I guess whenever someone asks me, “Why did you want to come to Japan?” or “What made you interested in Japan?” my answer goes back to my time in middle school when I was passing notes in class. I did not want anyone else to read them, so I was constantly coming up with new secret codes to write my notes in. I think at one time I even wrote in Elvish script using the back of The Lord of the Rings as guidance. In either 7th or 8th grade, we were told to do a report on a country of our choice. For some reason, I chose Japan. And while I was making the poster, I decided to write some kanji on it, too. The kanji I wrote was the word for telephone (電話-den/wa) and I could easily picture how they had come up with those characters to mean telephone since I sometimes used pictures to indicate a single letter for my own secret codes. I saw the first character as an old rotary phone with the receiver cradled on top and the cord coming out of the bottom. The second one I saw as sound waves coming out of a mouth and a person standing up. The real meaning of the two characters is electric and speaking/talk. Once I found out that the high school I was going to enter offered Japanese, I of course took that as my language option. The teacher was Japanese herself and because the language course was relatively new to the school, they only offered 2 years of it. The first year was spent painfully writing all of the hiragana and katakana multiple times—as is the Japanese way. I did not mind it, but for others it was enough to turn them off. After the first year, a new teacher came and was the Japanese teacher for the school. At first I did not like him. He was rough and tough and from New York (I have nothing against New Yorkers, by the way). His claim to fame was that he had lived in Japan for 9 years and had married a Japanese woman. But after a while, he grew on me and I liked Japanese class even more. We students conversed in Japanese and played games and even learned a little aikido. And we were all wary of the wrath of Carolin-sensei. By the end of high school, the AP exam for Japanese was created and those of us who wanted to, could be guinea pigs for the test (and pay about $90 for it, too). It was a brutally long test composed of multiple parts-speaking, reading, and typing on the computer in Japanese. I think I only got a 2 (out of a possible 5) on that test. It has since been remade multiple times and has gotten better (or so I have heard).
In the last few weeks of class our senior year, Sensei gave out an award to the person who he believe had worked the hardest/learned the most/etc. as each department in the school was to do. Most everyone thought it would be me who received the award, as I loved to participate in class and had one of the highest grades, and I thought so, too. But to my deep disappointment and dismay, I did not receive it. Another girl did who had been going to Japanese camp in the summers and knew a bit more than me about Japan and Japanese. I cried that day in class and did little to participate in the last weeks of class. My thought being, If I cannot be the best, then why try? I went on to a community college, trying to sort out what I wanted to do with my life in the future. By my second year, I had thought that I had wanted to be a Medieval archeologist and go to Cornell College. But the steep tuition and the fact that my parents did not believe I would earn much money from that job, made me rethink what I was going to be. One night, when I was visiting my old high school for my younger sister’s musical function, I saw my Japanese teacher and talked to him about my dilemma. He asked me, “Why don’t you become a Japanese teacher? The program is getting bigger and by the time you graduate, there will be a need for more teachers of Japanese.” While I still had some anger towards him for not choosing me for that award (petty, I know), I thought about it and asked my parents what they thought. While this prospect was not much better than my archeology one, they thought that if I at least double majored in college, I could pursue teaching as a degree. So I did. While I did not double major, my major was Japanese and my minor was English. I enjoyed the difficulty of Japanese in college and also the cultural classes. It was amazing to me how much I still did not know. I was a natural at studying hard for vocabulary tests and then after the tests, forgetting everything. It was not a good system for me to learn, but I got good grades and that was all that mattered. During student teaching, I grew to understand how little I had retained and how much I had to learn before I could really teach it to the students. I felt overwhelmed and under-prepared. But I pushed through it and came out with a new hunger for Japanese. Unfortunately, my dream got squashed rather quickly by the university. If you take the teaching program at that university, you have to take two Praxis exams—one for teaching and one for your area of study. Every other area had a written exam but Japanese. Nope, for Japanese, you had to take an OPI-an Oral Proficiency Interview. Over the phone. Because that is the same as taking a paper test. Obviously. The level I was required to be at or above was Advanced Low, which, after talking to my cooperating teacher for student teaching and my high school Japanese teacher, I realized was quite difficult to