A Reason for Feeling Thankful

So, last Friday we finally caved and met up with the rest of the ALTs during one of their two weekly bar meetings. We weren't trying to outright avoid them, we just don't like the idea of drinking on a Wednesday night or staying out until one or two a.m. on a Friday evening/Saturday morning. Well, getting to the point, we're glad we went (although we don't plan to do it every Friday). We'd rather spend our money on SUSHI!! Or, at least spend more time with some Japanese teacher friends that Veronica knows from school (we are in Japan after all). I think if we told the other ALTs that we'd rather socialize with Japanese people on the weekend they'd definitely take it the wrong way. I just don't think most of them are here for the same reasons that we are. Plus, we have the privilege of sharing the happenings of our day with each other. We don't have to meet up with other ALTs to vent. We did have some good laughs on Friday though. There's an ALT from Ireland who's quite the jokester but we really had to concentrate when listening to him because his English was so difficult to understand.

Anyway, I wanted to follow up on our very first blog where in we made some predictions about our Japanese experience to come. Numbered from one to ten:

1. Yes, our apartment is tiny, but it's actually bigger than we thought it would be.

2. We definitely eat sushi at least two times every week...yum.

3. Our jobs ARE a breeze. But this has given me the opportunity to start up my after school class in which I make a powerpoint of a famous English song with pictures and matching lyrics that the students can sing along with and learn English through the use of pictures. Next week we're doing Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called To Say I Love You". It should be another hit.

4. The first month wasn't "overwhelming" but it was exhausting. It was mostly exciting though.

5. We have travelled quite a bit so far but there is so much more to see. We are excited to have our first guests and show them around too.

6. I actually don't feel all that tall. Some teachers are almost as tall as me at my school.

7. Yes, we are astonished by the average Japanese body weight here. But, this is because Japanese people are more healthy than Americans, not because they are malnourished in any way.

8. Yeah, we do update our blog about once a week. Do you like?

9. I think we HAVE grown from our experiences here so far. I also think we have more growing to do. We'll revisit this one again in 2010.

10. I do think that this has already been one of the best experiences of our lives.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow. And although we won't be able to share a Thanksgiving meal with family THIS year, we'll be thinking of everyone back home and counting our blessings. Loving family, friends, this experience, and good health are just a few things that we are thankful for this year. What are you thankful for?

Festivals and Giving Thanks

Konnichiwa, dear bloggers! As of tomorrow, Jon and I will already have been in Japan for three months! The time has flown by, yet we have now settled quite nicely into the routine of life in Ashikaga as ALTs. Not so many things are new to us anymore, and while it feels nice to become more familiar with our surroundings, I also miss being surprised by different cultural and societal differences. Or I should say, being as surprised. There are still some things that we haven't become completely used to, and probably won't adjust to completely during our stay here. The hygiene factors, for sure, count among those things.

Life at school continues with some events marking the seasons: on Halloween weekend my school had "bunkasai" - the school festival. It was an amazing experience! Every class decorated their classroom in a different theme (haunted houses and general game rooms were popular). There were also special performances in the gym - chorus performances, dance routines, brass band performances, cello solos, speeches about exchange trips to Springfield, IL (the sister city of Ashikaga), etc. I enjoyed the gym performances the most, especially the rendition of YMCA the brass band performed, with players not playing locating themselves around the gym and waving pom poms in time to the music! Everyone got into it and for once I could participate full force and know what I was doing! The students were all very dedicated to the preparation for the school festival - in fact during the week leading up to bunkasai, classes after lunch were cancelled and the whole school spent the last half of the day preparing for the event.

Although Japanese junior high school students have very long days (if they participate in school clubs) generally starting at 8 am and ending at 5 or 6 (after which some students still go to extra tutorial classes away from school), much of the day can be dedicated to physical fitness in the form of the school clubs (table tennis, soft tennis, badminton, etc). Classes seem to take a back seat to all sorts of activities like clubs, or different festivals. This month my school has been preparing for our own chorus competition and last week all classes after lunch were cancelled to either practice or for teachers to hold parent-teacher conferences. Needless to say, I have had to struggle to keep myself occupied at school during the day. Sadly enough, I also already exhausted the 15 English books I picked out for myself to keep up my reading habit! I will have to be more creative in school as well as out, from now on.

