Souji-Time Part Two

It has come to my attention that several key aspects of souji-time were unintentionally omitted from my previous entry. I shall here make amends, as much as I am able.

I mentioned earlier that we have to move the desks across the room in order to clean the floors. As we have 40 desks in each classroom, that is actually a slightly involved maneuver. My standard method of moving desks is one I learned from my students: Get behind a row and bulldoze until the desks either topple or wind up (roughly) where they're supposed to. Now, I had grown somewhat famous among the students for my desk-pushing abilities. Somehow the fact that I might be stronger than even the burliest of the 120-pound baseball players seems never to have occured to my students. This was humorous to me not only because I am a full-grown man (albeit skinny), but also because I am bigger than the average Japanese full-grown man. Honestly, what did they expect? Nonetheless, when I was able to move, say, eight desks in a row without too much exertion, my students were genuinely amazed. This is but one among the innumerable feats for which I have earned inordinate praise during my stay in Japan--to the degree that I now have but the loosest, faintest grasp on reality regarding my own abilities. For all I know at this point, I may well be Superman.
On a fateful day but a few weeks gone by, my world of desk bull-dozing fame came plummeting down upon my head. On this day, one of my English teachers came to my room to supervise during souji-time (she was trying to help me). I performed my standard swift relocation of 7 to 8 desks, and her life nearly expired. I don't know what all was said in Japanese (fortunately) before she was finally able to spurt out in English, "Mr. Peter, you did a very bad thing!" And indeed, I did. As I now know--and as my students knew the whole time, those little punks!--bulldozing desks during souji-time is in fact a very, very bad thing. What makes me laugh about it even now was her response, beyond merely the words, when she informed me of my error: She was utterly shocked, as if I had just willfully taken in hand humankind's universal set of morally prescribed behavior and shattered it upon the ground.

I have one glaring omission regarding souji-time: The post-sweeping cleaning of the floors. I mentioned that boys use dirty rags to race along the floors, but I forgot to mention an alternate game that they often play with the rags. Many times, the boys will line up against a wall in my classroom, rag to the floor, kick off from the wall, and slide head-long with the rag in front of them as far as they are able to go. Then that boy leaves his rag, and the next attempts to best the previous boy's distance. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the whole of these students task during souji-time. It used to bother me that they were able to be such freeloaders, but my indignation has slowly melted away, aided by my realization that NO ONE actually cleans during souji-time. Yea verily, indignation has been ousted by a little thing I like to call... envy. No matter how I try, I can't shake from myself a desire to take my own rag in hand and show those little punks that I--Mr. Peter, former Great Mover of Desks, a veritable Superman!--can push so far across the floor that, were I so inclined, I could easily bloody my head on the opposite wall. Ha, that'd show them! Only the joint power of two things has thusfar been able to restrain such an attempt: 1) An utter exertion of self-control, and 2) the fact that my mother wouldn't approve of my sliding around on the floor in my Sunday trousers.
My resolve in this matter may not stand forever. If someday in the near future I should come to your door bloodied of head, you need not ask why.

What are you driving these days?

The adventures in Jenglish continue.

Here in Japan, it is popular to have cars with foreign names, especially English names. We of course do the same in America, using words like "stealth," "mustang," "trooper," "boxster," and the like. Those names sound cool.

Obviously, what sounds cool in English to Japanese people is quite different from what sounds cool to native speakers. Here are a few car names I've encountered while here in Japan:
"We've," "That's," I think I saw a "Please" at least once, and there are many others. I need to write them down. I write this post because tonight I saw one that made me laugh out loud, my all-time favorite: I saw a "Naked."

Foreigner: "What do you drive these days?"
Japanese: "I like to drive "Naked."

F: "How are you gonna get there?"
J: "Naked," I think. (Japanese people don't use articles.)
F: "Oh, I didn't realize that was an option..."

"How do you want to go tonight, honey? Naked?"
"Please."

And I'm sure they know what it means. That's the funny thing.

The "In" Group

The Japanese have two words for foreigner: "gaijin" and "gaikokujin." The former word is a hair slang from what I can gather and is considered to be slightly rude; it literally means "outside person." The other word, "gaikokujin," means "outside country person," and it's perfectly polite. I have been called both.

