For my CIP, I volunteered as an assistant English teacher at a school in scenic Ohara. On Mondays I took the subway to Kokusaikaikan Station, the northernmost stop on the Karasuma Line, and then rode a bus into the mountains where the school was located. The full trip was about one hour there and one hour back, relative to Doshisha.

My teacher recommended Ohara Gakuin as my CIP because of my previous teaching experience in both America and Japan. However, this was my first time in a school so small. From first through eighth grade, the total head count was just seventy students!

Every week I joined a different group of students – usually two per visit – and helped out with whatever exercises the teacher had planned for the day. My role, which I initially thought would be mostly demonstrating pronunciation, was more participatory than expected. We played games to strengthen vocabulary, and conducted mini interviews to practice grammar. Because of the small class sizes, it was easy to make sure that everyone got a chance to participate. Occasionally, instead of a lesson, the students would rehearse plays, or prepare for the various school festivals sprinkled through the fall semester. Even when returning to a familiar class, no two visits to Ohara Gakuin were the same.

It was fascinating to watch as the students intuited their own language skills over time. Even their mistakes showed instinctive pattern recognition: swapping out “took a bath” for “have a bath,” for example. They worked hard to make themselves understood in class, even if the exact rules or vocabulary for the situation escaped them. In every lesson, the teachers encouraged them to think creatively about the topic at hand, going beyond what was laid out in the textbook.

As an English teacher, I tried to use as little Japanese as possible, as was expected of me. Of course, in doing so, there is always a danger that the students will be too daunted to even respond, let alone retain new information. I also worried about playing into the stereotype of a foreigner who doesn’t speak a word of Japanese. In the end, I compromised by speaking only in English, but also making sure that they knew I was listening when they spoke Japanese. Nodding along and laughing at their jokes went a long way in showing that I understood. This, in turn, made them feel more comfortable when constructing their own English sentences, knowing they could switch back to their mother tongue at any time if they needed a quick break.

In every class, the students proved themselves to be unflappably confident and attentive, and I was fortunate enough to meet as many as possible during my time there. This CIP activity comes highly recommended for any KCJS student interested in education!

For my community involvement project I have been volunteering at the museum and archives at the Kyoto Institute of Technology. The museum specializes in different fields of design, and has a wide collection of antique posters, radios, art books, and more. The most recent exhibitions on display were about foreign advertisements related to food, and the Dadaist artist, May Ray, respectively.

The role that I play at the museum changes every week depending on what kind of tasks there are that need to be done. In my time there I have helped take photos to document antiques, set up and take down exhibitions, frame posters to go into new exhibitions, and enter data from old art books. Although it is probably the most tedious of my tasks, I find looking through the art books the most interesting. Some of the books were published as far back as the Meiji Period, so I have had the opportunity to learn something about old kanji that is generally not used anymore. For example, I never would have guessed that 学 used to be 學, 芸 used to be 藝, 十 can be 拾 in official documents, or that the number twenty (廿) has its own kanji!

Because I worked at a museum instead of joining a club or circle at Doshisha or Kyoto University, I didn’t have many opportunities to meet others my age through my CIP. However, I do feel that I am lucky to have had the opportunity to have a somewhat job-like experience in Japan, and although they may have not been college students, the people I met were great and taught me a lot.

Here is the museum’s website, if you are interested:

https://www.kit.ac.jp/en/research/museum-and-archives/

Over two semesters at KCJS, I have been training with a paper restoration team at the Ritsumeikan University Art Research Center (ARC). At ARC, I work mainly with damaged Japanese bound books dating to the Edo period. In most cases I encounter books containing full-page illustrations devoured by worms and beetles. Therefore, when beginning a new project, the severity of the damage is first evaluated and then, based on the amount of surface loss, a suitable treatment is decided on. The standard methods used to mend these areas of loss are known as infilling (tsukuroi) and back-lining (urauchi). Both methods serve different purposes, but are similar in the way that washi paper, sympathetic in thickness and tone of the damaged paper, is adhered with starch paste (nori) to treat the loss.

