Holidays Abroad

I played around with different titles, from more melodramatic ones like, “The Truth Behind Holidays Abroad” and less serious ones poking fun at my dramatic tendencies, “Holidays Abroad: Kaley Whines” but decided to settle for something a bit simpler. As a preface, this may come off as emotional nonsense to a lot of you but this is my blog and my emotional nonsense, so I’m sharing it.

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It’s easy to forget that you’re living in a foreign country. You get used to being constantly surrounded by a foreign language, eventually just toning all of it out unless someone acknowledges you directly, shoving the sounds into the background with the heater or the clicking of keyboards. You get used to the characters on signs and storefronts, your eye easily drifting to the English option written underneath. Visits to the supermarket become routine and after a while you forget what it is like to buy anything in your native language, replying to the same set of questions over and over so that they become engrained in your mind. Moments of anxiety still happen, you need to visit a bank for some money transfer, you need help finding something in a store, announcements about train delays are spoken in deep, muffled voices you know even native speakers have a hard time comprehending.

But, you adapt, life goes on and the thought of living in your native space, in an area where simple questions don’t evade you, where ordering a hamburger doesn’t require practice, where you can walk up to anyone and just say exactly what you’re thinking sounds like a nice dream you had Once Upon a Time.

There is a time, however, when the feeling of being away from home really gets to you, and that’s during holidays. Every country is partly defined by its holidays, you ask someone what makes someone in Canada different from someone in the US and, outside of a borderline obsession with hockey, it’s that Thanksgiving is on a different day, they don’t have the Fourth of July, etc.

Japan itself has a smattering of national holidays, random Mondays or specific dates that everyone gets off, once a month on average. Most people don’t really keep track of which holiday is which outside of a specific few, Golden Week in March/April (which is more like Golden Random-Days-Off-In-A-Week-Or-Two), New Year’s Day, and the August vacation. The other days include “Respect for the Aged”, “Culture Day”, “Day of the Sea”, and the Emperor’s Birthday.

Japan has adopted Western holidays as well, stores will sell Halloween candy in October, girls confess their love on Valentine’s Day, and Christmas music is played in every shopping center for the entirety of November and December. But, these holidays are not the same as they are back home, they are mere adaptations in a country that doesn’t really grasp the meaning behind these days, that has taken a basic idea and shaped it to suit their culture and their desires.

Children don’t go trick-or-treating and costumes are mainly worn by people going out drinking for Halloween parties, and even those are usually just very basic cats and devils and men in strange full-body suits. Valentine’s is usually just a school tradition, where girls will slave away on chocolates that they will give to that boy they’ve had a crush on, hoping that he’ll return his affections on White Day a month later. And Christmas is purely commercial, where people may exchange gifts and eat a bucket of KFC (due to a clever marketing campaign in the 70s) with some Christmas Cake.

Christmas is what gets to my emotions. I can handle no Halloween, as I grew out of trick-or-treating years ago and can easily enough find a Halloween party to go to. Thanksgiving I can easily find myself surrounded by friends and eating familiar foods, Valentine’s Day is a nonissue, since in the States I never really had anyone to celebrate with. Japanese people are more than willing to try out a Fourth of July barbecue on a weekend, and New Year’s Eve is still New Year’s Eve.

Christmas, however, is not Christmas. There are not roads lined with houses covered in lights. There are no elderly white men in red suits in the mall, there is no holiday cheer and people wishing you “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays”. There is just a stark reminder that you are outside.

This year, I’m working on Christmas; something that in my 25 years has never, ever happened. This fact alone has formed a gray cloud over my entire month, a looming reminder that I am out of place and that Japan is not my home. I need Christmas, I don’t need to sit in a gym for two hours listening to speeches I can barely understand and then sit at my desk feeling depressed for hours with nothing to do.

I’ve tried to explain to Japanese people just what Christmas means. Why is it so important? What makes it special? Why is working so bad?

It’s something I can’t put into words, it’s a feeling that I can’t express. For my entire life it has just been Christmas. I don’t expect understanding from people who didn’t grow up with a traditional Christmas. I don’t expect my job or my Japanese friends to feel the same way that I do about Christmas. It’s not their holiday, it’s mine, and living in this culture, living in their country, I need to make concessions to be like them, to push my feelings aside, suck it up, and do what is asked.

I realize I could have taken the day of Christmas off. Many of my friends have done it this year and last year I even took four days off to go home for Christmas. When I received my yearly schedule and saw that my last day before the official start of winter vacation was December 25^th my heart sank, but I thought it wouldn’t be so bad. I could spend the time teaching my students about Christmas. This week I am doing nothing but Christmas lessons. Yet, Christmas Day is a closing ceremony, an aspect of Japanese culture I don’t understand the value of just as they don’t understand why Christmas is important to me. So I will sit in a gym for a couple of hours, and then sit at my desk waiting to leave.

But as the day draws nearer and my Christmas lessons are met with nearly zero enthusiasm, with children who don’t care about how a different culture does this holiday that means next to nothing to them, I feel more and more dragged down by the weight of having to come in on this day that I value so much.

Some Christmas gifts from home.

