Land of the Rising Hair

Recently, I stumbled upon this picture online:

This image pretty clearly sums up all that I knew about Japanese people before 6 months ago. Sure, I'd taken several years of Japanese language and culture classes, but that really only gave me an insight into the inner workings of one Japanese guy, and my final evaluation of Hara-sensei (adorable) didn't really tell me much about the average Japanese person (for one thing, he was mostly bald). I'd played many, many years of video games, though (you know, in case you couldn't tell from the rest of the blog). In the end, I really didn't think that Final Fantasy VIII -- a game that featured slaying monsters by summoning other monsters and a spiky-haired douche with a gun-sword or possibly (sword-gun) -- would be what would give me an accurate portrayal of the modern Japanese person.

But oh, was I wrong.

So very wrong.

My school doesn't have mandatory uniforms (in contrast, Jenn's school mandates both uniforms and black hair), which means two things: 1. my male students don't flirt with death by exposure due to little shorts the way most schools mandate (my female students, naturally, take those risks by wearing tiny skirts), and 2. I get to see the ridiculous things that pass for high fashion over here.

Any given student in any given hallway in any given inner-city school in Japan. And you thought the baggy pants were bad.

I do wish that my students would pay half as much attention to class as they do to their hair. But weirdest of all, it's mostly the boys who put this much effort into their perfectly-coiffed, totally immoble hairdos; the girls color their hair, but that seems to be the extent of it for them. Of course, they make up for it by spending 30% of their waking life putting on makeup.

More on youth culture and boys doing things that would get them beaten up in the U.S. later.

Misunderestimation

As you may have gleaned from some of the posts on this blog:

1. If the entire surface of the Earth can be conceptualized as an immense cosmic dartboard hurtling through space, then each living human being could be represented by an individual dart in that board.

2. Furthermore, if there were a scale that measured human intelligence and capacity to learn a foreign language (represented herein as the "sharpness" of each individual "dart"), then naturally there would be a wide variation in sharpness evident in any given sample of people.

3. Bearing in mind points 1 and 2, I would posit that the relative sharpness of the students in my classes at Sakishima High School would be below the 50-percentile mark for the overall dart board.

Zing! And a new record for world's longest non-gorilla-related set-up!

Anyway.

My experiences teaching high school students have often been somewhat...what's the term? Disappointing? Yeah, OK, disappointing. Xenu knows I don't spend all my time at work writing lesson plans and...you know, working -- I'm at work as I'm writing this, for one thing -- but I do spend a great deal of time planning out lessons that will engage the students and help them have enough fun learning English that they might put their cell phones away for 30 seconds. I think I'm at least a decently smart guy, I've got some experience in a classroom, I have a passable knowledge of the English language. In short, I really, really think that with sufficient effort and practice, I can get through to these students, I can push past their apathy and make them learn some English even if they really, really, almost monomaniacally don't want to. The problem is, there are all these obstacles in the way.

Obstacle (ŏb'stə-kəl): n. This sonofabitch right here.

For instance, there's the textbook, Green Prep English. We go chapter-by-chapter at a pace secretly coordinated by the other English teachers; the process they use to determine when to move to the next chapter is a trade secret, but I have a theory that involves the alignment of the planets and the behavior of a decades-old Tamagochi. What's worse is that each chapter covers what I've been told is a fundamental, elementary part of English grammar, which comes as a bit of a surprise; little known fact, English-speakers: did you know that the difference between "going to" and "will" is, measured by coverage in this book, exactly as important either the present or past tense? You learn something new every day, huh?

I frequently feel that the greatest obstacle, however, is neither the materials nor the students, but the teachers with whom I have to work. Like pretty much all gaijin employed in public schools over here, I teach all of my classes in coordination with Japanese Teachers of English (JTEs). Some gaijin are little more than "human tape recorders" (the actual term used by most recruiting organizations), in charge of taking attendance and reading dialogues aloud; others are asked to plan and carry out all lessons, plus they have to get coffee for all of the JTEs. In my case, I'm in charge of...actually, I'm still figuring that out. Let me walk you through the process:

1. I attempt to deduce where in the textbook we are.
2. I try to somehow come up with a game or activity that lets student practice the difference between "must" and "have to."
3. I finish preparing the lesson, then get ready to show it to the JTE.
4. I wait for the JTE to come back from other classes, lunch, business trips, climbing Mt. Fuji, whatever they're doing, I dunno.
5. The JTE says, "OK, no problem." / The JTE says, "I think maybe it's too hard for the students." Go back to Step 2, remove half of the activity, repeat as necessary.
6. Stand in front of class and laboriously explain what we're doing today.
7. JTE translates into Japanese / JTE hangs out and shoots the shit with the students.

