Then she gets chikan-ed...

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week I was "invited" to a 2-day English Seminar for a local high school, Konan (湖南=lake-west, not Conan the Barbarian / Destroyer / Governor, or of Late Night with _), invited being in quotations since this is what my supervisor said. Really, it is part of my contract, so this was one of those Japanese mandatory "invitations"; delivering an order but couching it in polite language.

The seminar was held at a hotel in the city and consisted of two days of English conversation classes, workshops and activities, the slogan of the camp being "Japanese is not allowed!" 10 ALTs and 40 something first year high school students - mainly girls, since they dominate the English department - from the Konan English program attended the voluntary seminar. I taught 10 50 minute classes with 5 students to a class, and then spent a few additional classes working with one group to develop a skit for the competition held at the end.

At first, adhering to the "no Japanese" policy, I spoke only English to all of the students. They, in return, rewarded me with blank stares and monosyllabic replies. The awkwardness of the situation was enhanced by the fact that each class was held in a large meeting room at this business hotel with a small table placed exactly at the center that served to make us feel more isolated from each other and the silences that much more devastating. I felt like my life was bleeding out of me right there in front of them, their silence swamping my enthusiasm and energy.

So afterwards, I decided to start speaking a little Japanese with the kids, and that made all the difference. Once they knew I could speak, they would come up to me outside of class to chat or ask me to explain certain words to them, rather then spending the class leafing through a dictionary. Kids also probably became more comfortable speaking to me in their poor English once they heard my own bastardized version of their language. Really, they started talking to me a little too much, especially after I had lunch with the students and happened to find myself sitting next to the popular clique with the two loudest, most outgoing girls. Afterwards, they followed me around for most of the seminar, giggling and taking pictures of me with their cell phones.

The best part of the seminar though, was writing the skit. My group was assigned the scenario: "Someone is being annoying on the train. Tell them to stop" So we brainstormed what would happen like that on a train, and for the students, the obvious response was chikan, or the perverts that grope women on trains. This is a bit of an epidemic in Japan, with trains being so crowded that men at night sometimes take advantage of the cramped trains to try to grope women. (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/International/story?id=803965&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312) It's amusing that the girls were making a skit about grabbing each other on a train, but it is doubly amusing to me that it is so commonplace in the culture and basically taken as a matter of course that it is something that can be joked about.

My group was four girls, Yurie, Yumi, Kumiko, and Kyoko, and a boy, Yuuki. Yurie (left) was an extremely shy girl, rather tall, who barely spoke at all, and never in English, and spent most of the time in class covering her face with her handkerchief. Yumi (right) was this tiny little nerdy girl with glasses and hair that came down over her face. Kumiko (middle) had lived abroad, was a bit more confident speaking than the others and the only one who could really speak English. Kyoko was one of the previously mentioned chatty popular girls (the one not wearing my sunglasses), really loud and hilarious, very cute. Yuuki was really a shy little boy basically, but tried to hide it by acting cool and nonchalant about everything. Like most Japanese boys, he bored the hell out of me with his lack of personality.

Try to keep a picture of these kids in mind when reading this, and keep in mind they are all wearing their school uniforms too, which makes this even more amusing. So the skit that they eventually produced ran as follows:

Yurie - Chikan victim
Yumi -Chikan #1
Kyoko - Chikan #2
Kumiko - Chikan #3

[Yurie walks into the train car and grabs the overhead handle]

Yurie: I am so glad I caught the last train

[Yumi is a few yards to the side of Yurie in the train and eyes her]

Yumi: Oooo! That girl is so pretty, and alone!

[Yumi shuffles to the side to get a little closer. Yurie notices and moves away. Yumi scuttles closer; Yurie inches away again.
They chase each other around the train until Yurie, trying to escape Yumi, unwittingly backs right into the waiting Kyoko, who then grabs her ass instead]

Kyoko: Ohhh yeah! And nobody is going to stop me!

[Kumiko walks on the train and arms raised, yells]

Kumiko: I will stop you! Me and my two guns here (poses, flexing biceps and then kisses each fist alternately) are going to take care of some business.

Kyoko: Bring it on then, punk!

[They circle each other, Kyoko looks ready to hit her but instead suddenly whips around and runs off]

Kumiko: I saved you. [Puts her arm around Yurie (who is actually maybe 5 inches taller than her, which is hilarious)] How about a drink?

Yurie: As IF! I didn't need your help anyway, you pervert!