It’s a hard spot to be in, and when living abroad it is a situation you will be forced to deal with constantly. You will always be torn between two places, two countries, and two homes. I can’t just pop home for Christmas for a few days. I can’t just hop in my car and go to a friend’s wedding for a weekend, I can’t be there when someone I’ve known my entire life gives birth, I can’t be there when my dog dies.

With all of the great and wonderful things that comes with living abroad, all of the things I have learned about myself and what I am capable of; I’ve become more accepting of things that are different from my normal, I’ve learned to adapt to things that scare me, I’ve seen places that people only dream of visiting, comes a special weight that you will never really understand until you’ve been there. You never hear people talking about the stress of living overseas, of family and friends telling you how much they miss you, asking you when you’re coming back. Of looking at your life that you have and knowing that it can never be permanent, that at some point all of these people and places will be in your past.

I am not writing this to complain, though I do feel better having typed my feelings out, I am writing this to paint the full picture. It’s so easy for us to show only our perfect, cookie-cutter, edited lives to the world. But, that’s not life. Living abroad is great and wonderful and life-changing. It’s the best thing I have ever done and I regret zero moments of it, even the bad ones. But, it’s not always happen. In fact, it’s often very stressful. It’s often putting your own self aside in favor of a culture different than yours. It’s often about sitting in a gym for two hours on Christmas.

School Lunch in Japan, How I Learned to Eat

I’m a picky eater.

I used to be a really picky eater. Like really, really picky. As in, I only ate maybe five different foods and just the thought of trying new things would send me into a near panic attack. It wasn't something I was proud of, and I would try to hard to hide it from everyone I could. I'd feign stomachaches, eat before going somewhere, and spit food into napkins to try and hide my picky-ness from the world.

When you're a small child learning to eat going from squished up baby food to all the textures and tastes of real food is pretty difficult. And I decided I wanted nothing of this. My parents gave in rather than forcing me to eat the salads and meats that were being made for dinner, and often just made me my own meal. That meant that I never learned how to eat other foods, my tongue didn't like these strange textures and I would seize up the second anything that wasn't mac-n-cheese, pizza, or a grilled cheese came near my mouth.

In Japan, you cannot be that picky. In Japan, if you are that picky you will starve. Nearly all socialization done in Japan includes food. There was no way I could hide being picky in Japan. So, I decided I didn't want to.

In the year leading up to moving to Japan I tried my best to do some work on my eating capable food repertoire. My lowest point was when I ended up crying in a supermarket whilst an ex-boyfriend was picking out a lovely dinner to have with his family and I couldn't imagine being able to eat any of it. The sheer ridiculousness of the situation fueled me with this fire that I. Must. Change. So I pushed myself really, really hard and tried my best to change my mindset.

And that's when things began to change. It was a slow change, but eventually I began to eat more things. Most importantly, rice. As someone who was planning to live in Japan I couldn't not eat rice. 

Japan's school lunch is what helped me the most. I eat it every day. I could bring my own lunch, it was an option, but I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to be even more different. As part of my preparations for moving overseas I researched what Japan's school lunch would be and it scared me, it scared me good. Whole fish, tiny little fish, quail eggs, squid, natto, loads of mushrooms, shrimp, and even whale. I sat there staring at the pictures scared. I was going to starve, my schools were going to hate me. I should just bring my lunch.

But I didn't, and as I began teaching in Japan I began the very slow (and hungry) process of teaching myself to eat new things. The first few months I lived in Japan I barely ate anything. I'd eat the rice, drink soup broth, try a vegetable here and there. Slowly, though, my stomach began to win out over my brain and I would eat things.

I ate fish for the first time, and while I don't really enjoy the taste of  most fish (and really almost all of seafood for that matter) I can eat it. I began to eat the salads that were given. And, most importantly, fruit. I could eat fruit. I am from Florida, I grew up with an orange tree in my front yard and a grapefruit tree and my back and I never once ate them. To me, eating an orange was the holy grail. It was everything I hated. Small, little things that break apart in your mouth, squishy, chewy, and just all-around gag inducing. If I could eat an orange I had finally conquered my texture issues.

Just today I picked up a second mikan and ate it happily.

I still have my issues, if I am having anxiety problems my ability to eat reverts back quite a bit. If I'm sick I can't really handle the different textures. And there are still some things I just won’t. Shishamo (whole fish), most mushrooms, quail eggs, shirasu (small little sardines), asari (manila clams), squid, natto (just google it), etc. But they are more of a taste issue than a "I want to eat this but can't" issue.

And because I know you're all curious, here are some images of school lunches that my schools have served, just so you get an idea of what it is like. I cannot fathom most American children eating half of this stuff.

Chicken and nuts salad, grapes, cold ramen

 

Grapefruit, chicken stir-fry over rice, a salad with manila clams in it.

Italian soup, fried sugar bread, hasukappu (blueberry honeysuckle) jello, spinach salad.

Shishamo (whole fish), tofu in a spicy sauce, rice, spinach and cabbage salad.

Clam chowder, pumpkin salad, hotdog in chili sauce with bun.

Curry udon with ice cream.

One of my favorite lunches! Pork fried rice, potato and beef croquette, yogurt and fruit salad.

Potatoes, yogurt, spaghetti with meat sauce

Hijiki rice (a seaweed), baby tomatoes, flounder, miso soup.

Bread, potato and bacon soup, white fish cooked in mayonnaise, milk jelly with fruit.

