Funerals

Weddings and funerals are a big deal in Japan. If a coworker or a coworker's family member gets married, while you may not get an invitation to the ceremony and/or celebration, more than mere congratulations is expected. And if a coworker or a coworker's family member dies, words of consolation aren't enough. Attendance at the funeral is highly encouraged if not expected. So when I arrived at school today to learn that the father of the 3-3 (3rd grade/3rd class) teacher suddenly passed away last Thursday night/Friday morning, I wondered what was expected of me, considering that I'm a foreigner and don't know all the formalities of paying my respects.

If the funeral had been held during the weekend, all the staff of my school would have been expected to attend. However, because the "prayer" funeral was today and the "real" funeral is tomorrow (if I correctly understood the distinctions as explained by the teacher who sits next to me), not all teachers are expected to attend due to work conflicts. So one teacher from each grade went as a grade representative to today's prayer funeral, taking with them the offerings of ¥3,000 (about $40) from each teacher who is unable to attend either funeral. (I believe the money is used to offset part of the cost of the funeral. And the same practice occurs for weddings, only the amount each person gives is significantly higher.) And another small group of teachers will attend the second funeral service that occurs tomorrow.

I asked the teacher who informed me about the death and explained to me the funereal customs if I should go to the funeral. Since I am a Christian, she said, and the funeral will be a Buddhist ceremony, she told me that I didn't have to go. However, as I wanted to offer my sympathy to my coworker and her family as well as witness a Buddhist-style funeral, I told here that while I wouldn't participate in the actual ceremony I would still like to go. Unfortunately, she didn't respond to my comment, which, having lived here for almost a year and a half, I understood to be a polite way of declining my suggestion. So all I could do was offer my ¥3,000, which just doesn't seem to be enough.

Until next time...

**UPDATE (10/6/11): Waiting at my desk for me when I arrived at school on Tuesday was a recognition gift from the 3-3 teacher's family for my ¥3,000 condolences -- ocha (green tea), nori (baked seaweed sheets), and saké (rice wine). So I asked my next-desk teacher who had told me about our coworker's father's death how to say my sympathies in Japanese for when the teacher would return to school next week. Unfortunately, she told me it would be too difficult to do politely. (I'm not sure if she meant that it would be too difficult for her to teach or for me to learn/say.) Needless to say, I was a little frustrated by this response; so I planned to ask one of the teachers at my Japanese class that night how to express my condolences. But I forgot. So I was surprised and felt unprepared when I saw the 3-3 teacher at school today. Since I could say nothing in Japanese, I told her, in English, how sorry I was and asked if she and her family needed any help. When she looked at me quizzically, I explained the U.S. custom of bringing food to the home of the bereaved and told her that if she needed help, I would like to make some food for her family on the condition that they were okay with American food, to which she laughed. It certainly wasn't the concerted Japanese-style interaction I'd been hoping to have. But when communicating inter-culturally, I've learned to take whatever successes come, regardless of their profundity.

Say what?!

Japanese people are very private. Despite working together for years, many coworkers never learn much about each others' personal lives. As a private person myself, I appreciate that the teachers at my school tend not to ask many invasive questions, for more than once I've been asked by American coworkers both here in Japan and in the U.S. some very nosy questions. (Funnily, though, when it comes to being sick, Japanese people are not shy about sharing exacting details of their sickness.) So, needless to say, this tendency toward extreme privacy has led to some surprising discoveries on my part.

At the April 2010 welcome enkai for all new teachers, one of my coworkers complimented me that I use ohashi better than his wife. (A grossly overstated kindness on my ability to eat with chopsticks, I know.) However, it wasn't until December 2010 when another teacher and I were riding in his car to the end-of-second-term enkai that I learned he has a baby, which the car seat sitting conspicuously in the back seat couldn't hide. But it was only last week at the undoukai (sports festival) enkai that he shared that this "baby" is three years old. Maybe next year he'll tell me if his kid is a boy or a girl!

One Friday this summer, the teacher who sits next to me, who also happens to be the teacher with whom I talk the most since she speaks great English, told me that she was leaving school early and that she wouldn't be back until midweek the following week. That evening, when I went to visit an AET friend who'd been in the hospital for a couple of weeks, who should I run into at the hospital but that same teacher whose husband had had surgery that afternoon.

Then today, I received my third and most surprising bit of information about one of my coworkers. When I was talking with the jimuin (teachers' room manager) about what was happening with the youchiensei (kindergarteners) on the playground this morning (as I was supposed to teach them English and hadn't been informed of the change in schedule), she told me that they were learning how to run properly from a famous Japanese sprinter. When I asked if he was an Olympian, she told me that, while he isn't/wasn't an Olympic-level runner, apparently he's not too far from being/having been at the top of his sport. Then, quite out of the blue, she told me that the school nurse's husband was an Olympian and that he'd won a bronze medal at the 1998 Nagano Olympics. I was floored! Last year when the school nurse's desk was next to mine, I'd told her that I wanted to visit Nagano before I left Japan. And she showed me the hockey puck that she'd bought in Nagano when she visited there in 1998 and now uses as a paperweight. Not once did she say that she bought it when she went to watch her husband compete!

