No more frost on my car in the morning. No more snow. In a few weeks' time I won't need a coat outside any more. From the blank brown branches of trees come little buds which turn into tiny round flowers in white, hot pink, and every shade in between. There's Ume (plum blossom), magnolia, or if you're lucky you can find a grove of Japan's national sweetheart, Sakura (cherry blossom.)
These flowering trees are everywhere. I pass small groves on my drive to work, and there are a few trees planted in the schoolyard itself. The "Sakura line" starts in the south of Japan at the beginning of March and work its way up to Hokkaido, Japan's northern island, by May. For us here in the middle, late March and early April is full bloom season.
My great, special, hardworking 3rd-year students graduated from junior high school last week, in an utterly serious, formal, and professional ceremony (read: I wasn't allowed to cross my legs at my seat.) Now they're off preparing for their entry into high school. When the new school year starts after spring break, my 12 adorable sixth graders will move up into the big leagues of junior high school, and the six just-as-adorable five-year-olds from the daycare/kindergarten next door will move up into elementary school first grade. The circle of life.
Slowly, I'm starting to find more energy to pull myself out of my sedentary routine, both physically and mentally. I'm recently more adept at evaluating my position here, seeing my work and social situations with greater clarity.
Socially, I crave the fulfillment I had in the states--a group of close friends who I can regularly hang out and feel a connection with. I'm not lonely here, but it's a different feeling when I'm so geographically disparate from my friends here who I've known only a short time. I miss hanging out at Spectrum or Diamond Jamboree. I miss urban sprawl. I miss wide, multi-lane roads and free, fast freeways. I miss meeting with friends on weeknights and feeling a bond, a connection. I miss frequent in-person contact with friends (both at home and abroad.) I miss the opportunity to let loose and party with good friends without spending $20 and two hours (as Tokyo is to me here.)
I don't miss work stress. I don't miss busyness and living paycheck-to-paycheck. I don't miss sharing a room. I don't miss rude and confrontational people.
I actually have a life here. And it's not the magical life of peace, tranquility and nature that I sometimes fantastically imagined. I work, I clean my apartment, I go to the bank, I sleep in on weekends. It's so normal now, but I know I will look back and miss everything about this. And things will fiercely remind me of it. The songs my school's PA system plays before school and at lunch. Once this feeling crystallizes. Once it's a past and not a now. It will be its own feeling. I'll never get it back and it'll only be a memory. It's so fleeting. I will live for 60-plus more years NOT abroad.
JAPANESE CULTURAL TIDBITS: MEGA-EDITION!!
Work affords me daily opportunities to experience real Japanese culture in-the-flesh. Of course I don't mean Kabuki and Sumo wrestling, I mean the daily interactions of my co-workers and students. I read about these things before coming, but experiencing them firsthand makes them real and meaningful. Briefly, here are some.
1. Passive Aggression. You may be angry, or devastated, but you better say it politely and with a smile! If you blow your cool in public, if you show your anger or devastation, you'll lose face forever. No matter how annoyed you are, no matter how big of a deal it is, act like it's just the tiniest little thing that you just almost didn't have to bring up. Always keep the lid covered, so everything looks smooth and fine on the surface. I think this is crucial to Japanese aesthetics and interactions. And because of this, social relations are smooth and conflicts are minimized. But, as you could expect, this can create grudges and strain relationships internally.
2. Lack of independent direction, from both students and teachers alike. "What should we do if we're not told what to do?" There is an unending compulsion to follow the rules. Individualism is denied on every level, from the complete uniformity of their uniforms to the lack of any assignment which praises a different, creative response from each student. Critical thinking and individual thought are not even mentioned, let alone valued. For English classes, this means communicative output is difficult to draw out of students. In the staff room, I see the incredible amount of collaboration teachers undergo with each other in order to adhere to the group. This is a large contrast to the individualism American teachers exhibit--their own room, their own decorations, their own teaching style. But as many cons as this system has, it has just as many pros as well. It produces students which are diligent, hard-working, detail-oriented, and earnest. They acknowledge their mistakes and strive to work harder. They adhere to rules and obey authority. This eliminates extraneous distractions and makes social relationships smooth.
-INTERMISSION-
At my school, the schedule is malleable. Each year's class schedule is decided the week before. Students can have 2 science classes one day, and zero the next. They can have English every day for a week and then only once the next week. Teachers collaborate with each other to craft a schedule which is tailored to their pacing, where they need to catch up. I think this is amazing and lets the students learn what they need to learn when they need to. It also means that they'll experience the same subject matter at different times of day, which I think increases their likelihood of paying attention. It's a great idea.
In addition to regular academic classes, there are also occasional classes such as leadership, civics/moral education, life planning, etc. I'm happy to see these and think they are useful, although I know they don't emphasize things that I value in education, namely social equality and internationalization. Sex ed is still nonexistent. And the arts are still grossly undervalued. They only get art and music about once a week, and at least for music, the quality of instruction leaves much to be desired, both in content and pedagogically.
-END INTERMISSION-
3. Emphasis on personal responsibility. Everything students do is geared towards contribution to a group goal via personal responsibility. Tennis or basketball team practice, daily cleaning of the classroom and school, student government, serving school lunch, individual rotating classroom responsibilities, etc. The responsibilities are carefully constructed by teachers for the students so that they can learn this invaluable and necessary way to contribute to Japanese adult society. You MUST be a hard worker and you MUST contribute your own efforts towards the group's goal, which is the ultimate (and only important) goal.
4. Hard work necessarily equals success, regardless of results. There is no entitlement or babysitting. Either you do the work or you don't. If you're smart you learn faster but you still have to study and complete work in order to achieve a grade. You cannot coast by on smarts alone like some kids in America can. At the same time, if you're not as academically gifted but you're good at robotically completing the work (as some of my students here are,) you can receive a good grade based on busywork (like rote copying), when you don't deserve it. Students can't fail grades here, and students aren't grouped by ability, so there is no differentiation of instruction between classes. Tests are given by the whole school at the same time and are not at the teacher's discretion, which can disrupt the pacing and flow of curricula. Tests seem to be for statistical/data purposes just as much as actual learning evaluation purposes, and, as in the States, there is way too much focus on paper tests and not enough on measuring learning in other ways.
5. Content versus Pedagogy. In Japanese teacher training, there seems to be much more focus on content and little to no focus on pedagogy/pedagogical methods. My JTE knows a lot about English, she has studied grammar intensively and memorized buttloads of vocab, but I don't think she's ever really learned how to teach: what methods work best for which students, how to differentiate instruction, how to produce independent communicators. I don't know much about the Japanese education-of-education system, but it seems to me that, in suit with the public school education, a big focus is on memorizing and retaining information, whereas applying it critically is sorely, desperately undervalued.
Enough for now. In shortly over 24 hours I depart for the islands of Okinawa for my spring vacation! When I return I shall regale you with tales of their splendor.
