City Girl Does Squatters & Communal Bathing

Oh God, oh God I’m frying
To stay cool I’ve been trying
Some camp kids are great
Really first rate
But the English in my brain is dying.

Squatter toilets, communal bathing, bunk beds, bugs the size of rodents, panicked students with eyes agape in fear and language barriers. I tell people I’m a ‘city girl’ but didn’t realize how true that statement actually was until the past four days. I found it’s difficult to carry wood and build an outdoor fire in stilettos and it’s unfortunate that I dropped my Prada bag in the squatter.

I kid. I don’t actually own a Prada bag.

Anyway, as my first real teaching assignment I was sent to an English Challenge Camp about a half hour or so away from my new hometown of Niihama. My advisor picked me up and we arrived at the campgrounds before anyone else. Early is the Japanese way, isn’t it?

The campgrounds were actually what used to constitute an old elementary school on a mountain. The building was about four stories high complete with tatami classrooms, tatami dorm rooms with eight bunks per room, kitchen and ‘bathroom’ (let’s use that term loosely as squatters seem ridiculously outdated to me) facilities. This would be the site of my first squatting toilet and my first communal bathing – two elements of living in the Japanese countryside that I, coming from the Puritanical country of America where showering whilst standing up, mind you, is a loner activity for the most part, was doing my very best to avoid.

Change happens at a rapid pace. In four days the stone faced gargoyle-esque high school kids who came donned in their austere, practically identical school uniforms morphed into smiling, cheesing-it-up-for-the-camera jubilant children who could be easily won over by a mere piece of shiny paper with an adhesive on the back otherwise known as a sticker. I honestly didn’t believe it till I saw it: there was no way that a seventeen or eighteen year old girl could possibly go ape shit for something as simple as a sticker but lord oh mighty how true it is. By seventeen stickers did not impress me anymore despite the fact that they might be shiny. Give me some kind of high-end electronics gadget, diamonds or maybe a twenty.

The first assignment that the kids had to complete was a speech about whatever they so liked – aptly titled “Show And Tell.” Now as much as I had heard about the bizarre form of English that is taught here in Japan it still surprised me when I heard it in person. Phrases chained together with little inflection such as “Look at this picture isn’t it nice let’s all enjoy this picture together let’s all share this memory and enjoy” with a monotone drone-like deliverance was common throughout a good portion of the presentations. Mildly creepy? A bit. While going around helping different students I tried to help them make their intonation a bit more natural sounding and cut out some phrases that sounded as though they had been penned by a thoroughly depressed soul whilst being falsely perked up by Prozac and reading Engrish.com. Although all that being said I’m absolutely positive my shit-Japanese sounds robotic and monotone to them as well. It goes both ways.

Students

Even after just a day or so I was already able to peg my favorites. I’m going to be a terrible teacher as when other children spoke to me I would feign narcolepsy or simply walk away. The boys in my class were interesting. There was this one kid named Masahiro who reminded me so much of Gian from Doraemon, at least outwardly. He was kind of a husky kid with a crew cut and a strong interest in judo. He was what I’d describe as the ‘strong silent’ type. When surrounded by a gaggle of giggling Japanese schoolgirls who carry photos of Michael Jackson (I’m still scratching my head over this one) or Orlando Bloom or the Olsen twins on their cellphones (assuming you can FIND the phone in the complicated mess of dangly pieces of ornate crap that make it ‘pretty’), it’s nice to be in the company of a strong silent type. He would simply do what needed to be done, all the time working hard whether it be building scenery for a play, building a fire and oven to cook dinner outdoors or practicing for a speech. He did it, got it done and even gave me a smile and took a picture with me by the end. Definitely not the bully that Gian is. Truly a sweet kid.

