Bullying in Japan

It makes me a little sad to say this, but this class of first years is the worst that I've taught so far (out of three different class years).

Don't get me wrong; it varies a lot by school, and at some of my other schools, the first years are a lovely bunch. But as far as kids with Attitude Problems, this year takes the cake. There's always been some students with motivation and attitude issues, especially at the technical schools. Generally (though not always) they're in the non-academic electricity/technology courses, since those are all boy classes (to be fair, boys at my academic school are a little rowdy as well sometimes). And the boys seem to aggravate each other, or one yankee kind of student will influence other students around him to be similarly bad (though this happens with girls too).

Hopefully things will get better though?

As an ALT who works in the countryside though, I've always considered myself lucky because my students have always been really nice, not like some of the horror stories I've heard students from around the cities talk about. No crazy boys punching each other or whatnot.

At least not until yesterday.

It was the first time I saw bullying in full force, beyond the usual taunting and picking on and mocking that will happen occasionally in the classroom. Literally, there were punches thrown and wrestling and forcibly restraining one student from moving and participating in the game we had been playing.

The "My Good Neighbor/Anyone Who/English/Ice-breaker Knock off of Fruits Basket" game can sometimes get a little crazy with students running and diving for seats, but I hadn't expected it to get this out of hand. Some of the students would, when one student stood up, would also stand up and grab the student so he couldn't sit down, and then throw the student away from the seat as they made a dash to grab the empty chair.

It was appalling and shocking. I didn't think the kids were this ballsy to be this mean and obviously violent against another student in the middle of class. In the middle of class. In front of two teachers! But no, they kept on going at it, even after we interrupted a couple times to tell them to play better and despite giving the bullies several warnings. I got so angry that I almost stopped the game in the middle and made them sit in silence and write for the rest of class. But this is Oral Communication class, so there's a part of me that doesn't support doing something they're going to have to just sit and write.

Part of me wanted to just kick him out of class. I wish there were some system like detention here, but to my knowledge, if there is one, it's never utilized. If the bully was doing poorly in school, I think I heard that it's a bit easier to kick him out because it's likely he'll drop out anyways. But this kid... his English grades are actually really good. It might just be that he's simply really bored in class, and taking it out on this kid is his way of alleviating his boredom and is also a kind of performance so that people give him attention. Still though, even if that's the case, it's unacceptable, the kind of things he's been doing in class. It's disruptive and dangerous sometimes. This kid though needed to be disciplined. Badly. It doesn't help either that both me and my team teaching partner are women, since I think men have it a bit easier when it comes to intimidating the rowdy boys into behaving. Those are excuses though.

I just felt so bad for the kid who was being bullied. I talked to my teacher afterwards, and she talked to the class's homeroom teacher to tell him about the appalling behavior of that one kid. His response was that that kid was always like that, and that the kid they were picking on usually got picked on. He's a small guy too. It made me feel even worse, though mostly frustrated because both I and my JTE were unsure about how to proceed from here on out. Both of us were disappointed with how the class with, so much so that we're probably not using that room again in our lessons since it made most of the classes overly relaxed, undisciplined, and quite rowdy (though personally, I think not having a desk and sitting in a circle had something to do with that).

Today though, I was talking to my sister and she suggested that we're just so used to obeying orders that when people - the kids - don't, we get annoyed and want to discipline them with things like "okay you're going to sit and write here for the rest of the class and so help me god I better not hear you say a word." Believe me, I would have loved to either kick the kid out, make the kid sit isolated in the corner of the room (I don't really think he'd listen to me though), give him and the other misbehaving kids a homework assignment where they have to talk about how the other person probably felt and factor that into their grades or something.

If my Japanese skills were better, I would talk to them directly. In my head, I imagine I can speak perfect Japanese and that I give them one helluva dressing down and somehow manage to intimidate them into not bullying this kid any more. Or to somehow make it so they could experience the same treatment they were giving this kid. ...I'm allowed to dream, right? I suppose though, I should dream instead that they realize that hey, they're being mean idiots and they apologize to the poor boy and become good behaved students.

