KMK's GF LOL

A question I often get - as "often" as I get questions about the blog - is whether anyone at my school reads the blog; I guess readers wonder whether I'm worried about anyone getting upset, considering the amount of detail and commentary I provide on students and teachers. Typically, I laugh this off, because even if they found the site, I can't imagine this ever being an issue. I'd be incredibly surprised if anyone at the school - student or teacher - has the English ability or general wherewithal to actually read anything I write. After all, very few native speakers have the stamina to get through a whole bloated post in one sitting.

But, it turns out that at least one student has read the blog. You might remember KMK, a much-doted on student of mine from the English club. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned him several times before.

I had mentioned this fact to him as well, that I was writing a blog on which he had appeared. The thing is though, now that my students are also writing a blog that I also belong to, it only takes one click on my name on the student blog for them to find my site. So, KMK came up to me last club meeting to tell me he had been reading the blog. Specifically one part. With his girlfriend. He was a bit shocked.

He was showing the English club blog to his girlfriend one day, and I guess they clicked right through to my blog. And they started reading this post about the school festival last year. I talk about the time Matt came to visit the school during the festival, and KMK gave the two of us a tour. It's this description in particular of part of the tour that caught their interest:

Here is KMK and his harem. KMK actually has a girlfriend in the second year, but since I don't think she's good enough for him, Matt and I kept needling him about going after this first year girl on the right. As the girls here were in the cooking club, Matt played up that angle, while I convinced KMK that this girl had an elegant, rare "old Japan"- type of beauty. He went red and gesticulated in an even wilder fashion - if that can be believed.

Needless to say, KMK's girlfriend was not happy to hear this story, despite it being almost a year old, and he caught some flak for something I wrote. He didn't seem particularly bothered by it, just kind of exasperated. I was, of course, amused, and not at all repentant. I told him I still held to what I had said and written last year, and I explained the American high school custom I'll call "going down a grade to trade up a grade": boys dating younger, prettier girls of the type that might be unattainable to them in their own grade. I told him it's his senior year, and time to start taking advantage of that while he still can. Maybe he'll listen to me before he heads off to college and has to start at the bottom of the totem pole again.

Good Children = Good Drinkers

I took this picture the other day at Toys 'R' Us, or, as it's pronounced here, toizarasu. They were selling it at the checkout counter. It's a beer for kids.

I had read about this before, but had kind of taken it as one of those stories - typically, the only type of story ever written by foreign papers about Japan - on some bizarre trend now sweeping the country. I really think the media has special correspondents assigned specifically to find and report on any quirky things popping up here. It goes like this: some fad has reportedly caught on in Tokyo and is speading far and wide across the land- except, no Japanese person I know has ever even heard of the fad in question (two examples I can think of offhand are the "Japanese bathing suits" and "Tokyo oxygen bar" stories). Regardless, we are all thankful for the opportunity to stop and have a cheap laugh at the silly people across the sea. Imagine the kind of insane articles we could write about the US if we applied these kinds of ridiculous journalistic standard to ourselves.

So, when I first read about this - a beer made for and marketed to children - I took it with a grain of salt, but I stand corrected. Because they really are selling a beer made especially for children (or, at least, it's for sale; it didn't seem to be flying off the shelves). In a toy store, no less.

It's called Yoiko no Biiru, or "Good Children's Beer." At the top in red is, presumably, the slogan: "Good Children's Beer: The Beer that Good Children Drink." It is also described (in yellow) as, "A beer-like fermented beverage." Sounds tasty, huh?

Anyhow, the toddler pictured on the label certainly seems to be enjoying his frothy cold one. He's emitting a contented sigh; looking forward to knocking one back at the end of a long day of crawling around and putting things in his mouth.

Parents in this hyper-competitive society are always trying to give their children a head start. Even when it comes to alcoholism, I suppose. A big part of job success here is drinking after work with your superiors, so it's never too early to get a leg up on your (future) co-workers.

