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Category Archives: Teaching

Halloween & Day of the Dead Lesson – With Materials

10 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by scalesoflibra in Post JET, Teaching

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Tags

Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos, ESL Lesson Plan, Halloween, Halloween Lesson Plan, Obon, Samhain

Didn’t think I’d be adding new stuff to Lucky Hill, but…’tis the season.

Well, this isn’t exactly new. I figured I’d share one of my best lessons, and one that I believe I didn’t use to its full potential, namely my lesson on Halloween and Dia de los Muertos (Mexican Day of the Dead). I’ve mentioned this lesson before in my long post about the gaijin-san costume, where I brought up how differences are pointed out in Japan to the point of never letting people and students consider the similarities between things and people. That’s where this lesson comes in; it offers students the chance to learn about Halloween, Dia de los Muertos, and compare & contrast the two with a familiar Japanese holiday, Obon, in a Venn diagram.

FestivalsoftheDeadVennThis is the part of the lesson that I feel I didn’t do so well on, because I went in assuming students knew what a Venn diagram was. I think I asked the JTEs if they did, and was told that they knew it, but only in a math context. Overall, I underestimated how much this concept of using Venn diagrams in language arts would throw the students off. While some homerooms got it immediately, others struggled to grasp this concept, and we ended up running out of time in most classes.

If I were to do it again, with students of the same level, I would divide the lesson into two. I’d start off with the Venn diagram, and compare simpler things, such as “dogs and cats,” “Pokémon and Yugi-oh,” “Arashi and Exile,” and so forth. Then I’d do the introduction to Halloween and Dia de los Muertos in the second lesson.

Below you will find all my old materials for this lesson. First, the actual lesson plan. The worksheets I made are first in this PDF, the lesson plan is the last page here:

Festivals of the Dead Lesson

I used a presentation after the students had done the dictation/info gap exercises. I originally made this presentation in Keynote, but WordPress isn’t letting me upload that file (despite saying that “key” is an acceptable file format…) so I’m including a PowerPoint export of the file here. It may not display as nicely, but you’ll get the point.

Dia de los Muertos and Halloween

You may notice that the slide about spirits doesn’t have a picture. I could be wrong, as it’s been a long time, but I think I left it like that to explain the difference between “spirit” and “ghost,” namely that we usually think of a ghost as something that can be seen and felt, whereas a spirit is usually only felt. (On top of the fact that ghost usually refers to the spirit of a dead animal or person, whereas spirit can be like…the soul of a tree. That’s how I understand these words anyway. Ahaha…)

The last piece of this lesson is the Venn diagram. I simply gave students a sheet of B4 paper, and they had to draw the circles themselves. I’d drawn an example on the board. I suppose you could pre-print the diagram to save some time. There were a few students who had to bust out protractors and compasses to draw Absolutely Perfect Circles but…not too many.

Of course, even with all these materials, I think it’s crucial to do lots of research on your own into these things. One thing I’ve noticed, especially since coming back to the States, is how much people take their own culture for granted, and then end up misrepresenting their culture because of that ignorance. Actually, perhaps what prompted me to post this lesson now was a friend sharing an article on Facebook, namely this one telling people they shouldn’t dress as La Calavera Catrina for Halloween. The author, a Mexican American, makes the surprising statement that Dia de los Muertos is “a traditional event not at all related to Halloween” (emphasis mine), despite the fact that she’d mentioned Dia de los Muertos’ relationship with All Saints’ Day. I was like, “Uh, where do you think the word ‘Halloween’ comes from?”

New Oxford Am Dict def of HalloweenPeople can get so caught up in their need to defend their culture that they fail to realize that having things in common with other cultures doesn’t take away from their culture in the least. Sometimes, it seems like people straight out get into a game of one-up. “Neener neener, my culture’s older therefore better and valider than yoooours!” That’s an attitude that I think was present in that article, and it’s an attitude I’d often hear in Japan as well. That’s why I liked doing this type of lesson that brought together traditions from across time and place. There’s nothing wrong with a culture not being 100% unique, especially not when it comes to something as universal as death.

Well, I hope my lesson plan will prove useful in some way or another for someone out there! Until next time, folks.

☆

Random おまけ!

There’s a town in Star Ocean: First Departure which has, perhaps, perpetual autumn. It also has one of my favorite Star Ocean tracks ever, namely “Sweet Time.” Actually, I think I’ve mentioned this track somewhere on this blog before, but…it’s good enough to repeat. Enjoy!

Of Samurai and Scholar Athletes

28 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by scalesoflibra in Post JET, Teaching

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

bunburyodo, Detroit, Detroit Institue of Arts, samurai, Samurai: Beyond the Sword, Tokugawa Era

Last week I went to the Detroit Institute of Arts with some friends to see the special exhibit Samurai: Beyond the Sword. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’ve only got until June 1st to do so. (And if you’re a Wayne State student or alum, today is the last day you can get the “Warrior Wednesday” discount. It’s been extended through May.)

From the DIA's exhibit site.

“Tousei gusoku,” (当世具足) a type of armor common in the Tokugawa Era. From the DIA’s exhibit site.

It was a pretty good exhibit. As advertised, there were not only swords and armor on display, but also painted screens, ceramics for use in tea ceremony, paintings, woodblock prints, and other types of art. That’s not to say that the swords and armor weren’t artful, as they most certainly were. There was even a case or two with just sword hilts and fittings, so you could really see the detail and craftsmanship that went into every part of the sword. Short, explanatory videos in each section of the exhibit helped bring the displayed items to life. And, according to one friend, who started off listening to the accompanying adult audio tour but ended up switching to the children’s one out of curiosity, you can pretend that you’re a samurai in training by listening to said youth audio tour as you walk through the exhibit.

The exhibit is premised on the concept of 文武両道 (bunburyoudou) meaning “literary and military arts,” or, more gracefully, “the pen and the sword.” People of the samurai class were expected to be well versed in not only martial arts, but also literature, painting, and other scholarly pursuits. The term bunburyoudou, however, is from a time before the Tokugawa Era (1600-1868) that the exhibit covers, being recorded in the Shiji nearly 2,000 years before the samurai age. The term has also survived well into the current day, being used often in schools. Indeed, when I stepped into the exhibition space and saw 文武両道 written on the wall (one of the few instances of Japanese text in the exhibit, not counting Japanese written on the displayed items themselves), I could hear the voice of the third vice principal I had worked with, as he would say it often in assemblies and staff meetings. This concept of bunburyoudou was probably in play at my first school as well, only I didn’t know it.

