Kandahar

Today, in my higher-level class, I showed a movie. I had intended to show a different movie - something light - but yesterday I started to watch Kandahar, which I've had for at least a year, but only had time to see the first ten minutes or so. I wanted to see the rest, and decided that since the class had only five students, one of whom wants to be a journalist and another an aid worker, it might work.

It did. They were riveted. I felt a little guilty because a lot of the movie was not in English, but the subtitles were in English, and were not too fast for them so it was still 'English class,' sort of. And I stopped the movie now and again when students had questions.

I would be very interested to hear what others who have seen the film think of the boy, Khak. Did he deliberately mess up his recital at the religious school, so that he would be kicked out, or was he just a bad student? And was he really untrustworthy? I wasn't sure, and neither were the students.

Kandahar is a stunningly beautiful film, and has scenes in it that made us all think. The students were particularly impressed by the woman who applied her lipstick under her burka. You do not get to see her face, as she would not (or could not) uncover it, but she was determined to wear the lipstick anyway. My students wondered about the strange contradiction this involved. The whole point of lipstick is that it is seen, but this lipstick would never be seen, so why was she wearing it? What did it mean?

I've been thinking about this tonight, and I think the lipstick was for the woman herself, not for others. It was an act of self-definition. It was a way for her to remind herself, Inside my prison I may not be seen, but I am still a human being. I am not faceless. I am not invisible. I am a woman.

There are other images from this film that will stick with me for a long time (the amputees chasing down the parachuted artificial legs!), but I think the most lasting impression, for me, will be of the invisible women.


Technorati Tags: Kandahar, Afghanistan

Bad child

Doris has written about being sent to the headmaster's office when she was eight.

I was sent to the headmaster's office when I was eight, too, or perhaps seven, but apparently lacked Doris' inner resources because I remember it vividly. I was sent there by the headmaster himself, who was in the classroom talking to the teacher when the bell rang after lunch and I raced my friend back there. I burst in laughing and shouting "I WON!"

When I saw the headmaster I stopped short in surprise. He had never been in our classroom before, and I had never seen him so close up. To my surprise he glared at me as if he knew me, and became very angry. The next thing I knew he'd told me to go over to his office to await my punishment.

I was devastated. I didn't know what I'd done wrong, and the headmaster was a frightening character with enormous bushy black eyebrows. Also, I didn't know where his office was. Afraid to ask, I hovered until he bellowed at me to GO. I left the classroom and wandered around the school, looking for a door marked HEADMASTER. Eventually I gathered the courage to ask some adult who took pity on me and pointed me in the right direction. She also asked me why I was going there, and I told her I was going to be punished. She asked me what I'd done, and I had to reply that I didn't know. It was humiliating. I was fairly sure that not knowing what I'd done wrong meant that I was so wicked I didn't know the difference between right and wrong behaviour. (Oh, the joys of a religious upbringing.)

I found the office, which was locked, and stood outside in the corridor to wait.

I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

When the bell rang for the short mid-afternoon break the headmaster still hadn't come. I could hear the sound of kids playing and shouting out in the playground. After a while the bell rang again and everything went quiet.

I continued to wait.

I have never known an afternoon so long, before or since. Imaginings of the punishment awaiting me grew more terrifying as I stood there, until I was paralysed with fright. A punishment you had to wait for this long had to be something horrible, and I must have been very wicked to deserve it. Had I done something I couldn't remember? I wanted to run away, but I was sure that I would die if I did, or that someone would catch me because they would see right away that I was bad. There was no place to hide, and anyway I was an obedient child and defying authority was not something I did easily. Now and again a teacher or other staff member passed in the corridor and smiled sympathetically at me. I thought this meant they knew what was going to happen, and were sorry that I had been so bad. If they thought I didn't deserve it they would help me, surely. They didn't want me to be punished so badly, but they knew I'd deserved it so they couldn't do anything.

As the afternoon wore on I was worn down. There was nothing to do, nothing to read, nothing to distract me except my increasingly wild speculations of what was going to happen when that terrifying man finally turned up. (One of the approved books in our house was the illustrated Foxes' Book of Martyrs, and there was plenty there to feed my imagination. I was ghoulishly fascinated by that book, mostly because I was secretly convinced that it proved that I was wicked. If someone tied me to a bonfire and lit it I knew I would never sing a hymn with so loud and cheerful a voice that I'd be heard through all the cracklings of the combustibles, and the noise of the multitude. I knew I would become an instant atheist in exchange for a bucket of water.)

As an afternoon of eternity passed I became more and more convinced of my sinfulness, and more and more confused about it. What had I done? How could I undo it? How could I become good? What was going to happen to me?

The final bell rang, and again I heard the joyous yelling and clatter of children - the good children - erupting from classrooms. The noise died away gradually until I knew I was the only child left at school. The others had gone home, and now there was only me, the bad child. I was sorrier than I'd ever been in my life.

Then the headmaster arrived.

He walked straight past me and had started to unlock his office when he noticed me. He asked what I wanted. I told him, in a very small voice, tight with pent up tears, that he had told me to come to his office and here I was.

He paused, and there was a long silence as he opened his door and stood there, looking into his office. Then he turned.