Graduation Ceremonies as Cultural Rosetta Stones

The first Thursday of March was the graduation ceremony for the third year students at my school (The school year here starts in April and ends in March, with finals being held a few days before the ceremony. Strangely, school itself continues for a couple more weeks, though grades are already due, meaning students and teachers keep to coming classes even though we really can't introduce any new material).

Though the various formal ceremonies in the Japanese school system that I am required to attend are invariably tedious, they do offer me opportunities to see the core of the school experience here. High school graduation being the most important ceremony commemorating the most important event of that school experience, the ceremony is a crystallization of the motive and method of that schooling. I'll give you a summary of aspects of the ceremony, then I'll attempt a bit of interpretation for each.

The graduation is held in the gym. The front chairs are arrayed for graduating students; behind the students is a gallery for parents; behind that is one for current second years. The parent gallery is filled - with the exception of perhaps four members, to be generous - exclusively with mothers. To the sides of the stage are two sections: the one on the right of the stage from the audience's perspective is for teachers, with members further divided into camps of senior administrators, third year teachers, and remaining teachers. There is also a microphone set up for announcements behind a small podium, with one teacher who serves as Master of Ceremonies sitting at a folding chair behind it. On the left of the stage are visiting VIP's; PTA Presidents, Superintendents, retired teachers or administrators. Behind all the audience, in the second-floor rafters, is the school band.

In the center of the stage is a podium, behind which are the national and prefectural flags, to the right of which is the school emblem. Slightly off to the right and above the stage is a plaque that gives the order of events for the assembly.

It reads:
1. Opening address
2. Singing of the National Anthem
3. Awarding of Diplomas
4. Address from the principal
5. Address from visiting VIP
6. Farewell address
7. Sending off address
8. Singing of the school song
9. Closing address

The most glaring difference to me was of course the absence of fathers at the ceremony. I remarked on this to another teacher, and she informed me that each student is allotted only one seat for a visitor, explaining that the gym wasn’t large enough to hold more than that. This sounded reasonable, except that the gym apparently was large enough to accommodate the entire class of second-year students. So, apparently it’s more important that the second-year students attend the ceremony than the parents of the students actually graduating.

Along with other teachers who have put off entering until the last possible second, I enter the gym and take a seat near the front in order to easily take pictures. Teachers chat in muffled tones. Everyone is wearing a suit, even the P.E. teachers. (As an aside, a P.E. teacher in a suit is like a 10 year old in a suit: uncomfortable and adorable.)

Muted, indistinct classical music is piped in through the sound system as the third years enter the gym, walking in lines down a pathway of sorts, and sit down in rows, arranged by homeroom class. They are wearing the same school uniforms they wear every day, except with small red flowers - I'd guess carnations, but then again the only flowers I can identify for certain are roses and perhaps sunflowers - in the right front pocket of their jackets. They look bored, and the ceremony hasn't even properly begun.

The principal enters the gym, wearing a special jacket with long tails only used for the entrance and graduation ceremonies. He walks down the pathway to his seat at the aforementioned administrator’s area, sitting to the right of the two vice-principals. After he sits down, the MC stands up, walks to the podium at the side of the stage, and announces that the graduation ceremony will now commence. He then barks out, "kiritsu!"

-Now, this is a common part of all the ceremonies at school, these orders. It was something that jumped out at me the first time I attended a function, but now it seems entirely natural. The audience is told when to stand, when to sit, and when to bow through tersely worded yelps from the MC of kiritsu, rei, and chakuseki: "stand," "bow," and "sit," respectively. It's rather strange taking orders from another person like this at first - rather martial, really - but ultimately necessary to make sure everyone is on the same page as far as ceremony goes. Though it might seem like this would be rather obvious - stand for the national anthem, sit for speeches, clap at the end, etc. - as will become clear, the process here is so involved it would be chaos otherwise-

So,

kiritsu!

and we all stand. "Now, the singing of the national anthem," he announces. The band in the rafters behind us starts in on the mournful dirge of the song, and the teachers and students begin to sing. (I'm going to save my discussion of the anthem itself for another time, but suffice to say, it's both moving and troubling at the same time to experience) At the end of the song - which is mercifully short, as anthems go -

chakuseki!

and we sit.