A Personal Story: Assault In Japan

This is going to be a personal one, a potentially upsetting one, a maybe you'll be kinda uncomfortable one, but it’s one I feel I need to write. I'm nervous about writing this, sharing this with the world at large. Not because I am ashamed, not because it upsets me, not because it's difficult for me to put into words. I’m nervous because I don't know how people will react to me presenting this topic in this manner.

“You don't need to worry, Japan's so safe!”

I've heard this so many times in the years I have lived here, mainly in reference to walking home at night or traveling around the country alone. And really, Japan is pretty safe if you consider major metropolitan areas around the world. But… it's not 100% safe. Especially if you're foreign.

If you look Asian, you can blend in, travel around undetected, and avoid most of the looks other non-Asian foreigners get daily. If you don't look Asian, however, you are going to stick out like a sore thumb no matter where you go. Always. Even in Tokyo. You're just going to. Which means you can often times attract very, very unwelcome attention.

The number of times I have been standing in a public area (usually waiting for a friend) and been approached by older Japanese men is far, far too many. Oftentimes they say nothing, just silently stare at me while intruding on my personal space until I feel so uncomfortable I just walk away. The number of times random people just come up behind me and try to talk to me as I'm waiting to cross the street is too many. Sure, they may be trying to be “friendly” but it's not. It's startling and makes me very uncomfortable.

I've also been physically assaulted while walking home at night.

This happened years ago, back when I was in my first year of living here in Yamaguchi, way on the other side of the country. I rarely went out drinking back then, it was about a twenty minute walk from my apartment to the main entertainment district and I didn't have many friends, so going out drinking wasn't something I did often. One night mid-February, however, I had been invited out. It ended up getting pretty dramatic thanks to an acquaintance and a crazy girl he was dating, so I was 100% sober on my walk home. I am so, so grateful for this fact.

It was around 2am, and I was sticking to the well-lit main roads for my walk. Ten minutes down this road and ten minutes down another. I was about two blocks from my apartment when I heard footsteps behind me and then felt hands grasp my arms. My first thought was that it was a friend I had just left, that they'd seen me walking home and wanted to surprise me. When I reacted the man grabbing me readjusted his grip so that he could hold me facing him and I realized I had no idea who this guy was.

He was middle-aged, he wore a baseball cap, he was in a track suit, he was nearly my height. He looked serious. He looked determined. He was saying some things in Japanese I didn't understand, but I guess were along the lines of, “wait, be quite.” I struggled to get free, he wouldn't let me go. His hand on my right shoulder moved down towards the hem of my dress (thankfully I had on legging as it was February) and at that point I used my newly freed right arm to grab his neck. In my mind I was ready to kill him if he didn't let me go, I squeezed as hard as I could.

His eyes bulged and he panicked, tried to grab my own throat but I had a scarf on so his hand never got a good grip. That's when I screamed. It was a noise I didn't know I could make, one I don't think I can ever make nor do I want to make again. He ran off, faster than I ever saw anyone one run, straight across the four lane road in five seconds and I stood there watching him retreat shaking, angry and confused and not really sure what happened.

I stood there for a minute, just watching where he ran and making sure he didn't return. I walked back to my apartment, still shaking and checking behind me every few steps, until I finally got home. I sat down against my door and cried, listening and hoping not to hear anyone on my noisy stairs. Eventually I fell asleep sitting there.

When I woke up I showered in my clothes, because everything he touched was dirty and I didn't even want to touch it to take it off. Later the police would scold me for this but I didn't care. I still don't.

It was exactly a week before my birthday and I spent my Valentine's Day in a police station reenacting the assault over and over for police, taking them to where I was attacked and answering question after question about every single movement that we all did. It was so jumbled in my mind it took a while for me to sort it out. The entire attack lasted no more than twenty seconds, and in those moments it was largely flailing arms and panic,

They took pictures, collected my clothes from my house, and asked me question after question in Japanese and English. It was a hard day and later on I ignored my phone when they called, which led them to call my boss, and my boss to call me the next day at work where I cried in the break room and told them what happened.

They had an idea of who attacked me, as girls had reported similar instances though none as violent as mine. None of them went through with it. None of them stuck it out to get him convicted. I can't blame them, I really can't. It was awful. I would go days ignoring my phone and my email until a police officer would show up at my door to take me to the station. After I correctly identified my attacker in a photo they arrested him and brought him in, where I looked through a tiny foot by foot one-way mirror in a door at the man who attacked me. He looked far less menacing that way, surrounded by police officers and behind a locked door.

A month and a half after my assault I moved to Hokkaido and thought myself done with it. I was wrong, they flew up twice. I'd drive for thirty minutes to the nearest city and sit in a cramped room being asked the same questions I'd been answering for months.

“Did he reach for your skirt before or after you choked him?”

“Before.”

“What arm did he reach down with?”

“His left.”

“What arm did you choke him with?”

“My right.”

These tiny details made me relive the moment over and over until I could see nothing else. The event itself probably lasted fifteen seconds but I wasn't allowed to forget it for months. At one point they asked me to tell them what I wanted done to this man, a question that shocked me and took a while for me to process. After I expressed my confusion they said, "You're emotional appeal for justice will help get him convicted." It felt wrong somehow, for me to decide what should happen to this man, as if I was resorting to his own level by forcing my will upon his fate.

