Live in a Box

Well it happened again. A teacher couldn't understand that I have a job.

Some background:

I'm kind of a freelance teacher. I have a main place of work, let's call it Acme School, and sometimes I go to other places and teach as well. Like a piano teacher. You might work a few days at one school, a few days at another, help out a the university even, and fill it out with home lessons, yours or the pupils'.

Ok, so I visit a certain public high school once a week.Let7s call it Kitty Chan High. You might remember it from an earlier blog where teachers who just returned froma long holiday to southeast asia told me that I work like a Japanese because I didn't take a holiday like them, the Japanese teachers. Do you follow? If so, that's good because I don't.

So basically the same thing happened at the same school. It wasn't just a slip or silly small talk. This person who I've worked with for a couple of years, still hasn't figured out that when I don't come to her school, I might actually be doing something else. There's a common perception in Japan that foreigners who live here and teach
1. work about 4 hours a week
2. earn huge sums of cash
3. do this reclining on a nice sofa while one young maiden feeds grapes and another fans with a palm frond.

The reality is it's a pretty good job and I like it, but I don't have insurance, there's zero job security, no bonuses and so on.

So, last week I didn't go to this school because it was test week. The students at Kitty Chan high had one week straight of tests. Ok, so from this other teacher's perspective "Last week was a week of tests." I didn't go to the school for a week. Actually I just didn't go on one wednesday. I only teach there on wednesday morning, so I missed one wednesday, but from this teacher's point of view "This foreign guy had last week off."

Ok, so I came in about 830 wed morning and said hi to the teacher. The first period hadn't begun yet. She said:
"Where did you go?"
I thought she had been looking for me a few minutes before perhaps and thought I might have gone to the bathroom or something. But I didn't understand because I had just gotten there and it was the first time we met that day.
"Sorry, where did I go?"
"Mmm, yes. Where did you go?"
"Just now? I just got here."
"No, before."
"I just got here. I didn't go anywhere before. I just arrived."
"No, no, no, last week. Where did you go?"
Ok, so I figured maybe she was wondering why I didn't come to the school the week before. Maybe she had wanted to discuss something with me.
"Oh, last week? I didn't come here because of the tests."
"Right. So where did you go?"
"Where did I go? I didn't go anywhere. "
She was surprised. "You didn't go back to America or anything?"
That's another thing. It's not a big problem, but while I'm at it, no matter how long you live in Japan, people thing every time you get a day off you rush back to your place of birth.
I thought she was kidding.
"America? Ha, nooo. Why would I do that?"
"Oh well you had last wek off."

See? I didn't enter her world on Wednesday morning so I must have had a holiday. I teach there 3 hours a week and the other 165 hours I'm wrapped up in a coccoon.

So I said "Uh, no last week I didn't go anywhere because I worked. So I went to Acme school and the University."

Actually I teach with her husband at the University and she knows this. I've been doing this for years. Also, Acme school and Kitty Chan High have been working together for 15 years or so. For example, if she needs to contact me she calls or faxes Kitty Chan high. So she knows that such a place exists and maybe that's where they keep me in deep freeze on days other than wednesday.

Now maybe she was tired or had a bad morning I don't know. I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt for the 3rd or 4th time that conversation. If she had just said "Oh yeah, that7s right." we both would have had a laugh.

Instead, she made a certain face that Japanese people are prone to do. It's the "Does not compute face" If you've lived here a few weeks you know what it looks like. The forhead crinkles, the eyes get glassy and wisps of smoke drift out of the ear canal. Then the flowchart requires them to try again.

"You didn't go anywhere?"
"No, I have a job. I didnt come here but I taught at the other schools."
"No trip?"

Does not compute. I gues she figured she had just phrased it wrong or I was being difficult. But I can guarantee you that the next time this situation arises in a few months she'll ask me again.

She thinks I live in a bos and I think she lives in a box.

memos for later.
-hs students
- blind friend

French Riots, poor Japan... who knew?

Please read all of this post before drawing any conclusions.

A few weeks ago there were major riots all over France. It seems an underclass of angry young immigrants and 2nd even 3rd generations of immigrants were fed up with something and set about torching cars, schools and the occaisional disabled bus rider.

Sociologists and historians can debate the causes. I mention it for a different reason.

About a week into the riots, I was in a class and we had run out of things to talk about. But someone had mentioned something about France. So I said "That reminds me, how about those riots? Wow!"

So here's a short take of what happened that day in in the following weeks as they rioting progressed.

After a week of rioting, a lot of my students didn't know. (Everybody had known about Katrina the next day.) Ok, fair enough, not everyone is a news junkie. But, what interested me, and this is why I'm posting this, **is people's explanations for not knowing.** Many of the people who hadn't heard said basically "We are a poor island nation that is cut off from the world... how can we know? We only know about America." Ok, so you weren't there, I was. The tone was that of "Oh that poor man -- he lived in a landlocked arid country, of course he couldn't swim when the ship went down."

