I have a nice month and a half vacation, not that I’ll be spending it at home where I can do more with my time, but I’ll be at the office. Now, there are plenty of perks of being here in a wonderfully air-conditioned room with (luckily) pretty cool people. What’s good about the school’s teachers in general is that they’re expecting me to study Japanese when I’m not doing any work. I know of some places where they get angry if you do anything except something relating to team teaching, those unlucky folks would just have to pretend for hours everyday. That sucks.
The good thing for me is that simply because they’re expecting me to study Japanese, I have about 20 Japanese language experts at my disposal…for free! I most definitely take advantage of this because some people don’t have that kind of opportunity, ya know?
I’m studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, level 2. If I buckle down and study as if I’ll never get the opportunity to study Japanese again, I can skip 2 and possibly clear level 1. It’s quite a reach (I get lazy every now and again)… but I think it’d be best if I did as much Japanese studying as possible while in Japan before I go home.
If you are trying to learn Japanese I can tell you what I’ve done and you can see if it might help you. However we all learn differently, so what I say might not even work for you, and I think if you already have a method of studying Japanese then don’t follow mine because finding something that works for you is the best way to go about it. I will make a separate post for it.
I focused on Japanese language study simply because it’s my interest. It took my first two years of college and a lot of frustration to realize that my major in Japanese was inevitable. I tried the sciences for two years because I remember asking myself what could I possibly do with a Japanese major when I was in my senior year of high school. I had an interest in science so I figured that I would try that route. Even going so far as to researching Med schools in my freshman year of college lol. Yes, I know….I was quite green. 
As I took both science and Japanese courses…I stubbornly refused to admit, but was being forced to notice that I was getting very high grades in Japanese, and so-so grades in science, and I’m a firm believer in making a career out of doing something you like. It was hard for me to see that when I had pressure from my father in how I had to “ make as much money as possible” as well as family on my father’s side going “you can be the first doctor in the family!” but I’m sure that’s common.
So, halfway in my four-year college stay, I was tired of this terrible feeling of being a failure, feeling like no matter how hard I studied, I can’t do as well. I also feared the risk of messing up my GPA because my pride, and pressure from my family, but I stubbornly didn't want to give up something that CLEARLY wasn’t working... however, it had to be done. I threw away the whole science thing, focused my attention on an Asian Studies major with a Japanese specialization, completed an Africana Studies minor and never looked back... well maybe a couple of glances lol.
After I dropped my science class, I couldn’t help but notice the weight that was lifted off of my shoulders. I remember the exact point where I was sitting in my Chemistry lab and I had this sudden feeling of “Wow…..I don’t want to be here anymore,” and once I got back to my dorm, I dropped the class and took up a Japanese history class that just happened to be at the same time and days of the week as my Chemistry lecture. I would never forget the horrible feeling of dread and fatigue (all those weekends at the library wasted!) when it came to Chemistry at Binghamton and the sheer excitement and enthusiasm when it came to Japanese. I finally had that feeling I had in high school of excelling at things that I love, and doing science for two years really set the point home that it would be impossible for me to have a career in something that I don’t like.
It took me a day or so to call home and let them know that I changed my plans. It felt as though everyone was counting on me to succeed at something I told everyone so much about. So I waited not because I thought they would be angry with me…but because I felt like I let everyone down. My mother, siblings, father, everybody. However, everyone had to know. I told my mother first but I thought she would be disappointed…but the crazy amount of encouragement and understanding about such a sensitive subject got me so emotional. We’re a very tight knit family so it was great to feel that bond for something like this. I realized that it didn’t matter what I did; Japanese, science, whatever, they would always support me. That’s a good feeling. I told my father and he declared that I “make up my mind.” Whatever. I know where he’s coming from since he, my mother and grandmother brought us to America from Jamaica for a better life so I know he means well in how he just wants me to be successful before it’s too late, but I was 19 when I made that decision so I think I have plenty of time left lol. 
So, I filled out some forms, met with some people and officially changed my major. About a week later, I went to the Career Development Center on campus because I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do next. I mean most science majors have a good idea of where they are going to go after they graduate because science seems more tangible so it wouldn’t have been hard to figure out a game plan. However, like I asked myself before, what the hell could I do with a Japanese major?!
In rare instances, I’m not too proud to ask for help. So I scheduled a meeting and awkwardly enough, the “career advisor” was just as stumped as I was about what to do with a Japanese major. -.-…like, seriously? He suggested I become a teacher and I’m like..yeah but that doesn’t really solve my current problem now, does it? Then he suggested the United Nations and then we look up information together about the United Nations and he’s like, “well….they don’t seem to have anything for Japanese speakers…” Wow. Thanks for nothing! It’s like…why the hell did I sign up to talk to you? So, I leave even more confused than when I started, so a few days later I go to one of the awesome Japanese teachers and I’m like, “Hey I changed my major..but I don’t know what the hell to do with it!” So, she suggests Translation/Interpretation, but then I scoffed because I didn’t think I can do that, I mean sure it sounds fun, but I have Chem Lab, some Chemistry work with a serious deadline coming up soon and --- wait wait wait! I’m no longer a science major! I have time to do things I like! Wow…so after that hit me, I decide to look into it. I do tons and tons research on it, and I find out that I think I would love to be a Translator/Interpreter for Japanese/English. Sweet.
