I present… THE HAMSTER!!!
More pics to come soon, now that I know how to insert them!
I continue to write this blog on the fly, in a guerilla sort of manner. There’s still no internet connection at our apartment, and it may be awhile before we get one. I’m writing these entries in Word, putting them on a thumb drive, going to internet cafes (399 yen an hour) and surreptitiously plugging them into their computers when they’re not looking (the rules forbid downloading and uploading of files, as well as the plugging in of strange equipment), opening Word (which the internet café computers all have, for some odd reason), copy text, open the blog, copy, paste, and post. There’s probably an easier way, but I’m not tech-savvy enough to figure it out.
No internet connection yet? Why, you ask? Well, it has a lot to do with the Byzantine nature of a lot of Japanese institutions. Here, you have to own a phone line (which costs $1000 and is transferable). Luckily, my company owns several and assigns them as needed. Once that’s accomplished, permissions must be exchanged on all sides and an agreement signed. Then it takes them two weeks to get you your modem. I have no idea why. The process is further being held up by the fact that I’m a foreigner and I need an alien registration card to get a modem. But I don’t have my card yet, because it takes them a month to issue them (again, I’m not sure why). Etc. Round and round. In any case, expect irregular updates and few pictures until I can do this from the comfort of home. At the latest, it might be mid-May before I’m fully up and running.
Why not just find a nice wireless hot spot, you ask? Because there aren’t any. In Toyota, especially, it seems that public wireless internet has not yet caught on.
And now, a few words about my new school…
First, a bit of an explanation about Japan’s municipal reorginization. I’m teaching in Toyota City, which always conjures up images of vast factories and city bustle. In the center of town, this is totally true. However, a few years ago, Japan embarked upon an ambitious consolidation plan to reduce the number of municipalities. In 2003, when I left Japan the last time, there was something like 6,000 cities, towns, and villages. The plan was to reduce this to 1,000, with the thought that it would streamline bureaucracies and allow the smaller and remoter villages to get more in the way of big city money and services. What happened, essentially, is that cities absorbed the small towns and villages around them. As a result, for example, the town where I was teaching before, Fukuoka, no longer exists except as a sector of Nakatsugawa city.
The same thing happened in Toyota. It absorbed a lot of small towns, including the village of Shimoyama, which bears zero resemblance to the idea of a “city”.
Shimoyama has a single highway that runs through the center, one lane each way. From the center of Toyota, it is a steep ascent, up into the mountains, with lots of fun hairpin turns that make even the most staid driver feel like a rally racer. Mountains and valleys alternately rise and drop on both sides of the road. There is really nothing that could be called a “center” of town; the buildings are scattered in a thin strip along both sides of the road, along a ten kilometer path. The drive is pleasant and green, with cedar, blossoming cherries (in the spring) and wild bamboo springing up on steep inclines and around long, narrow little terraced rice fields. Side roads, one lane wide, take you further up the mountains, some eventually connecting with other roads on the other side, some running off into driveways and leading to individual houses, and some going nowhere in particular, ending at dirt footpaths or sudden, abrupt ends that leave little room to turn around.
Eventually, (just past the Circle K and Shell station) you turn left up a 10% grade and arrive at the front gates of Shimoyama Junior High School.
Like most Japanese junior high schools, it’s three stories high, with each grade on its own floor (higher grades on lower floors… one of the perks of seniority is not having to climb so many stairs). The current structure was put up sometime in the 1970s. The villages of Japan were the last to abandon the old wooden school buildings erected at the turn of the century and go for something that’s frankly a lot less charming; a rectangular, concrete structure with good functionality but zero curb appeal. It frankly looks like something designed in the Soviet bloc; most Japanese buildings erected post-war up until the mid-80s share this unfortunate resemblance.
Shimoyama, being far out in the sticks, has plenty of land and room to breathe, so the campus is spacious. A circle drive leads to the front doors where teachers and guests enter (students enter from the other side and down a ways, past the community kitchens and next to the bicycle parking spot). The gym sits in front, framing the circle drive, away from the rest of the school building, connected by a long corridor. An immense (especially for Japan) dirt sports ground is shared with an elementary school across the way, and dirt tennis courts project out opposite the school office windows. Additions made in the last ten years have added a new meeting room and library, which are a lot more attractive and exude more warmth than the rest of the building.
The walls are all concrete, the floors in the classrooms well-worn hardwood, the hallways linoleum. Sliding doors lead to the classrooms. Like most Japanese schools, there is no heating and no air conditioning (the teacher’s room has both, but neither is on during regular school hours, in a show of solidarity with the students). Some schools in extremely hot climates might have air conditioning, others in extreme cold might have heating systems, but most make do with body heat in winter and lots of open windows in summer. From experience, I will say that sharing a smallish room with 30+ students does tend to be plenty cozy in the winter. In the summer, the whole school can be opened to the point where it is basically one big semi-enclosed porch. The building profile is thin- the whole is one hallway and one classroom thick. Open the hall windows facing the front of the school, open the windows between the hall and class (running the whole length of the inner wall), and open the classroom windows facing the back, and the whole school becomes one big breezeway. With the humidity I would never claim that it’s comfortable, but it is at least tolerable.
The only other feature of the school that Westerners might find unusual is the long, trough-like stone sinks that run along the hallway walls, one in front of each classroom, with about twenty taps each (cold water only). These are used for various purposes, mostly for cleaning the school, which happens every day after sixth period. Students go to various lockers situated throughout the school, arm themselves with brooms, mops, rags, and sponges, and proceed to their assigned areas to give the school a thorough cleaning. The sinks are also used after lunch, as every student is required to bring a toothbrush and brush their teeth (most of the teachers do this, too).
Most schools in Japan serve lunch in the classroom. There is usually a central kitchen that services all of the schools, with the meals being trucked to the various buildings. We’re lucky in that the central kitchen happens to be adjacent to the school, connected by a corridor. At lunch time, each class has a group of five or six students on lunch duty (responsibility rotates throughout the year), who don white coats, hair covers, and white masks (sneeze guards) and go retrieve a huge metal cart from the kitchen loaded with buckets of soup, covered trays and bowls of rice, salad, meat, etc. and wheel them to their classrooms (there are large dumbwaiters that take the carts to the second and third floors, where the students retrieve them). After years of this, I still think it looks funny; the kids look like surgeons who are retrieving experiments from a cryogenics lab or something…
The lunch group then serves the other students and all sit down to eat. Teachers eat the same lunches as the students. Homeroom teachers eat with their classes (in Japan, the students stay put while the teachers move around, except of course for classes like gym, science, etc. where specialized rooms are utilized). Most of the other teachers eat in the staff room. The lunches are actually pretty good. They are, however, designed with the nutritional needs of growing bodies in mind and tend to be rather high in calories.
My students wear uniforms, of course. For formal occasions (assemblies, etc.) they have their dress uniforms. The boys have the classic military-look jacket with big brass buttons and black slacks; the girls have the classic sailor top and skirt. Most schools choose navy; my school was smart and chose black for the girls’ uniform (it looks a lot sharper) with double white pinstripes around the collar. For everyday wear, though, the students wear their jerseys- sweat shirt and sweat pants. In the summer shorts and lighter tops will come out. The jerseys are an eye-bleeding shade of sea foam green… a hue so intense it’s hard to look at. So when I’m in a class with almost forty students, and everyone is wearing one… ouch!
Thus concludes my overview of school life. More to come soon.
