Welcome to the Jungle[gym]

Japanese Word of the Day:

English: Small child, "pipsqueak"
Japanese: ちび (Chibi)

This entry starts with an exercise. Imagine you are moving to a new country where you don’t speak the language to do a job you aren’t trained for. What would you be most afraid of?

You know what has scared me the most since coming to Japan? Freaking bicycles.

I am fortunate enough to live in a relatively small town with public transportation to nearby big cities so I don’t have to rent or buy a car, pay the MASSIVE tax on owning a car, and brave the immensely tiny roads and backing into parking spots. Instead, I get to bike.

I’ll be honest, I’ve been putting off trying the bike since I got here. I ran into Becca and Andrew leaving one day and they were shocked I wasn’t taking the bike to get groceries but offered to walk with them instead. Bikes are a great way to get around town quickly, have a lovely basket for your bags, and are good exercise. So why am I so opposed to them?

I cannot remember the last time I rode a bike. Like at all.

It has to have been at least a decade. And now, you want me to get on a big scary bike and ride on tiny streets near cars and go down hills, across bridges, and along small paths that are next to a sloped river bank? No thank you.

Yesterday (currently 8/8), Inaho-sensei was going over scheduling with Allen and I for the week. He told us we’d be going to the Nursery today and asked Allen to show me how to get there. Allen confidently told me it was a quick 5 minute bike ride and we’d meet at 8:30. I suggested my nervousness towards biking and Allen suggested I practice a bit that afternoon. Guess what I didn’t do? In my defense it was rainy and I made a pizza instead. Totally justified.

So the next morning after getting ready and running a quick errand I found myself about 10 minutes early to meeting Allen and staring down the source of my anxiety; a tall blue bike.

Look at its smirk, the face of evil.

Honestly, it took me about 5 of the 10 minutes to get the damn thing unlocked. Some bikes in Japan (and possibly the rest of the world?) have built in locks on the wheel. In mine’s case, you insert the key and it moves a bar blocking the wheel from spinning. After riding you pop the bar back and the key pops back out. It’s not particularly hard; I think I was just being dense.

With the bike unlocked, I loaded my basket with my bag and inspected it thoroughly until Allen arrived. It won our staring contest, but I’m sure I’ll get it next time. Allen came down and after a greeting swiftly mounted his bike and began down the road. Well shit, time to go. It took me a bit of tiptoeing along on the bike before I finally got my feet on the right peddles and got started after Allen. Ok… ok… ok! I got this! Oh wait, we have to ride on the road, shit, no, no, no I don’t got this. AHHHH!

Actually I did fine, it was just completely terrifying. The bike/pedestrian area is not very large and is slightly sloped on one side so I tended to stick more on the car side of the path. The thing about back Japanese roads is they don’t seem to have the middle dividing line we have in America (and on main Japanese roads). So often, when there’s only one car on the road they drive in the middle and just move over when they see another car coming so mostly it wasn’t a problem. There was a bit on my ride home where I was on a thin road surrounded on either side by depressed rice fields (as in, they were lower,  not sad). I did fine sticking to the side until there were cars on either side of the road. A car on my side actually stopped and let the rest pass before they went by, to give an indication of how small the road was. I just got off my bike near them and walked the rest of the way up the hill until I had a safe bike path. I do NOT want to be known as “the white girl who is crappy on a bicycle and fell in a rice paddy”.

So bikes aside, I successfully got to the nursery. Allen and I checked in at the main office and they told us which classes to go to; Allen got himawari (sunflower) and I got cosumosu (cosmos, like the flower). Allen led me upsta– have I mentioned the stair case has a built in slide? Because that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Anywho, upstairs we found our classrooms side by side. Ok Madeline, time to teach! …can I go back to conquering bikes?

