Tonight I sat out on my porch for an hour and a half watching the rain.
June has been a long and difficult month. It is a month of no public holidays. The weeks rush by, but the weekends go past so quickly it seems like they never even happened. The weather, nearly every day, is overcast and humid. I started taking Japanese classes on the eighteenth but I my heart hasn’t really been in it. It doesn’t help that I began writing a novel on the fifteenth and it currently takes up nearly every minute of my spare time. But my heart hasn’t really been in writing, either.
The truth is, I miss my friends and family like crazy. Lately, it seems like the absence of these loved ones from my life is a real and physical emptiness in my own body. I wonder: What the hell was I thinking, moving to Japan to teach English? Am I really going to stay here for another year? How? Why?
But, I swear, there’s something about the rain here in Japan that’s different from any rain I’ve ever seen before. It’s like I can feel it under my skin, even when I’m not actually out in it. And the lighting as the sun sank, invisibly, behind the horizon but turned the whole cloudy sky a pale orange in doing so: my heart almost couldn’t take it. I would have sat out there longer except that, around seven thirty when it got dark enough that I couldn’t see the rain anymore anyway, I figured I had better eat something before it got too late and affected my sleep pattern.
Elementary school tomorrow. And a field trip to Tokyo with my second-year students on Tuesday. And then it will be July. Just a little bit longer. God give me the strength.
20090628
20090618
I like music. I play skiing.
Today one of my first-year classes learned the verbs “play” and “like.” In preparation for a mini presentation that they will give next week, each student had to write his or her own sentences using “I like _____” and “I play _____.” I walked around the classroom, checking their work and seeing if anyone had any questions.
One girl raised her hand hesitatingly as I walked past. Now, when I first met this girl I admittedly suspected that she might be one of the “slow learners” (the “politically correct” term that gets used in Japan: certainly less ambiguous than Special Education, as we say in the States). This might sound horrible but I actually do have to try to be really perceptive about these things on my own because, although there are several students at my school who have special needs or significant learning disabilities, most parents, out of shame or denial or some other personal reasons, absolutely refuse to put their children in the Slow Learners’ class. And maybe, in most subjects, these kids can get away with just sitting there in frustrated silence. But in English class, where everyone is constantly called upon to read sentences and answer questions out loud, they definitely stand out. So I have to be sensitive as to who they are and just how severe their disability is so as to not embarrass them in class, if I can at all help it.
As it turns out, I don’t think that this girl is a slow learner any more, but she is incredibly awkward and painfully shy. Which is why I was quite surprised when she flagged me down and pointed to the sentence she had just written in her notebook, which read, “I like Man.”
At first I was too shocked to feel like laughing. Okay, so she likes men, but is it really so important that she feels it deserves to be the first example she gives for this assignment?
So I read the sentence out loud to her: “I like man?”
“I like manga,” she said softly and hesitatingly, looking anxiously down at the paper.
“Oh!” I couldn’t help but release a giggle of amusement and relief. For those less familiar with Japanese pop culture, “manga” is a form of comics that originates in Japan. Everyone likes manga at least a little bit. It’s not considered at all abnormal for grown businessmen with families to read manga in their spare time.
I corrected her spelling and told her, “Good job!” But I also felt inclined to explain to her the meaning of “I like Man.”
I told her what “man” was in Japanese. She just sort of smiled awkwardly and nodded: not the appreciative reaction I was hoping for. So I translated the full sentence. But she only bent her face down further and huddled over her notebook. Her shoulders were shaking, but I don’t think it was because she was laughing.
I’m pretty sure I completely embarrassed her.
I told my English teacher, Mr. Ishikawa, the story after class and we both had a good laugh over it, but I couldn’t help thinking back and feeling bad for making the girl blush. Right now she’s probably still thinking, “I used to like English. But now I hate it. And I hate Ms. Meghan, too.”
But, oh man, was it funny.
