It’s a start…

Kids say the darndest things. As an English instructor / educator person, I’ve always been discouraged to laugh at students or wrong answers presented in class, but sometimes students come up with the most ridiculous responses, you just can’t help but laugh.

Two weeks ago was the new Japanese school year. With this new school year came a trainload of new faces and names, and teaching at four different high schools, that’s a lot of new names. Last week, I was giving my routine self-introduction of who I am and where I come from. Just for kicks, I decided to quiz the students on their geography, (hey, got to put that degree to some use) asking them if they knew where Canada ranked on the top five largest countries according to landmass. They all knew Russia was first, Canada was second, and China third. When it came to the fourth, one student answered Africa, and before I could stop myself, a very audible but short lived laugh squired out of my mouth, and into the ears of the eager to please students, including the one brave enough to answer my question. Perhaps not a huge deal, but I do want to be careful, especially teaching in what must be one of the world’s shyest countries.

Last week a similar, shall we say incident, occurred. Tominaga Sensei, one of the English teachers, and I just began our new oral communication class with a grand total of eight students. Last year was about 27. Eight is actually a great number for doing a conversation class, so I have no complaints so far. One of the students is a bit slower in his English capabilities than the rest of the students, so some of the answers that he has come up with have been quite, shall we say unique, but have helped add a nice easy going element to the class. Tominaga Sensei and I were going over some basic English expressions and phrases, and Tominaga had asked this student how you might respond to “goodbye”. Rather than saying, “See you again” he replied, “See you forever.” This had all the students in an uproar of laughter.

Another student this morning was trying to describe himself to me for whatever reason. Rather than calling himself hansom, he chose the words, “hyper nice face.” I had to leave the class.

These kinds of mistakes don’t only occur with students, but also with teachers. Several months ago, one of the English teachers at my main high school wanted to ask me a personal question in front of the class. Rather than asking, “Can I touch on (or ask) a question about your private life?” He asked, “Can I touch your private area?” I had to find the nearest wall to support myself from falling over with laughter. All the students were looking at me like I was crazy! Sometimes I wonder.

I really feel the misuse of English words in Japan has become a subculture in itself. This is characteristic of the many signs, labels and warnings written in broken English placed throughout Japan. Part of me feels a tinge of frustration, “Why can’t they just get some native speakers and have them correct all this misused English?” But then I remember that basically all language is, is a way to communicate with one another. Even in Japans most broken English, it’s not too difficult to figure out what those signs and labels are telling you. I really try to convey this idea to my students. When it comes to conversation, the main thing is to communicate, even if tenses are used incorrectly, or a couple of words are misused. When students realize this, I think they begin to see how enjoyable it is to communicate in other languages. One student in the 11^th grade and I had a pretty good broken conversation last week about hobbies and the like. The next day, Tominaga sensei came up to my desk and told me that this student was really excited to have been able to speak to me in English. So that’s encouraging.

Dear Joey

Some days are better than others, but when one of your students writes you a song, you know it’s been a good day.

For the last several months, me along with Tominaga Sensei, one of the English teachers at my main high school, have been teaching an after school English class for the 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th graders. We’ve managed to harness a couple of students from our karate circle, some from the oral communication class, and a couple of others just genuinely interested in studying English. We began near to the end of this school year. The school year in Japan is actually quite different from North American schools. The school year ends at the end of March, and the 12^th grade students graduate at the beginning of the month. What’s really cool is that the 12^th graders in my class who’ve just graduated are still coming to school only for this after school English class we created. One student has to drive about 30 minutes to the train station, ride the train for 45 minutes, and walk from the station to the school in order to come to our one-hour English class. She’s managed to come every time, regardless of the weather. If that’s not dedication, I don’t know what is!

Today was the last day that the 12^th graders will be able to come. Next month they will all be heading off to their new universities. At the end of the class, Ryouta, one of my12^th grade students, approached me with a CD in hand labeled, “Dear Joey”. He wrote me a song! Everything in the song was played, sung and synthesized by him. Very talented young fella. I’ve just listened to it, and it has to be my favorite song of all time…. mainly because its about me J… Check it out! http://joeygoertz.smugmug.com/Videos/Life-in-Japan/11304144_P43ao#813911867_jWt3t-A-LB

Here are the lyrics:

Dear Joey…

What should I talk

about with you?

While smiling a little as always.

Hey Joey…

Lower the black glasses to a nose.

You always said jokes and made me laugh.

Do you remember the hometown where

Wind of Canada blows to today?

And you are filled with tears

to see the sky of the good old town.

Hey!! You’ll write a letter….

To dear Joey

Hi Joey…

A favorite red tie

becomes you.

And the yellow shirt is the best, too.

Ya Joey…

There are a lot of questions to you.

I seem to already say goodbye.

