Now What?

The road ahead.

It’s kind of an odd feeling. After almost 10 years of working hard to get to Japan I’m here. I don’t have to keep planning; I have arrived. But I spent such a long time trying to get here that my lifestyle developed around achieving the goal rather than living the goal. My body might be here but my brain hasn’t realized it yet and is still looking for the next step.

I suppose this isn’t new. There’s a reason I have the Japanese words for “someday” and “now” tattooed on either forearm. I have long had a tendency to live my life in the future and ignore the present. I just thought that when I finally arrived in Japan this would no longer be the case. But even though I have a good job and like where I live, I’m still restless. I find myself asking “Now what?” and the fact that I don’t have an answer just contributes to the restlessness.

I’m thinking about what to do after JET. This is all very premature, of course. If things go well I could stay in this job for five years. And, since the salary goes up almost every year, there’s little reason for me to leave before I have to. I would someday like to teach at the university level but that will require graduate school, and that will require money. Hence staying in the current job. Rationally I understand this but irrationally I find myself romantically thinking about teaching in China or even going back to Korea. Fleeting thoughts for sure but they’re there nonetheless.

I haven’t been here even a year. Perhaps soon I will feel like I’ve put down some roots in the community and at my schools and it will all feel less transient. Maybe then my thoughts will stop fleeing ahead and instead calm down and enjoy the present. Or maybe I’ll pack it all in and join the Peace Corps.

Lunar Calendar

Lunar meet solar.

Although I knew it existed, I never thought much about the lunar calendar until I lived in Korea. Korea is ostensibly on the solar calendar but many rhythms of life still adhere to the old lunar calendar. For example, in my small town there was a local street market every six days. Also Buddha’s birthday is on a different day every year because it’s on the lunar calendar.

I assumed that Japan had abandoned all aspects of the lunar calendar, as it had a lot of the older Chinese ways (it used to celebrate Buddha’s birthday too), but when reading the book A Year In The Life Of A Shinto Shrine, I came across a passage on lucky and unlucky days. It mentioned that there are auspicious and inauspicious days to do things, and sure enough, this information is printed in most modern calendars along with the usual months and days of the week.

In keeping with the lunar calendar, there are six types of days (六曜) that repeat in cycles.

Butsumetsu (仏滅) – This is the day of Buddha’s death and so is very unlucky.
Senbu (先負) – Considered a lucky day except for the morning. It’s also a day in which judgment and haste are best avoided.
Tomobiki (友引) – A good day for business and lawsuits.
Senshou (先勝) – Lucky in the morning but not in the afternoon.
Shakkou (赤口) – Unlucky for all activities, with only the period around noon being auspicious.
Taian (大安) – Lucky day.

Doesn’t give you a lot to work with, does it? If you have to undertake some kind of important activity on an unlucky day, the head priest of the shrine in the book recommends doing it twice. The first time, do a kind of rehearsal on a lucky day and then do the real thing on the planned day. That day, whatever forces that guide the luck will be tricked into thinking you really did it on a good day.

Omiyage

Omiyage from Saga

I recently went to the prefecture of Saga for a few days to see some historical sites. People don’t often go to Saga, apparently. Other than pottery, people say that there isn’t really anything in Saga.

As is the custom, I picked up some souvenirs for my workplaces. This is called omiyage in Japanese and is usually some kind of local food product, or snacks containing a local ingredient. Because I have a lot of workplaces I went for price over quality but even so, there wasn’t a lot to choose from. Most of the snacks were just generic butter cookies and things like that.

When I got home I took a better look at the packaging of the omiyage and had a good laugh. “I went to Saga” is printed in big letters on the front. I guess there isn’t much more to say about Saga other than, “I went there.”

Into The Nature

I grew up in the suburbs of San Francisco. I started making forays into the city with friends and by myself when I was 14. I would take the train and then the bus to Haight St, where I would shop for books and records and posters. It seemed like all kinds of magical things could be found in the city, things that pointed to an interesting and exciting world of art, ideas and new ways of thinking.

Contrast this with the Lake Tahoe area, where we went at least twice a year to vacation. We had a condo in Tahoe Donner and from late elementary school on we’d be there skiing in the winter and swimming in the summer. Although I enjoyed making sled runs between the trees, I don’t ever remember really loving the forest. And by the time I was going to SF on the weekends, I had even less interest in nature. There was no interesting music there, no art. When I couldn’t convince my parents to drive me to the record store on the other side of the lake, I was inside making music on my drum machine and synthesizer. Yes, I brought my gear to Lake Tahoe. That’s how much nature moved me.

So imagine my surprise when I realized recently that I’m in love with the nature in Taketa. Driving to one of my many schools, I am often overcome with emotion at the site of a mountain or forest-covered valley. I have seen river gorges that left me speechless and vistas that made me shout out loud. I was even a little miffed when one of my schools moved my desk and I no longer had a magnificent view of Mt. Kuju.

The funny thing is though, I’m still a city boy at heart. I hardly ever go hiking in the woods. I certainly don’t go camping. I’m content to see this magnificent nature from the safety of the inside of my car. The woods are full of bugs and dirt, after all.

The one place where my new-found love of nature meets safely with my urban soul is at shrines. Here nature is revered but it’s done within known boundaries. A beautiful tree, a deep cave, an endless spring—these things are set apart and prayed to. Nature has been tamed and framed. I suppose it’s the hand of man here that I’m really attracted to. It’s no longer in a city setting but I’m still enamored of ideas and different ways of thinking. Records and underground comics have been replaced by Shinto and Buddhism, the religions of Japan.

