School's in Session!

I’ve always been the kind of person who marks transitional periods by making a personal change. In this case, starting this month, May, I’ll be posting on Wednesdays and Saturdays. That should keep things lively. For the next few days, I’ll post daily in order to capture the past few weeks and get everything caught up.

So let’s review the past…ahem…month. April has certainly been interesting. Every time I go out, I see a little more of Kitakami and well, let’s face it, I’m falling in love with this place. When it’s not colder than tits, it’s fun to walk around town and explore. 

Unfortunately, it’s cold-tit season…unseasonably so. Most of the teachers at the schools have told me that this April has been much colder than previous ones, which means the sakura have been somewhat delayed. It’s not all-out panic mode like D.C. when the cherry blossoms bloomed too early last year because it had been unusually warm. But on the rare occasions that it’s a beautiful and warm spring day, I poke around the downtown area and find something new and interesting.

Mmmm! Delicious "meet!"

So at the risk of grossly detailing every minute event over the past month, we’ll begin in tidbits starting with my schools. Hey, you can’t have any pudding unless you eat your meat.

Or in this case: your “meet.”

Schools!

I work at four junior high schools: two in Kitakami and two in Hanamaki. All are within 20 minutes of my apartment and they’re all “unique” in their own way. You can only get so unique with something as structured as the Japanese educational system, but it’s the little differences that make the big significances. Now, until I find out if it’s cool for me to name the schools on something like a blog, I’ll just refer to them by the first character: yay, learning!

Elementary school gurando

The first thing you notice about Japanese schools is the yard or the gurando: it’s mostly dirt and gravel. Every school has a large gurando for their gym class, club activities and Sports Day events. In each school, the teachers don’t have their own classrooms: they travel around with their materials and go to assigned classes throughout the day. Between classes for 10 minutes or during their planning periods, teachers go to the teacher’s room or shokuin-shitsu. Every school varies a little, but for the most part, the little islands of desks are separated by grade level with a head teacher at each group. Then at one end of the room are a row of desks for the vice principal—fuku-kocho sensei—an office assistant or secretary and sometimes the principal—kocho sensei. Most often, teachers are placed according to experience with the newbies farther away from this head table, but that’s not always the case. The principal also has their own office. There is also a usually a little kitchen for coffee, tea and whatnot. Every teacher’s desk looks the same for the most part: organized chaos. Stacks of books and materials, folders and binders, papers and mugs, all exactly where the teacher can grab what they need and race off to their class. In some cases, I look around and it’s like a city of folders, similar to when we were in school ourselves and the teacher had you prop up folders or books around your test and the less mature of us would build forts and tents with our surplus empty binders. Something else that is typical for each school, and yet varies greatly from place to place and sometimes class to class is the Native Speaker/Assistant Language Teacher’s self-introduction. We are expected to talk about ourselves and our countries for anywhere between five and 50 minutes. Can you say “flexible?”

名中学校: This was the first school where I started my journey. In the shokuin, I sit close to the head table, facing the gurando, so during my first three days there, I was lucky enough to watch as the teams practiced their school song, team chants and traditional dance for their Sports Day. I am also nestled between the stove and kerosene heater which sit behind me and the printer and computer set up which are to my left. As a Native Speaker, I’m not permitted to use these luxuries, but for as cold as it’s been, I do take advantage of them in my own way! Muahaha! 名is a great school, and the two English teachers I work with are very friendly. In this case, my self-introduction was only about 20 minutes while I personally introduced myself to each student in each class then proceeded to talk about a couple of my likes and dislikes as well as America as a whole. That went on for about three days as I met each class in each grade. Then, it was time to move on to…

や中学校: This time, my seat was as far away from the front desk as it gets, but I’m right next to the kitchen and facing the sliding door so I can easily fend off any frontal attack. Whoops, sorry: slipped into teacher mode for a second. This school is brought to you by the letter “F.” I like this school. This was another school where my self-introduction was just a few minutes because, SURPRISE! I was teaching full 50 minute lessons on my first friggin’ day! 

