The No-Front Door Item

After living in Japan for 1.5 years it's pretty rare that I experience culture shock. The closest I come tends to be when I visit a new place in Japan that's far from my city and see things that are done a bit differently than in Kanazawa.

But this (brief) anecdote reminded me of one of the many ways Japan differs from the Western World.

Yesterday I got home late from work at my Mountain School. I was tired from the day's events and the apartment was cold, so I crawled under my duvet while the heat blasted. I had arranged for an electrician to call me to set up an appointment to fix my hanging light, but they hadn't called and I figured they would try again tomorrow. I found myself falling into a nap when...

DING..........DONG. Went my doorbell. I had a feeling it was probably the electrician, even though he was supposed to call and set up an appointment, not come over. I decided to ignore him. My room was a disaster, no place to fix a light. So I closed my eyes.
DING.........................DONG. Ignore.
A few moments passed before there came a knock. I was tempted to answer but then I'd have to explain the embarrassing situation of my room, which might be incomprehensible to someone who likely always lived in a state of tidiness. I closed my eyes again and waited for the inevitable sound of the visitor returning down the outside stairs in defeat. But it didn't come.

Instead, much to my alarm, there was the unmistakable sound of my front door being opened and someone about to make their way in. I ran to the door and sure enough, there in the doorway looking surprised (but not guilty) was the electrician. "I'm here to fix the light," he said. He frowned. "Is now ok?"
"Sorry but.... I have a fever," I explained in a faux weak voice. "Can you come back on Thursday?"
"Hm. Thursday we're closed. I'll come back tomorrow. Okay?"
"Uh, sure."
And with that I closed the door and made sure to lock it.

This may seem like a scary-intruder story and in any other country it probably would be. But I had forgotten that in Japan, your small hallway (where you leave your shoes) is considered to be "public property", so while visitors will surely ring or knock first, it's not unheard of or impolite for them to step inside without permission and wait. This stems from back in the day when traditional houses had (and still do) have hallways that had an extra door into the house... kind of like indoor porches in Canadian homes.

Still though, what a surprise. And a good lesson to lock your door when you're trying to have a nap!

Glasses Shopping

Every time I have a shower, I leave my glasses on the sink just outside the shower room so that when I come out I can put them back on right away. This has never been a problem until last night, when unbeknownst to me my glasses fell off the sink and landed on the floor. I stepped out of the shower room and felt something break as blind-me's foot came down on poor glasses' arm. I took this as a sign and decided to go out and get some new specs.

I always forget what it's like to go into a heavy-on-customer-interaction store in Japan. Immediately as we entered (my Japanese friend Keiko had driven me), we were greeted with the usual chorus of "irasshaimase"s and a young man in a well-pressed suit rushed to meet us at the door. "Welcome," he said and gave a bow. "My name is Mori Junichi. What may I help you, honorable guest, with on this day?". Keiko explained that I was looking new for new glasses. He glanced at me.
"Is your honorable guest-friend perhaps wearing contacts?" he turned his attention back to her.
"Yes, I am." I said to him. He looked at me in surprise and amusement.
"Ah forgive my assumption. Please come this way. If it's not too much trouble, could you possibly remove your contact lenses so that I may conduct a check on your eyes?" He led me to a small sink. "I will prepare for you a complimentary lens case, of course!"
"It's okay. I brought mine," I told him. Once again he looked at me in surprise. He left to wait next to Keiko and I heard him say, "Her Japanese is very good, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is," agreed Keiko.
"'I brought mine', she said" he repeated my words excitedly.

When I came back out he took two precise steps towards me and, ensuring his feet were precisely together, raised his arm and half-bowed to indicate where I was to go. In Japan, something I think makes so much sense, when you want glasses you don't just bring in a prescription. They have a small area where they test your eyesight on site. It's free and ensures your prescription isn't dated.

Mori-san led me to the small eye-check area. He performed the routine series of tests all the while complimenting any Japanese I had to use in the process (this is very typical among Japanese people... whether you can easily read tomes of Japanese literature or just say Konnichiwa, they are always quick to applaud your efforts). Interesting fun fact! In Japan they don't have the usual roman-letter "E" eyechart that we all know. Instead they use Hiragana and nearly-full circles where you have to indicate where the opening to the circle is (up, down, left, right).

