My CIP this semester was the same as last semester’s, which is volunteering at Bazaar Cafe once a week. As I explained in my last blog post, the cafe functions more or less like a regular restaurant, but aims to help give work opportunities to people who may have a difficult time finding a job and generally to just be a welcoming space to people of all backgrounds. Similar to last semester, I go once a week usually to help out around the kitchen while the cafe is open to the public. And recently, one of the supervisors asked if me and another volunteer could help translate their menu along with some other miscellaneous restaurant related tasks. However, since the cafe is in the process of trying to become an official NPO/NGO, they are closed this month, while hosting and catering occasional private events during the week. Thankfully this means that I still have plenty of opportunities to help out each week.

What has been really great about my time here is since I’ve been volunteering since September, I’ve grown rather close with many of the workers, volunteers, and managers. Definitely more so than last semester, I’ve been looking forward to every volunteer opportunity each week and sometimes end up staying for as long as 4 hours (compared to my usual 2) simply because I enjoy everyone’s company. By spending time with everyone, I always have opportunities to speak and practice Japanese; not only that, everyone else is also very eager to help teach me new words or handy phrases, which I am always very appreciative of. In this regard, I could say I’ve been doing a lot of out-of-class learning and practice with the Japanese language, but I’ll be honest, I’m not sure if I can say I learned anything “new” this semester by continuing my time with them. Rather, I feel like I am building some very special bonds and friendships with an incredibly unique and welcoming community and to me, that is a lot more important. If I had to attribute how I achieved this sense of community to anything, I would say it came from consistently going every week and not only helping out on regular days, but also helping out and participating in their larger events, which I had the opportunity to do both last and this semester. I think that it showed them that I cared to even be a part of their community in the first place and so they welcomed me and other volunteers with open arms.

If you want to have a flexible CIP and have the opportunity to meet a lot of different kinds of people, volunteering at Bazaar is definitely a great place for that. And for anyone who does choose this as their CIP, do your best to committing to going every week; ask a lot of questions and keep an open mind. They are always very grateful for any help they receive and I personally have no regrets with choosing them. Knowing that I only have about a month left with them makes me really sad so I plan on doing as much as I can to help out before I go!

For my CIP, I volunteered at the Kyoto International Manga Museum once a week, alternating between reception/archive assistance. I loved manga when I was in middle school, so I thought, why not try to reignite that passion? Also I had always been wanting to experience working at a museum, therefore I chose this position.

This activity turned out to be way more formal than I thought it would be. I did not expect that I had to have an interview for this, and my name tag says “intern” instead of “volunteer.” I am expected to enter the office and greet everyone in a loud voice, saying “こんにちは。今からインターン入ります、よろしくお願いします！” “お先に失礼します。お疲れさまでした。” everytime I start working and leave, as if I were an employee of the museum. On the first day, my supervisor Watanabe-san told me this is basic etiquette and that she herself does that every day as well. As it was still early into the semester when I started volunteering, I felt like I embarrassed myself countless times by not suing the proper honorific speech towards the staff. The set phrases and almost ritualistic greetings were a little difficult to get used to, and I was slightly uncomfortable about how demanding they were towards their only volunteer. Yet thanks to this I’m able to get a taste of the Japanese workplace early on, and since the staff was generally really nice to me, I gradually got accustomed to the environment.

On my reception days I did translation, both verbal and written, to assist them during Chinese New Year when Chinese tourists flocked to Japan. Behind the reception counter I observed the hospitality and efficiency Japan prides in proximity. They are extremely observant; the receptionists would actively look for foreign tourists who need help, while handling a wide range of administrative tasks. Sometimes I even felt that they are excessively polite, even towards me. I translated a list of phrases into Chinese for the shop staff, and they thanked me repeatedly, even though I also replied “you’re welcome” repeatedly. Besides that, I got to have casual conversations with the receptionists during times that weren’t very busy, but I noticed that all of them tend to start conversations with small talks, and they would even repeat what they said. For example, they would start with “the rain is pretty bad recently, yeah?” and whenever there’s a pause in the conversations they would bring it up again and again: “rainy days make me feel sleepy” “I hope next week will be sunny”. . . Although the conversations would have been carried on fine without those fillers, I appreciate their effort in filling up the silence.

When I get to stay in the reading room and assist with book organization or preservation, I don’t really get the chance to converse with Japanese people. However one thing I learned from handling books in the reading room is that the Japanese really do research on everything ever. Since the reading room is mainly used for research purposes, the majority of the books there are research or theory publications on manga. I was astonished by how specific and obscure the topics can be, such as “on the evolution of the depiction of ballet in manga” or “reality as a fictitious narrative.” I returned during my free time to read some of these books.