[She walks off the train and Kumiko chases after her]

[Yumi is still standing in the train the whole time and after a few seconds sighs]

Yumi: ...I am so alone.

End scene.

The skits were all supposed to have a moral or message at the end. I guess our's was "Everyone on the train is probably a pervert"? But God, I laughed so hard and was so proud of these kids for their guts. I couldn't believe that Kumiko actually stood in front of all her classmates and flexed and kissed her fists, and Yumi's downtrodden look and slumped shoulders when she delivered her final line just killed me.

Unfortunately, though our skit was by far the most amusing, we were having such a good time thinking of lines for the skit that we didn't finish writing it until 5 minutes before we had to perform, and so nobody had their lines properly memorized. So we didn't win this contest based on delivery and grammar, but we made everyone else competing look boring and lame, which in the end, is all that really matters.

Del Mar is indeed a real place

Sunday night I was invited over for dinner at the house of one of the teachers I will be team-teaching with. He picked me up at my apartment and drove me back to his place, about 40 minutes away, where we ate with his wife, daughter, his father and mother, his brother-in-law, sister, and their daughter. As he warned me as we walked up into the alcove of his house, "You're going to have to speak all in Japanese tonight, because nobody else speaks English." Indeed, he was quite right. But of course it's not just the difficulty of speaking Japanese; entering into a family dinner is always tricky businesss - navigating a web of already joined exclusive relationships - but this is just exacerbated by the over-arching Japanese cultural system that puts one further on the outskirts. Walking into the dining room, despite the teacher having told his family a foreigner would be coming over for dinner, it was still hard to miss the barely-concealed shock on all of their faces upon greeted with me in all my glory. I suppose describing a foreigner to a Japanese person is kind of like trying to describe the face of God; words fail to do justice to its power and magnificence when one finally does see it, the experience reducing a person to a sort of gasping fetal state. Or perhaps a more apt analogy that more accurately captures the fear inherent in this experience while also commenting on my general relatively outlandish appearance here would be coming face to face with a grizzly after only looking at photos of grizzlies in National Geographic, standing quivering at the foot of the giant beast as it rears up on its hind legs to its full height, towering so far above as to block the very sun itself!

Anyways...

So dinner was a rather good mixture of sushi, barbecue, and fried fresh fish, but a rather stolid affair at first as everyone acclimated themselves to my sudden appearance in their home. But as usual, a bit of alcohol was all we needed to loosen my tongue and concurrently the atmosphere. The teacher grabbed a few beers for me and his brother-in-law, then he grabbed a couple more when we finished those. He told me he used to be a strong drinker when he was younger, but not anymore. Then he went and grabbed an old bottle of scotch and pretty soon the three of us were drinking scotch on the rocks. Yeah, sure, when you were younger.

After the scotch, he ran out to the back of the house, suddenly reappearing with a guitar and a songbook. Of Beach Boys songs. Which he then started playing at the table for all of us, to the delight of his family and to my great amusement. The Beach Boys, as part of the increasing trendiness of surf culture in particular, as well as the continuous fascination with American rock in general, are huge in Japan. The teacher said his favorite Beach Boys song was "Surfin' USA", and then asked me to sing along to the song with him as he played it. So we sat around the table singing the song. He was impressed that I knew the lyrics, since the song came out so far before I was born. So I explained, "Well, you can't really grow up in California, as the Beach Boys were from there, without hearing all the Beach Boys songs a thousand times." First, he said, shocked, "Wait, the Beach Boys are from California?!" I said yes, and then afterwards I pointed out that both Del Mar and La Jolla, mentioned in the song, were in fact in San Diego, quite near my house. To which he replied, incredulously, "Those are real places?!" Apparently he thought the Beach Boys had just made up all the names they were singing...

Not to make a point after every post, but that's a good illustrative lesson on the level of absorption of even American popular culture in Japan. If the Beach Boys can't make inroads here, what the hell am I going to be able to do?

The Reddish-Black Ship

Dialogue today with hilarious Japanese colleague:

Luke: I don't have anything to do during the day...
Sensei: You should go visit other teachers
L: Are you sure? It seems like people are kind of busy and besides, I disrupt every class or activity I get near.
S: I told you, nobody is actually busy here, they are all just stupid Japanese who have to pretend. Anyways, the teachers really want to talk to you but they are too scared and nervous and they don't know how to start.
L: Oh yeah? What should I do then?
S: You just have to walk over and force your way in like you are Perry and the Black Ships!
L: (Laughs) So I should maybe come in and demand they open their class to me? Then come back the next day to make them sign a formal agreement?
S: そうそうそう! (yeah yeah yeah!) But instead of warships and guns you will use your height and blue eyes.