The important thing to notice about these words is their designation of "outside." The symbol used here is the same one that is used to say, for example, "It's outside, in the yard." So whether by designation polite or inappropriately direct, you are, quite simply, an outsider.

To be honest, this doesn't particularly bother me, as I have no schemes of staying in Japan beyond a few years, but I know a few long-term Japan-dwelling "gaijin" who, being fluent, involved, and culturally well-informed, feel a little bit of frustration at being lumped together with every stray JET, tourist, or world-traveler as simply "outside," simply other. Theirs is a valid objection, I think.

Here's what I've been leading to: If you don't happen to be among the 90 million people in this world who were born "in" with the Japanese world, then prepare to do some adjusting if you come here. You won't be mauled horrifically by your experiences, and I'm sure you will go back home with a truckload of great stories and great memories, but you will need to adjust. So be ready before you come.

Let me list one area in which an adjustment or two will need to happen: The murky sea of personal property. I can't spell out for you exactly what a typical Japanese person thinks about this (or any) subject, but I can tell you, confidently, firmly, beyond doubt, that their and our cultural set varies more than a little. For instance, if someone writes, draws, or doodles something on a chalkboard (especially a "sensei," (?) especially while instructing), to erase their work without permission is strictly rude. I have never, regardless of need, regardless of any pressing reason, in spite of any exigency, seen it happen. (Then again, maybe I need to keep watching.) But on the other hand, every desk in the teachers' room--a cast jungle of desks, scuffling feet, water pots, kerosene heaters, and people (everywhere!)--every desk (including yours, my friend!) belongs not to the teacher whose name appears on the desk, but to the group. I cannot count the number of times I have returned to the teacher's room only to find that "my" desk is part of an endless assembly line of prints, is the pow-wow site for a group of irritated 3rd grade teachers, is the staging ground for a reclamation from wastewrack of three week's worth of old newspapers, or is the resting point (final until who knows when) for all manner of boxes, office materials, and items galore. And the funny thing about it is this: If I am in hurry such that I can't just casually exit the teachers' room and check back in at 10 minute intervals, if I am so busy I have to actually walk to my desk, occupied though it is, I have always gotten the impression that it is I, not whoever or whatever else, that is the inconvenience, the one out of line. That could be a misperception on my part. Or it may truly be how things work. I'm still trying to find out. In the mean time, I will continue to walk around with my hand in my coat pocket, pretending to keep ready with my gun so that everyone knows not to mess around with the "crazy gaijin." And I think I'll drink a little bit of green tea while I'm at it... Ah, that stuff hits the spot.

Insults via Jenglish

Yesterday, I read some Jenglish that said: "Give your life a sense of humor." I was a little taken aback at first, wondering, "How did they know I don't have a sense of humor!" Then I realized it was just devastatingly clever marketing. I don't know what it was they were selling, but it only cost 100 yen (~$1). That seems a little inexpensive for them to be busting out with a hit on personal insecurities, but I guess 100-yen competition must be pretty stiff these days.

Everything Under the Sun

Everyday at school, we have a little event that I affectionately call "Souji Time." What does it mean? Well, "souji" means "clean," and I think you can figure out the rest--everyone cleans, students, staff, teachers. In fact, it is the only substantial cleaning that goes on at school, as no cleaning staff is ever hired. Period.

Now, we have lots of people-power (formerly, "man-power"), with approximately 700 people cleaning a building about an eighth the size of the Louvre. The bulk of the responsibility falls to the students (or "proletariat," as I call them, on a good day), as they make up over 90% of the cleaning force. That keeps things interesting. So please permit me to describe their general cleaning procedure in my English conversation classroom, where I am the self-appointed supervisor ("oppressor").

Anywhere from 4 to 8 students come to clean my room (or "serfdom"). They have different responsibilities ("division of labor"), though the divisions occur with unflagging reguard for gender ("entrenched gender roles"). There are often disagreements and even squirmishes among the various proletarian groups, which help distract them from recognizing their shared oppression. Though useful, sometimes these tommybrooks ("expressions of lower class angst") can become disruptive to the cleaning of the room ("economy and wellbeing"), in which case, I myself interrupt to put an end to the dispute at hand. I attempt to do so in such a way as not to alienate the affections of either group, but sometimes hard feelings do arise.

