The Summer is Ending, and I have to Change Schools

Well, it is near the end of the summer vacation period here in Japan for the school children. It is somewhat ironic to call it a summer cacation when, in fact, most (if not all) of the kids in the schools have been going to school everyday since school "ended" at the end of July. There are clubs to continue practicing, and homework to work on. This is truly not a vacation.

I too have been needed at my school during this vacation. By the end of the summer, I will have worked 7 days at my junior high school to help some of the students prepare for an English speech contest to be held in September. Interestingly enough, I am helping these students to be the best and win, and I will not evne be at the school when the contest takes place, I am being forced to work at another junior high school in the same city, a rival, if you will.

I say forced, because I did not ask to move. I did not want to move. I was confortable with the school, the students, and the teachers. The only reason I was given for the move was that I was quiet and the school felt that I was not a "match" for the school as they were "passionate" about English. The strange part is that I cannot find a single person at the school who knew that I was going to change schools.

Part of me wants to think that this decision was made by someone in the Board of Education that I have never met and was based on reports from the school, not by observation. The cynic in me tends to think that this decision was made by my dispatch company and is some type of revenge or bullying on their part for me trying to quit earlier in the school year, again based on zero oberservation as no one from my company has ever visited me at my school.

I am destined for another junior high school in the same city, although this one is now a 20-minute (at least) bus ride away from the train station. While I am basically working at the one school, I am further "blessed" to have to work odd days at 3 area elementary schools (yes that is 3 other schools).

Sounds Fun?

Summer Vacation

As the summer comes to a close, and thank god for that with the temperatures we are having, I have not really done much. I have worked the aforementioned days at my junior high school, and worked a few days at my part-time job. The one "trip" that we did was a 5-day stay at my mother-in-law's house in Yokohama. Perhaps there is more to come in the new year.

My apartment

I thought it be best at this point to describe my Japanese apartment. In Japanese terms, it is listed as a 3DK. This means that it has 3 bedrooms, a Dining Room, and a Kitchen (plus the toilet and bathroom). That is it.

After entering the apartment through the outward opening front door, you are in the entranceway, which is essentially a tiled area for removing your shoes with enough space for 1 person to stand. Take a small step up onto the hardwood in the hallway and immediately to your left is the toilet in its own small room. Immediately to the right, along the hallway, is the small bedroom (for those inclined, it is 4.5 mats in size). Next to the toilet is the washroom (up another small step) that also includes the shower/bath room and the clothes washer. Continuing along the hallway as you pass through a doorway, you are in the Dining Room/Kitchen. This room is 7.5 mats large and is essentially a rectangular-shaped room with a small set of cabinets and cupboards on the right side as you walk in. This is the largest room in the apartment and also the centre. In front of you there are 2 doorways side-by-side. The doorway on the left leads to the "master" bedroom that has the largest closet (the small bedroom does not have a closet at all), and is covered in tatami mats (this room is 6 mats and the only room with tatami). To the right of this doorway is the other bedroom (according to plans and is identical in size to the master except has a smaller closet) that we use as our Living Room/Den/Library. Off of these 2 rooms is the balcony that stretches across both rooms and is just wide enough to use a chair on (this is when we do not have the laundry drying on it as there is no dryer in the apartment). The walls are all covered by the same wallpaper and we are not allowed to put anything up on the walls to decorate. There is one air conditioning/heater unit in the apartment located in our Living Room (although there is room to add one in our bedroom, we have not done so), as there is no central air.

That is it. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.

In terms of convenience, the building has an elevator and is located about a 7-minute walk from the closest train station (vital, living in Japan). There is really nothing around this station as it is quite small. There are a few supermarkets nearby (within a 15-minute bike ride radius of the apartment), but the nearest department store is one station away or an easy 10-15 minute bike ride away. To illustrate how small this station is, it has no fast food restaurants around it.

P.S. To see how big the room sizes are refer to this:

6 mats = 98.81 square feet

1 year in Japan

July 28th.