I simply told them, "If he is mentally ill, I want him to get help. If he is of stable mind, I want him in jail. I don't want him to hurt anymore people. That's all I want. That's the only reason I am doing this."

They tried to convince me to take time off of work to testify in court, to fly across the country just to face this man and a judge and tell them what happened even though they had it written down a dozen different ways. I couldn't, I'd reached my limit.

“If you don’t go to court he'll go free.”

At this point I no longer cared, I wanted to move on. I lived on a different island now, I was safe. Though the thought of him doing it to someone else disgusted me and I hated myself for not being able to face it. The entire reason I had been doing this for months was so he couldn't hurt anyone.

Then, one day mid-August, I got an email. He was going to jail for two years, I didn't need to come to Yamaguchi. It was over. He'd finally confessed.

I cried again, for the last time, and was relieved in a way that made me realize I never really knew what relief was. I'd done it. I'd gotten him. He wasn't going to hurt anyone else for a while, hopefully ever, because for six months I dealt with it. I'm not the best with follow-through.

I share this story not to scare anyone. I don't want people to fear walking home at night in Japan. For the most part I don't. I have my problems still, whenever someone runs in my direction I freeze, that involuntary flinch that's hiding under my skin always. Middle-aged Japanese men make me uncomfortable when they look at me. I'm always thinking the worst with them and I feel guilty for making the blanket judgment.

But, I'm safe. He didn't even touch my skin. I had no marks from him, not even from where he grasped my arms so tightly, because I was wearing a jacket. I got off unscathed, unharmed physically. It could have been so much worse and I am so thankful every day I didn't drink more that night.

My story isn't a one-time fluke. It happens more than people realize in Japan, and I have shared my story with many friends only for them to tell me their own in return. They vary from stalking to stitches, but they're there. By sharing mine I don't feel brave or that I deserve some sort of praise for being so strong. Because lately I've not been. These things happen and I shouldn't have to feel shamed by sharing it, so I don’t. But I still feel like I need to share it, I need to broaden the audience who know my story outside of the friends I have shared it with. All too often I hear people brushing off Japan as "safe", almost blinding themselves with this notion that nothing bad can happen here, it's such a nice country. Every time I hear someone mention how safe Japan is compared to America or England or any other country I roll my eyes, I've been attacked here, I haven't been attacked in America. I'm biased.

Japan is still a country full of people, and people can sometimes do bad things. While it does have a low crime rate, it also has a mandatory shutter noise on all smartphones in the country due to perverts taking pictures up the skirts of girls and women. 

Snow

I can count on one hand the number of winters that I've had snow in my life.

Nothing prepares you for it. It's always very sudden. One day the weather forecast says rain but the sky decides that rain isn't good enough, and the temperature dips just a tiny, little bit, and the water freezes. It's usually night, which comes much earlier in the day than you'd prefer, and you’re walking along and you realize the rain is too slow. The water drops a little too big. Then you realize it's not even rain at all. You've worn shoes that won't protect your feet from the slush and your jacket is just a bit too thin, but none of that matters because snow. It's beautiful and it's been a long time and it's falling.

It feels heavy almost, walking through that first snow of the season. The way it moves in the air reminds you of the tiny pieces of seaweed that float in the ocean, the connection to the warm sun of the ocean and the cold flakes hitting your cheeks a strange feeling. Then a tiny flake will find its way to your tongue, a tingly sensation as each individual snowflake melts. It's crisp and it's clean and it's cold.

You watch the snow fall to the ground, each tiny piece disappearing just as quickly as it appeared. Its brief life ends in a flash and you’re thankful. You had a good life, you think to yourself, you're one of the first. And it's true. In the month that follows the first snow the newness is still there, the excitement of things changing and the world as you know it becoming different. Their short little lives fill you with that childlike feeling, even if you know that in a few weeks you'll wish it were summer again.

The trees get covered first, their thin branches collecting the flakes into tiny little piles of what looks like cotton. It's as if there was some really huge pillow fight that you just pissed and all the stuffing has been left behind. It will remind you of Dr. Seuss without the color. It will remind you of childhood. It will remind you that there are things in this world you're still not too old for.

Then you'll walk inside and it's warm, you'll leave the quiet of the new fallen snow and the world seems brighter somehow, more distinct. You'll close your eyes and feel melted snow on your lashes touch your cheeks, a chilly reminder of winter's start. You'll rush to take your jacket off and your hat and your scarf. They will be wet with tiny little beads. In subway stations you'll see everyone's hair dotted with the droplets and you'll know that outside the snow is falling.

That next morning is shocking, it always is. That first time made your heart race and you found yourself giggling as if you were five again as you hopped through the snow in shoes that weren't warm enough, weren't dry enough. Now, it's been a couple of years and you're prepared. You put on your boots designed just for this, pulling them from the back of the closet they've rested in for spring and summer and most of fall. Your feet are heavy with the unfamiliar weight of added lining and waterproofing. The ground is covered now, the nighttime is always the busiest for snow. You walk through the half melted piles that line the sidewalk, trying your hardest not to slip, your legs not yet adjusted to winter. You're coat's warmer today, you've brought your gloves and you've left a few minutes early so that you have time to enjoy the snow in the daylight.

