So I've mentioned going to a lot of work parties, but not really described what they're like up until now. Like most things here they're very ritualized and all have the same basic format. First, the time and place are decided well in advance and RSVPs are collected. Along with the attendance, they also record who's going to be drinking and how each person is getting home, assumably to make sure no one drinks and drives. The cost is about $30-$50, which might be collected ahead of time or at the door. Any money that's left over will just roll over for the next party, so usually there's no refund of any overpayment afterwards.
The day of everyone turns up between five to ten minutes early. Usually seats are assigned, but occasionally they're randomized or free seating. If the seating's assigned there will be some component of seniority to it. The senior staff (principal, vice-principal, etc.) will all be together at one table, the support staff will be together at another, etc. People important to the occasion of the party will be at the senior table too, like new or departing staff at welcome or goodbye parties, or the third year teachers in the case of graduation. The tables are usually square, two people to a side, but occasionally round or long. At a party with just a couple long tables the seniority seating is more apparent with the senior people nearest the principal and the juniors furthest. That's also why they sometimes randomize it, to remove the seniority aspect and make it more informal. Depending on the venue seating might be chairs, or zabuton. Some of the food that doesn't need to be kept warm will already be on the table. There might be a dish with some bits of food in front of each person, but most of the food will be in communal dishes in the middle of the table on a big Lazy Susan. If it's the kind of food that's in individualized pieces (like sushi) rather than a mass (like salad), then usually there will be exactly one piece for each person.
The party starts right on time and the whoever's the MC says a little something about the occasion before calling on anyone else who's going to give a few words (usually just the principal, but sometimes one or two others, like a PTA head, etc.). At the end of the little speeches they break out the drinks. There's usually one or two types of bottled beer (Asahi and maybe Kirin) which comes in 40s, some kind of non-alcoholic beer, bottled oolong tea, and if Coke or something isn't already out the staff can grab it on request. Everyone stands and pours each others' drinks and when everyone's set the last speaker (usually the principal) leads the toast. Everyone clinks glasses, drinks, sets down their glass, and applauds, then sits down to start eating.
As people's glasses deplete other people refill them. Traditionally you're not supposed to fill your own glass, but later in the party if you're being neglected you can get away with it. The glasses are relatively small, but at this point the beer drinkers can go to the tap and get a big glass of draft (or rather, someone else will offer to get one for them). Maybe as early as now, but usually a bit later, a couple of people, usually older guys, might call for sake, which can be served either warm or cold. By the way, it's mainly the women who are doing most of the pouring of the initial drinks or fetching new bottles, because that's the kind of society this is. Although there's also a big component of seniority to it, and the women tend to be more junior. By the way, the seniority goes like this: Principal, vice-principal, office manager, a couple other senior staff, regular teachers (at the bottom of which is me), and support staff, like the classroom assistants, nurse, librarian, office staff, and maintenance guy. Within the teachers they're divided into the three grade levels whose homerooms they lead, and each grade level has a head, and maybe a sub-head. So among those groups if it's necessary to order them the third-year group has the highest precedence and the first-year group (which I'm in) the lowest. These groups are shuffled every year though.
So back to the party, everyone's eating and drinking and talking at this point, and periodically the staff brings out more food. After maybe an hour any events start. For the welcome and goodbye parties this would be speeches by the new or departing staff, and at the welcome party, introductions by the current staff. At the graduation parties there might be a few more speeches by PTA members, or the homeroom teachers of the graduating classes. At the elementary graduation party they showed a presentation of the graduating students; at the middle school one there was a quiz game about the school. At the year-end party back in December there were a bunch of games and gift exchanges. After this is done (or depending on what's being done, while it's still going on) there will be more socializing, but by now most of the eating is done, so people will make the rounds of the tables and talk to everyone else. This will go on for another hour or so until the MC calls it, often at a predetermined time (and always before the last train). At this time there will sometimes be a closing ritual involving some synchronized claps or shouting of "banzai". And then everyone goes home. The whole thing is around three hours.
It might depend on the group and other circumstances, but occasionally there will be one or more afterparties. It might be just one less formal party at a different venue and they collect a fee from everyone like for the first party (like at the elementary school graduation afterparty), or it might be different little groups going wherever doing whatever they want (a bar, karaoke, etc.). I haven't heard of any such after-party events after any of our parties, but everyone here is overworked enough that they're probably just not up for such things.
This is just a description of the school parties, but any other semi-formal party is similar. We finally got around to having my welcome party for the English conversation club, and the basic structure was the same, although it was more laid back.
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
School Graduations and Staff Changes
In Japan the school year changes over in the spring with graduation at the end of March, a short spring break, and entrance ceremonies at the beginning of April. In between, during the break, there's a shuffling of a few teachers between schools. I guess they like the teachers to get experience across different schools to be well-rounded or something.
