私は京都の上京中学校で英語アシスタントをしています.上京中学校は同志社大学の近くの公立校です。初めてＣＩＰで上京中学校へ行ったのは一月二十三日でした。前口先生が私を上京中学校へ連れて行ってくださいました。中学校では、英語の先生と副校長と話をしました。それ以来、週に一度そこに行っています。英語の授業では、生徒の前でモデルとして英語のテキストや、単語リストを読みます。そして、生徒の質問に答えたり、勉強のゲームをしたり、生徒とインタビューの練習をしたりします。
中学校でボランティアすることは実りあることだと思います。生徒の英語の興味を深めつつ、日本人と交流できます。そして、日本の教育や社会について学んでいます。
So…My CIP. As a quick summary, I have koto lessons once a week with Gabri in Yamashina since we both live relatively close to each other. Thankfully, Gabri’s host mom is friends with Imoto Sensei, our teacher, so that made planning a bit easier.
After my initial participation in my CIP, which consisted of two lessons and a rather informal concert in the space of one week, the pace of koto lessons has certainly slowed down. The next planned concert isn’t until sometime in February, yet Imoto Sensei has already chosen a song for us to play by then. I’m not sure if that means that we are only going to be practicing this one piece for the next few months, or if we play this one until it is as good as it is going to get and we get additional songs. I’m hoping it is the latter, or else I will not be very amused by the time February rolls around.
As for the actual lessons themselves, they are so-so. First of all, I have no memory for Japanese formalities, so I am always at a loss for whatever phrases are expected out of my mouth at the beginning and end of every practice. Perhaps I will remember one day, or I should just improvise whatever I think sounds appropriate. Continuing on, Sensei reminds me very strongly of my childhood piano teacher, and I have a feeling it’s because I feel like I’m being treated like a child when I make a mistake or can’t understand exact details of whatever she says. (Oh, the fate of every person who can’t speak the local language.) I likewise respond by acting like the child I’m being treated as by being as uncooperative as possible. Really, there is just something about Japan that brings out my worst character traits. Anyhow, I am again grateful that Gabri is there to handle the situation with her superior Japanese language skills and social grace while I seethe in the background until I start feeling magnanimous again.
Nevertheless, Imoto Sensei is certainly a character. Because I didn’t bother learning how to ride a bike until coming to Japan, I was practicing my biking one day and I happened to be in her neighborhood since she lives about five minutes away from my house and I was familiar with that area. She must have seen me almost run into a neighbor of hers on my bike as I was turning the corner of her house, since the next thing I knew, she was making me do laps around the neighborhood and critiquing me on how good my left turns and right turns were. She also invited me to accompany her and her husband to a Buddhist ceremony at a shrine on a holiday instead of having koto lessons, so that was nice. Overall, Imoto Sensei is probably a rather generous person who very much means well, but can’t help trying to correct mistakes or weaknesses.
As for the involvement part of the CIP, I do feel like I am literally more a part of the community. I get greeted on the street by the Ojiisans and Obaasans that saw me at the mini-concert at the temple and having Sensei so close makes my world seem a little smaller.
For my CIP, I volunteered at Bazaar Cafe, about a three-minute walk from Doshisha Imadegawa campus, on Thursdays, Fridays, and on a couple special occasions. By volunteering at Bazaar Cafe, I was able to glean some interesting insights into Japanese society, culture, and communication.
One of the most obvious things that sets Bazaar Cafe apart from other cafes is the fact that it is staffed primarily by minorities and volunteers. My co-workers were immigrants, sexual minorities, recovering and former alcoholics, and people with developmental disorders, all of whom Bazaar Cafe offered a community space and a chance to work for a salary. Talking to these people made more concrete the discrimination they face, their hardships in finding work, and, for some, the need to conquer cultural and language barriers. Having said that, their work at Bazaar Cafe illustrates that various kinds of minorities can be productive workers, support one another, and form strong ties with the local community. For example, through one of the Filipina volunteers at Bazaar, I was introduced to the larger Filipino community in Kyoto, whose meetings and events I have attended almost every week.
With respect to communication in the context of volunteering/working at a cafe, I found that Japan is actually quite similar to the United States. For instance, it is considered common sense and courtesy in both cultures to say “excuse me” when going around someone, or “sorry” when you have bumped into your co-worker. Further, I got free food for lunch during volunteering (as did the others), and I usually waited to be offered food instead of asking for it directly. Basically, in terms of interacting with other people, I think I acted the same way at Bazaar Cafe that I would have in a similar establishment in America. One notable difference I did notice, though, was that the native Japanese have a greater sense of status and age. While the other foreigners with whom I worked never deliberately varied their levels of politeness, the Japanese workers and volunteers used different language when talking to me, as opposed to our supervisor. Working with foreigners allowed me to compare the language patterns of native and non-native Japanese speakers.