Volunteering at the Kyoto International Manga Museum was in many ways rewarding. My duties went beyond my expectations, but I got the opportunity to explore Japanese culture not only through being in a Japanese workplace, but also through having casual conversations with the staff, and taking a glimpse into the massive collection of publications of the museum. Also, my time there did reignite my passion towards manga.

For my CIP this semester I worked as an assistant English teacher in a local elementary school. I chose this CIP because I wanted to know what is the nature of Japanese schools. Also, I grew up taking English as Second Language courses so I wanted to compare the English classes taught in Japanese schools to the classes I have had.

I go to this elementary school every Wednesday or Friday afternoon and rotate between four classes of the six grade. I was surprised to find out that each class has one teacher who teaches all the subjects. As a result, the progress and difficulty of the English classes are largely depended on different teachers. For example, one class is more advanced and is learning things outside of the textbook while another class sticks to the same page for two weeks just because they have different teachers. Another thing that strikes me is that even though it is an English class, most part of it is still conducted in Japanese. For instance, the listening comprehension has Japanese translation following right after the English part so the students would wait for the Japanese part and ignore the first English half. Also, students do not practice writing in English at all and they write answers in Japanese on the textbook. There are a lot of differences between the Japanese English classes and those that I took in Chinese elementary school. Japanese elementary school starts learning English in the fifth grade but we started learning basic English such as “A for apple” since the first grade. And the teachers are in charge of teaching one subject in about four classes and make sure that everyone are on the same page.

Japanese elementary students are a lot louder and in disordered than I expected. Japanese students talk among themselves during classes and the teachers will just look at them and wait for them to quiet down. When I am reading the listing comprehension materials out loud I have to raise my voice so that the students would pay attention to me. Sometimes the teachers will apologize to me after class for that. I discussed about this situation with my host family and they told me that if the teachers do anything aggressive in correcting students they would often get sued by parents and lost their job. I also learned that Japanese elementary students wear short pants even in winter. When I talked to Nakamura sensei in class she told me that there is this concept in Japanese that “子供は風の子,” or kids can still play around even in cold wind. However, in terms of language, the Japanese students are more polite. For example, after Japanese students finish cleaning classrooms and when they return their keys they say “〇年〇組の〇〇です。〇〇室のカギをお返しに来ました。”at the door of the teachers’ office. Another example is that when students finish answering a question they will ask the class “どうですか。” and the class will answer “いいです。”

Overall the students and teachers were very nice to me and it was a great experience to see how Japanese elementary schools actually are. And I was able to compare the English classes taught in Japanese schools to the classes I have had. The students sometimes come talk to me after class and after I dyed my hair they taught me the word “イメチェン” which means one changed one’s image. I learned more about Japanese culture and made friends with six-graders and I hope I can meet those students in the future.

Every Thursday afternoon I volunteer at Bazaar Cafe, a small local restaurant that’s barely a 5 minute walk away from Doshisha. From reading past students’ blog posts and the restaurant’s website, I figured this would be a good choice for a CIP since I have a lot of interest in community work and the restaurant’s goal is something that really speaks to me. The restaurant’s mission is essentially to provide a place for anyone and everyone to enjoy, regardless of age, nationality, sexuality etc. Not only that, but they also provide work opportunities for people who may otherwise have difficulty finding jobs due to a number of societal restrictions.

As a volunteer, I help wash dishes, prepare meals, and other kitchen related tasks that need to be taken care of. I would say that most weeks I go in knowing what’s expected of me and am able to carry out most tasks with ease. But every once in a while, people use the cafe as a spot to hold various kinds of meetings. What I think is really amazing about this is that the owners are incredibly open and encouraging of us learning more about their community, so often times they’ll invite me to sit in on some of the meetings that are happening. The first time this happened, there was a small group of former drug addicts who were working to help clean up and rework the garden in front of the cafe and I was able to listen to a little bit of their planning.

Going into this CIP, I thought I knew what to expect—I figured most of my coworkers would be kind and interesting, but at the end of the day, it’s a job and there’s an aspect of diligence involved. To some degree, I even expected to experience what I would have thought was typical Japanese “work culture.” But from the day that I inquired about volunteering until now, I’ve found that everyone is treated like family—the kindness and geniality that was shown to me from the beginning took me aback, but I am grateful to spend time with a community like this. I definitely wasn’t expecting to get to be a part of such an open-minded group of people during my time here in Japan, and that is in part due to my own misconceptions of Japanese society. Of course there are kind and accepting individuals in Japan, but I didn’t think I would discover a whole community this quickly.

For anyone who looking for something casual, but incredibly worthwhile, I would suggest volunteering here! You get to interact with such a wide range of individuals, there’s a lot of opportunity for conversation practice, and you get to eat good food.