By no means am I a perfect teacher. Frankly, some of my activities have sucked. Plus, as much as I would like to convince myself otherwise, I really do need a Japanese speaker in the classroom; my Japanese is good enough that I can spout off the occasional phrase in class (this usually elicits gasps from the students), but not good enough to keep order in the classroom or explain complex concepts or directions. And of course, some activities fail through my own planning or classroom behavior. But the thing that really kills me every time, that puts me into full-on shirt-ripping purple-pants mode is Step 5 above, where the JTE tells me that the activity is "too hard" for the students, that they "can't do it."

Some of the activities that I plan are too hard, I'll admit that, and I need to learn to tone down the demands of students' vocabularies, sure. But last week, to practice using the future tense "will" form, on Jenn's excellent recommendation, I planned an activity that focused on making those little origami fortune-tellers. To make it as simple as possible, I would print out templates all ready to be folded, we would brainstorm fortunes together and I'd write them on the board; all that was required of students is that they copy sentences from the blackboard onto paper and that they fold paper according to directions and demonstrations. My JTE said, "I think maybe it's too hard for them, the folding. Some of the students can't make things, it's too hard maybe."

SO. HARD.

I tried to compromise, really I did. She suggested that I just make four or five really big fortune tellers that I could show to them, and maybe they could write in them in pencil and then I could erase what they'd written and just do it already. I spent an hour folding huge posterboard origami fortune tellers, having them rip as soon as I was finished. Then: f*** it.

Guns blazing, laying mushroom clouds, I approached the JTE and politely told her that I would prefer to do things the way I originally recommended for many prudent reasons, if it's OK with her, sorry for asking, okay, sorry.

And you know what? Before I had even started giving directions on how to fold them, half of the class had already finished folding theirs. Yeah, we had problems with coming up with paying attention and with writing English fortunes -- it wasn't until the end of the class that they realized they could be dicks and use "You will die" or "You will have 100 children" -- but overall, a smashing success.

Students should be feared, mistrusted, and occasionally noogied. They should not be underestimated, however.

Those Who Battle with Teenagers

(Hey, kids! Today's literary technique is in media res!)

Head lying against my tiny little desk, shoulders slumped, I struggled mightily to cast the afternoon's events in a positive light before any of the other teachers made it back to the English Office; Remember, you're a stranger here, you're a cultural ambassador, the burden of understanding and adapting is on you, I told myself, choking back mouthfuls of ire.

The previous class period had been class G, what Watanabe-sensei calls with characteristically disarming candor, "the worst class" (I'd be inclined to believe him were it not for the fact that every one of my teachers claims that one of theirs is "the worst class"). We played Godzilla Jeopardy, a little game I'd picked up from Jenn that had gone over pretty well in F class. 6 students showed up to G class. Fifteen minutes into class, and we'd finished dividing them into teams and having them pick team names...one student was asleep, three were talking. A little under par, even for G class, the worst class in the worst school in the prefecture (which, if my pop culture trivia is accurate, would make me Mr. Kotter, right?).

Harry's mental picture of his students.

After a good ten minutes of watching two students (both of whom were on the same team, as it happens) dominate the game, I gritted my teeth in a psycho-killer grin, sidled up to one of the talking trio, and sweetly asked her to move the other side of the room. After Watanabe-sensei translated, she complied and proceeded to sulk as one of her companions began to pay attention and the other took out his cell phone. Well, I thought, that's progress. I tried to continue the game with the 50% participation boost, but I couldn't tear my eyes away from the kid with the cell phone. Poor damned fool that I am, I thought I'd make another try at increasing participation (of course, I belong to the horror movie character archetype known as the Doomed Optimist, the kind of guy whose last words are "Oh, c'mon, guys, there's no such thing as vampi-hurrrgh."). Another trick I'd learned from Jenn, one recommended by the JET Program: if a student is playing with their cell phone, just take it away from them! Sounded simple enough, though I'd never had the spine to actually try it.

