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Just when I thought I understood a cultural nuance, it gets taken to the next level.
I don't bow much. I'm trying to bow more. I have no problem bowing when someone really puts themselves out for me or when it fits nicely into an exit or entrance or a lull in conversation, but in general the rules for bowing are highly contextualized and no one really expects me to do it anyway because I'm foreign. I'll admit, even though I know some concrete occasions for bowing, it's still very unnatural. Not because I have a problem subjugating myself, but it's just a very active movement for someone as reserved as myself.
I thought I'd seen enough of Japanese life in the last four months so that I had a pretty good grasp on the multi-bow and other bowing scenarios...And then parent-teacher conferences came. Have you ever seen the SNL skit where Ricky Gervais claims to have copied the British office from a Japanese version of the show? Then he plays "footage" from the "Japanese version" (look it up). There are a couple of unfair stereotypes but by and large it's pretty accurate to Japanese office culture. One of the scenes features the "uber-multi" bow, where every is bowing so quickly and such a ridiculous number of times that it looks more like convulsing than bowing. I saw this and I laughed because I've seen some excessive bowing in my day and I thought it was a funny exhaggeration, but after parent-teacher conferences it's 8 times more hilarious. I haven't seen it used in any other context yet, but the relationship of self-deprication between teachers and parents proves that this skit is not exhaggerated! That's really culture right there lol A housewife walks into the teacher's office and the two of them begin bowing like rag dolls in a washing machine and for as open-minded and desensitized as I feel, being from a country as bold and proud as the U.S., it's pretty fascinating for me to see.
Parent-teacher conferences are interesting for more reasons than that though. They're held during the school day, with parents (almost entirely mothers) streaming into the teacher's office and sitting down to talk to the teachers of their children's homerooms. At first this seemed really inconvenient and kind of slanted against socioeconimcally disadvantaged families where both parents need to work full time, but it's true that most mothers in Japan only work part time and usually teachers encourage parents to schedule special meetings, sometimes late at night or even on the weekend (even though teachers are salaried). From what Batman says, I think their parent attendance rate for conferences is about the same as ours back home, and similarly it's always the smartest kids whose parents show up the most.
The parents don't go to talk to other teachers, seeing as there are 40 students per class and the other teachers probably don't know their children all too well, but the Japanese homeroom teacher is a different beast. Japanese homeroom teachers take a lot of interest in their students personal lives, and in many ways are more responsible for the student's social development than the parents. They're also equipped with a pipeline of information with all the teachers in one office, including teachers that supervise the students' club activities after school and on weekends. The responsibilities of teachers are very different from back home, the favorite example of one of my English-teaching foreign friends is the time someone in her neighborhood disapproved of a student spitting in the street, so they called the school, not the parents. Police also come to the school, not the parents, when the student gets in trouble. Furthermore, sometimes parents will come to the teacher saying, "The kid won't listen to me, please advise him." That's not to say that parents relinquish control over their child's upbringing, but the teacher carries a lot more influence, which is so different from what we have in the States.
It's been really useful for me as a learner, as well, listening to what words and polite phrases parents and teachers use for each other and what they do to honor and respect each other's responsibilties. It's even interesting to see how parents display their respect for the work place when they accidentally bump into a trash can or have to trouble the teacher for an extra chair. I can't understand everything they say, of course, but many times the teacher will ask the parents about the habits the teenager has at home, how she spends free time, how often she goes to cram school, and that kind of thing.
I don't know how else to describe it other than, "really interesting." Part of me is impressed that the teacher feels invested in those kinds of details, part of me feels like it's silly, and part of me is a little bothered when a father starts scolding a mother for being off by fifteen minutes when telling the teacher what time a student gets home from cram school. And of course, it's inevitable that showmanship and white lies end up surfacing in this kind of environment, I can't identify them of course, but there's no way they're not there, what with all the issues of saving face involved. There's a slight conflict in me because I can't decide if it's wonderful that everyone cares so much or that everyone is taking things a little too seriously for a teenager's well-being. Still, on the whole it suits Japanese culture just fine.
