Battling Myself

Japan has taught me that my worst enemy is myself - an important lesson to learn, indeed.

Seeing all these new kids around reminded me of how much time I spend at my desk and how little time I spend talking to students. Taking intiative to talk to people has always been hard for me, and I had the same problem as an RA. I like people and I like talking to them, but I get easily intimidated, I don't like awkwardness, and I often just don't think to do it. I largely am a wallflower, especially in large groups, so I tend to avoid active networking.

So, as of last week, not only did I have stress about changing my behavior, but I had the stress of not doing it for the last 8 months. If anything upsets me, it's when I've personally known about a problem and haven't done anything about it. I'm pretty hard on myself that way, even if I know it's only because I'm battling my nature and even if no one has judged me for it yet. My own acknowledged failure is the worst kind.

I got really angsty with all the internalization of this guilt, until finally one of my ALT friends gave me a pep talk on gmail chat. He just goes out and shoots the breeze with his kids all the time. He told me that if I just march out there and don't ALLOW them to feel awkward, eventually we'll push through it, even if do totally unnatural things like just walking up and asking what their favorite foods are. Yeah, it's awkward, yeah I stress about how to respond because I always have to pretend not to speak Japanese, and yeah their spoken English is painfully limited - but I'm thinking too much. This isn't who I want to be or what I want to be doing but I DO know how to fix it.

So I went. I walked around after school poking my nose into classrooms and stopping kids in the hall. I asked them if they liked high school, I asked them what they had for lunch, and I told them "good job!" while they were cleaning. I even walked around outside a little and chatted up the kids doing sports. This also led to an English conversation with a teacher who coaches soccer and had been dying to speak English with me but I had no idea because he didn't bring it up until last week.

I ended up having some hilarious conversations. While some of the kids literally ran away or pushed their friends in front of them when I made eye contact, I laid some major foundation for relationships. Afterward I felt really, really good. I stopped after only about 20 minutes because the kids cleared out and/or the clubs started, but it still felt like an overwhelming success and I probably talked to about 20 kids and made passing comments to many more.

I'll start slow. There's no reason I can't be the person I want to be.

A Real Welcome

Thursday's new student entrance ceremony turned out to be just as big of a deal as graduation, if not bigger. There were many more parents in attendance at the entrance ceremony (huh!) and some of them were even formally dressed in kimono. All of the homeroom teachers wore white ties with their suits, though they'd done nothing for graduation, and the pagentry was as ornate as ever. Each student's name was even read off in the exact same format as the graduation ceremony. After the ceremony the parents and kids split up for orientations and motivational speeches. I was with the parents and didn't understand as much as I'd have liked, but overall it was a nice feeling to have such a ceremony.

I can't for the life of me think of anything similar in the states though. We have orientations, in summer and some special programs for the students in the first few days of school, but other than that's it's more of a "high school classes" system instead of "high school life." I'd be curious to experience it both ways firsthand.

On Friday the students had a half day of classes and then everyone was brought to the gym to watch skits from the 25 school clubs as part of the Welcome Party. It was a kind of extra-curricular recruitment thing. For the most part it was a handful of students giving demonstrations or putting on plays with cheeky twists trying to explain their clubs and draw in new members. Some of them were pretty entertaining, and I always like things like this because it gives me the chance to witness Japanese comedy in its purest and rawest form.

For the most part it was slapstick physical comedy and pop culture references, but one presentation really stood out as a cultural difference. When it was the soccer team's turn, a few members in their team warm-up suits trickled out, and then a boy wearing nothing but biking shorts sprung onto the stage. I was a little shocked to see him wearing so little in front of the entire school, but I know how amused Japanese folks are by men in tight pants. The kid began throwing himself onto the floor of the stage, saying something about intimidating his rivals. That was pretty funny, he had some amazing spring in his step (fall?) and THEN he did what really shocked me. He thrust his fisted hand and forearm into his pants in front of his junk to make a monstrous erection, and proceeded to thrust it every which way.

If a 2 foot penis doesn't intimidate your enemies, I'm not sure what will.

The teachers just chuckled. No one even shook their heads as they laughed. Once I got over my shock, I laughed too - it was pretty funny after all! It surprised me that no one was the slightest bit embarassed or scandalized, not even the shyest girls. There was no adult-inferred shame and no one said, "Oh, kids these days! That boy is so crazy!" It didn't matter that with his arm stretching his pants he risked showing off his business or at least his underwear to everyone. Such a big cultural difference! It's not outside the realm of the zeitgeist of high school boy humor, but I've never seen a boy do something so crude even with his friends, let alone on stage in front of a whole school of peers and adults.

It's not like this is new information for me - what with the Hokkaido mascot being a ball of algae with a permanent erection and the comfort of people stripping down to nudity in the hot springs, and changing clothes in the middle of public places like hallways and tennis courts - but it certainly pushed my cultural learning to new extremes. It's really interesting to see myself so surprised, considering I'm not overly shy about body parts and nature and I'm pretty difficult to surprise to begin with. Even aside from the mandated 2+ angry mothers in a crowd, I never really considered that typical "polite" secular American culture was so conservative!

I don't think it's a negative cultural difference though. In fact, it's good that people in Japanese culture are so comfortable with their bodies and things. As far as comedy goes though, when you consider the extremeness of this culture point, it's no wonder we have this idea that Japan is "so crazy!"