One of the things that always left me scratching my head was how students with failing grades were allowed to keep on participating in after-school clubs and sports. In my high school education, and in many other Americans’ high school experience, extracurricular activities in the States were seen as a privilege, not a right. If your grades fall, you get suspended from after-school activities until you get your grades back up. Granted, there seemed to be a bit of looking the other way when it came to a few members of my high school football team, but for the most part this pattern held. Students on sports teams were “scholar athletes.” Not just scholars, not just athletes, but both. In contrast, there were students at my first school in Japan who were constantly failing tests in all their classes, yet they were never pulled from their teams or clubs.

I mentioned this once to the owner of a restaurant I used to frequent. I explained the American system, and he answered, “But then don’t the students get upset, not being able to participate in their clubs?” I answered that some students did, but that at the same time, they knew from the beginning that keeping their grades up was a condition of their participation. He went on to say that the thinking in Japan was that if someone isn’t good at academics, if you took sports away from them, they’d have nothing, and that would do them more harm than good. I could see where he was coming from, but I wasn’t quite convinced. After all, students can end up spending 3 and a half hours after school in clubs. Would it really kill them to take half of that time for study?

It wasn’t until I was transferred to my second school that I started hearing the term bunburyoudou with some frequency. I heard the vice principal say it the most during a staff meeting at the beginning of my last academic year in Japan. He was comparing our school to a private school he’d visited recently. The students there usually got into some of the best universities in the country. But there was no “school life” in the sense that there was apparently very little student participation in clubs. This made him realize, he said, just how wonderful a bunburyoudou school is. Such a school teaches young people how to live, not just how to take tests.

I remember thinking, 「どうかな?」(“Is that so?”) Ahaha…of course, my cynical reaction was based on what I saw of Japanese education, which was mostly English education, which, last I saw it, was still almost entirely at the mercy of the university entrance exam. Also, I couldn’t help but think that it isn’t truly bunburyoudou, the pen and the sword, if either side is allowed to remain at a level of undeniable incompetence. It was more like “the pen or the sword” for many students. That was my impression anyway.

Then again, perhaps it was like that for some people of the samurai class as well. There was one quote that really stood out to me at the DIA’s exhibit. It wasn’t something Musashi or Yagyu Jubei or some other celebrated samurai said. It was a quote from Tsubaki Chinzan, a samurai whose stipend was too small to live on, forcing him to take up painting to create a second source of income for himself. I don’t remember the exact words now, only the gist of it. Chinzan lamented the fact that he had no choice but to spend all his time painting pictures for others, people with the time and means to read classic poetry and commission artwork based on it, and otherwise lead culturally enriching lives. In his financial situation, apparently Chinzan didn’t have much variety to the arts he could spend time on.

All that said, I think balance is a good thing to aim for. In that sense, I like the philosophy of bunburyoudou.

The Tip of the Nose-berg

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by scalesoflibra in Living in Fukuoka, Stuff That Just Happens, Teaching

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

All Nippon Airways commecial, ANA, gaijin-san, racism, stereotypes

This is a very long post. To summarize for the TL;DR crowd, what I’m getting at is that the stereotype of “Gaijin-san” doesn’t exist in a vacuum, that there is a host of racial problems in Japan and that’s part of what makes Gaijin-san so aggravating.

Recently I found out about All Nippon Airways’ unfortunate decision to air an ad featuring a man in Japan’s ubiquitous “Gaijin-san” costume: a large nose and a blond wig. Honestly it left me stupefied because 1. the nose used was extremely large even by Gaijin-san costume standards, and 2. I had come to believe that the Gaijin-san costume was fading out of use. I remember seeing it in the variety shop InCube, being sold with Halloween costumes in 2009, but never again after that year in that store. I’d always check for it because the first time I saw it I was blown away. Can you imagine a “Mr. Black Guy” mask being sold in the U.S. in the year 2009 with no repercussions?

The "American" and "Indian" patrons of an "International Sushi Shop"

The first time I saw the Gaijin-san costume: August 2009, on some sort of variety show. The premise here was that people from different countries were eating at an international sushi restaurant. Here are the “American” and “Indian” patrons, both with fake noses. To my disappointment, neither a samurai, ninja, sumo wrestler, nor geisha showed up to represent Japan. The inclusion of a Japanese stereotype would’ve at least opened the door for the interpretation that the show made fun of everyone. And wouldn’t it have been funnier if the sushi chef was preparing the fish with a katana?

As I spent more time in Japan, I came to find the Gaijin-san costume increasingly offensive. It popped up everywhere, from TV shows to skits at school, and no one ever questioned it. I don’t think it would bother me as much if the extent of Japan’s stereotyping went no further than that, or if Japanese people would at least acknowledge that yes this is a stereotype, or if all the stereotyping did was make Japanese people think that all white people have humongous schnozes and hair in a Barbie shade of blond. But none of these scenarios is the case. Gaijin-san’s nose is just the tip of the iceberg.

In a country with so few foreigners, why would you need a phone to have

In a country with so few foreigners, why would you need a phone to have emoji of a white man (the only one shown in profile to showcase his splendid proboscis), a thinly mustachio-ed slit eyed Chinese man, and a turbaned Indian? What did the text message say, “Guess what I just saw on the train?” And where’s the stoic karate master or the sumo wrestler? If Capcom could do it for Street Fighter on the Super Nintendo, I’m sure SoftBank and Panasonic could’ve done it on this phone. At least newer phones seem to have the emoji of the white guy from the front rather than from the side; this is the phone I got in 2009 and had all 4 years in Japan.