I wonder what other interesting biographical bits of information my teachers are hiding.

Until next time...

Kukkiman (Gingerbread Man)

When people ask me about my hobby, I'm always hesitant to answer because it's not exciting, unique, or accomplished. In fact, I'm especially embarrassed by my hobby here, as it seems like every Japanese person is able to do at least one thing extraordinarily well. So I share with you, somewhat sheepishly, that my hobby is reading. But my hobby is particularly useful in my classes.

Since the books that I read are large and colorfully illustrated and they don't understand much of the English, many students pay more attention to the pictures than the story. While I'm not an actor by any means, my love of books makes me want to get animated when reading to kids because my sudden maniacal laughter or jump into the air catches them off-guard, makes them laugh, and perhaps helps them start listening for words they know rather than just hearing my words as noise.

This month with sannensei (third graders), we've been studying the verb can. So last week I read The Gingerbread Man to them. The Gingerbread Man escapes from the woman's oven and runs through a field past a farmer and through the woods past a dog before finding its journey toward freedom impeded by a river. (Perhaps there are variations on the story because the version that I read to my students last week didn't draw forth any hazy recollections from my long-term memory.) Anyway... the Gingerbread Man spies a crocodile in the river and asks it for help in fording the river. When I got to the part where the crocodile stops in the middle of the river [SPOILER ALERT], I opened my mouth wide, snapped my jaws shut, and swallowed audibly before reading, "SNAP! GULP!" The kids were stunned into silence before one boy shouted out, "Kawaisou! (Pathetic!)" and everyone started laughing. Apparently, Japanese fairy tales aren't quite so sinister.

Until next time...

Summer Training Is Oishii (Yummy)!

Today we completed our final day of summer training. While there were many great presentations throughout its eight days, the cultural aspects of training were most enjoyable for me. This year we made pottery, learned how to write our addresses in kanji (Chinese characters), made potato stamps, learned about old ways of maintaining the home, and made desserts. (No, N.P. and I didn't plan to be matchy-matchy for our cooking lesson.) If you've been reading my blog for the past year, then you remember that last year's food lesson was making sushi rolls, something most of us had never done. This year we again learned how to make something new -- traditional Japanese sweets made with anko (red bean paste). While anko is unappealing to many foreigners, I actually like it. It's an indescribable flavor, since it's unlike anything I'd eaten prior to moving to Japan. But it's only slightly sweet, since Japanese sweets contain much less sugar than American and European sweets. And it's found in a variety of desserts.

The first sweet that we made was a flower blossom. While the pink of the flower was not supposed to be variegated as mine ended up, I was quite pleased with my first attempt.

Unfortunately, my second sweet was less successful than my flower. Don't you think it looks more like a turtle than a maple leaf?

Until next time...

Backhanded compliment or just backhanded?

One day last year when I was sick for the seemingly gazillionth time and decided that perhaps wearing a mask was the appropriate thing to do, I decided to go au naturel in the makeup department, since everything but my forehead, eyes, and sides of my face would be covered by the mask. Unfortunately, I forgot that I would need to remove the mask in order to eat lunch. So when I took off my mask, the teacher of the class with whom I was eating kyuushoku (school lunch) told me how horrible I looked. Since eyes are supposedly the window to the soul, I decided to be charitable and think that she noticed the beating my soul was taking from all the new Japanese germs. However, I also avowed I'd never go without makeup again.

This summer, while not as hot as last summer, has been a scorcher nonetheless. So I decided to break my vow and have been wearing makeup off and on during these days when I don't have to teach. So imagine how taken aback I was today when this same teacher said loudly in the shokuinshitsu (teachers' room), "Rebecca, hisashiburi makeup!" (literally, "Rebecca, it's been a long time since makeup!"). I laughed along with a couple other teachers and replied to her, "You or me?" However, I was mortified. Is my "before and after" as horrible as that of the news anchors from Batman (1989) who look downright hideous in their makeup-free broadcast thanks to The Joker's scare-inducing cosmetics tampering?

The juxtaposition of today's comment following Wednesday's blog post referencing Japanese politeness is not lost on me.

Until next time...

Yatta! (I did it!)

Going to the doctor whether sick or well, even in the States, has never been a fun task for me. But going to the doctor in Japan is mendoukusai (a downright pain). Since making the decision to switch from an English-speaking-yet-condescending doctor to a Japanese-speaking-yet-kind one, I've been more inclined to go to the doctor when I'm sick. However, it usually requires that I take someone with me to serve as my translator, which is not an easy thing to do. So early last week, when I needed to go to the eye clinic in order replacement contact lenses, I thought that since I was healthy, I might be mentally with-it enough to manage on my own. My Japanese proficieincy is still low. But I know how to say, "up, down, left, right" -- the only words necessary to take a Japanese eye test. I can say how many boxes of lenses I want to order for each eye. And I can discern the gist of many conversations based on situational clues, even if I don't actually understand the words that are being said. Not the best language skill set to have for seeing a doctor on one's own; but you do what you gotta do.