So I had my last classes with the third-years and the teacher had me give a short impromptu speech, in English, at the end of each of the three classes, which was basically something like "I was only here for six months, but it was fun teaching you, and good luck in the future." And she had arranged for one of the students to say a couple words for me on behalf of the class, in Japanese, except for the class with the American-born girl, who used English. I got a little poster with messages from all the students from that class too.
Then I had my last classes at the elementary school and the sixth graders had little notes with messages for me too. Unlike the middle school third-years who I won't see again though, I'll be seeing them again every day at the middle school now. They all had gotten their yearbooks that day too, so just before I left for the day a few of them came to the teacher's room to have the teachers sign them, so I got to sign a handful of them with a short message in English that they should be able to read in a year or two. Then, since I don't have a car and the school is outside of town, I took the bus back with some of them as I normally do, and I heard them chatting behind me saying "How do you say poop in English?" "Ask the teacher." So I turn around with an amused look on my face and they giggle and ask me, and I told them. I figure with so many of the middle schoolers already too shy to talk to me I better build up as much rapport as I can.
So the third-years at the middle school got their yearbooks a little later too, and there were a bunch that came to the teacher's room to get signatures, but no one asked me. :( Then, just as I was leaving for the day, the one girl who interacted the most with me, the student council president, caught me heading out the door and asked me to sign hers, so there was that at least.
Next came the middle school graduation. At all the assemblies we always sing the school song, so I had been trying to memorize it since I knew we'd be singing it at the graduation ceremony too and I figured that would be a good time to 'debut' it, and then what do they spring on me but that we're singing the town anthem, and the prefectural anthem, and the national anthem too, but oh well, I managed to get one of the four down. (By the way, I found out that the town anthem is what plays every morning at 7am over the town loudspeakers, and our prefectural anthem is better than a lot of countries' national anthems.)
Aside from all the songs the ceremony was pretty much the same as in the US, and then all the teachers and other students lined up outside and we applauded them as they left. In the more southerly parts of Japan the cherry blossoms are out by this point in the year, but since we're up north, instead of falling cherry blossom petals in the background, we had falling snow.
Then that night was a party for the parents and teachers, arranged by the PTA. I wondered how willing the parents would be to try to talk to me, and it was only towards the end of the night after they had drunk enough that some of them called me over and we talked a little ("How old are you?" "What does ALT stand for?" (it's Assistant Language Teacher) and in English, talking about themselves, "Crazy parents!") The mother of the student council president mentioned above also took a selfie with me. We also played a quiz game with a few prizes during the dinner, so it's not like I was just sitting at the table silently the whole time.
Then the elementary school graduation was a few days later. The ceremony was similar to the middle school one in that there was a lot of singing, by the audience (the anthems), the graduates (to the parents and remaining students), and the remaining students (to the graduates), but the diploma presentation was a little different. After getting up on the stage, each kid immediately stops, faces the audience, and says a little something about their future, like what they want to be when they grow up. Then they continue on to the center of the stage to get their diploma. Also, the song that plays during the diploma presentation is this:
Normally I wouldn't bother noting that, since how would I know if they play the same song at every elementary school or not, but the scene was exactly like a scene from the movie Battle Royale (which, if you're not familiar with it, is similar to The Hunger Games), so in that context it was actually kind of creepy for me. The other thing was that the graduating kids all wore their new middle school uniforms, and I realized just how much I relied on their fashion to help distinguish them.
So at the elementary school party that night I was greeted at the door by a woman who looked disturbingly like her daughter. I mean she looked EXACTLY the same. It was like those pictures you see of pet owners and their pets looking exactly the same. And it wasn't just her either, at least two of the other women there looked pretty much exactly like their daughters too.
So at the middle school there are dedicated English teachers, which means I have at least a couple people I can easily talk to at the parties, but since the elementary school teachers teach everything, none of them are experts in English, and really none of them have very good English at all, so I had no refuge to sit with. I teach the fifth and sixth graders every week though, so I have the most rapport with those teachers, so when I saw the fifth grade teacher I ended up sitting with him. The others sitting at the table were some of the fathers, and across from me was one old guy that I don't know what his relation to anything was. He ended up being the one most willing to talk with me at the start though, and I don't know if he was teasing me thinking I wouldn't understand or just got drunk early or what, but he went on with this story about "You know Trump? You know how he wants to build that wall? Well I was going to build a wall once. You know that mountain over there? Mount Chokai? That's my mountain. I own that whole mountain. And I didn't want to share it with anyone else. I didn't even want anyone to be able to look at it. So I was going to build a big wall all around it. But that mountain's so tall, right? So the wall would have to be so tall, and I didn't have the money for it. So I didn't build it." Later he was going on about something else I don't completely remember, something about how after kids grow up they're not grateful for everything their parents did for them when they were kids, and he didn't think that I was understanding what he was saying, so I repeated it back to him in simpler terms and he was all like "To think that a foreigner can explain it in Japanese like that even more simply than a Japanese person can!"