Thank you for a lot of Christmas presents.

I was very glad.

I don’t forget it forever…

As for time that I spend with you, was short,

But was very happy.

Hey!! Let’s go to meet right now…

To Mr. Joey

You want it? You got it!

My car guy Ross, originally from Australia, calls Hokkaido “Fantasy Island”. Over the seven or so months that I’ve been here, I’ve really gotten to understand exactly what he means.

I feel that the Japanese people really like to be comfortable and in actual fact like to make others feel comfortable as well. This is evident through the greetings one receives when entering any store or restaurant in Japan, peoples over politenesses in traffic, or through the amazing hospitality that Japanese families show their guests. What always blows me away are the ways in which Japanese people will answer a question or request above and beyond, and that more often than not, people will go out of their way to help you the best way they know how. And if they don’t know how, they will literally run off and find someone who can do a better job. A couple of recent examples, this last week the music teacher asked me if I was watching the Olympic games. To be honest, I haven’t been too consistent with watching events and didn’t even know if I could watch the games on my TV, which only has basic Japanese farmer vision. I tried explaining that my TV only has 6 channels and didn’t know if I got the Olympics. The science teacher beside me of course overheard this and started explaining TV’s to me and offered to come to my house to check my cables and install an antenna. In the meantime, the music teacher ran off and brought back an assortment of printouts of final results from the games. This was totally appreciated and it looked as if most of the teachers didn’t have anything to do at the time, including myself, so I didn’t mind. These kinds of events happen quite frequently.

This Sunday, I was working on my computer, when my friend’s mom came to the door and told me about her friend who knows someone that’s been living in Winnipeg for the past eight years, who just returned, and lives several blocks from my house in Japan. She ended up phoning her friend and handed me the phone so that we could connect. My friend’s mom tried to phone her son in order for him to tell me this information, yet she couldn’t get a hold of him and she didn’t have my number. So, she ended up coming to my house, picked me up, and drove me to her friends house to have dinner with his family, who ended up feeding me about 6 different dishes, 2 of which I couldn’t finish, and sent me off with a bottle of orange juice and a couple of small wrapped cakes. Basically, I will never go hungry in this country.

Hokkaido is a really fun place to be. You mention to anyone that you are interested in trying something or doing anything, and someone will make things happen. I mentioned to the music teacher that I was interested in learning to play the guitar a couple of months ago. Last week, he approached me and invited me to his beginner class starting next month. I’ve mentioned that I love cycling to some of the teachers when they asked me what my hobbies are, and I think that I am now part of a cycling group? Going to go cycling on a frozen lake on Wednesday with a couple of the members by the way.

What really amazes me is how it seems everyone knows each other in Hokkaido. Japanese people love coming together. They love their groups, clubs, communities, and places of social interaction, karaoke being one example of many. Over all, Japanese people genuinely love getting to know one another, despite having to go through a few invisible walls to get there. With an island as small as Hokkaido, and a people as sociable as the Japanese, it seems as if everyone knows each other, or at the very least wants to know everyone, foreigners included. Although that’s not completely true, if true at all, for purposes of making this paragraph help me sound like an anthropologist, we will say that there is some truth to that assertion. In any case, Hokkaido does feel much smaller and more connected in comparison with other places that I’ve lived. I feel that this has affected my outgoingness as well, and having a car definitely helps. I really believe that the places one lives has an enormous affect on the ways in which people interact with one another and the way’s which people behave, despite language barriers. In Japans case, it seems as though you can find even the most looseriest foreigners become confident and more outgoing by the time that they leave Japan, a lot of the times with the most beautiful Japanese girls attached to their waist (cross my fingers!). So, perhaps there is some truth to my previous claim after all?

As most of my previous journals, I end up talking more about culture and my observations and opinions of them then I do about all the different things that I’ve experienced so far. I feel that if I only wrote about all the different things that “fantasy island” has conjured up for me to do, my hands would become burnt out from typing so much. My hope for people reading these journals is that they get a glimpse of one persons perspective and observations on the very large and complex topic of culture. As one person did not create all the elements of a single culture such as the Japanese’s own, one person can’t possibly be expected to give full incite to it. Take these observations as a grain of salt. That being said, one thing that I think most people will agree on, is how overwhelmingly hospitable Japan’s people are.

Teaching Abroad

One of my friends from university emailed me to find out what company I’m working for and some advice around finding teaching positions overseas, so I had sent him this overly long response. I thought I would post it for interest sake and for those interested or know someone who is interested in teaching overseas.