...yeaaah, one helluva dream.

Afterwards, my teacher told me that the bullied student, while he had been thrown on the ground, wrestled, held back, probably punched, and teased during class, had a strong heart so he was okay. But I'm worried that it's not, that he's just putting up a facade. Even people with strong hearts break sometimes though. Some people pretend to have strong hearts around others but don't actually. I'm scared that they'll bully him so much that he will join the ranks of students who become a tragedy and a statistic, another suicide. I don't want that to happen, especially since he always seems so cheerful. Like really, he's a sweet kid. I wish there was something I could do to help him, but short of speaking to the homeroom teachers and designing classroom activities with this in mind (guess who doesn't get to do games anymore) I can't really think of too many ways to work within this system I'm an outsider in, especially when I can't fluently speak the language.

We're taught to mock people who are hikikkomori - shut-ins - because they stay at home all the time; we presume they are wasting their lives away playing video games and that they simply do not want to be social. I heard somewhere (I forget where exactly, perhaps a friend, perhaps a news article) that bullying actually plays a sizable role in the reason why some kids become shut-ins. They don't want to go to school any more. I don't really blame them too, if I was going to get picked on, shoved, punched, tackled, and mocked every day. It's put a new perspective on this hikikkomori thing that's come from Japan; it's a lot more complicated than it seems.

In Defense of Pack Rats

Everytime someone comes over, it prompts a need for me to go into cleaning mode at my place, since let's face it, I'm kinda lazy so when there aren't social expectations from the outside making me clean my house, things tend to pile up and gather.

It's even worse when I'm packing or moving!

But yeah, as I was cleaning I came across so much old stuff that I had stored and saved up. The urge to go into hyper cleaning "throw everything away" mode rose within me. Being called a pack rat and a hoarder has such negative connotations; I still remember when a friend came over unexpectedly to my house to use the bathroom, which he turned into an invitation to take a look at my (post-social gathering) house. What he said still bothers me a little bit, though I'm not sure if he meant it intentionally or not. I think I wrote about this too, but as he was poking around, he made the comment that he, "always throws stuff away because he's not a pack rat."

I understand too, the appeal of not having that much stuff. Makes cleaning and organizing easier. Makes moving easier. Makes your house/space look larger. Not cluttered. Clean. Blah blah.

But! But but but. I mean, you can still keep stuff and be kinda organized about it. I'm... half organized. I'm not a neat freak, nor am I OCD but generally things have some kind of order (so when people help me clean, things get kinda mixed up ahaha)

Also, the entire reason why I keep these things is because my memory is pretty crappy. The odds of me actually recalling specific bits of memory - unless it's really quite memorable, like when I left my wallet on the bus in Tottori prefecture - are pretty low on its own. However, introduce something - a brochure, ticket, maps - and the thing serves as a kind of mental scaffolding I can use to dig deeper into the parts of my memory that like to remain hidden from me. The memory builds on itself as I remember another thing, which prompts another thing and another. It's amazing the amount of things I can remember that way! It's why I need to take things like notes or memos all the time, since otherwise, for some reason, my brain is quite bad at mental reminders. I guess that's also one of the reasons I write in this blog in the first place! To help me remember things.

I suppose all these things would probably go better in say... a scrapbook, (as far as looks and organization!) but I'm... kind of bad at getting those going. I don't know why either. I think I spend too much time reminiscing to get any actual work done haha.

...then again, there's also stuff here (especially anime/manga/game stuff!) that I have just because ohmigawd I need it. Hahaha. That I have no excuse for.

I also have no excuse for why I'm writing this. This is shameless procrastination from cleaning haha.

I suppose I should get back to throwing away stuff since I need to be moving out in less than three months now. Experience the here and now! All that stuff. Make memories that last. :)

Man, I really wish Pensieves were real! I WOULD SO BUY ONE. That would be super rad.