Inside the class I found a teacher who seemed to know who I was and I introduced myself. Allen had told me the kids schedule earlier so I knew it was free play time so I allowed myself to be swept up in the kid’s games.  This involved a lot of 3 things:

1. Kids talking to me and me having no idea what they said (90% of the time)
2. Kids talking to me and me actually understanding (5% of the time)
3. Borderline sexual assault (5% of the time)

There was one little boy who quickly decided boobs were the greatest thing ever and spent the rest of the day trying to grope me. At first I was completely dumbfounded by how to handle this little ちかん("chikan" or "groper") but eventually I just pinned his hands and told him だめ("dame" or "not good!")！ Thing is, he knew he wasn't supposed to be doing that because he never did it when another teacher was around. Kids, man. 

During the free period, the kids asked me where I was from, showed me the class pet (a Japanese beetle – and not the kind you’re thinking, it had horns), said lots of things I didn't understand, and ran around a lot. One little girl asked me first where I was from (“America”) and then without any prompting asked where my dad was. Uhh… uhh…. America? Yeah, let’s go with that. 

A few of the girls figured that since I couldn't speak Japanese I was a helpless creature in need of guidance so they took my hand and showed me where the bathroom was. The children’s bathroom appeared to be for both sexes and had no door blocking it from the hallway. As soon as I realized I was seeing a child at a urinal I looked away, so I can’t offer much detail beyond that. I mean don’t these kids have any modesty? It’s like they’d run around naked…

After free time was singing time. And by ‘singing’ I mean shouting lyrics as loudly as tiny humanly possible. Which is quite loud. Sing along time also included Allen’s class who came over from the neighboring room via a sliding door connecting the two. The two classes combined was just under 40 students, which is still enough tiny voices to make my ears ring.

After singalong time was… swimming time? 　何 ("nani" or "what")？No , I guess I did hear that right, swimming time. The two classes were going together so Allen got assigned pool duty and I got to stay with the 5 or so kids without swim suits. Speaking of, where did those suits comes from? I leave the room for a minute and suddenly all the children are in swim suits. Surely they didn’t change in the classroom, that would be silly…

So I stayed behind with the suit-less children for an hour or so with another junior teacher. Mostly this just meant making stuff with legos and corralling back any children who fled the room. After the hour was up I looked up from tidying up legos to see a naked body run past. ….何？！？ So in regards to all those ellipses earlier, the children do not in fact have any modesty and change right in the classroom. Except several would get distracted in the middle of changing and just run around naked. I had a girl clad only in a towel run up and jump in my lap and throw herself around me. Never have I been so unsure where to put my hands. I’m pretty sure in America you need a lot more than a basic background check to be allowed alone in a room with a bunch of half naked or naked children. Culture shock!

Once clothes were returned to bodies it was time for lunch. I gleaned that 5 students were picked as the class servers for the day. Those kids helped bring in the lunch stuff and hand out the food that the teachers doled into bowls. I was told to sit down with the kids, probably because trying to explain to me what to do would take too long to be helpful. The kids (and I as well) got a bowl  of rice with nori (seaweed) flakes, a bowl of alphabet soup, green tea (of course), and a plate with what appeared to be egg and cheese covered pork pieces and a vegetable mixture of… CABBAGE! My arch-nemesis strikes again. But this time I was prepared! After all the jokes at my expense I was going to conquer my foe and end the cabbage based humiliation! Except that cabbage is as nasty as I remembered and I could only stomach about half while repressing sick cat expressions. Opps.

Culture time! In Japan, resources have always been somewhat limited so it is important to finish all the food on your plate and not be wasteful. …Guess who didn’t finish all hers? I actually saw the teachers go around and make sure several of the children finished their food. Extra food from the serving bowls was distributed out to those who wanted it as well. I felt like such a bad role model. But seriously, cabbage is terrible.

After lunch, the kids cleaned up the room a bit, washed up, and headed over to Allen’s classroom where tatami mats were being rolled out. Nap time! Aw yes, this was my best class in college! …What do you mean Allen and I are on break? But…. Ok. : (

So for nap time, Allen showed me a temple literally next to the school. It looked really well maintained despite no one being there when we went. I might have to research this more. There’s also another temple a block from my apartment I intend to explore at some point and numerous other spots around town.