But as I was driving my scooter to the clinic, I began to think about how presumptuous I was going to appear. I had two boxes from my old contact lenses and my glasses with me so that they would know what my prescriptions were the last time I had my vision checked. And I knew that I planned to speak as much Japanese as possible. But I hadn’t thought about how the appearance of my translator-less self (when I’ve always had a translator for previous visits) might set things off on the wrong foot. And how horrible would it be if I had to stop the technician in the midst of our “conversation” to call a co-worker and have her translate for me via keitai (cell phone). I made plenty of mistakes in communicating with the technicians, including mishearing the name that was called and presenting myself as Kikuchi-san. And because the technician either was frustrated with my low Japanese level or was kind, the doctor whom I saw later immediately spoke with me in English, which I simultaneously appreciated and disliked. 

If this situation were reversed and a non-English-speaking Japanese woman were to go to the eye doctor in the U.S. without a translator, I know that she would not be treated with nearly as much gentleness as I received at the clinic. Living in Japan these past 16 months has been quite challenging. There are things here that frustrate me on a regular basis. And Japanese people have faults just as Americans have. Yet the value that is placed on politeness here will be a practice I miss greatly whenever I return to the States. In that area as well as in as-of-yet unconsidered areas, I know my reverse culture stress will be great.

Until next time…

Future Petroleum Engineer?

For the past month, my sixth graders and I have been studying foreign countries' flags and their English names. The first lessons involved them asking and answering the questions, "What country do you like?" and "Where do you want to go?" in interview games with their classmates. In order to practice the names of all 28 countries that they've been learning, the students would have to change flag cards with their partners at the end of each interview. But last week and this week, the students were able to choose three countries that they personally want to visit in order to continue the sentence, "I want to go to OO because I like OO." Although it might seem difficult, the students have been studying "I like OO." sentences since first grade. So unless there was something that they didn't know how to say/write in English (e.g., Eiffel Tower, Mona Lisa, Sagrada Família, etc.), apart from needing some time to write the English words, mostly all were able to do the assignment quite well.

I expected that there would be answers such as, "I want to go to Australia because I like koalas and kangaroos." Or, "I want to go to Italy because I like pizza." Or, "I want to go to Brazil/Argentina/Spain because I like soccer." However, there was a surprisingly large number of students who want to go to France because they like bread. (And can you blame them?) One confused kid wants to visit the United States because he likes soccer. (He really doesn't understand where soccer rates among Americans, does he?!) Another boy wants to visit the United States because he likes fast food. (What a sad, unintentional commentary on the U.S.) But my favorite answer for today's English exercise came courtesy of the boy who said, and I truly quote, "I want to go to Saudi Arabia because I like oil money.

Until next time...

Kyuushoku (School Lunch)

While I've appreciated the return to normalcy my life has gained these last two months after experiencing the earthquake of March 11, I've felt that nothing I could write about here would be worth writing or reading in comparison. But I realized this week that I've not written much about Japanese school life on this blog. So I'll start with my favorite topic, according to the count of my blog labels -- food, specifically school lunch.
 

Kyuushoku in a Japanese shougakkou (elementary school) looks nothing like school lunch in an American elementary school. Here in Japan, kyuushoku is prepared at the school itself. There is no central kitchen where a single dietician works to plan the menu for the entire district, oversee the large team of cooks who prepares the food, and disperse it to the individual schools in the district where it is reheated before it is served. Each shougakkou has its own kitchen; and one dietician manages the school lunch program for a small group of schools. So each district's shougakkou no kyuushoku could be different on any given day. And a shougakusei (elementary school student) will never bring a lunchbox to school... well, that is unless his family demands that he be allowed to bring his own obentou (packed lunch) after a nuclear reactor disaster causes a radiation-in-the-food scare. (Kindergartners don't attend elementary school in Japan. They attend a youchien and have to bring an obentou to school. And junior high and high schools have different lunch programs as well.) 

Additionally, there is no cafeteria in which all the students eat. The cooks portion out the food for each class into large containers and send it to the classrooms, where the students eat at their desks that they have moved together into small groups. At the beginning of the lunch period, the students put on white smocks, white hats, and masks to cover their noses and mouths. They cover their desktops with their placemats. They wipe off the serving table. And they assist the teacher with distributing the food to everyone in the classroom. In the younger grades, perhaps the students just distribute the rice, bread, or noodles; milk; and straws. But in the older grades, they also dish the food into the bowls and plates. Each class manages the actual food dispersal differently -- some teachers choose to have all the students form a line while others choose to have only the group leaders queue up. But no one serves oneself, instead placing trays on other students' desks. And no one can eat before everyone has been served and the "Itadakimasu!" (literally, "receive gratefully") has been said, which means that food is sometimes taken from bowls or plates that have already been placed in front of other people. (Remember, they're all wearing hats, masks, and smocks. So no one is breathing on or touching food until after the "Let's eat!" signal.)

