Broken Tooth and Village People

Broke a molar last week while eating nori.  Nori.  Went to my dentist in Gunma.  He repaired it in less than 30 minutes and it cost me ¥2070.  Since it wasn’t too far from where I used to live, I hopped on the electric blue village van for a quick visit. Four of my former students were on there:  Hakura, Ririko, Yoshinosuke and Rin.  Was so happy to see them.  They’re tenth and twelfth graders now!  We chatted a bit, then I let them get back to their video games and music. 

On the ride up the mountain the sky opened up in a sudden thunderstorm.  Up until then, the day had been bright, hot and humid.  The forecast hadn’t even said there’d be rain.  But then, the mountain seems to have its own weather system.  A few minutes after arriving at the village, it became a light drizzle.  As I walked down the hill from the gas station, a woman jumped out of a white pick-up truck, ran across the street and held a burgundy colored umbrella at me.  “Please take it.”  I was surprised, but then not.  This is how people are in the village.  I miss that.   

June 10, 2020

Advantages & Disadvantages to Living in the Inaka

Inaka is the Japanese word for countryside.  My first two years in Japan I lived in a tiny village in Gunma.  It was so mountainous and rural that I had to take a two-hour bus ride to get to the closest small city and train station.  From there, it was a two-hour train ride to Tokyo.  While traveling outside of the village was inconvenient, there were many advantages. 

1.  You spend less.  There are no stores to waste money on. The cost of living is cheaper.  My monthly rent was less than $100 USD, in contrast, an apartment a quarter of the size of mine goes for $900+ USD in Tokyo and other large cities. Great for paying off debt or saving.

2.  You have more time to develop hobbies, take online courses, etc.

3.  People in rural areas are less likely to Speak English, which means that you get lots of opportunity to learn and practice the language.

4.  Country people are universally friendlier than city people.

5.  You feel like part of the community.

6.  Free produce:  the countryside is full of generous farmers.  I constantly got free fruits and vegetables from my neighbors, co-workers and other villagers.

7.  Country schools have smaller classes, and country children are universally better behaved.

8.  There are lovely views of the mountains, especially in spring and autumn. The night sky is gorgeous.  It’s peaceful.

The disadvantages to living in the Inaka:

1.  People are always in your business because that’s how small villages work. Gossipers are on overdrive. 

2.  If you’re different. You will stick out.  There is no blending in.  You will be noticed everywhere.

3.  It can be isolating.  My first year, I went four months without seeing any other foreigners.  During winter break I attended a Kwanzaa celebration in Yokohama and wanted to run up and hug everybody there. 

4.  You will run into very traditional, provincial thinking.  For example, it’s not unusual for people to get married young, like in their late teens or early 20s.  Another example is blatant sexism or rigid sexual roles. A co-worker once whispered to me that one of our administrators took the trash and recycling out.  When I failed to see a problem with that, he explained that that was his wife’s duty. Yeah, juicy gossip.

5.  Specific to where I lived: winters were bitter cold.  This was made worse by the fact that most houses and apartments in Japan don’t have central heating.  

2019 

My Dispatch Company Cons

I faired pretty well with my dispatch company.  With only about 30 teachers, it’s a small one.  All the schools it supplies are in northern Saitama or southern Gunma.  They pay by the month, not per day or per hour, which is great.  Some of my friends work for companies that will subtract money from their salary if they leave work an hour early for a doctor’s appointment.  Not so with mine.   I have two main issues with my company. 

(1) They pay cash.  Cash!  In the year 2020!  Never in my life had I ever before been paid cash for full-time or part-time work.   In Korea and the U.S., as soon as you get hired they ask for your bank information so they can set up direct deposit.  With my company here, each month I get an envelope stuffed with ¥10000, ¥5000 and ¥1000 notes along with some coins and a tiny pay stub.  The amount is always accurate, so I’m not worried about not getting what I’ve earned.  It’s just that one month’s salary in cash is not the type of money you want to be carrying around. 

When the company began in the 1980s, paying people cash was probably the norm, but times change.  Japanese people are loathe to change, though.  “This is the way we’ve always done it.  Why change?”  So typical.  After I set up my bank account, I asked Ochiai-san, the company owner, if she could do direct deposit.  She refused.  “If I do that, I won’t see you once a month.”  When you do see me, you talk for 2.5 minutes and then you’re on your way back down the mountain.  So what’s the point?