One girl raised her hand hesitatingly as I walked past. Now, when I first met this girl I admittedly suspected that she might be one of the “slow learners” (the “politically correct” term that gets used in Japan: certainly less ambiguous than Special Education, as we say in the States). This might sound horrible but I actually do have to try to be really perceptive about these things on my own because, although there are several students at my school who have special needs or significant learning disabilities, most parents, out of shame or denial or some other personal reasons, absolutely refuse to put their children in the Slow Learners’ class. And maybe, in most subjects, these kids can get away with just sitting there in frustrated silence. But in English class, where everyone is constantly called upon to read sentences and answer questions out loud, they definitely stand out. So I have to be sensitive as to who they are and just how severe their disability is so as to not embarrass them in class, if I can at all help it.
As it turns out, I don’t think that this girl is a slow learner any more, but she is incredibly awkward and painfully shy. Which is why I was quite surprised when she flagged me down and pointed to the sentence she had just written in her notebook, which read, “I like Man.”
At first I was too shocked to feel like laughing. Okay, so she likes men, but is it really so important that she feels it deserves to be the first example she gives for this assignment?
So I read the sentence out loud to her: “I like man?”
“I like manga,” she said softly and hesitatingly, looking anxiously down at the paper.
“Oh!” I couldn’t help but release a giggle of amusement and relief. For those less familiar with Japanese pop culture, “manga” is a form of comics that originates in Japan. Everyone likes manga at least a little bit. It’s not considered at all abnormal for grown businessmen with families to read manga in their spare time.
I corrected her spelling and told her, “Good job!” But I also felt inclined to explain to her the meaning of “I like Man.”
I told her what “man” was in Japanese. She just sort of smiled awkwardly and nodded: not the appreciative reaction I was hoping for. So I translated the full sentence. But she only bent her face down further and huddled over her notebook. Her shoulders were shaking, but I don’t think it was because she was laughing.
I’m pretty sure I completely embarrassed her.
I told my English teacher, Mr. Ishikawa, the story after class and we both had a good laugh over it, but I couldn’t help thinking back and feeling bad for making the girl blush. Right now she’s probably still thinking, “I used to like English. But now I hate it. And I hate Ms. Meghan, too.”
But, oh man, was it funny.
20090616
An American Lunchbox in Japan
Japanese children think that Americans eat hamburgers on picnics.
Since half of my AET job description is “cultural ambassador,” I saw it as my duty as an American to set the record straight.
Today was Bento Day. A bento is a kind of Japanese lunchbox. There are little shops all over the place that specialize in bento. You can order a plate with any number of different lunch items—usually rice and at least one or two, but often a lot more, little dishes—that will be packaged into a neat little (usually) plastic box with (usually) a little rubber band holding the lid on. You are free, then, to bring this box with you on a picnic, a hike, or to your office lunch. Or even, once a month, to school.
In public elementary and junior high school, all students and teachers, with almost no exceptions, are required to eat the school lunch. School lunch isn’t bad. And, by Japanese standards, it’s pretty cheap (the standard price is ¥5000 [roughly 50 USD by the current exchange rate] per month but I don’t drink milk so I get away with paying only ¥4400).
But one day out of the month, everyone gets to bring a bento. Teachers can get away with picking one up from 7/11 or bringing (as one of my English teachers did this month) just a big plate of salad from home. But, if you’re a student in junior high school, your bento had better follow an unwritten, yet very strict, set of guidelines.
First of all, you need a cute little bag or a cloth to wrap everything up in. Inside this bag, your mother stacks a set of nifty matching containers that hold your lunch. One of these containers is almost certainly filled with white rice. Fried rice is also acceptable and maybe you can get away with fried noodles; I’m still a bit hazy on where this line gets drawn. The second container is a hodgepodge of tiny paper or foil cups containing what appears to be two spoonfuls each of leftovers from the last six nights. One cup perhaps contains a piece of breaded pork, one a meatball, one a salad, one a few bites of spaghetti. If you’re lucky you might get some fried chicken, but you’ll probably just have to settle for a piece of broiled fish and an array of different pickled vegetables. Also, make sure you don’t forget the fork and spoon and the pair of chopsticks that match the set of containers your lunch came in. Because then you’ll be forced to use a set of waribashi (wooden disposable chopsticks) that your homeroom teacher keeps handy in his desk. And that would just throw off the whole experience.