This will be exactly 1 year since I arrived in Japan to begin this latest chapter in my life and the second go-round for me in Japan.

I thought it would be good to reflect on the past year.

My wife and I arrived in the heat of the Japanese summer without a home, just my mother-in-law's house. I had no job, but some prospects. I had an interview scheduled for 3 days after I arrived with my current company, and I had some other appointments to make. I got a job almost immediately from the first company (but as I first posted in June, this was a mistake that I am still paying for). We had to find an apartment in another prefecture as well as get all the furniture and appliances too. All in 33-35 degree weather.

I worked in 2 different public high schools and now am in a public junior high school (for now as my company has kind of told me that I will be changing schools in September). I have gotten a part-time job to suppliment my income some more, but it is not too frequent, so I am in the hunt for another, or some private students. My ife is not working but concentrating on other things at the moment.

We have attempted to adopt a child here, but that is currently on hold.

We have taken a couple of trips in Japan earlier this year, first to Nagoya and Ise, and the second to Okinawa. Nagoya and Ise were kind of disappointing, because Nagoya Castle is not what I had hoped for (I am a fan of Japanese Castles from the Edo Period) and Ise Shrine is completely surrounded by a tall fence to prevent people from actually seeing any part of the shrine buildings apart from the roofs (essentially you have to pray to a portion of the fence). Okinawa was more interesting as I could visit yet another castle, Shuri-jo. This is a reconstruction, but still a World Heritage Site and completely different than any other Japanese Castle (due to strong Chinese ties). We also saw several memorials to the war too.

Now we are back to the time we arrived last year. Insanely hot and humid. Summer.

Got to do it all over again.

The Summer of Sweat

In an earlier entry on this blog, I talked about the heat that is a Japanese summer. Well, it has arrived. And it has brought some friends along too. They go by the names of: Humidity and Discomfort.

The annual rainy season finished much sooner than I, or anybody, expected this year, and as a result, the summer officially began. The rainy season for us in the Kanto area was relatively mild, with not much rain. Other parts of Japan are in a world of trouble from their rains that have resulted in flooding and landslides (landslides are never much of a problem here in the middle of the Kanto Plain).

However, summer is its own burden. We are just a few days into the summer season, and already it is too hot. To recap, Saturday the temperature reached a balmy 32 degrees, Sunday came in at 33 degrees, and yesterday, a holiday, came in at a blistering 36 degrees. Todays forecast? Yep, 36 degrees again.

Add to the temperatures the high humidity, and you got yourself one heck of a day of sweltering and sweating. There is no way to escape it. My wife and I have a system of going out to use someone else's air conditioning (like a shopping centre or big store) to stay cool (plus, we don't have to pay the electric bills).

Even the nights are too warm and humid. Since we do not have any kind of central air conditioning, we have to rely on a complex system of a room air conditioner and an electric fan. Still this does cool sufficiently at night. As a result, I often wake up sweating and uncomfortable.

The good news is that we only have about 2 more months of this weather before the fall.

Living in a Sauna

I recently read a story on the World Sauna Championships in Finland (here). Then I read about the heat warnings and high temperatures they were experiencing this week in Southern Ontario and Quebec.

This got me thinking, to prepare for both of these, one should spend a summer in Tokyo.

I am entering my fourth summer in the Tokyo area (fortunately broken up by 4 summers in Southern Ontario), and I can say that this place is just like living in a sauna.

First is the actual heat, right now the temperatures are hovering around the low 30's Celcius and a cool day is about 28 Celcius. So already it is a tad on the warm side. And it will not cool down until November (possibly October, but no one is counting on that anyway).

Just to make it interesting, and to keep you feeling the air around you, there a little matter of humidity. Sorry, that is an understatement. There is an insane amount of humidity here from now until the end of time. It is almost like you can drink the air (a side note, do not drink this air, but more on that later), or at least bottle up the litres of sweat that are bound to pour off you the moment you step outside. Never have I experienced a location that makes you sweat the moment you open the door to the outside.