Everything is quiet, it's so much quieter with the snow. Everything you've read about it in books in true. There's a stillness to it even in the middle of the city. And it's white, so much white. Your life had been filled with green before, and now you've gotten to see different colors. The reds and oranges and yellows of fall and the white of winter. You never knew such whiteness existed.

The day will go on, the temperature will rise, and the first snow will melt and freeze into dangerous slicks of ice. You'll find yourself wishing for more snow, anxious for it to really start. The first snow is just a tease, it always is. It'll be weeks before the permanent blanket covers the city. You'll get used to the roofs out the window being laden down, using them as makeshift measuring sticks for how much snow had fallen as you slept.

I began to write this for NaNoWriMo last week after the first snow happened here in Sapporo, and decided it would make a nice blog post instead. It's a bit different from what I normally post so I hope you enjoyed it.

Struggles of Being Foreign in Japan

Disclaimer: I am writing this to shed light on my life as a foreigner in Japan and focusing on negative aspects of it. Overall, living in Japan has far more pluses than minuses, so please don't think I am "bashing" the country in any regard. I love Japan and its people! Please read with an open mind, and I would love to hear about your experiences or opinions on the matter or any similar matter.

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I've started this post a number of times and always find myself unhappy with it. Sometimes it feels too factual, other times I sound defensive, and sometimes it feels like I’m being too defensive. It’s a topic that is very pertinent to my daily life and the lives of many of my friends. I've talked about it at length with a number of different people from different backgrounds and I still  think the extent to which I completely understand how I feel about it is lacking. Simply put, I’m a foreigner in Japan. I have spent three years living in a country that I sometimes feel doesn't even want me around or doesn't take me seriously.

When I first heard about Blog Action Day I sat in my apartment wondering what exactly I could give to the topic. During my life I've never really felt discriminated against for my race or gender or the things I have liked. I grew up in white middle-class America, I have no college debt, and I never really had to work until I wanted to. While I am a woman, which presents its own issues with inequality, I've never been personally affected by those problems. Even still, I feel as if my struggles with inequality are minimal compared with those that have struggled historically.

In the three years I have lived in Japan I've lived in towns of various sizes. I started in a small city of 150,000 people in rural Yamaguchi prefecture. Seven months later, I moved to Hokkaido to live in a small village of 5,000 people where there were only two foreign girls in the entire place, myself included. Currently, I live in Sapporo. It is Japan's fourth largest city and home to nearly two million people. In 1972 it hosted the Winter Olympics and in 2002 it hosted a few games of the World Cup. Every winter season the area is flooded by foreigners who are here to visit the various ski resorts as annually the city gets roughly 20 feet of snow (600 cm). Seeing someone who isn't Japanese should be fairly common, at least by Japan standards.

Of course, it is a country where over 98% of the population is ethnically Japanese, so you aren't likely to see someone who doesn't look Asian on a daily basis. Many Japanese people don’t even see a foreigner until their first English lesson with an ALT (assistant language teacher) who will be a native speaker of the language from a different country. Coming from America it is still strange to see so many people who are of the same ethnicity walking around. I grew up in Orlando, Florida, so it’s easy to say that I am very used to seeing people of different nationalities on a regular basis. The homogeneous nature of Japan is very foreign to me.

Japanese people may be some of the kindest and most polite people in the world. On the subway I don’t even think I've seen someone talk on their phone outside of a few brief seconds to say they can’t talk. I can’t even remember the last time I heard someone’s phone go off in public. Crying children are promptly taken out of public spaces and in general the children keep to themselves. When you go shopping the clerks make you feel like royalty, bowing and walking you to the exit as if that $10 purse you bought was actually made by Jesus. The decrease in customer service is something I always have to adjust to when I go back to America.

I am not Asian.

Perhaps this cultural stress on being polite and minding yourself around strangers is what makes the Japanese mindset towards foreigners that much more insulting and frustrating. When I go out in public I am always being watched. If I want to pop out quickly to buy some milk at the convenience store down the block there will be at least one person who stares at me the entire time. If I am sitting in a café reading, there will be people looking at me every time I glance up. It’s something Japanese, and even foreigners who look Asian, don’t experience. Oftentimes I’ll walk with an Asian-looking person and they’ll say things such as, “this never happens to when I walk alone.”

Other times people try to get as far away from me as possible. The number of times the last seat on the subway is next to me is every time. It is also common for a group of Japanese people argue among themselves as to who will be the one to sit next to the foreigner, laughing and trying to get the shyest member to sit next to me. It’s as if just sitting beside someone who isn't Japanese is a huge deal, like I’ll suddenly start talking to them.

When I lived in Yamaguchi prefecture I went to visit the festival in the city neighboring mine. I don’t even think I had been in Japan for four full months at the time. It was crowded, with people cluttered in the streets watching the shrine procession go past. I was alone, snapping pictures on my camera and trying to absorb some Japanese culture when I heard snickering behind me. I turn to look, thinking maybe something funny was happening, but there was nothing. A group of maybe five high school boys were standing there, huddled together, looking at me. When they caught my eye one of the boys grinned and shoved his friend, who stumbled out before me and quickly went, “Hello! How are you?” then ran off with his friends. I stood there silently, frustrated. It felt to me like I was some sort of sideshow freak out in town, when in reality I was just a girl with curly brown hair, pale skin, and blue eyes standing on a sidewalk.