All in all, working in a cafe allowed me to have real conversations with real people in the real world. And though CIP was sometimes an added stress at the end of the school week, I definitely appreciated this opportunity!
“I am most definitely not a comic artist.”
If you’d rather see an entertaining Youtube video like to read my first post regarding this CIP (in Japanese), please gently click here at your leisure.
For those of you not in the know, finding this CIP became series of trial and terrible, spirit-crippling errors. For a country well-known for its specialty in comics and animation, an affordable, accessible, and personally appealing manga classroom proves to be especially difficult to stumble upon. My first insight: two out of three really isn’t that bad.
Lucky for me, after wading through the train lines to Osaka and the despair of reading and writing far too many e-mails riddled with keigo, I managed to find myself at the Nijo Art School, a small and warm classroom taught at a teacher’s home where students of all ages are pretty much free to pursue their own area of interest, ranging from oil painting to sculpture to comics.
I’m a slow learner, but I did eventually come to some realizations about classroom culture.
First, Japanese workshops and classrooms take their jobs very seriously. At every school I interviewed, the instructors were not only intent on finding out exactly what you want to study and practice (even going so far as to ask you which manga artist you want to draw like!), but they were also concerned with whether or not you aim to take the class in order to prepare for your application to a full-fledged art academy. These classrooms are more than that private tutor you had for the piano back in elementary school. There is no such thing as a casual class you take for fun, just to learn – even the smallest of classrooms is all about getting you to past that test for that art academy, first and foremost. If I’ve learned anything from this experience, it’s that Japanese culture seems to be very focused on the end goal – it is always up, up, and onwards. While that sort of diligence and intensity is impressive, I did at times find it very wearisome to be unable to find a manga class that was not geared towards a final exam, and the atmosphere can initially be very intimidating when you want a more relaxed experience.
Secondly, I discovered a surprising dynamic to the student-teacher relationship. This may be a solely personal experience, but when I encountered problems with my CIP (wherein I was suddenly spending too much time working on realism rather than the comics focus I wanted), my Japanese teacher was very adamant that I had a right to question my art teacher and request that I get back on track. While in America I definitely had a friendly rampart with all of my teachers, I never dreamed of challenging their directions – if Mr. Huggett said that we were going to draw spheres from different angles for three weeks straight, then by golly, I would suck it up and slave over those spheres, quietly muttering under my breath and occasionally grinding the B6 pencil into the paper to express the blackest depths of my discontent. I’d assumed that it’d be the same for the Japanese student-teacher relationship, wherein you do not question your educator’s methods. Yet it seems that if those methods interfere with the straightest line to the end goal, especially if you’re paying ￥17,000 a month to go once a week for only three hours, you have every right to ask to get back to business. Unfortunately I still have reservations about requesting such a thing of my teacher, so I’ve spent a lot of time drawing redundant things rather than learning how to make comics, but it was interesting to find out that I do, indeed, have that communication option, whether or not I have the pluck to use it.
Finally, I’ve learned that everyone gets their time. My teacher always managed to pinpoint the faults in my drawing, and subsequently always managed to explain how I was to fix them, either through gestures, tone, drawing by example, or a combination thereof. He didn’t let me get away with anything, and had no issues with focusing squarely on a single student for twenty minutes, or running over time rather than rushing his critiques. Although Japan has been criticized by Americans for its strict educational system, the fact is that they are far more serious and effective about helping individual students reach their full potential than they are given credit for. Although Japanese culture may be more about the group than the individual, another underlying philosophy is that the stronger an individual is, the stronger the group itself becomes.
The title is a mouthful, I know, but here are a few musings.
When I first walked into the center’s office, there was a major problem. Whenever I write, no matter the language, I tend to perfect my language so that I say what I want to say with the necessary eloquence. In English, it works out ok, because I can speak the language, but the problem I had was that the director of the activity center had a preconception that I was more skilled at Japanese than I actually was, which made it slightly awkward when talking about what I would be doing and what the center does. But we managed, somehow, to come to an agreement that I would come once a week on Wednesdays.