Let’s just say I killed it. My heart was a shriveled raisin throughout the whole thing, but I like to think the students in the 3 classes I taught have a tentative grasp on the passive voice and past tense, respectively. It was shocking because I was not at all prepared to teach an actual lesson! It’s a good thing I just happened to have the text book with me, but mostly each class was me prancing like a proper idiot around the room reading vocabulary words with them and making them role play a dialog to eat up time! Here was another school that was also practicing for their Sports Day. It’s somewhat alarming to watch because the older students take over the drills and teach the other students how to shout and swing their arms for each chant. And let me tell you, if you’ve never seen 200 tweens marching in tight rows around a gym with such enthusiasm that the walls and floor shake, you’re in for quite a shock! And it’s not just や...

輪中学校: Here, I actually watched the students practicing some of the games they will play at Sports Day. The boys and girls were separated on different sides of the gym. The boys were playing a sort of chicken fight with four boys to a team, one boy on two others’ shoulders and one in the back supporting. The boys in the air try to grab the bands tied around each other’s heads while the supporting cast charge at each other, full tilt! There are collisions, boys falling, and fists thrown…but that’s not the most brutal game. It’s what the girls do that made my jaw drop in horror. Think of this game like a mix between dodge ball, the first challenge of the Tri-Wizard Tournament where you go after the dragon’s egg, and fight club. No, I’m not kidding. Two teams start at opposite sides of the room, lined up facing each other. On the center line are about eight volley balls. The object is to get all the balls onto your side, but once the first few are snatched up and deposited, there are always two or three girls sitting on the floor, clutching a ball each like it’s their first born while a mob scene ensues. Girls grab each other’s jackets and throw…literally throw each other to the ground in an attempt to wrench the ball from the girl huddling in the center of the chaos! I have seen shoes go flying and girls whole bodies defy gravity! Shrieks and giggles are the only difference between this game and a village being plundered by ruthless vagabonds. Needless to say, it’s awesome.

Not to mention, this was the first school where I have a desk that faces out the window onto the mountain range that surrounds Kitakami. The shokuin is very large and sunlit most of the day, so it was cozy to look out the window for a few minutes with a cup of fresh coffee before dashing off with the Japanese English teacher to finally finally teach my first 50 minute self-introduction.

Marta Quiz Question 3: My Favorite American Food!

I realize it sounds conceited, but let me put it into perspective for you: I came to Japan with props, toys and a stack of expensive laminated flashcards—little more than stock photographs of Americana, but relevant to what the company wanted me to talk about in regards to where I come from. Not to mention, I was dying to tell the students about Maryland! Up until then, my introduction consisted of my name, nationality and likes. The name always caught them off guard because then I could launch into a brief diatribe about how “my grandmother was from Japan but I…I am not from Japan! I am from…America!!!” They would look at “Haruko” on the board, then me, then the board, and the light would go on: ooohh…she’s crazy! 

Well, no, I’m joking. The kids are bright and also the teacher would help explain that while yes, this dancing idiot is a gaijin, she’s also “a little Japanese.” 

And last but not least, いい中学校: My final school, I am still in the process of meeting each class in all three levels, but I’m just doing my 50 minute self-introduction again. Just as with my other schools, I do my best to use what little broken Japanese I know. I used a few phrases during my introduction to the staff, and I believe whole-heartedly that it opened the door to communication between us. It’s said again and again in the company, but it’s true: if you do your best to speak their language, they will be less hesitant to approach you and try to have a conversation. It’s usually an awkward hybridization between English and Japanese, and we spend most of the time pantomiming, but the fact that they’re willing to talk with me is humbling and comforting! I feel like I’m welcome at these schools and only more confident about being in Japan on the whole. The teachers and administrators are very friendly and sometimes extremely generous! At ­­いい the fuku-kocho sensei has even invited me to his home for dinner to meet his wife and daughters! This being Golden Week, however, it may be a while before that happens. Regardless, I look forward to stepping a little closer to that impermeable threshold into the world of the Japanese.

明日: (tomorrow) Redhii’s First Hanami