I don’t have a cute little set of containers for my lunch, but I do have some nice Tupperware that work just fine. So, on Bento Day, I usually fill one large Tupperware with leftover spaghetti, pack some carrot sticks or a piece of fruit, toss in a little bottle of Yakult, and I’m good to go. Sometimes I bring a sandwich, but that’s about as crazy as things get.
The students are always really interested to see what I’ve brought in my bento, and equally amazed to hear that I actually made it myself (“What? You mean your mother didn’t make it for you?”). Today, I took it upon myself to explain to the group I was sitting with that American students almost always have sandwiches in their bento boxes. They nodded, considering this carefully and acknowledging that it indeed made sense. Then one girl asked me, “What about hamburgers?”
I shook my head. “No. Never.” All seven students sitting within earshot responded the same: by widening their eyes and saying, in unison, “Ehhhh?”
“Rice?” said another girl.
“Not usually,” I told her. They all looked confounded.
This incident wouldn’t have impressed me so much had it been the first time that I’ve encountered this misconception about Americans having hamburgers in their lunchboxes. Another student wrote something to that effect in his notebook just a few weeks ago. It was in response to an in-class assignment to generate a sentence that employed the new grammar point they were learning. His grammar was fine, so I didn’t think the timing was appropriate for me to question the content. But today it was time for me to take a stand.
Someone has been feeding these children lies. American school children do not get BigMacs in their lunchboxes. People don’t barbecue their lunch and then take it with them on a hike. Well, maybe some people do, but they’re not normal. They’re deviants. They don’t represent the American norm, which is good old-fashioned PB&J: white bread, grape jelly, and Skippy.* Nothing more, nothing less.
*Okay, I admit, I no longer eat white bread if I have a choice, grape jelly is lame, and I’ve long since come to favor natural over hydrogenated peanut butter; but that’s beside the point. We’re talking about America here people, and I’m not going to let my own sissy preferences tarnish the national icon that is the classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Again, I direct you to the disclaimer in this blog’s first entry.
Since half of my AET job description is “cultural ambassador,” I saw it as my duty as an American to set the record straight.
Today was Bento Day. A bento is a kind of Japanese lunchbox. There are little shops all over the place that specialize in bento. You can order a plate with any number of different lunch items—usually rice and at least one or two, but often a lot more, little dishes—that will be packaged into a neat little (usually) plastic box with (usually) a little rubber band holding the lid on. You are free, then, to bring this box with you on a picnic, a hike, or to your office lunch. Or even, once a month, to school.
In public elementary and junior high school, all students and teachers, with almost no exceptions, are required to eat the school lunch. School lunch isn’t bad. And, by Japanese standards, it’s pretty cheap (the standard price is ¥5000 [roughly 50 USD by the current exchange rate] per month but I don’t drink milk so I get away with paying only ¥4400).
But one day out of the month, everyone gets to bring a bento. Teachers can get away with picking one up from 7/11 or bringing (as one of my English teachers did this month) just a big plate of salad from home. But, if you’re a student in junior high school, your bento had better follow an unwritten, yet very strict, set of guidelines.
First of all, you need a cute little bag or a cloth to wrap everything up in. Inside this bag, your mother stacks a set of nifty matching containers that hold your lunch. One of these containers is almost certainly filled with white rice. Fried rice is also acceptable and maybe you can get away with fried noodles; I’m still a bit hazy on where this line gets drawn. The second container is a hodgepodge of tiny paper or foil cups containing what appears to be two spoonfuls each of leftovers from the last six nights. One cup perhaps contains a piece of breaded pork, one a meatball, one a salad, one a few bites of spaghetti. If you’re lucky you might get some fried chicken, but you’ll probably just have to settle for a piece of broiled fish and an array of different pickled vegetables. Also, make sure you don’t forget the fork and spoon and the pair of chopsticks that match the set of containers your lunch came in. Because then you’ll be forced to use a set of waribashi (wooden disposable chopsticks) that your homeroom teacher keeps handy in his desk. And that would just throw off the whole experience.
I don’t have a cute little set of containers for my lunch, but I do have some nice Tupperware that work just fine. So, on Bento Day, I usually fill one large Tupperware with leftover spaghetti, pack some carrot sticks or a piece of fruit, toss in a little bottle of Yakult, and I’m good to go. Sometimes I bring a sandwich, but that’s about as crazy as things get.
