Upcoming Travel Plans

These two months after our New Years trip have found me lazy and lethargic, hibernating from the coldest, snowiest, darkest days of winter under my kotatsu. So, to raise my spirits, I am going to talk about my upcoming travel plans.

This weekend, my husband and I will visit Niseko ski resort for the HAJET winter meeting. There is ample time to enjoy the slopes, so we are excited to rent some gear and hit the powder. Literally, we're going to hit it with our bodies when we fall down because we aren't great skiers. We've each been skiing twice, but the only thing I remember is "pizza" and I'm not quite sure what it does. Bunny hills, here we come! Almost all kids in Hokkaido own skis and there is a skiing unit in gym class. When my students ask me, "Can you ski?" I always say, "A little!" but I think I should just say, "No."

Mid-March my parents-in-law are visiting. We will give them the grand tour of our town, spend one night in Hakodate, one at the Noboribetsu Hot Spring Resort, one night in Otaru, and two nights in Sapporo. I can't wait to share my Japan experience with family!

And while May seems a world away, I am looking forward to our Golden Week trip to the tropical paradise of Okinawa. I have already booked our plane tickets (great deals with Peach), our beach house, and hostel book-ending our stay. We hope to snorkel, try some Okinawa food, and relax on the beach. 

I can't wait!

A Day in the Life of an ALT on the JET Program

I arrive at school around 8:00. I take off my snow boots, store them in a shoe locker, and put on my indoor-only tennis shoes. I am greeted by teachers and students with a resounding "Ohayo gozaimasu" or good morning. I sit at my desk and await the morning staff meeting. A staff member asks me, "Last week did you go to elementary school?" "Yes, I did!" "Maybe you saw my son?" I met about 120 kids last week. "You signed his paper." Ah, so that narrows it down to the one class, after leaving, in which students dashed into the hallway, begging for my signature. About 20 of them made it before I moved on. "Oh, yes!" I say, "They were so cute!" Word always gets around town about what I did on the weekends. "I saw you at the supermarket! Can you cook Japanese food?" or "Were you at the town gym? Do you like running?" It's like Where's Waldo, except I usually stick out a lot more than Waldo does. That would be a great Halloween costume.

Anyway, the staff meeting begins with the bell, and all staff members stand and utter another "Ohayo gozaimasu" in unison. News and upcoming meetings are discussed and perhaps I can catch a few words: "Yoroshiku onegaitashimasu, ijou desu." or "infuruenza" (influenza) at this time of year.

Some days I have 3-4 classes and some days, like today, I have none. My JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) left me this note: I'm gonna return tests to the students so please do your work today! I'm not sure what "do your work" means because I am rarely involved in lesson planning, but I make myself look busy. I'm just glad he gave me a heads up, because my JTEs at all of my other schools send me an e-mail a few days before or have a meeting with me in the morning. I am lucky if this JTE talks to me before lunch, so I'll be happy to "do my work."

On the days when I teach, I enter the classroom and the students are always surprised and excited to see me since I rotate between five junior high schools. Class sizes vary greatly between my schools. Two of my schools are in a small town about 50 km away through a mountain pass, but due to declining population, the town just merged with my main town. There are only about 6-10 students per grade. Two of my other schools are just outside town, with about 15-20 students per grade. But my main school has about 30 students per class and 3-4 classes per grade.

Students wear school uniforms. The boys wear a sport coat with the school emblem on the pocket and their name badge and grade pins situated below. They wear clip on ties and slacks that are both usually too short because of their growth spurts. Girls wear pleated skirts that fall below the knee, with scarves around their necks and vests or fitted coats. Some days students wear track suits too.

Class begins when the teacher gives the cue. There is a student leader who says, "kiotsuke, minnasan nijikan benkyou hajimemasu" (Attention, everyone, we are beginning second period study). All the students bow, and then we begin the morning English greetings. Please imagine students' responses in the dreariest monotone possible, like they just rolled out of bed. Good morning everyone! "Good morning, Ms. Rebekah." How are you today? "I'm fine, and you?" I'm happy, thank you. What day is it today? "It's Monday." What's the date today? "It's February twenty fifth." How is the weather today? "It's sunny."

The teacher usually makes a few remarks, gives a worksheet or vocabulary test, and then says, "Open your textbooks to page 92." Perhaps there is a reading passage or a dialogue. I begin by reading vocabulary words and students repeat, twice. Then, I read the passage and students repeat. Behold, the JET Program human tape recorder, all the way from America.  For the rest of class, I will either stand in the corner while the teacher goes over grammar on the blackboard or help students with "their work" in class.