Since then I have these encounters on a weekly basis. Just this past weekend I was walking down a street with some friends and a group of (drunk) Japanese guys did the standard “Hello!” only to giggle and not even care if we responded to them. The worst of these is when the group starts speaking in Japanese assuming you can’t understand and you hear things like, “wow she’s so big,” or “her nose is very tall!” Even the blatantly positive comments about me being “beautiful” and having “water blue eyes” are often unwelcome. While these things are never done out of malice, the knowledge that I am constantly being watched, constantly being examined, constantly being judged is tiresome. I can’t even go grocery shopping without feeling as if everyone is looking in my basket to see what I am buying, since most times they are.

There are other situations in which being a foreigner is a huge disadvantage. When I was looking for an apartment I could only go to a small selection as the others wouldn't want to rent to me. When I got my cell phone I had to buy it outright because they don’t trust foreigners to do the monthly payments ($500 dollars vs. a $20 monthly payment). There are also the times when I have walked into a smaller café or bar and had the owner look at me as if I was the biggest piece of scum they have ever seen and all the want is for me to leave.

It is scary, too, at times. I am a woman and oftentimes I am on my own. The number of instances I have had of an older Japanese man getting right in my face and just looking at me silently without saying anything is too many. While Japan is a relatively “safe” country, things still happen (and have) so this gross invasion of my personal space when I am just waiting for a friend in a public space is extremely off-putting.

What perhaps makes me the saddest are the Japanese people who use foreigners for their own personal benefit. It’s not uncommon for me to be invited to parties to just be a foreign face. Oftentimes I’ll say I’m going to an event with some foreign friends and it will suddenly be advertised as an international party where Japanese people can come and speak English. It’s as if these people don’t care about getting to know me as a person, they just care what having me on their Facebook friends list means to others.

I understand that I am a visitor in this country, that my purpose here is to broaden the Japanese global perspective and allow Japanese children to get used to the idea of a “foreigner”. I am, however, still a person. I’m not some amusement attraction allowed to be on their own and I am not some monkey in a zoo. I am also not a status symbol that you can use to make yourself feel cultured and more globally aware. I am a person with feelings and boundaries. I’m not that different from a Japanese person. I get hungry, I get cranky, I have days where I just want to relax and not put on a “good” face, and I care about what people are saying about me even if I don’t know them.

I am sure these experiences are not limited to just Japan, and may be things expats experience in general regardless of the country and regardless of how much they stand out as being foreign. In this day in age, however, I think it’s important to keep in mind that we are all humans on this planet and that we all have similar wants and needs. Just because we may look different from each other, may speak a different language, and may have had a completely different upbringing doesn't mean we’re a different species, just a different race.

I wrote this post for the 2014 Blog Action Day please click here to learn more about the event and read other great posts about the topic of "inequality".

First Day At School Fourteen

First, I'd like to start by apologizing for not updating in over a week. The weather in Hokkaido has gotten cold, which means I have gotten a cold. For the last week I've just not felt well and have spent much of my free time sleeping due to sinus headaches. Yay!

I know I have a Part II to my last post to write up, but honestly it still makes me sad to think about leaving that last school so I would rather post about this. Plus, I think this may be more interesting. Maybe.

In Sapporo, the board of education has us change schools halfway in the year, so from May to September I am at one school and then October to March I am at another school. It's a very stressful, depressing time because leaving schools is depressing and starting a new school is stressful. This year was no different. I left my previous school on a Tuesday and then started at a new school on a Wednesday (all while fighting off the beginnings of a cold). It was very, very hard for me to leave this last school, as I'd been there for a year - October 2013 to September 2014 - and it was honestly one of the best schools I have ever gone to. Needless to say, my first day was going to be a rough one.

My shoe locker in the entry

This was only amplified by me making what is perhaps the most annoying mistake anyone in my position can make. I had forgotten my indoor shoes. So, in Japanese schools everyone is required to change out of the shoes that they wore to school into clean "indoor shoes". This is done for a number of reasons that I don't feel like getting into at the moment. If you're curious I suggest reading this. Due to my forgetfulness, it meant I was to spend my entire first day in awfully uncomfortable slippers provided by the school. These are generally small with zero padding and live up to the "slip" part of "slippers" very, very well.

Per my contract, I don't have to be at school for the morning meeting (which usually happens thirty minutes before first period) but on the first day the principal wants to introduce me to the teachers and staff. This means that I am usually sequestered in the principal's office for twenty minutes trying to come up with some sentences in Japanese to impress my new coworkers all whilst fighting back my nerves and making awkward small talk with the principal.

This principal, however, wanted to interview me. He began by asking if I was from Orlando, Florida. After I said that I am he told me about how his daughter had been there, and then asked me about Disney, Universal, and the Kennedy Space Center. Once that was out of the way, he asked me about my history teaching in Japan, mainly confirming what my company had given him. Then the questions about Japan started: "What Japanese food do you like?" "How are America and Japan different?" "What surprised you about Japan?" etc.

