A Meeting in Obihiro

Last weekend I took a trip to Obihiro for the HAJET fall meeting. Obihiro is a city of about 150,000 people, located in the Tokachi area of Hokkaido. It is a large farming area, the main crops are wheat, potatoes, beets and beans. It is home to the "pristine" Satsunai river, which, like the Mississippi River, is largely polluted by fertilizer runoff from local agriculture.

I was nervous about the train ride, since my experience taking trains includes only a couple days in Chicago, chaperoned by a friend with a Smartphone, and going by myself from Yakumo to Sapporo with no transfer. That's it. There is like one train in Minnesota and I've never taken it. To Obihiro, I took a limited express train, transferred at Minami Chitose, and somehow figured out from which platform my train departed and which car was for unreserved seats. Being in Japan is in indispensable learning experience in so many ways. 

Upon arrival, I visited the Kita no Yatai foodstand, an alleyway of unique, compact restaurants. The area is famous for a dish of glazed pork on rice called butadon. We stayed at the New Hotel Obihiro, a fairly priced place that smelled like decades of cigarette smoke had seasoned the walls.

The training was rather minimal, but I enjoyed HAJET's ongoing game of assassins (I made the first kill by getting someone to say 'galaxy' only about 2 minutes after the game began), the Halloween costume contest (I dressed as Dr. Horrible, an obscure reference that helped me find kinship with some nerds), and the pub quiz, despite the way HAJET seems like a selective group of insiders who operate by the same popularity rules as high school, and the tendency for the 3rd+ year JETS to take every opportunity to interject with their undying expertise. That was a long sentence. 

I was glad to have some time to walk around during the day, and I found Obihiro's Park: Midori ga oka koen. Only a 15 minute walk from the train station, there is a park golf course, open green spaces, gardens, an art museum, a pond with mallards and some trails. It was a lovely fall day for a stroll.

I had some good times, met some friends, and took the train back to Yakumo feeling less than 100% after a night of ample festivities, if you catch my euphemism. 

Work Updates

I have been swamped, stressed, and sleepy. Between teaching 9-5 at 5 junior high schools, I facilitate an evening English circle, teach an English class just for beginners, and today I am leading a classroom/conversation one-shot English workshop for a mix of elementary and middle school teachers. Not to mention the everyday lesson planning, and I have to do and the multiple full-period Halloween lessons tomorrow and next week. And to top it off, my BOE is adding elementary schools to my mix, so Monday I will team teach at my first elementary school. It doesn't help my stress level that I have had about 5 CouchSurfing requests that I have had to organize in the last couple of weeks, and that lat weekend I was out of town for the HAJET Fall Meeting in Obihiro and wasn't able to get work done or relax. *head explodes*

On a lighter note, I drove to my 2 schools that are 45-minutes away through a mountain pass last week, and the fall colors and sunshine over the sea of Japan was so picturesque:

Last week all of my junior highs also came together to display tidbits of their school festival performances, which overall was lovely.

However, I think there is a teacher who is trying to sabotage me. She's an English teacher who sits next to me every day and rarely talks to me, besides apologizing for putting her stuff all over my desk all the time. On a day that I wasn't informed that it was a half day for students and there was no lunch planned, I remained at school for an hour while she ate next to me, before someone else mentioned the schedule change. She is constantly misinforming me about my weekly schedule, but what really got me pissed was what happened at the performances.

I walked into the gym, standing along the wall with a few other teachers while the gym filled with students sitting in chairs or rugs on the gym floor. A kind teacher came over to me and showed me where I could sit on the floor with students if I wanted to. But the saboteur intervened, and told me where I should sit in a line of tables with about 7 seats. She led me there and I didn't have much choice but to sit down.

Then, the superintendent and the head of the town council were seated at the other end of these tables. I felt out of place, sitting alone at the other end of the table that seemed reserved for people more important. I realized right before the performance started that the principals of each of the 5 junior high schools were standing next to each other, on the other side of the tables, as if they were waiting to sit down, and I thought for sure I was in their spot, but before I could act, people brought a bunch of folding chairs for them to sit where they didn't have quite as good of a view. So I sat, with 4 chairs between myself and the superintendent and head of the town council, for the entire performance. I felt like such a moron, but that teacher told me to sit there! She walked by later, and didn't acknowledge me at all.

I can only try to explain how uncomfortable I was...and have my little conspiracy theory that this teacher is out to make me look bad. Maybe she didn't know those tables were reserved, but why would she have been so insistent for me to sit there when she has never gone out of her way for me before?

