far, far away

This is Your Last Sports Day

Today I was at the kindergarten. Since its the day before their sports day, the students had practice all morning. I usually don't teach a lesson when the kids have had a long activity in the morning, so I just played with them after we ate lunch together.

At the very end of the day the class sits down together and sings a little song and then their teacher hands out papers for parents and gives out some announcements. Today was a little different though. The teacher gave a little speech to the class. My Japanese isn't super great, but I got the gist of it.

She basically was talking about how this was going to be there last sports day at the kindergarten ( I only teach the oldest two classes at the kindergarten). She talked about how it was their job to be an example to the rest of the school and to try there hardest "Try" has a much different meaning here, its the basis of their entire work ethic, their entire society. Basically they hold the belief that trying hard always is much more important than natural ability.

The little speech, lasting only a minute or two, summed up Japanese education and society pretty nicely. While this is the last sports day in kindergarten, it is not their last in school, not by far. They'll have a sports day every fall from now until they graduate high school, with the same basic design the whole way. It merely grows in scope and scale along the way. The students start preparing a month earlier and come together first as a class and secondly as a school. While the students "compete" against each other, it's more of an exercise in working together more than anything. It's not just sports day either, just about every month the students are preparing for the next big event at the school.

This month it's sports day, next month it's the culture festival, and after that it's the choral contest. They are always working towards a goal, as a group. Even students that get picked on or just don't seem to fit in normally are fully included in these events. It's just sort of programmed into the others that all must be included. At the middle school sports day all three grades compete against each other, the younger students almost always loose and usually by a large margin, but they are cheered by everyone until they cross the finish line.

And the same goes at the kindergarten. They don't even compete at this level. They just work together and cheer each other, the "competition" layer is added later, a mere mask to make it more interesting for the older students.

And so what does all this mean? Well, what is school meant for? Most would say to educate, which is quite true, but school's, more than anything and more than most people realize, are there to create citizens for society. Sounds simple, but that's what's going on here. Japan is grouped based and it's clearly obvious to an outside observer, like myself. It's also quite clear to me how much of an emphasis we, Americans, place on the individual.

Sport's day ends with the giving of awards. Awards go out to classes, to groups, not to students, not individuals.

No News is Good News?

Well, I guess things have been sort of quiet the last few days, hence the lack of blogging. Let's see..

Yesterday the other two English teachers and myself took 14 students to the Kansai airport to interview English speakers. I was quite surprised by my students. They are normally very reluctant to use English, but after the first person or two they did just fine. The only bad part was having to ride our bikes in the rain to the train station. That was not fun at all...

This weekend I have two more sports days to go to...whooo hooo....Sports day is like field day in the US, but each class kind of competes against each other in races and other games. The junior high had there's last week. The kindergarten and elementary schools are having there's Saturday and Sunday, lucky me, I get to go to both. Its nice to be invited and even be included in it, but I could use a day off. Which reminds me...

I just have not been sleeping right lately. I come home and I'm just absolutely beat, but come time for bed I just lay there, unable to sleep. I've gone through periods like this before, but not really since high school. Hopefully its just temporary.

Please click the neat little picture things on the right! They'll bring you to my other sites where I keep my pics. The upper one is for pictures I mainly take with my camera and then upload when I get home. The bottom one is from my mobile phone. I take the picture, send it as an email and it gets posted right away! Come on now, that's pretty cool, right? I spend good money and time on these sites for everyone back home! So, what are you waiting for?! Get Clicking!

That's Japan for you

Just before I go to bed I thought I would share something I saw tonight that might give one a little insight into the way Japan works. I was on my nightly walk and walking past a local gas station. As I glanced over I saw that a customer was pulling away. The girl who had just filled up the car ran along with the car and then walked out into the street and stopped traffic for the car and waved the car out once it was safe to go. As it pulled away, the young girl bowed to the car. Now that's service.

Lazy Sunday

Ahhhhhhh...sometimes it's nice to just sit around and watch videos all day. The weather is finally just right. There's a nice crispness to the fall air, some of the humidity is finally leaving.

The past week was pretty sweet. Off on Monday, sick on Tuesday (ehh, that wasn't so great), Wednesday was sports day (no classes), Thursday was my welcome party, which was tons of fun, and Friday was another day off. Not too shabby, huh? Caught up on a ton of sleep, took care of some things that needed taking care of (i.e. hair cut).

Everything is going pretty nicely. I've settled into a nice routine. All is well.

Hair is cut

What a day. It took me several hours, a long train ride, and about $70, but I got a hair cut. $70 seems like a lot, but hair cuts ain't cheap here. No Super Cuts to save the day in these parts. I actually found a place where the guy speaks english. Turns out he learned to cut hair in north jersey...weird, huh? So, he was trained in cutting foreign hair too, well worth the extra cost I would say. My hair looks good too.

Hey! It might sound like nothing much, but you try getting your damn hair cut in Japan!!

Wonderful Day

Ahhhh, I just woke up and the weather is wonderful today. Japan has terrible summer weather. Its hot, but even worse, its just ungodly humid here. I hate when its hot and humid, so I have really been looking forward to the weather changing. Hopefully it stays this way.

So, I think that today I will get a haircut...whats that? A simple task you say? Ohhhh, no, no my friend, I only wish it was that simple. At best I can hope they have some sort of picture book with foriegn hair styles. Even then most places have almost no experience with foriegn hair, which tends to be a lot less course and much thinner than Japanese hair. On the bright side I came equiped with a set of clippers, so even if this goes horribly wrong, I can just start "fresh."

I came across this fairly funny page about Japanese vending machines today. The Japanese absolutely love vending machines. You can look down just about any street and see 4 or 5 of them. I've seen most of the ones this guy took pictures of....though I can't say I have ever seen the "used panties" vending machine. I'll keep looking though!

Argh

Well, I've messed around with this thing for well over 3 hours now. I finally seem to have it looking decent. I even got the slick looking flickr badge up and running. I'll up load some more pics tomorrow or Sunday. For now, I'm beat and off to sleep!

Settled in

I've gotten settled in pretty well now. Well, I guess I should first say that I moved to Japan about 8 weeks ago to teach English in southern Osaka. It has been quite an adjustment, to say the least, even having lived here before. Anyway, I feel like things are somewhat "normal" now, so I thought it would be a good time to start documenting this whole adventure. Things are so different here...things are so much the same here. I thought you might like to learn a little more about Japan.

So.....last night was my welcome party. It was for me and the librarian, who always joined the staff in August. It was tons of fun. I already had one that the board of education held for me, so this was my second one, held by the junior high school. I don't know who pays for these things, but the food and drinks just come none stop. I wasn't asking any questions though, I didn't even have to ask for more drinks, the other teachers just kept ordering them for me. Only half of the teachers showed up, but it was nice to see a different side of them. At work, the Japanese are very reserved, they always talk about how "busy" they are and little else. Lunch in the teacher's room is often silent, not as a rule, but everyone just seems to be doing work while eating. Needless to say I was surprised at how open my colleagues were with me. It was nice to get to know them better. I even chatted with our principle, who always seemed really uptight to me, but was pretty cool last night. A good time was had by all.

Tomorrow I either A) clean more and get a haircut or B) go to Nara....I dunno which I'll be doing yet.