My first day, I was scared, to be honest. The staff had put the fear that I wouldn’t be able to understand anything into me, but it actually turned out well. We had talked about Zainichi Koreans in class a little bit, so I understood their background, but it was just nice to listen for a change. In class, it’s stressful for someone like me who is normally taciturn to always be speaking. I generally prefer to listen and to act than to speak, because I never was very good at gathering my thoughts in English even. And I really like going, because it’s nice to hear stories about their lives, especially since they would be much different than the average person in Japan. Sometimes they mix in Korean, and then I’m lost, but it’s a curious situation, because I’d really like to learn at least how to read hangul. I generally help out and clean after they leave for the day, and I’ve enjoyed the experience greatly. I’d like to continue going next semester, even if it isn’t for my CIP.
As a CIP, it’s not very exciting if you look at the logs. When you do the same things over and over, most people wouldn’t like it. But it’s fun to connect to a past generation with whom I share almost nothing besides the fact we breathe. You learn things you wouldn’t otherwise, because the weight of experiences and memories shape each person differently. In some ways, I’m following down an analogous path; even though I was born in the US, I’ve never quite felt right at home, even if I speak the language well and interact in society. If I opened my mouth half the time to my peers to say what I wanted to say, rather than what should be said, I’d imagine people would be maybe a bit surprised, such are the differences I hold. But I’ve rambled for a bit, so I’ll finish with this: In such a place, home is where the heart is. Times change, places change, people change, so in such a world, those closest to you are the walls which support you.
Although I started my CIP thinking I would be teaching English, I must admit very little English-teaching has actually been happening. Instead, I am more of an active participant-observer in the early education process of children in Japan. Back in the United States, I had also been very involved with educational- volunteer activities as well, so being able to compare US style early education with Japanese style early education has nonetheless been an enlightening experience.
From observing these two different settings, I’ve come to some preliminary conclusions about the educational styles and societal differences between Japan and the United States. For one thing, US schools appear to adhere to a much more rigid schedule. Lunch begins and ends at a certain time, even if a child is not finished eating. In Japan, every child must finish eating every grain of rice, therefore, lunch only concludes once every individual has finished. From this observation, it also appears that Japanese early education also emphasizes a much more balanced diet where food is more highly valued; children must say grace before and after a meal, and must finish eating every grain of rice. These two actions are not seen in my US observation at all.
I also noticed a lot of differences in regards to scolding styles in both countries. For example, Japanese children seemed to be punished a lot more for failing to follow proper etiquette – such as incorrectly setting their dishes. One time I also say a child being punished for dropping a plate – something I would only call an accident. However, in the US observation, children were being punished more so for inappropriate behavior – such as speaking too loud, leaving their seats, or not standing still in line. Honestly, I have yet to observe an incident of un-orderly conduct in the Japanese pre-school, which I find very surprising.
Something in common between the two schools though, was the fact they both appeared to be teaching children the value of individual responsibility from a very young age. For example, both American and Japanese children were expected to clean up their own trash after finishing their meals – whether it be throwing away the leftovers or putting their plates away in their appropriate locations. It was only after successfully completing this task that both children were rewarded with recess activities.
However, these observations might not be an entirely accurate reflection of differences in educational styles because of the inconsistency in outside factors. For example, the US observation took place at a public elementary school in a relatively poor area; the Japanese observation took place at a private pre-school in a relatively affluent neighborhood. A better analysis would be to observe more US and Japanese educational settings to flesh out a more accurate comparison.
Kids Will be Kids
When I first entered the doors of Doshisha’s kindergarten I didn’t know what to expect. How were the children going to react to me? Will they be any different from the children in America? Turns out children are equally energetic and wound up any where in the world. Everywhere I looked they were screaming, clawing at each other, jumping off the slide, hanging upside-down from monkey bars. To be honest, I was a little terrified.
Then I heard the first “Hello!” Many other small voices hesitantly followed, tiptoeing towards me as to get a closer look. My reply resulted in an explosion of giggles from the investigative party. I can certainly say spending time with these children allowed me to see a unique facet of Japanese life.
Most of the time I felt the kindergarten wasn’t much different than that in the United States, there was one apparent difference. When children got frustrated, or angry, sometimes just a little too energetic I often saw them hit (or even tackle) their teachers. Thankfully, because I am a foreigner I was granted a “barrier” from the children’s physical attacks. But the teachers I encountered weren’t as lucky; I witnessed countless numbers of secret ambushes. The teachers seemed more like “human piñatas” than “figures of authority.”
