Teaching in Japan :: Jessica's Diary, February '07  


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.

February Diary 2007....

Banzai!

I have travelled from the near tip to the near top of Japan this month, destined for Sapporo’s world famous ‘Yuki Matsuri’ or ‘Snow Festival’. A few other Okinawan Jets were also making the journey but had included an extra leg up into the mountains for skiing and snow boarding but I had decided I wasn’t going to spend loads of money freezing my arse off. I know… I’m a wet fart, it can’t be helped. Besides I guessed that the festival would probably involve some snow sports and if it was in Sapporo then I’d do it. I was looking forward to going shopping and checking out the cities nightlife; now both luxuries.

It took about three hours to get to Sapporo and it was
dusk as the plane began to descend into a blanket of
whiteness. From my plane window I could see the end of Honshu; mainland Japan, and after about 20 minutes saw the beginning of Hokkaido. The sea in between looked as though it had many icebergs floating in it and on both coasts the snow fell right up to the sea edge creating a crisp line between white and whale grey-blue. Having acclimatized to Okinawa I am now cold whenever the weather forecast predicts anything under 19 degrees centigrade and wasn’t looking forward to stepping out into a Siberian climate. I was traveling with Nick and this is where we would be saying our goodbyes before he headed off to Canada for the skiing season.

When we arrived at the hotel it was about 8 o’clock. We immediately found out that the Hokkaido people lived up to their reputation of being gaijin (foreigner) friendly. There are some places in Japan such as the city Nagoya where they have signs on doors saying ‘No gaijins’. The receptionist seemed pleased to speak to us in English and when we asked where to find a good place to eat, he immediately put on his jacket and handed an umbrella to each of us for a quick tour of the surrounding area. It was raining and the snow on the pavement was now slush but we hardly noticed as the man cheerfully showed us the neighbourhood restaurants before taking us to his favourite Izakaya. He was about the same age as us and was smartly dressed in an immaculate dark grey business suit that Japanese business hotel staff usually wears, but through the neat, formal image you could tell he liked to enjoy himself unlike some cardboard cut-out staff I have met on my travels.

He sat us down and went through the drink and food menus before ordering the chef’s specialty, but didn’t stay despite our attempts to sit him down and return the favour. He left us his business card incase we needed to call for any further assistance. After such a warm reception it made the beer and food taste even more delicious. A few days later we returned to the izakaya after going to the Sapporo Beer museum and sampling the different malts. My favourite was the ‘Yebisu’ one and I think it was the best beer I’ve ever tasted, better than the Germans, the Czechs and of course the French and the British.

The izakaya was a warm friendly bar with a big fat; smiling chef who we quickly found out was the owner, a barful of laughing girls and a cute waitress. The chef’s speciality was a slant on the local dish ‘okonomiyaki’ which is a sort of savoury pancake with vegetables including bean sprouts inside, with ham on the bottom and a BBQ type sauce and fish flakes on top. This secret recipe also had Sapporo’s popular soba noodles and egg inside. After weeks of tempura, seaweed, sushi and pig offal soup this dish tasted like Cornish fish and chips.

On our second visit to the Izakaya we ended up staying until after 3am, drinking with the owner, a guy from Nara, a doctor and our hotel’s restaurant manager. After a few drinks we were talking about all sorts including politics, Japanese and British society, football and music. It was really great to speak to people and hear their own opinions and who liked arguing different points. Japan is known for its people who have a generic and socially acceptable view on life, people are said to hide behind masks that they have been taught how to wear since birth. We spoke about this with these men and they seemed fed-up with this Japanese custom.

The conversations must have been mainly in English as Nick can’t speak Japanese and I am still learning. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If you want to learn a language, or more to the point, talk to foreigners, go and get drunk with them! They asked what my impressions were of Japanese people before I arrived here and I said after a moments pause ‘hard-working, immaculately dressed and a bit mad.’ Channel 4’s TV programme ‘Banzai!’ (‘Hooray!’) was probably my first taste of Japanese culture in which people do really painful things for a laugh and an excuse to gamble. I can’t remember if I said this before or after the restaurant manager began stripping but once he had taken his shirt and tie off and pulled his trousers down he ran out into the snow to expose himself completely to anyone passing by at that early hour! Nick and I were in fits of laughter. Amongst the frequent shots of tequila (his choice) and vodka (my choice) our new found friend kept promising that he would make us a feast of anything we desired the following morning, but sadly he was no where to be seen when we bailed into the restaurant in the last half hour of the breakfast shift. He was probably dying of a terrible hangover somewhere in the kitchen.

In the eight days spent in Sapporo we tried a few places to drink and found another really cool izakaya which had walls stacked high with colourful bottles of Chuhai, the local osake. I really love Japanese writing and now that I’m beginning to be able to read some of it I find it’s even more beautiful. If you think about all the different styles we use for English such as italic, calligraphic, gothic and then the thousands of different fonts, the Japanese also have some really unique ways of writing or arranging words. I had plenty of time to contemplate the design of the bottles whilst making a good attempt at trying all the different blends of chuhai. Some were made with black sugar, some potato and I can’t remember the others but they all were rice blends. The bar staff here were equally friendly and when the bar owner heard I was from Kumejima he proudly presented a bottle that he had picked on a trip to the island up and which was now a part of his vast collection. I guess he traveled around to Japan to stock his bar, which sounded like an excellent career for us at the time. The bar owner was only 28 years old and the bar looked really funky and although he worked hard he appeared to be very happy. Before 8 o’clock Nick and I were completely wasted and getting into a very passionate debate about where was the best place to open a bar. I still had my rose tinted ‘England is amazing’ glasses on while he had his ‘I’ve just escaped England and Italy is the place to be’ hat on. I can’t describe how friendly these people were and the atmosphere in the bars made you quickly loose track of time. The drinks weren’t expensive either and no one seemed in any rush to get drunk or make money.

