Atarashi Kyoushi

All about that new teacher!  That's me, in case you missed it.  Today I wanna talk about getting my feet wet in the wonderful world of teaching things and stuff.  That's right, kids; in addition to drinking beer, ridin' dirty in my Hot Wheels-sized K-car, and inadvertently scaring Japanese grandmas, I do have a day job as a full-fledged Japanese civil servant.  (You read that right.  Yeah boyyeee.)  As I previously suggested, I didn't even visit my schools for the first time until a couple of weeks ago.  I was mostly just sitting around at the city's Board of Education office for eight hours a day; the novelty of getting paid to do almost nothing was soon overcome by a soul-numbing boredom that pervaded my very bones--they turned cold and weighty, like frozen lead.  But!  As August drew to a close, so my schedule (my shed-dule) began to fill up.  I was due to hang out at my schools just before the new semester started, chat with my teachers, get a feel for the premises, and generally get used to the idea of being a teacher.

Here's the quick rundown.  I teach at five schools all told.  My gig is mainly middle school (or junior high school, as they call it here), which runs from our 7th to 9th grade.  They really hit the sweet spot on this one, since you have the first years who are at the tippy top of the rollercoaster before they plunge into the crazy hormonal ride of puberty, then the third years who are about fifty feet taller (I measured) and sound like fog horns when they speak.  I also do a little elementary school each week, and once a month I'll transform, in Autobot-like fashion, into a human jungle gym at a kindergarten.  So, putting aside the kindergarten, I visit two middle schools twice a week and two elementary schools once a week (half a day at each on the same day).

Obviously, at this point I can only give you my first impressions about the whole experience in general; I'm still very much in the process of getting used to my "normal" schedule--the quotations are to be taken somewhat ironically, since the schedule of classes I teach at each school varies at least slightly each day.  As the plot unfolds, I hope that schools will be specified and teachers will be introduced.  I can already tell some of my coworkers are quite the characters, and once everyone else warms up I'm sure to learn all sorts of interesting things.  For instance:  Our section head at the BoE was (and is) every inch the classic Japanese businessman.  We felt like we had him pegged at the start; a few weeks later, after company parties and a dinner at his house, we've learned he likes singing, playing guitar, surfing, and spear fishing, among other activities.  The wonderful thing about people not warming up as quickly as they do back home is that they will zag when you think they're gonna zig.

Anyway.  The visits were pretty low-key, especially once I figured out that all my schools wanted about the same thing from the start:  Make a lesson plan talking about yourself for the first day, and give a small speech at the welcoming ceremony.  Figuring out whether I would eat the school lunch was apparently a high priority; it was literally the first order of business at a couple of the schools I sat down at.  I later found out that my predecessor did not subscribe to the school's meals, hence the alacrity with which my teachers addressed the issue.  They were also impressed with my Japanese ability, which was nice, but here I had also been set up by my pred--he spoke no Japanese, it seems.  You can imagine that I was feeling pretty good getting off on the right foot, though I was a little worried when one of my teachers told me I wouldn't have any problems because I was "fluent" in Japanese.  Har.

As for the teachers themselves, they were mostly quiet but excited to have me (a real live foreigner!) on board.  The elementary school teachers speak less English as a consequence of the lower level they teach, but the junior high school instructors are pretty good.  I try to speak only in English with the latter group, and they keep up well.  They might be confounded by the contents of this publication, though.  (Then again, I'm probably confusing a lot of native English speakers too.)  I had the opportunity to attend an English teachers' workshop before classes started; I hung out with some of my teachers and we taught a demonstration lesson together, which was a refreshingly useful way to pass the workday.

 

So, the first day I actually went to school was the last Wednesday in August.  This was one of my middle schools.  I showed up, introduced myself to the office, and did…nothing.  Neither of my middle schools wanted me to start teaching right off the bat, so I spent that day spinning around at high speeds in my chair.  That is, until it was time for me to give my first welcome speech.  Dudes, they straight up threw me in the broadcasting room and slapped a camera in front of me while everyone watched from their classroom.  Even though I had prepared ahead of time, the nervousness was not diminished for sitting in a completely quiet room alone.  But I talked to some teachers afterwards, and they said that the kids all thought I was super smart.  Double har.  Classes ended on a half day, so I scoped out some of the clubs and chatted up the kids a little bit.  I felt kind of like Belle at the beginning of Beauty and the Beast as I walked around; as soon as I left each group of kids, they would start talking about me:  "Who's that?"  "His Japanese is so good!" "He's the new English teacher!"  The kids were super pumped, and I fancied it a good sign of things to come.