They had also given everyone a number when we came in, and it turned out to be for a prize drawing. They called out a few numbers, and then they just kept going, and then I realized they were actually going to end up calling everyone's number, so in the end mine got called too, so I ended up with some dish detergent. Then for the entertainment they had a plate spinner. This guy was pretty old so that made it extra impressive that he could do most of the stuff that he was doing.
I was talking a bit with a couple of the other guys sitting nearby too, and towards the end one of them was asking me about "nijikai" and I was trying to think how that would be written to figure out what it meant. 二時回 (two hour times)? 二時会 (two hour party)? Finally one of the other guys came out with the English word "afterparty" and then I finally remembered the word 二次会 (two next party). I had work the next day, no classes, I just had to be in the office, but it's always good to try to build rapport with the people in the community, so I agreed to go. And on the way out the door who stops me but the mother of the girl who asked me how to say "poop" on the bus. She apologized for her daughter, and then proceeded to ask me how you say "poop" in English...
Then we piled onto a bus that was waiting and it drove us through town somewhere until we got to some izakaya. I didn't know exactly where in town we were, but I figured they would make sure I got home somehow, or in the worst case it's a small town, and I'd probably be able to walk home from anywhere. So I sat with the dads and managed to have various conversations, a portion of which revolved around what my "type" is, such as asking me to choose between Rei and Asuka, and my knowledge of Japanese sex terms finally came in handy. (エス, エム, 巨乳, ぺったんこ. No, I'm not going to translate them!)
Later one of them noticed that the tail of my tie was backwards, so I demonstrated the unorthodox tie knot that I use. Later on they asked if I liked ramen and invited me out for ramen sometime and I exchanged LINE info with all of them. It was really late and I had to be in the office the next day, but I stayed until the end and someone DDed a bunch of us home. The next day I realized that I had lost my tie clip during the tie tying demonstrations, so I had to go back to the izakaya a couple days later and retrieve that. And a couple of the father's messaged me telling me not to forget about our ramen date. And that was the end of the graduation madness.
So then a few days later we had the closing ceremony and spring break started, and eventually we got the announcements of which teachers would be leaving and which new teachers would be coming. We lost our vice-principal who I really liked, one of the office workers, and a couple of the teachers I never really had much interaction with, although one had been here for seven years and I was under the impression that teachers later in their careers like that were more stable, except for maybe promotions to different schools, but I guess not. So then we had the going-away ceremony for them, which was the last time we got to see the old third-years, and then we had the going-away party the same night, and then the new teachers came. Even though no English teachers were transferred out, we got a new English teacher, so now we had one for each grade, but one of the English teachers is going out on maternity leave, so we got a temporary replacement for her as well. And then we had the welcome party for them, and then the welcome ceremony and opening ceremony the next day, with just the new second and third-years, and then the entrance ceremony for the new first-years the next day.
So I had my last classes with the third-years and the teacher had me give a short impromptu speech, in English, at the end of each of the three classes, which was basically something like "I was only here for six months, but it was fun teaching you, and good luck in the future." And she had arranged for one of the students to say a couple words for me on behalf of the class, in Japanese, except for the class with the American-born girl, who used English. I got a little poster with messages from all the students from that class too.
Then I had my last classes at the elementary school and the sixth graders had little notes with messages for me too. Unlike the middle school third-years who I won't see again though, I'll be seeing them again every day at the middle school now. They all had gotten their yearbooks that day too, so just before I left for the day a few of them came to the teacher's room to have the teachers sign them, so I got to sign a handful of them with a short message in English that they should be able to read in a year or two. Then, since I don't have a car and the school is outside of town, I took the bus back with some of them as I normally do, and I heard them chatting behind me saying "How do you say poop in English?" "Ask the teacher." So I turn around with an amused look on my face and they giggle and ask me, and I told them. I figure with so many of the middle schoolers already too shy to talk to me I better build up as much rapport as I can.
So the third-years at the middle school got their yearbooks a little later too, and there were a bunch that came to the teacher's room to get signatures, but no one asked me. :( Then, just as I was leaving for the day, the one girl who interacted the most with me, the student council president, caught me heading out the door and asked me to sign hers, so there was that at least.
Next came the middle school graduation. At all the assemblies we always sing the school song, so I had been trying to memorize it since I knew we'd be singing it at the graduation ceremony too and I figured that would be a good time to 'debut' it, and then what do they spring on me but that we're singing the town anthem, and the prefectural anthem, and the national anthem too, but oh well, I managed to get one of the four down. (By the way, I found out that the town anthem is what plays every morning at 7am over the town loudspeakers, and our prefectural anthem is better than a lot of countries' national anthems.)
Aside from all the songs the ceremony was pretty much the same as in the US, and then all the teachers and other students lined up outside and we applauded them as they left. In the more southerly parts of Japan the cherry blossoms are out by this point in the year, but since we're up north, instead of falling cherry blossom petals in the background, we had falling snow.