Our hangovers only partially stopped us from enjoying the festival. Each day it seemed to snow constantly and the road sides had snow as high as my waist. Unattended bikes and cars were buried in it and we wondered what surprises the white stuff would yield when it would all finally melt in April. The festival is famous for its ice sculptures. There were huge compositions including a sea scene which a blue whale burst up through an ocean, while in the background penguins shuffled along an iceberg and a polar bear searched for fish. I didn’t think about the whale catching at the time but as I write this I wonder if it sparked any controversy. There was also a snowboarding slope which the Japanese were taking turns to hurl themselves down a near perpendicular drop to music and a mc who laughed heartily at every miscalculated jump. We stayed to watch until our feet nearly froze to the spot and regretted not booking a trip into the mountains having since learned that Hokkaido is also famous for its soft powder snow. Later my friends told me that falling over was like falling into bed. I also regret to say that we didn’t make it to the onsens or outdoor natural hot springs. I had thought about hiring a car but on seeing the ice on the roads thought better of it and point blank refused to travel on a bus after a nightmare day in Okinawa where we spent all day trying to get to an aquarium in the north on a bus traveling at a maximum of 30kph, only to get there and have to turn round immediately to get the last bus back. A whole day wasted on buses for about 30 quid each… you realise how vulnerable you are when you can’t read a bus timetable properly.

Saying goodbye to Nick was difficult but also meant that I was half way through my time; I was now at the top of my hill and about to roll down the other side. The next six months will go quickly for me and we parted saying that each day that went by would be a day closer to us being together again. Absence definitely makes the heart grow fonder. (Sorry if you’ve just had your lunch!)

I didn’t have much time to wallow with my aching heart as I had the ‘English is Fun!’ festival for the six elementary schools to look forward to. This festival had been looming on the horizon since November as I was naturally to be the mc or presenter for the two day duration. I find it amazing that these kids start learning English at such a young age when they have only just learnt one of the three Japanese alphabets. At first I was worried that the method of teaching English; singing, dancing, games and chants was not effective because they seemed to learn the dance routines and the rhythm rather than the actual words. Now I realise these children have enough on their plates with such a complex first language to learn so if I can help make English fun so they enjoy the lesson and learn the basics then that’s enough for elementary level.

Each school had third and fourth grades performing mainly dances and chants that they learnt from a multimedia pack called ‘Dansinglish’. This material is great because they have a variety of foreign actors including children who have some really fun dance routines and funny face expressions that the kids love and I love too as I don’t have to make much of a clown of myself. “Do you like sushi?” “Yes I do. How about you?” “Me too!” This chant is sure to stay with me until the day I die.

The festival went smoothly and I made use of intervals by playing ‘Head and Shoulders’, ‘Simon Says’ and a quiz with the audience. Everyone seemed to understand me, even the parents. Sometimes it feels like I’m in a bubble so that everything I say can not be heard by anyone and I can’t hear anything they say. I have times in the classroom when my JTE has instructed me to explain something in English and the children just switch off or mimic what I say. I completely relate to this. Sometimes in the teacher’s room I’m sat at my desk and teachers will begin a conversation either side of me and talk and laugh loudly as if I’m invisible. I sometimes find it unbearable (especially when they are women as they screech and giggle) and relate it to sitting on a busy airport runway. Thinking on
the optimistic side, perhaps they’re just trying to pummel Japanese into my brain. I’ve stopped eating school dinners with the teachers now which is probably frowned upon but I need to keep my sanity. Also, my face had begun to erupt like a pubescent teenager on their sugary high calorie goop.

The Japanese have accepted Valentine’s Day into their culture after fierce marketing efforts from the card companies, but like everything else, they do it a little bit different. On Valentine’s Day, only females give chocolate to not only their hearts desire and loved ones but also their relatives, friends and co-workers in a completely unromantic and organised fashion. I read on Wikipedia that it was really expensive for women. In return, on March 14th Japan has ‘White Day’ when the males are supposed to give traditional white chocolates back to those females that gave to them. Wikipedia says that this is not often the case though and girls give much more than boys. On Valentine’s Day there were a few very unhappy faces on some of the boys and the girls looked quite smug. I was worried that I’d have to give chocolates to all my colleagues. I later found out that the women had all clubbed together and given joint presents to the male teachers and I felt a little upset that I had not been included.

Contrary to my December report which I vowed to never take another cooking class, I decided to introduce Pancake Day to my small third year class in the Mario cart hills. Here pancakes are made and sold in the American style so I showed them pictures of crepes to give them the right idea. They had never tried the traditional English lemon and sugar topping and my JTE looked repulsed at the idea but politely sampled a slice. The students all seemed to like it and perhaps they didn’t want to see any go to waste because after they had finished off the batter mix they began polishing off the lemons with huge piles of sugar that just watching made my teeth ache. After we sat down and I spoke about Good Friday, Easter, Jesus and the crucifixion.

In true Brit style I will finish on a weather report and say that I was pleasantly surprised with mild sunny days after hearing that February is mostly grey and cold. My trip to Sapporo also probably adjusted my body temperature a couple of degrees. In Okinawa the cherry blossom season has just begun (earlier than the mainland as it’s close to the equator) and the branches have bloomed with fuscia pink blossom, a lot brighter and heavier than the famous Kyoto cherry blossom, so I’m told. It has lifted my spirits and I feel happy to be part of Kumejima