After the short series of tests, the man said "Please forgive my intrusion, but if it is alright with honorable guest it is perhaps best to try these lenses" as he carefully set a large pair of glasses on my head and carefully tucked the arms behind my ears. "Great apologies for the inconvenience but please wear these for 5 to 10 minutes and read something during that time. If during that time you develop any headache please inform me and I will certainly adjust them for you." So I did.

I found a pair of glasses that I liked and we went to the counter to pay for them. A new man with an equally perfectly fitted suit bowed, introduced himself, and motioned for us to sit in comfortable chairs. I told him the frames I wanted and very delicately he took them from me with two hands, his head bowed, and placed them on a small folded cloth. He set down two decorative Japanese-paper placemats on the counter in front of us.

"Before we begin, here is our complimentary menu," he said, and once again with two hands offered us a small laminated drinks menu: Green tea, Seaweed tea, hot or iced coffee. I decided against Keiko's advice to order seaweed tea and we gave them our orders. Within moments a woman appeared and gave us our drinks, mine in a beautiful traditional tea mug, Keiko's coffee in an ornate teacup on a plate. The woman stirred in milk and sugar for Keiko as I filled out my address on a form. The man presented me with options for the lenses and asked if I would like to pay now or pay later. I decided to pay while I was there and the grand total was under 90$ Canadian-- including the frames AND lenses! "Please forgive us for the delay," said the man and bowed, "But your frames will be ready tomorrow."

I finished the last of my seaweed tea (which tastes more like soup) and Keiko and I left to go to our car outside. The man who had helped us at the counter walked us out and stood at the entrance, arms at the side and feet pressed tightly together. As we got into the car he bowed, and as we drove off he turned to bow in our departing direction. As we rounded the next corner I turned around once more and saw he was still bowing and I knew that he would only stop once we were completely out of sight.

Oh, Japanese hospitality.

The Shirtless Firemen Festival

On Sunday, Kanazawa held the annual “Firemen ceremony”. When I first heard about it I just assumed that it was a hoity-toity officious thing for indicting new firemen, involving lots of bowing and choreographed taking of certificates.

“No,” a friend corrected me, eyes sparkling in delight, “It’s a festival full of shirtless firemen!”. I needed more details but she herself had never been and had only heard this tagline from a friend who had gone before.

It didn’t matter, the brief description was pretty selling. So early on Sunday morning I eagerly layered up and braved the freezing rain, waiting for the show to start on the cold castle grounds, facing the hoards of dangerous umbrella-wielding Kanazawans. Hundreds of firemen, in their very fancy uniforms, stood in rows as the MC belted out the usual (boring) opening comments. And then the show began.

Now, the word “shirtless firemen” definitely evokes a certain image. For me, that image was along these lines:
But in Kanazawa, what “shirtless firemen” actually means is this:

The ceremony was too fun to be disappointed however. In the first “act”, groups of firemen held up slippery wooden ladders as one brave fireman from each group climbed to the top and performed incredible synchronized tricks.

In the second “act”, new firemen stripped down to their traditional Japanese skivvies and held onto firehoses in pairs. The sirens from nearby firetrucks flared up as freezing water burst from the hoses. The firemen held strong for a solid 3 minutes, getting doused, before finally the water died down and they scurried to get their clothes back on.
It was brief, but pretty fantastic, despite the lack of calendar firemen. :)

