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…