This other guy had a passionate interest in music. I really believe if he had the opportunity to marry Paul McCartney he would do it. He wrote his speech about something called a Live 8 charity concert that goes on around the world. We got to chatting a bit about music and such and as he is entirely obsessed with UK rock we had something in common. I have a soft spot for kids with similar tastes in music. He also always had an honest expression on his face during class. Often the ALTs would be called up to the front of the room to make a mini-inspirational speech or share reactionary comments with the group. The looks on this kid’s face were priceless. I believe it can best be summed up by the following adjectives: bemused, confused and skeptical. When greeted by a sea of blank faces that have all been trained to look somberly stoic it’s refreshing to have some real emotion bounce back at you like that even if it isn’t necessarily positive.

There were some cool girls too. I have a soft spot for the quiet ones having been that girl myself. Often times I’d go around the room asking people to practice with me and the quiet ones would blow me away with either an incredibly interesting story that said “hey look, I DO have a personality and its awesome” or surprisingly decent pronunciation.

Some of the other girls were just plain sassy. Sass can be good but when it borders on downright obnoxiousness it’s unfortunate, not so much for the girl herself but more so for the others around her.

The big project of the camp was to work on a ‘Drama’ (which, incidentally I simply would have called a play) that would be performed on the last day of class. Two of the kids in my group were slackers. Every group has to have them. This one girl simply would not get off her phone and would order everyone else around in rather snotty Japanese whilst not doing anything productive herself. At one point she even pointed to herself (by pointing at her nose as is typical in Japan) and said smugly to me, “genius.” Modesty at its finest. I honestly thought this girl hated me but during the last day when my shiny stickers came out she came bounding up to me and was overjoyed when I agreed to give her an extra one. As fate would have it she also happens to be a student at one of the schools that I will be visiting every so often and bizarrely enough she seemed happy about it and assured me she’d be jumping up and down in her seat being the ‘superstar’ of the class. I. Have. My. Doubts.

The OCD of Japan

I confess that once in a while I will fold my dirty clothes, but only because I’m trying to save room or they’re being packed away for whatever reason. Folding dirty sheets into perfect eighths caused me to lift one eyebrow. We were even given a detailed demonstration so that we would not muck it up.

Our days were divided up fairly rigidly and to the minute starting for the students at 630 AM and ending at around 1030. If I planned out my days that well in my actual life I’d probably accomplish a lot more however there’s something downright unnatural about it.

Treatment of Foreigners
“I long for you” she said to me. Now while it is true that I had my first communal bathing experience on this trip, thankfully that quote was not said within that context. You’d think that after three or four years of English students would have learned how to express simple ways of communicating feelings towards other people. Even in my beginning Irish class we learned how to do such things. However when one types in the Japanese word for “admire” or some other such emotion word, things like “long,” “adore,” and “desire” pop up in English. Your typical Japanese student will select the one that probably is the shortest and the easiest to translate into katakana and will run around using it ad nauseum. Now while I admit that being “longed for” is somewhat flattering, the innate New Yorker in me automatically assumed that she was being sarcastic, so I chose not to pursue it.

The other most bizarre experience was the amount of times I encountered the word “cute” in conjunction with myself. Typical treatment of a foreigner in Japan. I know. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I know I’m not downright hideous all the time, however let me assure you that this past week I WAS. Tragedy stuck yet once again as I was stupid enough to buy blueberries (apparently yet another fruit of evil) a day or two before I left for camp. I can’t blame Japan for this as they were imported from somewhere in the States. Thinking I was treating myself to a ‘taste of home’ what I was actually doing was consuming more infectious American insecticides that would blow up my lips once again and cause a hideous-looking, vile skin mold to spread across my face leaving me akin to something of a leper. I honestly think that these girls need to reevaluate what they call ‘cute.’ All that being said however, I was also told I looked like Nicole Richie which is quite possibly the most horrid thing that anyone has ever said to me. Then again this was coming from a girl who wants to marry Michael Jackson and live in Neverland. I rest my case.

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Published:
8.12.06 / 5pm
Category:
classroom antics, what i call life, culture