At my two-month meeting with my supervisor, I was asked if there were any situations in my life in Japan where I felt confused or uncomfortable (the paper she gave me said, "tell me about your condition"). I told her that I feel confused and uncomfortable a lot, but I would do my best. Being unable to speak Japanese well, unable to understand the subtle rules of Japanese culture, and unable to grasp the individual school subcultures, renders me awkward and if unguided or misguided, I will likely commit many a faux pas, creating an endless string of baka gaijin's misadventures.  *sigh*

Shikotsu-Toya National Park, Ryokan, and Tourist Traps

This last weekend I took a trip to Noboribetsu's Hell Valley (地獄谷 Jigokudani) and Shikotsu-Toya National Park (支笏洞爺国立公園 Shikotsu Tōya Kokuritsu Kōen). Having a car in Hokkaido makes amazing weekend trips possible. 

The trip began in Noboribetsu, found on the Japanese Ministry of Environment`s list of the top 100 areas of fragrance and scenery! I stayed at Dai-Ichi Takimotokan, the largest spa in Asia. This was by far the most luxurious stay I have ever had at a hotel. 

I greatly enjoyed staying in a Japanese style room for the first time. The tatami mat floor is delicate and it smells very earthy, both refreshing and sort of like a pet store at the same time. While I had been hesitant to book a room without Western style beds, futons turned out to be a lovely experience! It felt like a sleep over, and the staff set them out for us in the evening. I honestly enjoyed them so much, I slept so soundly and comfortably, that I would consider sleeping on a futon back in America.

Hell Valley (地獄谷 Jigokudani) is a 450-meter-diameter mouth of a volcano, which produces 3,000 liters of hot water per minute. The fragrance I mentioned above? That would be the sulfur rotting egg fart smell that seemed initially vile, but ended up growing on me by the end of the trip. If you can't get over that smell, you won't enjoy the hot springs very much, as they contain sulfur too. The hot springs feed the baths at local ryokan, and as the springs boast 11 different types of water, each with different chemical properties that supposedly have different health benefits .

Every year around late August, the Hell Festival takes place here, so demons are a local motif. There are even red and blue beers, which looked cool but tasted like soapy carbonated water.

I enjoyed wearing my first yukata, using the instructions provided by the hotel website:

The main drag in Noboribetsu is full of souvenir shops, and some all-you-can-drink bars at night. One amazing thing about this town is that at any time, you can see the hotel guests walking about in their yukata and sandals!

Dinner was a huge, all-you-can-eat buffet with seriously high quality food, a large selection of fresh seafood, and a huge table of desserts including four kinds of hard-serve ice cream. Breakfast the next morning was also impressive, but I didn't have much room in my stomach after dinner the night before! It's probably best to choose either the dinner OR breakfast buffet.

The next day, I took a cable car/gondola up a rope way to reach the summit of Mt. Usu (有珠山 Usu-zan). This volcano had a massive eruption in 1977, wiping out all the surrounding buildings. People who reside near volcanoes (which accounts for many residents in Japan) have a unique appreciation for the destructive power of nature, and a unique resilience for overcoming that destruction. There was a volcano simulation room and museum, and plenty more tourist traps. My visit coincided with a group of tour buses from the Princess Cruise lines, and I hadn't seen so many white people in awhile!

Here's the crater at the top:

Below is a view of Showa-shinzan (昭和新山), a lava dome that mysteriously emerged from the ground between 1944-1945. A local postman kept notes about the rapid growth of this mountain, which remain the best record of its growth. The Japanese government tried to keep it's emergence secret at first, as it seemed an unlucky omen during wartime. It is listed as one of Japan's "Special Natural Monuments" - there seem to be about a million different lists like this in Japan, presenting every location as superlative.

My next ryokan stay was in Toyako resort town (Tōyako Onsen 洞爺湖温泉), which lies on the shore of Lake Toya (洞爺湖 Tōya-ko). Lake Toya is a caldera lake, formed when land around the volcano collapsed during an eruption. I took a cruise on a castle-themed ferry, and again, encountered many tourists. I saw one lady with skull pants that I had seen earlier that morning at the breakfast buffet. Also, a good bit of advice is that where tourist areas are concerned, sometimes it's better to speak English than Japanese to other tourists. I walked up behind an Asian couple that spoke only English to buy tickets for the ferry (while us white folk purchased tickets using only Japanese), and another Asian man asked us to take his picture and we spoke a bit of Japanese to him before we realized the text on his camera was in Korean. It can be confusing. Anyway, here are some photos from the cruise:

The ferry stopped at Nakano-shima, an island in the middle of the lake, that houses the Tōya Lake Forest Museum, a shrine, some tame deer, and a little ice cream stand. I think it is possible to explore the forested area that is fenced off, but the sign stated that during the deer mating season (Sep-Oct) they can be quite aggressive, so it seemed in our best interest to steer clear.