At first, she was expecting me to go to her office in Saitama to pick up my salary.  That’s five hours and ¥4000 roundtrip.  No way.  People with cars or those who live paycheck-to-paycheck can do that mess.  

My school was the most remote of all the schools serviced by the company.  All the others are in easily accessible small cities and towns.  In order to reach the village, you have to drive up a windy mountain road.  Although Ochiai-san drives herself everywhere else, she’s afraid of driving on the mountainous road that leads to my Gunma village, so whenever she goes, her secretary, husband or IT guy drive her.  I guess sometimes she was unable to get someone to driver her, so I sometimes got two or three months’ salary at once.  Lucky for her, I’m good with money, so I can be patient.   

My second year, the new elementary English teacher was a recent university grad from the U.S.  He was up to his neck in debt, had no budgeting skills and liked to spend money unnecessarily.  He often had very little money left at the end of the pay period.  So when payday was approaching, he talked about nothing else.  And then he would take the bus to the town at the bottom of the mountain ( ¥2500 roundtrip) where Ochiai-san would meet him with his envelope.  Not I. 

This is why there are so many money frauds in Japan that don’t exist anywhere else, because people walk around with wads of cash rather than use cards or do electronic transfers.  My co-teacher told me that several of our co-workers do not trust ATMs and only go to the bank when tellers are open.  These people are in their 40s and 50s, not old at all. 

(2) Most of its teachers have Japanese ancestry or are married to Japanese people and have been living here for more than ten years.  That’s a problem for a newcomer like me because they’re not used to providing teachers with the help that other companies (with single, foreign teachers) are accustomed to providing. 

When my boss went with me to find an apartment in Saitama, it was her first time ever doing such a thing.  When we finished the hours-long process, she exclaimed at how involved it all was.   She’s been in business some 35 years and had never helped an employee get an apartment. When it came time to move, I asked if her husband could drive my stuff from Gunma to Saitama in his pickup truck.  “Find a moving company online,” she said, flippantly.  Bitch, what?  Do I look like a hafu to you?  Do I have a Japanese husband or relative to help me with that?  I can read katakana and hiragana, but websites are full of kanji.  And how would I even begin to find a moving company online?  I’m a very independent person and try to do as much for myself as I can. So when I ask for help, it’s with great effort and it’s because I really need it.  Don’t wave me off just because other employees don’t need the same help. 

Good-bye Gunma

This summer I left my mountain village in Gunma and moved to Saitama. After two years, I decided it was time to move on and get a taste of life in a less rural part of Japan.

The July morning sun was streaming through the windows pleasantly onto the teachers and students. The end-of-semester ceremony was like all the other ceremonies: speeches, certificates, more speeches. In other words, boring. Then Terayama-sensei, the tall, barrell-chested, jovial P.E. teacher, who was serving as master of ceremonies calls to me. “Guaria-sensei. Speech!” Japanese folks love their ceremonies and speeches, so I knew I wasn’t going to get away without giving one. I’d prepared a six-sentence speech. I walked to the front and faced the student body. First, Shogo, one of the ninth graders presented me with a bouquet of flowers. Then, Yoshinosuke, another ninth grader read a letter he’d written about his best memory of me as his teacher.

“Good morning, girls and boys,” I said my usual greeting as if it were the beginning of class. “Good morning, Ms. Guaria,” they answered in unison. In a millisecond the realization came over me that this was the last time we would exchange greetings like this. I was overcome by emotion. Immediately my eyes filled with tears and my throat tightened. I had to pause twice during my brief speech, tears streaming down my face, to regain my composure. I managed to get through it without becoming a complete blubbering mess and stood at the back during the rest of the ceremony.

After it was over, Kozue approached me, “Ms. Guaria...” I could tell she was searching for words to say. Finally, she said, “Thank you for two years.” And the waterworks began again. I thanked her and patted her arm. I would have given her a hug, but Japanese people are not huggers. And I’d seen some of the painfully awkward hugs people were giving each other at the last two graduations. But the kid wouldn’t budge! She just stood there staring at me meaningfully. Finally, I mumbled something and made my way down to the staff room. I felt hot and spent. There, the Kyoto-sensei (the vice-principal) presented me with a farewell gift of large, square hanko, which read “Lindo-sensei” with my name in kanji (Chinese characters). That was brief, so I was able to hold it together.