"You can go home now," he said, and wagged his finger at me sternly. "I can see you are sorry for what you did. But let this be a lesson to you, and don't do it again!"

"What did I do, sir?" I asked. I was terrified, but had to know.

"NONE OF YOUR CHEEK! GO HOME BEFORE I CHANGE MY MIND!" he thundered, and disappeared into his office, shutting the door firmly.

It was devastating. How come adults were allowed to behave so unjustly? How come he didn't have to explain? Why couldn't he tell me what I did wrong? It was UNFAIR. If I had to be so wicked I wanted to know WHY. I had spent the entire afternoon standing outside his door, a petrified and unwilling martyr, and HE HAD FORGOTTEN I EXISTED. The whole thing was outrageously unjust.

I went home, confused, angry, and laden with a terrible burden of unpunished sin.

If I could remember how this story ended I would tell you, but I'm afraid the memory ends there.



Technorati Tags: headmasters

Gossip

Today I ended up on the train with three colleagues on our way home. I had to get off first, to change to another line, and just before the train started slowing down for my station one of my colleagues suddenly remembered a bit of essential gossip she thought we might not have heard yet. She told it quickly so I would not be left out of the loop, and I appreciate it deeply. I now know a little more (but not nearly enough) about a very strange professor who used to invade my classes.

He WAS a tenured professor at the university (my students had told me so, and I thought they must have made a mistake), but nobody is quite sure if he'd actually been given any classes. He certainly didn't seem very professional when I met him. I thought he was a homeless person who had somehow wandered onto campus and into my class in an alcoholic fantasy. But he claimed to be from Tokyo University, or to have graduated from Tokyo University, or to be on a transfer from Tokyo University, or something like that. Whatever it was, I was supposed to be impressed. He spoke English, but it was a strangely garbled and very fast version of English that never made sense, quite. He was full of confidence and this worried me.

I deeply resented him walking into my classes like that, but put up with it because you never quite know who it might be, and you don't want to make enemies of tenured professors if you are a lowly part-timer. Everybody knows we part-timers are not real academics, and not real teachers. We're just replaceable bits of equipment. Tenured professors, on the other hand, are living treasures whose every word is sacred and who might get you fired. You learn to be careful.

This guy stopped invading my classroom after I frightened him one day. I did it very nicely. He had wandered into the room, as he was wont to do, while I was in the middle of erasing something from the board in order to write something new up. The students were working on something but looked up at the interruption. I asked if I could help him, and he said no, but then sat down next to a student, pointed at the mostly erased board, and asked interestedly and loudly what it meant. He wanted attention, and was getting it. My students had stopped even pretending to work.

What was on the board didn't mean anything, of course. It was mostly erased. It said something like:

page 44 th
s a sele
ne and de
hich fo
te a par
u thi

I was getting a bit tired of this guy. It was the fourth or fifth time he had interrupted this one particular class of engineering majors, and I was starting to feel picked on. He would sometimes just sit down and stare at me, grinning, or other times start chatting to a student, in Japanese, or to me, in English. He was disturbing and creepy and disruptive and I didn't know what he was doing there, and when I asked what I could do for him he would brush me off by telling me not to worry, he was just checking things out, just carry on, carry on. The first time, after he'd gone, I asked the students if they knew who he was, and they said he was a professor. They didn't know what he was a professor of. (I only found that out today - he was a P.E. professor. I didn't know it was possible to be a P.E. professor. Perhaps I misheard.) I asked the students if they thought he was a little strange, and they had to think about it. This was the wrong question. To students, professors are strange by default, here. To expect a professor to not be strange was too novel an idea for them to comprehend.

So when he asked me to explain something that didn't make sense, and when I overheard one of the students whispering to another about how good his English was, and he obviously overheard it too because he looked all smug and twitchy and expectant, I decided this guy had been getting up my nose for long enough. I decided that if he wanted an explanation of something that had nothing to do with him, I would give him one.

So I told him, in English, at great speed, all about a journal article I'd been reading on the train that morning. It had nothing to do with what was on the board. It was about memory and cognition, was heavily scientific, and was written by a neuroscientist. I had only understand it vaguely myself, but that didn't stop me. I fixed him with a manic eye and speed-babbled with enthusiasm, waving my arms around and using all the really big words I could remember from the article whether I could pronounce them or not. I interrupted myself several times to ask him, confidentially, as a fellow teacher, if he didn't also think it was an astonishing bit of research and wasn't it relevant for us all, as educators? We should be taking it into account when we teach our students, I said. Didn't he think so? I waved vaguely at the garbage on the board and told him that this was what I was trying to do here, and what did he think?

He was lost from the first sentence, and all he could do was sit there nodding dazedly and agreeing with me. I burbled on happily, asking him for his agreement every couple of sentences. He didn't want to admit in front of my fascinated students that he didn't understand a word I was saying, so he tried to look intelligent, but the panic in his eyes grew. This inspired me to greater flights of pseudo-scientific fancy, and I carried on as he stood up and came to the front of the class, turning his back to the students so they couldn't see his face and the growing alarm all over it. When I finally stopped for breath, beaming at him expectantly, he pulled himself together, shook my hand damply, said, "Yes, yes, yes, very good," a lot, told me I was doing a great job, and left.

