Do you like snake?

Japan has extremely high levels of employment. Everybody here as a job, a role, a purpose in society - more than anything, because it would be dishonourable not to have one. There are two consequences of this. Number one, there are about 8 people required to do 1 persons work (leading to the fact that,) number two, everything is expensive (for example you could pay up to £20 for a melon). The impact on their society is interesting. Firstly, you have to understand that people's work is the most important thing here and most employees devote their lives to their (one) company. Secondly, work starts early (a commuter train would be packed at 7am on a Sunday morning) and ends late and even the school kids are conditioned to this from an early age (most have after school clubs from three years old that finish at six). Thirdly, their obsession with processes (and tradition) rather than the outcome they desire clouds any decision to actually make things more efficient. It has always been that 6 people are required to sell you a Big Mac, and it always will be. Being at work is often a substitution for actually doing anything, provided you look busy and are suffering from severe stress. It is beginning to drive me insane.

Take for example my school. In the English department we have four teachers, a head teacher and a supervisor. We also have a Japanese teacher present with us in each lesson. As a result there are often 4-5 teachers to a class of 20, many of whom just stand about and do nothing. Quite often I am one of them, because there is nothing to do and it is begining to get me down. The Japanese teachers work from 7am to 8pm everyday, yet they stop teaching at 2pm and their admin work is light due to the fact there are so many administrators already there. Yet they walk about, or sit at their desks, look busy and wait for their boss to leave so that they can. This is repeated all over Japan. I find it infuriating as it is against my nature. Japan is a country that can move a train 500km in 2hours and arrive on time, all the time. Yet last Sunday it took 6 teachers to supervise 20 pupils waiting in class to take part in a school play. Can anyone tell me why? And yet, everyone is so stressed, in case the slightest mistake is made - if I was them I would be more worried that some western consultant comes to their school and axes 80% of the irrelevant jobs they do. At least then I suppose mummy and daddy would see the kids, something that rarely happens here and the affect that their replacement fathers (Nintendo, Sony and Sega) is having on Japanese culture will probably provoke a revolution in the next twenty years. I for one would welcome it. The new generation of Japanese youngsters, despite their institutionalised education, are resistant to it. As I sit on my train home after another ineffective day at school I sometimes wonder if I am not the only one there who is thinking that there is bound to be more to life than this.

I crave intelligent conversation. The vocabularly of my students (the most of whom are under 6) is limited. For example, consider an average lunchtime conversation with some of them.

Dean: "What is your name?"
Student: "I am fine thank-you"
Dean (slightly more slowly) "What ... is ... your ... name?"
Student: "I like rice"
Dean: "I like rice too, what colour is rice?"
Student: "I am fine thankyou"
Dean: "How old are you?"
Student: "I like rice"

And so it goes on. Last week I did a UK presentation (in the most basic terms I could think of) to some teenagers... I asked them to ask me some questions in English at the end. They consisted of:

Do you like rice?

Do you like snake?

Can you swim?

What is your favourite colour?

I despair, there are only so many times I can point at animals and say "What is that?". Outside of work it is not much better as the Japanese people I know are just as inept with English, and afraid to try as they fear some severe punishment if they make a mistake. I suppose I should help them, but it is tough. Don't get me wrong this is an amazing experience, and I am still, despite it all, enjoying myself - but, it is difficult to accept and very different from what I expected. I guess i underestimated the value of the British education system - at university here you can get credits for dancing classes and as a result, even those fluent in English, struggle with intelligent conversation and the amount of sarcasm I use. Yes, the most simplest of things will make them laugh, but the more complex I'm afraid, just washes straight over all of them. Maybe I'm just not that funny.

So tomorrow after a brief holiday, it is back to school. I wonder what they will ask me, I guess it can't be more random than "Do you like snake?" Maybe I should teach them it is "a snake".