But if the middle school was excited on my first time there, the elementary schools made them look positively sluggish.  At the first school I visited, these little kids were bouncing off the walls so damn hard I thought the poor building would collapse, its structural integrity compromised by so many child-sized holes.  I may have misunderstood, but I think all of them were asking me to be their best friend from that day until the end of time.  It's not going to always be play time with the younger kids, but probably most of the time.  I talked a little and showed them pictures, they asked me questions, we had a few games, and I played some music I'd burned--I feel kind of like a troll for playing "Call Me Maybe," but at least I didn't Rick Roll them.  In the afternoon, I went to my other elementary school.  I met the school's principal, and was very heartened by the following conversation I had with one of my teachers while we waited in her office:

"Hey Chris."

"Yeah?"

"You like alcohol?"

"Yeah."

"You like whiskey?"

"Yep."

"You like sake?"

"Uh huh."

"You like beer?"

"Oh yeah."

My intuition tells me that he'll be a fun guy at the next office party.  At this school, I was persistently mobbed by kids before I even parked my car.  Seriously, any time I was outside of the classroom or the teachers' office, I was rolling like thirty kids deep.

Since then, it's been pretty much the same schedule:  Teach somewhere between three and five classes a day, usually teaching lessons about myself, and chill out in the teachers' office during my off periods (and nourish my starving body on internet access, which I am still without at home).  Probably my favorite part of it all thus far has been question time after my introduction.  Aside from the basics, I've been asked multiple times if I like girls, if I have a girlfriend, if I'm married, and what my favorite Pokemon is.

After the initial rush of novelty wore off, the middle school classes have ranged in energy; some are pretty engaged and focused overall, some are dominated by one or two kids, and some I have to take a kid's pulse before I ask a question to make sure they're not dead.  This serves to illustrate an important point:  The schooling over here isn't as different as you might think--these kids aren't all mega studying machines whose lives revolve around getting into a good high school.  There are still the kids too cool for school, the popular girls, and the outrageous nerds as well.  No matter how totally unique to the system I am, these kids still just wanna dick around with their pals at the end of the day.  And I can respect that!  I may have actually put effort into my studies like the good little nerd I was back in the day, but that doesn't mean I wasn't forward to playing Smash Bros. and drinking Mountain Dew Gamer Fuel with my friends.  In short, these kids are, well, kids.  I've been around the block (by which I mean the planet), and that's one thing that doesn't seem to change too much no matter how far I walk from my front door.

The other instructors—that is, those I don’t teach English with—are also warming up, slowly but surely.  There is not an overabundance of younger teachers, but the few that are around are the vanguard of the teachers’ office; I try to talk to as many of my coworkers as I can, but the younger teachers are the ones that have gone out of their way to engage me.  That is, beyond complimenting me on my Japanese and ability to use chopsticks.  One such teacher, Ikeno-sensei, told me about his visit to Hawaii; and I had a brief but pleasant geek out with another, Iwami-sensei.  These are the kinds of dudes I hope to see more of as time goes on.  Being over here, I’ve discovered how unique the American ability to make friends almost instantly is.  But that’s cool, I’m not going anywhere for a while.

Real quick before I have to go, here are a few ways I've been killing my free time:  We jacked around at a nearby river for an afternoon and (totally unintentionally) got free food from a nearby barbecuing shindig in return for playing with their kids all day; I got my ass handed to me by the girls' table tennis club at one of my schools, in what was the first of my weekly hangings-out with the club; and I briefly participated in a rice harvest with some of my fifth-graders.  You guys, I think I might be legally considered an Asian by the time I get back.  …If I ever come back, muahahahahaha!  Just kidding, I'm gonna need to eat a burrito eventually.

 

NEXT TIME:  I have a long weekend starting like now that is apparently going to involve me pulling and carrying some heavy shit in the big fall festival from Saturday to Monday, so that will probably make an appearance.  I also hope to make a cursory report on how the teaching itself is going once I really start to hit my stride.  Beyond that, I already know that I'm pretty much booked solid for the month of October; I won't spoil the story for you now, but stay tuned.