There was silence, and the students stared in awe. One of them asked me what we had been talking about. It sounded so very intellectual, and he hadn't understood a word.

"Sugoi," he said. "His English is very good." Then he added somewhat wistfully, "My English will never be good like that."

"Yes, it will," I said. "It will be better, if you study a little. He didn't understand anything I said."

The students gaped.

"I didn't understand it either," I added. "But it sounded good, didn't it?"

I laughed happily (he'd gone!), and they gaped some more. Some of them started laughing as they understood what I had done, but they were a little shocked, too.

"Never mind," I said. "Let's get back to work. I don't think he will be back."

I was right. He never did come back.

That was a couple of years ago, and I had forgotten about him until today. But when my colleague was telling us about a professor who had been arrested for drunkenly attempting to kidnap a woman and her child at a train station at nine o'clock in the morning, something rang a bell.

"Gawd. He sounds like that guy from Tokyo University who used to interrupt my classes," I said. "He was nuts. Kidnapping? What happened?"

"It WAS him!" said one of my other colleagues. "I heard about it, too, and there was something about him being from Tokyo University. Oh, so you've met him! I heard he speaks English really well..."

The doors of the train opened and I had to run for it.

I hate it when that happens. KIDNAPPING? I'll have to call my colleague tomorrow.

I love gossip, and Japanese universities have the best and most bizarre gossip ON THE PLANET.


Technorati Tags: Japan, Japanese universities, gossip

Rrrrrr!

Today I was giving conversation 'tests.' These are more to satisfy my students' need to be studying for something rather than to satisfy me. It also keeps the universities happy if I show I have tested students. I make the tests worth 15% of their grade, and grade them all high because basically, they've all learned to communicate a little in English, and that was what I was aiming for.

The students get very nervous about this test and tend to overdo things a bit. One student today, having apparently swallowed whole the notion that r is the most difficult sound for Japanese learners of English (it isn't, really), decided to rhoticize his entire output. He put an r into every single word whether it was originally there or not. His partner had a hard time understanding the strangulated sounds that emerged, but I have to admit it was fascinating. He has learned the American r perfectly. He does a better r than I do.

He added two to wow.

"Wrorw!" he said, in an amazed tone, in response to something his partner said.

He had apparently also heard that foreigners use gestures more than Japanese people do, so there was a lot of hand-flapping added for good measure. But he couldn't quite bring himself to flap any higher than the elbow, and the effect, while appealingly earnest, was also rather disturbingly camp.

I scored him high, of course. It is not his fault that the Japanese English education system has never quite come to grips with the blindingly obvious fact that the first place to start when you are learning a new language is with the sound system. That he is making this much effort on his own is a credit to him. I find it hard to teach much pronunciation in the time I have and with the syllabus I am supposed to be following. Good for him, I say. He is willing to make foreign noises, and that's a huge step in the right direction. And once you got used to the odd sounds he was making, and the hand-flapping, his communicative skills were actually pretty good.

He was happy with his grade, and told me so, twisting his hands eloquently.

"Ire'm verrry harrrpy," he said. "Ire warrs verry nerrvourrs."

"But I can tell you've studied hard," I replied. "You deserve a good grade."

He looked pleased. "Yerrs, Ir sturrdierd verrry harrrd," he said. "Ir thirnk Ir've irmprroverd."

I've decided to add a little more pronunciation practice to next semester's classes.


Technorati Tags: Japan, ESL, language learning

Melons

Adachi-san just turned up at our door. Adachi-san is the local independent builder. We recommend him to everybody because he doesn't rip you off like the big construction companies do here, as a matter of course. He is a lovely man, forty-something, and has missing teeth. Builders in Japan always have missing teeth. It's a Japanese tradition.

He yelled outside for a while, knowing that our doorbell is broken. Eventually I realized the yelling was for us, and yelled back from upstairs. (The broken doorbell has never been fixed - since the earthquake - because we discovered we LIKED not having door-to-door salespeople ringing it daily. The people who know us yell our names.)

I went downstairs.

Adachi-san was there, grinning from ear to ear and carrying a box.

"I know The Man isn't here," he said, "But tell him the kids are really happy. This is for you both. Thank you!"

(Or maybe he said 'the kid' - there is no plural in Japanese.)

I took the box, sagging a little and somewhat dazed by his gapped-tooth grin and his total obliviousness to the unfortunate fact that my Japanese isn't up to his speed or his level of street talk. He burbled on for a while more, cheerfully, and I missed most of what he said except that the kids are REALLY happy, and please thank The Man.

I promised I would thank him, and Adachi-san left, still laughing. He slammed the gate. He always slams the gate. His natural exuberance demands it.

In the box were a couple of melons. I don't know what melons cost right now, but they're never cheap.



What has The Man been up to? He left the house about half an hour before Adachi-san arrived and didn't say anything to me. What has he done? Has he been doing magic tricks for Adachi-san's kids? Has he been telling them tall stories? Giving them presents? (Do they still think he is Turkish or Pakistani? Will he go to hell for telling lies to children to explain why he doesn't seem quite Japanese enough to them?)