I ended up getting on with JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme). I believe the deadline has already passed for this year. As far as I know, applications had to be in by November. There are a lot of other teaching programs out there though, but I decided on JET because of the positive reputation it has. I had done a year of teaching in Indonesia with a private organization based out of Jakarta called Intract, and the experience was kind of similar but also really different, perhaps because there are such differences between the Japanese culture and the Indonesian culture, and the way things are done. The similarities between the two are that both contracts provided a house at subsidized costs, both provided a monthly salary, Japans of course larger because of the economic differences (JET provides around 3000 dollars a month, whereas Intract was something like 700 dollars a month, which was like 3 times as much as what a regular teacher in Indonesia makes). JET provides a plane ticket to and from Japan from the beginning of the contract to the end, whereas Intract only provided the flight home, based on completion of the contract. Intract did provide a personal driver to and from school everyday, Japan I had to buy my own car to get around (because there are not enough trains around where I’m living) but they pay for the gas used to go to the schools.

JET also provided pre-departure orientation, giving free language classes and what to prepare for before living in Japan. They also put you up in a nice hotel for 3 nights in Tokyo to give a thorough orientation on everything you can imagine about living and working in Japan. Intract didn’t provide anything like this, which made it a bit difficult to adjust to everything at first. Here, I am at 3 different high schools, but have my base school that I’m at everyday. Indonesia I also had three schools that I was at once a week (all elementary) but was on call if a teacher couldn’t make it to school. Every JETS situation has been different, really depending on if your teaching elementary, junior high, or high school, but everyone that I’ve talked to, has more than 1 school that they work at. Some have 19 schools that they rotate through (this would be elementary though, and is pretty rare).

Every situation is different, and every contract will be a bit different. Take a look at Dave’s ESL Café: http://www.eslcafe.com/joblist/

There are tons of job postings here. I think a large majority of them are for teaching English, but there might be some for other subjects too. I think this website is pretty good, but there are some job postings that you really have to be wary of. I have some friends that ended up going to Mexico, and their contract was not what they thought it would be. I think they had to end up finding their own housing and paying full cost on it or something like that. It just didn’t sound very organized. You should make sure that they provide some sort of accommodation, let you know how much it will be, let you know your salary, where you will be teaching, and at least a flight to or from the country. The more information that’s posted about the job, the better. Get as much information as you can and be really sure of the company that you want to work with before going. Some of the higher paying places/more popular places to teach are Japan and Korea. I think Korea would have been my second choice had I not come to Japan.

Anyways, working and traveling is the best thing ever. Great way to see the world and still make some money.

Hope this helps!

Joey

Aisu Kurimu onegaishimasu

If there’s one thing I enjoy it’s seeing the ways in which different cultures will take elements of other cultures and adopt it as their own. Japan, like so many other countries has adopted elements of the English language and fit it into their own linguistic framework. This has made for some very interesting and unusual, how shall I say, Engrish. Japan has three alphabets, one of which is used for loan words; words or ideas that are not originally from Japan. There has been an explosion of new words, taken especially from the English language after Japan opened her doors to the world in the Meiji period. In the last couple of decades there has been an explosion of loan words, taken especially from the English language. You would think that this would make teaching English in Japan easier, but guess again. The Japanese language has about one third the amount of sounds than that of the English language. Two of the most difficult sounds for Japanese speakers studying English are words that have the letters R and L. Just for fun, I sometimes have my students attempt the word “parallelogram”. In order to get around the problem of not being able to pronounce these English sounds comfortably, the Japanese have taken these new words and ideas and turned them into Japanese sounding words. Words like ice-cream and hamburger have phonetically become aisu kurimu, and hambaaga. Going to any western style restaurant you will find the menu items said in this katakana style. Place names have also been katakanaized. New York, London, Winnipeg become Nu Yooku, Rondon, Uinipegu. When I first heard this, I thought that it was some form of Pidgin, but later realized that there are many other languages that the Japanese have adopted, specifically from Korea and China. I suppose the English language does the same thing with other languages; adopting words for such natural phenomenon’s as El Nino and Tsunami, and we often pronounce place names without consideration of how it would be said in the local dialect. I just like to think of Japan as a special case, just because there are some words which are adopted that are worth a chuckle. Words such as ‘camara-man’ meaning photographer, or movie titles such as the movie “Up” has become “Karl”. Some words are just adopted because they sound cool to the Japanese. For instance, a hair salon that for whatever reason decided to name itself poo-p. “Wow, where do you get your hair done?” “Oh I go to Poo-p.” (First word learned perhaps?) Grammar is generally very difficult for Japanese learners of English. There are a lot of things poorly translated into English that are just plain bizarre. Often the grammar on signboards and official documents are too wordy, many of which are out of context, the grammar is off, and the idea becomes lost. One example, my Aunt and I went to an aquarium last week, and one sign read, “Please do not disturb sunfish by taking photographs with a flame of flashlight. Thank you for your cooperation.” Another one read, “Please to not get over the handrail.”

