Slight..cultural...differences

I hate it when people repeat things over and over again. I especially hate it when they repeat, they say it in a 'matter of fact' tone as if they just didn't say it a second ago. I'm having slight gripes with some of these people, and it's not even bad compared to what I hear from other ALTs. It's just small things that get on my nerves. I try and multitask, but even if someone is talking to me, I will listen, regardless of whether or not I'm looking at the person. That's simply what some people in western culture do. However, doing that here will result in people getting mad, leading them to explain things...ad nauseum. I will take the blame for not understanding upon my arrival here that I would have to drop absolutely everything I'm doing so some butthead can explain something (for no reason) three times. I rarely even do that anyway, but today I was trying to look for something to teach, and I didn't have much time to do it, and here comes the teacher who likes to say everything over and over, and even has the nerve to say "do you understand?" in Japanese almost as often as he likes to explain himself, to start yapping. I had this problem even in America when I spoke with this Japanese guy in my college e-board (I was event coordinator of the Japanese association on campus), it's all well and good that English isn't his first language, but when he struggles with absolutely everything he says, he adds in little Japanese phrases to fill in the blanks. There's nothing wrong with that, but when it takes 3 minutes for him to say, "I think we should buy the grapes," it gets a little........annoying. So fastforward to now when the guy whom I sometimes teach with and sit next to does the same exact thing....it's annoying. Not to mention the fact that he feels the need to tell me absolutely everything about nothing. Our speaking Japanese would be faster than our speaking English, but he wants to torture me and take 5 minutes to say, "Please look at me when we speak." Damn that's annoying. I'd also be more inclined to look at him if he didn't treat me like I was 7. I'm very appreciative of his help, but there's only so far someone can go before their explanations get rather tedious and it becomes a 10 minute effort for him to say ONE fucking thing. None of the other Japanese teachers of English do that either....it's just him.

They also claim that I can be honest with them and say whatever I feel about any situation, but it only works from one direction. Even if I told them something very slight and random, they're quick with a retort and pretty much say that what I think is silly or just flat out wrong. So....then what's the point of telling me that I can say whatever I like? I can say positive things all day though. Even if I actually took what they said and ran with it and said whatever was bothering me, they'd probably end up complaining about me behind my back, so speaking my mind wouldn't help anything. Well in any case, this is quite common to struggle with these minor things, especially when everything feels like it's piling up on each other, but usually they're solved in like one day....I still can't stand that damn repetition.


It's also interesting in where you can be doing absolutely everything right for two months, then you do one thing differently, and everyone freaks the hell out. There's a daily cleaning time, in which everyone picks up a broom or wash cloth and cleans something. It usually involves students moving the very minimal dirt from one spot to the next. Regardless of that, I always pick up a broom and start sweeping. This one time last week, I was talking to my supervisor during cleaning time so I missed it. My teachers' room includes the vice principal who's fairly important in Japanese schools. He's the one teachers have to go to when they want to take vacation days off or when they're going on a business trip. He's not much that of a prick, but I heard from other teachers that he has the potential to be one every now and again. So I miss the first cleaning time ever. The next day I hear from another teacher that I'm ALWAYS SUPPOSED to do cleaning time. Welll...duh, I know that...that's why I pick up a broom and sweep everytime the annoying cleaning music comes on. The issuse that I spoke with my supervisor about was a hell of a lot more important than cleaning time, to tell you the truth (visa stuff), but that was only one time out of two months. This one time when I took one minute longer to pick up my broom this jerk goes "Hey! It's cleaning time!" And claps three times quite loudly while staring at me. I give him a calm stare, then wait a minute or two before I actually get up. I know I'm not supposed to do that and rock the boat, but I'm not Japanese so I'm not going to jump up, apologize and run for the broom. It's all about hierarchy so he's supposed to talk down to me, like he talks down to everyone else (except for the principal of course ^-^ ), but I'm not going to react the same way. He only did it once, but I still get slightly annoyed when I think about it.