I don't have the foggiest idea what's going on, but I do appreciate the melons.


Technorati Tags: Japan, melons, mystery gift

Irreverent

The usual bunch and a couple of extras met at the bar tonight to drink to our absent friend. The owner of the bar, who is also our regular waiter, had heard the news of her death, and gave us two extra carafes of wine. This means we all ended up well over our usual limits.

When we were leaving he also gave me a hug. The others had gone down the stairs, and I was delayed because I'd been collecting rubber bands from all over the floor. I answered his question about what had happened, as he only knew the barest outline.

I told him the details, stumbling over the Japanese. He looked distressed, and hugged me. It was a chaste shoulder hug, and infinitely comforting.

"Taihen, desu ne," he said. He had tears in his eyes.

Japanese people NEVER hug like that. This is not a hugging culture. I'm guessing he has picked up on our habits. We arrive at the bar one by one, every week, and as each person arrives it's hugs all around. We've been going there for a couple of years now, and he has been there and we always chat with him briefly as we arrive and again as we go. Perhaps he has been watching us. His hug was friendly and sympathetic, natural, and not at all awkward.

But it was a testament to our friend that even the waiter at her once-a-week bar felt so bereft at her untimely death. She was the kind of person who always noticed wait staff. If she was talking when a waiter brought her order she would interrupt herself to smile and thank him or her, and it was never perfunctory. It was always a full eye-contact smile and genuine thank you, from the heart. This was second nature to her. Everybody deserved to be acknowledged.

When I got down the stairs I told the others why I'd been delayed.

"Oh, it's good you talked with him," one of them said. "Of course, he knew her, and deserved to know what happened. He'll miss her, too."

We stood silently on the pavement for a moment.

"You know, that was really kind of him," someone said. "The wine and the hug and all that. What a special guy." Then she added thoughtfully, "He's kind of cute, too, isn't he?"

We all agreed that hmm, yes, come to think of it, he was, wasn't he?

And as we were being so woefully distracted I could almost see our absent friend rocking with laughter at the turn the conversation had taken. A woman who turned irreverence into an art form, at that moment she was RIGHT THERE.



Technorati Tags: Personal

Thick

Early this morning I remembered that I'd promised my students I'd bring a Beatles song for them to learn. All our Beatles videos are on DVD, and the school only has VHS, so I'd planned to tape one this weekend. I told The Man about it.

"I'll have to do it next week instead," I said.

The Man responded, as I'd hoped,

"If you have ten minutes, I'll do it now."

He recorded the song while I was getting ready for work. What a sweetie.

In my small class of foreign students (four Chinese and one Vietnamese), I flourished the key to the video cabinet.

"I've got the Beatles video!" I said, and they cheered. They're sick of the textbook.

I opened the cabinet.

But when I got everything apparently working, the sound was crap. It had sounded fine at home, but on the system at school we had the sound turned up to the max and could only hear the music very faintly. That was no good.

I wondered if The Man had recorded the sound on the audio sub-channel, used for bilingual recording, and tried to figure out how to get the sound output from the sub-channel. There didn't seem to be any setting for that. I tried adjusting the tracking. That didn't work either. I fiddled with various mysterious buttons and settings, and nothing worked.

While I was bent over the cabinet getting more and more frustrated, one of the students said something that sounded rather rude.

"Pardon?" I asked. I turned around, flustered.

"You're thick," she repeated, grinning.

"Thick?" I said. "It's not me! It's the video! It isn't working!"

"No, no, no" she said, shaking her head. "Not the video. You are - " she paused and arranged her tongue - "THHHICK."

I stared at her. She was usually a nice person. I thought she liked me. Why was she being so insulting suddenly?

She stared back. Then she grabbed her dictionary, looking exasperated. After a minute she looked up again.

"THIN!" she exclaimed, happily. "You're THIN!"

In the end we moved to another classroom, used a different video player, and the video played perfectly. My students sang,

You say yes, I say no
You say stop and I say go go go, oh no
You say goodbye and I say hello
Hello hello
I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello
Hello hello
I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello

And so on. It was fun. The lowest level student, who had trouble with the alphabet at the beginning of semester and sometimes feels a bit left out, was in heaven because she could understand all the words. By the third repeat of the song she was singing her heart out.

We all were.



Technorati Tags: Japan, ESL, Beatles

Revenge

For a while now I've been carrying a supply of rubber bands wherever I go. I am practicing a bit of magic that involves one rubber band passing through another one, and I want to get it just right, so that I can do it without looking at my hands and without fumbling. I want it to look casual, as if something impossible just happened accidentally while I was fiddling with a couple of rubber bands.

The reason I am trying to learn this trick is that in one of my Friday classes I have a student who has been disconcerting me all semester with his sleight of hand. He loves magic, and I can tell he practices a lot. You don't get to be that good without practicing a lot. He does not disrupt the class with his magic - he doesn't overdo it - but now and again when the students are on task and I'm checking the room to see where help is needed I'll be distracted by a suddenly vanishing coin, or a coin miraculously leaping UP from the desk to his hand, or by him apologetically reaching out and removing a marble from his partner's ear. He'll do something like this maybe two or three times a class, and he doesn't stop his study to do it. He does it while he is doing whatever it is he is supposed to be doing: casually, as if he didn't mean to. When the students around him demand to know how he did that, he gently steers them back on task. Then he glances at me, to see if I noticed. I smile and give nothing away. It is very funny.