While incredibly valuable, the technical skills I have acquired only describe a single side of my experience at ARC. Twice a week, as I continue to practice my techniques, I also engage in a facet of the Japanese work community. As expected, this has led to quite a few interesting cultural and language exchanges. First of all, the restoration team consists of a total of three people, all middle-aged women. Everyone is on a different working schedule, so when I go to ARC I am usually working alongside Nakamura-san, the head of the restoration team.

When I first began training at ARC, the most challenging barrier I faced was communication. I was afraid to hold conversations and I struggled to understand the directions that I was being told, even when heavily aided by Google translate. This semester, however, it is undeniable that living in Kyoto has improved my ear for both standard Japanese and “Kansai-ben”, the local dialect, and has opened up new opportunities to be more interactive within ARC. For instance, being able to better communicate with the team has helped me understand in greater depth the reasoning behind a certain restoration principle. In result, I now take part in the evaluation process when beginning a new project. For students who may face a similar situation, my advice would be not to feel afraid to ask questions or start a conversation! In my case, the team became excited to teach me more when they saw, through the questions I was asking, my interest and curiosity in art restoration.

Sitting for long periods of time meticulously trimming washi paper and preparing starch paste in a large wooden vat becomes taxing on the shoulders and eyes, but I have discovered that I can refocus my attention through conversation. Oftentimes I become so accustomed to speaking casually in conversation that when it comes to expressing gratitude, I carelessly neglect social etiquette and forget to attach the formal “gozaimasu” to my informal “arigatou”. I am corrected instantly, and my honest mistake reinforces the importance of maintaining a formal student-teacher relationship when dealing with work-related matters. However, I was told that if “arigatou gozaimasu” is too long, I could always opt for the Kansai-equivalent, “ookini”. Apparently, if used towards a Kansai-native, “ookini” carries the same formal weight as “gozaimasu”. I have yet to try it out.

As the semester is reaching its end, I still feel that there is a lot I could improve in terms of restoration. At least once or twice per week, I make a careless mistake in my work, leading Nakamura-san to address me by “onesan”, which translates to “older sister”. Since I am the youngest of the group, I was initially confused as to why I was being called “onesan”. However, seeing that I am only called this when I overlook a mistake, perhaps it is an indirect message that I should to be more careful next time. Nevertheless, I feel respected in my position, and while I rarely receive any direct compliments from Nakamura-san, I can sense through her patience that she is silently supporting me in both my language and restoration endeavors.

With that said, I would like to thank KCJS for giving students the opportunity to step out into the Kyoto community through CIP, as well as ARC for taking care of me throughout this year. This experience is one I will continue to carry with me as I continue my studies in Japanese and art restoration.

Ookini!

For my CIP project, I decided to volunteer at a children’s daycare. Once a week I would go to the daycare and play with the children for a couple of hours. An interesting point to note is that when I was initially asking to volunteer at the daycare, the staff personnel also requested bank account information. This is because in Japan it is not unusual for volunteers to receive「お礼」money, which I could never imagine receiving in the United States.

As someone with an introverted personality, I initially found it difficult to interact with the children at first, but like with any child they were interested in learning about their new 「先生」and after learning I was from America would often request me to say things in English, which were often met with laughter or additional requests. Another difficult point was that understanding the children. Compared to the staff personnel, the children had a high tendency to speak in Kansai dialect. While I was able to quickly pick up the word meanings, the children also tended to speak faster than the adults, and to someone whose listening skills are not their strongest point to begin with, understanding the children could sometimes be hard. However, since the children also tended to speak in short sentences and simple vocabulary it was not impossible to talk with them.

Additionally, the more time passed the more friendly the children became with me. It was interesting to see the subtle differences between Japanese and American culture at the daycare; things like how fast they become friendly toward others and the children’s increased willingness to listen to adults and others. But it was also heartening to see that regardless of culture, children are still rambunctious, outgoing, and at times more forward than their adult counterparts. I am also grateful to my fellow volunteers and the staff personnel for helping me out and taking care of me during my time at the daycare.