I had made coasters on a sewing machine in the home economics room as farewell gifts during my free periods. One side was traditional Japanese fabric and the other, African wax print. I placed one on each desk in the staff room with little cakes I’d bought from Shizuoka. They loved it. The principal was especially impressed. He kept saying “Lindo-sensei blah-blah-blah, handmado!” Apparently, Kyoto-sensei didn’t think what they’d given me had been enough because he started having discussions about me with the secretary and principal. He came up for air to ask me about my official last day (it was Tuesday). The next week, he brought me a gift bag with local hand woven gifts, a mini-album with photos from the current semester and other goodies.

Then Kozue and Airu, two ninth graders, both, separately gave me letters. Kozue wrote a letter saying that she disliked English, but after two years with me as her teacher, she like it and wishes she hadn’t been shy to practice with me the first year. I was such a touching letter that it started me crying all over again. Not only is she smart, she has a type of kindness and compassion that is often characteristic of children who grow up with a disabled sibling (her sister has a developmental disability). She is also super-caring and patient with that boat-load of dorky boys that is her homeroom class. After I read the letter I went, found her and did give her a hug. And it wasn’t awkward at all. 

**Will add photos later. 

December 25, 2019

Don’t Erase Guaria-sensei’s Skin!

When I first arrived at my school in Gunma my co-teacher, Sakamoto-sensei, was apprehensive. I was very different from all the other foreign teachers he’d worked with. 1) I had more years of teaching experience than he (he had been shown my résumé), while most were new university grads for whom this was their first real job. 2) I am taller than him by at least ten centimeters. And he has a complex about his height. 3) I am older than him. In the Confucian scheme of things, the older person has the upper hand. Then again, also according to Confucius, men are superior to women, so whatever. And 4) I am Black. New territory for him. So, until he got to know me and got more comfortable, Sakamoto-sensei was extra-careful not to offend.

The special education class at that junior high school only had two third grade (same as grade nine) students. Early on, I noticed that my co-teacher made an absolute minimal effort to teach their classes. He was content to let them do the same exercises and play the same games over and over because “They’re not taking the entrance exam to get into one of the better high schools, so they don’t need English” (as if tasking an entrance exam for a competitive high school is the only reason to learn foreign language). So, although we planned and taught all the other classes together, I took over planning and teaching of this class, and he was happy to let me. He’d show up late to class, do grading for another class, and sometimes leave early.

I told him, in the most diplomatic way I could, that if I were the mother of a child with a learning disability, I’d want his teachers to put forth their best effort. Both students happen to be only children of single mothers. I even brought that up. These boys are precious to their mothers. We should do our best for them. It was like talking to the wall, so I quit trying to convince him and channeled my energy to working with them. I was dismayed to discover that this is not an uncommon way of thinking among educators, in general, and my co-workers in particular. Japan is a place where uniformity is of utmost importance, so if you learn differently, you aren’t going to find a whole lot of understanding or accommodations. For the most part, the Japanese educational system is one-size-fits-all, and if you don’t fit the mold you’re considered mendokusai…troublesome, bothersome and not worth the extra work.

Instead of standing over the boys, I’d sit between them so I could help them with their assignments as needed. One morning, in my first month there, I sat between Junki and Kotaro as they did their work. At one point, my arm got tangled up with Kotaro’s and he accidentally marked my forearm with his pencil. He promptly grabbed his eraser and began to rub my arm with it. Mr. Sakamoto, who hadn’t been paying attention to us, looked up in horror at that moment and, not knowing the context of Kotaro’s actions, immediately commanded him to stop and to apologize. I tried to tell the man to calm down, the kid wasn’t trying to erase my brown skin, he was only erasing a pencil mark, but he was so busy scolding him that he could not hear me. The confused boy apologized to me and didn’t know why. Being new to the country, I didn’t even know how to say “It’s okay,” in Japanese. So I said it in English and hoped that, he would understand my tone, if not my words.

March 5, 2020

The Nail That Sticks Out Gets Hammered Down

Ai-chan tries really hard in school. She does well too. While most girls at the junior high school wear their hair in ponytails or short bobs she wears hers in two thick braids. Eight months into my time in Gunma, she started missing school. Through the other teachers’ bizarre explanations, I came to realize that she was suffering from anxiety and depression (“She doesn’t want to get out of bed. She cries too much at home. She afraid to go outside.”). I prayed that her parents could find qualified people to help her through this. In many ways, the field of psychiatry is still in its infancy in Japan because general attitudes toward mental health issues are stuck in the 1940s.

