Saying Sayonara

I find that sayonaras are difficult in Japan, and I’m not talking about the etiquette of bowing or the tongue-twisting nature of polite Japanese. The sayonaras I have seen have always been rather formal, especially ceremonies like graduation where even the tears appear to be on cue. Formalizing the sayonara process has its benefits: there’s no room for gaffes or awkward displays of affection and such a ceremony can be impromptu if needed because everyone knows how it should go.

Such an impromptu ceremony was held for a part-time teacher who left shortly after winter break. She had been at my junior high school for two years, filling in for a teacher who was taking care of her dying father. The father passed away and the day after the funeral the part-time teacher was out, farewell ceremony and all, and the next day the grieving daughter was back at work. The transition was seamless. And utterly jarring. It felt strange and even a little wrong that death can be so meticulously organized and seem so natural.

The third years need a PE teacher but it seemed of little matter who the PE teacher was from one day to the next. In itself this experience is noteworthy given its stark contrasts to similar transitions of personnel back home. But as a JET who’s not re-contracting, seeing this transition made my heart drop a little. In the hierarchy of teachers, I am the most forgettable, my role the most ornamental. How much less fanfare am I to expect in my transition out?

My time in Japan was been amazing and amazingly frustrating, invigorating and exhausting. Certainly impacting. And as my time draws quickly to an end I am a bit disturbed to think how little my leaving will be noticed. I have fostered relationships that are bound to last well after I say my last sayonara but just as many or more that surely will not.

For my own sanity I thought I’d compose a list of my sayonaras, things I will miss and ones I will not. Of moments great and small. I will create my own fanfare, damnit! But mostly because I know these last weeks will be rushed and it’s not just Japan’s fault that my good-byes may be incomplete.

So without further pontification, I say sayonara:

to the Docomo man who would not sell me a phone charger without calling my supervisor beforehand to make sure I knew what I was doing. I will NOT miss you.

to the Dalmatian next door whose constant barking I rarely notice these days and who has replaced his policy of growling with one of tail-wagging. I will miss you.

to school lunch, with your fish heads, unidentifiable vegetables and obscene proportions. I will NOT miss you (though I will miss curry and pumpkin doughnut days).

to playing cricket in winter on the bank of a river. I will miss you, Australia Day Cricket!

to the Kyoto-Sensei at my junior high school who cleans the staffroom with me and laughs with his shoulders. I will miss you.

to face masks during cold/flu season. I will NOT miss you. You are ridiculous.

to speaking tests when students exhibit moon-walking skills, tell Japanese folk tales in English, and ask about my love life. I will miss you and the opportunity you always provide for laughter.

to simultaneous road construction on all the roads leading to my house. I will NOT miss you.

to maps from road construction crews delivered to all the mailboxes in the neighborhood, displaying alternate routes and asking for our patience during construction. I will miss you.

to extremely helpful and enthusiastic sales people. I will miss you!

to the teeth-sucking textbook salesman that visits school three or four times a month. I will NOT miss you. You seem good at your job but, for the love, you are obnoxious!

to my granny bicycle with its glorious front basket and cheery bell. I will miss you.

to riding to and from school in pouring rain. I will NOT miss you and your day-ruining properties.

to my kotatsu. I will miss you more than words can say.

to my unheated shower room in the winter. I will NOT miss you.

to the yakitori stand couple who ask me about my country and always remember I prefer salt to sauce. I will miss you and your husky irrashaimase.

to Mt. Misen in Miyajima. I will NOT miss your fiasco-causing capabilities.

to Mt. Misen in Miyajima. I will miss your monkeys and the view from the ropeway.

to Kobe, with your Chinatown and Harborland attractions and glorious night view from Mt. Rokko and general grooviness. You rock and I will miss you.

to the rugby, soccer, and baseball fans I’ve seen at games. I will miss your impressively coordinated and dedicated cheering sections.

to crutching around a school without ramps let alone elevators. I will NOT miss you.

to Sanfrecce Hiroshima FC. You changed my mind about soccer. I will miss you.