Through no fault of the school district cooks, I remember a lot of fried foods, hamburgers, canned fruits and vegetables, instant potatoes, and rolls from my elementary school lunch days. Even though I may not have taken my lunch to school very frequently (I honestly can't remember what I usually did.), I remember not really liking the hot meal options that I could get at school. And I can't say that I like every kyuushoku meal that I eat here each day, especially on the days when traditional Japanese food is served -- like stuff with lots of seaweed, whole dried baby fish, or fish paste products, to name but a few. But I do like knowing that the ingredients in my kyuushoku are fresh, for I can see the unevenness to the carrot slices rather than cubic perfection. And on the rare days when we are treated to fruit, I know that my two cherries, 1/6 grapefruit, or 1/2 kiwi are not sweetened with added sugars.

Kyuushoku isn't perfect. I think there's entirely too much emphasis placed on carbohydrates in the Japanese diet. (Potatoes and bread or potatoes and rice in the same meal is not very nutritious.) Non-soup vegetables are generally no more than 1/4 to 1/2 cup per serving. And fruit is served only a couple times per month. But the thing I most like about kyuushoku is the thing that originally most bothered me, which I hinted about earlier. When I first saw food being scooped out of the dishes that were sitting in front of students, I was upset, for I felt that the portion sizes of the non-rice foods allotted by the dietician were far too small. And my opinion became further solidified when my start-of-class question, "How are you?" was answered with, "I"m hungry!" in the two class periods following lunch. (American portion sizes are ridiculously huge, as I've already mentioned, so I'm not advocating American-styled or -sized lunches, either.) But the more I've experienced lunch in the Japanese classroom and have compared it with the Wednesday night dinner experiences I've had with the foreigners at church, the more I've grown to see its merits rather than its demerits.

In comparing and contrasting this kyuushoku time with our church potluck time, the more taken aback I am by we foreign Christians' actions. We serve ourselves during Wednesday evening meals at church, when shouldn't we serve each other? (If Hard Rock Café can get it right, should we be able to?) Some of us in the group gluttonously mound food onto our plates and then don't wait to make sure that everyone has gotten a meal before we start digging in, when sometimes the group responsible for the meal hasn't made enough food. And sometimes we fail to show altogether, which means that the meal-prep crew has spent too much money on too much food for too few people and the clean-up crew is reduced to one person.

Last August I wrote a post about how I felt that many of the Japanese people I've met often act quite Christ-like, despite their quickness to say that "Japanese people" are not Christian. (I enclose Japanese people in quotes because to be Japanese means that one is culturally Buddhist, whether or not one is religiously Buddhist.) I know this is because of the collectivist nature of their culture. And I know that good things can and do come out of an individualist culture like that of the U.S. But I wish that when surrounded by an others-first culture for more hours of the week than our own me-first culture on Wednesday nights, we Christian English teachers might learn by cultural osmosis if not actual study the truth behind the apostle Paul's instruction for how to behave when sharing a fellowship meal (a.k.a. love feast). In addition to the U.S. school lunch program needing a kyuushoku-esque Food Revolution á la Jamie Oliver, perhaps the foreigner population at church needs Paul to give us a Love Feast Revolution.

Until next time...

Miyajima Island

Itsukushima Island (a.k.a, Miyajima Island) is a 12 square mile island located just a short ferry’s ride off the coast of Hiroshima. In the Shinto religion, the entire island is viewed as a shrine, which means that neither birth nor death may occur on the island, in order to protect its holiness. However, in addition to being home to several Shinto shrines, the most famous of which is Itsukushimajinja and its torii (gate), a few Buddhist temples also are present on the island.

Itsukushimajinja, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is dedicated to the daughters of the Shinto god of oceans and storms. Here, the torii is seen from the back of the jinja (shrine).

As quoted from Wikipedia: “A torii is a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine, where it symbolically marks the transition from the profane to the sacred.” This is a different style of torii found at the back of the jinja.

The world’s largest rice paddle

Until next time…

Hiroshima

After the earthquake, my kouchou-sensei (principal) allowed me to have three days oyasumi (absence), as I had no work for the remaining six now-half days of the school year. At first, the days at home seemed to be a good idea. However, the aftershocks were still quite strong and frequent; and I discovered that staying home alone was far less preferable to sitting at school with nothing to do. So when my friends, R.D. and A.D., invited me to stay with them in Yokohama over the holiday weekend as well as go with them to Hiroshima for a couple of days, I jumped at the chance to use my last two days of nenkyuu (vacation) to get out of town. And, thankfully, my kyoutou-sensei (vice-principal) was more than willing to let me go. While I didn’t get as much rest as I would have liked, I was able to relax and enjoy myself.

My time in Yokohama was so nice and, now that I think about it, centered almost entirely on food, as there is an abundance of American-style and American chain restaurants scattered throughout Yokohama. But I was so stuffed from my four days of American food gluttony (I forgot the lesson that I learned on Guam about American portion sizes.) that I’m now inspired to eat only when hungry and to eat like Okinawans, who eat until they’re 80% full and then stop.

