The Japanese Teacher Experience………..

Ever wonder what it’s like to be a native teacher in Japan? Well, I’m still wondering too. J But here are some things I’ve observed about being a native teacher in Japan.

One of the first things I noticed when I first started keeping regular work hours at my JHS’s was that the principal, vice-principal, head teacher, as well as all other teachers, would show up in the teachers room every once in awhile looking like they just trekked through Amazon – faded gardening clothes, water and grass stains on their clothes, wearing gloves, and gigantic hats with brims and gloves, sometimes with netting to pull over their faces. Then they disappear. As you’re sitting in the teachers room minding your own business, your gaze wanders to the window and you catch a glimpse of Kocho-sensei (principal) trimming the hedges along the sports field fence. And the Head Teacher rides by on some kind of contraption meant to rake the dirt of the sports fields. And the janitor wanders in with bunches of dirty, gigantic white radishes you’ve never seen before clutched by the stems in her hands. You realize she’s been gardening, and it must be the school’s garden. The science teacher is in the hallway cleaning the small aquarium. Just as the students are expected to help with basic maintenance of the school and school grounds, so too are the native teachers expected to help with the upkeep of the school.

It’s the little things….

The other day at school lunch I was very pleasantly surprised to find on my tray what appeared to be cool-whip fruit salad. Other items on the tray included a thicker stew I hadn’t seen before and two hamburger-type-looking buns. I wasn’t interested in eating the buns plain, so I thought I’d try eating the stew inside them like sloppy joes. Not an unreasonable deduction, I think, by American standards. As I bit into my stew bun, I looked around the table at the Japanese teachers I was seated with and noticed that they were stuffing their hamburger buns with the cool-whip salad. Ah, cultural differences.

A Day in the Life….

School life, that is. Maybe some of you have been wondering what a typical school day is like for a Japanese student? Of course I can only relate to you what I perceive the experience of my students here in Tokigawa to be. I’ll start with Junior High School, since I think I’m more familiar with that.

I think most students get up about 6 or 6:30am. It seems kind of early to me, but maybe I got up around that time in Junior High School also, I just didn’t think about it much then because hey, I was young. They need to be at school by 7:30am to start morning club practice. The bigger the school, the more club options. The first JHS I was at only had the options of volleyball, softball and brass band clubs for girls and baseball, basketball and brass band for boys. The JHS I’m at now has badminton, table tennis, track and field, soft tennis and art club any student, as well as basketball for girls and baseball for boys. ALL students MUST belong to one of the school clubs.

Morning club practice lasts until maybe 8:15am or so. Homeroom starts sometime between 8:20-8:25 (I say this because even the JHS’s in my town have different time schedules). In Japan, students stay in one room all day and the teachers rotate from room to room. I think the students have about 10 minutes of homeroom and 10 minutes of “reading time” before the first class starts sometime between 8:40-8:50. I don’t know exactly what the students do during reading time, but I’m assuming it’s literal. Various things occur during homeroom, amongst which I’ve heard students receive “moral education.” I don’t purport to know what goes on in “moral education,” but I’ve heard it’s where students are told how to behave as students, as people in general, at JHS, in Japanese society in general, how to wear a tie, be professional, etc. Students have 6 classes a day, except on Mondays, when they only have 5 (why, I don’t know) and on Thursdays when they tend to have school assemblies for various purposes. Types of classes are generally the same as what you would find in the States – Social Studies, Science, Math, Japanese (like English class in the States, except because the Japanese language uses 3 alphabets, including the insanely numerous kanji system, students are still learning the alphabet for all intents and purposes in JHS…actually, they don’t finish until sometime in high school, I think. But, besides the alphabet, they study Japanese literature, grammar, writing (Japanese calligraphy – shodo)), P.E., Home Economics, Industrial Arts, Music, Art, Elective classes (for which they can choose their favorite from any of the primary subjects) and of course the one class that is obviously different than the curriculum in the States, their second language class, English, which they have three times a week.

My two favorite parts of the Japanese school day though are lunchtime and cleaning time. There are no cafeterias in Japanese schools in which students congregate to be served lunch by salaried cafeteria staff. Instead, lunch is delivered to each school by truck everyday and at the appropriate time, designated students from each class collect the crates, boxes, etc that contain the day’s lunch and lunch accessories (trays, plates, silverware, etc) and either take it back to their classroom or to a larger assembly hall type room where the different grades divide up and serve their own classes lunch. For me for some reason, it’s great to see the students having to lug their food around the school prior to getting to eat lunch, and to see them have to clean it all up at the end of lunch as well.

