True Lies

Japanese Word of the Day:
English: Nice to meet you
Japanese: Hajimemashite ( 初めまして or はじめまして)

Back at the beginning of my working I was adamant that I was going to stay on top of blogging as things came. Obviously that didn't happen, though in my defense a lot of stuff happened all at once and quite fast. It was like a typhoon of interesting, blog-worthy things which sapped my energy and time. I did diligently take notes about things I wanted to relay but now looking back 2 months later the note “stairway goblin” is a little confusing. Maybe I shouldn't have used shorthand.

So, in lieu of a more in depth summary of my chaotic first days at work you’re getting the sparknotes of anecdotes worth remembering.

Friday, August 29^th; Ikkokan JHS – “Swim, English teacher, swim!”

My first day of actual teaching involved 5 classes. There are 6 periods in the school day. 5 is the absolute max number of classes I teach in a day and I had to do that my first day. It was a little rough.

Fortunately for me, the first classes I went to were the 2^nd years (8^th grade) who are taught by the amazing Motonishi-sensei and Suigioka-sensei. I had met Motonishi briefly before school when tutoring some of her students for an upcoming test. Allen had told me that she had the best sense of humor of the group and over the last few months I've learned that to be true. She’s a slightly older woman who does things like play English hangman with the word “stupid” to tease her class. I like her. Sugioka-sensei, on the other hand, is a rather young teacher who is new at Ikkokan as of last year (or so I’m told). He’s still plenty nice but doesn't have quite Motonishi’s humor.

Each grade at Ikkokan has 3 classes so I went to each of the 2^nd year classes that Friday and gave my self-introduction, which consisted of a powerpoint, question and answer portion, short quiz, and small activity if any extra time remained. The powerpoint was basic stuff like where I’m from, my family, what I like to do, and also a completely pandering slide on video games I like. Becca had told me many students like video games and can relate better once they know the teacher does too. This didn't work quite so well in JHS. I got a few smiles and comments but not a particularly wild reception.

Another thing that didn’t work well was question and answer. I think in JHS kids get a case of the withdraws and refuse to be engaged. I thought they might genuinely be curious about something about my life and allocated a bit of time for questions and I think I got maybe 2 or 3 my entire first class. I later learned, the kids are curious but too shy to actually ask things. Opps.

My self introductions with Orihashi-sensei and the 3^rd years went largely the same except that she forced them to get in groups and come up with 2 questions in English per group. This resulted in me getting asked the same question twice by a student who wasn't paying attention and honestly not much else of interest. There was a slight misunderstanding when introducing Seth and Katie. I introduced Katie as Seth’s fiancée and Orihashi misheard and thought I was saying Seth was marrying Beyonce. Enunciation is good.

Monday August 1^st  Ujitawara ES  – “I’m sorry, you want to know what?”

Have I mentioned yet that I had to make a speech at each school? ‘Cause I had to make a speech at each school. In Japanese. Motonishi-sensei was wonderful enough to translate the speech I wrote but I was still reading words and a language I’m not that familiar with. I’m reasonably sure in at least 2 of the speeches I barreled through some words incorrectly and probably changed the meaning to something random. But I did my best so I have no regrets.

So between all the speeches, I had another set of introductions at Ujitawara ES on Monday. Elementary schools in Japan cover grades 1-6 though only the 5^th and 6^th grades have regular English classes (once a week). This meant I only had 4 introductions on Monday, since there are 2 classes in each grade for ES.

My day started with the 5^th grade classes in first and second period and the 6^th in 3^rd and 4^th. The introduction went like normal except that I abandoned the activity at the end for more question time since the ES kids actually wanted to know some stuff about me. Actually, they wanted to know a lot of stuff about me. Some of it really oddly personal, like how much money I had. Here’s a collection of some of my favorite questions.

• How old are you? Are you married?
• What do you think of Sugioka-sensei?
• Who’s your ideal man?

Actually that last one was translated strangely. The first time, Sugioka translated it like I wrote it and the second he just asked who my favorite actor was. Japan is big on ‘types’ and he was hoping to convey my ‘type’ through favorite actor. Unfortunately, I answered Jennifer Lawrence since he removed the gender requirement in his second wording so I thought it was a different question. This led to many confused faces before I understood and changed my answer to Stephen Colbert. This led to many more confused faces and I just said I liked comedians. Then a boy next to the boy who asked the question told him the equivalent of “oh well, good luck bro!” I was so, so very confused.