The Visitor 2

**Disclaimer: my Japanese is faaar from perfect. So ~~~ indicated places I was very unclear about what was said.

One afternoon after school, a Thursday, I was finishing a sketch when the doorbell rang. As I made my way to the door I wondered briefly if it was the woman who’d rung my bell back when I first got here.
I reached the door. The window on it is frosted glass and I could make out the shape of a man. He reacted a bit and through the door I could hear him say “Oh geez, a gaijin*.”in Japanese. Amused both by the fact that he had realized this by my foggy silhouette and that he was mildly disgruntled about it, I opened the door.
There stood a middle aged man in a business suit. He held a slim wallet in his hand.
“Yes?” I asked, in Japanese.
“I’m a policeman,” he said, “But I didn’t realize– sorry to disturb you.” he made a move for the steps but I was too curious to let him leave.
“It’s okay, I can understand Japanese,” I called after him. He seemed to toy with the idea for a second before reluctantly coming back. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m Morimoto, with the police,” he said, and flipped opened his wallet to reveal a badge. He held it up hesitantly, perhaps wondering if I would understand what it was. I did.
“I see,” I said.
“There was an accident ~~~~ on Tuesday night.~~~~~~~” he said, and motioned towards the major intersection by my house.
“That’s terrible! Is everyone okay?”
He was vague in his reply and I didn’t understand. Then he said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a few questions.” In a very movie-esque gesture, he reached into his coat to pull out a notebook, licking his thumb and flipping the pages until he came to the right one. He clicked his pen.
“Where were you on the evening of December 1st, 2009, at approximately 10pm?” he asked. I could barely keep myself from laughing. Did cops really talk like this?
I considered the question. “I was home,” I answered simply, disappointed in my own answer. How boring!
“What were you doing?”
I thought about it. “I think I was watching a movie.” Pretty dull indeed.
“Did you see or hear anything unusual?”
I hadn’t, which was actually strange considering my apartment’s lack of insulation, sound and otherwise. I can usually clearly hear conversations taking place across the street, so I was surprised I hadn’t heard an accident.
“What did you do before that?” he continued, taking notes.
“I was at school.”
“You’re an English teacher?”
“That’s right.”
He scribbled something on his notebook. “What school?”
“Noda is my normal school,”–he smiled in recognition–“but I am at Uchikawa every Tuesday.”
“Age?”
“My age?”
“No. What level of students?”
“Oh. Junior High school.”
He wrote this down as well. “Do you enjoy it?”
“Yes, it’s interesting and fun.” I wondered how this was relevant and he must have too because he quickly got back to business.
“So after school, what do you do?”
“I come home. But Tuesday and Thursday I have Japanese class. So on that night I was at Japanese class before I was home.”
“Where is your Japanese class?”
“Downtown.” he frowned, as if hoping I would answer “Right at the intersection where the accident happened” and thus make myself a prime suspect.
He looked past me at the parking lot. “Do you own a car?”
“No, I cannot drive.”
He seemed to realize that this interaction was not going to lead him to any suspects and he looked dejectedly at the notes he’d made.
“What is your birthdate?” he asked. I told him and he wrote it and my name down. He flipped back to his main page and looked over the notes once more. “So on Tuesday at 10pm you were inside, watching a movie. Before that you were teaching in Uchikawa, and went to Japanese class. You don’t own a car or drive and you didn’t see or hear anything?”. Japanese people are extremely skilled in hiding their emotions but I could tell he was disappointed about his encounter with the neighbourhood gaijin.
“That’s right,” I affirmed.
He tucked the notebook back into his coat and pulled out a card. “Here’s my card,” he said. I took it in the careful way JET has overtaught me, accepting it with both hands and pretending to examine the fine details on it. “If you remember anything, call this number.”
“Of course.”
He nodded and bowed politely. I thanked him and closed the door.

The next day at around the same time, the door rang again. This I opened it to reveal two middle-aged men in suits, holding clipboards. They flashed their badges at me. “Please excuse the interruption,” they said, “But we’d like to ask you a few questions. Where were you on Tuesday night at 10pm?”

The Whiz Kid

Today in my sannensei (3rd year--grade 9) class we were learning a very simple concept. Students were working on a worksheet and every now and then I was pausing to remind them to add an S to their plurals or a pronoun to their sentence. A hand went up. I was surprised, because the owner of the hand was a boy whose English was better than all of his peers.

"Excuse me sensei," he said in English. "Can you help me spell this word properly?"

What was the word? "Antidisestablishmentarianism".

Later he called me back again with another question. "What's the longest word in English?" he asked me. I paused for a minute to think about it, vaguely recalling something about a very specific kind of insect specialist. I told him this. He broke out into a big grin. "No," he said. He wrote a word on his notebook. "The answer is 'SMILES' he said. "Because there is a mile in the middle."

WIN.

Sports Day

Sports Day*s

Japanese junior high schools are very different than Canadian schools (but that topic is an entirely new blog post in itself). One of the ways in which it's different is the annual Sports Festival! Before coming to Japan I had heard of regular "School Festivals" but never one exclusively for sports. My vision of it was that it would be a series of competitions amongst the variety of clubs, forming teams and trying to best each other at baseball or soccer or jumping hurdles. This notion confused my teachers, but they couldn't quite figure out how to explain Sports Day properly to me in English and the world of sports is a large portion of the Japanese Language that I've never bothered to learn, so I was left with a muddled view of this day. Things became further confused when, a week before, the 700 kids at my school split into 3 teams (red, blue, yellow)of about 200-250 and practised cheerleading in the seperate gyms. I wondered if the whole day would be a cheering contest, and once again due to the sports-language-gaps, I never got a clear answer. All I knew was that I would be on the "yellow team" and would have to wear some sort of sporty yellow thing on Sports Day.