This article doesn't have many pictures so have some temple pictures!

Yup that's a temple.

Temples being smack in the middle of town isn't uncommon.

After that, we went over to a nearby 7-11 to get drinks and chill in the AC until the end of break. Apparently, loitering is cool in Japan. I perused the drink section and in lieu of melon soda (which is somewhat rare to find, it seems) I got a sparkling orange juice. What? I would never buy a drink just because it came with a tiny figurine, that is simply absurd. I am a grown woman and am not swayed by such trivial things. I just wanted to try something new. Yes.

After a nice chat with Allen our hour break began to draw to a close and we headed back to school. The kids were still well in nap time and I was instructed to join them. All those years of study finally paying off! I’m going to show these kids what a pro napper can do!

…Except that the two excitable girls near me spent the entire hour asking me things I didn’t understand and giggling and poking me. It was like a cruel cosmic joke. Also, I am not one of the people who finds tatami mat incredibly comfortable (as you’ll see when I post my futon later). Nap time was an extreme disappointment.

After nap time we had story time with both classes. Then the classes divided in their rooms to have a snack (it appeared to be a potato based something served with milk) before cleaning up again. We’re getting near the end of the day at this point and Allen approaches me and says we lead the last bit of class. Crap, can we go back to nap time? I had grabbed some pictures for a self introduction earlier that morning so most of the time Allen would ask me a question in loud, clear English and then a teacher would translate for the kids. I would answer, show a picture when available and have it translated for the kids. At the end the kids got to ask me questions (translated by the teachers for my sake). Most of them were pretty easy to answer in Japanese which was nice and made me feel a bit competent after a rather disheartening conversational day. At one point, one of the kids asked if I’d been to Disney and I happened to have a picture (courtesy of Thomas) of Cinderella’s castle all lit up for Christmas that I got to show. The children thought it was the greatest thing ever. Thanks Thomas!

Oh did I mention, some kids sang Let it Go at one point? I seriously need to learn that song.

After a few more songs the day wrapped up. Allen and I chatted a bit with the nice teacher of the classroom I worked in and she was very impressed by a picture I had of some of my mom’s paintings. She was also very patient and understanding considering the class was interrupted twice on my account. I forgot to mention this in the chronological bit but at one point Namba-san came by with some papers for me to sign and called up to have me go to the office. Then later Inaho-sensei called and basically asked the teacher to scan him a picture of my bank book, which she did no questions asked. I think right now I’m probably more trouble than I’m worth for teachers but hopefully once things get ironed out it’ll be better.

I confess I’m a bit jealous of the easy going way Allen interacts with the kids. He can casually chat with them while teaching them English. He also picks them up and throws them around which I’m a bit nervous to do. I’ve always been afraid of the fragility of kids. I’m pretty sure “sorry, s/he slipped” isn’t going to pacify a parent but maybe I’m just overly cautious.

Overall, the day went pretty well. I have 2 more days at the nursery school next week so I can get a bit more used to the kids. Also build up my immune system. Kids are nasty.

On the way home I dropped by the grocery store to get a bunch of delicious junk food to celebrate completing my first full week in Ujitawara, yaaaay! [cue confetti] Honestly, I’m settling in quite nicely. Once I have internet and a phone I think I’ll be totally comfortable here, minus having to constantly translate stuff like mail to make sure it’s not a bill. Or mosquito spray to make sure it’s not poison. Or detergent to make sure it’s not bleach.

…you know what, life will still be a challenge but it’s not so bad. At least Japan has bread with chocolate icing in the middle.

Also dark chocolate. Aww yiiisss.

Edit: I totally forgot to mention, the very first thing a child said to me was "your nose is big". He then proceeded to grab it and pull as hard as he could just in case it was fake and he could yank it off. Kids, man.