Then that night was a party for the parents and teachers, arranged by the PTA. I wondered how willing the parents would be to try to talk to me, and it was only towards the end of the night after they had drunk enough that some of them called me over and we talked a little ("How old are you?" "What does ALT stand for?" (it's Assistant Language Teacher) and in English, talking about themselves, "Crazy parents!") The mother of the student council president mentioned above also took a selfie with me. We also played a quiz game with a few prizes during the dinner, so it's not like I was just sitting at the table silently the whole time.
Then the elementary school graduation was a few days later. The ceremony was similar to the middle school one in that there was a lot of singing, by the audience (the anthems), the graduates (to the parents and remaining students), and the remaining students (to the graduates), but the diploma presentation was a little different. After getting up on the stage, each kid immediately stops, faces the audience, and says a little something about their future, like what they want to be when they grow up. Then they continue on to the center of the stage to get their diploma. Also, the song that plays during the diploma presentation is this:
Normally I wouldn't bother noting that, since how would I know if they play the same song at every elementary school or not, but the scene was exactly like a scene from the movie Battle Royale (which, if you're not familiar with it, is similar to The Hunger Games), so in that context it was actually kind of creepy for me. The other thing was that the graduating kids all wore their new middle school uniforms, and I realized just how much I relied on their fashion to help distinguish them.
So at the elementary school party that night I was greeted at the door by a woman who looked disturbingly like her daughter. I mean she looked EXACTLY the same. It was like those pictures you see of pet owners and their pets looking exactly the same. And it wasn't just her either, at least two of the other women there looked pretty much exactly like their daughters too.
So at the middle school there are dedicated English teachers, which means I have at least a couple people I can easily talk to at the parties, but since the elementary school teachers teach everything, none of them are experts in English, and really none of them have very good English at all, so I had no refuge to sit with. I teach the fifth and sixth graders every week though, so I have the most rapport with those teachers, so when I saw the fifth grade teacher I ended up sitting with him. The others sitting at the table were some of the fathers, and across from me was one old guy that I don't know what his relation to anything was. He ended up being the one most willing to talk with me at the start though, and I don't know if he was teasing me thinking I wouldn't understand or just got drunk early or what, but he went on with this story about "You know Trump? You know how he wants to build that wall? Well I was going to build a wall once. You know that mountain over there? Mount Chokai? That's my mountain. I own that whole mountain. And I didn't want to share it with anyone else. I didn't even want anyone to be able to look at it. So I was going to build a big wall all around it. But that mountain's so tall, right? So the wall would have to be so tall, and I didn't have the money for it. So I didn't build it." Later he was going on about something else I don't completely remember, something about how after kids grow up they're not grateful for everything their parents did for them when they were kids, and he didn't think that I was understanding what he was saying, so I repeated it back to him in simpler terms and he was all like "To think that a foreigner can explain it in Japanese like that even more simply than a Japanese person can!"
They had also given everyone a number when we came in, and it turned out to be for a prize drawing. They called out a few numbers, and then they just kept going, and then I realized they were actually going to end up calling everyone's number, so in the end mine got called too, so I ended up with some dish detergent. Then for the entertainment they had a plate spinner. This guy was pretty old so that made it extra impressive that he could do most of the stuff that he was doing.
I was talking a bit with a couple of the other guys sitting nearby too, and towards the end one of them was asking me about "nijikai" and I was trying to think how that would be written to figure out what it meant. 二時回 (two hour times)? 二時会 (two hour party)? Finally one of the other guys came out with the English word "afterparty" and then I finally remembered the word 二次会 (two next party). I had work the next day, no classes, I just had to be in the office, but it's always good to try to build rapport with the people in the community, so I agreed to go. And on the way out the door who stops me but the mother of the girl who asked me how to say "poop" on the bus. She apologized for her daughter, and then proceeded to ask me how you say "poop" in English...
Then we piled onto a bus that was waiting and it drove us through town somewhere until we got to some izakaya. I didn't know exactly where in town we were, but I figured they would make sure I got home somehow, or in the worst case it's a small town, and I'd probably be able to walk home from anywhere. So I sat with the dads and managed to have various conversations, a portion of which revolved around what my "type" is, such as asking me to choose between Rei and Asuka, and my knowledge of Japanese sex terms finally came in handy. (エス, エム, 巨乳, ぺったんこ. No, I'm not going to translate them!)
Later one of them noticed that the tail of my tie was backwards, so I demonstrated the unorthodox tie knot that I use. Later on they asked if I liked ramen and invited me out for ramen sometime and I exchanged LINE info with all of them. It was really late and I had to be in the office the next day, but I stayed until the end and someone DDed a bunch of us home. The next day I realized that I had lost my tie clip during the tie tying demonstrations, so I had to go back to the izakaya a couple days later and retrieve that. And a couple of the father's messaged me telling me not to forget about our ramen date. And that was the end of the graduation madness.