Like so many things in Japan, it was neat and organized. Fancy tents with tables and chairs had been set up in front of the big sand-field for the teachers to hang out under and for the MC to announce things and for music cues, and a seperate one nearby for the proud parents. On the big field the students had all brought out chairs and were sitting in their giant color groups. They tied their color's ribbons proudly around their foreheads and we teachers did the same. As the dust settled and the students were still in their chairs, I sat down with a camera in hand and waited for it all to begin.

The first thing that happened after the Principal's announcement, was the famous "morning exercise" routine! All 700 students and all the teachers moved in unison to the famous Morning Taisou "song" (which just goes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 in an entertaining fashion) and I tried to follow too but failed a little. After a few more words, the games began.

In the end it was completely unexpected and so, so, so much fun. All my imaginings of what this day would be like were rendered completely ridiculous as the first event started-- an obstacle race!! 1st year girls hopped over horses, skip roped, and crawled under nets to the finish line. The next event was an obstacle course for boys, but theirs involved a different series of obstacles, including my absolute favorite one, pictured below-- crawling forward in flattened boxes!
The events became more exciting and creative as the day went on, and club activities had nothing to do with it.
-More obstacle courses with new and crazy obstacles each time
-Regular races
-Teamwork races which involved 5 boys holding onto a pole and having to circle around pylons to get to the goal
-Tug of war
-Capture the flag, but in this game two teams faced off, each team gathered around a tall pole with a flag stuck in the top. Runners from the team would run to the other side and try to get past the flag soldiers, climb the pole, and grab the flag
-Tossing beanbags into a makeshift basketball net
-Wrestling each other while balancing on other people's shoulders and trying to capture a flag
-and many more

Each time I was super impressed with the creativity and above all, the FUN these kids were having. These are the kids who are overworked, overstressed, and overexhausted, and they were laughing and smiling. They were trying to win but not at the behest of the other teams, and when the results were in the losing teams didn't FEEL like they had lost anything.

Before the closing ceremonies the kids performed the cheers they had worked so hard on, each cheer corresponding somehow to the team's color. They had pompoms and did flips and cartwheels and with 200+ people on each team it was a very impressive spectacle.

In the end, yellow won by a landslide but everyone was happy, happy to have been outside on such a perfect day. Together we took down the tents and chairs and packed it all in, totally satisfied :)

~~


A few days after that Sports Day, the one at my base school, my mountain school had THEIR Sports Day. Now my base school has 700 kids. My mountain school, which is also an elementary school, has a grand total of 50 kids. In the whole school. So it was a very different feel, but in a good way. This time there were only two teams of about 25 kids, red and white. In fact, because this one was on the weekend, there were more people in the audience than people on the field. But still, because it's Japan, they had beautiful tents and chairs set up and a fantastic MC and music system.

Some of the games were similar to the ones at my base school, but all offered a different flair that could only be accomplished because of the small size of the teams. They still had obstacle races, but new obstacles came into play. For example, during one obstacle race, the JHS boys had to choose a small toddler car to ride on to the finish line. In another they had to sit on ordinary desk chairs decorated as cows and try to ride them to the next leg. There were three-legged races and races where the big 9th grade students had to carry the little 1st graders as part of the challenge.

After the games were done, the cheer contest began for both sides. What was particularly awesome about this was the fact that before they began their actual cheer (and in the case of one of the teams, their skit to go along with it), they cheered at the OTHER team to please do their best. That is definitely one of the major differences between Canadian/American and Japanese society that I've noticed-- Canada is way more individually competitive. Where Canadian/American JHS kids might cheer when their opposing team is falling behind, in Japan they cheer for the runner who's coming in last to "try your hardest, do your best!" even if he's on the other side. It makes Sports Day, a day that I never liked much in Canada BECAUSE of the malicious competitors, a really memorable and warm and FUN day.

After the cheer contest, the elementary school students performed a traditional Japanese dance that was really really cool. And then just when I thought it was over, one of the boys in my third year class came up to me and said, "Miss Allie, shall we dance?". I had no idea what was going on and had somehow even LESS of an idea when he pulled me into a giant circle with kids from both circles, teachers, and parents. The music began to play and we all danced in an epic circle as I tried to follow along in a dance that they were surprised I didn't know. It was totally goofy.