On the Lack of Intent, Criminal or Otherwise

One of the most common ways Japanese and non-Japanese alike justify things like Gaijin-san is by saying “No one is being hurt by this,” and “It’s just a joke.” True, between seeing someone put on a toy prosthesis and display their ignorance, and being followed around in the mall by clerks because I’m Hispanic, I’ll take Gaijin-san. The problem with this idea is that it only takes into account immediate, direct harm. But can anyone say with certainty that making a toy out of an entire group of people doesn’t harm the real human beings of that group indirectly? When students don’t take ALTs seriously, when schools don’t take ALTs seriously, can we say with certainty that constantly presenting foreigners as punchlines isn’t reinforcing this type of behavior? How much English and cultural awareness can students get from a person whom they may subconsciously view as little more than an entertaining distraction, a break from the academic rigors of their real classes? When Japanese people see a gag more often than an actual foreigner, is it surprising when they do things like stare, or say rude things in Japanese assuming the foreigner won’t understand? What’s that attitude going to do to the country’s bottom line?

Another common excuse is “Japanese don’t mean to be racist.” For the most part, I think that’s true. But saying “Japanese don’t mean to be racist,” means that they are indeed being racist, just not willfully. And if that’s the case, I don’t think that the conclusion “and therefore people shouldn’t speak up about things that are bothering a whole lot of them” follows logically from “Japanese don’t mean to be racist.” I think students donning Gaijin-san costumes, or the ANA commercial, are chances for real-world dialogue and learning that should not be missed because of the idea that lack of intent justifies slighting people.

Disclaimer: Neither (clockwise from top right) Kim Soo Hyun, Takumi, nor GACKT had anything to do with the making of this illustration.

Disclaimer: Neither (clockwise from top right) Kim Soo Hyun, Takumi, nor GACKT had anything to do with the making of this illustration.

The above image is based on a student’s English Passport (a name card which students could either attach purikura of themselves to or draw themselves on) that I saw in my first or second year on JET. I had directed the students to draw an arrow pointing to themselves if they used a photo that had their friends in it, so that I could learn who was who faster. To my surprise one girl labelled not only herself, but also the three other people in the photo, writing in “me,” “friend,” “friend,” and “Korean.”

I’m sure the girl who did this had no malicious intent. I’m sure she didn’t get the implication of not labeling the third person as “friend” like the rest. It may well be that the student who did this loves Korean pop culture, and feels like being in a photo with a real Korean person gives her some street cred or cool factor, and that’s why she wanted to let it be known that the person was Korean. But doesn’t that turn the person into a sort of status symbol, like wearing a sweater whose main feature is the massive logo “Marithé + François Girbaud” in huge letters across the torso? And is it not worthwhile to address this possibility with the student, regardless of how much she didn’t intend to offend anyone?

If I get drunk, crash my car into a pedestrian and kill them, I’ll still get charged with a crime, right? The charge might be manslaughter rather than murder, but no one will say, “She didn’t mean to kill that pedestrian, so let’s just leave that corpse in the street and act like it’s not there.” And if some guy asks me to deliver a package somewhere, but I don’t ask what’s in it, when the police catch me with a box full of meth, “I didn’t know what was in the package” will not be an excuse. Is it in Japan’s best interests to insist that their box is empty and completely ignore people who tell them there’s some racism in there? Especially when it will be hosting an international event like the Olympics in a few years?

If Japan chose to shut itself off from the world completely, none of this would matter. It’d be their decision to make. In their isolation they’d be totally free to think whatever they wanted to about anyone. But as long as Japan wants to buy products from abroad and sell its products abroad, it doesn’t seem wise to play the “we didn’t know” card rather than the “we didn’t know, thanks for telling us, can you explain it further so that we may understand?” card. Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with true cultural awareness and understanding springing up from a need to protect one’s pocketbook. It’s not ideal, but it seems more realistic. It’s a fairly easy concept to understand, after all: “Anger these people, and they won’t give us their money.” I don’t for a second believe that a lot of the progress Hispanics have made in the U.S. wasn’t due to the economic and political power that Hispanics came to wield as an ever-growing group.

Two Wrongs Don’t Make A Right

It was almost painfully predictable what would happen if I tried to bring up the subject of discrimination against foreigners in Japan to a Japanese person: “But when I lived in X country the people there treated me like I was different and asked me rude things.” “Oh, but America had slavery, didn’t it?”

These things are logical fallacies. Since when does one fact cancel out another fact just because it’s a fact too? Both are true and neither can make the other go away, nor does either justify the other.

I first saw Breakfast at Tiffany's in 2013. I couldn't believe the character of Mr. Yunioshi.

I first saw Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 2013. I couldn’t believe the character of Mr. Yunioshi. I’m sure that to audiences in 1961 it was no big deal, but live and learn eh? No need to make the same mistakes.

If it’s okay for Japanese to strap noses to their face and put on blond wigs to become Gaijin-san because white people have done black face and yellow face, and otherwise discriminated against people of color, when will it stop? I mean, a character as blatant as Mr. Yunioshi would probably not make it into an American movie these days. Yes, Asian characters are often portrayed by Asian actors of a different ethnicity (e.g. Japanese-American soldier Jim Morita played by Kenneth Choi, who is of Korean descent, in Captain America: The First Avenger) but that’s a step up from casting white people in those roles. So for how long do people have a right to stick it to the white man when the white man’s ability to stick it to minorities (at least in media depictions) has been curtailed? For as long as there was slavery? For as long as Breakfast at Tiffany’s has existed? For as long as white people command vast amounts of political and economic power? And if so, is that the best we can do, as people of color? Poke fun at how big The Man’s nose is?

Gaijin-san doesn’t do anything to rectify these wrongs, it just creates more problems. And not only for white people in Japan, but for non-white foreigners there too.

Half the World Doesn’t Exist

I have a problem with how differences are emphasized in Japan to the point of completely ignoring similarities. There’s a hilarious but sad example that illustrates this all too well in the book Hi! My Name is Loco and I Am a Racist. That same conversation is also up on author Baye McNeil’s blog (this post).