When lunch comes around, I choose a classroom and eat with my students. I will usually take a picture of my lunch to blog about, and students will come over and ask about my phone, "iPhone 5?" "4S," I say. They are still impressed for some reason. That happens almost every day.

Students put on aprons and hats and dish out food while others bring food to their peers' desks. Then, the class leader gets everyone's attention, "Kiotsuke..." and then everyone says, "Itadakimasu," together. In Japan, before eating, people say itadakimasu to express appreciation for the food and those who have prepared it. People ask me what the English equivalent is, but we Americans just eat. Maybe some people pray. But there isn't as simple a translation as, like "Cheers" for "Kanpai." Anyway, lunch commences and at the end of the meal it's another, "Kiotsuke..." and then "Gochisosamadeshita," meaning "Thanks for the food I just ate."

Now, I am "doing my work." The math teacher is itching his butt, inside his pants, directly across from me in the teacher's room. I have my Kindle and my laptop and my iPhone for 3G internet connection so I can check my mail and play games on my phone. Sometimes I study Japanese. It's pretty relaxed. Now there is a teacher gurgling at the sink in the office.

While every day in Japan is an adventure and something cute always happens with my students*, it's a shame that I am so underutilized in lesson planning and teaching in general. While JETs are told, "every situation is different," every JET seems underutilized. I have traveled across the world, become TEFL certified, and here I am, "doing my work" for 8 hours in the staff room. 

I hope you enjoyed the little slice of life description of a school day in Japan!

*At lunch, a student had the teacher translate this hypothetical situation: "if you were on an island with a friend and your friend died, what body part would you eat?" I was grossed out and confused. He explained, "Japanese people usually say 'hands' and Americans usually say 'brains.'" I guess we're zombies... "No brains!" I replied, "brains make you sick. I wouldn't eat my friend. I would go fishing." My students laughed.

How to Prepare for an Interview with the JET Program

As it's about time for the JET Program 2013 interviews, I wanted to share my preparations for my successful interview in 2012, as compiled from other blogs and sources. 

No matter what happens, always appear relaxed and confident. A part of the interview is seeing how you react to stress. Emphasize that you are up for any challenge. They are looking for the “genki” factor: that chipper, excited, happy disposition that will win you have with plenty of Japanese kids. And don’t forget to smile.

The JET interviews have three main segments:

1) Questions about your teaching / international experience

2) Questions about you personally or how you would react in certain situations

3) Some kind of teaching / role-playing demonstration

The interview will be focused on:

• Your knowledge of and level of interest in Japanese culture
• Getting to know more about your personal interests or your background
• If you know what you put on your application, inside and out!
• Your ability to improvise and think on your feet

In addition, I made sure to know my application and statement of purpose inside and out. Here are the interview questions to prepare for.

 

Qualifications

Why do you think you are a good candidate for our program?

How would you contribute to international understanding?

What kind of special talents or abilities would you bring to the program or your students?

Why should we hire you?

What makes you different from the other applicants?

Why didn't you study abroad?

Why are you interested in Japan?

Why did you choose this particular city/prefecture?

Culture (Shock)

What kind of negative experiences do you anticipate encountering and how would you deal with them?

How do you handle conflicts with your friends?

If you were at a work-sponsored drinking party and a fellow teacher tried to grope you, how would you handle it? What if it was the principal?

What would you do if you were expected to serve tea to the men during the morning meetings?

What would you say if a student asked you why America bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Education Issues

What sort of teaching experience do you have?

In what ways do you expect education in Japan will be different from education in your home country?

How will you present your home country to the Japanese people that you meet?

Suppose there is an important event at one of your schools on a weekend that you had pre-arranged plans. Your principal asks if you could cancel your plans and come to the event. What would you do?:

Tell us three things you would like to tell your future students and other ALTs about your home country.

If you could bring only three things to show Japanese students to represent your home country/state, what would they be and why would you bring them? 

Paint us three pictures: three distinctly Western things that you could describe to students without having a common language.

Name the three most important people in American History.

What if your JTE only uses you for a “human tape recorder”?

How would you get students interested, especially if they have no reason to learn English?

Classroom Management

There is a loud, obnoxious boy in your class who isn't doing the assignment you have given.

You are teaching a lesson and Japanese team teacher makes an English grammar mistake. What do you do?

What will you say if a student asks you about drug use?

Would you ever strike a student? What if the teacher you are teaching with struck a student in front of you?

What would you do if you are teaching a class and there is one student in the back room sleeping? Reading comics? Talking on a cell phone?

What would you do if a student spit or cursed at you?

What would you do if you were in the right classroom when the bell rang, but your team teacher is not there?

General Knowledge Base

What do you know about Japan?

What Japanese movies do you like?