After an exhausting but thoroughly fun morning it was time for lunch. My schedule at ES is that I do my classes and then eat lunch on a rotating schedule so I can visit all the classrooms. My first lunch was scheduled to be with…. The first graders. Fantastic, they don’t speak a word of English, this is going to go great.

Actually it kind of did. Well, once they abandoned trying to ask me things. After an awkward lunch filled with “wakarimasen!” (“I don’t understand!”) it was time for recess. The kids had claimed me as theirs so I followed them to put up our lunch materials and play. Possibly the best part of the day was walking out of the lunch distribution area to a scowling pack of first graders reprimanding me for trying to go out the “in” door. They proceeded to lead me around to the proper exit, all while scolding me like a child. It was very humbling.

After my lecture, I followed them outside to the play area for recess. The kids decided we should play Oni-Go-Go which fortunately Allen had told me the rules of before. Basically, it’s tag with the people being “it” rotating once they tag someone, as best I can tell. I had a fun time running around with the children who acted like getting tagged was life or death serious. Ahh, the naivety of children. We adults all know real life or death scenarios are things like almost burning your pizza.

After lunch I went back to the teachers room where I found a collection of my teachers from 5^th and 6^th grade all clamoring about my lunch. You see, during question time in each class someone had asked what a food I didn't like was and I had honestly replied cabbage. At lunch, we had had soup with cabbage mixed in. Every single teacher who had heard my dislike of cabbage had apparently gotten worried about me not being able to eat (for the record I ate it no problem) and had wanted to check on me. Sometimes I feel like a really expensive pedigree dog that everyone fusses over. It’s kind of nice.

After recess, the vice principle approached and asked if I’d like him to drive me to the BoE office or the JHS now that I was done for the day. I asked for the JHS knowing I could at least get work done there and so began a trend. Whenever I sit down for more than 2 minutes at Ujitawara ES the vice principle rushes over to ask where I need to go. I’m not sure he realizes the school technically has me all day but I’m not complaining since I don’t have a desk or computer there. Also he speaks maybe a few words of English so the drives are rather awkward.

…I don’t know what else to say there. Awkward transition to the next school stories!

Thursday August  4^th; Tawara ES  – “I so got this”

By the time I visited Tawara ES for the first time I had been going to school for a week and doing my self introduction lessons for several days. I had given up my hopes of perfectionism for a much more realistic acknowledgment that I would not only make mistakes, I would probably make an absolutely ass of myself no less than 2 times an hour. Needless to say I was much better prepared to be in an Elementary School. I read in one of the teacher guides I consumed my first few weeks here that you absolutely should not bring an ego to Elementary school but just act like a clown and go with the flow. It was seriously some of the best advice I've gotten so far.

I started my day with incredibly over dramatic high fives and janken (rock, paper, scissors) matches with the kids and wouldn't you know it, they seemed more comfortable with me! I even managed to make a joke with the kids. Each student had their surname written on their PE uniforms on the front. They were almost always kanji but I could read bits of a few of them. For the parts I couldn't read I’d just say “nani” (what) along with what I could read. The kids got a big kick out of me reading their names as “nani-yama” or “ta-nani” or more commonly “nani-nani”. At one point I was surrounded by a horde of kids all laughing hysterically as I dubbed them all nani-nani-chan. Things were going better than JHS.

My classes were similar to the other ES in that the only part with mentioning was the question section which was again highly entertaining. This progression of questions was my favorite:

• What do you think of Sugioka-sensei?
• Do you have a boyfriend?
• ….Sugioka-sensei do you have a girlfriend?
• [The next question wasn't translated for me but I could see the cogs turning in the little boys head and I knew exactly what he asked. “Hey, you aren't married, new English teacher lady isn't married, why don’t ya’ll get married?” Sugioka said something to the boy and asked for the next question rather quickly.]

