Allen's Adventures Abroad

So, today was the Emperor’s birthday, a national Holiday in Japan, and since I’ve got some time at the end of it, I figured I’d make it into a bit of a blog. I was in the middle of what I considered a fairly mundane day when I realized that what I now consider mundane is, in fact, quite different from a day in the U.S.  So, here goes, a day (actually a day off) in my life in Miyanojo. It’s a bit long, so feel free to break it up as you will.

Today was admittedly a bit out of the ordinary. A good number of my friends have taken off to their respective holiday destinations (they cashed in some vacation days I’m hanging on to by working through the week) and the holiday fell in the middle of the week. Because of this, my usual tendency to take off from my small town in search of more to do on the weekend days off was abandoned in favor of a day to myself.

So, I started my day at about nine-thirty with breakfast, NPR, and a house chores. Thankfully, it warmed up a bit today, so while I tidied up I was able to open some sliding doors and let some fresh air into my apartment. We had a bit of a cold spell over the past week or so, which means that the one room in my apartment with a proper, wall-mounted heater, tends to pile up with all my books, coats, purchases, laundry, etc from the week, because it’s a bit too cold to work up motivation to put things in other rooms, where they actually belong. As a side note, the coldest day yet was about two days ago, and my unheated bathroom was so cold that my mouthwash hurt my teeth, which was an interesting, unexpected experience. So, I’ve gone from a four room (granted, they’re Japan-sized) apartment to pretending to live in a one room apartment, and I definitely needed to get a few things done. For example, since I sleep on futons, on warm days such as today, as general mold prevention, it’s necessary to hang out futons so they can air out. I also tackled the small pile of dishes that had started to gather in my sink. Although with the cold as it is, it sounds like winter could be awful here, and I will admit to thinking so as well. However, I am learning how to stay warm and comfortable in Japan, and I must say it’s increased my appreciation of the season.

Before I explain a few “stay warm” tactics, I’d like to point out that it wasn’t until I was explaining that I used to joke with my friends about wearing sweatshirts in summer and t-shirts in winter in America to a Japanese teacher that I realized how ridiculous it is to use the amount of climate control that we Americans are used to at this point. That being said, I surely miss it. Eco-friendly or not! Nonetheless, there are some good ways (exempting central heat) to stay warm in Japan. One approach is to use a kotatsu, and although mine seems to have died on me sometime in the past week, I plan to get a one and will explain what it is. Basically, It’s a coffee table-futon combo—and here’s the kicker—the coffee table has heating unit mounted underneath. The basic idea is this you sit on a futon with another duvet like cover going between two layers of the tabletop and never want to get up because it’s warm and cozy. It’s one of the best and worst ideas ever. It’s definitely not very conducive to getting work done. If something isn’t nearby enough to grab, I’m likely to decide against working on it, but it’s incredibly comfortable. Needless to say I’ll be replacing mine for a working one quite soon, (and since I recently purchased a camera, I’ll try to get a picture up once I do!)

Another new strategy I’ve adopted for warmth is really enjoying the onsen experience, which is what I decided to do after housework today. Because, as I mentioned before, there is no heat in my bathroom, I’ve realized that quick showers are fine for mornings (I’m definitely awake afterwards) but after a few days of teaching in schools without heat, I start to crave something that will warm my body to the core. That’s where onsen come in. Onsen were nice for relaxation in the summer and fall, but in the winter, they are turning out to be a godsend. After soaking in a steaming hot natural bath, baking in a wood-paneled sauna, and taking a slow, hot, relaxing shower (all usually in a rather aesthetically pleasing environment, I might add,) I feel like I can take on a few more days of whatever cold weather comes my way. I’ve been to onsen around the prefecture so far, but today was the first time I decided to go in my own town. Many Japanese people have told me that my town is famous for them, so I figured it’s about time I got acquainted.

After following signs to shibi onsen (shibi is the name of the closest mountain by my town,) I found myself in the middle of a little valley on the mountainside, with four different onsen to choose from, a little shop selling various local food, and some fun looking campgrounds. After spending about and hour soaking in a natural hot spring, I drove around for a bit and got better acquainted with that little corner of Satsuma. I think the best way to describe heading out to shibi for people back home, is it’s like living in Maryville and heading out to Greenback, excepting that you need to shrink both towns substantially. Each little area of satsuma-chou (mine is Miyanojo-Yachi) has it’s own little neighborhood, compete with a corner store or two, in this case onsen, and plenty of rice patties—I do live in the country. My “village” is a in the main part of town, and so is more of a subdivision attached to the center of town, but these smaller communities are quite cute, small, and tight-knit. Now, because there are three more onsen there, I have good reason to head back out to Shibi again before making the rounds to other villages around the area that also have onsen. I think onsen hopping will make a good hobby for the winter, and regularly getting the chills out is definitely going to keep me in good spirits until spring.

