Teaching in Japan / Sports Day – 9th October, 2010.

1. 
   

My Desk

View from my Desk

The Dreaded Assembly Hall

Time went by real slow today because I was summoned to sit with these people who now surround me. It is the School Festival week but, although we know festivals to be: calypso competitions; coal pots frying fish; greasy pole climbing; drum-playing, flute-tooting tuk bands with big-bamsied Mother Sallys and scantily costumed revellers gyrating their hips all sautéed in Extra Old Rum…I am in Japan. Also, to be fair, I am at a school and what they call a “Festival” is a fair or concert in Barbados, where students are allowed to wear something other than their uniforms. This is my first school festival and I wanted to know what it was about, though…for the first 10 minutes. I returned to the staffroom after four hours of crippling boredom in the assembly hall.

In the hall, the sound of a teacher swatting a student’s head woke me. I’m on the student’s side when this happens. They get to school at 7 a.m. for mandatory bukatsu (club activity) practice (everyone is in one club or another), and school starts at 8:45, finishing at 3:00 pm with a fifteen minute cleaning period. Then they run and ready for their club activity (again) which ends around 6 or 7 p.m.! I’ve worked it out that the status of being called “sensei” is to encourage teachers to feel good about being babysitters for parents who feel emotionally coerced into staying at work until their bosses leave. Each teacher leads a club activity. At my school there’s: Japanese archery, soccer, baseball, Judo, mountain climbing, newspaper club, volleyball, basketball, swimming, robotics, art and I’m sure I’m forgetting something.

I’ve been told students get home, have dinner, go to bed and wake up around 1 a.m. to do their homework, going straight through until it’s time to get ready for school! Sitting at my desk, I wonder who I would have prearranged to find my body (out of spite), hoping that in all possible permutations, resulting in my physical existence as a human, I’d have resisted indoctrination, even if it killed me. However, I’ve also heard some kids are kept up all night by video games. Students are always falling asleep in class, on the bus and anywhere they stop moving for two minutes.

Then teachers you thought were the nicest, swoop down on their skulls with a flat hand for falling asleep in the assembly hall, where the curtains have been drawn and the lights switched off, and they’re made to listen to an adult read a list of names. Makes me want to set the staffroom on fire.

So, two days of this “festival”, interspersed with a few skits involving the teachers and funny videos the students filmed. In one video, following a script I did not write, I ran a race and pretended to elbow the PE teacher, known to be the fastest person at the school, so I could win, propagating the idea that foreigners are inferior and could only beat a Japanese person by cheating. (I didn’t see it that way at the time I ran the race. I just didn’t know how to say no from excessive fear, [learnt at Orientation], of offending).

Finally, tomorrow is Sports Day. A teacher asked if I wanted to do something. She wrote me down for putting my forehead on a baseball bat and running around it in circles ten times, then sprinting lopsided to a finish line.

I can hear the students practicing their cheerleading. It is an all day hollering. And how unnaturally synchronised they are! Each team will get thirty students doing these moves in less than two days! I sure I couldn’t even get my oneself to do the moves in three weeks.

Classes

It still doesn’t make sense I’m in Japan. I enjoy the challenge of making classes interesting, and working at a technical high school means kinaesthetic learners, so I get them out their seats.

Once I flipped out on them, reading this phrase as I wrote it on the board, “NO MORE ONE WORD ANSWERS!!!!”. You sound like neanderthals! (Didn’t write that part).

Two questions later:

“What is your hobby?”

“Baseball.”

I slapped the board and the chalk exploded. They gasped. I stared. They laughed – thought I’d done it on purpose.

The teachers excuse away expectations of them. “They’re shy,” I’m told again and again. Shy my backside. I praise them a lot, so I don’t let them get away with this shy shit. When I ask a question to which they should know the response (BECAUSE THEY’RE LIKE THE SIXTH STUDENT RESPONDING) and they look down and pretend they didn’t hear me, I throw aside the desks and students as I move through the aisle. Arriving in front of them, I glare – eyes open wide enough to swallow their souls – and then I descend upon them: “YES YOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUU!!!! What is YOOOOOOOORRRRRRRR favourite colour?” And dem does find de answer quick enough!

Then they’re the jokers, the ones the other teachers dislike, except my supervisor, who is, himself, a joker. They’re my favourites. I don’t hide it. I want the others to be more like them and less like themselves. There’s one who, to my every question, responds, “I love you” and blows kisses. He is a thoroughbred idjit. One Itojun. The other day I have them interviewing each other, practicing present perfect, “Have you ever…?” and every time he asks a question and his partner’s answer is no, he’s, “But why?” all dramatic down on his knees, shaking his head downwards…then the inevitable, “I love you!!” and he blowing kisses. I tell he straight, “You got too much love for my class, yuh!”

My lesson plans have been ok. They’ll work better with some classes than others, and need adjusting. It’s exhausting work keeping them interested – remember their schedule, and then it’s a technical school and many of them make a point of hating English because of previous experiences learning through memorisation. Initially, I was insulted by the one or two students sleeping in class, but they do it in all the teacher’s classes, so I let them. One of the Japanese teachers, with whom I work directly, cuffs them in their backs.

The students high five me in the corridors, but hearing another “Herroh”, I will dive through the window from the third floor. Modelling speech has proven useless. Students value fitting in more than speaking good English. They won’t say it the way I do, but as the majority does.

I writing dis during cleaning time. The child labour all around me – students (pretending to be) cleaning the staffroom. I so frighten one of them does an exchange programme, return and lock me in a class room and burn it down for not telling them there are people called janitors and cleaning ladies.

The others are going to Osaka for the weekend, but I’ve got to run a marathon at one of my other schools on Sunday. Apparently, as part of a PE assessment, the students run a 5 k and a teacher has to run with them in case they start to die en route. They’re constantly finding ways to test me – as if to show they’re better – especially physically. Tonight-self, I jogging around de school five times to make sure dese people don shame me come Sundee.

My compensatory day will be on Tuesday, so I’ll have Monday and Tuesday (usually a 45 minute bus ride to the same marathon school) off. Praise Rihanna! Did I mention I’m exhausted?

Electric Blanket & Brazilians

I’ve stopped using my electric blanket, having been told I should get sensitised, if not I’ll be very cold when December comes after me.

If there weren’t so many Japanese in my town, the Brazilians would take over. At least ten in my block and I keep bumping into them in stores. The other night, before I could boil some water, a Jehova’s witness knocked on my door. The state of her. She looked like a little girl’s favourite dolly: hair frazzle out and patchy, one eye opening halfway. She started to speak Portuguese as I pointed to my throat to indicate I don’t speak. She switched to Japanese because I’d then actually whispered “I don’t speak” (in English) before realising she was speaking Portuguese. We both stopped and stared at each other, confused. Then I used her for Portuguese practice.

A Few Days Later

Sports Day was a lot of what we do at primary school, including potato sack races and tug-a-war and a particularly childish game where pairs (one mounted on the other’s shoulder) attempt to burst inflated paper balls on each other’s caps. These are 15 and 16 year olds.

I going here an walk bout de school, pretend I interested fuh de nex fifteen minutes.

Let me know what’s going on with you.

P.S. Follow the link to see awesome Japanese cheerleading – called oendan.

P.P.S Yes that painting in the picture says, “The Dope Man.”

The Dope Man

My team shirt above: “The Players Only – The Dope Man.” They hear these words used by people they emulate and put them together in any order. It just happened to work out that I am The Dope Man and my club is for The Players Only.