But I want to get a little revenge for all the times he has surprised me. I want to surprise HIM. For this I will have to be able to do my trick smoothly and casually, just as he does. I have been practicing like mad, and for the last few days every time I sit down somewhere I start fiddling with my rubber bands. This means that as I am talking to whoever I am talking to, a series of rubber bands goes flying into the air (except when they hit me in the face). I keep losing the bloody things. Obviously, this is not supposed to happen. The trick is supposed to require two rubber bands, not twenty, and they are not supposed to end up all over the room.

I am apparently getting better at my trick, though. Yesterday I met a Japanese friend, and while we were sitting having coffee and chatting I was fooling with my rubber bands. One went flying, but as she was saying something to me and I was paying careful attention, I noticed her eyes going down to my hands. I casually did my trick, not taking my eyes off her face, and her startled double take was exactly what I have been aiming for. She actually jumped, and forgot what she had been saying.

But I don't get it right every time, yet. I'm hoping to be proficient by next Friday. If not, then the Friday after next.


Technorati Tags: magic

Rain

When I started this blog, it was to keep in touch with people when I was travelling. Then I came back from my vacation and kept going because it was fun. I deleted most of the old posts, which I didn't want up there anymore, and just carried on. The blog gradually transformed into something different; it became a place for me to record the funny little incidents and quirky things about life as an expat in Japan.

Yesterday I found it hard to come up with funny little incidents and quirky things. I spent the afternoon at the memorial for a dear friend who died suddenly a few days ago, far too young, of a heart attack. I was not going to write about it here.

But she was one of my regular readers, and while she never commented here on the blog she often commented in email or in person, and I don't think she would mind if I told my other readers why I missed a day, and why I am sad.

My friend provided inspiration for blog entries occasionally, most memorably when she described the experience of eating fugu balls. Her description was a conversation-stopper, but she hadn't quite realised why. When she talked to me later about what I had written she laughed and laughed.

I can hear her laughing now. She had a wonderful laugh.

The last time I talked to her was on Monday, when she wanted to organize a time to meet and go to visit our friend in hospital, who is recovering from an operation. This was typical of her. She was an enormously loving - and lovable - person. No matter how busy she was she always had time for a friend in need.

But her time ran out, far too soon.

I sat in the train on my way to the service yesterday and stared out the window at the rain, and over the grey suburban sprawl at the wisps of cloud that were wrapping themselves around the hills and drifting into the valleys. I thought of my friend, and tried to get my head around the fact that she will not be there next week for our usual meeting, or ever again.

It is raining again today.



Technorati Tags: Personal

Wasp waist

I do not have a lot to say tonight. I'm tired, and the most interesting thing to happen all day was that while I was having dinner with a colleague we spent a lot of time being astonished at the waiter's tiny waist. And yes, I said waiter, not waitress. We sat there ogling him enviously every time he went by. He was wearing an apron tied around the middle, and it was impossible not to stare.

I have never seen such a small waist on a man. From front on it was tiny, and when he stood sideways he practically disappeared in the middle. I would have to remove a few internal organs to achieve a waist like that, and wear a heavily wired corset.

It's not fair. Such a tiny waist looks weird on a man, but it would look fabulous on me.


Technorati Tags: Japan, Japanese men

Not real

This morning I woke myself up, far too early, by having a terrible argument with The Man, in a dream. I cannot remember what we were arguing about, but I was FURIOUS with him. It was all his fault, and I told him so in no uncertain terms.

I yelled,

"IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT! BECAUSE OF YOU I'VE SPENT TWENTY YEARS IN THIS STUPID COUNTRY BEING A GAIJIN WHEN I COULD HAVE LIVED ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD AND BEEN A REAL PERSON!"

The words were echoing in my head as my eyes popped open. It was four o'clock in the morning and I was so enraged I didn't know what to do with myself. Then as I became more rational I replayed the words in my head and started to feel quite proud of my unconscious self for coming up with something so brilliant. I wrote it down and went back to sleep feeling pleased. Move over, Shakespeare!

I told The Man about it in the morning, and he stared at me, devastated.

"That's terrible! Is that how you really feel?" he asked.

"No," I said. "Well, except the gaijin versus real person part. That was good, don't you think? I'm quite proud of that. I'm never that clever when I'm awake."

"Are you SURE you're all right?" he asked.

"Of course I'm not," I said. "It's the end of semester, it's horribly hot and humid, I'm resenting having to get up early, and my students are sick of me. We all need a holiday. But we're going to get one, soon."

The Man looked doubtful.

"Think about it," I said. "My existential crises always happen at the end of semester, and almost right away I get a nice long holiday. Who could ask for more?"

He still looked only half convinced. I don't think we've heard the end of this one yet.

I told some of my colleagues about this dream today, and when I got to the gaijin vs real person bit, recognition bloomed over all their faces before they cracked up.