So yeah, TL;DR, Sports Day at both schools were mad mad fun. :)

The Guess Who Visitor

So the city I'm in is called Kanazawa, it's in a peninsula-prefecture called Ishikawa on the midwest coast that, as I tell everyone, looks like a fire-breathing sock puppet. Some people claim they can't see it. At the very least it looks like a hissing snake head or something... right?

Kanazawa is an awesome city, it is certainly one of the the best placements one could hope for on the JET programme. It's probably one of the biggest cities involved in JET too, actually, with half a million people in it. Kanazawa is home to a castle, a Temple district, a samurai district, a geisha district, one of the 3 sacred mountains in Japan, one of the 3 most beautiful gardens in Japan, a bustling fish market, and a downtown that's totally mini-Tokyo meets Disney World Pavillion. It's really quite something. I really want to detail each trip to these nifty places in different entries because I think they each warrant their own with fancy photos. So that will come later.
For now I think I'll share with you a unique anecdote.

Last Sunday I was hanging around the apartment, reorganizing some things and basically putting off getting groceries in the terrible humidity. Around 2pm, my doorbell rang. I thought for a moment, wondering who it could be. Most of the other JETs lived too far away for an impromptu visit, and my appliances had already been delivered the day before. So I opened the door, and there stood a very friendly Japanese woman.

"Hello?" I asked politely, wondering if maybe she had been expecting someone else to answer. Instead she began speaking rapidly and excitedly in Japanese. She kept saying "koenkai", which I had no idea what it was. "Enkai" means an afterwork drinking party, so I kept wondering if it had something to do with that. She barrelled on, ignoring my helpless replies of "I'm sorry, I don't quite understand". And thus began an epic guessing game, and a huge test of my (obviously weak) Japanese skills. Yep, here is our strange conversation. In Japanese.
"Oh, I'm sorry." I said, bowing, "I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Allie. Nice to meet you."
She looked at me funny and hesitantly introduced herself. I continued to try and deduce who she was. "Are you my neighbour?"
"No..."
"Do you live near here?"
"Yes, over in Izuminomachi."
"Oh! By the library!"
"Yes, the library."
"It's nice there."
"Yes. Um, are you a mother? That is, do you have children?" she asked.
"...No, I do not have children. ....Do you have children?"
She brightened. "Yes! I have a son and two younger daughters."
"Oh!" I seized this opportunity, wondering if perhaps her kids went to my school. "How old are your children?"
"My son is 16. My daughters are 12 and 14."
"Oh, Junior High!"
"Yes."
"Do they go to Noda??[my school]"
Again, she looked at me with a perplexed expression on her face. "No..."
"Oh..."
An awkward silence ensued before she said, "Oh, are you an English teacher?"
"Yes I am. At Noda."
"Really! That's great."
I brightened again, hoping to get more info, "Are you possibly an English teacher as well?"
She frowned. "No, I dye kimonos for a living."
"Oh... wow, that's really interesting!"
Yet another awkward silence before I said, as politely as I could, "I'm sorry, why did you come here today?"
Again, she repeated koenkai, and talked of "the other women" and it became even more confusing, so I ran to get my dictionary and together we tried to carry on our conversation but it kept getting very roundabout. She finally said, "koenkai--conversation!". I thought of course she was referring to the conversation we had been having in my doorway, about kimonos and children, and so I smiled. "Yes, we're having a conversation" I affirmed.
Finally, after another few agonizing moments and my attempts at saying "Thank you for coming today to visit", I explained that I had to "meet a friend soon" and she nodded in understanding but still didn't leave.
"I'm very sorry my Japanese is so bad," I said bowing. "Next time, I will ask my friend to come. That chick speaks Japanese and English."
She laughed amicably at my use of "that chick", a term I had thrown in when I couldn't think of how to say "she" in Japanese. Finally she said, "I'll come again then." and bowed. I thanked her and said, "yes, please come again."

It was only the next day, through asking a Japanese teacher, that I realized what koenkai was-- a lecture. She had been there, wanting to ask me to give an English lecture to a group of eager homemakers.
I hope she DOES come again so I can be prepared with this newly learned vocabulary and say "Hai! Yarimasu! *Yes, I'll do it!*"