Then, the MC announces it's time for the awarding of diplomas, and the principal heads up onto the stage, bowing at the audience, then at the flag, taking his position behind the central podium. Now proceeds the most tedious section of the ceremony - the reading of the names of each student. The home room teacher of each class proceeds to the podium at the side of the stage and reads the name of each student in sequence. Nobody walks up to the stage; after his or her name is read, the student stands, yells, "Hai!" bows, and remains standing until all of his or her classmates have had their turn. Then that homeroom sits, and the next homeroom teacher approaches and it starts over again. 40 or so students to a class, 10 classes = lots of "Hai!" and bowing.

I try to amuse myself by thinking about the insane amount of overlap in names that occurs in a country without any sort of immigration. It's like having everyone in a graduating class be named Smith or Jones. There's remarkably little innovation as far as first names go either, because people seem to put all their ingenuity into thinking of different Chinese characters to use to write the first names of their kids rather than thinking of an original name. That topic only works for a bit as a diversion, so I start studying the individual bows of students. You can tell a lot about someone by how they bow: how deep, how long they hold the bow, what they do with their hands - all these things can reveal to an observer things about your personality and upbringing. Or at least, I imagine they reveal such things to me. This kills time.

It also keeps me awake. Many of the other teachers make it through this section by sneaking in a nap. Many of the students do as well, actually. Nestled down in their seats, they jump up as their names are called, managing to get out a muffled "Hai!"

Finally, all the names have been called, so the principal walks off the stage, bowing again, and takes his seat down at the side of the stage. Then, 10 seconds later, he stands right back up, walks back onto the stage, bows again, and takes the exact same position behind the podium. This is the part in the ceremony where I - without fail - laugh aloud and am scolded by whoever I happen to be sitting next to. Because this is the part where the observance of protocol just crosses the line into insanity.

Kiritsu!
Rei!
Chakuseki!

The principal, now back up on the stage and, presumably, rested from his 10 second sojourn, begins to give a speech. This is amusing to me because he's just been transferred to this school in the last year and so is barely known by any of the students. Several, actually, had confessed to me that they don't even know his name. His speech is innocuous enough and passes without incident or interest from the students assembled.

Kiritsu!
Rei!
Chakuseki!

But his speech is outdone in the capacity for arousing disintrest by the VIP speaker brought out next, as the district superintendent comes up on stage to give a rambling 10 minute address. He looks like he's never spoken to a group of students before, and he addresses them in patronizing, simplified terms, like they're graduating primary, not high school. I'm completely mystified by why the guy is even at the ceremony, let alone giving a speech to students. There are actually several other adminstrators present from other junior high and high schools, but they, fortunately, do not also give a speech. Like the principal before him, the superintendent mostly talks about how the students will and should never lose their identification with their school. He sweats a lot, but makes it through, eventually. Most of the students, however, did not make it through the first minute (They're asleep).

Kiritsu!
Rei!
Chakuseki!

The principal stands up once more and again takes his place behind the podium onstage, and the MC announces now it's time for the Farewell Address from a representative of the student body. A girl stands up and walks up on stage to stand facing the principal across the podium. This is what you can see in that picture at the top of the page.

If you look at that picture, you'd probably suspect this was of the girl greeting the principal, or perhaps receiving something on behalf of the class from the principal. But this is in fact a picture taken midway through her speech.

Because, the girl giving the speech about her experience at high school is not giving the speech to her assembled classmates, but directly to the principal at the front of the stage. She talks about the good times and the bad she has had at school, her formative experiences and the times she'll never forget. Near the end, she breaks into tears several times and has to pause to regain her composure enough to go on. Students in the audience, and teachers as well, are similarly shook up by the speech, and the sounds of stifled weeping can be heard all over the gym. Never once during this entire speech does she turn around to face the crowd; the speech is directed solely at the impassive face of the principal. Never once do I see a betrayal of emotion on his face through my zoom lens. The girl goes back to her seat, and

Kiritsu!
Rei!

as we bow at the Principal again, before he makes his way off the stage, and

Chakuseki!

we sit down too.

The sending off is a very quick speech by the

Kiritsu!
Rei!