to being packed like sardines on the second-to-last train home. I will NOT miss you.

to the amazingly efficient and user-friendly public transportation. In two years, I can recall only three times that my train was so late that it was inconvenient. I will miss you!

to the Shinkansen. I will miss you!

to paying 6 sen ($60) for a Shinkansen ticket from Osaka and standing the whole way back. I will NOT miss you.

to getting a hearty “Good morning!” from the PE teacher who’s English skills more or less start and end with that greeting. I will miss you.

to delicious restaurants and friendly staff: Manao (Thai) in Hiroshima and Pizza King in Wake. Oh how I will miss you!

to vacations to Arima Onsen, Kyoto and Nara, Nagasaki, and the Philippines. I will miss you.

to the confusion and awkwardness of taking leave to go on vacation. I will NOT miss you at all.

to Henry, the mangy stray that lives in the stairwell of Stephen’s place that we give food to. I will miss you. Take care of yourself old girl!

to my drafty and impossible to heat/cool house that is prone to dust bunnies the size of my head. I will NOT miss you.

to the first place that lived in by myself; you’ve kept me safe as I cried and never complained when I cursed you and you’ve kept me alert by having lots of creaks in the night and you’ve kept me busy by not cleaning yourself up and you’ve been great to my company since you’re so roomy. I may actually miss you in the end.

to Okamoto Sensei who is the perfect teacher, encouraging participation and excitement by her own insatiable enthusiasm. I will miss you.

to another Sensei who told me my hair isn’t blonde because blonde hair is more brilliant than mine and who looks disapprovingly at me anytime I don’t finish my lunch. I can’t express how much I will NOT miss you, at all. I may throw a party.

to the students that break teachers’ fingers and noses and classroom windows and the ones that say mean things to me in Japanese that they think I can’t understand and the ones that deliberately move far away from me when I am seated next to them at lunch. I will not miss you, mostly because I wish I could have done more to reach you.

to the students that smile brightly as they greet me in the morning and the ones who tell sex jokes and the ones who draw me pictures and the ones who tell me they miss me and the ones that dare to ask questions and the ones that talk to me outside of class. I will miss you!

SANYONARA!

All the things I will miss I might forget and the things I will not miss I may remember forever. Either way, how wonderful and sugoi (great/terrible depending on context) it is to have lived and taught in Oku, Okayama for two years.

Fish Heads Aren't Even the Worst of It!

I have a piece of paper with 500 written on it stuck to my fridge. It reminds me of this unbelievable statistic: the average American consumes the same quantity of food as do 500 Ethiopians. It's not meant as a guilt-laden diet plan; “make yourself so depressed about the state of the world and you won't want to eat!” Rather, it is a reminder of a principle that has long since vanished from our doorsteps in the West: moderation. Our society encourages thoughtless consumption, from Hummers that end up in the driveways of cookie-cutter homes in the suburbs to pasta dishes for children that contain more saturated fat that an adult should consume in four days. If someone is selling it, we think it must be a good idea to buy it.

With this cultural heritage, I was thrilled to be making my way to Japan in 2008. Known as a society heavily influenced by it's religious and artistic aestheticism, Japan could be the poster-child of “less is more” and “quality not quantity.” What I couldn't anticipate was the wreckage that the principle of motainai wreaks on school lunch at my junior high school.

Motainai is kinda like “waste not, want not.” In a conversation you'd use it to explain why you'd saved the scraps of fabric from a sewing project just as much as you could use it to explain why you stayed up late watching the Olympics. Applied to school lunch, this principle forsakes wisdom and pushes the boundaries of sanity.

Our school lunch company is, from what I can tell, incapable of counting or reading a calendar of events. If half the teachers will be away for a sports conference the company does not give us less food; we simply eat twice as much. Why? Motainai. The lunch company also keeps track of the food we didn't eat and sends my school a report card.

Class competitions are held to see what class leaves the least amount of milk bottles behind. Variables like chronically absent students and those with allergies are not taken into account. Allergies in general are not considered by the company; there was a student at my school last year who is allergic to seafood, all seafood. Almost everyday we eat fish, especially in the summer, and he simply went without. No meat replacement was ever offered.