Umbrellas

Cynics among us, (or realists, I'm not sure!) believe that both Gulf Wars were fought over oil not freedom. Many development economists believe the next world war, if there is one, will not be fought over oil, religion or political ideology. But over water. It is the world's most precious resource. Which is remarkable considering the amount of it that there is about. Japan, positioned in Monsoon Asia, recevies twice the world's average rainfall, which believe me is a lot. And, as I stare out of my bedroom window, looking out on night time in Osaka, listening to the patter of the torrential rain against the ground, trying to dry off from the soaking I received on the way home, I wonder. I wonder who on earth would fight a war over this, there is more than enough to go around - yet, I suppose, I've never lived in sub-sahara Africa, or in India or in the Middle East.
Everyone in Japan seems to own an umbrella, I must get one. Global warming or not, when it rains here it pours and it is doing so with an alarming frequency. The t-shirt wearing cyclists that freely pedalled their way over the footpaths of Osaka (nearly wiping out half the predestrians in the process); that did so, so skillfully, one handed, whilst smoking a cigarette, have gone. I guess they where just practising for winter, because now they wear thick coats, do not smoke but instead carry their umbrella in one hand whilst steering with the other. Apart from nearly losing an eye to one yesterday I have escaped this menace so far. The environment and resource conservation is important here. Everywhere is geared towards recycling, towards saving electricity and water. The air has changed in the last week though. It is getting cold, winter is coming, and I feel as if I was a little hasty in my first update when I began to gloat about the lovely weather. Saying that, the kids still come to school in shorts, a t-shirt and a cap; whilst I prefer a thick coat and a very heavy jumper. It will be like that all winter, even in snow. It's weird.
I'm getting better at teaching. It is tough though, and I must admit I am struggling with certain elements of the Japanese work culture. The work hours for one. Yes they work long hours, (regular Japanese teachers start at 7am and work until 8pm. I on the otherhand, do 9 hours per day) but that is not the problem. For a country that can get an intercity train to travel 500km in 2 hours to a levely of punctuality within 30 seconds, they are suprsingly inefficient. At some stage I think I will rebel, the rule for instance that the youngest person cannot leave work until someone older has done so, (is outdated and) may be fine for the Japanese, but not me. Part of me thinks the nation is slowly killing itself, and it is not the addiction to cigarrettes, or pollution from exhaust fumes, but it is the fact that most of them do 60 hour plus weeks at work, and barely see their kids, or daylight. Yet they don't need to. Yesterday I was sitting doing nothing, waiting around to start teaching (I had to come early because everyone else does) they told me to hold some cards when I asked for something to do. I felt a like a valuable member of the team, like about as valuable as a shelf - a shelf that could have done with an extra hour in bed, given that he had to wake at 6am. Despite this I am still enjoying it. The sun was never going to shine everyday, and I knew it would be different. Upon talking with people though, it seems though, that changes are afoot.
The English teachers I work with have been in Japan for ten years or more and they see a definite shift. The emergence of a new, westernised generation. The Play Station, Nintendo, Pokemon loving kids, who fight back, who answer back to their elders (when they come back from work on Sunday) - who disagree, who rebel, who refuse to conform to the stringent rules Japan tries to impose on them. Ten years ago, they say, that was unheard of. As I entered the public elementary school I teach at on Wednesdays, I saw it with my own eyes. Discipline in Japan is strange. A school teacher in a state school has three punishments at their disposal. Three solitary words. "Stop doing that!" That's it, no detention, no lines, no expulsion, no sending them out of the room - nothing else, nada. And some of those kids, let's put it diplomatically, are thugs (and they are only 6). Apparently those solitary three words were enough ten years ago, but cable TV, Coca Cola and video games have taken their toll spawned a mutant generation that the words just bounce off. Where it will take Japan too no one knows, but an American I spoke to reckons that they are going through many of the changes the US did in the 50's and 60's. I for one hope so, but I hope it ends differently than it has in the US. There is a certain amount of arrogance about older people here, that they think they are better, that they always know more, that I can't stand. In the words of George Orwell "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." Or so they would like to think.
The remainder of my week is spent at a plush, private, kindergarten. Here discipline is mandatory and I begin to understand why Japan is the way it is today. These kids are so institutionalised (from three years old), I fear that wearing too bright a shirt may blind one of them. The pressure on young people here (as well as their teachers) is immense, and it becomes clearer as to why it is home to one of the highest suicide rates in the world. In fact it is said that someone jumping in front of a Shinkansen is one of the few things that ever delays it. It happens more than you'd think. On Sunday we have a school play. If any class fails to perform to expectations their teacher will be sacked. I find it shocking, though it is not a suprise. This kindergarten is for the children of the elite, where daddy pays for institutionalisation, he demands success, and unlike in a state school, he demands discipline. Here, anything goes and one dirty look puts the fearful kids back into line, literally, because they must sit in a perfectly straight line whilst in class. No wonder the older ones are afraid to speak English, they are afraid of making a mistake, and Japan is not a forgiving society.
We do our best to make English fun, and to be fair the organisation I work for seems to be succeeding. Nevertheless it's world's apart from home. For a start they all carry umbrellas. Even the men.