As an American, I found this shocking. I’d grown up with the idea that a “good parent” or a “good teacher” was someone who set strict boundaries and, when those were crossed, consequences. I’d assumed that these standards were the same no matter where you were in the world. But after volunteering at the kindergarten I realized rules aren’t considered nearly as important as fostering the development of a mutual child/teacher friendship. To me, this seemed more effective than the strict rules placed in American schools. All in all, it was an eye-opening experience that allowed to me to experience teaching English and, in turn, gave me new insight into Japanese culture.
Looking back, I remember deciding when I submitted my application last year that if I had the chance to come to Japan, I wanted to learn kyudou (Japanese archery). I would like to say that actually being here and being actively involved in a kyudou group is different from what I expected, but the truth is I never really had any expectations. It was just my community project, after all. However, kyudou has in many ways defined my experience here in Japan.
Perhaps most importantly, kyudou club was one of the few places in Japan where I felt like I really belonged. It is easy to feel like a gaijin (foreigner) in Japan, in part because one clearly looks different, but in greater part because, in my case, I understood only around half of what was said to me and closer to a tenth of the cultural concepts underlying Japanese life. In my kyudou club, though, before I was a foreigner, I was a student. If the rigorous traditions of the sport seemed alien to me, they were strange to the Japanese students as well. Moreover, the more I saw of those rigorous traditions the more I realized I was seeing an older framework on which the entire society appeared to be based. Having the uniform meant expressing a certain level of commitment, and by extension, truly entering the club. Once a part of the club, one’s education became the responsibility of all of its members, and so I was taught to bow properly, give greetings, excuse myself, and so forth. The deeper I delved into kyudou, the more life outside of the sport made sense.
The structure of the club itself also uniquely gave it a special place in my life. It consisted in large part of people older than me, middle aged or slightly older, with a few younger individuals who largely came in the evenings towards the end of my stay, and the sensei (teacher). Perhaps for this reason and since I inevitably knew no one’s name, I was mostly called ojō-san, meaning young lady. Foreigners looking in on Japanese society tend to use the word “family” to describe the various social organizations, and I would apply the same word here without hesitation. We were in many ways a family. When I first wore my kyudou uniform, most people came to congratulate me on the fact that it suited me well. Afterwards, they would occasionally fix me if I came in with my collar mussed or some tie misplaced, and took great glee in telling me to bicycle home without changing because “all the young women in the club do it that way.”
Moreover, their attitudes towards my quirks and successes were those of a family. The women tittered when I put on my knee boots beneath my hakama, and everyone together found their daily amusement in watching me drag five-minute conversations into thirty-minute ones due to a variety of comical misunderstandings. Everyone watched when I fired my first arrow at the outdoor targets, and everyone managed to somehow hold their laughter until I finished the entire ceremony after my arrow rebounded off of the roof nearly the entire 150 m back to the stage. Finding that I had a tendency to stuff my clothes into a paper bag at the end of the day, sensei found me a suitable cloth to bundle them into. Indeed, whenever I lack something, someone tends to show up with it in hand, and even now I worry that she will next show up with a pair of traditional sandals (I insist on wearing flip-flops).
I would like to conclude with some advice, perhaps, to anyone else who thinks they might be interested in kyudou; throw yourself in head first. I, being the oddball that I am, wore my uniform to school, and even added a kimono beneath it just for fun. I was embarrassed and nervous at first, but I was also proud. Learning Kyudou was never just about learning to hit a target with a bow and arrow; it was about the form, the mindset, and the people whom I stood beside as I released my arrows. I frequently stayed late to practice afterward when I could, since the stage cleared and the club quieted down as darkness fell. At that point I could relax before heading home for the night, and the sound of snapping arrow strings and nighttime insects will forever color my thoughts of the long winter evenings in Japan.
