The Japan Files ~ Kid Edition

Look at them.

Adorable aren’t they?

Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, children are full of life. They make you laugh; they make you cry; they make you grin from ear to ear with their incredible antics, and we as the adults just can’t help cooing at them. And Japanese children are no different. Some of them are adorable; shy little critters that make your heart melt. And some of them are genki grapplers, full of energy and bursting at the seams. But there are certain things about children over here that I’ve noticed that are a little bit worrisome. And even though my Japanese is still below par, I’ve started to pick up on things that once again, make me raise my eyebrows.

It’s been noted over many years that children seem to have an uncanny obsession with genitalia here. They feel quite comfortable talking about it and making jokes about it while their adult counterparts completely shy away from it (unless they’re half cut, of course). I’ve heard a three-year-old girl giggling about “cold boobs” and six to seven-year-olds having a “penis” discussion. They chortle about toilet habits and have no concept of inappropriateness. And to be honest, the lack of understanding – of knowing what’s right and wrong - is common in children all over the world but what I don’t understand is why they talk about this particular topic so freely here. After all, the Japanese are considered a conservative people, are they not?

And these antics don’t just stop at talking, but continue onto exploring it as well. You see, foreign teachers here tend to be larger in stature, which means that in some cases, our assets are also much larger. But it isn’t uncommon for children here to reach for said assets and give it a quick poke, or for some of the more confident children, a well pronounced punch in the goolies.

Children – 1, Teacher – down!

What’s more is the childhood phenomenon known as “koncho”, whereby children put their two index fingers together in an attempt to shock each other – or adults too – but prodding one forcibly in the anus. To them, it’s harmless fun, but to people like me, it’s a giant question mark. I mean, who does that really? Why would anybody want to voluntarily stick their fingers into someone else’s ass?

I’ve had a five-year-old boy attempt to flash me. Please note that not only was there a co-teacher in the room but also, his father was present – so why he felt comfortable enough to do that was way beyond me. I’ve also had a six-year-old mimic pinching nipples which was not only in front of his older brother but in front of a selection of parents coming to pick up their children as well. Young children here seem highly sexualised – whether they’re aware or not – and I’m really not sure where they’re getting it from.

Heck, when I was six-years-old, I found it embarrassing to say the word “kiss”. I didn’t know about the birds and the bees until I was eight, but I knew that discussing certain topics or making certain gestures was highly inappropriate (if I knew them at all).

But maybe it’s because of the customs here. As I mentioned in a previous entry, porn is readily available here. It’s even accessible at your local convenience store at eye-level of an unsuspecting child. What’s more is that cartoons are slightly more grown-up here – or generally what we in the west would consider to be. Twelve-year-olds can watch fairly-realistic cartoon violence, while four-year-olds can tune into cartoons like Crayon Shin Chan who I’ve been told, has been noted to pretend he’s a gay cross-dresser.

Note: I didn’t even know what a cross-dresser was until pre-adolescence.

Culturally, there are also a couple of annual penis festivals that take place. These are often a celebration of fertility but I suspect that if a child saw a giant phallus walking around, he might somehow interpret it to be okay to whip out his private parts…

As a result, I often have children attempt to get a rise out of me by screaming out rude words. Whether they’re simply doing it because of my lack of Japanese, or whether they’re doing it just because is beyond me. But as a child, if I ever did say a rude word, it was never in the presence of an adult.

What I’ve also noticed however is how the reverse seems to happen between our two cultures. Because children will freely discuss these things here but as they age, it becomes more taboo and for some people into adulthood, sex and the like becomes almost embarrassing to talk about. It’s something considered private despite its relatively easy access. But in the west, we started out relative innocent. And then we went to school, learnt secrets from our friends, had special lessons at school and now into adulthood, we can freely talk about it with no qualms whatsoever.

Even now, in the west, there’s debate on the sexualisation of children. We may not put our porn on the bottom shelf, but subliminally, sex is everywhere and it’s caused quite a stir. But it’s because we acknowledge it as a problem, that people are working towards trying to keep children innocent (granted, on the playground, it’s a little difficult). But in Japan, this discussion does not exist. And if there is a concern about children and sex, they’re keeping tight-lipped about it.

