responses. A few weeks ago I was grading 6^th grade paragraphs as we practiced framing debates in English. We were focusing on using “for or against” to make an argument. The paragraphs were looking at the statement, “High School Students Should Wear School Uniforms.”

My favorite response (and the one I see as “most Japanese”) is:

“I agree with this opinion. High school students should know social machinery, so we should put on uniform. Also, I think students who put on uniforms seem to be clean and decent.”

Soooooo Japanese J. Japan has a saying, “the nail that sticks out will be hammered down.” Understand the social machinery, and make sure to adapt to it. Also, it is good to look the same, because it makes students, “seem to be clean and decent.” They might be axe murderers, but they at least, “seem to be clean and decent,” which is what is really important.

Another good response about the importance of groupthink:

I think that wearing uniforms shows that those who wear uniforms belong in the same group, so they mustn’t do bad things. If they don’t wear uniforms, they may do something bad. Therefore, I think high school students should wear uniforms and behave as those who belong to one group.

Clearly those in a group are not allowed to do something bad. If a kid wasn't wearing a uniform, they might go crazy, or be different than the other kids. Madness!!! 

Funny enough, that is really true here. It’s one of the reasons why Japan has less discipline issue than in America, but also has such a problem with bullying in schools. Students police each other, and teachers allow them to do it. There are class leaders in each class, and if a kid is screwing up, the leader – and usually all of the other kids – will let them know it in no uncertain terms. In some cases this can be positive, like when I saw a kid constantly nudging a boy sitting next to him in efforts to keep him awake in class, but in other cases kids will really turn on the “weak link” in the class.

This has turned into a long post, but I’ll leave you with a response that made me sad, but didn’t surprise me in the least, and is a great example of how gender roles and stereotypes run deep here.

This sentence was written by a girl in grade four (the first year of high school) as an answer to the prompt, “are you for or against co-educational schools?”:

I am for co-educational schools because girls cannot lift heavy things.

And that’s Japan. See you next time!

The Three-Month Wall

We have now been in Japan for a little more than three months, and I’m beginning to hit a bit of a “three month wall.” I think everyone hits this at some point. I suppose I’m lucky that I avoided the three week wall, three day wall, or even the dreaded three hour wall that cause people to realize they’ve made a terrible mistake and fly straight back to where they came from.

This is the point where you realize it’s not just a fun vacation anymore, the “honeymoon” period has worn off, the weather is starting to cool off, and all those things that were wonderfully novel at the beginning start to wear on you. All of the sudden, your job is just a job, with regular kids that can be a pain in the ass and regular teachers that can be a pain in the ass, except this time you can’t really communicate with any of them. You also realize, to your surprise and chagrin, that you will not learn the entirety of the Japanese language by studying a few hours a week for three months. Finally, you come to understand that the bills, loans, and expenses from your previous life in America still exist, and that it will still take you some time to pay them off, even though you are making decent money.

As you understand this, you will notice even more the other members of the JET program that are traveling to places like Tokyo, Osaka, and South Korea, and believe that they are having a more spectacular time than you could possibly imagine. Their hopes and dreams are all coming true, and they post pictures just to show you how fabulous it is that they are in these places and you are not. All of the sudden, focusing on staying close to home and monitoring finances so that you can be responsible and pay bills seems really stupid, at least in that seven year old, kick dirt with your toe, pouty sort of way.

This is the part that everyone warns you about, the dreaded “stage 2.” You believe that you love Japan unconditionally, so it will never happen to you, but I think it happens to literally everyone; whether it last for five minutes or five months is really just a matter of perspective. There are a few popular ways to deal with this period. One is to curl up into a ball, listen to The National and Iron and Wine on repeat, cry a lot, quit trying to learn Japanese, and do your best to gain sympathy or at least some company by posting sad bastard comments on Facebook.

I’m hoping to avoid this particular approach.

I’m trying to reconnect with the things I know that I love to do, and finding ways to set some alternative goals. I’ve been a runner for the better part of my life, but I’ve never run a marathon, so I’ve decided to train for the Tokushima Marathon in April. I’ve started reading more, and am trying to find little things that make me happy, like vlogbrothers videos or Calvin and Hobbes comics.

Here are two awesome examples that hopefully can pull you out of a bad mood regardless of where you are or why you’re down.

I also am extremely fortunate to be sharing this experience with my lovely wife Heather, who is contractually obligated to stay with me regardless of how shitty I act or what kind of mood I’m in. I am thankful for her, and as usual I’m sure I will be doing my fair share of apologizing for acting like a dickhead for no apparent reason for the next, well, for the rest of our lives together.

I am lucky to have all of these things, and hopefully whoever you are, wherever you are, you have your things too. So find your Calvin, or your Heather, or your John Green, and know that regardless of how you might feel now, you’ll come out on the other side.

I’m sure I’ll still listen to my share of sad music, and I’m as likely to have a bitch session on Facebook as anyone else, but hopefully I’ll stay uncurled and keep moving forward.

Halloween!!

People in Japan celebrate Halloween on an individual basis. For the most part there is no grand Halloween night festivities or week/month long decorations. Clint's school did one Halloween themed lesson, while mine put on a party. For my school this is one of the bigger celebrations they have all year. We rented out the ballroom at a local hotel and decorated it for the occasion. Students and parents came as well as anyone who was willing to pay the $10 entrance fee.

 Yes this is a velvet wall. I know you want to touch it, refrain or you will get very strange looks from parents.

The previous day(s) we spent hours, quite literally, making these tiny houses and witches out of paper. The witches, apparently, were not cute enough and didn't make the cut.  

We had music, a "fashion show", Heather's corner, trick or treating, a haunted house and fingernail painting. T Assorted food items were available, including freshly made churros, Halloween themed pastry's and bentos, even ice cold coke poured from glass bottles. The catch was that all of these were offered at an additional cost. 

What Halloween party wouldn't have a live jazz band?

Spooky Bento Box

I dressed up as a Skunk and the kids loved it.

I didn't take very good pictures but you get the idea. 

The kids were all dressed up and super cute. 

* For security/privacy reasons I will never post pictures of the actual kids at my school. These are images from the web that give you an idea of what I'm talking about. They are eerily similar.

Imiages from: http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2012/10/30/Small-kids-may-need-Halloween-fears-eased/UPI-84341351573616/

http://starr.talkspotblogs.com/aspx/m/629684/beid/139725

 After the school party which lasted all of two hours. CLint and I went out with other JET's and celebrated at the International Bar. I wore the same costume and Clint dressed as Magic Mike. He rocked it!!

 All that working out really paid off. 

We had a great time and really enjoyed seeing the other JET's in costume.

The following Friday the JET's went to a local high school and hosted "English Day". Everyoone dressed up and did Halloween lessons and games. Since Magic Mike was not appropriate for such an event Clint dressed as a raccoon.  

 A very fuzzy one at that.

These furry onsies are very popular in Japan. Generally they are worn by women at home, kind of like a snuggie you can walk around in.  They also make terrific costumes, about half of the people at "English Day" wore them.

Even though I didn't have my tubs of decorations and I didn't get to stuff my face with milky ways, we managed to have a great Halloween in Japan this year.