Musings...

I've been blogging in my head all week, now I'm finally gonna get it down!

During some of my classes at the beginning of the week, a shrill whistle was distracting most of the students. The first time I saw the first-year boys PE class, I didn't know whether to be shocked or awed. The new PE teacher was doing all sorts of military formations with the boys. He would blow the whistle, and one boy would raise his hand and the rest would uniformly line up around him. He would blow the whistle again and the boys would disperse into equally formed lines. It was super-intense! I could never imagine seventh-grade boys in America having that sort of discipline! There would be some lawsuit about harsh treatment or something...anyways, as shocked as I was, I was also pretty impressed at the control that the teacher had over the students!

I went to the first-year English classes for the first time this year. You would have thought I was quite a celebrity the way their faces lit up when I entered their class! I did a really brief introduction, and then we had a "shitsumon (question) time." Of course I got the "what's your favorite food?" "what do you like about Japan?" and "what's your favorite singer?" (All in Japanese, of course!) But I also got some interesting questions (as translated by my teacher), such as "what do you think about Bush?" what do you think about the Koizumi administration?" "what can you do?" (this was a question in the textbook that a student just found and repeated...I wasn't sure how to answer, so I just said, "I can do many things!") "do you think Mr. Arai (their English teacher) is cool?" "do you have a boyfriend?" "do you have any children?" "who is your favorite samurai?" One little girl raised her hand to ask a question, and when I called on her she, without saying a word, walked up to the board and drew a cartoon character, pointed at it, and looked at me. I basically took her question to be, "what do you think of this cartoon character?" Who needs language to communicate?! : ) Some of the students did adorably try to speak English, either straight from the textbook or that they had learned in elementary school or cram school. It was kind of sad to see the first-year students enthusiasm, and realize that within a month or two, they will become silent and embarrased to speak English. They are fresh from elementary school, and are still basically children. With a combination of puberty and the strictness of Japanese school, soon the students will become much more subdued and hesitant in class.

I'm not sure if I was awake, or if I was woken (is that a word?) by the earthquake this morning (I don't even know what time it was, maybe 2:30am??) Or should I say earthquakes...there have been so many small earthquakes throughout the day. I know I've lived in Japan for awhile because the earthquakes don't even phase me anymore. I usually don't even stop what I'm doing because the earthquakes are usually so shallow and so long. But this morning, and then this evening, a few hours ago, I did go and stand under the door between my kitchen and room. The only thing I really do when an earthquake hits is to make sure the cupboards in my kitchen are closed. I heard on the news that there have been lots of earthquakes in this area, and there are more to come. I'm just glad I won't be at school so that I don't have to do some big earthquake drill!

This morning at school I arrived to find all the teachers standing and lecturing 4 boys in the teachers room. I couldn't sit down because no one else was, so I just stood there until the lecturing ending. After it was all over, I asked my new confidant (the young cute teacher :)) what had happened. I couldn't understand the details, but basically the boys had not followed a traffic signal on their bikes the previous day. Someone had probably reported it to the school (because the students wear school uniforms, everyone knows what school they go to) and then they got in trouble with the teachers. In fact, there was a student meeting after the lecture, probably to tell all the students what happened and to warm them to follow traffic rules (I had a first-year class to go to, so I didn't attend the meeting). Again, I can't imagine an American teacher lecturing their student for not following traffic rules, unless there was some serious accident. Tateyama is very countryside, so the road the boys crossed was probably only 3 meters wide. Just another example of the high-level of involvement of Japanese teachers in their students lives.

This week was full of half-days because teachers were doing home visits. Home visits! Reminds me of the pioneer days...The purpose of the visits is for teachers to know where their students live in case they have to drive them home (I think it's illegal in America for teachers to drive students home?) and to meet their parents. Teachers have such a big job in Japan! I thought they were just having parent-teacher conferences, but I was confused why all the teachers were leaving school. Then I realized they were going to students' homes!

In my third-year classes, my teacher has started the habit of asking me to sit and read the newspaper when he is explaining grammar in Japanese. While I'm very thankful that he understands how boring it is to just stand and pretending to be "teaching" when you have no idea what's going on, it does feel a little weird to be sitting in front of the class just browsing the newspaper and not paying attention to the lesson at all! But it certainly is more interesting for me!