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.

Before I came to this program, I am not that in volunteer activities because I think personal class can learn more about Japanese culture. However, I knew I was wrong when I actually started volunteering at the first time in KCJS program as an English assistant for a junior high school English activity. I haven’t decided to do volunteer for my CIP at that time. Then, considering the fact that I live very far from school and really need to do something have flexible time schedule, I chose Niconico tomato for my CIP, which is basically a volunteer association for children in hospital. When I started to do this weekly, I knew I finally find something that fit my schedule and very meaningful.

The basic job for Niconico tomato is to help children in hospital to have lives as normal as usual healthy children. Besides the treatments they have to take during the most time of their time, Noconico tomato offers them a chance to have a library and play room, even school. Elder children can read books freely and even have classes in hospital and for younger children, they can get a chance to learn some little hand crafts every week with professional teachers. My work is to do some regular work like pasting labels on a monthly magazine of Niconico tomato and doing decorations for children’s profile album. Speaking of this album, I really learn a lot from it. The profile album is different for each child recording their life before hospital, in hospital and after hospital. When I read the album, I am impressed by the vitality shown from the pictures of their smile. Even though they are in hospital and some of them have serious disease, it can’t take away the right of a child to learn, to play, to laugh. Looking at their smiles, I feel I am doing something for them and it is really meaningful for me.

There are also something happened in-between volunteers. I learned that you have to be very humble to someone who are elder than you or working longer than you and use careful language to them, but this doesn’t mean that there is a distance between. They were all very kind to me and helped me a lot, not only in my working but also in my Japanese. Because the speed of their conversations in usual speed, I have to listen really carefully to understand them. This is an absolutely good chance to practice listening and speaking. I really appreciate this experience as a volunteer in hospital for children.

I joined another KCJS student as an English assistant at Kamigyo middle school. The CIP met once a week every Tuesday, the starting time changing depending on when we were needed. Each session usually lasted about 1-1.5 hours, varying, again, on when we were needed.

Every week, the students worked on reading out loud a specified passage that they’d been working on. In the later sessions, after the contest was over, I helped students with a mock exam. The students had a set amount of time to read a passage, where they then had to answer a few questions not only about the passage, but two personal questions about their thoughts based on some aspect of the readings. I was then required to write down feedback for the students, and suggest areas they should work on, as well as ways to improve on those sections.

When working with the students on the speech contest, it was really interesting to see how each student responded and interacted with me. Most of them were shy at the beginning, but I had one student who was very enthusiastic. I had a lot of difficulty trying to get to know them better. The main hindrance was that I was on a very strict time schedule. I had about fifteen minutes with each student, and if I went overtime, the English teacher would come in and have the next student come in. This made it exceptionably difficult to ask personal questions, because I had to focus on their speech contest first and foremost. What further compounded this problem was that the students had difficulty answering my simple English questions. I would ask them about how their weekend went, or what they like to do as a hobby, and for the most part I got blank stares. I tried some advice I got from other students and from my Sensei, to stick to just present tense and to make the sentences as simple as possible. This worked better, and I got at least a basic response, if not overly-shy and hesitant. It was really interesting, though, to see what problems were common throughout the students’ English. Most of the big problems were pronunciation, but they were able to read everything they were assigned. As for if they understood everything, I do not know. Each student’s level of comprehension differed slightly, and some seemed to understand more than others.

When I had the opportunity to do the mock exam with the students, it was even harder to get to know them. Because it was a mock exam, I had absolutely no time to do anything personal, and from greeting the student to writing up a quick report, it was also extremely formal and timed. Everyone was able to read the initial passage just fine, and had little difficulty answering an almost word-for-word question from the passage. However, when it came to the next sections, all students except one had major difficulties. The situation required the students to look at a picture and describe to me what each individual was doing. Many of them did not understand the question I asked them, and needed me to repeat it multiple times for them to understand. After the first two repetitions, I changed the wording of the question to make it as simple as possible, and in one case, I had to point to the pictures to help the student understand. The last section had me ask two ‘personal’ questions about the student’s thoughts, the subject for which originated from the passage they had read. All of the students were able to answer these questions, albeit some more explicitly than others. At the end of this task, I had to complete a short evaluation form and provide feedback and comments. This was extremely difficult for me, because at that point time was almost up, and I was only able to provide the most minimum of details.