So I was not surprised, really, when after informing one of my teachers that I didn't eat today's soup because I'm allergic to clams, she said “Motainai.” Not a command, necessarily, but certainly a sentiment that expressed as much or more disappointment in me having an allergy than in the school lunch company for not providing me an alternative.

Any principle, even moderation, observed entirely for it's own sake loses all meaning. Motainai is a good idea when it encourages students to try foods they don't like or aren't familiar with. And it's a good idea when it encourages us to soak in every last moment of an event. And it's a good idea when it makes us appreciate the labor that's gone into our food manufacturing, making us thoughtful in our consumption. But at junior high schools all across Japan motainai has gone terribly wrong.

I have become an expert at force-feeding myself and ignoring my gag reflex all to satisfy a principle that is, in the meantime, rendered meaningless.

Kumquat. What, What!

This is a kumquat. It's in a tea cup. It's cute.

And it's a for real fruit! Five days ago the only thing I knew about "kumquat" is that it's a funny word to call someone. That's all. If I had to take a multiple choice test and the question was "What is a kumquat" I might have gotten it right, depending on the other choices.

I probably would have picked "fairy tale villain" and "1970s anime character" over "a fruit" but other than that I think I would have come out on top. But if it was a fill in the blank test I would have been at a loss. And I never would have guessed a kumquat looks exactly like an orange for dolls. Who would think a fruit with such a sweet, sweet name would be such a poser in the looks department?

For lunch there is occasionally dessert and sometimes that dessert is fresh fruit. Fresh fruit days are always good days. When I looked down at my lunch tray and saw two mini oranges all I could say was kawaii (cute). The office lady informed me that it's called kinkan. Awesome. No idea what it was but at least I knew it's name.

As I watched the students eat their kinkan I gleaned nothing further about my mystery fruit. Most students looked like they were just eating the peel. Weird. A couple were peeling their kinkan only to be laughed at by the other students. A kid next to me was eating the whole thing, making a terrible face. The other students were laughing at him and shouting oishii?! ("is it good?!") As I do with anything in a wrapper (the fresh fruit comes packaged to guarantee freshness) I took the tiny oranges back to my desk. I'd give it a try when I got home.

The teacher in the desk next to mine happens to be one of the English teachers and was eating her kinkan. She saw mine on my desk and pointed it out, asking if I could eat kinkan. Well, I said, I don't know. I've never eaten one before. At this Andou Sensei got out her Japanese-English electronic dictionary and I was introduced to the fruit kumquat! I couldn't hold in the laughter. Kumquat. A tiny orange. Just great.

Apparently kumquats are very good for you, especially the peel. The fruit, however, is a very bitter-sour taste, akin to grapefruit on steroids I would say. The peel is even less thick than a clementine peel and tastes just like the fruit of an orange. I was told that Japanese people eat kumquats as a snack and also use the peel in homeopathic medicine.

After trying my first ever kumquat I heard a bunch of laughter and exclamations of nihonjin janai (not a Japanese person). Apparently the head teacher of the second year students had never eaten a kumquat before and, like a a couple of the students I ate with, tried to peel it and eat the insides. His response to their exclamation was to question the logic of a fruit of which you eat only the peel, his closing argument being that "Japanese people are strange."

Kumquat. Best lunch ever.

Being Taught about Learning

Despite my wealth of resources to learn Japanese (dictionaries in book form and on my DS, flashcards in the shape of a friendly lion, textbooks and cute notebooks bought at the 100 yen shop) most days I find myself in short supply of motivation to study. And though I'd like to use the excuse that I am too tired from my busy days at school that's not the deciding factor in my scholastic apathy. Or I could say that Japanese is difficult, I can't learn it. But difficult is not impossible. But besides, after I go back home it's not like I'll need to know Japanese, right?