Maybe I'll just have to work at researching one haha. ...in my East Asian Studies major. Ha!

OKAY SERIOUSLY BACK TO CLEANING.

Mori no Sanpo 「森の散歩」 Forest Walk~

Not all who wander are lost - J.R.R. Tolkien

Today I did a bit of wandering... though I think towards the end, I did get a little lost since I had noooo idea really where I was geographically. In an attempt to justify hours and hours of video gaming today to myself, and to check out what was up with this Bitchu-Matsuyama Castle Festival, I decided that today was going to be a good day for walking and set off walking up the mountain. It's a really pleasant walk to the hiking point. There's also a hiking route available but yeah, I prefer concrete sometimes (especially when there are loads of bugs...) plus the concrete path that the cars drive up is also actually quite beautiful, especially when the rice has been planted (and even more beautiful when the rice has grown all green or is almost ready to be harvested). The hike up to the castle is nothing new, since I've done it several times. It's been a while since I've gone all the way from the bottom to top; last time with my parents we took the shuttle bus up. I thought it was going to be a nice little hike full of exercise, no more than two hours, two and a half tops.

Yeah, nope.

The festival bit was kind of small, and mostly consisted of banners lining the road all the way up to the castle from the base of the mountain (next to my house even). They had shops selling Takahashi things (yubeshi, a kind of yuzu flavored mochi, and "Indian yakisoba" made with curry powder and tomatoes) up near the shuttle stop, and the shuttle was free as well. Oh, at the top, right outside the castle, they had armor that you could pay to dress up in (or were free if you were a child). I think there were other things going on as well, but alas, they were at times I wasn't there. 

There was a path leading behind the castle that you didn't need to pay to get into - the castle you need to pay 300 yen and I've been there a bunch of times, plus they weren't doing anything inside for the festival thing - so I took that. You get a pretty nice view of the back of the castle and the little... housey thing that's really old. But behind that, there was a little path leading downwards, and it piqued my curiosity. 

It didn't look like it was in too sad a state - or well, it looked as if it had been maintained somewhat, so my brain reasoned that clearly, this meant this was a path that went Somewhere. I'll just check it out, since I want to know where this path goes, I thought. I won't be walking for too long. This was my reasoning for not walking back about 100 meters to get my water bottle refilled. 

The path, to start with, was wooden stairs that disappeared into the forest. Leaves - probably from the winter and fall, now that I think about it - were around the path, but someone had clearly swept them away from the center of the steps. Earlier I had seen a sign that had the kanji I so often see with "no smoking" signs... and I wasn't sure if that was a "don't smoke here" sign or if "this path is forbidden" sign. I'm going with no smoking. Yeaaaaah. Probably was that.

The path eventually led to a small bridge, that led to a small clearing. Ever curious, I decide to follow it "just a little bit further" and then turn back. From the clearing, I went up a bunch of steps that twisted and turned like a snake before finding myself before a small sign that indicated that indeed, these paths went places with Things to See. The signs were the standard ones they had in the city that indicate in both English and Japanese the Destination as well as how far away they are. So I figured that this was definitely a legit path, and continued on my way to what I thought was another part of the castle ruins. Actually, they were kinda that, but it was just kind of a clearing with stone markers. The site for where the ruins would be of the castle, and also, a little further down, a suspension bridge! 

Oh, I passed another man who was really surprised to see another person walking along the paths, and he warned me that there were poisonous snakes in this area. Thank god I've played video games in Japanese! They taught me the word for poison hahaha. But the guy was like "uhhh... be careful."

When I saw that there was a suspension bridge from the signs, it was like, "well, I'm going to walk to at least the suspension bridge, since omg what, there's a suspension bridge behind my house in the mountains?!"

There was indeed a suspension bridge! It was green, and on both ends there was this cage with two sets of doors... I guess since the mountains have monkeys and they don't want the monkeys on the bridge? 