By this point in question answering I had also learned a very important strategy; lie. Sort of. When a child asked me what my favorite game is the correct but rather obscure answer of ”聖剣伝説 Legend of Mana” was not what they wanted to hear. They wanted me to say “well… I like (insert well known Japanese games here)”. That also meant I usually had to change their questions slightly from “what’s your favorite band?” to “what bands do I like?” so I could safely avoid actually lying; it was a delicate verbal dance.

The schedule was very similar to my other ES school so after a morning of the older kids I found myself with a different class for lunch. Instead of the 1^st graders though I was with the Himawari (Sunflower) class which was special needs. There were 3 boys in this class and 2 teachers so it was pretty intimate. The boys didn't seem to speak any English so I mostly tried to speak little bits of Japanese to interact with them when I could. During lunch we heard a quiz over the intercom system though the teachers only translated the answers for me so I didn't get to enjoy it much.

When recess time came around I expected to stay with the Himawari class based on the precedent set in my other ES but the teachers had other plans so I was let loose on the school. Because it was rainy that day all the kids were running loose around the school as well. A ground of children found me and claimed me as theirs and I followed them around for most of the free time. Apparently there was a goblin who lived in an abandoned hallway and all the kids were gathered around it screeching and flipping the lights on and off. It was a strange recess.

After recess was cleaning time. I had missed out on cleaning time at Ujitawara ES because I didn't realize when it happened. I was determined not to let that happen this time so I asked an English speaking teacher and was given my own broom and area to clean. I had way too much fun cleaning and even convinced a few kids to broom swordfight with me when no other teachers were around. I am an amazing role model.

Unlike Ujitawara ES, it was very clear that I was staying at Tawara for the duration of the day so after cleaning I found I was scheduled to observe a class. Everyone was out of the teachers room so I ended up walking down the first class hallway I got to and finding the 1^st graders rooms. I showed the teacher my schedule and was invited into her room to watch. I did my best not to distract the kids but I think I was more so a distraction to the teacher. She seemed rather flustered that someone was observing her and I managed to understand her say to the kids once that they should do better to make a good impression on me.

The class was a Japanese language class so the kids focused on reading a story in the book. It turns out that my Japanese level is apparently on par with 1^st graders as I could understand bits of the story and I knew the few kanji that were used. I borrowed a book from a student at one point and flipped through it and was quite surprised by the contents. Later in the book there was a story about a boy getting hit by a car which seemed to me a bit heavy a subject for 1^st graders! In fairness, maybe if I had read that as a 1^st grader I wouldn't have been so reckless around roads, so maybe it’s a good thing.

After that class I thanked the teacher and praised how good her students were (mostly so she’d relax and not think I had a bad impression of her) and went back to the teachers room. Again there was no one here so I decided to just walk around until I found what I was supposed to do next. I actually learned that after 5^th period the 1-3^rd graders got to go home so I stationed myself by the exit and bid them all farewell with more epic highfives.

Once they were all gone I decided to find the committees that I had been told were meeting during this period. I ended up following voices to the library where I found a bunch of kids running a committee and hey, I like libraries! I decided to stay.

I had no idea what was going on other than the kids were coming up with reading comprehension questions from some books but I enjoyed looked around the library and ended up staying to chat with the librarian after the committee ended. Librarians are the best people in Japan, seriously.

By this point my work day was about over and I had sat down and rested for probably 10-20 minutes the entire day, so I was feeling a bit tired. What better way to rest than to bike home uphill! Wait…

So ended my first few days of mass introductions. I had some more introductions with the first years of JHS and various lower grades of ES over the next few weeks but none were particularly noteworthy. I actually still have one last introduction to do next week, woo-hoo. After the Greatest Wedding Ever™ I added a few pictures of the wedding to my introductions to let the kids “ooh” and “aah” over how beautiful it was and brag on my family a bit but mostly the introductions got simpler with time. Turns out, after giving the same bio about yourself somewhere around 30 times you get a bit bored of yourself.

So on to something more interesting! Like uh…

Sports day! Yeah! My notes from sports day are cluttering my floor so let’s talk about that next time. I mean…

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ON THE NEXT EXCITING INSTALLMENT:

Bravery! Passion! Students passing out from heat stroke!

School Sports Day!