Today we went back to Coco Farm and Winery in the beautiful hills of Ashikaga. They were holding their annual Harvest Festival and we had been told by several natives that it was the place to be! It was definitely crowded - most people took shuttle buses because of the sheer number of people crowding the location, but we took the smarter route and opted to bike (as if we had another choice ha!). It was nice to be able to weave in and out of traffic and not have to sit in a car. When we arrived, we paid $20 a piece and got our 'Harvest kit' which included a wine glass each, a 'member button' and a ticket which we exchanged for a bottle of wine and souvenir corkscrew. There were food tents and wine tents everywhere and a stage situated in front of the vineyard where the crowd sat enjoying the music and refreshments. Our friends Michi and Yuki (the same ones who went paragliding with me) met us there and kept us company. There were so many people there, and more foreigners than we've ever seen in Ashikaga! Something we noticed shortly after arriving in Japan was the lack of foreigners in most places - they stand out a lot - especially lack of dark skinned people (African Americans, etc). In fact it took me several weeks to even see one African American looking guy! Today there were at least two I saw a couple times, and the fact that the sight is so rare here is still bizarre to me. We saw several young people that looked like ALTs and a few of the ALTs that we know from Ashikaga schools. Normally we don't see any of the other ALTs on a regular basis, although it seems as if we are in the minority with this. Other ALTS hang out frequently together, but we don't really want to spend our time with other people from our home culture because we're here to experience Japanese culture! It was a great day and experience at the festival, but we decided to go home after witnessing a man 10 feet away from us vomit into his lap and the tarp he was sitting on. Officially the first time seeing an intoxicated Japanese person, and we saw a lot of them today!

With November already half over (incredible!) we are starting to look forward to our winter vacation and Kristin's visit! Thanksgiving is coming up and I have done my duty and drawn some pilgrims, Native Americans and turkeys for the English bulletin board at school. Explaining and focusing on my own culture's holidays and hearing them taught to students by Japanese English teachers has made me appreciate them more than I ever have before. I never really thought about how many special things we do around Halloween until I had to think about it and make a game for my students around our traditional activities. This week as I cut out and colored my Thanksgiving decorations I returned to a familiar elementary school activity and thought about what I was thankful for. I deliberated and wrote out each of the ideas I came up with, cut them out and put them up on the board under the heading "I am thankful for...". Jon, family, friends, music, languages, food, water, oceans, books, sunshine and my dog were some of the things I wrote down. In fact, with the death of my dog at the beginning of this week, I am thankful for so many memories of loved ones, those here, and those who are no longer among us. I am thankful that my family could see Sasha grow up, thankful she was there with us during the good times and important moments, during the scary times and the sad. I can still hear her tail thumping on the carpet as someone walked past her, or her nails clicking on the pavement. It's nice to have those memories to draw upon when needed. I am so thankful for memories.

What about you? What are you thankful for?

