Only in Japan

On Friday afternoon, I decided to hang out with the computer club members. They were in 3-1's classroom, busy drawing storyboards for their animated pics. They hope to design on a computer some day. For now, they are sharing one laptop because our makeshift school doesn't have a computer room.

Anyways, I ended up having a good talk with M-sensei, who runs the club. He's one of the friendlier faces in the staff room. He doesn't mind speaking Japanese and broken English with me, so that we can have some decent conversation. On Friday, he went around the computer club and told me the meaning behind each kid's name. He also told me R-kun has been dubbed "Fantastic Boy," because he manages to be late for school every morning. Fantastic. I told him my last name means something like "new town" in Spanish. Oh, internationalization.

I'll always remember M-sensei, because he was one of the first teachers to introduce himself to me in the staff room almost three years ago. He spewed random words he associates with Canada, such as: white bear, Anne of Green Gables and maple syrup. (He told me he loves maple syrup, so he only gives his kids a little bit when they have pancakes at home.)

Friday's chat with M-sensei included comparing and contrasting Canadian and Japanese culture. I told him I was really surprised about the differences between school life in Canada and Japan. I could write reams and reams of paper on this topic, but I'll just jot down a few notes for now:

School Life
Some differences I've seen:
- Kids in Japan have to wear uniforms. They basically wear them every day, even on the weekends and when they're out doing errands with their parents after school. I've only seen them in their civvies at rare opportunities like shopping on the weekends or the town festivals. They do wear them with pride, but I do wonder how many school tees they own.
- School lunch is delivered every day. Everyone eats the same meal. In elementary school, you are expected to eat everything.
- They don't sing the Japanese anthem in the mornings.
- When you ask a student to answer a question in class, it's OK to give them a moment to discuss the answer with their peers.
- Club activities are extremely important.
- All of the kids bike or walk to school. We don't get any yellow school buses!
- In general, the kids are pretty obedient. In my school, at least, you won't see a kid talk back to a teacher.
- It's OK to sleep during lessons.
- Indoor and outdoor shoes are required
- Kids are responsible for cleaning the school, including the toilets. Dang. When I help, I usually just grab a broom and sweep a classroom.
- School hours are vastly different. My kids spend most of their day at school, and even show up on weekends/holidays. It's a place where they can easily meet up with friends. We don't have nearby luxuries like the mall or movie theaters.
- Teachers work overtime, and will even report to school on weekends to run practices.
- At my school, the teachers will drive around neighbourhoods and creep on their homeroom students' homes. They want to make sure everything is on point. Sometimes, they have difficulty finding the homes, because addresses here are sometimes unclear.

Some similarities I've seen in Japanese and Canadian school environments
- Recess and P.E. are perennial favourites
- The peers in your homeroom are probably destined to become your best friends
- Passing notes in class is a popular pass time.
- There is still a divide between girls and boys
- There are cliques (in the staff room and in the classrooms)
- It's a treat to watch a movie in class. (It was funny to watch my kids watching the E.T. movie. They kept yelling "Kimoiiiiii...." ("Ugly!!!!") whenever E.T. popped up on screen.)
- If you act up in class, the teacher will ream you out.
- The principal appears to have a pretty sweet job. (Last week, he tried to join in a dodgeball game with the boys during lunch recess).
- School pride is a given.
- The most popular kids are the ones with cool haircuts.
- etc.

More observations on the uniqueness of Japan:
- Central heating is considered a luxury. Everyone lives in houses or apartments with thin walls lacking insulation. Using a kerosene heater indoors is the most common method to heat up your home during those chilly winter days. In Fuku, it is absolutely miserable from December to March when you're indoors. But you learn to deal, by running up your heating bills and staying warm with umeshu.

-Alcohol is readily available on the shelves of local convenience stores, grocery stores and some vending machines. 

- Most countryside kids help out on the farm. Te-chan, who happens to be one of my favourite students, was telling me about his family's two rice fields near the school. I also saw his family weeding our neighbourhood over the summer.

- During domestic flights, people use overhead bins on planes to stock their tell-tale paper bags of omiyage (R-chan and I had a chuckle over this when we were flying back from Fukuoka).