It was also great to discover that my friends and I travel well together. In traveling to/from and around Hiroshima, we moved at the same pace. (It helped that, at 5’9”, I’m the shortest of the three of us. However, it didn’t help in avoiding stares.) We were interested in seeing the same things. We got hungry at the same time. ☺ And we weren’t distraught when we ran out of time to see the Peace Memorial Museum before having to catch our Shinkansen (bullet train) back to Yokohama. So A.D and I are talking about when we might be able to travel back to see the museum. Here are some pictures from the Peace Memorial Park, with captions synthesized and quoted from the literature provided throughout the park:

A-bomb Dome: On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m., an American B29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb approximately ¼ mile above and 1½ football stadiums away from the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. The building was almost completely destroyed by the resulting fire, causing everyone in the building to perish immediately. As time passed, the former promotion hall became a hazardous, derelict, and painful reminder of what happened during the war. So many wanted the ruins to be razed. But as the city was rebuilt and other buildings that had been destroyed by the bomb were cleared away, others began to advocate the preservation of the promotion hall. The first such project occurred in 1967, funded by Japanese and foreign donations, with several additional projects following in later years to guarantee that the promotion hall, renamed the A-bomb Dome, would forever look as it did following the bombing. In 1996, the A-bomb Dome was registered with the World Heritage List “as a universal peace monument appealing for the abolition of nuclear weapons and the realization of lasting world peace.”

Memorial Tower to the Mobilized Students: Over three million students over the age of 12 were mobilized to work throughout Japan during WWII. More than 10,000 of these students were killed, including 6,000 by the A-bomb.

"This tower was erected by concerned families and friends to console the souls of these victims who sacrificed themselves for their homeland, and who would have had a promising future had there been no war."

For those who died and those who cried: Japanese legend holds that if a person folds one thousand origami cranes, his or her wish will be granted by a crane, a traditionally holy creature. These cranes are hanging at the memorial tower.

Children’s Peace Monument: “This monument stands in memory of all children who died as a result of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima…. Built with contributions from more than 3,200 schools in Japan and donors in nine countries, the Children’s Peace Monument was unveiled on May 5, 1958.

“At the top of the nine-meter (27-feet) monument, a bronze statue of a young girl lifts a golden crane entrusted with dreams for a peaceful future. Figures of a boy and a girl are located on the sides of the monument. 

“The inscription on the stone block under the monument reads: ‘This is our cry. This is our prayer. For building peace in this world.’…”

A one thousand crane origami mural at the peace monument whose kanji read “Peace”.

While in Hiroshima, we also visited Miyajima Island which lies off the coast. I'll include pictures from that portion of the trip in another post.

Until next time…

Why I'm staying in Japan

As I was wrestling with God last summer about leaving Japan, I was working through a Bible study on the lives of the women of Genesis. (Coincidentally, or perhaps providentially, I had worked through another study in the series when God re-called me to move to Japan last November.) Lot’s wife taught me that looking backward when I should be looking forward might prevent me from reaching a physical and/or spiritual safe haven that the Lord has prepared for me. And Sarah’s life showed me how taking matters into my own hands in order to hasten the delivery of a promise may result in greater distress. These stories of Abraham’s family greatly influenced my decision to stay in Japan.

While I would never presume to consider myself worthy of being included in the Hall of Faith with Abraham, in many ways I felt and continue to feel somewhat like him – God called both of us to leave our countries, our people, and our families in order to go to a different land. Here, though, the similarities in our situations end, and not just because he went with his wife, nephew, and entire household of servants and possessions whereas I went alone with two suitcases and a backpack. Although Abraham had no idea of where he was headed when he left his homeland, he knew what he would receive in that land because of the promise the Lord had given to him before he left. I, on the other hand, knew to what land I was going, although I had and continue to have no idea of what I might receive here because the Lord made me no promises other than those which are common to all believers, e.g., He will never leave nor forsake me. So to stay in Japan would require me to truly walk by faith.

When I considered that the Israelites wandered through the wilderness for 40 years because of their lack of faith and that some looked back toward the certainty of slavery rather than looked forward toward the uncertainty of the Promised Land, I wondered what unknown promise or gift I might deny myself if I were to leave Japan. So I decided to stay to see what the Lord had planned for me here in Japan when He first called me all those years ago. Yet knowing and believing all this didn’t stop the fear from setting in during the days following the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant problems. So once again I found myself wanting to leave Japan despite knowing that the Lord hadn’t conditioned my stay with an early-departure clause for natural disaster. Once again I found myself praying for another clear indication that God wanted me to stay in Japan such as I’d prayed for when He re-called me to Japan almost 16 months ago. And once again the Lord proved faithful in graciously overlooking my fear in order to answer the prayer of my heart.