 I stayed at Kawanami Hotel, a small but affordable place, with excellent meals, and hot baths that aren't as crowded as other places. I enjoyed a relaxing 10pm bath without another soul in sight, and had all three baths to myself! I really recommend visiting the bath right before bed...I have never slept better in my life. And remarkably, every summer, Toyako shoots off fireworks every night about 8:40pm over the lake. If you're as lucky as I am, you can see them right from your window! 

The last leg of the trip was a stop at a sandwich and cheesecake place in Niseko that came recommended by one of my Japanese coworkers called Graubunden. The sandwiches, on soft and delicious French bread, are made with some hard to find ingredients from around the world! I had the ALT (avocado, lettuce, tomato, not assistant language teacher), with chicken, and it came with cheddar cheese and dill pickles, YUM! However, I recommend against the pumpkin pie, which tastes nothing like its American counterpart, and pales in comparison to their other choices: cheesecake, or gigantic slices of layer cake, the likes of which international bakeries have never seen.

If I could do this trip again, I would spent less time visiting tourist traps and more time hiking and exploring off-the-beaten-path locales. I truly enjoyed the ryokan experience and the natural sights!

Kendo and Japanese Culture

If you express interest in someone's hobby or culture, they will move a mountain to help you learn or experience it, especially the Japanese people, who are endlessly kind and generous to me. 

While anxiously waiting outside the meeting room to introduce myself to the town council, the head honchos who make the decisions and budgets and such, a man who was waiting outside for the next meeting approached my supervisor and me. A kendo master, he offered to teach me and my husband kendo. He saw my husband and I running several kilometers to a nearby park, which we wanted to see but didn't have car insurance yet. And my supervisor has begun to put the wheels in motion. I have given her a list of cultural things I would like to try: calligraphy, kendo, taiko, visiting a rice paddy, dairy farm, or fishing boat (main industries in my area), etc., and she is making everything happen. 

On Tuesday, my husband and I observed our first kendo practice. The participants were children ranging from 7-14 years old. All of them know me from school. The teachers were the man I met at the town office and his 74-year-old father, the most energetic and genki old man I have ever met, and I have met some very genki old men! Here is a video:

A member of the town English Circle was there, as she has two sons in kendo. She worked hard, with her limited English and our limited Japanese, to explain the rules and spirit, because we were very much in the dark. At the English Circle this week, she had made a copy of a few pages of an English textbook she had at home that describes kendo in great detail. To me, the process of learning absent the Internet, is a very organic and natural feeling. I could probably teach myself some kendo from watching YouTube videos, and I could probably get a Master's degree online, but there is something that just feels right about learning about kendo by observing and having it explained by friends and colleagues.

The kendo instructors said that my husband and I are welcome to observe anytime, but I will need to talk to my supervisor if I wish to take the next steps to join. I imagine that lessons and the whole get-up could be quite expensive.

Here are some bonus pictures from the Yakumo Matsuri Festival:

 My junior high school students' orchestra:

The elementary school brass band:

CouchSurfing in Japan

To plagiarize, www.couchsurfing.org is a volunteer-based worldwide network connecting travelers with members of local communities. From their website, "We believe that people who are different than us are good, trustworthy, and inspiring. And every day we're sharing our cultures, hospitality, and adventures with each other."

I heard about CouchSurfing two years ago at Macalester College, but unfortunately I did not have the resources or space to host surfers, the means or courage to travel, or the trust of strangers. Fortunately, on a trip to Chicago, a friend introduced me to the website www.airbnb.com, a similar service where people rent their homes to travelers. While airbnb isn't as specific as CouchSurfing when it comes to cultural/international exchange, I had such a wonderful time with our hosts on bike tours of the city and eating together at local restaurants. Then, traveling became more about enjoying the people than enjoying the views and tourist attractions (although, I still enjoy that part too).