So, here I am, after all of that and after being a year in Japan, I am still just as excited then as I am now to know as much as I possibly can about the language. I might not be able to become the first doctor of the family, but I’m headed towards the first Japanese/English translator of the family and I think that’s just as spectacular damnit! lol
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Nothing too crazy has been going on recently. Pretty much everyone is waiting for summer vacation. Our summer break is this coming Friday, so my lesson plan has been a game and the winners get candy. They don’t really have to learn something with EVERY lesson plan I think. In any case, the teacher and I can relax in class while making it fun for students. Everyone wins.
I’m pretty excited for summer vacation. That means that I get to….go to work everyday and not have to do anything. “What the hell kind of summer vacation is that?” you ask? It’s a Japanese summer vacation! Even though there won’t be any classes, seeing as how it’s summer vacation, I still have to go into work. I, as well as every other teacher still have to go. You wouldn’t believe all the complaints I’ve heard from other teachers about that, and how it’s unfair and such. The idiot English teacher (the one that spoke about Korea’s snow) told me, “Well..we used to be able to go home when the students left, but now…the economy is getting worse…so now we’re forced to go into work.” What? That’s such stupid “logic.” Most people would say that going into work would be WORSE for the economy because working includes wasting more paper, ink, electricity, water, etc. Whoever “they” are, government or whatever, it’s clear that they’re making people go into work during summer vacation, simply because no one is going to riot, or cause trouble; they’re going to complain to other people in the same boat, while not really doing anything.
While it should be obvious that we have the those weeks off, however, it would be no different from any other day in which people run around, look busy and give everyone else the illusion of doing work. I see it everyday; I’ve seen it since last October. Yes, even during normal days, most teachers aren’t doing work, but they’ll pretend for the sake of surface compliments. 
How did I find that out, you ask? Well, about 5 different teachers have told me in the past 7 months. It would come unexpectedly simply because when I first got here, everyone seemed busy. Then I asked my former supervisor what’s he doing, then I got a, “Walking around and pretending to be busy.” What? Was he joking? Well….he doesn’t really have the best sense of humor so it’s a definite no. At first I thought, well, he’s only one person, it’s not like everyone else does no work. However, I noticed that if someone runs past me, after I wave and greet them; they would stop, and chat me up for like an hour! After a while, I’m like wait…wait…wait….if they’re so busy, how they can just stop whatever they're doing and talk me to for a full on hour about nothing? That’s odd. Doing that after a couple more times, and living here for more than 6 months, you quickly begin to realize that most people do that. Of course there are people who really do work and are tired after work and all, but the majority don’t feel actual exhaustion due to work.
You have to wonder: why is everyone pretending when everyone else MUST know that nobody is doing work? Clearly this happens all of the time, so there has to be a point where nobody is fooled by anyone’s antics. You would never hear it out loud though, mainly because no one wants to be the person who blows that whistle, out of fear of being ostracized. I won’t get into that; just know that it’s a big deal. 
They could just take a lot of vacation days during the summer vacation, right? No. Japanese teachers (I’m not sure about other professions) get 40 days of paid holiday and are supposed to use at least 20 days or lose them. Year after year, according to Japanese teachers here, most Japanese teachers don’t take more than like 8 days a year. So, they continue to let all of those vacation days go to waste. Why, you ask? Well, if they take too much vacation time, the other teachers will jealously gossip about that person and call them lazy and whatnot. That’s also the point of omiyage; the practice of giving a gift to the people that you left high and dry when you were on a business trip (hanging out) in Okinawa/Tokyo/Osaka, so you have to give a gift that apologizes to everyone else who had to take up the (non-existent) slack that you so heartlessly left to everyone else in your absence. It’s kind of like an apology and to let people know that you were thinking about them. Even that though, it’s a cultural norm and if you don’t give something, then you’re a despicable Japanese person. However, everyone else must already know that you HAVE to give a gift, even if you hate everyone in your office. So, where’s the genuine apology in that? I don’t know.
That teacher who takes all of that paid vacation will eventually be confronted by one of the teachers who “heard from other teachers” that he/she is taking too much vacation time.” It’s a bit ridiculous because it isn’t as though the people that are still at the school are even doing any work. Even going on actual Vice Principal sanctioned business trips still require you to give gifts, even though it probably wasn’t your choice to go where you went.