The aftershocks continue to come each day. I now must pore over produce and dairy labels at the grocery store. And I feel lost over here in so many ways. But my kouchou-sensei (principal) asked me to stay next year instead of telling me to return to America, which was my post-earthquake fleece for distinguishing the Lord’s will. So I have to remind myself everyday that this is where I’m supposed to be this day. I don’t know if Japan is my literal or figurative Promised Land or just a rest stop on the road there. But I do know that I want my faith to be more than a t. So I will stay in Japan for a second year. Pray that I will seek the Lord’s guidance in November when making the decision about a third year.

Until next time…

George Michael's "Faith" certainly didn't look like this.

We had another fairly strong earthquake today. I have no idea what's considered an aftershock from Friday's quake, what's considered a new quake, and if any of the quakes/aftershocks that we've received are fulfilling the predicted 60%-70% chance of a similarly-sized follow-up. But I've been getting new earthquake notifications on my phone for the past couple of days, with some of the quakes being strong and some being comparatively minuscule. Granted, I got no earthquake notification for the world's fifth largest earthquake. So who knows how much credence I should give them. But I did sleep fairly wonderfully when back in my own bed last night, despite the ongoing tremors throughout the night.

That said, the first of the teachers in my group, a couple, understandably headed toward Narita as soon as this afternoon's earthquake hit. We are all on edge. And with no idea of when these quakes and nuclear uncertainties will subside, several of my coworkers have bags packed so that, if necessary, they can head out the door at a moment's notice. With no obligation to go school until Friday and with today's large tremor, I've decided that I will join the ready-to-leave-at-a-moment's-notice group. If I do leave, I'll certainly be leaving behind some of the clothing that I brought with me. And I may not be able to bring home all of the precious notes and other gifts given to me by students and parents. So I'm doing the difficult sorting today to pare down to one checked bag and one carry-on.

Yet if it comes down to making the decision to leave, it's not going to be an easy one. I've long felt God's calling for me to be in Japan. Though I appreciate the refinement I've received since coming here, it's been an extremely painful process and doesn't fit with the awesome-yet-nebulous gifts that I thought I would receive by following His calling. I've felt like an outsider at school the entire time I've been here. I've been sick more than I've been healthy since arriving. And I've not taught EBC at church since October, when all three of my students stopped coming. So though I decided to stay for a second year, that decision was reached only after wrestling with the Lord for several months. Ultimately, my decision to stay was based on my desire to be obedient to His will and to not miss out on whatever He wants to do in me and through me by being here. If I decide to leave as a result of these quakes, tsunami, and potential nuclear danger, I feel like though leaving is wise in man's eyes, it's disobedience in God's eyes. Please pray for me that I'll make a Spirit-led decision.

Until next time...

Nibankari (Aftermath)

**If you're looking for my Jishin! (Earthquake!) post, please scroll down. 

The aftermath of the earthquake has been quite stressful. However, my friends and I have all been looking out for each other. So it has made this ordeal much less intimidating.

Not knowing for how long we'd be without utilities, C.G. and I decided that we would weather the earthquake aftermath together. The first decision of weathering an unknown number of days without water, which affects toilet usage, was to assign one apartment the small potty toilet and the other apartment the big potty toilet. Lucky for me she designated me the keeper of the small potty toilet!

The second decision of not knowing when we would get running water again involved us going in search for water. Japan is a nation that has vending machines on almost every corner. Near my apartment are seven within a two-minute walk. But with no electricity, they were inoperable. (Apparently in times of crisis, one vending machine company allows for its machines' contents to be accessed when there is no power. But we didn't know this at the time.) And the kombini were closed. So we decided to walk to the city's education research office, which is located near my apartment, to check in. On the way there, we stumbled across a warehouse that was selling cases of drinks for ¥1100. (A drink from a vending machine can cost ¥150.) Amazingly, the warehouse wasn't taking advantage of people's desperation for water by charging ridiculously high prices. Unfortunately, they also weren't rationing. So C.G. and I, though we stood in line, were unable to buy any drinks. We met one of the Japanese families from church in the line. We all hugged each others' necks and made sure that everyone was okay before C.G. and I headed off to the education research office with two of their onigiri (rice balls) and some cans of coffee that they refused to let us turn down. (Literally, one of the daughters shoved four cans of coffee into my coat pockets. And though C.G. had already accepted two cans of coffee, the mother tossed another one into her purse as we were walking away.) Upon arriving at the education research office to let the staff know that we were okay, we were able to use a working toilet, wash our hands, and get 10 liters of water.

As the day went on, we noticed people standing in really long lines at kombini, at a grocery store, at a gas station, and at a home center. We were struck by how polite and patient everyone was being in spite of the horrible situation they now found themselves in. C.G. had told me the story from her walk home on Friday of seeing people standing in line at a kombini whose clerks were selling goods through a broken window in order to manage the crowd. Nobody stormed the locked doors to force them open. Instead, they waited patiently for their turn to make a purchase. Through all of this, we've witnessed only one occasion when someone tried to line jump for gasoline. No one has been yelling, pushing, or rioting in their panic. And the third decision we arrived at is if anyone ever has to weather a natural disaster, Japan is the place in which to do it.