During the mock exam, a major concern I had was the presence of the English teacher in the room. At the start of the test, she would leave us alone. But as I was getting towards the end, the teacher would come into the room and watch us. This not only made me nervous, but I could visibly see the students freeze up. Most of the time, she came in towards the very end when I was leaving my comments, which I would then explain to the students. But the last student I had was having a lot of difficulty answering the questions, and he took some extra time. As such, the teacher came in while he was still answering questions, and then he became even more nervous and especially reluctant to speak in English. I was actually quite annoyed by this, but I was not able to say anything. The teacher even came over and helped him understand the questions, except she used Japanese to do it. Even though this was a mock exam, I think it was important to not use any Japanese at all, which I took care to do so. Using Japanese would have created a fall-back for the student, and should have only been used to explain once the test was over, not while it was still ongoing. Despite his difficulty, this student was actually the most enthusiastic of them all, and at the end he was really interested in asking me what I thought about how he did.

Overall, I learned a lot just by observing the students, even if I wasn’t able to get to know any of them personally. I was able to observe the general difference in the second and third years’ English, how they interacted with me personally and respectfully, and how the teacher interacted with the students. This was a very valuable experience for me, mostly because I am considering the JET program. I was initially unsure about this CIP because I was never in a situation where I tutored or taught someone other than a close friend or family, so this was an entirely new experience for me.  I was extremely nervous at first, and was unsure about how to do this CIP successfully. However, once I met the students, my initial apprehensions faded, and I started to look forward to visiting the students every week. This opportunity has definitely made me more interested in pursuing the JET program, though it is still more of an idea than anything.

As my CIP, I chose to become an Assistant English Teacher at Kamigyo Middle School, near Doshisha University. I met with students interested in learning and improving their English once a week for an hour, and helped them read English more naturally and practice speaking.

The main idea I had behind choosing to teach English was to gain experience for the JET program, which I intend to apply to after I graduate. At my home university, I would often attend exchange lunches with Japanese students and we would help each other with learning about our respective languages and cultures. In that time, I found I really enjoyed teaching English to others, though being a teacher never really crossed my mind. However, after coming to Japan, I wanted any chance to return, and was reminded of my love for teaching when we talked about CIPs.

In that regard, I suppose it was a natural procedure from there to try out being an English Assistant, before I really decided on whether or not I would devote up to five years of my life to teaching my native language. When I first entered Kamigyo Middle School, I was pretty nervous; I was an A class student, with the bare minimum language ability to enter KCJS, and had a bad habit of using casual speech regardless of my listener’s social status or familiarity with me. With that, my journey started with five young girls of varying English-speaking abilities, and five odd little readings. I was told to listen to the girls recite the passages, and then to well, fix them. The rush to start was daunting, but the hour and a half passed by almost too quickly. I hardly felt prepared enough, and I probably wasn’t as helpful as I wanted to be. I couldn’t even remember all the girls’ names. Yet as discouraged as I was, I remembered one of them telling me when our fifteen minutes were up:

“Your help was really clear and easy to understand. Thank you.”

I suppose that this is the reason all teachers can put up with the frustrations of their work. Over the next couple of visits, I began to notice that perhaps, just the slightest, I was making a difference. Not only to them in regards to their recitation, but in myself by being more prepared, by knowing what to do, how to help, and being more confident in myself. I found ways to make the experience more fun, even if it was just rainbow colored pens, and I found ways to tweak my teaching style to the student, such as speaking quieter to the shyer students or being excitable about accomplishments for the outgoing ones. I started to realize that Japanese students needed a lot of positive reinforcement for their abilities, probably because of the modest culture and strict school structure they were raised in. Teaching, even in such brief intervals for each student, had a strong impact on me.

However, I also felt a lot of frustration during my CIP. Because I only had about fifteen minutes with each student, I never got to know each individual very well. Some of the students seemed interested in learning more, but they were quick to leave because of the teachers coming by at the end of the time limit. I think I would’ve been able to help a lot more had we had more time together or to be working on more broad English conversational skills. I was also quite surprised to learn how drastic the level of English ability could change between school years. A lot of my second year middle schoolers were a lot more capable of general conversation than the first years, who hadn’t even learned past tense yet. I would’ve really liked to see how English was taught in the classroom, as well as maybe seen what would’ve happened if I met more often or for longer with each student, and done different activities with each of them.

Though at times my CIP was frustrating, I really gained a lot of valuable experience from it. Teaching, while difficult at times, continues to interest me as a path I hope to take in the future. I wish the best for my students as well, in school and in learning English.