My last October as an ALT I whipped up what I thought was a witty lesson introducing Halloween, its precursor Samhain, and the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. I made sure to include the vocabulary words “ancestor” (which the students had just had in their Vocabulary book as well), “grave,” “altar,” “offering,” and “spirit” on the handout with Japanese translations, as well as show many pictures of Day of the Dead festivities, which center on cleaning ancestors’ graves and making food & drink offerings to them at altars. Before moving on to the last part of the lesson, a Venn diagram, I asked the students, “Samhain and Dia de los Muertos especially are both very similar to a Japanese holiday. Can you think of which one?” When no one would answer I told them to read over the passage about Dia de los Muertos again, and to look at the Japanese in the vocabulary list again. Out of 10 homerooms of 40 students each, only in one homeroom was there a single student who immediately saw the similarity between these foreign holidays and the Japanese festival Obon, during which cleaning the family grave and making offerings at altars is also very important. In other homerooms, the first answer shouted out was Oshougatsu (New Year’s), and there was even at least one spirited yell of “Taiiku no Hi!” (Health and Sports Day, which is in October).

An "ofrenda," or altar for the dead, and a butsudan, or Buddhist altar, with Obon offerings. The tiers, the lights, the photo and/or plaque for the deceased...yeah, not similar at all. (I found the ofrenda photo on several blogs saying it was from Wikipedia but couldn't find it there. The butsudan comes from Hasegawa Butsudan, a company that sells altars & altar accessories.

An “ofrenda,” or altar for the dead, and a butsudan, or Buddhist altar, with Obon offerings. The tiers, the lights, the flowers, the food offerings, the photo and/or plaque for the deceased…why did I ever think the similarity was obvious?
(I found the ofrenda photo on several blogs saying it was from Wikipedia but couldn’t find it there. The butsudan comes from Hasegawa Butsudan, a company that sells altars & altar accessories.)

I was blown away by how hard it was for the students to make the connection between Obon and Dia de los Muertos. By the fourth or fifth time I’d given the lesson, I was ending it, perhaps too gleefully given some of the weird looks I got, with the revelation “Every culture has a death festival! EVERYBODY DIES!!!”

Some of the teachers blamed the students’ inability to make the connection on their being young and therefore not familiar with traditional Japanese culture. But I find it very hard to believe that they didn’t know the very basics of Obon. Are 399 of the students in that grade in families with zero filial piety? To me a much more likely explanation is that students have never been asked to find similarities before, so when they get asked that simple question their brain crashes. What students are constantly asked, at least in their 3 years of high school, is what are the differences between Japanese and Westerners. How and why are students who by and large have never been to the West expected to answer such a question?

But getting to a story that more directly illustrates the problems that the Gaijin-san costume causes:

The high school English Communication I textbook ELEMENT for the current academic year is generally pretty good. I read the entire book before classes started and of its ten chapters I only had a problem with one: Chapter 3, “How Asians and Westerners Think Differently.” I figured I was in store for sweeping generalizations, and indeed I was. I don’t remember many details now, only that the bulk of the chapter cited a study whose subjects were Chinese and American children. So why wasn’t the title “How Chinese Children and American Children Think Differently?”

Anyway, the school I was at sometimes had to host demonstration English classes. Teachers from other schools as well as people from the Board of Education and college professors would come to sit in on and evaluate the new English-only English classes. One of these demos used the chapter mentioned above. So the teacher giving the class opened the lesson with the question, “What do you think are some of the differences between Japanese and Westerners?” A student was called on, and after hesitating a while, he offered a wonderful answer: “I don’t know.”

I was so glad in that instant. “I don’t know” is a perfect answer when you really don’t know and are being set up to display a bad kind of ignorance, which is ignorance masquerading as knowledge. But the student was prodded for an answer. And what he came up with was: “Westerner’s eye color is different.”

Hopefully this wasn't the face I was making on the outside, but I was certainly thinking "for real now?" when I heard the teacher say that yes, Westerner's eye color is different.

マジで? This is the Westerner who works in your school, whom you’ve been seeing for several months, and what you come up with is “Westerner’s eye color is different”? And the teacher just co-signs on that? While I’m in the room?

The episode made me realize the monumental proportions of the stereotypes and ignorance that I, as an ALT there for cultural exchange as well as English education, had to fight. I was disappointed by the student’s answer but at the same time I was fully aware that he was only regurgitating what his culture had fed him.

Brown eyes are the most common in the world. Even if we assume that “Westerner” excludes Mexico, Central America, and South America, there are brown-eyed Europeans. Only you’d never know that when you’re constantly presented with the caricature Gaijin-san that tells you Westerner = Caucasian = blond & blue-eyed.

Every now and then, you’ll see representations of Westerners that aren’t white. Unfortunately, many of those tend to be mere stereotypes as well.

Coke with a music downloads promotion (I think) in 2009.

Coke with a music downloads promotion (I think) in 2009.

From the same bottle. Somehow I doubt the American Coca-Cola would've put something like this on their products Stateside.

From the same bottle. Somehow I doubt the American Coca-Cola would’ve put something like this on their products Stateside.

I Ain’t Been Dropping No Eaves, Sir, Honest!

Being a foreigner who can understand Japanese can feel like being an eavesdropper, only it’s not hard to catch what people are saying because they say it right in your face.

My first year on JET, I pretty much kept to myself. Being dark-haired, dark-eyed, and silent kept me safe from prying eyes. I didn’t feel at all the sort of discomfort I’d end up feeling in my second through fourth years, when I would more frequently be around other foreigners in public.

One time I was going home from Japanese class with 3 other ALTs who lived in the same jutaku. One was a Japanese-American man, another was a white American woman, and the other was a white New Zealand woman. We were talking, not too loud but louder than everybody else, and I noticed an older Japanese man staring daggers at us from the priority seats. I lowered my voice hoping the others would follow, but it didn’t have much effect.

We got to our station, but it was the old man’s station too. He was on the escalator, I directly behind him, followed by the guy and the 2 girls, who were still talking. As we rode up slowly the old man huffed and puffed, till he could take it no longer. He leaned forward a bit to speak over me and address the guy behind me, saying 「女はどこでもうるさいね。」(=”Women everywhere are noisy, huh?”)

I was flabbergasted. The statement was sexist. But perhaps more than that, what punched me in the gut with bittersweet irony was that the old man skipped over the foreigner who understood what he said perfectly, to say it to the foreigner of Japanese descent who probably didn’t catch half of it! Without thinking I blurted out at the man in the overly textbook-y Japanese I had in my first year, 「必ずしも外国人の女性は日本語を話せないわけじゃないです。」(“It’s not always the case that foreign women can’t speak Japanese.”) The man was taken aback, asked me if I spoke Japanese (D’UH what did I just say to you?!), and grumbled on his way once the escalator reached the top.