By the time I left Gunma, she had just started coming back to school a few days per week. Most Japanese people don’t understand mental illness and treat it like weakness of character or lack of willpower. Therefore, some of her teachers saw her absenteeism as bothersome. Whenever I saw her, I always greeted her and told her that I was happy to see her. Apparently this meant a lot to her and she wrote me a letter saying so.

She is also a Jehovah’s Witness in a school full of non-religious or barely Buddhist people, so that also added to her reputation as a wierdo. One teacher said, “Her family goes to church three or four times every week. Can you believe it??” I told him, yes, I can. Jehovah’s Witnesses are common in the West and I’ve had JW classmates, friends and colleagues. He was shocked. He thought they were rare. 

Many Japanese traditions are rooted in Shintoism and/or Buddhism, so when there were school events she couldn’t participate in for religious reasons, I’d keep her company. It was just the decent thing to do. I didn’t want her to feel ostracized or punished for being different (which, in the land where conformity is king, it is the modus operandi).  

An often-repeated Japanese proverb says that “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down…” That’s all well and good if you’re literally referring to nails, but people aren’t nails and diversity shouldn’t be punished. Especially when it’s things outside of our control.  

December 27, 2019

Google Translate is Not Your Friend

I discovered that one of my 9th graders had used an online translator to do last night’s homework. I wasn’t angry. He thought he was clever and nobody had probably ever told him that using such tool for homework is cheating. 

I’ve been reading his writing for the last four terms, so I’m familiar with it. Therefore, when I saw the paragraph he wrote last night, I was immediately suspicious. First, it contained none of his usual mistakes. Second, he was using grammatical concepts that were far beyond his level. Even my co-teacher was unfamiliar with some of the turns of phrase the student had used. Also, not only are the mistakes that a translation program makes obviously discernable by a native speaker, but different from those a human language learner makes. Besides, the difference between the homework he turned in yesterday and today was so drastic, that I’d have to be blind not to notice. I discussed it with my co-teacher and after class we had a chat with him. I told him that he wouldn’t be penalized this time, but he’d have to re-do the assignment and promise not to do be lazy and use a translator again because I can tell when he does. He looked embarrassed when we spoke to him, and I honestly don’t think he’ll do it again. But it’s was amusing that he thought he could get away with doing this. 

It reminded me of a similar, but less pleasant situation I encountered when I taught high school Spanish in Washington, DC. I had marked down a student’s (I’ll call him Bill) project because he had obviously used a translator. In this case, he was a Level I student, and I’d been the only teacher he’d ever had, so there was no question what vocabulary and grammar he was familiar with and capable of using. His father called a meeting with the principal, one of the vice-principals and me. 

Bill’s father raged about how teachers like me don’t want to see Black boys get ahead. Excuse me? Could he not see that I’m Black? Secondly, the majority of the boys in my classes were Black and earning decent grades, so his point was pure nonsense. He was clearly one of those irritating people who cries racism at every perceived injustice even in situations where it quite decidedly is not the case. He wouldn’t let up and kept asserting that Bill had done all the work himself despite the fact that he was incapable of replicating any of those sentences on his own, AND the head teacher of the World Language department had reviewed his work and agreed that he’d most certainly used an online translator. He said that he didn’t want anybody to lose their job, but people like me shouldn’t be teaching. Again, he repeated the preposterous accusation about me wanting to keep Black boys down. 

Bill was his parents’ youngest child and only boy. He had two older sisters who were in their 30s (which leads me to believe that he was probably a change of life baby). He was coddled & spoiled and could do no wrong in his parents’ eyes. He was not really a bad kid, but he was annoyingly immature and disruptive. During the meeting, I remember suppressing the urge to tell the father, “I hope Bill likes orange, because that’s what he’ll be wearing if you blindly defend him every time he does something wrong and never learns to be responsible and honest.” Instead I said something aptly professional and diplomatic. He mentioned his annoyance at my calmness. One of us had to keep our head. What did he want, a screaming match. You got the wrong teacher, pops.

Most of my students’ parents were reasonable and supportive, but every year, I had one ridiculous parent who was a hassle to deal with. That year, he was the one. 

Bill should be about 21 years old now. I wonder what he’s up to these days. 

January 18, 2019