This entire conversation was done in both English and Japanese, and once he felt he had enough information on me he told me how his son is living in Canada and then stood up to show me something on his phone. It was a picture of his dog, a miniature dachshund, which is his "best friend". Then, he pretended to be a dog. At this point I honestly thought that maybe I hadn't woken up yet and was in the middle of some strange stress-dream.

The introduction to the staff went well, I had decided to plan ahead on my welcome speech and written something in Japanese the week before, which got me many compliments from my new coworkers. My morning, however, was still very stressful. I had to give my first lesson during first period, which gave me very little time to unpack or prepare or adjust or really do anything. I also had to give a speech on TV to students, which lead to a gaggle of third year boys crammed in the staff room doorway to get a good look at me as I left the broadcasting room.

It had been a while since I had started a new school and I'd forgotten just how much attention my appearance garners. The entire day was filled with groups of boys or girls following me down the hallways trying to convince each other to talk to me. Eventually a boy would muster up enough courage and introduce himself to me, which would lead to a good five minutes of me answering questions about myself, normally in the vein of if I'm single or not, how tall I am, and what my age is.

Worksheet I use during my introduction

The lessons themselves went well enough, the first day was just second years, and at that age (13 and 14) the students vary quite a lot in regards to how interesting they find me. Overall, the English level at this school is quite high and the students are much better at listening than my prior second years, so it was already an improvement. I am also required at this school to eat lunch with the students, which is a mixed bag in most cases, especially at the beginning when the students aren't used to me. I could (and most likely will) write an entire post about eating with students, so I won't go into too many details other than to say that eating with students is usually just me sitting quietly trying to shove food in my mouth for the ten minutes I am given to eat.

There's really not much else to say at this point. I'm still adjusting to the new school, having finished all of my self-introduction lessons this past Tuesday. Usually once I get through an actual English lesson with each class I finally feel at ease, as I know what to expect. Overall, I think I'll enjoy this school. The teachers seem really good and friendly, and the students are engaged and good at listening (so far). I've honestly yet to have a "bad school" in Japan, so I feel very lucky and I'm really not even sure they exist.

I'll try to get another post up Monday or Tuesday, as it's a long weekend (health and sports day, wooo!). Hope you have a wonderful day!

My desk! It's small :(

I've also added this post to the Lotus Collective Daily Diaries. You can see more posts there!

A Japanese School Festival, Part 1: The Lengthy Opening Ceremony

This past Friday was the annual school festival at the junior high school where I have taught at for the last year. Last year (at a different school) was my first time experiencing this aspect of Japanese culture, and it was a very interesting insight into the differences between Japanese and American junior high school life.

For nearly the entire month of September students have been preparing for this festival. From students designing and submitting their own "symbol marks" (a logo to represent the year's festival) to spending hours after school and during preparing decorations for the classrooms, there isn't a student that doesn't have a hand in helping this event come together.

My current school's festival differed in a number of ways from my last, so each school clearly has their own take on the event. Talking with friends who also teach in junior high verified this, in that some schools have festivals lasting multiple days whereas both of the ones I attended only lasted one. Some don't even include some of the same components as the two I went to, and others add other activities. Universally, it is a time for the students to show off their artistic and creative abilities over a variety of different media outlets.

From last year's school festival

The week prior to the festival I stayed late helping students make decorations for their classroom. I painted a few doors, glued some eggshells, and helped make a house. It was such a nice way to spend some of the final days at this school. It is rare that I get to talk with students in such a relaxed fashion, and seeing their personalities outside of the classroom is something that I always enjoy. The day prior to the festival was spend solely in preparation so I was given the day off of work. It was awesome to come to school the day of and see everything finished. The kids were also very excited, so their energy was better than any coffee for a morning pick-me-up.

The festival itself begins in the gym. Every grade will give a performance of a play their class had written. Each class would have submitted a play and then the best one from each grade is chosen to perform. Another (first year) class is then given control of the opening ceremony.

Japan loves ceremonies. I have been to countless of them now and I am always impressed at just how much effort goes into them, even if the reason for having it seems rather simple or mundane to me. Walking into the gym all of the classes are sitting in the center; boys to the left, girls to the right. The constant separation of genders in this country is something that I'm still not completely used to. There is a huge white tarp covering the 3 square meter "symbol mark", which is to be seen by everyone during the opening ceremony for the first time. Scattered around are exactly 65 chairs for parents, guests, and teachers to sit in. Most of these will be filled by PTA moms and  maybe three fathers or grandfathers. The lack of parental involvement in these school functions is something that always makes me feel a bit sad, but these activities are done for the students, not their mothers and/or fathers.

The "symbol mark"

The ceremony began with a brief history of the school's "symbol marks" at past festivals and I was left feeling a little perplexed at the importance of it. To me, it's just a logo, but to the students it is something more. Something I'll never understand as I am not a Japanese student. After the slideshow there is a countdown to the reveal of the "symbol mark". A  few students cut the strings holding up the tarp, which falls down to reveal what, I must admit, to be a really impressive banner with an amazingly done 3D symbol. After everyone cheers and fawns over how great the logo looks, the creator of the "symbol mark" is called to the stage to accept a certificate from the student body president and give a speech about her inspiration behind creating the logo.