Fourth, C.G. and I decided to combine our food resources. While we've not eaten luxuriously or even gotten full at each meal as a result of sharing our food, we have been good at helping each other ration what we do have in order to make it stretch as far as possible. This includes what we already had in our apartments as well as what we found at a fresh produce market that was set up near church on Sunday. We've shared with each other and with K.M. and A.H., two people who opened their apartments to us on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights while we waited for our utilities to come back on. And at church on Sunday, other friends shared their food with us and invited us back to their apartment for a meal, since their utilities already had been turned back on.

Due to our extreme fatigue (ten hours of sleep in a four-day period), we've found great hilarity in some of the things we've said. But we've also tried to find the humor in the situation in order to keep ourselves from dwelling on the magnitude of what is happening all around us. At A.H.'s apartment, her refrigerator had purged itself of its contents during the earthquake before closing its door, which made me think of the armoire in Beauty and the Beast which defends itself against invaders by vomiting its owner's clothing onto the attackers. And as A.H.'s freezer didn't feel as threatened (or perhaps because it opens with a drawer rather than a door), its contents were spared. So once we'd washed the dishes, we decided that the freezer was the safest, albeit coldest, place to protect them in case of an aftershock sending things toppling again, which had happened to our friend N.P.

The utilities at my apartment came back on Monday, where I am now happy to spend my time since my school has told me to stay home until Friday's graduation, as there is no work for me to do there. While I plan to stay on top of what the latest news is saying about the nuclear reactors, in order to minimize my stress, I plan to treat the next two days as a staycation, watching movies, catching up on American TV shows, and doing anything that might temporarily free my mind from worry about what is happening and what decision I should make next.

Until next time...

Jishin! (Earthquake!)

I am so thankful to have been physically uninjured and minimally disturbed by last Friday's major earthquake. And I am keenly aware that millions of people just north of me are unable to say the same thing. Thus, I am conflicted to share the struggles I've encountered as a result of the earthquake's much more minimal effects in my city. They seem so small in comparison. However, they are the struggles I experienced.

Last week there were several small earthquakes that occurred before Friday's quake. A couple woke me in the middle of the night. And some occurred mid-day. But the biggest one occurred just before lunchtime on Wednesday while I was at my one-day-a-week kindergarten, lasting approximately one minute and feeling much more real than any of the other joltings I'd experienced in the 10 previous months. In fact, on Thursday when I went to my main school, I mentioned to my school nurse and my jimuin (teachers' room manager) that I'd had enough earthquakes for the week. And after Friday's quake occurred, I remembered having thought that the week's mini-quakes seemed like precursors to something big yet to come.

I'd finished cleaning up my classroom after having taught my last English class of the day and was walking through the hallways when the quake hit. As I was walking, I didn't initially notice that the vertigo I was experiencing was due to the quake. But the quake quickly became stronger and the school's emergency notification system set in, with the automated warning message sounding and the fire doors closing. Thank goodness that the fire doors have smaller doors built into them, as by the time I got to the bottom of the stairs where I could exit the building, the fire doors had all completely closed.

I looked at one of the other staff members of my school to find out what I should do/where I should go because I'd missed the earthquake drill earlier in the year. He was not helpful in letting me know what I should do. (In his defense, his English is limited.) So when another shock occurred, I went outside where the first and second graders had gathered to leave school at their regularly-scheduled time. I could feel and see the ground rolling like ocean waves and then circling like water going down a drain. And the sixth graders who were setting up the hall for a teacher-appreciation party that was to occur in 15 minutes, came running outside to join us in the courtyard. The rolling and circling of the quake lasted anywhere from three to five minutes; and when the initial quake had stopped, attendance was taken before the students and teachers all went out to the playground, which is a big open dirt field so that we could be away from any debris that might fall. After the rest of the school joined us outside (the other grades endured the quake under the safety of their desks, I assume), we waited for perhaps an hour or 90 minutes for aftershocks to die down before walking the students to their homes, some with their parents who'd come for them, some without.

Skip forward a couple of hours... Around 6pm, the principals dismissed us to go home if we wanted. Upon hearing that there were no traffic signals and that it could take two to three hours to make the trip home by car, I'd hoped that the teachers would want to stay at the school for the evening. (Most schools are designated safety evacuation areas.) But most wanted to go home. So I followed a teacher who lives near me to make the long journey home. It did, indeed, take almost two hours to make the usual 25-minute drive. Traffic was snarled; cement walls around homes had toppled into the streets; roads and bridges had buckled; pedestrians jaywalked to stand in lines at kombini (convenience stores) lit up by car headlights. Upon arriving home, I found some of my neighbors preparing to spend the night in their cars. After climbing the stairs to my fourth floor apartment, I opened my door to find my apartment in shambles. Almost everything in the front half of my apartment had been jostled off the shelves. I had to climb over my shoes, microwave, rice cooker, dish drainer, cooking supplies... to get to the back of my apartment, which I found had fared much better. My furniture had moved six to eight inches away from their original positions; and some things were on the floor. But my TV, computer, and photos survived unscathed. And I had no utilities. I cleaned up some of the broken glass, cleared a couple pathways, and got in bed at 8:30pm.