So then a few days later we had the closing ceremony and spring break started, and eventually we got the announcements of which teachers would be leaving and which new teachers would be coming. We lost our vice-principal who I really liked, one of the office workers, and a couple of the teachers I never really had much interaction with, although one had been here for seven years and I was under the impression that teachers later in their careers like that were more stable, except for maybe promotions to different schools, but I guess not. So then we had the going-away ceremony for them, which was the last time we got to see the old third-years, and then we had the going-away party the same night, and then the new teachers came. Even though no English teachers were transferred out, we got a new English teacher, so now we had one for each grade, but one of the English teachers is going out on maternity leave, so we got a temporary replacement for her as well. And then we had the welcome party for them, and then the welcome ceremony and opening ceremony the next day, with just the new second and third-years, and then the entrance ceremony for the new first-years the next day.
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Japanese schools
I had tried writing out a post about the differences between American and Japanese schools not long after I got here, but it was hard to do without some kind of narrative to organize it around. Well, I still don't have a very good way to organize it, but I wrote out a post about the graduations recently and realized it would help if I had some background about how the schools are actually organized, so I revisited this draft to finish it up.
So my first day of school was the Monday after arriving here, and it started with a school-wide assembly for the sole purpose of introducing me. They had me sit up on the stage alone in front of the entire student body, the principal came up and said a few things, and they had me give my self-introduction. The whole thing was only ten minutes, but the fact that they'd get the entire school together like that just to introduce me says something about the importance of such formalities here.
So the way the grades are split between the three levels of schools is that elementary school is six grades, middle school is three, and high school is three. They're not all numbered consecutively from 1-12, but as elementary 1-6, middle 1-3, and high 1-3. Elementary and middle are compulsory, but high schools are not only not compulsory, but not even free or with guaranteed admission, even for the public high schools (which make up only about half of all high schools). So the last semester of the third year of middle school is heavily concentrated on studying for the high school entrance exams. Kindergartens are mostly all private and are basically the same as US preschools.
So within each school the students in each grade are split up into classes (there's three classes, A, B, and C, for each grade at my middle school), and each class has a room, and the kids basically are in that same room the entire time they're at school (except for special classes like art, shop, music, science, etc., which have their own special rooms), and it's the teachers that rotate around the classrooms, rather than each room belonging to a teacher and the students rotating around them. So that leads to a few differences, like how in the US the history teacher's room would basically be a history room, and have history posters all over the walls and things like that. So here the teachers have to bring any such things to class with them, so there's a little teacher's room and supply room in each grade's wing to store things like that. Also because of the fact that the teachers don't have classrooms to themselves to use as their office, there's a main teachers' room that the teachers are based in and have their desk and computer and all that, just like any other office.
Another thing is that in Japan students clean the schools rather than having janitors do it, so cleaning the classrooms and most of the halls and bathrooms is done by them. Because they each have their own classroom, it then makes sense for them not to make a mess of it, since their the very ones that'll be cleaning up any such mess later. There is a woman who cleans the teacher's room and the nearby hallways and bathrooms, among other things, and there's a guy who does the maintenance work, which also involves some cleaning, but the majority of the cleaning is done by the students.
Along with doing the cleaning, the students also serve the lunches. The kitchen staff makes it and hands off the bulk containers to the students, who then set each place at the tables and portion out the food and set it out at each place. No one brings a lunch, everyone eats the school lunch, and then afterwards the students sort out the dishes and they get taken back to the kitchen. And there's almost no wasted food that gets thrown out. If a student doesn't like something or can't eat everything, there's someone else who'll be more than happy to take it, so there can be a lot of swapping food. Also there's sometimes extra after all the food is portioned out, so a lot of the time a few of them can go back for seconds to use it all up. The lunches are super healthy too. Usually there'll be rice and miso soup with some vegetables, then a vegetable mix, some piece of meat, and a carton of milk. Occasionally the rice is swapped out for noodles, or a big roll, or even naan.
I don't know if it's related to the fact that the students 'own' their classrooms rather than the teachers, but the teachers usually just ignore it when kids aren't paying attention, or are talking a little, or whatever. Learning seems to be more left up to the kids rather than forced on them. There's also a lot of cooperation between the students when doing worksheets, or even answering questions from the teacher. They'll talk to the person next to them to check their answers, or the kids around them will whisper the answer if the kid doesn't seem to know.
Although I think there are some elementary schools that have uniforms, I think most don't, and mine doesn't, but all the middle schools and high schools do. Despite that enforced uniformity, they find other ways to individualize themselves, mainly through their backpacks and pencil cases. But similar to the uniformity enforced among the students, since the whole school system is heavilt centralized, exactly the opposite of the US, even the school buildings and classrooms are very much standardized between schools. Like, I've seen plenty of anime that take place in schools, and everything looks exactly the same as in real life, down to the style of flooring in the classrooms.
So that wraps up my observations. This is what I meant about this post being hard to organize, there's no good thing to conclude it with, it's basically just an elaborated-upon list, and that's the last item.