The ANA commercial is like this old man on a much wider scale, and far less excusable. Japanese is a language largely written and spoken on the assumption that the people who will read it and hear it are Japanese only. Even if it’s true that there are few non-Japanese who have a solid command of the Japanese language, the news media exists. Stuff gets translated and spreads around on the internet. No company, no public figure, should assume that what they say won’t go all the way round the world and sneak up behind them to bite them in the tush. Even private citizens have to be careful what they post online, lest they lose a job because of a raunchy Facebook photo.

On a lighter note, this reminds me of Tiziano Ferro, an Italian singer who was also popular in Latin America. In 2006 he went on an Italian talk show and said that one of the things that made touring abroad hard was having to compliment each place he was in. Among other insulting remarks he said that Mexican women all have mustaches. To his surprise the Latin American media got wind of it and his popularity in Mexico plummeted.

But Even When People KNOW You Speak Japanese

I had this hilarious exchange in Japanese with some sweet English club girls in July of 2013:

Student A: It’s said that foreigners who speak Japanese start to have the facial features of Japanese.
Me: Really?
Student A: Yeah, the ones who live here.
Me: Hmm.
Student A: (Turning to speak to Student B) Once you get used to looking at them [=foreigners], you lose that sense that something’s off [=違和感], don’t you?
Me: The sense that something’s off…? *Bursts out laughing*
Student B: Ah! No no no…
Student A: Sorry…
Me: *Still laughing*

The conversation had started off with something I hadn’t exactly heard before but was no stranger to: the idea that there’s some physical component to being able to speak a language other than the movements of one’s mouth and tongue, such as the belief that only those with Japanese blood can truly speak Japanese. I suppose it’s possible that speaking another language could change the appearance of one’s face if a radically different set of muscles is being put into motion, though I have no science to back this up. They say long-married couples end up looking like each other, so maybe there’s something to this foreigners-turning-Japanese thing. In any case, the idea struck me as odd, but no biggie. It was the 違和感 (“iwakan,” a feeling that something is a bit off) comment that really surprised me. Even though Student A wasn’t directly addressing me anymore, without thinking, I just said, “Iwakan?” Student B seemed to catch on immediately that I was saying, by simply repeating that word, “There was a time when you looked at another human being and felt like their face was a mistake?”

Granted, Student A didn’t seem like she realized she’d committed a faux pas until Student B started apologizing on her behalf. Student A really is a very good-natured individual so I’m sure she didn’t think she was being rude. But it still felt like maybe she’d forgotten, for a brief second, that I could understand what she said and had even been conversing with her in Japanese just seconds before. Or maybe she forgot that I was a foreigner because I was speaking in Japanese!

Investing in Japan

When I was volunteering in City Year, I was heavily invested in the outcome of my work. Not just because I take pride in anything that’s gonna have my name on it, but also because I was a resident of the City of Detroit, working with the youth of the City of Detroit. Indeed, one of the things that had made me want to find a way to help my city was the many destructive things I’d see kids doing in the street. Ripping branches off trees for no reason, throwing rocks at birds trying to kill them for the fun of it, joining gangs and walking down the street talking about how they “run this” while probably not having the faintest idea of what real power looks like, and the fact that real power is not at all inconvenienced by people with no power killing each other off with drugs and violence.

When my City Year team was at a school in Southwest Detroit, AKA Mexicantown, it was easy to reach out to the students and have them respond to me. I was Hispanic like them, I was an immigrant like them, I had come to this country not knowing a lick of English like them. In my second year my team was at a K-8 school on Detroit’s primarily black east side. But I could still tell them, and indeed I did, I care about you because you live where I live. This is my city too. Your future is my future. There are people who want us to fail, because we’re from Detroit, or because we’re minorities. Are you gonna play into their hands? Even the boys most hell-bent on being thugs had to stop and think for a minute.

In Japan I likewise did the best I could as an ALT out of personal pride, but also out of the sincere belief that I could reach the students based on our mutual experience of learning English as a second language. I’d say to them, I had to learn English like you’re doing now, I made many mistakes in public but it’s okay, the U.S. is a nation of immigrants and we’re speaking English with different accents but we can still understand each other.

Four years and about 3,000 students later, I feel like this had no effect on the majority of the students I had in Japan. Perhaps the problem was that no matter what, the students had been conditioned to see foreigners as different from them. Idealistically I could have said that in a global world their future is my future even if we’re thousands of miles apart. But that’s much more abstract, and it’s a little bit harder to be personally invested in reaching people who are heavily invested in keeping you at arm’s length.

In Conclusion

This has been a very long, semi-stream-of-consciousness post. A lot of these things are things I’d been thinking about for years and just couldn’t find a way to put them together and express them. The ANA commercial served as a trigger to get all these thoughts out of my head. All of this, all these 4000+ words of thoughts, are the context in which I take Gaijin-san as offensive. ANA isn’t the first nor will it be the last to use Gaijin-san, though I hope we’re nearing the end of it. The United States still has a LOT of racial problems but I think it’s something to at least have moved away from stereotypes like Sambo and Mr. Yunioshi. I’m also of the mind that humanity isn’t GOING to hell in a hand basket, it’s been trying to LEAVE hell by way of a slippery ladder that we take two steps back on after going one forward. Humans seem naturally inclined to segregate themselves, stereotype, and give preferential treatment to “their own.” Maybe this will never stop. But I think it’s worth it to try, and we can’t try if we don’t acknowledge that it’s even going on.

What’s In A Name?

20 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by scalesoflibra in Other Things JETs Do, Teaching

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I’ve been home for little over a week now after ending 4 years on JET. As I try to find my next step, I’ve been thinking about the reasons why I decided to leave in the first place. Despite my original intention when joining JET of getting good enough at Japanese to teach it, I ended up so dissatisfied at work that I would say to anyone who asked me if I’d consider continuing in education, “I don’t want to teach anybody anything.”

My stance on that has softened somewhat as I remember what the draw of teaching Japanese had originally been. And I realized that hands down, what I came to hate about work was that I felt like I wasn’t getting even the bare minimum of respect that someone at the bottom of the school totem pole should get. Not consistently anyway.