I should also mention that there was a cute shrine near Shibi spa, so I spent a few moments admiring the architecture before hopping back in my car to go pick up a few necessities from the store. While shopping, an elementary student from one of my schools spied me, ran up and forgot how to say “hello,” and then went running after his grandfather shouting something akin to “Grandpa, grandpa, the English teacher is here!” With his huge, front-teeth-missing smile and unconcealed curiosity, he’s like lots of my kids, many of whom have similar reactions to seeing me outside of school. Especially the younger ones, who are occasionally surprised to realize I’ve not just flown in from the US when I visit their schools but am, in fact, temporarily residing in Japan. At the store check-out, a woman wearing a pink, fleece track suit, a rainbow, faux-fur coat, and pigtails, despite looking to be in her 40s, came out with some surprisingly well-pronounced English phrases. Now, Japan is known for some funky fashion, but this was quite odd none-the-less. I always try to be polite and said “nice to meet yoy as well” and other basic phrases as waited behind her for the cashier. Afterwards, she cornered me in the parking lot for a few minutes, insisted I take her phone number, and invited me to come to her house for “American” food at some point. I doubt I will, but I think the experience illustrates the constant odd encounters I get as a result of being white. While I spoke to the woman, a troop of teenage girls out of school for the day walked to the photo booth behind me, giggling nervously, and one literally shrieked when I waved back to them as I drove off. What happens when you go to the local supermarket?

I decided to wind down my afternoon by reading at our local “joyful cafe,” which is like a Japanese version of iHop (the seating style and quality of the food, but not the food itself of course.) Coffee is hard to come by here, but Joyful has a drink bar with espresso machines, so since there isn’t a coffee shop in my town I go there to read, study Japanese, and drink unlimited coffee (also a rarity!) While there, I again ran into some of my students. This time it was some first year middle school girls, who I confused by using English outside of the classroom before trying out my Japanese to talk to them. After a short conversation, I went back to my book and coffee, eventually ordered dinner, and then headed home.

Now, I’m back in my apartment, surfing the internet and watching TV shows. I only have one more day of work (tomorrow, Christmas Eve) and then my real vacation starts! I’ll be leaving for Hiroshima, Kyoto, and Osaka on Saturday. I’ll be traveling with a guy I met in Tokyo and have since kept in touch with, and I’m terribly excited about being in a large city for New Years. Anyway, I’ll have plenty to talk about when I get back. Also, since I’ve finally got that camera, it’s likely my next blog will be accompanied by appropriate photographs!

As always, thanks for checking in!

Recently, the Kagoshima prefectural education department hosted our annual mid-year seminars (school year starts in April.) While there, I participated in various workshops pertaining to my job, so while it’s more or less fresh in my mind, I’d like to give everyone a better idea of what my job is like here. Oh, and as a  heads up, I’ll be using the acronyms ALT, Assistant Language Teacher (my job) and JTE, Japanese Teacher of English, quite often.

In Kagoshima prefecture, ALTs work at either the local level, like myself, or the prefectural level, like many of my friends. The prefectural level ALTs travel between the various high schools in their area, but local ALTs work in a mixture of Elementary and Junior High Schools. The specific amount of schools any one ALT teacher is quite varied. Some ALTs at large high schools only teach at one school, for example, but I have the fairly common set up of spending a fair bit of time at a base JHS (between two and three days out of a week) and the other days at a random selection of my other schools. Specifically, I teach at Miyanojo JHS more often than anywhere else, which is a school in the center of my town with a little more than 300 students. Besides MJHS, I teach at the much smaller, sixty student Yamasaki JHS, although never more than once a week. I also teach at eight different Elementary schools. Because of a Japanese law that dictates the distance an elementary school student can travel from his or her home to school, I have some schools in rural areas with tiny student populations, from 10 to 30 students as well as a larger school in the center of my town with 500 students. In other words, I hit the full gambit of varied educational experiences in my area, all of which changes depending on the day and where I’m meant to be. To put this in perspective, I’ve been asked to teach an entire elementary school how to count in English at a big event in the gym and today I had a lesson with only one student at my smallest school. I should also mention that I’m technically based out of my local Board of Education, BoE, which is the organization that I’m employed by and where my supervisor, Kawaji sensei, works.