I do miss Tokyo (as I have mentioned here before) but for the 41-year-old me, finding a huge stone carving of a Buddha in the forest is just as exciting as discovering an Einsturzende Neubauten record in a dusty record store on Haight St.

More JETs

In a recent article in the Japan Times, it was reported that the LDP wants to more than double the number of JETs from around 4,400 to 10,000 in three years, and have a JET in every elementary, middle and high school in Japan within 10 years. The article didn’t specify whether these JETs would be full-time teachers at a single school or if, like me, they’d be making rounds and would visit a school once a week or even once a month.

No matter the frequency, I think more JETs is a good thing. Most of my students have only ever met a few foreigners in their lives, and those are usually their current and former JETs. I’ve had students ask me if my blue eyes have trouble processing colors and other odd things that are are a reflection of their culturally insular lives.

It would be great if each JET only had one school. I worked at a single school in Korea and liked it better than traveling around to different schools every day. While there are benefits to my current work situation—such as meeting lots of different kids and seeing how the Japanese educational system works in general—I feel like I could make more impact in the lives of the students if we could spend more time together. As is it, I don’t even get to see every student each month. Sometimes a number of months will pass before I get rotated back around to a certain classroom.

The article mentioned that one of the reasons the current government is pushing for more JETs is to help students become prepared for new college entrance and exit English tests. Most foreign English teachers here feel that teaching for tests and not for communication is one of the main problems with the Japanese educational system (and I tend to agree) but if it gets more decent foreign teachers working in Japan then it’s fine by me.

Loan Words In Japanese And Korean

When I lived in Korea, a lot of the Konglish words that drove the other teachers crazy didn’t really phase me. A lot of them I already knew from learning Japanese. Somewhere along the way, for whatever reason, a number of loan words from English entered both Japanese and Korean. The interesting thing is that quite a few of them have the same odd meaning in both Japanese and Korean. After coming back to Japan I realized that a lot of loan words that seemed very Korean to me were in fact also used in Japan.

Here’s a list of some English loan words that have the same odd meaning in Japanese and Korean.

Mansion – a nice apartment. If you say you live in a mansion in Japan or Korea it’s not nearly as impressive as in the states.
Cider – lemon/lime soda. This drink is really popular in Korea and I drank it all the time. In Japan it’s about as popular as 7-Up is back home.
Skinship – this is an odd one in that it’s not a directly imported word. It means holding hands and is used kind of like PDA is in the west.
Punk – punctured tire.
Sand – an abbreviation of sandwich commonly used on packaging, leading to fun copy like, “Delicious sand for your happy life.”
Sharp – mechanical pencil.
Fighto/fighting – ubiquitously shouted for encouragement. It has nothing to do with arguing or violence.
Apart – short for apartment building. Refers to the building more than the room.
Autobike – a motorcycle. Confusingly, a bike is also often a motorcycle.
Cunning – cheating.
Service – getting something for free from a business. Sadly for me, Korea is way more into this than Japan.
Talent – A person whose only talent is standing in front of a camera on a variety show.
Arbeit – this means part time job in both countries but it’s not English, it’s German.

Apologizing In Japan

Apologizing is a big part of life in Japan. I’m not talking about apologizing for doing something wrong, which is par for the course most anywhere. Of course this is done in Japan, and often in spectacular fashion with a 90-degree bow and crying and everything. Just look on Youtube for the video of AKB48 member Minegishi Minami apologizing for going out on a date for a look at how serious apologizing can get. I’m not even talking about stepping on someone’s foot or wearing someone’s bathroom slippers into the living room, both of which are certainly worth apologizing for.

No, I’m referring to the little apologies that occur throughout the day. They happen so frequently they’re not even really apologies anymore, more like tiny little verbal social buffers that keep Japanese society moving smoothly.

Here’s an example: every school has what’s basically a full time tea lady. When she puts your tea on your desk, it’s customary to both thank her and apologize for going to the trouble of making tea for you. Yes, it’s her job and if she didn’t do it she’d be looking for a new one but the fact remains that she has just done something for you and this deserves to be acknowledged.

Another example: the postman brings a package to your door. You can thank him in a few different ways and you would probably also apologize to him for taking the trouble to bring you your mail. Again, it’s his job but he’s still doing something for you. Hence, the apology.

The word to use in these occasions is sumimasen. It’s said so often it is often slurred as suimasen. This is actually the negative form of the verb sumu, which has a few different meanings, including to feel at ease. So in the negative it means to be uneasy. You feel bad or guilty for troubling someone and so you let them know that you feel bad about it.

Where it gets interesting is that sumimasen can be used interchangeably with thank you. It may sound off to substitute an apology for an expression of thanks but they both fulfill the same purpose: they acknowledge the efforts of another person.

Japan is a very polite place, as one may infer from this. To an American, though, all this apologizing can seem odd and heavy-handed. In America, there’s a tendency to apologize less with people we’re close with. My co-workers are constantly apologizing to me (as they are with everyone else) but to me it feels like I’m being kept at a distance, that they’re walking on eggshells around me. I very much doubt that this is their intention though. It’s just the way that I culturally interpret their apologies.

I’m trying to keep this in mind at work: I’m not being kept at a distance; I’m being treated as an equal, as someone worth apologizing to. And that’s not bad.