obtain for someone straight out of college. Needless to say, I did not pass it. I was only an Intermediate Mid. Great. Now what. Well, my guidance was to go to Japan to learn more Japanese. Wait. So you are telling me that since the university could not prepare me enough for the exam they expect me to pass to get my teaching license, they wanted me to go to Japan to learn what they couldn’t teach me? Does that make sense to anyone?! As a side note, they had only had master students pass the OPI and I was only an undergraduate. Whatever. So, in August of my student teaching, I applied for the JET Programme. In short, it is a program that takes native English speakers around the world who have Bachelor’s degrees and brings them to Japan to teach English to Japanese students. No teaching experience or Japanese language knowledge required. Myriads of paperwork and several months later, I received my notification that I was accepted. There were several more steps including an interview in Chicago and a lot more paperwork, but eventually I got my placement result: Iwaki-shi, Fukushima-ken. Oh dear. While my hope was to not get Hokkaido—where it is severely cold most of the year and gets a ton of snow—or some remote location in the middle of the mountains, I was still a bit apprehensive about traveling to the place that was renowned for it’s nuclear power plant meltdown and tsunami devastation. After receiving wonderful information from the people who were already there for the JET Programme and doing some intensive research online and in books, I was assured that there was no reason to be worried about going to Fukushima. Radiation was a non-issue and everything except the exclusion zone (many hours away from Iwaki) was the only place to be worried about (but since no one is allowed in there, it was not a problem). Plus, I was in the one area that people had fled to to escape the radiation, so I was most definitely safe. Through it all, my husband was extremely supportive and encouraging. While hard for us both, my going to Japan was the only way I was going to be able to get my Japanese level up enough for me to pass that (stupid) OPI to be able to get my teaching license. Before I knew it, it was time for us to go to Chicago for the pre-departure Orientation. I wore my best suit (my only one) and was shuffled into a room in a hotel and told about packing instructions, culture shock, luggage regulation, what life was like in Japan for a few previous JETs, and more. It was all very warm and hot since it was the end of July, but we were told that it was practice for Japan, where it will be even worse (truth). That evening we were put at tables with people who would be in our region or, if there were only a few people in one region, multiple regions put together. I met a few people who were also headed to Fukushima-ken and we all talked and had a good time trying to figure out what the mystery spreads were on the table for the bread (there was a whitish one, a green one, and an orange one—none of which we figured out their flavor). There was general nervousness in the air as well as excitement. After being asked to raise our hand if any of us had been to Japan before, I was surprised to see almost one-half to three-fourths of the room raise their hand. It turns out that a lot of the people who got in to JET had some sort of Japanese background or teaching background, which was good to know because I was worried that some people wouldn’t have any teaching background nor Japanese ability and I wondered how they would survive in Japan. The next day came, and it was a terribly sad goodbye to my husband as he left to drive back to our hometown alone while I stayed and eventually was herded off to the airport with everyone else. It was a non-stop flight to Japan from Chicago, which made it about 12 hours on the plane. Luckily, I was able to get an aisle seat that was relatively close to the bathroom so I could get up multiple times and not bother anyone. Also, since my seat was in front of the wall for the cabin attendants, I could tilt my seat back without having to worry about the person behind me getting angry. But it was the flight that seemed to never end since I was so excited to just get to Japan! After touchdown, we were again herded through customs where we got our pictures taken for our residency cards. Mine looked as lovely as if I had just spent the last 24 hours awake with 12 of them being on a plane and the last 2 of them in a muggy line to get through customs. Once everyone had made it through customs and collected their bags, we were bussed to the hotel in Tokyo, but we could not go to our rooms yet. No, we needed to sit through some more informative meetings and collect even more paperwork before we could finally retire to our rooms. However, I had made previous plans with a girl I had made friends with when she had come to America as a chaperone for her school’s trip (and I had been a substitute teacher for the Japanese classes at the high school they visited). So, I quickly changed into some new clothes (while pretty much exploding all over one of the three beds in the room) that I had packed and redid my makeup and met her back downstairs in the lobby. And with that, I was thrust into the world of Japan—surrounded by Japanese with some English mixed in and trying to make sense of it all with my