 

Hisashiburi!

Long time no see, nerds!  Yes, much to your relief (or chagrin, depending on who's reading this), I haven't been stabbed by a samurai sword, eaten by spiders, or flipped my car in a catastrophic but adorable accident (on virtue of the bite-size cars here).  I should mention that these are all real dangers, but thus far I have prevailed, survived long enough to resume--in an extremely belated fashion--the publication of this esteemed blog.  (Wait, before I get too far out here, I should probably mention that I haven't actually run the risk of being impaled on a katana.  I think.)  Although the content of each post will probably be somewhat different from the last batch of two years ago--i.e. the adventures of a gainfully employed, grown-ass man compared to some kid jacking around in a foreign metropolis for a few months--I aim to maintain the distinct quality that was characteristic of that first chapter.  You know, that rich style that made you roll your eyes so hard they nearly departed from your skull in a brisk fashion, as if they were booking it from the theater after the first five minutes of The Last Airbender.  This shouldn't be difficult, though; as I intend to convey to you, dear reader, my excitement at being in Japan has hardly diminished for having already been here once before.  Once again, I'd like to thank you for stopping by; the thought of you (yes, you) curled up by your laptop late at night when you need to get up in the morning to go to class or work/buy kolaches before they close/water your neighbor's plants serves as a more stimulating muse than I've ever had.  So, I'd like to invite you to wade onward and enjoy this account of my experiences in and observations about Japan, along with the occasional dick joke, cuss word, and esoteric reference swirled in for good measure.

So.  I've already been in Japan since the end of July, which means I've already experienced a lot of things and a lot of stuff.  For the sake of both brevity and clarity, I'll unfortunately be unable to give as much attention to each individual item as I should like to, but that's what I get for being lazy as shit.  Let's rewind to five weeks ago.  (Click.  …That's the sound of me rewinding.  The tape.  Five weeks back.  Okay.)  So I left outta Houston, where I fuelled up on good beer and tex-mex for the long haul, had my first trans-Pacific flight, and landed in Tokyo to get oriented and shit.  Orientation was, in a word, pretty fuckin' rad.  I think JET hires up to age 35, but my incoming class was overwhelmingly recent college graduates.  Predictably, when you stick a bunch of kids who have at least one shared major interest and are already mega pumped to be in Japan (many for the very first time) in one of the busiest parts of Tokyo, the resulting critical mass of sheer excitement would produce enough energy to power a small eastern European country for a year.  And that's exactly what it was like for me, returning to Japan and meeting tons of really cool people.  Surely that's what they had in mind when they put "euphoria" in the dictionary.  I probably could've taken a bullet and shaken it off with a smile on my face.  I roomed with two of the guys who I had flown in with, Lance and Jose; we spent much time after each day's workshops bossing around town like the foreigners we were and eating ramen that was waaayyyy too spicy.  And once we finally met up with the other kids who were placed in the same prefecture--well, that is when the shit got real.

At this point I want to introduce to the plot two key members of the cast, Carly and Amanda.  Well before I showed up, we had already known that we were all going to be living in the same apartment building together and doing a lot of overlapping professionally; so I knew that a mission-critical objective was to deceive them into thinking that I'm not a complete jackass for as long as possible.  I think at this point I've already abandoned the charade.  When our prefecture gathered, Carly was the first one I met.  Recognizing her from the Facebooks,  I politely informed her that I was the dude she was going to be living with.  She responded by giving me a look that said, "Great!  The fuck are you?"  See, I had cleverly disguised myself by getting a close shave and haircut right before I left, hence her confusion.  That was quickly resolved, and then Amanda came in.  Literally the first thing she said was, "You guys, we're going to become best friends!"  This was a fortuitous event; I was so elated I was going to say that myself.   We went out a couple of times as a prefecture too, including the obligatory inaugural karaoke visit.  (Incidentally, I don't think I've ever been to karaoke without "Bad Romance" coming up.)  I should mention that going out in urban Japan is insane; take the sum total of all the bright lights and the sound of any major city's downtown, compact it down, then liberally squeeze the resulting product into cramped blocks and tiny streets.  You would imagine that the zoning board was aiming to inflict as much sensory overload as possible.  In short, the profusion of neon signs, the loud yells of hawkers standing in the road, and the pervasively wafting scent of noodle shops and conveyor-belt sushi restaurants combined to make a not-so-gentle reminder that I had, in fact, wound up in Japan once again.