So my first day of school was the Monday after arriving here, and it started with a school-wide assembly for the sole purpose of introducing me. They had me sit up on the stage alone in front of the entire student body, the principal came up and said a few things, and they had me give my self-introduction. The whole thing was only ten minutes, but the fact that they'd get the entire school together like that just to introduce me says something about the importance of such formalities here.
So the way the grades are split between the three levels of schools is that elementary school is six grades, middle school is three, and high school is three. They're not all numbered consecutively from 1-12, but as elementary 1-6, middle 1-3, and high 1-3. Elementary and middle are compulsory, but high schools are not only not compulsory, but not even free or with guaranteed admission, even for the public high schools (which make up only about half of all high schools). So the last semester of the third year of middle school is heavily concentrated on studying for the high school entrance exams. Kindergartens are mostly all private and are basically the same as US preschools.
So within each school the students in each grade are split up into classes (there's three classes, A, B, and C, for each grade at my middle school), and each class has a room, and the kids basically are in that same room the entire time they're at school (except for special classes like art, shop, music, science, etc., which have their own special rooms), and it's the teachers that rotate around the classrooms, rather than each room belonging to a teacher and the students rotating around them. So that leads to a few differences, like how in the US the history teacher's room would basically be a history room, and have history posters all over the walls and things like that. So here the teachers have to bring any such things to class with them, so there's a little teacher's room and supply room in each grade's wing to store things like that. Also because of the fact that the teachers don't have classrooms to themselves to use as their office, there's a main teachers' room that the teachers are based in and have their desk and computer and all that, just like any other office.
Another thing is that in Japan students clean the schools rather than having janitors do it, so cleaning the classrooms and most of the halls and bathrooms is done by them. Because they each have their own classroom, it then makes sense for them not to make a mess of it, since their the very ones that'll be cleaning up any such mess later. There is a woman who cleans the teacher's room and the nearby hallways and bathrooms, among other things, and there's a guy who does the maintenance work, which also involves some cleaning, but the majority of the cleaning is done by the students.
Along with doing the cleaning, the students also serve the lunches. The kitchen staff makes it and hands off the bulk containers to the students, who then set each place at the tables and portion out the food and set it out at each place. No one brings a lunch, everyone eats the school lunch, and then afterwards the students sort out the dishes and they get taken back to the kitchen. And there's almost no wasted food that gets thrown out. If a student doesn't like something or can't eat everything, there's someone else who'll be more than happy to take it, so there can be a lot of swapping food. Also there's sometimes extra after all the food is portioned out, so a lot of the time a few of them can go back for seconds to use it all up. The lunches are super healthy too. Usually there'll be rice and miso soup with some vegetables, then a vegetable mix, some piece of meat, and a carton of milk. Occasionally the rice is swapped out for noodles, or a big roll, or even naan.
I don't know if it's related to the fact that the students 'own' their classrooms rather than the teachers, but the teachers usually just ignore it when kids aren't paying attention, or are talking a little, or whatever. Learning seems to be more left up to the kids rather than forced on them. There's also a lot of cooperation between the students when doing worksheets, or even answering questions from the teacher. They'll talk to the person next to them to check their answers, or the kids around them will whisper the answer if the kid doesn't seem to know.
Although I think there are some elementary schools that have uniforms, I think most don't, and mine doesn't, but all the middle schools and high schools do. Despite that enforced uniformity, they find other ways to individualize themselves, mainly through their backpacks and pencil cases. But similar to the uniformity enforced among the students, since the whole school system is heavilt centralized, exactly the opposite of the US, even the school buildings and classrooms are very much standardized between schools. Like, I've seen plenty of anime that take place in schools, and everything looks exactly the same as in real life, down to the style of flooring in the classrooms.
So that wraps up my observations. This is what I meant about this post being hard to organize, there's no good thing to conclude it with, it's basically just an elaborated-upon list, and that's the last item.
Wednesday, April 5, 2017
A Wedding in the US
So in February was my younger sister's wedding, which meant taking my first trip back to the US since coming here. Since classes were in session I didn't want to take too much time off, plus I wanted to save my vacation time for other traveling, so I was planning on being in the US only on the day of the wedding (a Saturday) and the day before for the rehersal, so that besides that the only other time I would have to take off was for the travel. The time zone changes worked in my favor on the way over, but against me on the way back, so I could leave Tokyo on Friday morning and arrive on the East Coast by Friday afternoon, but leaving on Sunday morning meant not landing in Tokyo again until Monday evening.
So getting flights out of and back into Tokyo is the easy part, but I would also have to get to Tokyo from my town to begin with. The nearest major city is about an hour and a half north by train, and then I would have to take a bus from the train station out to the airport to take a plane to Tokyo. There's also a smaller city with an airport to the south, but with the same inconvenience of needing to take a bus in between. In the end, adding up the amount of time it would take to take the train, wait for the next bus, padding for the security line, and the flight itself, and looking at the combined costs besides, if I was going to have to take the train for the first leg of the trip from my town to begin with, it would be easier and just as fast and a similar cost to just take the train all the way to Tokyo (transferring to the bullet train in the nearest big city). So what I ended up doing was just take the express train south from my town to the nearest big city, and catch the bullet train to Tokyo from there.