muddled, sleep-deprived-fourteen-hour-time-difference brain. We went to a nearby tonkatsu (breaded and fried pork cutlet) restaurant where we chatted politely about what had been happening in our lives recently and other Japanese-y stuff. I was really frustrated at the time at how poor my Japanese reading ability was and what a hard time I was having at trying to hold a conversation for the evening. But, that was what I came to Japan for—to increase my Japanese ability so that I could become a Japanese teacher back in the United States. We said our goodbyes at the entrance to the hotel and I went back to my room where I showered and promptly got on the internet to share my past several hours’ experience with everyone on Facebook. Not long after, my two roommates returned and we introduced ourselves. One of them had no Japanese experience, but had taught before, and the other had Japanese experience, but not teaching experience. They were amazing and were some of the best roommates I have ever had the pleasure of rooming with. We shared our sorrows and lamentations over leaving our loved ones back in America, laughed at the crazy things that happened during orientation, and ate meals together in this country we would soon call home. The following two days were jet lagged and full of information that was (mutually agreed to be) useless. The lectures were usually long and full of information that, to the casual observer, was common sense. The language classes were also a joke. Intermediates (me and one of my roommates) were basically told everyday greetings and how to bow properly (things you should most definitely already know if you consider yourself intermediate). But the one nice thing about orientation was the people you met. Everyone was grouped occasionally with the other ALTs who would be in your area, so you got to meet people and get to know them before having to depart into the various cities in the area, maybe to never see them again for many months. On the third day of orientation, we said our teary goodbyes and were sent off on different modes of transportation to our respective areas in Japan. Luckily for me, I only had to take about a 2-hour bus ride to get to Fukushima City. It was a nice day out, meaning it wasn’t too unbearably hot and it was sunny. After circling the block a few times (for some reason), we left the bus and dragged our one piece of luggage into the building (which looked like a kindergarten) and in groups of 4, went up the elevator to wait outside a room where our future JTEs were sitting, waiting for us. After getting lined up in order of how we were going to sit (I was first), we got the OK signal and walked in. At this point, I was really nervous, but also just ready to finally get some sort of progress towards moving into my apartment. We sat down facing our JTEs and listened to a short speech given by a man of some importance before our names were called one by one. I, of course, was first. So, I stood up and my JTE, who was sitting directly across from me (and we had nodded and smiled to each other during the speech because we had become Facebook friends before my arrival) stood up too and we bowed to each other as everyone else clapped. We sat down and the ceremony continued. After everyone had seen their respective JTEs, we were allowed to talk to them. And one of the first things I received after the initial hello was more paperwork. Oh, Japan. My JTEs name was Sakuma and she was really sweet and nice, but also shy. I think it was very awkward for both of us since we had sort of known each other before, but not very much, so there wasn’t that much polite conversation to be had. Fortunately, after about 5 minutes, the BOE (Board of Education) for Fukushima (Iwaki?) came over and had us sit with another girl who was going to be my neighbor and her JTE. They then went over some general rules and guidelines of living in Japan as an ALT. The woman from the BOE spoke good English, but sat really close to me and it felt like she was talking within a few inches of my face. Awkward since I thought that the Japanese had this very large personal space bubble. Anyways, after that, my JTE and I walked to her car, where I put my luggage in her back seat and almost got in the wrong side of the car (the driver’s side). It would be the first of many times that I would do that. We then proceeded to drive to Iwaki where we stopped by the school where I would be working on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to pick up the luggage that was shipped there from the airport. It was again, very awkward for me to meet the principal and head teachers and such, as I still did not feel like I worked there. They also commented on how big and how much luggage I had brought (even though when I was at the airport looking at everyone else’s luggage, mine was one of the smaller ones). I just chuckled politely and informed them that it was mostly clothes and shoes since I will not be able to buy any of that here in Japan since I am so tall. They nodded in semi-understanding, and I took my suitcases outside to Sakuma’s car and dropped them in. Then it was off to the apartment.
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Myself
Video blogger and now a blogger as well. My life in Japan has changed me for the better. However, it wasn't easy... Archives
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