Also articles such as A and The do not exist in the Japanese language and is very difficult for Japanese speakers to know when to place these properly in a sentence. One sign I saw the other day read, “Please push a door” I’m a little worried this Engrish is going to effect the way I talk. By the time I come back, I will be saying everything with adopted English loan words. Canu yu undasusando mi?

Appearance Counts

For some reason, between 1920 to 1930, Japan decided to model their school uniforms after European uniforms. The boys all wore military style uniforms, where the girls wore a sailor outfit (anyone familiar with Sailor Moon?). It may surprise you that these uniforms have changed very little. Everything from the shoes to the gym cloths are standardized in all Japanese schools. One thing I really have to laugh at is how Japanese students find sneaky ways around these authoritarian outfits. Teachers are very strict about students wearing their neckties properly, not wearing any makeup, and making sure their shirts are properly tucked in. Hair color is also not to be changed. Despite these desperate attempts to make students more responsible and prepare them for the outside world through constant reminders of dress and the immediate removal of any possible makeup on female students, students are still able to let a bit of their personality seep through with the clever ways of working around the school uniforms. I’ve never seen so many different colors and styles of socks in my life! Everything from rainbow ankle toe socks, to socks that go above and beyond the knees. Many students try to hide their colorful fancy belts with their German blazers, and it’s not hard to see the hard rock café t-shirts through the translucent white dress shirts. I’ve even seen some student’s hair grow a whole two feet from the day before! Teachers of course are to be models for proper dress conduct. With all the very somber colors that exist in the schools, I must be hurting peoples eyes with my yellow, green and blue dress shirts matched with orange, purple and red neck ties, the vibrant red Canadian neck tie from dollarama being the students favorite. The earring that I have in the top left ear is of course removed, yet there are times, depending on where I’m standing, where the light from the window shines through the hole, which students just have to examine! What I really love is when both teachers and students call me on something that’s out of line on my wardrobe. I’ve had several students and teachers adjust my collar for me, and even had one of the home economics teacher get me to stand up out of my chair so she could cut the strings that were connecting the back flaps of my suit jacket. How did she know?! Appearance seems to be everything in Japan. What kind of impression do the other teachers have of me I wonder?

Tabemasho!!!

Food is so interesting. I love how different cultures are able utilize the plants and animals which are able to grow and live within respective regions. I love how necessary it is to eat, and how everyone needs to eat in order to stay alive. Some very interesting types of dishes have come out of this necessity of daily living, and experiencing the delicacies and unusualities (new word?) that come out of different countries is one aspect of culture that is so much fun to experience. With all the traveling that I’ve done so far, and all the different types of foods that I’ve been fortunate enough to experience, I feel that I can stomach just about anything. From eating raw seal liver to over seasoned dog meat (no, I don’t know what kind of dog it was, but for the sake of this story, we’ll say he wasn’t a very nice dog who probably had it coming), I feel that a part of me has become immune to eating new and strange foods. I really have to remind myself once in a while what I’m actually eating.

This weekend, my friend Hitoshi and I had gone to Otaru, a quaint little port city on the west coast of Hokkaido. Lunch was the first stop, and sushi was on our minds. Hitoshi and his family seem to know everyone who has lived or been to Shimizu. The sushi chef at the restaurant used to live in Shimizu, so Hitoshi and the chef had a long talk. As they were talking, pieces of sushi kept magically appearing in front of me, delicately placed on a long green leaf. I’ve eaten sushi a good number of times, and anytime I go for sushi, I love to have the real thing; slabs of raw fish placed on rice held together by thin sheets of seaweed. Most of what I had eaten, I knew what it was, and could easily enjoy, yet there were a couple that I had know idea what it was I was eating. One piece of sushi, which I was particularly curious about, really made me question if I actually liked this delicacy or not. Seeing that Hitoshi and the chef were still very engaged in conversation, I decided to eat it anyways. After finishing the last piece of sushi, which must have taken at least 10 minutes to chew, (hey, you try swallowing a huge piece of raw octopus under a minute) I had asked Hitoshi about the strange sushi with the white goopy stuff. He was a little reluctant to tell me, but after I relentlessly persisted for an answer, he informed me it was fish sperm that I had eaten. Hmmm…. Another one to cross off the list, I suppose? I would be really interested in meeting the person to invent this sushi and know what he was thinking.

I really enjoy coming to my desk after classes are finished, and finding little Japanese snacks garnishing my books and papers. After someone has been on a business trip, its customary to bring back some treats from different parts of Japan, and present them to the people you work with. Some days I have 4 well-wrapped treats on my desk from who knows where, and from who knows who. The other day after class, one of my students came up to me and presented a dried flattened squid in a small clear plastic bag. I’ve gotten cookies from students before, but this squid was definitely a first. I will have it later.