(And no, in case you were wondering, I haven't been here for twenty years, and the decision to stay has always been a mutual one. On the other hand, the gaijin vs real person thing is so close to the bone it hurts.)


Technorati Tags: Japan, gaijin, expat

Here. Have an out-of-date stereotype

One of my friends told me yesterday that one of her students, who is studying French, went to some sort of information event thing that was held in Osaka by several universities, promoting a study/homestay in France thing. (Note the word promoting. PARTICULARLY note the word promoting.)

They gave a lot of information about France, and tried to sell the students on the idea of studying in France. However, my friend's student, who had been keen, came back fairly sure that she didn't want to go after all. When my friend asked why not, the student replied that she didn't think she could cope in a country where people did not bathe very often but instead wore lots of perfume.

Yes, this is what the students were told, at an event where they were being sold the idea of France as a study destination. You know, the kind of event where they gather the experts, and the potential customers are given the facts so they can make an informed decision.

The kind of event you get only in 'intellectual,' 'academic' Japan.

My friend had quite an uphill battle trying to convince her student that while it might seem incroyable, France is quite a modern country, really, and quelle surprise! most people even shower daily.


Technorati Tags: Japan, Japan stereotypes, Japan academia,

Something special

This is a followup to my angry post a few days ago about the part-time teacher who was asked to resign when she suddenly became very ill.

Our union chair had a meeting with the head of personnel yesterday, and was all fired up ready to fight for a fair deal for our sick colleague.

The union chair didn't get a word in edgeways, however. Before she could even speak the head of personnel was falling all over himself apologising. (Moshiwakegozaimasen!)

Our colleague will not lose her job. They will not ask her to resign, and they will not stop paying her, even for the days she is not working. He said the letter should never have been sent. He told our union chair, without prompting, that OF COURSE it was against the contract - look at article six! (he stabbed the paper with his finger) and he was very upset that it had been sent at all. He didn't say who sent it, but it was clearly not him and he hadn't known about it. He was deeply sorry for the distress it must have caused our colleague and was shocked about her sudden illness. He knows her personally. He knows all the union members - all four of us (out of several dozen) who were not too scared to form the union - personally. We have always got on just fine, which is one reason why this whole thing was so startling and worrying. (In fact starting up this union branch was a really good thing to do if only because we got to meet the people at the top and establish a personal relationship, once the initial awkwardness had passed. We would never have met them, otherwise. It is the people lower down the totem pole who generally cause any problems, and without the union we do not get past them.) I would have expected this to happen at any other place I work, but not there. I thought we had a good working relationship.

The union chair got the impression (although this was not said, exactly) that somebody acted stupidly and independently, and will be feeling the flames of the personnel head's wrath. She thinks it was someone new at the top doing a new broom thing and trying to impress with penny-pinching. Perhaps someone was trying to take power from the personnel head. However, I suspect the boss of our own department, who is as stupid as you could get and cannot be counted on to support us for anything at all, of trying to assert power in his own little domain. (I have to admit that the main basis for my suspicion is that I find him personally creepy, which probably isn't very rational.) I don't know if we will ever find out.

Whatever, the result is far better than we expected. We did not expect they would pay our colleague for the classes she cannot teach, even though by law they are obliged to. We were not that optimistic. The best we had hoped for was that they would not force her to resign, and would only cut her pay for the time she was not teaching rather than for the vacation period as well - and we expected to have to fight for that much, given that they'd already sent the resignation letter to her to sign.

I am OVER THE MOON about this. I didn't know I was feeling so depressed by the whole thing, but I guess it had been bothering me a lot more than I thought, because when I heard this news last night it was like a great black cloud lifted. We all work hard, and it was upsetting to think that the moment something went wrong we'd be out on our arses, no warning, no thank you, no acknowledgment that we were more than bits of equipment whose time was up. I am reassured to know that the head of personnel went to the trouble to meet the union chair to apologize. He could have just relayed the message. Instead he personally acknowledged that the letter had caused distress and was a mistake, and wrong, took responsibility for it. He went to the trouble to meet the union chair to say so, adding that he was anxious that the message should get to our sick colleague (in hospital, resting after her operation) as soon as possible. He passed on his regards, and was visibly upset that such a thing had happened. In short, he was a gentleman.

This is enormously cheering.

It also makes me feel a lot better about working there. At the other places I work the pay is better, but at this place we have, in the past, been treated better in almost every other way. If my colleague had had to resign I would have wondered what I was doing there. That they are supporting her through her illness is really something special, especially here.

(Of course there is a cynical way of looking at how all this turned out, too, but please do not pop my bubbles by pointing them out to me. I know them already, thank you, and I do not believe that this man, at least, is insincere. In any case, sufficient unto the day and all that.)



Technorati Tags: Japan, Japanese union, Japanese university, Japan working conditions

Strong

At the women's university I work at on Mondays and Wednesdays, most of my classes are small this year, which is a good thing. I am able to spend more time with each student and get to know them in a way I don't usually know my students.