On the other side was a nice concrete path... so that piqued my curiosity even more (plus I had slipped a little on the sand on the way to the bridge, so I was trying to find a way back that didn't involve going back up that). It even had rope dividers between the two sides... so instead of turning back across the suspension bridge (since my original "plan" was only to go to the bridge) I went up the path. Wee~

I ran into another, equally startled, man who said something about a parking lot and a shuttle bus, so I went off to find said parking lot. And I found it (plus a sign with warning about monkeys). There was one car. No sign of shuttle times or anything. Reaaaaaally didn't know where I was, though there was a map. I did puzzle out that I was in a place whose kanji I couldn't pronounce, and that the city was about... 4.2 km away, and the castle was a good 1.2 km away. Eventually, this old man in a truck also came to the parking lot, so I asked him about where I was and where the paved road went, and how far away the city was - just in case. 

Turns out that the road was 4.2 km, and it led to a place called Narai (...town?) that was a bit inland from Takahashi. Yeaaaaaaah. We concluded that it would be better to just return on the same path I took and go back to the castle. The old man also helped me find a nice walking stick, since he too warned me about the same type of poisonous snake, called mamushi in Japanese (and apparently in English too, though there are two types: the Japanese mamushi and Tsushima mamushi, which only lives on tsushima island in between korea and Japan). He was giving me advice on what to do if I see a monkey, and so I asked him what to do if I saw a snake. His advice was to run away haha, but also that I should try to scare it away with a long walking stick. Then it came to his attention that I didn't have one, so we went into the forest, found a stick laying around that looked about the right height, and made it into a walking stick (though due to its suspicious length, I think it was a walking stick someone already made and then left behind). 

Walking stick: acquired. 

Thankfully, I didn't run into any snakes on my way back (tons of bugs though, and blue tailed skinks) and while I didn't see any monkeys... I definitely heard a bunch.

All in all though, my adventure took somewhere around three hours, so by the time I made my way back home, exhausted, it had been a four hour trip! That was with taking the shuttle bus back down, since my legs were reaching that point where they really needed a rest. I did walk/jog the rest of the way down, and saw one of my third year students working at his part time! That was a fun little interaction. Going out took way longer than I thought, but way more interesting as well. Also, racked up TONS of steps on my 3DS hahaha. The 3DS has a built in pedometer, so I was using that to kind of keep track of how far I walked. (Apparently, it was about 13,868 steps) 

I should really explore Takahashi more often! I'm constantly finding amazing and beautiful things. :) I'm really going to miss it here. 

Oh yeah, speaking of amazing things, I went to the Naruto whirlpools with one of my JET friends. They were pretty cool to see, even if I was slightly disappointed at first (since they are definitely not the permanent, end of the world, ship destroying whirlpools I thought they were). But it was fun. We went on a boat into them! That was even more fun. I miss being on a boat. Maybe I'll write a proper entry about that later with pictures. :) 

Japanese TV foods

One thing I'm really curious about about Japanese food culture, is when they shoot the food kind of glamour shots. In the states, there have been documentaries about how often the food is doctored, or has makeup artists or how they use glue to make sure the pizza doesn't slide when you cut it. But Japanese shows often go to the restaurants themselves and they'll show how the food is made and then they'll show a shot of the food being picked up with chopsticks, then people consuming it. To me, that seems harder to fake, but then again, I never imagine they would use nail polish to make food look brighter and tastier!

Plus there's this idea, I think, that Japanese food is kind of "pure" in that sense - that what you see should reflect how the food really is. I don't know if Japanese people think the same way, but I do know that McDonald's burgers more closely resemble their ads here in Japan!

This TV show about food... they have this plant that looks like giant brussels sprouts hahaha. I wonder if these shows are like Good Eats (since they're showing where all the food comes from, giving a kind of cultural context for the food, then showing you how to prepare it complete with recipes, commentary, and guests). Ahhh they're showing this beautifully marbled steak rice bowl! It looks so. Tasty. But like I was saying before, they show you a shot of the top sizzling as it's cooking (I suppose you could maybe use a blow torch for that) but they showed a shot of the dish and then someone picked it up and ate it so...

