Yesterday I mentioned a failed business and how I ended up teaching the classes I’d hoped to teach, sort of. I also mentioned there were some issues. Today I thought I’d talk about those issues.

Basically, you have to keep in mind that although Japan managed to reduce its workers unions to empty, somewhat  noisy shells, the teachers’ union still maintains a certain amount of influence and prestige. The mandatory four skills classes were, essentially, a shot across the bow from the government to the teachers’ union that they’d be facing new rules and, possibly, regular evaluations. They also took place during summer vacation.

I taught the classes in two phases. First I was called in as a substitute on weekend for a shortened proto version of the course I still don’t understand. The Japanese English teachers were polite enough but there was a lot of sighing and eye-rolling every time I said it was time to do an activity. (It was a lot like telling a teenaged daughter to clean up her stuff and/or a lot like me when I’m forced to attend such workshops.)

Not a lot happened, to me but one of my friends came back from a break to find “Fuck You” written on the blackboard–remember what I said about teenaged daughters. He went through their handwritten assignments and using handwriting analysis figured out who wrote it and then strangled the guy and threw his corpse out the window. (So I heard; my friend may have simply discussed the issue with the guy but that doesn’t seem as plausible to me.)

Eventually the courses went “live”. They were Monday through Friday six hours a day. At first the students were actually pleasant because the ones who went early were keeners/ass kissers apparently intent on impressing someone. I came away from the first classes with several friends among the students until the voice came down from on high “Thou shalt make no friends among thy charges! Neither shalt thou have any friends amongst these masses which are around thee!” (Something like that.)

Towards the end of the four years, as the deadline for teachers to complete the course came closer, we got the diehards. We got the teachers who’d fought the course as long as possible and when I arrived to teach my class you could feel the anger and hatred.

Oddly, they were not the ones I managed to piss off.

I started class by saying I appreciated them being there because I was sure there was nothing they’d rather be doing on a beautiful summer’s day than sitting in a room in a school having some foreign guy tell them how to do their jobs. I then told them that I sympathized because there were a lot of things I’d rather be doing too–I just left out the part about me being there voluntarily, which is not, technically, lying–and that I hoped I could give them something to take away and that I didn’t waste their time.

Everything went well after that. They relaxed and participated, even when the curriculum was clunky. While I and the other teachers taught, we had a woman from the Tokyo Board of Education office roaming around listening in on us. At some point I told them my students were lucky. Because they teach at public school and when the students asked “Whey do we have to study English?” they could just say “Ask the Ministry of Education”.  (I said it with it’s Japanese name “Monbukasho” This brought some laughs. I said because I was at a private school I couldn’t say “Ask Monbukasho.” This brought more laughs.

Then, at the start of lunch time, I was told by a Japanese staff member from my company that there were some issues about my class making fun of the Ministry of Education. I said that’s not what happened and I’d talk about it after lunch. By the time I got back from lunch things had hit the fan. The staff member panicked and high level people from my company were already there. Apparently the woman from the BoE, who’s English wasn’t that good, heard:

Me: blah blah blah blah Ministry of Education. (snort)
Students: LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL They suck.
Me: blah blah blah blah Ministry of Education. (snort)
Students: ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO They are evil.

I explained everything and apologized and during their brief interviews/interrogations–yes, this is how things are done where I work–my students vouched for me as well.

Luckily for me, other teachers were doing worse. The course was supposed to be conducted only in English and one guy was holding a major graded discussion in Japanese, which actually did make his students angry. In the end my students rocked their final presentations much to the delight of the woman from the BoE. I praised the students but she said they had a good teacher. I thanked her and said “Do you have any BoE positions available?”

Apparently she didn’t, but I was invited back the next year, so it wasn’t a complete loss.

When I first got to my schools in Niigata the first thing I noticed was that a lot of my Japanese English Teachers (with a couple exceptions) were young. In fact, a good percentage of the staff were young. At the end of the year, I also noticed that a lot of the young staff went away and were replaced with more young staff. (With exceptions.)

This is partly the result of the way a lot of prefectures in Japan treat their teachers. They tend to do military style assignments of three years before moving on. In the case of Niigata, the prefecture tried to send young teachers as far away from home as possible for their first job. Since Nou-Machi was hell and gone from Niigata City, it got a lot of young teachers.

After three years, the teachers moved to a new school a little closer to home for another three year assignment. After that the explanations got confusing and I started to get a headache trying to understand it but the gist was that by their third assignment teachers began to have some choice in where they wanted to go. There is also some politics involved because the school boards also get some say in who they want.

This system had a lot of odd effects. First, it guaranteed that every district, no matter how small and/or undesirable could get teachers. (This would solve a lot of problems for district in Western-Kansas.) On a personal level it also forced the teachers to be less dependent on their families for support which was great for their personal development.