Right now new ALTs are probably thinking about things such as “What should I have the students call me?” I’m a big proponent of Mr./Ms.+Last Name, especially if that is the way teachers are addressed in the ALT’s home country. It’s also a matter of respect and establishing yourself as being above the students. Maybe that sounds a bit high and mighty, but in a society as hierarchical as Japan’s, and in regions that still often treat foreigners as curiosities rather than human beings, it’s important to establish who’s who.

People who are at least vaguely familiar with Japanese culture might have some ideas about the sempai-kouhai relationship. While I was aware from the start that sempai, one’s “senior” be it at work or in life, were regarded with respect by their kouhai (juniors), I never realized how deep and important this relationship was until I’d been working in Japan for a couple of years. Students actually bow to their sempai. For example, 10th graders bow to 11th and 12th graders, and the 11th graders bow to the seniors. In my school’s English club, all the students went by cutsie nicknames, but the underclassmen never addressed the upperclassmen without an honorific, even if it meant saying somewhat silly sounding things like nickname-chan-san. When referring to the one junior in the club, the sophomores, talking amongst themselves, would always call him Last Name-sempai. When talking about him to me sometimes they’d use his first name, I don’t exactly know why, but they never called him his first name to his face.

If students show that much respect to each other, what kind of sense does it make to have them call ALTs by their first names?

The majority of ALTs might not have teaching certification, but they’re still adults. What’s more, they get put into schools, in name if nothing else, as “assistant language teachers.” When school faculty and staff address the ALT by the ALT’s first name, especially without the -sensei honorific, they are destroying what shred of credibility the ALT might have had with the students. When students don’t take the ALT seriously, they don’t take the class seriously, and the class becomes a pointless waste of everyone’s time. In contrast, the two (out of 10) homerooms that did address me as Ms. Last Name, as I had explained at the beginning of the school year, were much more open to participating in the class, and performed better on tests. Could it be because they took that extra step of actually understanding and using a basic part of American culture?

I’ve had at least two ALTs tell me that they were uncomfortable with being called Mr./Ms. Last Name because to them, that signified their father or their mother. I found that a bit strange. I can understand their sentiment but at the same time I don’t understand why they don’t also just see it as “adults are addressed this way and I’m an adult.” My mother was a school teacher but it doesn’t bother me to be addressed the same way; I just take it as “I’m an adult being addressed as adults are.”

Ultimately, and perhaps unfortunately, it is up to each individual ALT to set the rules for how students and coworkers address them. I hope this made anyone thinking of letting students address them by first name alone think more deeply about their position.

☆

Take Out the Cannons and You’ve Got What It’s Like To Be an ALT

07 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by scalesoflibra in Stuff That Just Happens, Teaching

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

commercial, Cup Noodles, Nisshin, Survive!グローバリゼーション編

I was peacefully painting my nails pink and green to take the place of the already fallen sakura petals for the upcoming Entrance Ceremony while watching The Tourist on TV when I saw the most awesomest commercial ever. Yes, its level of epicness requires the use of incorrectly formed superlatives and nouns.

出陣

The full 60-second spot isn’t on YouTube so I can’t embed it, but here it is on Nisshin’s website.

While I can’t catch all of the dialogue, I did my best to do a a transcription and translation.

[Globalization]

President: From today, our company’s official language will be English!
Employees: Whaaa?
(The army sallies forth)
Cavalryman 1: What’s the President thinking?
Cavalryman 2: I got 300 on the TOEIC*…guess I have to change jobs huh.
Cavalryman 1: I’m only Eiken level 3.** I couldn’t possibly use English now…
Cavalryman 2: If it were Japanese (??????)
Cavalryman 1: Is that the new boss?
Boss: Hi!
Vanguard: (While charging) Hi!!
Boss: Nice to meet you!
(The Japanese vanguard is hit by the cannonade)

Vanguard: What great pronunciation!***
Vanguard: It’s no good!
Vanguard: (???) the dictionary, the dictionary!
Vanguard: It’s no use!
Commander: (Orders archers to fire)
Archers: Howatto iz yoa neemu?!!!! (Fire arrows)
(The volley falls short of the Western army)

Boss: Pardon?
(The second wave of the vanguard gets hit by cannon fire)
(Someone): He didn’t understand!
(Someone): His pronunciation…it’s too good!
(Someone): Good score!
Cavalryman 1: (Brandishing sword) Don’t take Eiken Level 3 lightly!!!
Cavalry: (Charging) Good morning!
Boss: (Aims gun) How are you?
Cavalry: Fine, thank you! And youuuuuu?!?!!
Caption: You can’t fight on an empty stomach.
Cavalryman 1: (Jumps from his horse, bringing his sword down on the soldiers in the midst of the Western army)
Voiceover: Survive. Cup Noodle. Nisshin.

Notes
*TOEIC = Test of English for International Communication. A composite score of 300 would indicate extremely low English competency; a good score would be 855 to the max of 990. Well, so says Wikipedia.

**Eiken = The EIKEN Test in Practical English Proficiency, also known as the STEP Test. It has 7 total levels, level 3 corresponding to the level expected of Japanese students after completing junior high school.