 

We also learned some useful stuff during the workshops, but that's boring.  What wasn't boring, however, was the day we left for our town, Gosen.  I'll have a bit to say about the town later, but for now, just keep in mind that Gosen is a small, mostly rural town in Niigata prefecture, about three hours to the northwest of Tokyo by bullet train.  We showed up around lunchtime at the Niigata City train station (Niigata City being about a half hour from Gosen) and were greeted by three members of the Gosen Board of Education:  Kumakura-san, the section head; Nakahara-san, who coordinates with the school we teach at; and Yoshida-san, our supervisor whose main duty, in a nutshell, is to make sure we three don't die.  Also present was Yamagiwa-san, who was brought on to interpret.  However, we soon made it clear that we were equipped with some Japanese ability, much to the relief of everyone present; Yamagiwa-san joked that she would be fired.  I wasn't feeling super confident in my Japanese at that point, but I was really gratified that they had such a positive reaction.  I guess it was like, one, I was glad to be accepted, and two, it was great to see that my years of study were beginning to pay off in a really concrete way.  I would later find out that all but one of our predecessors spoke no Japanese at all, which is part of the reason why they chose kids who had some command of the language.  We had a bite at a sushi place--a heavenly welcome back to Japan--and were taken to the Board of Education office.  At this point we received our first practical test of Japanese--the self-introduction.  That day marked the first of approximately several million times that we've all been compelled to state such information about ourselves as our name, age, home country, and other trivia.  The bad news is, I've become immensely bored with myself as a person; however, blowing away coworkers with my (limited) ability to use Japanese is truly the best fun.  That, my friends, will never get old.  Later that night, we attended an important office function:  the enkai, or party.  Yes, a critical component of Japanese office culture is periodical enkai, where office workers meet at an izakaya (or Japanese pub) to eat, socialize, blow off steam, and drink enough beer to float an aircraft carrier.  In spite of our exhaustion and somewhat bewildered by our drop feet-first into life here, it was great to hang out and have a more personal connection with our coworkers from day one.  After walking home (the pub being close by), we returned to our new apartments and I gratefully crashed, tired, full of delicious Japanese food, and at least a little tipsy.  If not for the jetlag, that trifecta of circumstances would've put me in the best sleep of my life.  Would that we could all go to bed every night like that, huh?

 

From the next day on, we were on the clock at the BoE.  Fortunately for us that meant running around and doing all the necessary shit:  Getting our phones, a health examination--wherein they attached clamps and diodes to me and I legit thought they were going to shock the fuck out of me--and filling out all sorts of fun paperwork that I understood about 90% of the time.  (Maybe 70%.)  This exciting business was broken up in a few different ways.  On what was literally our second day of work, we met the mayor and had our first (yes, one of a couple) interview with the newspaper.  One day, Kumakura-san took us inside and out of Gosen; we got to scope out the gorgeous countryside that encompasses our small town, and we even checked out a temple way up in the woods.  Beyond that, the weekends have been super duper packed thus far.  I've danced in traditional festivals, been out camping on the beach at a taiko concert, shot off gnarly Japanese fireworks at my coworker's barbecue, partied in the city and elsewhere with fellow JETs old and new, relaxed in hot springs, made at least one new Japanese bff…the shit goes on and on and on.

But alas!  Alas, dear reader, I've come upon a major conundrum.  Were I to try and describe all these zany happenings at length, this single post would grow large enough to exert a powerful gravitational field, accrue matter, turn into a white dwarf, and finally (once its mass had surpassed 1.4 solar masses) collapse into a black hole.  Now, I've been called a dick before, but far be it from me to jeopardize the fate of the planet.  In the future, I plan to reference this past month where appropriate, but for now I'll draw this latest installment to a close.  But that was a pretty exciting list up there, right?  What a fucking tease.

 

NEXT TIME:  Gonna be talking about last week and this week, wherein I actually start teaching and shit!