On the other hand, it also meant that Nou-machi was full of new teachers suddenly discovering that a couple weeks of practicum (not a joke) with little time in front of the class didn’t really prepare them for teaching.

The other effect was that, because Nou-machi was rural and out of the way (I could get to Tokyo just as fast as I could get to Niigata City), not a lot of teachers volunteered to work there once they had enough experience to make a choice. The school boards then played some politics and a lot of older teachers ended up having their choice taken away and were sent to Nou. That also had some interesting effects.

When I was working with younger JTE’s I could pretty much raise them up in the way I wanted them to go. They were also really good at speaking English. My last year though, Nou Junior High School was issued two older teachers who very much wanted to be some place else. Because they were older, it was difficult for me to raise them up in the way I wanted them to go and that led to a bit of tension. I, of course, was very flexible and did my best to support them. Well, not really, I didn’t get along with them at all. I don’t remember a single class I taught with them even though I can remember at least one class from every teacher I worked with. I don’t even remember their real names.

The first I remember only as The Airhead. I all fairness, she  was much more concerned about her pregnancy than dealing with a loud foreigner and/or doing much teaching. She did her best to fit in but she was distracted.

The second I remember mainly as the Bitter Bitch. She resented being in Nou-machi and was convinced that everyone and everything in Nou was backwards and illiterate. (Especially the loud foreigner, who I’m pretty sure she remembers as “that self-righteous asshole”.) I would try to show her that the students already knew the alphabet and the days of the week, etc. but she just went ahead and taught as if they didn’t. The tension eventually led to swearing (the f-word was involved at one point) but we learned to get along and just do our own things.

Eventually, I was the one who went away. My successor, who was a heck of lot nicer than I am, said that the Airhead improved a great deal and that he pretty much kept his head down around the Bitter Bitch and they got along to get along.

About this time 18 years ago I was invited to join the Grade 3 (9th grade) Camp at Nou Junior High School. Unfortunately, at that time, I had ears but couldn’t ear English spoken in Japanese. I also didn’t know how to ask the right questions.

Because I was still in the honeymoon, Japan is wonderful phase of moving to Japan, I agreed to go to the camp. Thinking back, I’m trying to remember the exact moment when my colleague told me what to bring by telling me it wasn’t necessary. I was told the teachers would be sleeping in cabins but when I asked what I should bring, I was told I didn’t need to bring anything.

Now, I’m not sure if this meant that because we had cabins I wouldn’t need to bring a tent, or she assumed I understood what was meant by “camp” and “cabin” and would know what to bring. I also pointed out I didn’t have a sleeping bag and that didn’t seem to be a problem. Either way, I went minimal–the camera and a book to read being the most important things I was carrying–and was surprised when I arrived at the gathering point and saw students and teachers loading fairly hefty bags and sleeping kits into a truck.

At that point, if I were smart (and if you’ve been reading regularly, well, you know) I would have hurried home–I only lived a few minutes a way–and assembled a blanket roll but, well, you know. Also, with no evidence whatsoever, I convinced myself there’d be futons in the cabins. We took the train two stops and then began hiking. We went through town, crossed an expressway, went through a field and then followed a road into the hills. The hike itself wasn’t that difficult but it was Japan in August and the humidity was two percentage points away from liquid.

The camp itself looked nice but had apparently been located in the most humid place possible. I, of course, had only one shirt, now sweaty, and it didn’t dry completely while we were there. The cabins did exist, but they were empty rooms with no cots or futons and I would be sleeping on the bare floor.

The preliminaries were fun. The students cooked Japanese style curry for us and there was a bingo game–with the only prizes being a completed bingo–around a campfire. Bingo was followed by everyone heading off to their tents or cabins for sleep. At this point, I was still damp from my hike and, because the camp was in spitting distance of the ocean, it was cool enough to make me feel cold. I figured I could fashion a pillow out of a towel and my pack and eventually fall asleep.

However, the last card had yet to be played. One of my cabin mates, who also happened to be a colleague, also happened to be one of the world’s worst snorers. If I’d had a pillow I probably would have smothered him. I would discover after a manly attempt to suffer through it that he could be heard dozens of meters from the cabins. My usual panic “What have I done” freakout started and went down near the showers and restrooms, which had electric lights, and started reading my book to calm myself down.

I was seen by the chaperones, who would report what I’d done to my colleague who would apologize the next morning even though I was more angry at myself than anything else. Eventually I calmed down enough, and got sleepy enough, that I was able to get a couple hours sleep. The next day we went home and I was never invited to another camp.

The funny part is, as I write this and think back over what was said and what wasn’t said prior to the camp, I’m not actually sure I was actually invited to the camp in the first place. I may have misunderstood what was being said invited myself, which is why I didn’t get any information about what to bring to the camp.