At 11:30pm, one of my neighbors, C.G., knocked on my door. She'd just accompanied one of her teachers on a six-mile hike home, as the teacher had insisted on going home but was too afraid to drive her car. After finding her apartment in worse shape than mine, she came down to spend the night with me. We both spent the night terrified by the hundred or so aftershocks that continued throughout the night. Every time a strong shock came, we bolted upright, prepared to run out of the apartment. We got absolutely no sleep; and in the morning we felt like we'd been in a war zone due to the rumbling aftershocks that sounded like mortar explosions, emergency sirens that blared all night long, and helicopters droning overhead to survey the damage.

To spare you an even longer post that is already long, I'll share the post-quake stories in a later blog(s).

Until next time...

It's more than a t.

Being a Protestant Christian, I never realized how much the Sign of the Cross has shaped some foreign non-Christians' understanding of Christianity. Granted, Protestant Christians don't have as distinctive a worship gesture as do Catholic Christians. And my lack of realization probably says more about me than I intend it to, since it may signify that I rarely attempt to look at the world through another person's eyes. But I find it very interesting that every time I mention to my Japanese teachers something that I did at or with my kyoukai (church), they cross themselves. So that presents the question, What do I presume to understand about other people's religions based on something as simple and as non-revealing as a gesture?

Until next time...

Pardon me, miss. I didn't notice you're a dude.

I've been holding off on writing this post for several months because I didn't want it, if written, to be misconstrued. So let me be upfront and say that what I've written is not intended to be judgmental in any way. Rather, it's an observation about Japanese culture and people who are my age and younger and is a sharing of me putting my foot in my mouth as a result of the ambiguity that is prevalent around me.

A person's sex is biologically determined. Unless a mutation occurs in a person's sex chromosomes during gestation (which results in an intersex individual [formerly known as hermaphrodite]), a person is going to be born either XX (female) or XY (male). However, a person's gender is sociologically determined. Familial norms, cultural influences, and other factors determine the degree to which a female is feminine or a male is masculine. So what is considered normal or desirable by one culture for its women or men may not be normal or desirable by another culture.

Having been raised in the Midwestern/Southern U.S. culture where gender, historically, has been quite narrowly defined, I've come to view masculinity through a particular lens:  Masculine men don't like pastels. They don't have long hair. They don't carry purses. They don't wear pointy-toed shoes. They don't wax their eyebrows. And they don't want to be skinny. Yet gender ambivalence is greatly prevalent here among younger males. So imagine how challenged my ideas of what's acceptable became when in my first weeks here I saw men who were completely opposite of what I'd been socialized to believe they should be. The aforementioned things apply to many younger Japanese men I've seen. And as parents generally impose their tastes on their children, it has been very difficult for me to know if some of the children whom I teach are boys or girls.

At my two youchien (kindergartens), the different classes are distinguished during recess time by different hat colors. At the smaller school there are only two hat colors -- pink and yellow -- while at the larger school there are four hat colors -- red, blue, pink, and yellow. It is so difficult for me to determine a male child's sex when he is wearing a pink hat and his little face is surrounded by long hair. It is also difficult for me to determine a female child's sex when she is wearing a yellow hat and her little face has no hair surrounding it because it's cropped short. The same is true with my shougakusei (elementary school students). Unless they are wearing skirts, there are some students whom I don't know to be female because their faces are androgynous and their hair is super short. Equally frustrating is the tendency for the youchien no sensei (kindergarten teachers) to call some boys by the diminutive -chan, which means girl, rather than with the diminutive -kun, which means boy. Thankfully, I've never called a boy a girl or vice versa at my youchien, for time has proven a boy to be a girl and a girl to be a boy.

I don't know why I feel the need to know the sexes of my students, since knowing them doesn't change who they are. But the discomfort I feel from not knowing if the child with the pageboy haircut and the rainbow sweater is a girl or a boy is quite unsettling. Today a ninensei (second grade) boy got his feelings hurt when his classmates laughed (at him or me, I don't know which) because I, still unable to distinguish his sex after nine months of teaching him and not being wise enough to touch a super-feminine girl on the head when trying to teach the difference between he and she, called him a girl. His oniisan (older brother) and buddy both have short haircuts. So I wonder if he'll show up at school tomorrow or Monday with a new hairstyle. I hope he doesn't. If he likes his hair as it is, I hope he keeps it that way and doesn't let my ignorance influence his self-expression.

Until next time...

UPDATE (02/04/11): Sure enough, the kid got a haircut last night, well, more like a trim. It's still longish. And he's still got bangs. But the ends don't curl under like they did yesterday. However, after today's lunch clean up, I saw that his place mat which protects his desk is pink. If I hadn't stuck my foot in my mouth yesterday, I would have gone away from today's lunch time still thinking that he's a girl.