Vice Principal,

Chakuseki!

and an intro into the singing of the school song.

Kiritsu!

The band starts up on the song, which all the students and teachers know - except for me. I suppose I could learn the lyrics, but it's more fun to just go through it making noises that sound vaguely like the verses, waiting for the end where they just sing, "Hamamatsu Minami Koukou," (the name of the school) at which point I can join in heartily. Sometimes I whistle. The school song is longer than the national anthem, incidentally.

The song done, the Vice Principal stands up and walks over to the side podium to announce the end of the graduation ceremony. With one more...

Kiritsu!
Rei!

...the ceremony is finished. The piped-in music begins anew and teachers stand by the door as the students file out in rows. I start trying to make a mental image of the ceremony to write about later.


So, this was an extremely long, perhaps tedious description of the event. But that's not to say just because the recounting of so many details was tedious to read that the details are of no importance:

First, just walking into the gym, you can see how everything has its place. Everyone knows where they are to be. And, with the giant sign announcing the order of ceremonies, everyone knows exactly what they will do. Obviously, a current running throughout is the intense attention to detail and procedure. This is most ridiculous in the way the principal dances from stage to the table off-stage between portions of the ceremony, of course, but though I laugh while watching, it makes perfect sense here. Things happen according to certain rules in certain ways and at certain times. Everyone knows this, so it all runs like one well-oiled machine. From the outside - to me - it may seem amusing, silly, or even a bit fascist, but the school is not built to produce people like me to live in the US; it's for Japanese kids to learn to navigate Japanese society.

In Japan, knowing your place is vital, as an awareness of relative status is necessary to even properly talk to another person; different verb conjugations and even verbs have to be used to those above or below oneself. There are rules for behavior in most any situation to follow, and social consequences for not following these rules. Once kids graduate school, they enter adult society, and they have to be ready for their new roles in the workplace. That means learning the right way to navigate the social landscape of the group as much as it does any actual job-skills (Interestingly enough, I've heard of Japanese companies making hiring decisions purely based on a candidate's grasp of honorific language, so in some cases this social adeptness might actually be held above actual work-related ability)

The most shocking part of the ceremony for me was watching the girl give the commencement speech facing the principal, rather than her peers and parents. The symbolism was just amazing. In the US, the girl would speak to her classmates. She would share and celebrate their time and accomplishments at school. But here, the girl was speaking to the principal, the school made manifest. By turning away from her classmates, she was showing that this ceremony was not about their lives and futures, but about their obligation to the school.

At the very end of their schooling, the graduate is produced, not as a supposed invididual who has accomplished much and is on the way to even greater things, but - just as the speeches of the principal and superintendent made clear - as someone who owes a debt to the school and though going on to another, larger group, must never forget their place here. The students are there to be reminded of their place in the line of those before and to come. The ceremony is not about the accomplishments of the students, because it's not really about the students at all; it's about the school.

And that's really it. The ceremony is not about the students, because the schooling is not about the individuals. The schooling is not about producing individuals because the goal is to create members of a group that will cohere into one. The ceremony is a celebration of the group, because that's what the society celebrates.

The thing is, watching one of these graduations, though the school and its ceremony seem to exalt in the group, the students themselves seem ambivalent if not apathetic. And this reveals some problems for this generation in Japan. Schools were set up to create factory workers to compete in a post-WWII market that no longer exists. Loyalty to a group - typically a company - in adult life was predicated on a promise of job security that is no longer being made. Kids see this, and the divide between what society promises and what it can deliver them, what the system is there to provide and what they actually want, seems to be growing. This graduation should be a stirring moment for them as a symbol of what's to come.

But most of them couldn't stay awake.

Those damn Brazilians

In Japan, candidates for political office are subject to all kinds of restrictions on campaigning: apparently forbidden from advertising on television or radio, and prohibited from campaigning of almost any kind up until the last couple weeks of the elections. They're left with two main options: plastering every open surface with posters with the candidates mug and name, and blasting every open frequency with propaganda speeches from huge megaphones mounted on trucks, screeching like terrible birds of prey, descending upon innocents in public spaces, mercilessly slaughtering peace of mind and quiet.