Info on the Black Ships:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Ships)

An education in the way of the sword

This is the office I work in, the teacher's lounge at the high school. Japanese offices are not separated into separate rooms or even into cubicles, just one large room with all the desks next to each other. All of the teachers have desks in this room, along with the two vice-principals, with only the principal having his own office. I suppose it's to promote unity in the workforce, or to make sure that the vice-principals can observe everyone working. The end result is that everyone has to be busy all the time, but since nobody really has anything to do, basically everyone has to pretend that they are busy all the time. I however, having finished my assignments for the whole month already, have taken instead to watching movies or listening to music on my laptop; since Japanese people don't really know anything about computers, nobody knows what I'm doing on it. Otherwise, I wander around the campus listening to mp3s on my cell phone.

Even though it's summer vacation, the students still come to school almost every day to take part in club activities. Each student joins at least one club - out of sports, martial arts, English, chess, calligraphy, etc - and this club is basically their main social group throughout high school. Teachers volunteer their time to be in charge of these various clubs. Having time to wander around, I also started visiting various club meetings. Yesterday I went to watch the kendo club practice, on the invitation of one of the teachers I'm working with, who happens to be in charge of this club.

Kendo 剣道 (literally, way of the sword) is the modern martial art of Japanese fencing based on traditional Japanese sword fighting, but formalized into a competitive sport with specific equipment and rules. Each participant wears a kind of protective cloak with armor along with a helmet, and they fight with bamboo practice sword called a shinai. Points are awarded in competition only for strikes to certain areas of the body, and each strike is accompanied by a loud kiai, or shout, kind of like a battle cry. So kendo practice is a bunch of kids in these elaborate outfits running and smacking each other while shrieking loudly.

Enter this teacher, who pulls out students during the two-hour practice for individual sparring. Usually this guy is really well-mannered, almost timid, in his 30's. He walked me over to the gym wearing his robe and I had to stifle a laugh because I just couldn't picture him participating in, let alone teaching, an activity involving violent confrontation. However, once he put on his mask, everything changed. He pulled out this kid and after they bowed at eachother, proceeded to BEAT THE SHIT out of him for about 20 minutes. He would rush at the kid with this samurai war cry - weakly returned by his opponent - and then just whack the hell out of him; on the facemask, on the wrist, on the shoulder, and once, ducking under the swing to hit the guy full on in the stomach. The best part though, was when they would get too close to swing at each other and would start grappling, swords pressed against eachother near the hilt and masks close together. The teacher would get in the kids face and just start yelling his kiai at the kid over and over, while the kid - who I imagine is by this point weeping underneath the mask - would reply weakly with a squeal that sounded more like a stuck pig. He got so in the kid's head, it was just awesome to watch.

The Hated Otaku

This is the hated オタク, "otaku": a person who is obsessed or devoted to a particular hobby or activity, especially on an individual basis. These hobbies include anime (Japanese cartoons), manga (Japanese comics), video games, computers, and collecting of all sorts. And so, here he is, 35 years old, in a toy store, buying model kits for giant robots from the "Gundam" cartoon series.

From the fact that almost all video games come from Japan, and the huge worldwide success of anime movies like "Princess Mononoke" or "Spirited Away" and Pokemon, you might suspect a lot of people would be into playing video games like they are in the US, or watch these anime shows occasionally; it would seem that there might be more of a tolerance for nerdy activities in the culture of Japan. But there is no tolerance. In fact, most people I know greet these types with a particularly virulent disgust. If you mention otaku to a Japanese girl, the response you will almost invariably get is きもい！"kimoi", which is something like "gross!" Girls would never date a guy interested in any of these things, and self-respecting guys are not into them at all. So out of all the guys I knew at Waseda, not a single one of them played video games, or at least, would admit to it.

I take special pleasure in seeing all the lame Americans who came here purely because they like anime made for little kids discover this fact upon their arrival in Japan, and how by revealing their interests they immediately sabotage their chances of ever making any friends or getting any girls. Seeing a Japanese girl crush an anime guy by saying, "No, but my baby brother watches that show..." is pretty priceless.