The students are always really interested to see what I’ve brought in my bento, and equally amazed to hear that I actually made it myself (“What? You mean your mother didn’t make it for you?”). Today, I took it upon myself to explain to the group I was sitting with that American students almost always have sandwiches in their bento boxes. They nodded, considering this carefully and acknowledging that it indeed made sense. Then one girl asked me, “What about hamburgers?”
I shook my head. “No. Never.” All seven students sitting within earshot responded the same: by widening their eyes and saying, in unison, “Ehhhh?”
“Rice?” said another girl.
“Not usually,” I told her. They all looked confounded.
This incident wouldn’t have impressed me so much had it been the first time that I’ve encountered this misconception about Americans having hamburgers in their lunchboxes. Another student wrote something to that effect in his notebook just a few weeks ago. It was in response to an in-class assignment to generate a sentence that employed the new grammar point they were learning. His grammar was fine, so I didn’t think the timing was appropriate for me to question the content. But today it was time for me to take a stand.
Someone has been feeding these children lies. American school children do not get BigMacs in their lunchboxes. People don’t barbecue their lunch and then take it with them on a hike. Well, maybe some people do, but they’re not normal. They’re deviants. They don’t represent the American norm, which is good old-fashioned PB&J: white bread, grape jelly, and Skippy.* Nothing more, nothing less.
*Okay, I admit, I no longer eat white bread if I have a choice, grape jelly is lame, and I’ve long since come to favor natural over hydrogenated peanut butter; but that’s beside the point. We’re talking about America here people, and I’m not going to let my own sissy preferences tarnish the national icon that is the classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Again, I direct you to the disclaimer in this blog’s first entry.
20090514
京都
The fact is, the longer I put off updating my blog, the more pressure I feel to make a decent account of my long silence, which makes me feel all the more inclined to continue to put if off. A lot has happened since the beginning of March: my third-year students graduated, the school year ended, I went home to California for spring vacation, a new school year started, I took a trip to Kyoto. And here is my attempt to somehow bypass all of that and bring you to the place where I am now. ☺
However, I can’t not tell you a bit about Kyoto. Knowing that Kyoto is there makes me feel better about Japan as a whole. In Kyoto one discovers a wealth of Japanese art, culture, beauty, and history that seems depressingly absent from the Kanto region. Or perhaps just absent from the tract-house-and-chain-businesses-lined streets of Moka. I went during Japan’s “Golden Week,” so called because it’s a week when three public holidays occur three days in a row; and, as a result, all of Japan goes on vacation at the same time. For this one week, the trains are crowded, airline tickets are twice the usual cost, and booking a hotel room less than a month in advance is just about impossible. Everywhere I went in Kyoto was completely overrun with tourists—foreign and Japanese alike. But I loved it. A lot. In four days, I came nowhere near running out of things to see, and I eagerly anticipate my next opportunity to visit.
However, I can’t not tell you a bit about Kyoto. Knowing that Kyoto is there makes me feel better about Japan as a whole. In Kyoto one discovers a wealth of Japanese art, culture, beauty, and history that seems depressingly absent from the Kanto region. Or perhaps just absent from the tract-house-and-chain-businesses-lined streets of Moka. I went during Japan’s “Golden Week,” so called because it’s a week when three public holidays occur three days in a row; and, as a result, all of Japan goes on vacation at the same time. For this one week, the trains are crowded, airline tickets are twice the usual cost, and booking a hotel room less than a month in advance is just about impossible. Everywhere I went in Kyoto was completely overrun with tourists—foreign and Japanese alike. But I loved it. A lot. In four days, I came nowhere near running out of things to see, and I eagerly anticipate my next opportunity to visit.
20090427
A Bit of a Local Celebrity
Ha!