So I go to Starbucks to get a cup of coffee and read a book last week. I like to sit outside on nice days and read, taking breaks to people watch. Often I see people I know - usually students, typically in awe to see me living outside the school grounds - and though it's not terribly exciting, it's a way of getting out of the house and getting some reading done.

But, I'm only there for about 10 minutes when this truck parks down the street and starts blaring its political speech at an intolerable volume. Typically I can ignore background noise when I'm reading, but this not in the background; it's more like someone standing next to you with a bullhorn screaming in your ear.

So I pick up my coffee and book and head down to the other Starbucks. This being a modern city and all, that's only a couple blocks away. I get about 15 pages farther in my book when the speech begins again. I look up and see the same truck. It has now set up shop directly across the street from this Starbucks.

I don't even try to read through it this time; I snarl at the truck a bit, jump to my feet and immediately walk back to the other one, still with my original cup of coffee in hand. I sit down again - back at my original table - and open the book.

I'm still not halfway through my coffee when the truck comes back again, except this time even closer to the first Starbucks than before. Now, I get so angry I actually start listening to what kind of nonsense this guy is yelling into the megaphone. I want to know what is so damn important that they feel it's necessary to hound me all around town.

And then I really get angry.

Because this guy is talking about foreigner crime. Actually, what he's talking about is a case in which a Brazilian from Hamamatsu killed some girl and then ran back to Brazil. Apparently now the government refuses to extradite him. It sounds like a pretty tragic case.

But-

This guy is not talking about this one case alone. He is not leading a crusade on behalf of this girl to bring her killer to justice. He is not even just talking about the problems with the law as it applies to Brazilians. No, he is sitting on the sidewalk talking about foreigner crime. Foreigners, as in all non-Japanese.

He talks about how, though most foreigners are good people, some of them are committing crimes, and then they escape back to their countries to avoid punishment. He exhorts the Japanese people to support a stronger stance on foreigner crime: both to increase penalties and also to educate the foreign population. He informs the Japanese in the area that many foreigners simply don't understand Japanese morals, and it's the job of the Japanese to teach them how to be good citizens.

I am steaming at this point.

In my head, I compose several counter-arguments:

1) Statistics on foreign crime in Japan, though often trotted out in elections to play into public fears of the Other (recently re-elected Tokyo Governor Ishirhara is a prime, prime offender), are rather misleading. Though overal crime rates are somewhat higher for foreign residents, there are mitigating factors. First, to compare "crimes" is misleading, as a majority of the "crimes" committed by foreigners in Japan are actually visa-related, and obviously none of these can be committed by any Japanese person. Second, though crime rates base use the number of legal foreign residents in Japan as the base population, they include crimes committed by any foreign person - even tourists or illegals - for the total amount of crimes committed. Basically, this underestimates the foreign population while overestimating the number of crimes they commit, leading to an artificially inflated number.

2) Why are the actions of one Brazilian used to indict the entire population of non-Japanese in Japan? As an American, invited here by the Japanese government, well-versed in Japanese culture and language, playing a valueable role in the community educating children, why should I be labeled a possible threat? To these very same children, no less. Recently, a young British woman in Japan as an English teacher was murdered by a Japanese man, but I'm quite sure that her parents aren't down on the street corner talking about the grave threat Japanese people pose to us all. An even more pertinent example would be the tragedy at Virgina Tech; only the lunatic fringe of our society use the actions of one disturbed kid to attack all Koreans, all Asians, or all foreigners. Hell, even those people are likely to at least be a little more specific in their racism!

3) For a guy purporting to want to teach Japanese morals, isn't it insanely rude to sit on a street corner and speak in Japanese about the problems with foreigners, addressing just the Japanese citizens as if no one else could understand what you're saying? It's treating all non-Japanese like children who don't need to be part of the conversation that all the grown-ups are having. And if you're going to make wild indictments of these groups, shouldn't you make your accusations directly, rather than in a way you assume they won't understand?

So I think about these things. I stand across from the guy and try to get him to meet my eyes. He does not. I think, if you're going to label me a killer, why don't you fucking look at me directly and say it?