Our oldest and I got back from visiting the in-laws today and spent the day recovering from the trip, the days sitting on the floor, and the time standing around watching our girls play computer games. All this has got me thinking about little vials of energy.

I suspect that part of the reason Japan was, and partly remains, a smoker’s heaven and a coffee drinker’s hell is the abundance of energy drinks (called “nutritional drinks”) available long before the West discovered Red Bull–an import from Thailand. In some ways energy drinks are better than coffee for workers in a hectic environment: There’s no mess; no one has to worry about being the one who empties the pot and has to waste precious time making a new one; there’s no chance of spilling on the way back to the desk; and there’s no chance some moron will slip decaffeinated evil in the mix. Energy drinks can be consumed quickly at the desk or during a smoke break.

My first experience with one of these came my second year in Japan. Mr. Oguma, the former punk-rock musician working as my Japanese English Teacher, either noticing I was tired or tired of me complaining I was tired, gave me a little bottle of energy drink. I don’t remember the name, but I remember it had coffee beans on the label. It had a nice, tart flavor and was gone in a few seconds. I wasn’t that impressed at first. Then my stomach felt warm; then that warmth spread to my entire torso and out into my limbs. Then I had one of those movie moments where I went “I’m not really feeling it” and then it hit and my teeth bared, my fingers made claws and I hissed. I was ready for work.

Almost every pharmaceutical company in Japan makes some form of energy drink and they range in price from a few dollars a bottle to over 20 dollars a bottle. I know one company that, as a right of passage, sends its new employees, regardless of their job, into shopping centers and into the streets to sell cases full of the drinks to passers-by. Because of the pharmaceutical connection, they were only sold in pharmacies. Several years ago, however, for reasons I don’t remember (best guess: money), Japan changed its law to allow energy drinks to be sold in convenience stores.

This created political problems for some of the pharmaceutical companies. One company has a pharmacy chain as one of their major stock holders. The pharmacy chain refuses to allow the drinks to be sold in convenience stores even though sales would probably double. (It would be like trying to buy aspirin if it could only be sold over-the-counter in pharmacies.)

I still generally avoid the energy drinks. The one’s I’ve tried were, with only a couple exceptions, free samples for human testing from clients. I’ve tried Red Bull a few times, but mostly when the Red Bull Mini and the Red Bull Girls are out in front of the station near where I work.

I prefer coffee.

After my batch of JET Programme members arrived in Tokyo, we were subjected to three days of orientation of questionable benefit. Our prefectural orientation involved a handful of people telling us that we’d get more pertinent information at our August training. One of our presenters then explained that the training would take place at something called a Kyoiku center, which is a kind of education hotel, and that there would be a lot of rules. The most important rule was that the there was a 10:30 curfew. In fact, at 10:30 the outside doors were locked.

This prompted one English lass in the front row to go into shock and keep repeating “You’re taking the piss. Right? You’re taking the piss right?” Our presenter assured us no piss of any kind was being taken. Now perhaps because, at the time, I was pushing 30 and had been in Air Force ROTC and the Peace Corps, I wasn’t surprised. A few years in those institutions will prepare you to handle both random rules and random bullshit. And then there was that “It’s part of the job” thing. However, “It’s part of the job” doesn’t go very far with young people yet to actually start their first jobs (in their minds, the orientations were just an extension of university).

We were then sent to our towns and while those of us working directly for the local governments were required to show up to the office and do “work”, those assigned to the prefecture got a month’s holiday. After that month, though, we all arrived at the Kyoiku center, some of us happy to see different faces that all spoke English and some of us wondering why the hell vacations had been interrupted for more classes.

The fun started right away, when we learned a couple more dirty little secrets of the kyoiku center: not only were the doors locked at 10:30 but it was lights out at 11:00 because that’s when power to all the rooms was shut off, which also meant there’d be no air conditioning until morning. Keep in mind, this was Japan in August and it was nasty hot and humid (those are technical terms). Also, any official drinking could only occur in certain common areas during the half-hour between lock in and lights out as we were not allowed in the common areas after lights out.

The kyoiku center did make one concession by opening the baths and showers in the morning to appeal to our bizarre Western idea of not waking up sweaty and going straight to work.

We were allowed to leave the center for the 5 ½ hours between the end of classes and lock in. The complication is we were in a rural area with spotty train availability. In order to get back by 10:30 we had to leave Niigata City around nine. It was amazing to see how much partying a group of Westerners could fit into the 2 ½ hours available to them.

Not much happened the first year, but in the years after that there were incidents involving loud noise and people pulling fire alarms to get the doors open after lock in.

I suspect things would have been different if we’d gone to the center straight from Tokyo. Please keep in mind we were not in the military and this was not a military institution, although it was where local firefighters did their course work. The organizers kept insisting, though, that this kind of thing was important to the Japanese. It was a hell of a test of flexibility, but it all seemed very old school in a well, old kind of way.