So it’s everyone being forced to go to work for some reason, not really doing work, but pretending very well and being envious of people who decide to use their vacation days so they can do something better with their time. Yeah…I don’t know either.
“Michael Jackson…he’s the guy that changed his face, right?” That’s what I was greeted to when students wanted to confirm his death with me. Even as I’m typing, I can’t believe it. It took me a couple of days to actually write because of the sheer shock I experienced. Seeing red background with bold white letters telling me that OUR Michael is gone after I check my mail wasn’t really my favorite way of being told. I go into the office that morning, upset but trying to hiding it because I didn’t want to make a scene. While still in shock, I sit down and just wait until I have class. Then one of the teachers decide to bring it up, albeit sensitively, which I appreciate. However, I found out 20 minutes before I went to work; I simply wasn’t prepared to talk about something so monumental; something even I didn’t fully understand, in Japanese. I didn’t mean to lash out but I said as politely as I could remember at the moment that I simply didn’t want to talk about it.
Afterwards, the female English teacher next to me, “Oh my gosh how terrible!” at my response of not wanting to talk about it. I talk about everything else with them, so clearly there’s something wrong if I don’t want to talk about something, and yet I still had to explain. It got to the point in where I could only say about two words and I would quickly stop because I knew if I opened my mouth and spoke anymore that I would start to cry. So after two words to make them understand, they left me alone, which I appreciated. However, I couldn’t act like this all day because I have to be bubbly and cheery for my students, like how my personality dictates. So, I go to my class, trying to forget about the news. I thought I was able to forget about it until unfortunately one of my students decide to bring it up and of course I don’t want to talk about it, but I have to for the students. I won’t be able to do him justice with my mind scrambled with confusion and sadness so I look towards the Japanese teacher I’m working with. She says that she knows him so I ask her to explain a little bit about him. As she’s relaying information while I stand there…something doesn’t sound quite right with her explanation. She lets me know during class when she confirms something, ”Michael Jackson…he’s the guy that changed his face, right?” Yes, this cultural insensitivity mess doesn't happen only from the foreigners' side onto Japanese people; it most certainly goes both ways.
……I try to hold in my fury and frustration with such tragic news in my mind while trying to explain to a noticeably apathetic group of Japanese kids, whose only concern was that they knew that he had a pretty sister and asked me to remind them of her name and after the face changing question that I’m SUPPOSED to confirm is true, the only thing I can get out is, “That doesn’t matter! What matters is his music and contributions to the music that ALL OF YOU are listening to!” I’ve never done that before so they know that it’s a big deal, but I didn’t want to get into it anymore, and started the class. I felt so tired after that, understanding that I’m being forced to once again talk about something that even I can’t fully wrap my mind around. Then the teacher says, ”Oh..well…our generation knows Michael Jackson…but I don’t think the generations after us do.” False, false and false. Just…no. I didn’t want to tell her that she’s absolutely wrong and it’s only people living in a country who decide to cut themselves off from the rest of the world around them are the ones who don’t know who the hell Michael Jackson is, but I wasn’t going to get into that in class at my emotional state at that time.
Most frustratingly don’t know about him, but I won’t make it my job to tell them anything and me and Keith were invited to a private art exhibition so I took off from work after my interview test with the students and after deciding that I should apologize for my outburst in my office, I was able to go back home before once again dealing with people who can’t comprehend the gravity of this situation. Damnit. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. In any case, from the students’ apathy, to the teachers not understanding why I was upset, to today when this stupid moron decides to “be funny” and tries to terribly and offensively do “The Moonwalk,” ask me if I know what it is and how to do it, and after shutting him down HARD, I’ve decided to say, “You know what, Japan? Nevermind about it.”
Our apartment has another JET from the states here. He moved from his previous apartment 50 minutes away to come here. RIGHT next to my apartment -.-. Damnit. I don’t hang out with him, I do not want to associate myself with him, but the simple fact that I’m a foreigner here means that anything he does (or doesn’t do) will be reflected upon me. There has been no trouble with the other people of the apartment, all of them say hello and wave or something, and some of our neighbors have invited us over to eat lunch every now and again. I don’t want that to be jeopardized because some guy wants to bring his drama to our apartment. He left because he had problems with other foreigners here, got in an argument and ran away from those people there. However, those catty people, knowing that he’s here now, would come and visit one of the other JETs in the complex. Little does she know that her so called friends are just using her because after a while it gets boring hanging out with the same JETs weekend after weekend.
What annoys me about all of them is that all this crap that they go on and on about; it’s all drama among other foreigners. It’s drama among people who they have seen and hung out with for the past 20 or so years. My thing is, why aren’t they arguing and fighting with Japanese people? Why aren’t they trying to reach out to the Japanese people in the apartment complex? Even “the help” and her tag along, even though they’ve been here for three years, I haven’t seen ONE Japanese person around them that wasn’t a teacher and they had work to do. They stress hanging out with foreigners to the point of neglecting the people of the country, despite LIVING IN THE COUNTRY.