So then next was getting a flight out of Tokyo to arrive in time for the rehersal on Friday afternoon. Problem was, there wasn't the greatest selection of flight times, so the choice was pretty much between a flight leaving too late on Friday to get there before evening, or one leaving too early on Friday that no train would get to Tokyo early enough. I really didn't want to take the extra day and take Thursday off, especially since that's the day that I visit the elementary school that I only see once a week to begin with. Finally I hit on the idea that I could actually take the train down Thursday night after work and then still be able to catch the early flight without losing Thursday. The situation for my return was even more desperate, since there was absolutely no combination of flights and trains that would get me back into town on the same day as my arrival back in Japan, but applying the same split-day strategy to my return I could leave the US Sunday morning, get to Tokyo on Monday evening, and then head back Tuesday morning and still have some of the afternoon left over to unpack and unwind.
So the actual travel ended up being relatively uneventful. Thursday night in Tokyo I stayed at a cheap (in both senses of the word) place near the train station, which served a surprisingly fancy Japanese style breakfast in the basement in the morning before I headed out to the airport, which is an hour outside Tokyo. The main thing I had to be sure to get right at the airport was to get the re-entry permit at customs to make sure that I could actually get back into the country when I returned, but there was no problem there, it's just a little card you check a couple boxes on and the customs guy stamps it and you're all set. On the flight over I just did some reading and then found they actually had Kimi no Na wa in their movie library (or rather, I saw that the guy next to me was watching it), and with English subtitles to boot, so I rewatched that and was able to confirm that I had pretty much understood everything correctly the first time I watched it. Since I'm not Muslim or Mexican it was a piece of cake getting back into Trump's US. There's a kiosk you scan your passport at and answer a bunch of questions on-screen and it prints out a "receipt" that you take to the customs guy who scans it and asks you nothing but what your final destination is before letting you through. Easier than coming back from Canada.
Once I got back in the US it was of course impossible not to make comparisons to Japan, so here's just a short list of the obvious differences I immediately noticed:
I guess this is the part where I say how nice it was to see everyone again and how beautiful the ceremony was and all that jazz, but most of the people reading this that I would be saying that to were there themselves, so I don't feel like there's really much to elaborate on. Even back in the US most of us live far enough apart that we don't see each other that often anyway, so really my being on the other side of the world doesn't make that much of a difference and it wasn't really anything different from getting to see everyone at any other time.
But I'll go ahead and write a little about it anyway. I got in Friday afternoon and my dad picked me up at the airport. One of his friends also happened to get in at the exact same time, so we met up with him and his wife and went into town together. I had a little time to crash in the hotel room with my dad, and then visited with my mom and her friend a little in her room before we all headed off to the rehersal. I found out I would be leading my mom down the aisle, but that was an easy enough job to practice. The chapel was just a cute little thing in the middle of a park, so a nice location. Afterward we had the dinner at a nice BBQ restaurant/bar, and a few other friends and relatives that had just gotten into town came, so it was nice to finally be meeting up with everyone for the first time in a while.
I crashed as early as I could that night because I was crazy jetlagged and knew I would end up waking up really early whether I wanted to or not, which is what happened, so I just went down to the lobby and read a magazine until everyone started waking up. When my mom and her friend came down we had breakfast at the hotel buffet, and met up with another friend of my dad's and his wife there, and eventually my dad woke up and joined us too. Then it was just hanging in the hotel room again for a little while until the ceremony. It went off without a hitch, nothing out of the ordinary, and then off to the reception. This is usually the most boring part of a wedding for me since I'm not a dancer, but there were plenty of people I hadn't seen in a while to hang out and talk with, so it wasn't too bad, except that I was still crazy jetlagged.
When we went back to the hotel afterwards we had convinced them to keep the bar open later than usual by promising them a lot of business from the wedding party, and we were able to keep that promise. I wanted to sleep so bad, but it was worth staying up late to hang out with everyone for a couple more hours before leaving, so I powered through it. Even back in the room I stayed up for another hour or so talking to my dad, since I was leaving early enough that I wouldn't really see him in the morning either.
So I left Sunday morning and mostly just slept on the plane. Since I was arriving in Tokyo earlier in the evening than when I had on Thursday night, I got an inn a bit further from the station which was actually in a cute little tucked-away neighborhood by the Ueno zoo that I wouldn't have expected to find the likes of in central Tokyo. Also found this in the lobby, which was cool:
And then I got back home the next day without incident.
So getting flights out of and back into Tokyo is the easy part, but I would also have to get to Tokyo from my town to begin with. The nearest major city is about an hour and a half north by train, and then I would have to take a bus from the train station out to the airport to take a plane to Tokyo. There's also a smaller city with an airport to the south, but with the same inconvenience of needing to take a bus in between. In the end, adding up the amount of time it would take to take the train, wait for the next bus, padding for the security line, and the flight itself, and looking at the combined costs besides, if I was going to have to take the train for the first leg of the trip from my town to begin with, it would be easier and just as fast and a similar cost to just take the train all the way to Tokyo (transferring to the bullet train in the nearest big city). So what I ended up doing was just take the express train south from my town to the nearest big city, and catch the bullet train to Tokyo from there.