I was very excited to volunteer at 保育園(Japanese nursery centers)once a week as I have dreamed a long time of having such opportunity to observe early childhood education in Japan. There are actually two types of care and education for infants and little children and 保育園(could also be called daycare centers)is the one for kids younger than age of 3 before attending 幼稚園(kindergarten). The latter one is considered more educational whereas 保育園mainly functions more to “foster” children as daytime care center for the sake of busy working mothers.

The volunteering went surprisingly smooth from day 1 because sensei tachi are super warm and nice and kids are cheerful and cute as angels. They welcomed me as a “Yuki nene” (sister Yuki) guest and spending several hours every Monday afternoon is an emotional therapy for me especially when stressed out during the day. I usually arrive after the children just finish their afternoon nap and helping them changing clothes is the first major task. I messed up time to time such as forgetting to take off the diapers before putting on pants or getting their clothes inside-out. Though instead of being angry with me or even noticing my mistake, kids always thank me energetically with big smile. Sometimes I feel like my role slightly changed when singing Japanese songs, dancing as rabbits, piling toy blocks or listening to teacher’s storytelling together with the kids — I am not a volunteer, I become one of them. I was happy to pick up many interesting 幼児語 too such as　“ブーブ”means cars, “ねんねしよ”means time for bed and “オッチン” means to sit.

According to be observation at 保育園,  I realized that Japan indeed has finely tuned educational approach to life and actions of each individual child. The thing that shocked me most is called 連絡帳 (parent-teacher notebook?) I’ve never heard of it before actually saw my host mom and teachers writing it – it is a kind of a note for both parents and teachers to keep track of very detailed activities of the children each day such as sleeping time, body temperature, food content, little stories if happened, what mood the child is in and even when they poop, sometimes including pictures. Children are really provided with considerate care and respected for their very existence. Creating and reading these kind of notes and memories as seeing the process of children growing up into themselves must be a great enjoyment for parents.

Moreover, children get to learn the rules for living in society by adopting basic daily routines of life and proper habits at 保育園. From saying  “いただきます” “ごちそうさまでした” “ごめんなさい”and “〜ください” to taking care of own dishes after finishing eating, they are learning to be more independent and well-mannered. In this case the early childhood education is sometimes disappointing as most kids are often treated like the center of the universe. Parents tend to say “leave it there I’ll clean it for you” after meal or “give me your backpack” when picking up their kids after school.

During play times, children are given enough freedom and encouraged to relate with one another through various options of activities. They can decide on their own about what to play and what to use. While there are group activities as well, there is minimal direct instruction from the teacher. This is good for children learning to be independent at decision making. Also have to make sure clean up everything by themselves before leaving, otherwise sensei would have a private talk and watch him/her put things in order.

Overall I learned a lot from the experience and I feel so lucky to be able to get involved in the community as Yuki nene. I hope I can be a better one in the future.

I stuck with my CIP from last semester, and continued to volunteer at the Kyoto Institute of Technology’s museum and archive this semester as well. Although I was at the same place with the same people, I did learn a lot of new things about the museum itself, and the Japanese work environment in general.

Although my job often consists of working with old art books, I am sometimes asked to help translate things from English to Japanese and vice versa, correct English presentations and essays, and help set up the new art exhibits. I do learn quite a lot from the old books and have fun figuring out the old kanji, but it is probably in the interactions with the employees at the museum that I learn the most about Japan.

Through working with people in the museum’s office I have noticed that a lot of importance is put on the daily kyuukei, which seems to almost always be around three o’clock (the same as the daily ‘snack time’ at my host family’s house). During this time the people in the office separate out small snacks for everyone and sometimes even offer tea. I already knew that omiyage-giving is an important thing in Japanese culture, but I didn’t so much know how important it is to also bring something for your co-workers! Whenever someone goes on a trip they bring back an easily-sharable snack for everyone in the office. I wish this sort of custom was expected in American offices!

Being the only native English speaker at the museum, I had quite a few requests to work with people to translate writings from Japanese to English (and sometimes the other way around). When speaking Japanese in class or doing homework in Japanese I try to think in Japanese to help my learning. However translating forces you to think in two separate languages, and this experience has taught me how difficult that really is! In some areas where Japanese is very detailed and poetic, English does not have the same kind of flow or beauty. In other places were English is straight and to the point, Japanese can be frustratingly indirect. I also ran into some problems with words that cannot really be translated such as dorya (used often when exerting self, moving heavy objects, etc.).

Having the opportunity to volunteer at the museum for the last two semesters has been a really great experience. I learned a lot about Japan, and a lot about the work world as well. I had an internship at an American museum a few years ago, so it was very interesting to compare those two experiences. I feel more confident in my Japanese language ability, and feel more comfortable with communication after this experience. I am very excited to use what I have learned, and to continue learning more.