He didn't even bother to look up as I stopped the game, approached him, and yanked the phone, a sinister purple doodad with a tiger-tail charm, out of his hand. He looked up in astonishment and said something about a "geemu" as I smugly held it away from him and explained that he would get it back at the end of class. I returned to Jeopardy only to see a moment later that he had produced a second cell phone from somewhere. I made a move to approach, and he put it away with a scowl. That's right, kid. Who's the boss around here? Uh-huh.

Of course, it was out again within 30 seconds. I tried, I really tried to ignore it, but I was fixated and still puffed-up from my earlier success (really, my greatest achievement in terms of physical prowess). I made a move for it again, and this time he hissed something in Japanese at me when I took it. I marched back to the front of the room, phone in hand, patting myself on the back, only dimly aware of somebody moving behind me. I set it on the desk and turned back to the class, now noticing that the student was lumbering menacingly towards me. In a flash, Watanabe-sensei was somehow holding both of the cell phones and...what? He's handing them back to the student? How the hell can I work under these conditions? I can't believe he totally undermined me like that!


It was all I could do to make it through the rest of class (Team Cucumber beat Team Young Master by 800 points, if you were wondering). I just couldn't stop fuming at Watanabe-sensei...how could he so blatantly contradict my disciplinary actions in front of the students? Why wasn't he taking charge of class himself?

The door slid open. I sat up straight, pulling my head off the desk fast enough to give me a pain in the neck (one unrelated to students, for a change). We nodded at one another, then I just let the tension smolder as we both stared off into space for awhile. Finally, I worked up the courage to ask, as sensitively as possible, if I did anything wrong by taking that student's phones.

He laughed. Of course, he always laughs when he speaks English, even when having an extremely uninteresting conversation; it's a very endearing character trait for the first 20 minutes or so, really. He stalled for a few moments, hemming and hawing (pronounced "eeto" and "anno" in Japanese). Then he explained, cryptically: "They have no feelings for themselves, but their phones..."

I tried my best to see this as a learning opportunity. Picture him as Yoda, it'll help; their English skills are roughly equivalent. "So, what should I do next time? You know, the next time a student won't put down their cell phone."

He laughed again, and stalled a little more. The students call him "Old Man-sensei," which is funny, because he doesn't look much older than 35 to me (which probably means that he's actually about 50). Somewhat nervously, he said, "When you take their phones away, they become...(unintelligable), and..." Brilliant? They become brilliant when you take away their phones? Then, still puffing out weak, nervous little laughs, he mimed a fist coming in my direction. Oh, belligerent. Oh. Oh.

The incident was cast in a new light: I wasn't being undermined by an unprofessional, weak-willed teacher, I was saved from physical harm by the superhuman reflexes and diplomacy of a saintly mentor.

Harry's updated mental picture of his students.

I'm still not sure what to take away from this. A month ago, I told ECC that I'd be really very happy to stay here at Sakishima, really, I absolutely love it here, no problems at all, though if they might possibly have an opening somewhere else where my skills could be put to a little better use, I might kinda sort of possibly be cool with that, if it's not too much trouble. Unemployment has that effect on me. I guess if I've learned anything, it's to completely forget what I've been trying to teach myself since my first day here: don't be afraid of these students.

Legend of the 47 Ronin and All their Friends and Relatives and Acquaintances, Parts VII-XI

We're all about the culture over here in Japan. So far, we've been to see bunraku puppet theater, noh theater (good for all of your "Who's On First?"-style comedic skit needs), a ryokan, numerous onsen, and a Maid Cafe. All of these classic Japanese cultural touchstones have been extremely well attended by Japanese people, if not enthusiastically so: Jenn has informed me that most of the crowd at the noh theater slept through it. The point is, people here make an effort to experience culture! Even if they find it stultifyingly boring, they go anyway, usually dressed in kimono, because that's just what you do.