So then next was getting a flight out of Tokyo to arrive in time for the rehersal on Friday afternoon. Problem was, there wasn't the greatest selection of flight times, so the choice was pretty much between a flight leaving too late on Friday to get there before evening, or one leaving too early on Friday that no train would get to Tokyo early enough. I really didn't want to take the extra day and take Thursday off, especially since that's the day that I visit the elementary school that I only see once a week to begin with. Finally I hit on the idea that I could actually take the train down Thursday night after work and then still be able to catch the early flight without losing Thursday. The situation for my return was even more desperate, since there was absolutely no combination of flights and trains that would get me back into town on the same day as my arrival back in Japan, but applying the same split-day strategy to my return I could leave the US Sunday morning, get to Tokyo on Monday evening, and then head back Tuesday morning and still have some of the afternoon left over to unpack and unwind.
So the actual travel ended up being relatively uneventful. Thursday night in Tokyo I stayed at a cheap (in both senses of the word) place near the train station, which served a surprisingly fancy Japanese style breakfast in the basement in the morning before I headed out to the airport, which is an hour outside Tokyo. The main thing I had to be sure to get right at the airport was to get the re-entry permit at customs to make sure that I could actually get back into the country when I returned, but there was no problem there, it's just a little card you check a couple boxes on and the customs guy stamps it and you're all set. On the flight over I just did some reading and then found they actually had Kimi no Na wa in their movie library (or rather, I saw that the guy next to me was watching it), and with English subtitles to boot, so I rewatched that and was able to confirm that I had pretty much understood everything correctly the first time I watched it. Since I'm not Muslim or Mexican it was a piece of cake getting back into Trump's US. There's a kiosk you scan your passport at and answer a bunch of questions on-screen and it prints out a "receipt" that you take to the customs guy who scans it and asks you nothing but what your final destination is before letting you through. Easier than coming back from Canada.
Once I got back in the US it was of course impossible not to make comparisons to Japan, so here's just a short list of the obvious differences I immediately noticed:
- People standing in the middle of the escalator so no one can pass them.
- Fat people. I swear I've only seen one obese person the entire time I've been here, and only a few overweight people.
- Signs like this:
I guess this is the part where I say how nice it was to see everyone again and how beautiful the ceremony was and all that jazz, but most of the people reading this that I would be saying that to were there themselves, so I don't feel like there's really much to elaborate on. Even back in the US most of us live far enough apart that we don't see each other that often anyway, so really my being on the other side of the world doesn't make that much of a difference and it wasn't really anything different from getting to see everyone at any other time.
But I'll go ahead and write a little about it anyway. I got in Friday afternoon and my dad picked me up at the airport. One of his friends also happened to get in at the exact same time, so we met up with him and his wife and went into town together. I had a little time to crash in the hotel room with my dad, and then visited with my mom and her friend a little in her room before we all headed off to the rehersal. I found out I would be leading my mom down the aisle, but that was an easy enough job to practice. The chapel was just a cute little thing in the middle of a park, so a nice location. Afterward we had the dinner at a nice BBQ restaurant/bar, and a few other friends and relatives that had just gotten into town came, so it was nice to finally be meeting up with everyone for the first time in a while.
I crashed as early as I could that night because I was crazy jetlagged and knew I would end up waking up really early whether I wanted to or not, which is what happened, so I just went down to the lobby and read a magazine until everyone started waking up. When my mom and her friend came down we had breakfast at the hotel buffet, and met up with another friend of my dad's and his wife there, and eventually my dad woke up and joined us too. Then it was just hanging in the hotel room again for a little while until the ceremony. It went off without a hitch, nothing out of the ordinary, and then off to the reception. This is usually the most boring part of a wedding for me since I'm not a dancer, but there were plenty of people I hadn't seen in a while to hang out and talk with, so it wasn't too bad, except that I was still crazy jetlagged.
When we went back to the hotel afterwards we had convinced them to keep the bar open later than usual by promising them a lot of business from the wedding party, and we were able to keep that promise. I wanted to sleep so bad, but it was worth staying up late to hang out with everyone for a couple more hours before leaving, so I powered through it. Even back in the room I stayed up for another hour or so talking to my dad, since I was leaving early enough that I wouldn't really see him in the morning either.
So I left Sunday morning and mostly just slept on the plane. Since I was arriving in Tokyo earlier in the evening than when I had on Thursday night, I got an inn a bit further from the station which was actually in a cute little tucked-away neighborhood by the Ueno zoo that I wouldn't have expected to find the likes of in central Tokyo. Also found this in the lobby, which was cool:
And then I got back home the next day without incident.
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