In one of these classes today there is a young woman I like very much. She told me that last summer she spent her vacation in Thailand, doing volunteer work in a village there. Her volunteer group was helping to build a school. Her goal, after she graduates, is to do more of this sort of work. She wants to work in India, she says.

If almost any of my students told me something like that I'd worry about them. Most of my students are pampered, spoilt, and if they live away from home live on convenience food because they can't cook. They live in one-room apartments and complain that the housework is too much for them.

But although this girl lives at home I have no worries about her being a volunteer. She told me her mother is a terrible cook, and she does most of the cooking and housework herself. (When they learned the word siesta today, she laughed and said, "My mother always has a siesta - all day!") Also, of course, she has done volunteer work once already, and knows what kind of conditions she'd be living in. Six weeks of it only gave her a taste for more. She is full of indignation at the injustices she has seen, and wants to do what she can to make the world a better place.

Today she had written something about her educational experiences. She wrote that she attended the high school that is also owned by the university. This high school is a girls' high school. This means that since she was about fifteen she has been entirely in all-female institutions. She is a third year university student now.

"This is why I am ribald," she wrote. "Men like a woman who is neat and weak. I want to be a strong woman. So I am sure I will never get married, because men will not like me."

I queried ribald, and we talked over what she meant, consulting a dictionary. We decided unladylike was a better word.

When one of the others asked her it worried her that men wouldn't like her, she laughed and laughed and laughed. The others stared, smiling uncertainly, until she stopped.

"No," she answered. "I want to be strong. I want to go to India." She lit up at the thought. Her eyes shone.

Personally, I think she is in for a big surprise. I have no doubt there are any number of men out there who will be extremely interested in this strong, beautiful, passionate, thoughtful and intelligent woman.




Technorati Tags: Japan, women, volunteer,

Rotten to the core

Potato farmers held a noisy protest outside Parliament today to get the term "couch potato" removed from the Oxford English dictionary, claiming it harms the vegetable's image.

Potatoes are sensitive creatures, and their TV watching habits are nobody's business. Why should they be singled out for sneering disapproval?

The answer, of course, is that they are not. Nuts also get bad press, and are planning to join a new march on Parliament to demand that derogatory definitions of the word nut be removed from the dictionary, along with the derogatory definitions of, nutty, nutter, nuthouse, and all the other derivatives that imply that nuts are, well, nuts. They may well be, but it is insensitive to call attention to it like that. Nuts do not like it.

The nuts will be joined by lemons, who are extremely hurt by the implication that they do not deliver what they promise. There is nothing defective about lemons, most of the time. And if there is, it is rude to say so.

In fact, vegetables and fruit, generally, are planning to protest about the way they are abused in the English language. After all, why would a person whose brain does not function properly be called vegetative? This implies that vegetables are somehow defective. They are not, or at least most of them are not. This terrible slur must be removed from the dictionary, they say, and they intend to make their feelings clear. Also, fruit are not gay. Well, not all of them are, and in any case it is none of your business if they are.

In short, the fruit and vegetable movement is about to get underway. The potato protest was the thin edge of the wedge. Fruit and vegetables are up in arms at the way they are being maligned, and a system that allows a few bad apples ruin their reputation is, they claim, rotten to the core.



Technorati Tags: language, metaphor

Bad teacher

I am not a very good teacher. I have been marking homework today. In this particular class I have been teaching how to describe people, and the homework assignment was to describe some people the students knew. One of my students has written that her boyfriend is elderly and has blond eyes.

Later she adds that he is twenty-five. That explains the elderly (she is eighteen), but what's this blond eyes business? What do blond eyes look like, I wonder?


Technorati Tags: Japan, ESL

Wink

Today I got to the page in the textbook that teaches a little about gestures. There is a series of pictures of people using various gestures, and the students are supposed to try to match them up with the meanings. These gestures included pointing, beckoning, waving, and a few others, including two the students had real trouble with: crossed fingers, and winking.

These two gestures are not used in Japan, and many of my students mixed them up. They guessed that winking meant Good luck! and crossed fingers meant I'm joking!

I thought the textbook didn't go far enough in explaining these gestures, and told the students that if you crossed your fingers behind your back, it meant that you were lying. They liked that one. I then explained that this gesture comes from the Christian tradition: that it was a way of making the sign of the Christian cross. You ask for blessings (and luck) from God when you cross your fingers, and when you hide your crossed fingers behind your back and lie you are warding off the devil, who will take your soul for doing something so naughty. Actually I just made that up on the spot, I added, showing them my crossed fingers - but it COULD be true. I would look it up and tell them for sure next week.

I then told them that winking doesn't only mean I'm joking, at least not where I'm from. It is often a gesture of complicity. I didn't know quite how to explain that in simple English, so since they had told me that nobody uses the wink gesture in Japan, and it didn't have any meaning for them, I thought I'd demonstrate. I winked knowingly at the student sitting nearest me. He went beet red and flopped forward onto his desk in a paroxysm of uncontrolled giggling.

I pointed at him, amazed.

"Why did he do that?" I asked the class. "You said winking didn't mean anything in Japan! Are you sure?"

They said they were sure, but they were all grinning. I wondered if it was just that one student, and winked at another one. She went pink and collapsed into helpless giggles.

