Teaching in Japan - Jessica’s Diary November
November Diary 2006
Jessica Hartridge worked at Cactus Language for two years as our Creative Designer. Jessica has always been fascinated by Japanese culture and left Cactus in August to spend a year teaching in Japan. Here are her initial impressions of Japan and teaching...
WARNING! The following report contains unusually high quantities of negative criticism. Caution Advised. Please take with a large pinch of salt.
Depression Dave told us to watch out for November. Depression Dave, as we fondly refer to him, was christened at the Jet Summer Orientation Meeting in Naha. There he went into chronic detail about his tales of woe and how low he found himself in his first few months in Pineapple Paradise Island. We all yawned indignantly at the time but I for one made a mental note to be on the look-out.
This month I think it’s safe to say that I have mostly been caught up in the clutches of Culture Shock. The Jet Programme helpfully outlines the symptoms as follows: Intense Discomfort, Irritability, Bitterness, Resentment, Depression, Boredom, Withdrawal, Avoiding Contact with Host Internationals, Ethnocentrism, Helplessness, Stereotyping, Hostility, Psychosomatic Ailments, Physical Symptoms, and finally, Compulsive Eating, Sleeping or Drinking.
I am writing this after coming home from a meal with my trusty fellow gaijin, Laila. Having just walked through the door I immediately attacked my cupboards for the remaining chocolate and salty snacks I had leftover from the weekend. I am also thinking about reaching for the half-empty (note I say empty) bottle of JD I bought the other night and drank to myself.
Drinking by myself, on a Friday night… It doesn’t sound good dear friends right? Not the sort of behavior you’d expect from someone leaving the UK to begin a new life on an exotic island? Right now this exotic island is in the midst of an amazing electrical storm. I want to go outside to watch it only there’s too many metal structures around and my door is also made of metal. I can’t see through the frosted double-glazed windows. Maybe I’ll venture out after a whiskey or two.
So you see my dear chaps, and as many of you already know; life is not always rosier on the other-side. I know that will make you feel a little bit better about yourself and Good Old England. I remember feeling happy when my best friend emailed me from Australia to say she was homesick and that she missed London. Still, you have to experience these things for yourself, and I miss England – a lot.
I will continue to whine some more so if you’ve had enough already I do apologise and promise to concentrate more on TEFL in my future reports.
Okay, so let’s tee off with the way a few of the people here walk. You can immediately sense my level of irritability by how I choose such a stereotyping and minute aspect of Japanese life. I remember when watching Manga films, thinking how amazing the animated drawings were, but on closer inspection thinking they hadn’t quite got the affect of walking right. Wrong! They had it perfect! In the Manga films the characters would lift their feet up and down in a sort of clip-clop, slop-slop, shuffling motion. I am surprised and slightly ashamed at myself to point out that many people walk like this! It might be because of their indoor shoes being stretched from standing on the back of them so they can slip them on and off quickly. What ever the reason it makes their footsteps extremely noticeable as though they want you to know they are there and walking. I’m used to people walking quietly have been brought up to avoid dragging my feet across the floor. For this our cultures are poles apart. The same goes for eating. It is perfectly exceptable for people to talk with their mouth full, noodles practically spilling out, and also to suck your teeth as loud as possible after a meal.
Now that I’m warmed up I’ll go for the big one. I hate being in such a mono racial society and it’s really starting to get to me now. I’m used to multicultural England and now that I’m over being stared at I realise it’s never going to stop here because I AM different from everybody else and that makes me sad for me and for them. On the news I heard a native woman saying she liked being in Japan because everyone looked and thought the same. She’d been to the US and felt nervous because everyone was different. Only 1% of the Japanese population is foreign. Sometimes I feel like I’m looked at as a degenerate even though I have heard they envy white skin and fair hair.
On one of my weekend trips to the mainland in a bar in Naha I found myself in such a reckless state as to order Wild Turkey shots knowing full well that whisky is wrong for me and a sure bet to get me puking before the night is through. Needless to say I found myself conversing with the great white telephone heaving up the pork Katsu Curry I’d eaten moments before.
Having covered irritability, over-eating and many of the afore-mentioned Culture Shock symptoms let’s move swiftly on to bitterness, resentment and helplessness. Sounds like an episode of Eastenders…
After three months I had to take the plunge and get my hair cut. I was recommended a place by a fellow Brit and, sorely hung-over from the previous nights binge, found myself sitting in a posh-looking salon. The fashion posters around me seemed as good as could be expected for the cute female style so popular here and I soon found myself being measured up by my stylist-to-be. Growing in confidence I gestured that I’d just like a trim while the woman was busy marveling at how beautiful she thought my hair was. I was then sent to a trendy-looking young man who invited me to sit on a chair that swooshed out into a horizontal position with a basin at the head. Daintily he put a towel over my face as if pronouncing me dead. This is probably done to relax the customer and aid the hairdresser’s concentration. Still I felt the whole hair-washing process to be a bit like Alien Vs. Predator.
To cut a painful story short my hairdresser took about 10 minutes to do her job and safely wreck my hair. She finished by putting the remaining tufts up using a curby grip. You don’t walk out of a hairdressers with your hair casually put up with a grip, you’re supposed to like the style! In a state of shock I met my friends and said “look how they’ve managed to put my hair up using only one grip!” Later that evening before going out I convinced myself it was rock-chick but now I see it’s just shit. I think the woman must have hacked my hair off to make a wig for her shitsu or something.
To close I would like to say that there have been many good things to happen this month but Depression Dave probably tainted my vision with his forebodings. I feel so much better having got all this out and I hope it helps someone, somewhere in some obscure way. Perhaps most importantly I am realizing who I am and that moving to the other-side of the world doesn’t necessarily change me.