Okay, enough of that. Here's what we do.

First, we push all of the desks (40 of them) to one side of the room. Then two or three people, almost always girls (with the wildly inappropriate exception of me), use brooms to sweep. It isn't sweeping the way I was taught--careful, methodical, thoughtfully brushing along a pile of dust, making sure not to miss any. Basically, my girls just attack the floor with the brooms. Their only method is that they attack whatever dust they happen to see at any given moment, and as half of the dust in the room is swirling in the air within three seconds, that's not much. They do make some kind of effort to sweep the dust toward the not-being-cleaned portion of the room--i.e. directly at the misplaced desks. I keep trying to show them that, when we do that, half of the dust just gets pushed back onto the already-clean portion of the floor when we move the desks, but that must be, on Piaget's chart, one level above their peak capabilities at 3:30 in the afternoon--cause they ain't gettin it!
After a sweeping job as random as a two-year-olds efforts to "stay within the lines," two other students have races across the floors, holding dirty, old rags to the floor with their hands and running. I don't understand how those filthy rags are supposed to get anything clean, but it hardly matters, as the students make no attempt to actually cover the surface area of the floor--they merely race one another back and forth across the same strip of floor.
At some point, I say, "Okay, that's enough," or "Finish," or something, and we push all of the desks (and a lot of dust) back onto the "clean" section of floor. Then the sweeping manque resumes, followed by more floor races, and alas, the final placement of the 40 desks.
While the sweeping and all-important floor races are being undertaken, if there are more than 4 or 5 students to help, the other students will engage themselves in beating the dust out of the chalkboard erasers, changing the dates on the board, or attempting to teach me inappropriate Japanese words (which, unfortunately, are generally not in the dictionaries to reference).

A few final notes.
I can't say I fault the students for their sloppy sweeping, as the floor is composed of wooden tiles that have half-a-centimeter gaps between them, little spaces which of course catch an insane amount of irretrievable dust.
Besides the bathrooms, where 90% of the cleaning is accomplished with nothing more than a water hose, I have never seen anything chemical be used to clean the school. And I am of the mind that that is probably a bad thing.
In all fairness, the schools in Japan cannot be judged quite by the same standards as, say, America, because they take their shoes off before entering school (everyone does), which keeps out a lot of the nastiness that we track in 20 times a day.
My classroom is becoming a souji-time hang out, which is good in that the students like me and are learning at least a hair more English than otherwise, but bad in that, it makes cleaning time longer and longer...

These kids really do crack me up.
Grace and peace!

I love my children

And by "my children" I of course mean, my students.

They're great! (some of them)

I don't have time to elaborate on why so many of them are so great, but here's a little hint.

My 3rd graders (equivalent to American 9th graders) will graduate in two days, so today they gave some/all (?) of their teachers a rose, a card, and a gift. Although I am sometime excluded from the various proceedings at my school, being after all the only foreigner amongst 700 Japanese people, I was not left out today. Three smiling but slightly nervous boys came to my room bearing gifts. The fact that these three boys were bringing me a beautiful PINK rose and a gift with a PINK ribbon on it struck me as a little odd, but then again, I am in Japan. So I took it in stride, and fortunately my gift turned out to be two very nice tablecloths, which are very useful in Japan. Their color was a rugged, manly green. So I was thrilled.

Also, I was erasing the writing on my desks the other day, and on a desk on the front row right in front of where I "lecture" was written (and I quote): "Don't overfriendly with me."

I have more than once been accused of being a flirt, but it's been a while since that accusation came from a junior high girl. I guess I had better tone things down next time I lecture...

These kids crack me up!

Augustine of Hippo

For all of you AETs out there, here's a quote from Augustine, a 4th century Christian and one of the ancient world's greatest thinkers:

"This is proof enough that unbridled curiosity is a more effective way of learning a foreign language than constraint and compulsion." --Confessions, 1.14.23

I think my ninensei would agree.