There is then a slideshow of the various classes preparing for the festival which, I would learn later, is the Song-Of-The-Festival. I cannot tell you what it was, but I am pretty sure I heard it fifty times over the course of the day in both standard and music box varieties. Finally, the class who prepared the opening ceremony sings a song and does a dance that involves a lot of organized clapping (which the rest of the school hilariously tries to clap along with). It was equal parts cute, strange and emotionless. But, I guess I really can't expect much else from seven graders.

Once the song is finished the attention is directed towards the Super Smash Bros party ball (くす玉 Kusudama, or medicine ball) hanging over the students which then opens and a huge banner that says "begin the school festival" unfurls from inside and the kids are showered in confetti. There is cheering and everyone is excited for it to finally begin. Even though we've all been sitting in the gym for thirty minutes and will continue to sit there for the next two plus hours watching performances.

Due to the length this has gotten, I've decided to split this blog post into two parts. Part two will include a brief summary of the performances and my thoughts on them, the way in which the schools were decorated, the band performance and the not-nearly-as-long-as-the-opening-ceremony closing ceremony.

The Teacher

Since I've had over a dozen schools, I have had the chance to interact with many different kinds of teachers. Some of them have been a pleasure to teach with; giving me control during class and just having a great attitude towards me being in the classroom. They essentially become students themselves, especially if they are elementary school teachers as they almost always don't know any English. On the other hand some can bit a bit difficult to work with, mainly in the sense that they have problems trusting that the students will understand what it is I am trying to teach them which leads to issues giving up control.

Thankfully, I've never had huge issues with a teacher and very few teachers actually fall into that latter type above. I have had, however, one teacher that turned me into a puerile school girl.

He taught at one of my first schools as a third grade elementary school teacher. I was twenty-two years old and he was likely well into his thirties. He was handsome, with a smile that you knew was genuine. His hair was utterly fantastic and he always dressed really, really well (which is rare for elementary school teachers). He also really loved being a teacher. Every time I taught his class he would join in the games with the same enthusiasm as his students. Seeing him interact with them just turned me into a huge pile of goo. I was putty in his hands.

Me, roughly third grade. Maybe.

I never seriously thought about pursuing anything with this teacher. The conflict of interest alone was too much for me to handle. But boy, did my heart flutter every time I saw his name on an upcoming schedule.

There were a couple of instances that I still remember of him just capturing that thirteen-year-old-girl part of me. I had shown up to school with my hair tied up in a bun atop my head. At that point I was still in the habit of really caring about how I looked at school. Not that I don't care currently, I was just more concerned with looking cute than being comfortable during the day. That meant wearing my hair down almost daily regardless of the fact that I would spend just as much time pushing my curls from my face as I would spend teaching. But I was cute doing it, and that’s all that had mattered. Now, my hair almost always sits in a messy bun on my head while I am teaching. But I am comfortable and that, truly, is all that matters; especially when the teacher's room is nearly thirty degrees Celsius.

So, it was a rare day of me wearing my hair up. I can't really remember having a reason for it, just that for that day I had decided to wear it up. The third grade teacher walked in during break time and just stopped and looked at me. His English was worse than my Japanese so our communication was always a little awkward. After a few seconds of silence he finally said, "You hair," while using his hands to simulate stroking an invisible ponytail resting on his shoulder, "it's nice…like," then pretending to push all of the imagined hair onto the top of his head. Clearly, he was trying to say that my hair looked good when it was up in a bun. This, in my mind, was the equivalent of the popular boy at school giving my glasses-wearing, braces-having, frizzy-hair-sporting thirteen-year-old self a compliment.

I am pretty sure I just smiled awkwardly and said, "Thanks," in English.

And then he walked off silently.

After that he stepped up his "game". In class he would always say how the students really looked forward to my lessons. He would consistently look up phrases in English so that he could communicate with me and even started to tote around a Japanese-English dictionary. Every time I went to that school my crush on him would grow and grow. I'd never had a guy act in such a way around me. I still don't think I have ever been treated in such a fashion by another guy.

It all climaxed when I had lunch in his classroom for the last time. Eating with students is always a mixed bag. Sometimes it is fantastic, the kids are excited and try to engage with you in conversation and you become closer with the students. On the other hand, you can get put with students who just sit there in awkward silence, scared to even look at you or speak in Japanese. This third grade class was always fantastic thankfully.

I had crammed myself into one of their tiny, third-grader-sized desks with my knees out to the side and bent up taller than the desk itself. The kids are all lively and talking with me, clearly excited that I am there to eat lunch with them. They all finish their food rather quickly and sit down.

Silence.

The teacher pulls out a piece of paper and reads, "We have made you a present." Then he pulls out a guitar.

Yes, a guitar.

He starts playing it and the entire class bursts into a very well-rehearsed song. I just sit there grinning like an idiot. There is really nothing else you can do in that situation, is there? What the song was, I'll never know. It was all in Japanese and the tune was vaguely similar to a Beatles song. I honestly have zero idea what it was they were singing about.

The goodbye pizza gifts

Nothing ever happened with that teacher and I can't even remember his name anymore. The time before my last visit to that school he came over with his memo pad that I had grown to recognize and read, "What is your favorite food?" from the pages.

This time I didn't turn into a teen aged girl and simply replied, "Pizza," which he wrote down in the notepad and walked off.

On my last day at that school he came over to be just before I left and handed me a bag. Inside were various snacks, all of them flavored "pizza".