- Omiyage is the social lubricant that holds people together. Souvenirs, preferably individually-wrapped food, is distributed to colleagues after a trip that has taken you out of the office. The tradition gets expensive, but I don't mind doing it because it's been an ice breaker with my teachers. I think I was most touched when my JTE said that his daughter sleeps with the polar bear stuffed toy that I gave her last year. She calls him "Marron" (Japanese word for "Chestnut"), since his dark brown noise bears a striking ressemblance to the nut. I also can't forget how A-sensei remembered a year later that I handed out flavoured seaweed after my trip to Seoul. (That's right, people like seaweed as a snack.)

- Upon graduation from junior high school, most of my students cannot string together a proper sentence in English. Sure, they have English lessons starting in their first year at JHS. But the education system is so flawed, they don't learn any real communicative skills. Bless their little hearts, though.

- Students bring in their parents' empties for the school's recycling program.

- Drinks at izakayas and karaoke keep flowing.

- The mama-san (lady who owns a snack bar) prepared a banner, birthday cake and presents for my 26th birthday bash. I was never friends with bar owners before...

- It is highly suggested that I wear a surgical mask around illin' elementary school kids. People often wear them when they are coming down with a cold or flu. My JHS students also wear them to mask unsightly blemishes or to avoid being called upon during lessons.

- it's not strange to sing old classics from the Backstreet Boys with your students' mother. (It happened last year. She approached me at the see-saw, and started running through various BSB hits. Cutest thing ever.)

Tomodachi/Kodomodachi

I haven't written about my time back home, nor the whole journey getting out of Fukushima. Leaving Japan from March to April was a tough decision for me, and I haven't quite achieved putting down on paper what I want to say. Coming back was a tough decision, too. I can't tell you how my family, friends and even perfect strangers were asking me if it was the right thing to do. In foreign circles within Japan, people like me were dubbed "flyjin." It's a pun on the word "gaijin," which is slang for "foreigner" in Japanese. Sure, I flew the coop. Then, I came back. No hard feelings, right?

I made the decision to come back. Why? I feel like I belong in my community, but I also know that I will always be on the outside looking in. That is, people were happy to have me back. Even my local cabbies and the taxi dispatcher were pleased I was back in town after such a long time. (And I don't think it's just because I give them relatively good business). It has also been nice seeing friends I haven't seen in ages, and who will soon be scattered across the world in their own hometowns post-JET. On the other hand, it took some of my students a few days to have things pick up where we left off. I'm sure they realized I bounced out of Japan when I didn't show up for work in early April. But I feel like we're OK now. They're starting to tell me all the junior high gossip again, and the first-years tell me how excited they are to be in junior high.

It also really brightened my day to meet the new six-year-olds at one of my elementary schools yesterday. It was their first time to meet with me, and I'm guessing the first time most of them have met a real "foreigner." All day, I could hear them saying: "The English teacher is here! The Englsih teacher is here! Gemma-sensei! HARRRRRO! HARRRO!" Adorable.

I'm also really touched by the text message replies that I've been getting back from some of my kids who have already graduated. I don't really like "talking about my flair," but I am absolutely ecstatic when I hear from them. A-chan, a girl who graduated two years ago, wrote me a massively long e-mail just this evening. She wants to meet up for purikura (ie. taking sticker pictures together in a photo booth.) Her twin sister also texts me, and says she's quite busy trying to find an after-school job. She's now a student with a friend of mine, A-sensei. T-kun, who I saw biking the other day and now sports a cool buzz cut, is always telling me to cop the latest RADWIMPS album. Rice ball-kun writes about playing tennis and still finding English lessons difficult, even though he can write perfectly. Y-kun, who graduated three years ago, but still finds the time to tell me about his home stay experience in Canada. S-chan, who graduated in March, got her younger sister to deliver a handwritten note penned on kawaii Minnie Mouse paper.

I could go on about the other kids in my life, but I should really stop talking about my flair. Overall, all these messages make me feel like I've somehow made a strong connection. It's funny how kids from six to 18 years old are some of the people I know best these days.

I'm gonna miss all of these rugrats.

3.11

It was supposed to be a day of celebration. The third-graders at my school were getting ready for their graduation ceremony. This would be my third time experiencing bidding adieu to the senior students, so I thought I was familiar with the day's schedule.