Cleaning usually happens at the end of the classes. All the students have to chip in and help clean the school, which I think is a fantastic idea. The students are divided up into groups based on their classes (1-1, 1-2, 2-1, 3-2, etc) and each group is responsible for cleaning something particular. There is a group assigned to clean the teacher’s room, one for the students’ classroom, hallways, general rooms like the computer room, art room, etc. They have to sweep the floor, empty the garbage, wipe the floors down with a rag, sometimes clean the windows, and do sweeping, raking, etc outside immediately around the school. 15-30 minutes each day is dedicated to this task.

Technically the school day is over sometime between 3:10 and 3:20pm, but then students have club activities again. In the winter, because it gets dark outside earlier, club sports are over at 4:30pm, but during the longer daylight seasons, they finish around 5/5:30pm.

There is an exception to the school club rule though. All students have to participate in a school club activity until they finish the first term of their third year. (Students go to JHS for three years. There are three terms in one school year in Japan.) After that, they are supposed to be using their after-school time normally designated for club activities to study for their high school entrance exams, which coincidentally are occurring right now (late-January to early-February). When I first arrived in Tokigawa and started working at my first JHS, Tamagawa Junior High School, I joined a few of the volleyball practices (and sweated out the equivalent to the Indian Ocean, but that’s beside the point) and was surprised at how few students there were on the team. Granted most of the girls play softball so the volleyball team is smaller in comparison to begin with, but it wasn’t until a few weeks later that I realized the only players left were the 1st and 2nd graders.

I really couldn’t say definitively what all the students do after school and after club activities. Some students help with family businesses. Some students participate in other extracurricular activities like second or third sports clubs, piano lessons, etc. I’ve been given the impression that by far, the majority of students go to “after-school school,” a.k.a. prep school or cram school for their choice in subjects. I’ve often heard that some/many students don’t get home at the end of the day until 10pm and still have homework from school to finish (although I honestly don’t feel like I’ve seen a lot of homework being given out, but maybe it’s just a ‘lost in translation’ kind of thing), so are getting to bed around midnight. Again, I can’t confirm this for even one student, let alone the majority of the student population in Japan, but if it’s true, man! I also don’t remember getting home later than 9pm, but that was usually with some QT already spent at home after school before heading to other activities. Since I’m so far removed from the JHS student experience, especially nowadays, it’s difficult for me to truly compare the JHS student’s life in Japan to that in the States. I guess you’ll have to make your own judgment call!

In Japan, for the first time ever in my life…..

I drank coffee. :-) I know it probably seems like an anti-climactic statement to you, but it marked a milestone in my life. I’ve never had the desire to drink coffee and hence never have….had, that is. It’s never been a problem to turn down coffee in the States, but there have been many an anxious moment for me either in mentally preparing to go overseas or actually being overseas where the chances that I would be served coffee as a guest in someone’s home or in a professional situation were very high. It had been beaten into my consciousness that to turn down the cup of coffee would be offensive. Of course I don’t want to offend anyone, but does that mean I have to suck it up and down the bean juice? I don’t know how I avoided it up to this point, but apparently I lucked out in every said situation and was either served tea automatically or asked which one I preferred before the liquid made its appearance.

My luck only lasted until the 2nd week after my arrival in Japan. Almost 30 years of pride down the tube. During my first visit to one of my junior high schools, I sat down not even 2 minutes into the visit and suddenly a cup of coffee appeared in front of me. In a country renowned for its politeness (understatement), there was no way I was going to test the “turn it down” waters in Japan, let alone on the first day I was meeting my future co-workers. Luckily the coffee cup was accompanied with a saucer laden with cream and sugar and you can bet the house that it all went in order to make it as indiscernible as a cup of coffee as possible.

The coffee-serving continued for about two weeks, following me to my first visit to my other junior high school (dang it all!). Then one day I noticed I hadn’t slept well for about, oh, two weeks, and was having crazy dreams. It could have been anything- the heat, new surroundings, unfamiliar language, another screw coming loose – but I blamed the coffee and suddenly it was no longer an issue for me to refuse to drink the stuff. No one (at least outwardly) seemed offended, and I’m sure they are happier to serve me Japanese tea (green tea) because it’s Japanese and I like it (which makes people happy). However, the cuppa-joe reared its ugly head at me again last week when I renewed my visits to the lesser visited of my 3 elementary schools. Seeing as how it was the New Year and I didn’t visit there often, there was something about being served 2 cups of coffee that day that I just couldn’t bring myself to refuse. Experiencing the side-effects again though brought me back to my senses and I am proud to announce that this morning’s coffee offering at that same elementary school went back where it came from and was replaced by a lovely cup of Japanese tea. Um Himmel’s Willen, my experimental coffee-drinking days are over. :-)