Through the Motions

A New Beginning

It starts with a train ride. I head south and the urban, concrete landscape of Osaka thins out into residential suburbs. A half hour later the track twists through green mountains where narrow stretches of land appear at the foothills and become a patchwork of fields. This is Wakayama prefecture, the place I teach. The name of the town is Hashimoto. It straddles a wide, shallow river that is spanned by the occasional bridge. There are not many buildings in the area and a lot of the town residents are of an advanced age. Some of them squat in the shade and stare off into a distant nothingness. Elderliness has tipped the scale of time against them with their best days already long past. What life they have left must seem like a small island poking out precariously from a sea of death. Nowhere to go, nowhere to run. So it falls to the new generation to carry on in their stead. And that is where I come in. As a teacher I must guide my students towards an uncertain future and help mold them into functional members of society. The goal of every Japanese school, after all, is to produce hard working, productive adults who will one day contribute and pay taxes. 

It Starts Here

Rinkan Denentoshi Station

I arrive at my school. The kids shuffle in through the front entrance. They are open faced, little creatures with far too much energy for their own good. I greet them. Waving my hand, I can't help but to think that Japan is blessed with the cutest children on earth. It's not only about appearances, mind you. One should also factor in how they behave. The kids bounce around like colorful anime characters, their chirpy voices and random gestures surreal to an outsider. For a time I was utterly charmed. Now I simply smirk, thinking how every batch is the same as the last. And I've seen plenty. Thousands upon thousands of kids. A good number of the ones I currently teach weren't even born when I first came to Japan. Others from before have already become adults.

Walking to school

Nice to Meet You

With each new school year I do a self introduction for the first lesson. In some schools I have had as many as 30 classes and I often teach at more than one school in a semester (three schools right now). That has amounted to a lot of introductions over the years. When I step into the classroom a giddy excitement fills the air and the children fidget in their seats, flash smiles and whisper to one another. I'm there for their entertainment, a clown if you will, one without a costume. I say a few words and they laugh. I trip on a cord, they laugh. I rub my jaw, they laugh. I don't even have to try. My presence is a novelty in their otherwise foreigner free lives.

At the end of the lesson I set aside time for questions. The kids ask how old I am, if I have a girlfriend, what TV personality I like, my impressions of Japan. Sometimes I'll get a question I haven't heard before, like the time a seven year old asked what I thought about North Korea developing nuclear weapons. That threw me off and I replied, "Um...er....I uh....um, I think...uh, it's bad."

Another Class

So Many Kids

Once I've finished the introductions, the students' interest in me slowly wanes and I am happy for it. I'd rather not always be the center of attention. In Japan one should try to blend in. The great thing is I'm still able to have it both ways. If I feel like indulging in a bit of fun I simply walk outside during break time and play with the kids. The little ones I grab and swing in the air until I have a dozen lined up eagerly awaiting their turn. It is exhausting work and I'm never able to get through them all. As for the older kids, I avoid touching them, especially the girls. That doesn't stop them from pulling at my hand or tugging my shirt. "Come jump rope with us," they might say. It is very routine. I am at the mercy of my students and try as I might I find myself forever caught in the currents of youthful requests.

School Building

Grub

To keep my strength I eat the school lunches. They are not large but are balanced and vary from day to day. A typical lunch comes with rice, soup, vegetables, meat and milk. Hungry, silent and focused, I shovel the contents into my mouth and feel better for it. But this has not always been the case. Before I'd adjusted to the local diet I would often poke at my meals with a suspicious eye. Strange things appeared on the tray, things like lotus root, whale meat, squid bits, pickled radish and dried persimmon. I forced myself to eat what I could and eventually got used to the food. Then I worked at a school that had stopped serving school lunches because of a food poisoning incident. That's when I realized what a fool I had been to think the meals beneath me. In this day and age, a cheap, hot, nutritious lunch is not easy to come by.

Sukiyaki

Hamburg Steak

Fried Fishies

Fried Chicken Bits

Other Workers

The coworkers at my schools are nice. Most are locals. Simple folk. And those are the type I enjoy being around. They have no pretensions or ego to tiptoe around. The conversations we share are sincere, friendly and ordinary. Why just today we we're talking about the French company that introduced staplers to Japan. It was called Hotchkiss and that is now the word the Japanese use for stapler. In English the name association between a consumer good and a company brand is known as a generic trademark. One example is Kleenex ( tissue paper). Others are Scotch tape (cellophane tape) and q-tip (cotton swab). And there we were chatting over coffee trying to think of as many examples as possible. I was glad to learn some new Japanese.

In this city there are other foreign teachers like myself too. Aries, a Filipino guy from Manila, worked the same contract as me last year. In the morning we sat and chatted on the train together. He's a good guy--easy going, positive and quick to laugh. I'd like to think we are alike in that regard, and talking how we did our hopes were high for he new school year. Yet here we are doing the same damed thing in another town. I shouldn't complain. Work is work and I have only me to worry about. Aries on the other hand has a Japanese wife and two kids. Plenty of responsibility comes with a family, and in Japan it's not cheap raising children. But Aries does his best. A few weeks ago I went to his house for his son's birthday party. He entered dad mode and I could tell he's the fun, caring father type that all children deserve but few have. It's amazing he can be like that after dealing with other people's kids during the day. We even work the same part time job on Saturdays teaching at a YMCA. That's six days a week keeping little kids in line. My mother comes to mind. She's a teacher too. She teaches Montessori school to kindergarten age children. It's a job which requires a lot of energy and dedication and she's still at it in her late 60s. Some people are just made to work with kids, I suppose.

Aries and Son

YMCA Students

Musings

I now sit at a desk in the English room of one of my schools. I don't have class at the moment and am left to my writing. Across the room is a large window. I am three floors up and have a pleasant view of the mountains and river outside. The quiet setting and downcast weather have put me in a pensive mood. I've taught English in the US, Spain, Chile, Taiwan, a kids camp in Mongolia and several prefectures in Japan. Seven prefectures to be precise. And I wonder what meaning there is to it. What wisdom if any have I chanced upon along the way?

Across the River

Well, I wish I could say I now stand proudly atop some great peak from where I can gaze down at the path I've taken in life. But that would be a stretch of the truth. Sad to say I've become more of a lost and worn out soul trekking endlessly through a maze of narrow canyons. What is around the next bend, I cannot say. Where I am headed, I do not know. My one hope is that I can push on long enough to emerge from the shadows and at last set my sights on a clear horizon. The longer I have been at the teaching game the more I think I must leave Japan before that happens. So I'm giving it one more year and I call it quits. Until then I've resigned myself to month after month of going through the motions.

Tea Time