I imagine committing several acts of violent foreigner crime.

But in the end, I walk away, because though all the above points and more would easily flow out with righteous indignation in English, the process of trying to say these things, to think these thoughts in Japanese just tires me, frustrates me. I can't speak out, and I can't stand up for myself. Yet.

I went home and studied Japanese. For next time.

Because I know there will be a next time.

Santa's Visit

I've been quite lax in my writing lately; not out of nothing to say so far as less time to do so. And, a seeming inability to write on a constant basis. I was home over Christmas and then, after returning to Japan, immediately went off to Cambodia. After coming back from Cambodia I went right back to work - literally, going directly from the airport to school to teach a class. Now I'm trying to interview for jobs in Tokyo so I can move there after my JET contract ends in August. Things have happened, certainly, but these Things get away from me as I put off jotting down stories for another day, which becomes another week, which has become now two months. So, as a stopgap, here is this:

It's speech time again at school. The speeches last semester (last year as well for that matter, though I can't hold this year's students responsible for the ineptitude of their predecessors) were so uniformly awful - in the sense of being awful by virtue of extreme uniformity - that this time kids were required to submit their draft to the teacher before the speech even got to me. The teacher was supposed to reject outright any speeches that were too boring or ordinary, forcing the students to come up with original ideas.

So, that worked, in a way. By and large, the speeches were much less about club activities or the need to study - the mainstays of last semester. And they were more original. One kid talked about how much he loves Rage Against the Machine - even rapping a few of the lines from "Bulls on Parade." (With a solemn expression, he recited, "Weapons not food not homes not shoes / Not need, just feed the war cannibal animal" and then simply announced, "I heard these words and knew they were very true.")

Sometimes their originality left me with some questions about their general mindset. For example, this girl's speech. It starts off with her saying she used to believe in Santa, and one time she saw him. "Oh, that's cute," I thought. I would ask that you click on the image and read how the speech develops from there.

First, this girl is 16. Not only does she still believe in Santa Clause, but she actually does believe that Santa came to her house to take a piss. I talked to her about it when she gave the speech. She insisted.
Second, in what kind of magical Christmas story does Santa take a piss in your house? I'm pretty sure there aren't any carols or claymation specials about Santa sneaking in and leaving that kind of present; even the Grinch stayed clear of that. Even surrounded by bright blue smoke, that's still not a sight to inspire wonder or the spirit of the holidays.
Third, if Santa did come to your house just to take a piss, would it really be something to be so happy about? Something that would fill you with longing and regret that he didn't return to soil your house again with his steaming, yuletide urine?
Fourth, isn't the whole idea of this kind of unsettling? It conjours up thoughts for me of vagrants wandering into her house, or perhaps an alcoholic father stumbling around in the dark.

Other times, the push for originality seemed to result in the students becoming more unhinged than usual. Asking a lot of these kids to write something individual on any topic they like is akin to suddenly releasing animals raised in captivity into the wild veldt; pushed out of the metaphorical cage of their completely structured educational system, shocked by their freedom of expression, freezing stock-still and unable to write at all, or racing off across the fields on some bizarre tangent of communication.

Like this guy. Sandwiched in between the opening and closing lines here is a completely normal speech. That opening line, however, is "I will cause a revolution next year." I read onward to learn of what this kid's plan might be, but to no avail. He just talks about studying and playing basketball. Then the revolution rears its head again. He admits that "causing a revolution is difficult for me" (and I think we've all been there before!) but assures with confidence, "but I will cause a revolution."

When I get speeches like this, I usually pepper them with question marks and send them back to the kid to explain. When it's something I want to hear though, I just leave it, wait for the kid to give the speech, and enjoy the show. They stand up in front of the class and say the most insane things with no comprehension of their meaning. A student declares "I will cause a revolution," but as I break into laughter, he only crinkles his brow slightly before going on, a bit befuddled by my reaction but otherwise unaffected. The rest of his classmates turn back as well to see me laughing, but just shake their heads at me in incomprehension, since they don't understand what the speaker is saying any more than he does.