Japan's Waiting Room
Ogawa JHS
The school has a total of 19 student in all three grades, making it the smallest school I go to. The right half of it is actually the elementary school. Its school motto is "love". The students here are PAINFULLY shy and quiet. Lessons actually hurt because I'll ask a question and no one answers... I may as well stay in the staff room and teach the rice cooker. The rice cooker would be more responsive. But the kids are actually really wonderful outside class. It's just in class that I want to pull me hair out.
I almost forgot to post the PotD because I've been stewing in anger all night. My friend Chie (a girl who was born and raised here in Sakawa but has excellent English and is my age) was sent a very hurtful email by a 60-something Dutch man who recently moved to Sakawa and built a house here. He invited her to visit his home and they have been emailing back and forth for about two weeks. To make a long story short (in which he very slyly got Chie involved in his unsanctioned scheme to start a exchange student program here,) he was upset with how long it took Chie to respond to his emails (she had to ask me for help understanding his overly verbose language) and told her that her invitation to his house is revoked and said a lot of other hurtful and totally untrue things about her character. This guy married a Japanese woman but obviously has no clue about Japanese protocol and, apparently, no regard for it. I felt so helpless when Chie talked to me about it on the verge of tears. All she wanted to do was see this guy's home, have a cup of tea with him and his wife, and make a new friend. She doesn't have the time or the status to get involved with a (frankly, ridiculous) exchange program. One of this guy's ideas for the "program" was having students on both sides have an essay contest to decide who gets to go and then when the students arrive, have them preform their winning essays in front of a huge assembly. Another brilliant idea was to have students preform one of the screenplays written by Hans Christian Anderson (in Japanese) for the delight of the Dutch exchange students...
Excuse me while I catch my breath from laughing so hard.
All it would take is one day of working with Japanese kids to discover that just getting them to stand up to give the daily morning report is like pulling teeth. Japanese kids do not preform plays outside elementary school. They do not read essays filled with their private thoughts in front of droves of people. Everything about the plan is ridiculous and laughable.
But the fact that he was so mean to Chie makes me want to go burn his house to the ground so he will move back to the Netherlands where he obviously belongs. As I told Chie, he is a lonely, bored little man who has nothing to do all day but dream up ways to force his own culture on Japan. And not just Japan, but the most inaka part of the whole country. He doesn't speak Japanese and he doesn't know anything about the culture here (he mentioned specifically in his email that he's frustrated with "the hindersome bureaucracy"-- hindersome isn't even a WORD!) He does not work here, he simply lives here. He has less power to change the system than an ALT does and we are pathetically powerless.
Grr! I'm still so angry. I think I'll be angry for awhile. Poor Chie. She is too wonderful to be treated like that.