In any case, these are isolated incidences, except for Repeat Man up there, despite my slight gripes, I'm quite happy with my placement and I love the students. Most are bad at English and don't have a particular interest in it, but they're willing to speak with me about everything in Japanese. I get a lot of "You are.......soooo cute," from the boy and girls students. This one crazy kid, from the crazy kid class, had his friend write the Love kanji (愛) on his arm in pen. Then after he was finished, he decides to point at me and point at his arm...then point at me and point at his arm...for a good three minutes while I'm just standing there in front of the students. I suppose in a way it's.....kind of endearing? You can't help but laugh at their crazy antics, and I mean even if you didn't like their behavior, they aren't going to change for you, so you might as well roll with the punches and laugh about it anyway. Such is life in Japan as an English teacher.

Students in the Classroom and other Misc.

I'm at an agricultural school in southern Kyushu. There are plenty of different kinds of Japanese schools. There's academic, which means that these kids are hard workers and going to go to college, so learning English is important for them because of standardized tests. There's agricultural which means the complete opposite. A very good majority of the students are not going to go to college and upon graduation from high school, they're eventually going to be taking over their parents' farms and other agricultural stuff. So with that logic, that means that some of them don't want to learn English, they don't feel as though they need to because they know that they're never going to leave Japan. However, compared to the students at the academic schools, they're a lot more..er...energetic, but I like that because it means that even if they get the question wrong, it's clear that they're listening to what I'm saying and I'm not getting frustrating blank stares. At the same time, there are plenty of good students at the agricultural high school that I'm sure are going to go to college and although they're a little shy, I still get responses from them.

At the sports festival, we had some visitors. First off, seeing as how I'm supposed to be fast, they had me run in the festival against the students. It was quite awkward at first, but I guess now in retrospect, I'm kind of glad I did it. Doing random things go a really long way here.
About those visitors though, they were agricultural school dropouts...think about that for a second. Drop outs of a school that for only a small percentage lead to college. They decided to come back during the festival and show off how "cool" they are. With their George Michael single hanging earring, to their freakin bright orange hair held back by a sparkly tiara headband. Not to mention sparkly hair clips and Hello Kitty paraphernalia (headbands, earrings, hair clips, etc). Yes they are male and no I am not making that up. They're making quite a uh...bold statement... but it's mainly because they're trying to stick it to the Japanese man by looking like the exact opposite of what's expected, in terms of hair color, having their eyebrows shaved off, manicures etc. But since they already dropped out, by that time it doesn't even matter anymore, does it?

Sports Festival

I'm an ALT in Miyazaki, Japan at an agricultural senior high school so I get to see a lot of cool and strange things. Tomorrow is the Sports Festival (taikutaikai), so there are no classes today. It's a sports festival, but there are a lot of random things that go on during the practice. Yesterday, because of the sudden and oft-occurring crazy downpours, there couldn't be any practice outside. So we were all inside; the students weren't practicing sports, they were practicing how to march in place. When they're not doing military style like marches, I usually talk to the students. If I pick any random group to sit next to, they freak out. One girl asked me if she could touch my hair, and saying yes apparently means EVERYONE in the area can, my poor hair...sigh. Also, constant affirmations of how cute I am is also quite common since the semester started, even though I'm older than all of them. Awkwardly enough though, I've managed to get some cat calls from some of the all male classes as well being called Beyonce more times than I appreciate :-\.

I ran into the students that I know won't be doing any worksheets and will most definitely give me the most trouble. It's easy to see spot it now after a helpful orientation. After the opening ceremony, the boys and girls were separated and the teachers had to check the clothes and hair of all the students. Girls cannot get manicures or pedicures, they can't have different color hair, their nails can't be too long, nor can they do anything to their eyebrows. If any students are caught, their name is written down and after the procedure is over, they're sat down and scolded for a couple of minutes. I didn't see the boys' section but I assume it's similar. So imagine my surprise when I see a group of guys, whom one in particular has a strange Japanese mullet type hair cut with shaved eyebrows. I guess that's as bad as they can get. Awkwardly enough, he knew more about Jamaica and reggae than most of the other kids. At the school, I also see a lot of kids with Red, Green and Yellow and Jamaican paraphernelia, towels or pencil cases and etc.

Everyone here also seems to "love" Jamaica (without really knowing anything about it except Bob Marley and the Jamaican colors), and if anyone watches Japanese TV, they'll know that it's filtered. It's more obvious during the Olympics since I usually ended up always seeing the matches in which Japanese people won. The only time where that didn't happen was when they were covering Jamaica, which was nice. It's a little strange though now, seeing as how people assume that I can run really fast because of it.