What Japanese food do you like?

What are your hobbies?

Who is the governor of your home state (or province)?

Who is the president and vice-president of your home country?

Who is the prime minister of Japan?

Name five famous places in Japan.

What are the important issues facing our world today? 

What are some current important events in Japan?

What holiday is your favorite and why?

Do you like karaoke?

Name five famous authors of your home country.

Name the major islands (or cities) of Japan.

Name three famous Japanese people.

What do you know about the political system in Japan?

What are some issues facing Japanese-American relations?

Do you have anything that you would like to ask us?

Ask each to give one piece of advice to new JETs heading to Japan.

Ask the former JET about their time as a JET and how their interview went, or their best moment in JET.

What can I do to prepare, in the case that I am selected, before departure?

Good luck!!!!!

Green Tea & Cigarettes: Health in Japan

What do you know about health as it's related to Japan? What is the secret to their long lives, and what are some common misconceptions? These are just a few of the things I've noticed.   

• I know that the Japanese people have the longest average lifespan of any nation.
• The obesity rate is very low, only 3% compared to about 30% in the United States.
• They eat less fast food than other nations, although this is changing.
• Japanese people walk more as a part of their daily lifestyles because public transit is more the norm.
• Also, the cost of food is higher here, and the average Japanese person consumes about 200 fewer calories per day than an American.
• I know that they eat a lot of fish and seafood, which are rich in omega fatty acids and a lean source of protein.
• They eat a lot soy products, including tofu, miso soup, and edamame.  
• You might think of Japan and think, "soy sauce" and you’d be right. The Japanese diet actually contains a lot of salt.  
• They drink a lot of green tea, with the mysterious power of antioxidants.
• The national health care system is extremely impressive, and the average Japanese person visits the doctor about 14 times per year.
• However, MANY people smoke, and according to the National Cancer Center, smoking kills more than 100,000 people per year and is responsible for one in ten deaths. 
• Their dental hygiene is remarkably terrible and most toothpastes do not contain any fluoride.
• Japan is also the land of alcoholic nomihoudai or "all you can drink," and excessive drinking in Japan accounts for 4.15 trillion yen per year in health costs.
• The nationwide suicide rate is quite high, perhaps due to the dominant culture of overwork and stress from societal pressure.

So, while people in Japan live longer on average than any other country, it has more to do with their healthy diets and active lifestyles and less with some mysterious Asian health secret. 

Influenza & The Face Mask in Japan

Do you remember the SARS and the Bird Flu outbreaks? What images do you remember from the media?  For me, as with many of the images from Asia that you see in international news, I remember the "mask." However, use of the white face mask is a part of everyday life in Japan.  

Imagine a class of 30 students staring up at you, each wearing a white surgical mask. This is the norm for classrooms in Japan, especially from January to March when students are struck with the influenza bug. Entire classrooms or schools close for days to weeks at a time. The mask is used both to protect ones' self from the environment and also to protect others from any illness an individual might be carrying, especially the common cold. They are also a barrier to prevent people from touching their mouth and nose, through which bacteria and viruses can be transmitted.

The mask is not weird. It's not always worn because people are still afraid of SARS, radiation, or air pollution. The mask is a preventative measure; a responsible barrier to protect yourself and others. Perhaps because of the density of the population, there are many measures taken in Japan to prevent the spread of illness including disinfectant solutions sprayed on cash in ATMs and everyday items like writing utensils or musical instruments made of antibacterial plastic. 

And in Japanese junior high schools, where body odor reigns and deodorant is much less powerful than in America, I really can't balk at the practice of mask-wearing.

Sexism in Japan

Warning: I'm going to say the 'S'-word. Sexism. After six months in Japan, I am beginning to pick up on a pervading sexism here. Although Japan is one of the world's wealthiest developed nations, the gender gap is wider in Japan than you might expect. While this controversial and opinionated post significantly departs in tone from the previous ones, it has been on my mind and is worth a discussion.

You may have thought about the issue during the 2012 Olympics when the world champion women's soccer team flew coach while, on the same flight, the sub-par men's team flew business class. The story made international news, and the team captain and star Homare Sawa remarked, "I guess it should have been the other way around. Even just in terms of age we are the senior." The JFA stipulated that if the women's team proved their worth with a medal, they would be upgraded for their return flight. They did, and JFA kept their promise. Regardless, the men's team found themselves with plenty of leg room, even without a medal. 