It started off normally enough. I woke up early to curl my hair and wear my black suit. I parked my car on the soccer field, knowing the teachers' parking lot had to be left clear for the apres-graduation parade. I had my morning coffee in the staff room, then stealthily popped into the homerooms to snap some photos with grads. Everyone was pretty enthusiastic; the boys who never paid attention in English class even agreed to take a photo with me. The lengthy graduation ceremony was pretty routine - there were endless speeches, some songs were sung and the grads solemnly received their certificates from the principal. I shed tears when I saw the students do their final procession. Haruka-chan was the first kid who I saw bawling, so my eyes started welling up, too. It was also really difficult to watch Taiki-kun struggle during the entire ceremony. The poor kid's face lost all colour, and I thought he was going to vomit while sitting rigidly in his chair. Other teachers asked him three times if he wanted to be excused for the bathroom, but he wanted to experience his special day in its entirety. After the ceremony, I snapped more photos with the kids. I was especially excited to see the Takahashi family, because I've taught five of the kids (T-kun, J-kun, K-kun, J- kun and Kinou-chan). When 12:30 rolled around, the parents and the entire student body hopped into their cars or started walking home.

The rest of the teachers and I ate a special bento lunch in the staff room. I then spent the rest of the afternoon waiting for work to finish. I think I cleaned my desk. I placed a glittery knit hair scrunchie on my desk, a farewell gift that sweet Yusei-kun gave me after the ceremony. (I wish I had taken it with me!) A lot of the other teachers must've taken nenkyu, because people kept filtering away. Even my JTE had excused herself, but that's because her poor daughter was stuck at home with the chicken pox.

And then 2:46 p.m. rolled around.

We all felt the familiar rumble of an earthquake. I've experienced them before, and we usually just wait it out calmly. But a few seconds elapsed, and the tremors were getting stronger. The heavy kerosene heater behind my desk swaying. The school alarms started blaring. Things were toppling down from the bookshelves. That's when all of us teachers ran into the hallway. I was crouched on the floor, holding onto door frame with some other teachers. I remember kyoto-sensei closed the emergency slide door, cutting the hallway in half. We looked outside, as a strange snowstorm started brewing.

We waited for what seemed like forever, but it was probably only two or three minutes that we experienced strong waves of the building rocking violently. Dust was flying all over the place, ceiling tiles were jostled and windows cracked. It was so surreal.

When the shaking finally stopped, we ran into the staff room to quickly grab any personal belongings. The teachers' room was an absolute mess. Everyone's desk had been displaced so much, that the drawers spewed out everyone's papers. The heavy bookcases no longer contained binders and the like. I guess I paused for a long moment, because the P.E. teacher, who is one of the friendlier faces in the staff room, grabbed my arm and we both rushed outside. The teachers and I stood in the parking lot, as large snowflakes dropped from the March sky. I remember K-sensei repeatedly saying: "Chotto hen tenki. Chotto hen tenki." ("What strange weather...") And then the sun burst into the sky.

We thought the worst was over. However, we moved onto the soccer field and saw the damages. Poor Motomiya 2nd J.H.S. The sliding doors of each classroom had popped out, while the picture windows were in shards. The old school gym was now leaning to the side, with its walls peeling off like cardboard. Y-sensei had retrieved four helmets from his car, and was wearing one of them. We all joked about his preparedness for disasters.

Then a wave of "aftershocks" followed. They felt so strong that we had to crouch low on the soccer field. I remember holding onto Ooki-sensei's hand, both of us hissing "Kowaiiiii." (Scary...) She's a friendly thirty-something Japanese language teacher at my school. We rarely talk, but I was really grateful for her comfort that day.  Everyone joked that it was a good idea she had changed out of her graduation kimono earlier.

The aftershocks kept going and going. Someone brought out a portable radio. C-sensei told me the earthquake reached 6 on the Japanese scale. (These days, the Tohoku earthquake is considered a 9.0-magnitude earthquake). All of my teachers were getting ready to go home. They suggested I go bunk down with friends for the night. Earlier, I had asked if they had experienced anything like it.

It was a first for everyone.

It would only be in the late evening that I'd learn about the true severity of the earthquake. Sure, my school got destroyed and everything in my house got tossed around. We would see a tsunami wiping out entire cities and villages on the coast. It was like watching a movie. And then we would later about the trouble at the Fukushima nuclear complex...

がんばろう、日本！がんばろう、東北！(Let's hang on Japan. Let's hang on, Tohoku.)