"Yes, my hobby is writing!" I reply to my school nurse, Hashimoto-sensei, as she makes known her observation that I've been spending a great amount of my day at school today just sitting at my desk writing in my journal. She goes on to list off two more off my other hobbies: reading and hiking. It's amusing to both of us because she got this information from watching my recently aired interview on the local Moka "Ichigo" cable channel. It ran six times per day from the 23rd to the 25th, and it had completely slipped my mind to try to catch one of the airings. Hashimoto-sensei proceeds to share her amusement at how nearly every single AET, in his or her "message to the people of Moka," said something along the lines of, "Please talk to us when you see us around town!" Hashimoto-sensei laughs at this. "Japanese people are shy," she observes, and, to further illustrate the point, impersonates a Japanese woman in the supermarket, bashfully avoiding eye contact so as to evade the risk of feeling obliged to make casual conversation.
I wonder if my encouragement to the people of Moka to come speak to me will actually give birth to a response. Perhaps I'll have to start leaving home an hour earlier in the morning to make time for all those people who will now abandon all social reservations and fear of foreigners in order to placate their curiosity about where I'm from, can I speak Japanese, can I use chopsticks, how many boyfriends do I have?
I hope so.
But I doubt it...
"Yes, my hobby is writing!" I reply to my school nurse, Hashimoto-sensei, as she makes known her observation that I've been spending a great amount of my day at school today just sitting at my desk writing in my journal. She goes on to list off two more off my other hobbies: reading and hiking. It's amusing to both of us because she got this information from watching my recently aired interview on the local Moka "Ichigo" cable channel. It ran six times per day from the 23rd to the 25th, and it had completely slipped my mind to try to catch one of the airings. Hashimoto-sensei proceeds to share her amusement at how nearly every single AET, in his or her "message to the people of Moka," said something along the lines of, "Please talk to us when you see us around town!" Hashimoto-sensei laughs at this. "Japanese people are shy," she observes, and, to further illustrate the point, impersonates a Japanese woman in the supermarket, bashfully avoiding eye contact so as to evade the risk of feeling obliged to make casual conversation.
I wonder if my encouragement to the people of Moka to come speak to me will actually give birth to a response. Perhaps I'll have to start leaving home an hour earlier in the morning to make time for all those people who will now abandon all social reservations and fear of foreigners in order to placate their curiosity about where I'm from, can I speak Japanese, can I use chopsticks, how many boyfriends do I have?
I hope so.
But I doubt it...
20090309
church in Japan and the Church in Japan and Church period
Yesterday I went to church in Moka for the first time. The congregation was small (including Jennifer and me, the pastor, and the parishioners, there were eleven people total in attendance that morning); and so the service was intimate, to say the least.
I've been wanting so much to get connected to the Church in Japan and to feel part of some larger Christian community in my area. But I've been in a bit of a slump on account of the fact that there just isn't an English-speaking church in Moka or anywhere nearby. I've followed Jennifer to church a couple times to places outside of Moka (last weekend to somewhat disastrous but mostly just humorous results when what was described to be an English-speaking Evangelical church turned out to be a Spanish-speaking Jehovah's Witness congregation; but if you want to know more about that, I'll let you read Jennifer's account), but have never exercised much initiative on my own part to find a "church family" with which to associate myself.
The church I attended on Sunday was conducted entirely in Japanese, so I understood nothing of the Message and very little of the service as a whole; yet, it was powerful and refreshing and entirely beautiful just to be there worshiping with other believers.
How is this possible? The answer is, Jesus.
I don't understand how Christianity works in Japan. By this I mean, my own grasp of Christianity is so embedded in Western culture and has been shaped and influenced by two-thousand years of Western thought. And Japan is not Western. At all. And this general clashing of worldviews is one of the myriad reasons why only about one percent of all people in Japan refer to themselves as Christians. And yet there are people in this country who know and love and serve Jesus Christ, despite the centuries of culturally-biased gunk that cling stubbornly to our collective notion of this person that English speakers call Jesus but in Japan is known as イエス ("iesu"). But though the numbers are small, they are still a testament to the truth that God is so much bigger than language or culture or boarders or continents.