In contrast, American Culture is a rather sketchy thing. For most Americans, culture is one of those things that happens to other people: sure, sure, there are art museums, operas, concerts, movie theaters, and malls. The thing is, most of these are also available in other countries, and the average trip to an American art museum or classical music concert will be a showcase of European works with a smattering of American and "world" (i.e., everywhere else) exhibits. They have art museums, operas, concerts (we've seen four punk bands and four ska bands in the last few months), movie theaters (usually playing American movies), malls, and KFCs here, too. I'm not saying there are no uniquely American art forms, but when was the last time you went to a jazz club or an improv comedy show because that's just what you do? [/tangent]

So, in order to gain a deeper understanding of Japan and Japanese people, Jenn and I attended a kabuki performance earlier this week. In the end, we confirmed what we had known pretty much all along: Japanese people are crazy.

(A quick side note: with this blog post, I'm walking on some familiar territory that hopefully will stay a few steps away from Shameless Rip-Off Land. Dave Barry already covered kabuki pretty thoroughly in his masterwork of cross-cultural dialogue. I will attempt to stray from stealing from him too much; I got over my wanting-to-be-Dave-Barry phase shortly before I resumed wanting to be a pirate.)

The play that we saw was called Kanadehon Chūshingura. Actually, technically, that's not true; our show began at 4:30, and we found out upon buying our programs that we had signed up for the second half of a series of selected acts from Kanadehon Chūshingura. The people we had seen pouring out of the theater at 4:15 were just getting out of the first half, which started at 11 a.m. Clearly, we were in for the long haul. Even more incredible is the fact that this was a 4:30 show on a Tuesday and there wasn't an empty seat in the theater.

Kabuki represents a very specific, highly stylized part of Japanese performance tradition involving period costumes, painted faces, and exaggerated poses:

Specifically, the goofy part of Japanese performance tradition. If they got a dozen more people on stage at once, it would have been a full-fledged ska concert.

Actually, "goofy" has some historical accuracy; the word kabuki has its etymological roots in the verb that translates as "to be out of the ordinary," and the aesthetic of kabuki dress and manner is based on a 16th-century group of itinerant, oddly-dressed thugs who posed as samurai and acted in an outrageous, eccentric fashion (sort of like theatrical productions by the SCA or Klingon Hamlet, if you will).

Klingons were actually on my mind pretty often during Chūshingura; the plot, based on actual historical events with the names and era changed (yes, like Law and Order!), concerned a group of samurai who seek to avenge their lord who was made to commit ritual suicide by the unscrupulous actions of a rival nobleman. I found the focuses of the various acts to be really interesting from a narrative perspective: it's a basic revenge story at its core, so I expected approximately a Kill Bill-type story arc, where we see the conspirators arm themselves, make their way to their target, and surmount one obstacle after another in their relentless pursuit of their goal. Here's a summary of the acts that we were able to see:

• Act VII: The head samurai diverts suspicion from the revenge conspiracy by hanging out with geishas all day and pretending to get tanked. Meanwhile, the play's comic relief tries to get the protagonist to let him join the conspiracy, and the protagonist tries to kill a geisha who overhears their plotting.

• Act VIII: Dancing.
  
  
• Act IX, which resolves most of the plotlines of the ancillary characters that we've been listening to for hours: Not performed.
  
  
• Act X: The conspirators take time off from their busy schedule to construct an extremely elaborate test of loyalty for the merchant from whom they bought their weapons. Hey, even insatiable engines of vengeance need to have some fun, right?
  
  
• Act XI: They storm the castle, kill the evil dude and live happily ever after.

The ending diverges slightly from the historical events: the original conspirators didn't so much "live happily ever after" as "kill themselves." But after 11 hours sitting in theater seats, the management knew that there would probably be a riot if they kept too close to the facts (especially since sake and beer were sold in the lobby).

The highlight of the production was probably the kid they got to play the merchant's 4-year-old son, mostly because I was able to understand his lines (like "お父さん！こわい！", "Dad! Scary!"). Also, he looked as bored as most of the audience. B+.