Speeches and Keeping the Peace

So Japan, along with the rest of the world, is in the early stages of a long influenza season. The only thing is, around here, influenza is visible. Most people are wearing masks 24-7. That includes Veronica and I while we're at school. Both of our schools have made it mandatory that all students and staff wear masks all day to prevent getting the flu. Even though the WHO (the World Health Organization--working out of the United Nations) states that there is no evidence to support that wearing of masks by healthy individuals helps to prevent them from getting sick. This is of course assuming that nobody who is sick (and not wearing a mask) sneezes into your face at some point throughout the day. What is important for flu free individuals, however, is practicing proper and frequent hand washing throughout the day and NOT touching your face (i.e. eyes, nose, mouth) where the virus can easily enter your body through one of your moist, mucus membrane tissues. Until recently, I was under the impression that all modern nations understood these illness prevention techniques. I know you're thinking, "Jon, stop whining and just wear the mask." I would if that was all there was to it. Please ponder the following and leave a comment after this blog entry if you still think I'm over reacting. Issue number one: I am the only man who washes his hands always, often, or ever in my school. I know this because the same bar of soap has been in the men's restroom since I started working there on September 1st and it hasn't gotten much smaller. When I purchased some liquid hand soap to donate to the men's restroom in hopes of making washing one's hands even an easier activity than it already is, I noticed that the bar soap started to dry up and crack from lack of use (and I also don't think anyone has used my liquid hand soap besides me). I only hope that in the women's restroom the situation isn't identical. Issue number two: Since gargling with water is encouraged and brushing one's teeth after lunch is also encouraged (this is mostly for show, not true hygiene purposes), there is a glass in the men's restroom next to the faucet that I've been encouraged to use if I would like. Obviously, it's not being washed ever. Issue number three: Teacher's have now started to spray an isopropyl alcohol solution onto their new mask before putting it on their face every morning. They don't allow it to dry before securing it to their face. Umm, why not just spray the rubbing alcohol directly into your mouth? Whatever goal you are trying to achieve, I'm pretty sure it will work even faster that way. These are only three of the things that I've witnessed at my school (Veronica has some great stories as well) that not only don't prevent illness, but actually encourage the spreading of it. Some other things like running humidifiers in every room of the school I just find humorous. I was told that they help prevent the flu from spreading. To which I responded with, "Who, really, I didn't know that."


These illogical practices remind me of one of the cultural expectations here in Japan concerning the repression of questioning. As we've stated before, you're just not supposed to ask too many questions. If you do, you run the risk of people assuming that you don't know what you're doing. Kind of like boot camp. Just do, don't think or ask any questions. Maybe, just maybe, some questioning concerning influenza (What is a virus anyway? How is it spread? etc...) would be beneficial to our students right now. I don't think I am the best candidate (considering my foreigner status) to be testing these uncharted waters.


Since our last blog, Veronica and I were able to see the fruits of our labor (since September 1st) come to fruition in the form of the Ashikaga Junior High School English Speech Contest. We've both been spending extra long hours at school helping four students (four at each of our schools) prepare for the contest. Over eleven junior highs and forty students participated in the event. All of the long hours squeezing enthusiasm and pronunciation out of our students paid off with 5 of the 9 speech contest awards going to either my students or Veronica's students. Actually, one of my students came down with the flu and couldn't go to the contest so only one student from each of our schools didn't get an award (of the students who participated). Not bad huh? One of the other ALTs who was sitting next to me said that he didn't work on pronunciation with his students at all because he thought he didn't have enough time and that it was too difficult of a task to tackle all together. So much for trying. After meeting a number of the other ALTs and receiving numerous mass e-mails "To All ALTs" from Heart (our employer) that have a disciplinary tone to them, I've come to the conclusion that most of the other ALTs don't take their job too seriously.


Last Thursday I went with my school to the large theater venue in town for my school's choir contest. Basically, every student in school (all 750 of them) was expected to participate. Each homeroom class was a choir. Also, the accompaniment and conducting was also done by students from that homeroom. Pretty amazing right? And believe it or not, most classes actually sounded pretty good. Not only are Japanese students more physically fit than American students, but as a whole they are more musical as well. I've read (and witnessed) that students who have some type of musical influence at a young age often excel in other subject too. Pretty scary. Hey students back in America, if that one doesn't have you thinking, I'll close today's entry with something that will. This is a quote from a student's speech that I heard at the recent speech contest. The fact that the student giving the speech didn't feel the need to clarify what she meant by this line speaks volumes about the Japanese work ethic here. The student was talking about difficult challenges in her life and concluded with...."No matter the challenge...I'll handle it like a Japanese person." What vision enters your mind if you were to replace the word Japanese with the word American in this quote? Just wondering........