I have become accustomed to the frequent, subtle sexism. When in public, people primarily address my husband. People find it strange that I am the primary earner.  In my town in Japan, most members of town offices and all the town leaders are male. At junior high schools, the male students dominate class and their female counterparts must be coaxed to squeak in their barely audible voices. At the town gym, I get many curious glances when lifting weights or running the track because the ideal, feminine woman is not powerful. Here, the feeling of the societal gaze is strong. For me, I am judged not only as a foreigner, but also as a woman. Needless to say, as an American woman in Japan, I am incapable of meeting the expectations for Japanese women: thin and beautiful, passive and powerless, shy and demure. 

Japan remains one of the industrialized world's least equal countries, while nations like the U.S. continue to improve political empowerment, educational attainment, economic participation and opportunity, and health. At Japan's top 500 companies, women account for less than 1 percent of executives, compared with 10 percent in America and the UK. The 2012 Global Gender Gap Report, which measures the aforementioned factors, ranks Japan at #101 near India at #105. The Nordic countries occupy the very top of the list, with the US at #22, China at #69 and Yemen last at #135. While many nations have much improvement to make, the facts are surprising about Japan. 

The social consequences, like the effect on the career and family due to changing gender roles, is nothing out of the ordinary. In 1985, only 30.6% of women in their twenties were single. But because of the increasing pressure and desire to have a career, the rate rose to 54% in 2004.  Unmarried women in their late twenties and onward are the subject of much town gossip, and I know a few female ALTs who have been questioned endlessly about why they don't have a boyfriend or are unmarried. They are ridiculed by peers and called names like "Christmas Cake" which becomes undesirable and goes on sale the day after Christmas. While there is an up-tick of Japanese women in the workplace, they are so frequently overworked that they find it quite difficult to raise a family. At the same time, with Japan's aging population, women are feeling more pressure than ever to have children. Oh, to be a modern woman. 

However, Japan has a history of great females. Did you know there have been eight empresses in Japan?  Did you know that the author of The Tale of Genji was a woman? But even in this history, you can see the well-established roots of gender inequality. The Tale of Genji was written primarily in hiragana, Japan's syllabary. Males were allowed more education than women and Chinese kanji were "men's writing" while hiragana was the "women's writing." This further distinguished the power of educated men and the deference of women. Linguistically, women's speech is expected to conform with traditional standards of onnarashii, the code of proper behavior for a lady. Women speak with an artificially high tone of voice (omnipresent in Japan), and their polite speech and even grammar has a feminine characteristic.

After WWII women received the right to vote and the new constitution stipulated equality between the sexes. The late 1960's and early 1970s saw Japan's radical feminist movement. One leader was Misako Enoki, a pharmacist who organized activists to push for the legalization of the birth control pills. Her approach was to generate media attention by forming a protest group called Chupiren, who wore pink motorcycle helmets and took part in publicity stunts like confronting unfaithful husbands in their offices. They weren't taken seriously by the media. Mitsu Tanaka was the most visible individual figure during the movement. She wrote a number of feminist manifestos and her writings called for a dismantling of the household system. "By questioning man and authority, we will deconstruct our own fantasies of love, husband and wife, men, chastity, children, the home, and maternal love."

I think Tanaka's quote about the household system begins to touch on why advances for gender equality have stagnated in Japan. Japan is a land of tradition, and in many ways resistant to change. They do things because it's the way they have always done things, and that is reason enough. To question is to disrespect. Tradition calls for Japanese women to serve as willing subordinates to men. 

As a socially and politically emancipated American women, I can't help but force my ethnocentric world view upon Japan. However, I value Japan's traditional culture and I see value in preserving it. This balance between social change and honoring tradition must be struck, and it is an issue that is being struggled with the world over. I think that Japan's traditional culture is beautiful, but when it comes to women's rights, I think that Japan should change. Cultures aren't to be mummified, petrified, placed in test tubes to observe in a museum; they adapt and make transitions to modernity.

Here is one example. While women traditionally weren't able to participate in many of Japan's martial arts, now, I have seen junior high girls practicing kendo and met an American woman who placed 2nd in a sumo tournament in Fukashima. Dori from Kansas, an ALT in Mori, Japan, just 30 minutes south of my town, earned the pride of her town, the respect of her students and the fame of NHK news and newspapers by participating in a sport in which it was once forbidden for women to enter the ring.

As Japan becomes a more globalized nation and as they continue to measure their success against other industrial powers, I predict the country will want to "keep up with the Joneses" so to speak. In the next ten to twenty years we will see great improvements for gender equality.

Until then, I'll be soliciting hundreds of confused looks and disapproving glances at the gym, restaurants, and any old place with the preposterous behavior of a modern American woman.

I'd be interested to hear what you think about the topic of gender equality in Japan. Do you have a different opinion? Have you experienced something in Japan to add? Have you read a great Japanese feminist author? Please chime in with your experience or opinions!