I think a lot of that stems from being so caught up in the foreign bubble that once you get in, it’s impossible to leave. I mean, why would anyone want to deal with speaking with Japanese people, have eventual cultural clashes, deal with the language barrier but eventually trying to come to agreements and make friends, right? It’s a lot easier to ignore them, hang out with people that speak your native tongue and only reluctantly deal with Japanese people when you have to, right?
I think all foreigners come here with the idea of wanting to make a lot of Japanese friends, wanting to feel accepted and so forth. However, when you first get here, you realize that it’s a lot harder than you thought, and their reactions to you aren’t really what you expect. If you are able to understand that what this person does doesn’t apply to all Japanese people, and while annoyed, you can begin to work through it, then you’ll be okay. I think that if you complain to other foreigners, who ONLY hang out with other foreigners (even those in charge), they will tell you that it’s your fault that this is happening to you, and the way to deal with it is to understand what you’re doing wrong to make them behave like this to you. That’s a big part of the textbook method of dealing with culture shock. I don’t agree at all. That was repeatedly fed to me by people who haven’t been through their own period of self-searching and awareness because they’ve been around foreigners for 3 years. The term culture shock is also thrown around too often as well. If I don’t like something about a culture, I’m not culture shocked. I’m critically thinking. How come I can’t dislike a part of the culture I’m living in? What’s crazy about it is that those who are giving other people “advice” are just as blind to problems, so it becomes the “blind leading the blind.”
I still stand by my opinion that most of the people I have met here, know just as little as those who just came here because they blind themselves to truth of a lot of things. After a while it’s just a passing of the veil, or rose colored glasses, or whatever way people like describing “hiding the truth.” The thing is, it seems like a lot of people have this strange notion that if you dislike ONE thing about Japan, then you dislike EVERYTHING about Japan and you’re culture shocked and need to read a book. It’s something that everyone living here will be forced to come to terms with. Whether you want to deal with it when you first arrive, or 3 years later when you realize that you’ve been living in a foreign bubble and haven’t really been IN Japan, but just looking from the outside through your bubble. Blinding yourself to the truth of things is just as bad as hating all things Japan. Being aware of things you dislike, while finding things you can appreciate is the way to go. You can never reach that point if you hang out at foreign bars and ignore Japanese people on a daily basis. Keith likened it to the Matrix; you’re either plugged into it or not.
I was given some interesting advice by a Japanese woman. I’m learning piano (still quite terrible, but I can do scales…) and the woman teaching me is one of the kindest and sweetest Japanese ladies I’ve ever met. Her daughter is also adorable too. Her mother is also great and always makes lunch for me and Keith. Out of the blue, when the lesson was over and I was getting ready to leave, the piano teacher’s mother asked me, “So, Tatum…do you hang out with many foreigners?” Excluding Keith and the awesomely awesome Rachelle, not really, and I told her that. Do you know what she said? She said, “Well….this is just my opinion (!) but I don’t think that you should be hanging out with a lot of foreigners. Ever.” Well…..shit. I’m not really sure where it came from but then she went on with, “Well, this is also just my opinion (!) but when I see a big group of foreigners around, I ask myself and others, ‘what is their purpose of being here?’ So, I don’t want you to be associated with those kinds of people, are we clear?” Whoa. First off, she said “this is just my opinion” which is outrageous since most Japanese people, in order to keep the peace, don’t really say what’s actually on their minds.
When you’re a foreigner who speaks Japanese, you get told all kinds of things that they cannot say to Japanese people. I’ve also been told by her that if one Japanese person believes something, then almost all of them believe the exact same thing. Now, I’m not sure how correct that even is, but it’s clear that a lot of Japanese people don’t like big groups of foreigners. Even for me too, if I see a big group (I’m talking 6, 7 and up) of any type of people in the states then I’m going to wonder what they’re doing and why they’re together in such a big group because of the group mentality in how everyone shares the same brain. She clearly told me to make sure that I’m not involved in that. I completely agree. Not to mention, I can’t become fluent if I’m speaking English 24/7. 
I’m not saying all foreigners should be avoided; I’m saying the ones that you don’t like, and the ones that you would never hang out with in your home country are the ones that you should be avoiding. Whether or not they are able to see things that others notice, hanging out with someone just because they’re in the same company as you is counter-productive. You don’t want to be with the group that’s too busy ignoring Japanese people and acting stupidly in public. Whether or not you take part in their stupid activities, just being around them makes you guilty by association. If they want to give up and blindly hate Japanese people or blindly love Japanese people then they shouldn’t be any of your concern. I, for one, want no part of it.