***While it seems strange at first to say that the native speakers have great pronunciation, it stems from the idea that Japanese are so used to hearing katakana English that they are surprised by how different natural English as spoken by native speakers sounds, sometimes to the point of not being able to understand it even if they would have understood the katakana version.

~~~

Ahahaha…so there it is. Judging by the sound effect at the end, it seems Cavalryman 1 was able to land a direct hit on one of the Western soldiers, though in the video it looked like they all cleared out of the way.

In case Nisshin takes the CM off their site after a while, here’s the 30-second edit on YouTube.

My favorite lines:

英検3級なめるな!!!

英検3級なめるな!!!

How are you?

How are you?

XDDDD

I think I’m gonna have to buy a cup of Cup Noodles to thank Nisshin for entertaining me, while not thinking about Cavalryman 1 potentially having killed a native speaker of English with English as his weapon. >o<;;;

Momohiro

04 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by scalesoflibra in Me Being Random, Teaching

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Momotaro

This probably amuses me more than it should.

The final assignment before finals that I gave the students was to research any world mythology and share one story or episode from it. My plan had been to put the best speeches on display, but alas, too few students seem to understand the concept of using folders/clear files to not let papers get raggedy, and that of writing neatly. So I hit upon the idea of having them turn their speeches into illustrated mini-books. Ever since an ALT used mini-books made from a single piece of paper in their presentation at one of the ALT meetings I had been looking for a project to use these in.

I made three sample mini-books using the stories we had read in class together, namely that of Orion and the Scorpion, Echo the Nymph, and a modified version of Momotarou. I called it “Momohiro.” >o<;

When giving students writing assignments, if you don’t explicitly say “Don’t use Momotarou!” you will get several Momotarous, often with no variation on the most well-known version. I actually needed an easy story to demonstrate how to divide text into paragraphs, so I choose Momotarou since then understanding the words themselves wouldn’t get in the way of understanding how paragraphs are used to create flow. But I just can’t bring myself to tell that story as it is. I’ve heard it and read it ten trillion times. When I had to write that story in the Japanese class I go to here, I made Momotarou talk like a Sengoku era warlord. This time I figured I could at least change the details.

Of the different suffixes for boys’ names (e.g. tarou, hiko, suke, etc) I like the ring of “hiro” the best. Hence, “Momohiro.” Ahahaha…

Without further ado, here are photos of the sample book. My camera’s been acting up lately so it looks like the paper is canvas what with those lines, but it’s just a regular sheet of A3 paper. Enjoy!

Momohiro Cover

Momohiro 1

Momohiro 2

Momohiro 3

☆

The Beginning of the End

04 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by scalesoflibra in Other Things JETs Do, Teaching

≈ Leave a comment

Happy New Year?

Ahahaha…it has now been over two months since the Arashi concert in Osaka. I think it’s fair to say at this point that I will never write a post about it. It was great, it was fun, don’t get me wrong, but I just don’t have it in me right now.

Lately I’ve been feeling like I’ve worked really hard to do the things JET tells us to do: become a part of the school and engage in “cultural exchange.” I’ve gone to clubs besides ESS, participated in classes other than English classes, cleaned in the shokuinshitsu…and it feels like it was mostly for nothing. I now feel like less a part of the school and like I’m having less of an impact than ever. A huge part of this may simply be because I’m comparing my situation now with my previous school, which matched my background and experience (and therefore ability to fit in) much better.

That’s what I’ve been feeling for the past several months anyway.

Even though I had made up my mind not to seek reappointment while I was resting in the States, I wanted to discuss it with my supervisor and vice principal first. I was caught off guard when on my first day back in Fukuoka, still messed up from jet lag and not in the best of moods, my supervisor asked me if I was staying or not. The part of my brain that was awake and rational was saying, “Don’t answer that! Don’t answer that right now!” But my Autopilot said, “I think I should go home,” to which my supervisor replied with an “Oh” and ran off somewhere. I was confused, as I assumed my inclusion of “I think” would’ve shown I wasn’t 100% sure. Well, maybe we’ll discuss it later, I thought.

Was I wrong. Even though the prefecture sent me a letter offering an extension of my contract, from that point on my supervisor moved forward with the paperwork for my leaving at a dizzying speed. I was like, “what’s going on here?!”

I remembered reading somewhere, maybe it was the CLAIR newsletter, that while contracting organizations may push their ALTs for early answers, that ALTs should remember that they have until February to decide whether to recontract or not. I was thinking, “Why are they pushing this on me in such a hurry?” At least as far as the prefecture was concerned, the offered extension was proof of satisfactory performance, as 4th and 5th years are not freebies like the 2nd and 3rd years can sometimes be.

The way that whole business with the recontracting papers was handled left a bad taste in my mouth, but what could be done? Anyway things were starting to get better. I got over my jet lag induced insomnia (the opposite of when I go to the States; there I become narcoleptic), the atmosphere at work seemed better…then there was today’s ALT meeting that left me fuming.

Lately we’ve been having guest speakers at these ALT meetings, which is a great thing. But I was blown away by what today’s guest speaker, a JTE, had to say.The topic of his seminar was the New Course of Study for English Education. He told us that no matter what, English education, as taught by teachers (not as envisioned by the Ministry of Education) focused on getting students ready for the university entrance exam. No big surprise there. This is something that’s been openly acknowledged for a while now. What blew me away was the teacher’s suggestion of what ALTs’ role within the New Course of Study would be.

“What can ALTs do?” said the PowerPoint slide.

The speaker’s answer: “Pronounce words.”

Pronounce words? Pronounce…words? ………really?

So…basically you’re saying the Japanese government spends how much money on getting flesh and blood employees over to Japan so that they can…pronounce words? Something that CD players and electronic dictionaries can do just as well?

Then he added that by having ALTs in the room it creates a situation where students HAVE to speak English.

So yeah. We’re here to pronounce words and force students to do something they otherwise have zero motivation and reason to do. Man, was I angry after that!

At moments like those, I feel like I made the right choice. I’m going to miss the English Club students, I’m going to miss seeing the senior members take leading roles in the Sports Festival, I’m going to miss their graduations. I’m going to miss the freedom to move around by bicycle and train, to go where I want when I want. I’m going to miss being a member of GACKT’s official fanclub and going to his concerts. But I can’t say that I’m going to miss being this ill-defined and ever more ambiguous thing called an ALT. I’m not going to miss people who don’t give me papers because they assume I can’t read them, or people who give me papers and say, “Oh, but you can’t read it, it’ll be good study then. Hahaha.” I’m not going to miss having 40 pairs of eyes looking blankly through me.

Well, 39 pairs of eyes. There’s usually one in each homeroom who’s listening, and I don’t know what I’d do without them.

I Can’t Tell If This Is Subversive Or Clueless

03 Saturday Nov 2012

Posted by scalesoflibra in Teaching

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teaching materials

I was cleaning my apartment and I found a copy of the first year students’ post-summer vacation English proficiency test. It included a passage that left me scratching my head:

“In Japanese television programs, we see a commentator at one side of the small screen and an assistant at the other. The commentator is usually male and middle-aged. The assistant is usually female, young and often pretty. He comments on various topics, and she assists. However, she assists so little that, to our eyes, she might as well not be there at all. She only nods at the camera when he makes various statements, and says So desu ne when he makes an important point. She never presents an idea of her own. To many Americans watching these two, the situation might seem strange indeed. We are certainly used to double commentators, but usually each commentator really comments and both are equals. In this common style of Japanese television, the pretty girl seems absolutely unnecessary. We fail to understand her role. Yet she has a very important one.
A commentator is, by definition, giving his opinion. In the West, this is quite enough. In Japan, however, giving an opinion in public makes him appear too self-centered, and this is a fault in a society where unity of opinion is an important value. The attractive, nearly silent, young assistant emphasizes this value. Her nods and expressions of agreement indicate that he is not alone in his opinion and that therefore he is not just self-centered. Rather, he is saying a truth, because at least one person agrees with what he says. At the same time she introduces harmony by indicating that we all agree – after all, she is nodding to us – and the unity of opinion has already been reached.”

By the end of the first paragraph I thought the text was going to focus on why the assistant was usually a pretty young woman, as opposed to another older man, an older woman, or a not so pretty young one. The older man-attractive young woman combo is certainly not unique to Japan; while not as blatant on modern American television, any Hispanic person who has watched the news or infotainment shows on Univision would find the pattern familiar. But instead, the second paragraph focused on how the girl was there to preserve harmony.

I can understand that, but it didn’t erase the question from my mind: why did the author of this passage emphasize so many times that the assistant was a pretty young girl and then completely ignore that point? After all, if the assistant’s role is just to preserve harmony, the assistant’s physical appearance and sex shouldn’t matter; all that’s needed is a nodding head.

Of course, if this is an excerpt from a much longer passage, it’s possible the point was addressed. This passage certainly isn’t from the Reading textbook, so I don’t know where it came from. If the point wasn’t addressed, I’d like to think that the point was at least not lost on the author, and that they were just writing what they could without making waves.

You Know English Is Meaningless When…

29 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by scalesoflibra in Other Things JETs Do, Stuff That Just Happens, Teaching

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EXILE is a very popular 14-man music group: 12 dancers and 2 vocalists. Given how hugely popular they are, it always used to surprise me when students who told me they were big EXILE fans couldn’t tell me what “exile” meant. When I would tell them that it means 「追放」they always reacted with surprise. They don’t get why the band is called that either.

For me, not knowing what your favorite group’s name means is the perfect example of what happens when a language is used as commercial glitter. When ALTs say that students don’t have enough chances to listen to real English, I think, is the problem that, or the opposite? I think they have too much English floating around, both of the grammatically correct kind and the “all your base are belong to us” variety. I think English in Japan has become a part of the background noise, like the hum of electric appliances. You never notice that they are constantly making a sound until there’s a black out.

Maybe there’s also a certain level of naiveté involved, but I hesitate to reach for this conclusion because I think it’s a bit condescending. Is it paranoia that makes me think, “don’t wear clothing with text you can’t read,” “don’t repeat things whose meaning you don’t know,” or just good sense?

Today my English Club girls put on a CD. It was kind of rowdy rock music so I asked what it was. They didn’t really know, so they just pointed to its jewel case by the stereo. I go to look at it: it seemed to be a band composed of foreigners and Japanese people. On the cover it said 「女の子募集中」(“Recruiting Girls”). I flip it over to check out the track list. One: “Drink Beer.” Inappropriate, but not too bad, I thought. Two: “Whipped!” Then my eye drifts over to three. It was “Stinky P***y.”

My jaw hit the floor.

Seriously?

Wow.

I debated with myself if I should tell them what that meant. On the one hand, I think, as girls they should be aware that there’s this language that’s not very nice to them so that they can avoid promoting it. On the other, I wondered what they would think of the fact that I knew how to say that in Japanese off the top of my head.

Ultimately I did tell them. I think they should know in general because this stuff is out there, and I don’t want them to embarrass themselves by saying bad words without knowing they’re bad words, or by saying they like certain music without knowing what that music is really about. Can you imagine a potential host family’s reaction if these girls went abroad and took a CD with such tracks as “Drink Beer” and “Stinky P***y” as an example of the music in English that they listen to? And I do hope that it’ll make them think twice about what it is they’re listening to, and sometimes buying. I want English to stop being just more background noise.

Long Legs

30 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by scalesoflibra in Me Being Random, Stuff That Just Happens, Teaching

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

anime, fashion illustration, illustration, legs, manga

I stand at just 5’6″ (167 cm) so I never thought of myself as having long legs. But it’s something I get told here in Japan, not for being tall, but because my legs are long relative to my torso. Many Japanese have a longer torso relative to their legs. Now, when I first started paying attention to this ratio after being told that I had long legs, I thought, how funny, considering one of the few things that nearly all anime have in common is that the characters have ludicrously lengthy limbs on par with the 9.5 heads high human figures of fashion illustration. Of course, anime and manga are not real life, so I can put it down fantasy. But I was a bit surprised by the nearly universal reaction to this illustration:

I drew this for a lesson on shopping. I didn't have enough time to fix the skewed perspective caused by drawing on a flat surface.

「足長っ!」

“What long legs!”

I thought, “Is it really that different from what you see in anime? Isn’t that normal for this type of drawing?” @_@ Out loud, however, I just laughed and said, “It’s a habit I developed because I first learned how to draw humans from a fashion illustration book.” (Which is true, BTW.)

After the fashion illustration book, the biggest influence on my drawing style was Sailor Moon. There go them long legs again!

After Sailor Moon, Ayami Kojima's illustrations in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night made me consider seriously studying art.

Our half-vampire half-human friend there stands about 8.25 heads high in this illustration (counting to his heel, not the heel of his boots–which I’ve always wanted a pair of! >o<;), still with longer legs relative to his torso than the average person has in real life, Western or otherwise.

Well, I will say that, especially on the girl in my illustration, the legs are not so much “too long” as they are “too big.” Drawing the lower half of the body too large is a tendency I have that is exacerbated by lack of a proper slanted drawing surface, and lack of time to fix the mistake when I see it.

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As my time on JET has ended and I've said all I wanted to say about it, I will not be adding any new content to this blog. I leave it up for reference. However please keep in mind that the usefulness of this reference may drop as the years go by, because sometimes things change. Anyway, thanks for dropping by! ~September 2014

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