Respect

   Thanks to Azrael and his posts at Outpost Nine, one of the most well-known aspects of teaching in Japan is the kancho -- a "game" where kids shove their pointed index fingers up your ass.

   I have a bunch of problems with this on so many levels. It's always bothered me that the one thing everyone seems to know (and popularize) is this stupid game. It just exaggerates the lack of respect everyone has for ALTs, including the ALTs themselves!

   I'm not denying that it happens.

   I feel like the practice of being kanchoed is something that's more the ALT's fault than anything. Yes, it would be nice if students would stop doing it, and of course, it would be nice if teachers would discipline them. But they won't and they don't -- there's nothing that ALTs can do about that.

   On the other hand, ALTs are pretty much the only ones (playmates aside) that get kanchoed. This tells me that it's likely an issue with ALTs rather than the kids. The way I worded the first sentence of this paragraph should give you a hint about what I think the problem really is: ALTs are more like playmates than teachers.

   A lot of people who come over here want to be friends with the kids; I'm not denying that I don't feel that way, because I certainly do. My kids are all incredibly important to me and I enjoy talking and playing with them. At the same time, though, I'm a teacher, so there are certain lines that I have to establish.

   Those lines, ironically enough, weren't as firm at my old school, despite it having much stiffer discipline than Fujimi. I wasn't included with all of the teachers in the various parts of... being a teacher. Nobody discussed student problems with me or invited me out to school events like teachers at Fujimi do, so I always felt like an outsider. Naturally, I went to the group that would accept me: the students.

   I tried treating them like younger friends, though I had some basic boundaries set up -- especially in the last year, when I was getting stricter with students who wouldn't study.

   On the other hand, the teachers at Fujimi have been great. They've accepted me from square one, so I feel much more like a teacher. In a lot of ways, I was still a kid when I came to Japan; coming to Fujimi has made me more of an adult. I've had to mature a lot as a person to deal with the kids up here. I could have just been their friend, like I was at Azuma, but I'm not.

   I'm a teacher.

   I feel like other ALTs, who are less invested in the job or less mindful of what their job actually is (as opposed to what people say it is [that is, a human typewriter or class clown]), tend to joke around a lot more and stay in the "friend" or "funny guy" zone more than anything else. Once you drop down to the students' level, though, you're just one of the guys and they think it's "okay" to kancho you, or "okay" to use a certain level of politeness in speech to you.

   These things are all symptoms of a lack of respect. If they don't do it to the "real" teachers, then why are they doing it to you? What makes you different as a person?

   Why am I ranting about this now?

   I've gotten a lot closer to ALTs this year than ever before, and they all talk about being kanchoed. It really bothers me, because it's never been a real issue for me and I don't see why it should be for anyone who shows that they respect their own job.

   On the other hand, it could also be a problem stemming from a lack of communication; if, as an ALT, you cannot speak Japanese, the number of people you can talk to is very small. In addition to that, disfluency is seen as a sign of a lack of intelligence by most people; ALTs may be intelligent, but if Japanese people can't communicate with them fluently for whatever reason, there's a tendency to see them as not being intelligent -- or vice versa.

   So students, who can never really get a look at the "professional" side of the ALT, may begin to view him/her as more of a "funny pet" than anything.

   While you can screw with your pets, you can't screw with your teachers.

School Comparisons

   I know I shouldn't do it because nobody wins, but I still do it anyway.

   I compare the junior high school I work at now with the one I worked at for the last three years.

   This school has come to feel like home, so it's not like I look down on it or think badly of it; it's just different. Jarringly different sometimes. For example, the other day, I was checking mini-speeches written by the second-year students about their dreams. It was strange in a lot of ways; the girls wanted to be doctors, nurses, and pastry chefs -- normal stuff. The boys had different aspirations, though. They wanted to be mailmen, delivery men, mechanics, farmers, maintenance men, office workers, and government employees. Sure, a few of them wanted to be astronauts or chefs, but the vast majority of them wanted to be... well, practical workers with a steady salary.

   Read on!

Local News

   I saw a tiny news headline on Google News about a truck accident in the city I live in that killed three teenaged girls. My heart was racing as I googled for a Japanese article with names...

   I'm relieved that the three girls who died were from other cities. I didn't know them. I was scared to death that they could have been girls I knew.