I am used to a nice hard summer thunderstorm and kind of enjoy them. However, the ones that I am used to in Ontario used to have the added bonus of cooling down the outside temperature and reducing the humidity, somewhat temperarily. Here in Japan, once we have a summer storm (had a couple the last few nights), the temperature and humidity both remain high and there is no respite at all.

As there is this humidity, and the Tokyo area has millions of residents, there is the inevitable smog to deal with. It gets so bad sometimes that one cannot see 50-storey buildings that are less than 5km away from you. It is literally like someone has lifted these buildings and removed them for a few months of the year (I like to say that they left on their own, or have just gone to sleep for awhile). Quite a thing to behold, or not as the case may be. I have even experienced the sight of Mt. Fuji (itself peaking at 3,776 metres) simply disappear and not see it for 5 months.

Add to all of this is the first 8 weeks or so of summer are actually referred to as the rainy season as a rain front covers Japan and stays here to torment us with rain almost everyday. It is not enough that it rains, it is just the mere threat of rain that keeps you griping that umbrella as though your life depended on it, and everyone carries an umbrella here (no trying to be tough or manly, carry that umbrella son, you will need it).

Still, I there is no place I would rather be right now than here.

Bring on winter.

Please.

Japanese School Life

After having worked in Japanese public schools (both high school and junior high school) for a while now, I thought it would be appropriate to highlight some unique Japanese ideas on school life that would be interesting to Westerners.

The School

Generally all public schools regardless of the level, look pretty similar. They tend to be made of the same concrete that is the same colour and pretty uninspiring. This is true of my current school and me previous 2 schools. The design also tends to be similar too, with 1 or 2 buildings connected by a walkway and a separate gym also conected with a walkway. The grounds of each school are not covered in grass, but rather a quasi-dirt/gravel mixture where all sports are done (by sharing the field as all sports teams practice at the same time). There is always fencing around the exterior of the property with a few access points with heavy gates (these tend to be closed during school hours in elementary and junior high schools, but not so much in high schools). All of these factors might lead the average Westerner to imagine that a Japanese school is more like a prison than a school, and in some ways, it does look like a prison.

Inside

Inside the schools there is more of the same look as the outside with very little in the way of wall decorations in most hallways. Generally, all of the classrooms are located on one side of the hallway with windows on the other side. The newer schools, like my previous 2 schools had air conditioning in the classrooms, while my current school (much older) does not. Heating and air conditioning are not used in the hallways.
There is one teacher's room where all the teachers have a desk. Unlike any western school that I ever attended, students are encouraged to come into the teacher's room and talk with teachers and even walk right up to their desks (this changes during exam times where the students can enter the teacher's room, but are limited in where they can go). Teachers usually come back to this room between classes to rest or get ready for their next class.
In older schools (like my current school) the classrooms tend to have wooden floors and the newer schools have tile. Each student is assigned a desk and chair (to which their name is written). When the seating plan is changed, the student moves their entire desk and chair to the new location in the room. There are no lockers in the schools so students are required to carry all of their books and papers with them to and from school everyday (some of these are left in their desks too). Typically, students will leave one of their bags at the back ot the class on a shelf, and bring the other bag to their desk.
No one is allowed to where shoes inside the school (except for in the gym, and those cannot be worn inside the rest of the school), so students usually have special slippers they only wear at school (can be purchased at many stores). Teachers will wear their own slippers or other type of shoe/sandal, provided that they are not worn outside. Students and teachers each have their own entrance and have a place to change their outdoor shoes for their indoor ones (a sort of shoe locker). Anywhere there is carpeting (quite rare, but there some rooms), no slippers/shoes are allowed, so you have walk in your socks. For visitors, there is always a number of slippers provided at the entrance for them to use while in the school.