A Sunday school class for children ran concurrent to the church service in an adjacent room. After the service had finished, a boy came into the chapel holding a heavy white book. I noticed with surprise and delight that it was the exact same illustrated Bible that I had owned as a child (except this one was, undoubtedly, written in Japanese). But I assume, with a tinge of sadness, that the pictures must be the same: that Adam and Eve, Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus are all depicted with white skin and auburn hair. I think about my friend Ebi confessing only two nights before that she, as a child, had bought into an assumption that White people where somehow innately superior to Asians. Today she has, at least consciously, outgrown this perception, and yet how heartbreaking it is to hear this! How devastating that there are children who don't know that they have been made in God's image; that they are beautifully and lovingly crafted individuals with a unique capacity to give glory to their Creator.
Sometimes I feel weighed down by the spiritual deadness that pervades Japanese culture. People don't seem to really believe in much of anything. Most people cling to their work, and the people (mostly women) who don't have to work constantly find other (mostly materialistic) avenues for passing their time. Fanaticism and radicalism, in general, are looked down upon. Which makes things tough for Christians because following Jesus can look like a pretty fanatical and radical thing. But God is bigger than all these variables. And so, regardless of them, the Church exists in Japan. It is small, but against incredibly unfavorable odds, it exists.
I want to go back to this church, and I ask that you would continue to pray for the community that I'm surrounded by here in in Moka. And please pray for Japan.
I've been wanting so much to get connected to the Church in Japan and to feel part of some larger Christian community in my area. But I've been in a bit of a slump on account of the fact that there just isn't an English-speaking church in Moka or anywhere nearby. I've followed Jennifer to church a couple times to places outside of Moka (last weekend to somewhat disastrous but mostly just humorous results when what was described to be an English-speaking Evangelical church turned out to be a Spanish-speaking Jehovah's Witness congregation; but if you want to know more about that, I'll let you read Jennifer's account), but have never exercised much initiative on my own part to find a "church family" with which to associate myself.
The church I attended on Sunday was conducted entirely in Japanese, so I understood nothing of the Message and very little of the service as a whole; yet, it was powerful and refreshing and entirely beautiful just to be there worshiping with other believers.
How is this possible? The answer is, Jesus.
I don't understand how Christianity works in Japan. By this I mean, my own grasp of Christianity is so embedded in Western culture and has been shaped and influenced by two-thousand years of Western thought. And Japan is not Western. At all. And this general clashing of worldviews is one of the myriad reasons why only about one percent of all people in Japan refer to themselves as Christians. And yet there are people in this country who know and love and serve Jesus Christ, despite the centuries of culturally-biased gunk that cling stubbornly to our collective notion of this person that English speakers call Jesus but in Japan is known as イエス ("iesu"). But though the numbers are small, they are still a testament to the truth that God is so much bigger than language or culture or boarders or continents.
A Sunday school class for children ran concurrent to the church service in an adjacent room. After the service had finished, a boy came into the chapel holding a heavy white book. I noticed with surprise and delight that it was the exact same illustrated Bible that I had owned as a child (except this one was, undoubtedly, written in Japanese). But I assume, with a tinge of sadness, that the pictures must be the same: that Adam and Eve, Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus are all depicted with white skin and auburn hair. I think about my friend Ebi confessing only two nights before that she, as a child, had bought into an assumption that White people where somehow innately superior to Asians. Today she has, at least consciously, outgrown this perception, and yet how heartbreaking it is to hear this! How devastating that there are children who don't know that they have been made in God's image; that they are beautifully and lovingly crafted individuals with a unique capacity to give glory to their Creator.
Sometimes I feel weighed down by the spiritual deadness that pervades Japanese culture. People don't seem to really believe in much of anything. Most people cling to their work, and the people (mostly women) who don't have to work constantly find other (mostly materialistic) avenues for passing their time. Fanaticism and radicalism, in general, are looked down upon. Which makes things tough for Christians because following Jesus can look like a pretty fanatical and radical thing. But God is bigger than all these variables. And so, regardless of them, the Church exists in Japan. It is small, but against incredibly unfavorable odds, it exists.
I want to go back to this church, and I ask that you would continue to pray for the community that I'm surrounded by here in in Moka. And please pray for Japan.
20090306
Proof That I'm Turning Japanese
MyHeritage: Celebrity Collage - Pedigree charts - Historical photos
Yeah! I look like Ayumi Hamasaki!
P.S.: Thanks Vicki.
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