I stared. "It DOES mean something, doesn't it? YOU'RE TRICKING ME!" I accused the class.

They assured me they were not tricking me, although they were all laughing by now. I asked them why they were laughing and they said they didn't know. I told them to hold up their hands. None of their fingers were crossed. Two or three held their hands in front of their faces, afraid that I would wink at them, too.

I decided not to tell them that winking is also sometimes a flirtatious gesture, albeit not a very serious one. I had embarrassed at least two of my students quite enough.

But I still don't get it. If winking doesn't mean anything to them, why does it affect them so powerfully?



Technorati Tags: Japan, gestures, winking, cultural

Dedicated student

Today when I arrived at work, very early, I was almost the only one there, aside from the janitorial staff. But as I was walking across the campus I heard somebody call me.

"Me!" the voice said.

It wasn't a very loud voice, and I looked around.

"Me!" the voice said again, and I saw who it was. It was the campus cat.



This cat makes itself scarce when the students are around, although you sometimes spot it hiding out in the gardens under bushes, or behind buildings, or peeking through a fence warily. In the mornings, however, it shows no anxiety at being spotted. In fact it seemed to welcome the attention.

I tickled it under its chin, and it bowed. It is a Japanese cat, after all.



Well, it couldn't be bothered standing up to bow, but you could say that it followed the form of bowing without actually bowing.



Come to think of it, it bowed in the same way that my students study. Perhaps it has been taking lessons. After all, it is a university.


Technorati Tags: Japan, cat

Angry

Yesterday I was too angry to write a proper post. (Not that my posts are proper, really, but you know what I mean.) This afternoon I find that I am still angry. I do not want to get emotional on here - emotion is generally boring to read (especially mine - I tend to go on and on) so instead I'll explain why I am angry.

A few weeks ago a colleague found out she needed major surgery.

The university where she works part-time (the same day as I work there) responded by being very sympathetic and telling her not to worry, they'd find somebody to cover the five days she will miss. She is only there once a week. There were six weeks of semester left when she told them about her illness, and she was able to work one more week and sort out the details of passing her classes along to another teacher.

However, a couple of days before she went into hospital she received an envelope from the university containing a resignation letter for her to sign, and informing her that she will not be paid for the second half of June. This also means that she will not be paid over the vacation. Our pay is calculated on a monthly basis. (People who work for universities that pay per class, and which don't pay during the vacations, are paid more to compensate for this.) This resignation was presented as just a formality. They would rehire her in September, for the second semester, they said.

New teachers at that school, we were informed two months ago, will be hired at a lower rate of pay than existing teachers. Existing teachers' pay is not affected. (We were supposed to be grateful for this.)

Those are the facts.

We suspect that, besides getting out of paying her for the vacation, the university wants to rehire her in September at the new, lower rate of pay, although they have not actually said this. She has been working there for years with no pay increase AT ALL. We all have. (It is the lowest paying of all the places I work already.)

Fortunately we formed a union branch there a couple of years ago, having heard rumours that our working conditions were going to change. Subsequently we were told by the university that our working conditions would not change, and that the rumours were wrong. However, I suspect that the only reason our pay was not cut this year was that they were afraid of the union. Many universities have cut teachers' pay, and if there is no union there is not much anybody can do about it.

When we formed the union, only four people joined. Nobody wants to 'make trouble,' and we were seen as troublemakers by the other teachers. (This reputation of union members is fostered carefully by the media - and practically everybody else - here. Unions disturb the Wa.)

My ill colleague is one of the four teachers who joined. Another colleague is the branch chair.

Part-time workers get no sick leave under the Labour Standards Law (or whatever it's called).

However, workers who work one day a week for more than four and a half years (why the odd number?) are entitled to three paid days off a year. These carry over for a year. This means that our colleague is currently entitled to six paid days off. At the time of the union branch formation, the university signed an agreement stating they would abide by the Labour Standards Law. They also assured us, personally, that they greatly appreciated us and wanted to treat us well. They seemed somewhat hurt that we wanted to form a union branch there at all.

They appreciate their part-time teachers so much that when one of them becomes ill they respond by telling her that they will stop paying her, a couple of days before she is due to go into hospital for major surgery. They did not even tell her to her face. They did it by letter, after she had taught her last class before going into hospital. The whole thing makes me sick with anger, and it is particularly worrying that she almost signed the letter, as she was feeling harassed and busy with last-minute arrangements, and it was presented to her as a reasonable thing to do. Fortunately her daughter contacted the union branch chair, who was able to tell her to stop her mother from signing the resignation letter. We told her to hold off until we had contacted the union to find out what her rights were.

This is a very wealthy, private university. It has no problems attracting students, as many universities do, now. It is full of the rich children of rich alumni.

The union chairperson has contacted the union, and we are hoping that the whole thing will be sorted out without any fuss. The university prides itself on its old-fashioned 'gentlemanly' reputation, and they will not want publicity that paints them as money-hungry ghouls, feeding off the misfortune of an ill, vulnerable employee. This is, of course, exactly what they are.

Gentlemanly, MY ARSE.



Technorati Tags: Japan, Japanese university, Japanese union, Japan working conditions, anger

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