I decided to start hosting surfers recently and for selfish purposes...do we really take action for any other reason? I can't say, really, I don't know anything about philosophy...some altruism stuff or something. I wanted to speak English with people, learn Japanese, fulfill my duty of internationalization in Japan by bringing foreigners and travelers to my city, and show people how cool the town I'm living in is.

So far, I have hosted two surfers, both who have inspired me, taught me, made me wonder, and helped me think more holistically about the world. In other words, they have fulfilled my selfish motivations for hosting, and then some. My most recent couch surfer was a Japanese man: a musician, world hitchhiker and philosopher. He wore a rainbow colored hat, baggy pants, and sandals, and carried a guitar that rivaled his height. Maybe he looked like a Japanese hippy, but this man had traveled to 65 countries. At some point in his life, he lived and worked in Tokyo, commuting to work every day being pushed on trains (have you seen these train pushers?):

Anyway, the way he engaged us in conversation, the way he was willing to communicate with us in English and share his knowledge of the Japanese language and culture, and his vivacity for life really made an impression on me. He visited on a Wednesday, and graced our English circle with the song "Hello, Goodbye" by the Beatles while the class sang along. When I dropped him off at Panorama Park (a stop from the Hokkaido Expy), he thanked me graciously, and as I pulled away, he stood and waved, both arms over his head, until I pulled out of the lot (I thought he had maybe forgotten something in the car and was trying to flag me down) but no, he was just gracefully waving his arms in a thankful goodbye.

In the next month, I will be hosting two more surfers, Hokkaido wanderers who, for one reason or another, want to come to my quiet village and share a few days with me. I am becoming a better host, a better communicator, more trusting and global and brave to travel myself. I have been inspired by descriptions of many countries, and the ease of which these CouchSurfers travel, often with no car, phone, money, etc. They make me want to travel the world too! 

how does one become a teacher?

Ready for a bad science joke?: The evolution of my posts is clearly a punctuated equilibrium.
"instead of a slow, continuous movement, evolution tends to be characterized by long periods of virtual standstill ("equilibrium"), "punctuated" by episodes of very fast development of new forms." Now for the post:

I love teaching. However, I am finding many hoops that need to be jumped through in order to become a licensed and legal teacher in the United States. For me, graduating from a 4-year college was a hoop dream for so long, and now, to pursue a Master's Degree seems an equally daunting task. About a year after the State of Minnesota gave approval for alternative teaching licensure programs, not a single institution has initiated a program. Government subsidies for graduate loans are being cut, but a master's degree is increasingly becoming the gold standard for obtaining a job.

I wonder, with a Master's Degree and experience in St. Paul schools with AmeriCorps and my TEFL experience in Japan, if I would be a competitive candidate. If I pursue graduate education, I would like to get a Master's in Elementary Education. My dream is to teach at a private school, charter school, or Montessori school with the hope that I will not be paralyzed by standards, testing, and bureaucracy.  Working with children so enriches my life, and with my love of the outdoors, working at an nature-based elementary charter school would be the ideal.

The fact is, I know many certified teachers who have been out of work. I have heard that the market for elementary teachers is completely over-saturated. My hypothesis is that the biological clocks of many females are ticking, while the average age of marriage and having children goes up. Women turn to Elementary Education as a professional calling, but what is really calling them is their maternal desires. 

While my dream is to teach at a private or charter school, I had many wonderful and inspiring teachers throughout my public education, and I would be overjoyed to find any job, public schools included. I believe in a high quality of public education, and if I ever become a public school teacher, I will fight for that, but now, the government is surely not doing its part to attract high quality public school teachers. 

There seem to be many more barriers and deterrents when it comes to finding a job in a public school. I am concerned about  becoming licensed in one state and wanting to live or finding a job in another. It seems that transferring licenses can be a difficult process, as each state has different licensing standards. It is surprising that the US doesn't have a nationwide license or more cooperation between states. While licensing is one barrier, I can think of a few more, like No Child Left Behind and the constant pressure for students to achieve high tests scores regardless of circumstances and with the teacher's position on the line.  

Supposedly, some school districts will offer on-the-job training while licensure is pursued. I don't know where those are, but it sounds awesome. Teach for America is an option, but having served two years already with AmeriCorps, the education award would be rendered moot.

I will ruminate on this topic for a bit longer. Maybe, instead of trying to become a legit teacher, I could pursue environmental education programs at nature centers. I hope to find some way to couple my love for the outdoors and my love for education, because, Confucius once say, "Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life." Finding a job that just pays the bills is an option, and following MLK's advice, if it falls to my lot to be a street sweeper, I would, "sweep streets like Michelangelo." But I believe that with vision and effort, I can shape the progression of my future. 

reflections & the reality of teaching in japan

Well, now that I have talked about my Japanese study, here are some updates about my other goals. 