So,I have the potential to refer to nearly a thousand students in my broader area as “my students, but that’s a bit of a loose term, because it’s not as though I’m their main English teacher. The fact of the matter is that my job is quite literally that of an assistant. My middle school students all have a main JTE that teaches their regular classes, and my job there is simply to assist them. So, I do a variety of things such as help prepare and execute fun lesson plans, work on special projects with students, answer JTE questions about English, work on things such as pronunciation and inflection, and eat lunch with the kids. So, for the most part, my job can be super easy. I don’t have long hours like the other members of staff, I don’t have to worry about students performance on tests, and I rarely grade papers, although I do help my JTEs check the students English notebooks. So, although I have grown to see myself as more or less a permanent fixture at Miyanojo JSH (Miyachuu,) and to a lesser extant at Yamasaki as well, I still am not really a member of staff at any of my schools. I’m an employee of the BoE making “school visits.”

In the middle schools, English education is compulsory for all students (which is also the case for high school students,) so students are learning basic grammar structure for English comprehension. I try to organize in class games and activities that allow students to practice English usage, but it’s the JTEs that control the class pace and main teaching methods. Because it is a compulsory subject, JTEs tend to focus on preparing students for written English exams that are a part of the process for being admitted to high school. Japanese middle school students, especially those in their third and final year, are extremely busy preparing for the tests that determine which high school they attend and, subsequently college and jobs. So, there is a lot of pressure on comprehension and very little on communicative English.

There are a number of major barriers to proper English education in this setting, but I’ll give you pronunciation as an example. Because of the emphasis on testing, ALTs, who are directed by the National program to assist in developing “communicative ability” are in the occasionally awkward position of trying to eke out class time we don’t really have any right to in order to work on abilities that aren’t easily tested. So, many students make do with “katakana English” or pronouncing English words by writing them out in Japanese syllabary, which can at times sound nothing like actual English. (“and” becomes “and-o” thank you becomes “san kyu” etc., and that’s just simple words!)  The irony if this is that ALTs, who are constantly confronted with this sort of pronunciation, grow to understand it fairly well based on their own study of Japanese and time spent listening to it, which tends to decrease the incentive of students, who I can understand, to learn to pronounce English in a way that’s intelligible to English speakers that are not employed by Japanese school systems, despite my occasional insistence that I’m a spacial case when it comes to understanding them.

In contrast, the elementary school visits take a different extreme to the same result. Because the elementary education is ungraded and not compulsory, it’s really just prep for middle school and exposure to foreign culture and language. Students aren’t really expected to get very far with English at that stage. A major contributing factor to this problem is the textbook, which all ALTs such as myself are baffled by, called Eigo Noto. In the process of taking ideology to the extreme, the focus on communicative English, the text does not introduce the alphabet. So, the best opportunity to get students to read and imitate English sounds in a non-threatening environment by teaching phonics and the alphabet is wasted. It’s possibly to get students to speak English rather clearly with a bit of work, but since I see my elementary schools about once or twice a month, as soon as I’ve left the students have too much time to forget English or (worse) learn it from their teachers who have no English qualifications and often can’t pronounce the words much better than the students themselves. So, I settle for making English fun and getting students better accustomed to at the very least hearing English and, equally importantly, with the concept of communicating in a foreign language. During lunch and recess, I hang out and practice my Japanese and play with the students for the cultural exchange part of my job. It’s nice to give students a chance to ask questions, and it’s always amusing what surprises them about Americans. (A number of students enjoy running up, rubbing my arms because I have blonde arm hair and then exclaiming “ooo! Nice smell,” which is more or less like being a human scratch and sniff.) Those sorts of reactions certainly make one realize that the kids do, in fact, need exposure to foreigners, but actually getting students to improve in this setting can be daunting.

A few other problems that I’ll skirt over for the time being include classes that aren’t differentiated based on ability, interpersonal relationships between ALTs and JTEs, students’ incentives to learn, and time constraints. I can, and probably will, go on about my job in future posts, but I’ll end this one with this line of thought. Although there are some definite, and seemingly insurmountable challenges to effective English education, there is so much more to my job than the title of English teacher itself. Every time I go out in Japan and converse or otherwise interact with locals, I’m helping to foster internationalization and exchange. Another ALT said to me that a local woman she has become friends with used to be scared of foreigners, at the Japanese government really just wants us to live and interact with our communities. I know that I became interested in international travel and studies based on my interactions with foreign friends, and I hope that my engagement with the students on a regular basis convince at least a few of the importance of being aware of and experiencing other cultures. So, I may not be turning out students that can carry on worthwhile conversations in English, but it’s possible some of them will go on to develop a real interest in English or another foreign language. Maybe I’m helping to make my small town more acutely aware of the global context in which we are living in the 21st century. As always, thanks for checking in!