For reasons I’ve already explained, or rather complained about, in the previous blog post, I had a pretty late start to my CIP. I felt rather unmotivated by the time I first visited my CIP site because it had not been my own choice to participate at that particular place, but more of a last minute option given that half of the semester had already gone by without me having done anything other than writing polite emails and wandering around Doshisha campus hoping that a student sadoubu would welcome me. In any case, the CIP activity I am currently involved in is volunteering at a machiya called Kamigyo History House. After the very first week, I still had my doubts for I couldn’t exactly understand the purpose of the machiya. Of course, we had learned in our Japanese class that the city of Kyoto has implemented laws for the purpose of protecting and preserving the remaining machiyas, and consequently maintaining the status of Kyoto as the ultimate touristic spot in Japan. While it was obvious that the core purpose of this particular machiya was to provide information to tourists regarding the traditional way of life and architecture of an ordinary house from back in Heian period, its location made it hard to see the practicality behind investing resources and sacrificing possible profit by preserving the machiya. Sequestered from the busier part of the city by tall mansions and combinis, this machiya is quite difficult to find, especially for tourists. I myself got lost and walked around in circle for about half an hour within a couple of blocks of the machiya until a 日本人 volunteer came to my rescue. To my surprise, however, visits from Japanese tourists – some coming all the way from Tokyo – frequented whether it was their genuine interest in machiyas or the pouring rain that drove them to stop by. Moreover, the fact that it has not been commercialized like many other touristic spots in Kyoto meant that it was run entirely by the sponsorship from the private owner of the machiya and by the volunteers, who were usually old ladies incredibly knowledgeable about Kyoto, its history and its traditions. It has been interesting to observe how so many different players come together harmoniously for the sake of preserving a piece of the past. I have come to enjoy my time spent at the machiya, whether assisting other volunteers give information to tourists or helping the director with the various lectures and events, because I believe I have been able to witness one of the core values of Kyoto, and probably of Japan – appreciating the past and learning from it, rather than solely deeming it as old fashioned.
When I first attended one of Nagare Parkour’s training sessions, from the moment I stepped out of the station and saw everyone gathering in the park, I immediately felt like part of the group. Since the atmosphere was so much like that of my club back in Ann Arbor, I was able to feel at home. I think that friendly and open atmosphere kind of inherent in the attitude of traceurs (practitioners of parkour), as well as my attitude toward parkour. I attented a few jams, or large parkour gatherings. There were so many people that it was hard to memorize anyone’s name. At the second jam, one of the guys shared that sentiment and said something along the lines of, “isn’t it enough [for now] that we remembered each other’s faces?” That made all my nervousness about names vanish. The parkour world is full of some of the strangest and friendliest people in the world. I realized that’s no different here in Japan than anywhere else. Everyone attends to learn, to grow and to enjoy the atmosphere and each other’s company. I’m really glad that I was able to find a group, to continue practicing parkour with while I’m here in Japan.
Recently, I’ve mostly been training apart from the group with a friend that I made at the first jam. That relationship is probably the most equal of the friendships that I’ve made through the community involvement project (CIP). Even though I taught/ran the last couple training sessions we had, I’m learning just as much as I’m teaching. Being able to speak both English and Japanese, or the fact that each of us is learning the other’s language is a huge asset. It makes it a lot easier to share experiences, terminology, and ideas. We’ve even had the chance to chat via Skype a few times with another fellow traceur from Hokkaido.
As for the Kitanotenmangu Taiko Group, I feel like an honorary member. While that’s a good feeling, I think I could describe it as a very “for the time being” kind of feeling. They’ve been so kind to the three of us (I attend Taiko practices with two other KCJS students), so much to the point where I feel that sometimes they are over-accommodating. There are times where the leader will go out of his way to explain things in English without even trying to speak Japanese. There are some points that make it hard to feel like a true member though. The most difficult of those points is the fact that the group meetings are so infrequent that it’s hard to feel like we are really contributing or learning very much. I still have yet to learn everyone’s name. In addition, I actually haven’t learned very much about how to play Taiko, since the practices are for the most part run follow-the-leader style. All that being said, I’m looking forward to next semester. With every practice, we become a little bit more a part of the group. It’s not much, but every practice we help set and put away the drums, and I might go as far as to say that until this week, in that alone did I feel like an active member of the group.
This past weekend, Miao and I went to Kitanotenmangu to cheer on the group at one of their performances for the Fall Festival. We half-jokingly asked (in Japanese of course), “We’re not going to perform, right?” Well, to our surprise, they said, “Of course, we’re going to have you play the songs you memorized.” I think we were both half in despair and half laughing at the hilarity of the situation. Up until that point, we hadn’t even put the proper names together with the pieces which we had haphazardly memorized. I thought it was going to be a disaster. It turned out to be a great time and an experience that I will probably not find anywhere else (except in the next two performances in the coming weeks). They lent us all the performance gear, from happi to hachimaki and even took us up into the main part of the temple for the preperformance prayer. To have us perform the little that we knew somehow demonstrated just how much confidence in us and/or willingness to include us that the group had. And it felt good.
Overall, the CIP aspect of KCJS has been a very good experience so far. Ideally, the groups would meet more frequently, but as it is, I’m still gaining a lot and I think there is potential for me to give back much more in the coming semester.