First, I need to post more continued reflections and inspiring observations. I think many of my posts end up being travel reflections and general complaining, and I hope to better target my blog in order for it to achieve its purpose. While blogs in general seem like a narcissistic concept ("Look how cool and smart I am!"), they can also serve the purpose of providing information (in my case, for interested JETs or family members at home). They can be a medium for self-reflection, or digital scrapbooks of sorts -  pixilated catalogs of memory. Alas, I will trudge forward, submitting my musings to the void of anonymous readers. 

An inspiring anecdote from the past few weeks has been the joy I've discovered in working with special needs students. At one of my schools, a student who is particularly interested in and skilled at English, went out of his way to speak to me and bring me vegetables from the school garden. Another student at a different school came up to me after lunch and bravely offered, "Will you play volleyball with me?"  Life in Japan is packed with linguistic and cultural barriers and feelings of difference and otherness. The special ed students at my schools, like Houdini, make all of them disappear. They come from a place of otherness within their own society, and because of this, I think we are able to find common ground. Sadly, in my relations with other junior high students (especially the boys), I often feel ridiculed. They will laugh at me every chance that they get (somehow the English word "ankle" is really funny, and I have no problem laughing at myself, but I can anticipate it getting old.

Another issue has been becoming involved with activities and clubs at my main school, which also happens to be my most troublesome school. Some days, the teachers do not give me any responsibility or they tell me after class has begun where I should be. Their class schedule changes weekly, and I generally am not given this schedule and must somehow devise, with my lack of Japanese reading and speaking abilities, where I should be. Only once I step into the classroom and the teacher tells the students what page to open their books to, do I have any inkling about the content of the day's lesson. I do not want to misunderstand my role, or violate the sanctity of the workplace hierarchy by voicing my concerns, especially since I have only been in the school for about a month. I would like to get involved in the school activities, but I am sometimes not even involved in the classroom, which is my prime directive at school. Furthermore, the organizer of the town soccer team is an English teacher, but he doesn't seem to have taken a liking to me, despite the fact that I try to talk to him about soccer and play with students after lunch. I really want to play soccer in Japan! It is becoming very popular here because of the success of their national teams. I have been able to be active in community cultural activities, joining a taiko club, and I will soon be observing/participating in kendo and shoudo (calligraphy) classes. 

As for my relationships with my teachers, many are too busy or apathetic about my presence in the classroom to spend time meeting with me to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of lessons or to discuss lesson plans. In America, I worked hard to prepare for team teaching and effective instruction in Japan, and it is frustrating for me to find so little cooperation and enthusiasm from many of my Japanese teachers. Of course, there are exceptions, especially at my smaller schools who aren't as busy and who are very happy to have me there. 

I have been doing well with many of my personal goals, eating quite healthily, consuming few sweets, and going for 5:30am runs when it is cool and few pedestrians are around. I have come to realize that if I am seen in town by someone I interact with, they like to inform me and others that they "spotted the gaijin" (in different words) at the grocery store, hardware store, or driving with sunglasses on. Sometimes I don't know if I am like a local celebrity or, rather, a sideshow. 

Now, I ask myself, how is my progress on the culture shock spectrum? I think it is better described as a normal progression into a new culture - an "adaptation curve" perhaps. At the end of the curve comes adaptation/biculturalism. What does it mean to be bicultural anyway? Is it possible to straddle the line between your cultural roots and a new way of living? How is biculturalism related to acculturation/assimilation? I'm no cultural theorist, but it would behoove me to do some more research on this topic. 

And as I begin to become accustomed to life in Japan, it will also be important for me to think about my personal and professional life outside of the "JET/ALT/Japan" bubble. Once you arrive in Japan, there are many things that pressure you to stay. Your new friends, expatriates who have been in Japan for 3-10 years, have been sucked into the language teaching vortex. My #1 marketable skill is my ability to speak my native language, and here in Japan I am paid well and treated reasonably well while being able to travel and enjoy this beautiful country. What's not to love? Well, the fact that I am married and would like to set myself up professionally and financially in the United States in case we decide to start a family or to grow some roots somewhere. The fact is that in the modern era, a BA from a liberal arts college may not land me a good enough job to support a family.

I will continue to ruminate upon my goals, but for now, I will abruptly end this post.