Maid in Japan

Source: http://admintell.napco.com/

"I don't think I can do this," Jenn said, quite reasonably.

"Guys, come on," I replied. "We can totally do this. It's an important cultural experience! Besides, it's Steve's last day in Japan, and we need to show him the weird side of Japan, right?"

We steeled and screwed our various positive qualities and marched resolutely down the block towards the inscrutable hot-pink sign. Grinning like fiends, Jenn, Steve and I walked by the door and, with all the spine and grit of three of the less dignified Little Rascals, peered in the window at the den of sin (peered, that is, casually, from the sidewalk, at great distance and increasing speed). I continued our charge to several safe paces beyond the doorway before anyone could see us.

"No, I don't think I can do this," I whined. "No way." We loitered there for a second and caught our breaths, the only people standing on the block.

The time: New Year's Eve 2009, 4 p.m..

The place: In the middle of one of Osaka's hepper districts, Den-Den Town, the one-stop shopping district for all your electronics, porn, and fanboy-related needs. More specifically, about 30 feet from the door of メイドドルチェ, meido doruchie, a real-life Maid Cafe. Go ahead and read the Wikipedia entry -- we did before going, which explains our sheer terror at the prospect of going into one of these places.

Pictured: the den of SIN.

It was Steve who managed to marshal our courage enough to actually go inside. In the grand tradition of Henry V and General Patton, he squared his jaw and told us that he really, really needed to pee. We had no choice.

Maid Cafes are, in a nutshell, cafes where all of the waitresses dress and act like maids. I'll let that sink in for a minute. There. Customers are addressed, more or less, as "Miss" and "Master." Tables are equipped with little silver bells for summoning your server, who is paid to smile and make conversation with you. Our cafe, Dolce, had a very low Maid-to-customer ratio (about 1:1, actually). Some wore what I had expected, the traditional French getup immortalized in costume shops everywhere, but more were pushing the boundaries of what is considered "Maid." Some had cat-ear headbands. One wore a male butler's outfit with the addition of high-heeled boots. One wore full-body cow pajamas. And somehow Wikipedia asserts that there's nothing sexual about these places.

There was a wait for the restroom, and I tried not to think about the reasons for this...the least icky possibility is that the bulk of Dolce's sales came from diuretics like liquor and coffee. We were greeted by all of the maids as we entered and were led to a table. The place was actually a little dingy. Surprisingly dirty considering how many Maids it had standing around at all hours. The walls were bedecked with glossy photos of the Maids in various costumes and positions, as well as calendars that featured photos and the Maids' birthdays. Honestly, the closest equivalent in the States would probably be Hooters. Except without sports.

Eyes bugged out, shit-eating grins on our faces, we tried to get over the fact that we were probably paying by the hour for the privilege of enjoying the service of these women (and, being freethinking feminists all, the greater moral implications of this fact, specifically the ones that rhyme with frostifrushun).

We were not unpleasantly surprised to see that Dolce dealt in a wide variety of cocktails, each only 500 yen. They ordered margaritas, I took my chances with a goddofaaza, which turned out to be a huge portion of whiskey served over big, manly ice cubes in the biggest, most masculine glass I have ever seen. Badda-bing.

After a short period where we divided our time between sipping our drinks and avoiding making eye contact with the Maids, one of them (ohgodohgod the cow PJs one ohgod she's coming right over here) approached our table and showed us some photo albums, using her best English. It was a nice conversation, I guess, though she seemed pretty disappointed when I answered her "Do you like manga?" question honestly.

In the end, we each paid 300 yen for our hour of taking up their table space, not counting the drinks. Massages were offered at seemingly reasonable rates, but we had had our fill of Temporary Consumer Servility (plus, we probably would have exploded if we had actually had physical contact with any of the Maids; being in the same room was hard enough). It was a time as bizarre as it was short. Incidentally, there are no pictures from us because they charge you to take pictures inside the sacred demesnes of Cafue Doruchie. That's how they roll.

Ever since we went, Jenn has been saying, "I still can't believe we went to a Maid Cafe." I think Steve summed up all of our feelings very succinctly when he broke our awkward silence by saying, "I hope I can still live within 100 meters of a school after coming to this place."