Now let's move out of my living room (where I am busy arranging my study materials for a photo shoot instead of...well...studying) and into my classrooms. The third year students (8th graders) are by far the least enthusiastic though they know the most English. Half the time if I say "Hello" to them as we're eating lunch together they'll look at me as if I just said "Jxvryklg" and then mutter something like "muri" (meaning "impossible").

The first year students (6th graders) are almost the polar opposite. Though no one really likes to have crazy foreigners interrupt their lunch periods the these kids are great sports. I get a chorus of "Hellos!" upon entering their classroom where they're eating. Even the terribly shy ones try to ask me about what I like or don't like on my plate. (Today I learned that "kinoko" is "mushroom" because one of the students hates them. I feel her pain). Besides saying that "It's sunny/cloudy/rainy today," likes and dislikes are pretty much all the first year students can say and yet they are the most eager to talk to me. By the end of this year they will have an exhaustive list of what I really feel about school lunch. And the third years will memorize all the scratches and stains on their shoes/desks since they spend most of their lunch looking down, trying to avoid eye contact and the horrible possibility of saying "Hello" to me.

The third year students' attitude depressed me a little. They know so much yet are using so little of it. I understand if they are shy (I was a very shy student) and if they'd rather just keep to themselves (I felt the same way for much of my education). I don't expect them all to be outgoing or talk to me every second because I wouldn't have done that as a student but it would be nice to see a little more effort on their part. Obviously there are exceptions to this general rule of apathy but by in large the third year students either feel like they are too busy to bother studying, that English is too hard to learn, or that they won't need to know English once they're done with school so what's the point.

And all of a sudden it came to me: in relation to learning Japanese I am just like my third year students. The first year I studied Japanese in college my roommate and I hosted a Japanese exchange students for two weeks. Before her arrival my Japanese professor helped us think of things we could say to the exchange student in Japanese. And as we went through helpful expressions like "from what time to what time will you be gone" or "do you like hamburgers." I got so excited as I realized that I could actually communicate with her in Japanese. For the next three years I studied Japanese and my roommate and I hosted exchange students. I spoke Japanese the most to the first student. The last one we hosted I spoke no Japanese to. As I continued learning Japanese, my focus turned from what I could say to all I couldn't say and the more I learned the more I realized how little I knew. All it takes is a couple pompous people making fun of your pronunciation and then it's game over. I didn't need it for daily life so I studied, spoke in class, and then promptly forgot anything Japanese until next class.

And it's the same now. I think to myself, Sure I can say "What time is the meeting" but what's the big deal, 5-year-olds know how to say that so why even try and besides, I'll probably pronounce it wrong. I can try to learn 5 kanji characters a week but I'll never be able to read an office memo so is it even worth it? And so for the first couple weeks that I was here I just gave up. I didn't open my textbook, I didn't speak to anyone in Japanese.

However, once I realized I was getting frustrated at the students for acting just like I was I decided it was probably time to be more mature than a 14 year old. Also, little friendships have made me reconsider my position on not bothering with speaking Japanese.

One of the teachers who sits next to me in the staffroom can speak only a little English but is very intent on asking me how I am and how I liked the lunch on any given day. From him I'm secretly learning the words for all the stuff I really don't like. During lunch last week one of the third year boys said "Sensei, shaberu!" ("Teacher, let's chat!") When I said I didn't know what "shaberu" meant he asked me to "please study Japanese." I followed quickly by asking him to please study English and the students within earshot all laughed.

I am here to teach English. But I'm finding it more and more difficult to excuse my lack of effort in studying Japanese if I expect the students to work hard at their English studies.

And if we both try a little harder, one day soon we'll "shaberu" during lunch, giving me a convenient excuse to leave half of my fish and unidentifiable vegetables untouched.

An Insider's Guide to Surviving School Lunch or Tales from the Fishfront or Thank God for Mushrooms

I like shellfish (Unfortunately, I am allergic as the photo clearly illustrates).

I do not like fish.

I believe this distaste is due to two major factors: fish rarely was a part of meals as I was growing up and more importantly I spent the better part of my first 10 years of life washing tuna fish salad-smeared dishes. That's enough to turn anyone off to fish.