Maybe it has to do with the Japanese aesthetic for beautiful food in the first place? I don't know, but I want to find out!

They're also showing someone's travel diary... It looks amazing! They drew pictures of all the dishes they ate with commentary and I'm so jealous of their drawing skills hahah...

People talk

Today I'm returning to Okayama! I dunno if typing this in the bus is the best idea (me and buses don't usually play well. Like, I only get motion sick when trying to read on buses) but! What else am I gonna do for 40 minutes? Can't really sleep right now, and I can't read anything (see above) wooo.
Here are some impromptu pictures from my bus ride back! These pictures are brought to you at the expense of my dignity a littl bit, since I was That Person who was taking pictures with their iPad.



I'm sad to be leaving though! Last night I was talking with a bunch of other guests, most of whom were from tokyo. They were super chill, and we had a pretty good time. I think I might have offended the owner a little though, because we were giving people nicknames, and I used his first and last names and came up with Tako... Yeahhhh... Oops.
But other than that kinda faux pax, it was nice to talk and chit chat in a mix of English and Japanese. Mostly Japanese, though I would have to ask the two people who spoke both for a translation sometimes.
Oh, weirdly enough, there was one woman from Santa Monica, the owner dude worked in Newport Beach, and I met a masters student who was gonna work for Foursquare in San Francisco who went to UCSanta Barbara while diving! :) talking to random people is kinda fun. :) hahaha I also bragged a bit about going to Stanford (ohohohoho) since they were trying to think of famous universities in California for some reason (I didn't bring it up!) and they were like "ahhh oh yeah Stanford!" and I was (a little smugly) "actually... That's where I'm going to grad school"
Inner me is still giggling gleefully. Tee hee. That's probably gonna last until I get there and go "YABEI" because it's so hard. ^^;
Oh yeah! There are loads of pineapple fields here. If you saw a pineapple growing for the first time and you didn't know how they were grown... Wouldn't you think they grew in the ground? I did. At first I thought they grew in trees, but when I found out they didn't and I saw this (minus the pineapple), I assumed that you pulled pineapples out of the ground like carrots or something.

Lol yeah.. Did I mention I'm going to stanford? Looools.

Some dreams you just gotta chase

It looks like I'll be doing a bit more chasing After all. In an apparently rare day, we failed to see any manta at Manta point. Or well, most of us did. I think there was one person - a guide - who saw the manta.
Not going to lie, I'm really disappointed, especially since I was diving for two days to avoid this and seeing mantas was seriously the only reason i came here) But no... Yesterday we didn't even make it out to the scramble because of the snorkelers and the sick lady. Yeah I want to chase after my dreams, but not at the expense of the enjoyment and well being of other people (generally anyways).
Part of me wishes I wasn't so kind though. That's the super sad part, the part that's like, "you came all the way here to see manta, and you're leaving empty handed? I am disappoint." It kinda sucks to try to fulfill your dream (at your own expense! This was still an expensive trip) and then fail (though on the bright side, the dive spot we went to yesterday was excellent, and we saw the sea snake, and I still got to dive after a freaky moment of vertigo underwater, so there's that).
But I'm not going to give up. I'll save up my money, and try coming again someday. One day I'll make it out and swim with the giant mantas. One day. This is a dream I think worth chasing; one of the things (actually the only thing right now) I want to do before I die.
Wait for me mantas - I'll be back.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
On a brighter, less serious note, Okinawa has some of my favorite combining foods and drinks. Taco rice, spam musubi, and these two drinks:

The one on the left is "sanpincha" and the one on the right is "shikwasa" I might have written about it last time I was here? Oh well. Sanpincha is actually jasmine tea (a stronger version apparently) and shikwasa is like calamansi, the Philippino name (I think) for it. It's like a lime... Kinda, but a bit sweeter and has a little different flavor.
Very tasty though. I want to bring it back to Okayama with meeee!