There's a lot of ignorant people in America, I agree. But my point here is not that a lot of japanese hadn't heard of the riots, but that as soon as they were acquainted with this information immediately went into "We are a poor helpless society, and the rest of the world is against us, and we are helpless to resist American influence." Were the Japanese always like this? I don't think in the Meji (1870's---)and Taisho eras (about 1920's,) both "modern" periods, people said these things. What has changed?

In the weeks that followed, more and more people talked about the riots. What I gathered from these discussions was:

1. a lot of japanese were shocked, shocked! that there might be any sort of problems related to minorities in France/ Europe.

2. They were shocked that there were slums in Europe. Europeans are cool, fashionable, cultured, egalitarian and rich.

3. The reasons there were problems with katrina in the US is because the US is bigoted and New Orleans was a sinister black city. Blacks were angry in America because of this.We talked about this before. Minorities in France, however, were merely expressing themselves in the time-honored french tradition of rioting and arson, and the month-long mayhem in France was actually an expression of French liberty and independence.

Okay, I fell into sarcasm when writing this, but really, this is the gist of what I got from hours of conversation with dozens of Japanese of various ages and incomes.

Another "Japanese people don't..." post

This one I simply have no idea what to categorize it as.

A text I was using today had a trivia tidbit. The unit's grammar was about dates and numbers, and the trivia was that August is the most popular month (in the US, I assume) for birthdays.

So I asked the students if anyone was born in August. A few of them shook their heads and chuckled. They had strange looks on their face. Then one woman, who is usually the de facto leader of the skeptics in that class, enlightened me:

"Japanese people aren't born in August," she said, as if I had asked an absurd question.

I hear that sort of stuff all the time. It is common here to make those kind of strange, big generalizations.

Blue Eyes, golf superstars and my house

I was teaching a class of 45 high school students the other day. They were about 16 years old. A special class for students who like English.

My eyes are blue and I overheard them say:
"Wow, his eyes are so blue."
"Yeah, they're as blue as an Australian's!"

So maybe there are some Japanese high school students out there that think Australians have particularly blue eyes.

*********************

Last week a rising young superstar named Michele Wie came to Kochi. This was really big news. We are in "the stix" and no one famous, especially someone young and cool and beautiful comes here. We're kind of a punch line sometimes. Anyway, the golf is good here and she came for a big golf tournament.

Some background in case you're reading this sometime in the future. At this time, she is a 16 year old prodigy who just turned pro and is making headlines. She's an American, lives in hawaii and if I'm not mistaken is of Korean descent. But she grew up in the states and if you hear her speak english she sounds more american that i do.

So she came here and even went shopping at the local mall, local restaurants and so on. I know that 6 months ago none of my students knew her name but now everyone does.

So my students asked me f she's famous in America.
Sure I said, very famous.
They were skeptical. Really?
Yeah, she's very famous now. In the news all the time. A beautiful young sports genious? Sure she's famous. Two years ago not so famous but now she's very famous.

Again, disbelief. Because she's of asian descent my students figured she would be famous in Japan but not the US. Even though she grew up in the States and as far as I know doesn't speak a word of Japanese (not to mention the choppy relationship between japan and Korea) people just figured she somehow became famous in a vaccuum, unbeknownst to other Americans and was then invited to an international tournament in Japan where she could be appreciated finally.

The fact that she calls Hawaii home explains a little. here, Hawaii is considered just barely technically a part of the USA.

**************

Yesterday I bought a sofa. The shopclerk (woman, about 6o years old) was using a map to figure out where to deliver it. Even though I've been here a few years, and was conversing in japanese and had just made a "durable goods" purchase with a japanese credit card, she was a bit skeptical that I knew my own address.

I'm getting sidetracked here but I mention it because even though I and most of my foreign friends find the japanse to be very nice and accommodating, it sometimes comes at the price of, I don't know what to call it, respect?

In other words, you could be a brain surgeon and people will clap their hands in glee if they see you use chopsticks. Sure, people are just being nice but imagine how you would feel as an adult if people were constantly pattng you on the head and saying things like "Wow, you can ride a bicycle!" or "Gee, did it take a long time to understand how to use the TV remote control?"

So she found my house finally and said "Wow! You live in a house!" In other words, living in a house is harder for foreigners than living in an apartment.
I kinda played along. "Yeah," I said "and I live there alone too!"
"Wow! That's amazing"

Just a note: sarcasm is rare in Japan. She was truly impressed,
Another note: sorry if this post wandered. I was having a conversation while typing.