Now, however, I live on a island. Though I have yet to wash any dishes reeking of fish I have spent an entire week at school eating fish for lunch.

In my school there is no cafeteria, the students eat in their home rooms with their teacher. Teachers that do not have a homeroom eat in the staffroom. The lunch supplies are delivered each day and everyone dons aprons and hair nets, setting up lunch. Junior high school students are trusted--everyday of every year--with setting up one another's lunch. Though the meals are portioned well, the students are a bit on the slow side. The teachers get lunch served and we're all eating with about 25 minutes until the next period. The students usually only have about 10-15 minutes.

Despite this, I have opted to eat with the students. Why? For one, I want to discover their secret for consuming 500 calories in rice in under 10 minutes. This also provides me an opportunity to learn 6 names of the nearly 500 I'm expected to learn. And while force feeding myself fish will never be ideal, I have found ways to survive school lunch in all it's fishy glory.

My first two school lunches were also fish-free (a nasty trick to play I would like to note!) which made me feel that all my worrying was for nothing. "What's the big deal," I said to myself on the third day of school lunch and then I smelled it. The odor was unmistakable. It was the odor of the shore of Lake Michigan when hundreds of fish get stranded on the sand, dying a slow and smelly death in the summer sun. And there I sat, with my plate of smelly fish, facing 6 junior high school students who though terribly shy were equally curious about a foreigner who eats Japanese food. (My predecessor did not eat Japanese food and always brought his lunch from home). I had an idea about how to handle this situation, and though it was untested I had a good feeling about it based on the mechanics behind drinking a shot of hard liquor.

Milk. Milk is my saving grace in school lunch. My routine is as follows: take a bite or two of the mystery soup which usually contains 90% mushrooms, 5% tofu/seaweed, and 5% broth; move onto the bowl of rice, taking several hearty bites in order to keep up with the 12-year-olds; and then go into the fish routine: take a tiny bite, chew once and then take a sip of milk, swallowing the bite of fish without ever tasting a thing. I have just enough milk to finish about 3/4 of the fish. I began to think of myself as a real champ about school lunch.

The other day, though, I they threw a monkey-wrench into my fish routine. They put tiny fish in my rice. That day I could only eat half my rice and half my fish because my bottle of milk had to be split between two offensive dishes instead of just the one.

Also, my mind can render the powers of milk useless.

Example 1: on a seemingly ordinary Tuesday I was in for a great surprise in the form of two fish, eye balls and gaping mouths intact, for lunch. Already I knew the head was out. There was just no way I would be able to eat eyeballs without gagging. And the tail was out too. Imaging the feeling of the charbroiled tail poking the roof of my mouth made me queasy. But I was going to do it, I was going to eat at least one of fishes' bodies. Just one fish, I told myself as I took the first bite of the worst thing I have ever put into my mouth. (Things I have put into my mouth that were not as gross as that bite of fish: play-dough, dirt, sand, grass and ear wax.) Then I made the fatal error that would end my career as a "real champ" of school lunch. I looked into the fish body, at what I was eating. I was eating a pregnant fish, with eggs in it's belly. Eyeball fish: 1 Me: 0.

Example 2: I never ask what I'm eating for school lunch, never. It will only give my mind something to fix on and then I will not be able to take another bite, no matter how tiny. But yesterday I asked. I had to. I just took a bite of something white-ish in color and shellfishy in texture. During an unfortunate episode a couple weeks ago I discovered my allergy to shellfish (see above photo of puffy lip). Scared that what I had just put into my mouth could give my puffy lip #2 I asked the teacher what I was eating. It hadn't tasted bad and I was happy, thinking I would be able to eat it all. Then the teacher said: squid, fried in egg. And I was down for the count. I managed two bites after hearing the dreadful news and then silently admitted defeat to the squid/egg combo. Simply, it was too weird to eat.

Two months ago, back in the States, I would not have touched a dish with mushrooms in it. On squid day, I gleefully discovered that my soup was swarming with little mushrooms, perfectly identifiable as mushrooms.

Mmm. Thank God for mushrooms.