I don't bow much. I'm trying to bow more. I have no problem bowing when someone really puts themselves out for me or when it fits nicely into an exit or entrance or a lull in conversation, but in general the rules for bowing are highly contextualized and no one really expects me to do it anyway because I'm foreign. I'll admit, even though I know some concrete occasions for bowing, it's still very unnatural. Not because I have a problem subjugating myself, but it's just a very active movement for someone as reserved as myself.
I thought I'd seen enough of Japanese life in the last four months so that I had a pretty good grasp on the multi-bow and other bowing scenarios...And then parent-teacher conferences came. Have you ever seen the SNL skit where Ricky Gervais claims to have copied the British office from a Japanese version of the show? Then he plays "footage" from the "Japanese version" (look it up). There are a couple of unfair stereotypes but by and large it's pretty accurate to Japanese office culture. One of the scenes features the "uber-multi" bow, where every is bowing so quickly and such a ridiculous number of times that it looks more like convulsing than bowing. I saw this and I laughed because I've seen some excessive bowing in my day and I thought it was a funny exhaggeration, but after parent-teacher conferences it's 8 times more hilarious. I haven't seen it used in any other context yet, but the relationship of self-deprication between teachers and parents proves that this skit is not exhaggerated! That's really culture right there lol A housewife walks into the teacher's office and the two of them begin bowing like rag dolls in a washing machine and for as open-minded and desensitized as I feel, being from a country as bold and proud as the U.S., it's pretty fascinating for me to see.
Parent-teacher conferences are interesting for more reasons than that though. They're held during the school day, with parents (almost entirely mothers) streaming into the teacher's office and sitting down to talk to the teachers of their children's homerooms. At first this seemed really inconvenient and kind of slanted against socioeconimcally disadvantaged families where both parents need to work full time, but it's true that most mothers in Japan only work part time and usually teachers encourage parents to schedule special meetings, sometimes late at night or even on the weekend (even though teachers are salaried). From what Batman says, I think their parent attendance rate for conferences is about the same as ours back home, and similarly it's always the smartest kids whose parents show up the most.
The parents don't go to talk to other teachers, seeing as there are 40 students per class and the other teachers probably don't know their children all too well, but the Japanese homeroom teacher is a different beast. Japanese homeroom teachers take a lot of interest in their students personal lives, and in many ways are more responsible for the student's social development than the parents. They're also equipped with a pipeline of information with all the teachers in one office, including teachers that supervise the students' club activities after school and on weekends. The responsibilities of teachers are very different from back home, the favorite example of one of my English-teaching foreign friends is the time someone in her neighborhood disapproved of a student spitting in the street, so they called the school, not the parents. Police also come to the school, not the parents, when the student gets in trouble. Furthermore, sometimes parents will come to the teacher saying, "The kid won't listen to me, please advise him." That's not to say that parents relinquish control over their child's upbringing, but the teacher carries a lot more influence, which is so different from what we have in the States.
It's been really useful for me as a learner, as well, listening to what words and polite phrases parents and teachers use for each other and what they do to honor and respect each other's responsibilties. It's even interesting to see how parents display their respect for the work place when they accidentally bump into a trash can or have to trouble the teacher for an extra chair. I can't understand everything they say, of course, but many times the teacher will ask the parents about the habits the teenager has at home, how she spends free time, how often she goes to cram school, and that kind of thing.
I don't know how else to describe it other than, "really interesting." Part of me is impressed that the teacher feels invested in those kinds of details, part of me feels like it's silly, and part of me is a little bothered when a father starts scolding a mother for being off by fifteen minutes when telling the teacher what time a student gets home from cram school. And of course, it's inevitable that showmanship and white lies end up surfacing in this kind of environment, I can't identify them of course, but there's no way they're not there, what with all the issues of saving face involved. There's a slight conflict in me because I can't decide if it's wonderful that everyone cares so much or that everyone is taking things a little too seriously for a teenager's well-being. Still, on the whole it suits Japanese culture just fine.
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