The Gathering Storm

   It's been generally hot and unpleasant for a while, but that's something that comes with summer. The humidity's been really high and I thought we'd get some relief since it rained last night, but apparently it didn't rain hard enough.

   The sky today is gorgeous, though.

Birthday

   Yesterday was my birthday.

   Quarter of a century, yep.

   I had a simple plan; wake up around 5 to shower/clean the apartment a little, catch a ride at 6:40ish to go to the judo tournament and cheer for my judo girls in the prefecturals, then come home and do laundry or something. Nothing spectacular; I don't really celebrate birthdays. Not that there's anything to do out here. Or anyone to do it with.

   So I woke up around five, showered, cleaned, worked on the HTPC a bit more...

   Read on!

Making a Home (Theater!)

    I've never really had a home in Japan, for whatever reason. I've had apartments, but they were generally just places to dump my stuff and sleep. My last apartment was really big, but I only ever really used the corner of it -- that's where I put my futon. I always sat/laid there while I used my computer and that was all I needed.

    Sure, I got a sofa bed and put it in the other room of my old apartment, but that was more of a concession to impending visitors from America and Britain than anything else -- just like the table I bought. When I wasn't expecting visitors, my apartment turned into a giant dump.

    Literally.

    I'm not kidding. I would just dump my stuff on an empty space on the floor, lacking the furniture or some other more organized place to store it. As far as I was concerned, the apartment was just a giant storage shed because I never did anything else that warranted... well, anything else.

    That changed this year.

   Read on!

Name Differences

   It's a little thing, but sometimes the little things are the ones that make me realize I'm really in a different place. People's names are really different up here!

   Back at Azuma, there were a lot of names that took a while to get used to, but then I realized that I saw them around a lot in anime, manga, the news, and film. So they weren't that alien or odd. On the other hand, up here in the mountains, there are a lot of names I've never ever imagined, much less seen somewhere.

   Not just family names, but personal names!

   Read on!

The Finger Game

   Japanese kids have a bunch of variants on rock-scissors-paper that they play, but they also have the finger game. The finger game is usually fast-paced and generally only ends when someone makes a dumb mistake because they were trying to hurry. You see, it involves very basic math: addition and subtraction.

   The setup is pretty simple; two people play and decide who goes first. Then both players stick out their index fingers. The game itself is also pretty simple -- you reach out and touch the opponent's hand with your hand and they add the number of fingers you have stuck out.

   So if you have one finger stuck out and tap a hand that has two, that person sticks out one more finger for a total of three. If you have three fingers stuck out and tap a hand that has three, that person goes down to one finger, because six minus five (the maximum number of fingers normal people have) is one. If you have two fingers stuck out and tap a hand that has three, that makes a total of five, and that hand is "out." You win the game by getting both of a player's hands "out."

   Additionally, since you have two hands, you can swap fingers between them. So if you have four fingers out on one hand and your other hand is out, then you can tap them and give them both two fingers, or give one three and the other one. The thing to consider is how many fingers your opponent has out on each hand -- if they have three fingers out on one, then going two and two isn't the best idea since they'll immediately knock one of your hands out, even though you can knock that three hand out.

   It sounds confusing when described like this, but it's really pretty simple.

   Does this game exist in America?

Busy Weekend -- PTA Party

   This past weekend was a pretty busy one for me, with the festivities starting, quite literally, on Friday. Friday night featured a party run by the PTA to greet the new teachers and PTA members and also to send off the leaving teachers and PTA members. It started from six, so I stayed at school, went to the literature/culture club (which is really the story-writing and manga-drawing club), then got a ride to the party.

   My original plan, you see, was to ride my bike down the mountain to the party since it was a 20-minute trip at worst, and all of that downhill. I mean, how bad could it have been?

   Read on!

In The Gutter

   One of the most commonplace features of Japan that I take for granted is the road gutter. Sure, there are chopsticks, weird square cars, and power lines everywhere, but the ubiquitous gutter is something I've gotten so used to that I sometimes forget that it doesn't exist in America.

   Whereas roads in America have grass, dirt, or gravel along the shoulders, Japanese roads tend to have a gutter along one side, if not both sides. I don't know if this difference is due to different road building techniques or simply an adaptation to the monstrous rainy season in Japan, but whatever the case, gutters are everywhere.

   Read on!