Students

All school kids from junior high to high school (and some elementary) are required to wear a uniform while on school property. There are usually 2 uniforms, a summer and a winter. The summer uniform is worn from June 1 to the end of September, due to the heat in Japan and the uniform is lighter, i.e. short sleeves. The winter uniform is worn the rest of the year. There is also a gym uniform for sports activities as well as gym classes (sometimes this uniform is worn in class). A boys uniform generally consists of a pair of blue or black semi-dress pants and a white shirt (with tie in winter and without in summer) with white socks. The girls uniform is generally a skirt (usually a tartan-like design, but occasionally a solid colour) and a white shirt with a ribbon (bow in the West) with white or blue socks worn almost to the knees. Since some school clubs practice on weekends, students are required to wear their uniforms to school even then, so many kids wear their uniforms almost 7 days a week.
Students are responsible for cleaning the school as there is no janitor in any school. At the end of every day, the students move their desks to the back of their classroom and clean the room. Then each class will also be responsible for another part of the school to clean, like the teacher's room, the stairways, etc. Typically this cleaning outside of the classroom is done a couple times each week.
The students themselves ore typically not that different from Western students, as kids are the same around the world, as there are the smart ones, the ones that want to study and the ones that don't. It seems that the older the students get, the less excited and eager they become. At least in my classes, the younger students tend to be the most active and enthusiastic whereas the older students (including those in High School) tend to not participate until forced to.

School Life

The main purpose of school is the same as the West, to educate children. There are many other things for the students as well. There are numerous club activities from all kinds of sports, to educational clubs as well. All schools, no matter what level, have a Sports Festival during the school year where classes compete against other classes in their grade for essentially bragging rights and a trophy. Everyone participates in this festival in one form or another. Events are varied, but usually running events are featured. This year's Sports Festival at my school had 100m races, 800m relay races, class jump-rope, and some other events (I even was in one relay race with a team of other teachers and school staff that had every member of each class race 100m).
High Schools tend to also have a 3-day School Festival where they decorate their classrooms in a theme and parents and members of the community are allowed to visit and see presentations and performances by the students and buy items from each class too.
Each year and each grade also go on a school trip, longer for the older kids. Examples of this are in High School last year, the students went to Okinawa for 3 days. The first grade junior high school kids went for a one-day trip to the mountains, the second-grade went for a one-night camping trip, and the third-grade kids went to Kyoto and Nara for 3 days.
As an ALT, I am the only foreigner in the school and the only non-Japanese speaking teacher in the school most of the time. There are always many English teachers to communicate with (as I have to teach with them, it is important) and always a handful of other teachers that will try to communicate with me in English too. It can be frustrating a little bit, as the only one not able to understand what is being said, but if it is important for me (usually not), someone will translate for me.

All in all, school life is much different from what I remember growing up in Canada, but each place is different.

Really Nothing to Say Today

Just an update on what is happening here lately.

It is the rainy season, and insanely humid almost every day. Have been coming to work every day this week, but have done very little as it is a slow day that sees many of the students off doing club activities (Tuesday thru Thursday), so many classes have been canceled. It makes for a quite boring day as I have to fill 7 hours of time "looking busy."

The only other excitment of the week was that I got my very own Hanko this week. For those that are not Japanese, a Hanko is essentially a stamp with your name on it in some way that is used for signing government or official documents (e.g. bank and insurance forms). Traditionally these are made of wood with a carved end with a name, but the more modern ones are done in plastic or similar material. Mine is imprinted with my first name, Chris, in Japanese (using the Katakana symbols that are reserved for foreign words). Written out it looks like: クリス. There was not enough room for my last name (more typical of Hankos). To place your Hanko on a document, you first dap the imprinted end onto an ink pad and then place the stamp in the desired location on the form. I got this because I had to open a new bank account this week and they only will open the account if it is signed using a Hanko. Will update later with a photo of the Hanko and the stamp it leaves behind.

That is all.