So it’s an interesting contrast between our two cultures. A little food for thought. Is it really just the media influencing kids? And is it really influence, when eventually, it’s something they will grow out of? Is this level of intrigue just kids being kids and not knowing where to draw the line? Or is there something else we’re missing completely? 

The Japan Files ~ General Misconceptions

The world is rife with stereotypes. All Black women are aggressive? All slim people are healthy? All Japanese people are short…? And while I do believe that stereotypes possess a small manner of truth to them (a very small manner), I also dislike stereotypes because it’s not physically possible to generalise an entire population. So for this article, I’m going to talk about some common generalisations that people – including myself – have made about Japan and I’m going to both confirm or debunk them.

So let’s kick this thing off with the thing about Japanese people being very short. For the most part, things are much smaller her. My fridge is small; my washing machine is small – heck, my apartment is small and yes, some Japanese people are small. But some Japanese people are really tall as well. I find this to be especially the case with men. Now I’m pretty tall myself and people are often amazed at my height – granted, I’m a foreign woman – but I’ve even seen Japanese women tower over me, making me look tiny. So let’s kick this conception to the curb, shall we? Japanese people come in many different heights.

The same thing could be said about size. I’ve already had it confirmed by a Japanese friend of mine that in Japan – thin is in. Thin gives way to small, and small and cute things dominate here – especially for women. But in Hiroshima, I’ve seen many a shape – men and women alike. I’ve seen super lanky women and big and rotund men. My students are all different shapes and sizes and while I’m pretty sure I’m the only one I’ve seen with my particular shape so to speak – I’ve yet to come across someone wearing tight or revealing clothing – I don’t feel so out of place. In terms of shape and size, I could very well be walking around London.

Now, bodies aside, I reckon I’ve mentioned it in the past but Japan has a big drinking culture – very much like the UK. But unlike the UK, people are under the notion that the Japanese can’t hold their liquor. Now of my very small circle of Japanese friends, a couple have admitted that it takes all but one drink to put them under the influence – although I wonder what actually passes for drunk over here. For the most part however, the Japanese are pretty much like people anywhere else in the world. There are some people that can hold their drink and some people that really should start taking lessons. I mean, I was at a party and I had no idea that this small Japanese woman was wasted. She managed to switch from Japanese to English with perfect ease at one point and simply kept knocking them back whereas in the UK, I’ve seen what can happen when the average British punter knocks back around seven or eight pints.

And speaking of mannerisms, I’ve constantly heard it said that Japanese people are super polite. And once again, a lot of the time it is true. Starbucks here is a perfect example of this. I have never gone to a Starbucks in Japan and felt unwelcome. People welcome you into shops (most of the time), and I even had a random stranger come up to me welcoming me to Japan. But Japanese people are like any other people really. They have their good days and their bad ones; they may or may not be good at hiding how they feel. And they may get drunk and unruly. I’ve been turned away at a shop with a rather abrupt “no” when I asked for help. I’ve had people jump in front of me when going through the ticket barriers. So yes, while some people are generally quite nice here, some people just aren’t.

And speaking of politeness, let’s not forget Japanese children. Now before I arrived, I expected that most children would be pretty well behaved due to that famous Japanese notion of uniformity and not making waves. I promise you this – Japanese children are like western children who are like any other child in the world. Some will be adorable to behold and some will be little demons in disguise. Children are children are children. They will love you, laugh with you, laugh at you and they will test your patience. Don’t let this culture of politeness fool you. Kids will be kids and teenagers will definitely be teenagers.

Which brings me to my final point. Rules. In the UK, there are rules that don’t necessarily warrant a fine or are difficult to police like littering or drinking alcohol on the underground. Naturally, people will still do things if they know they might not be caught. I already mentioned the idea of uniformity being common here and it is. People will queue up to get on the train. People will wait at a road crossing for the green man to appear even when it’s quite obvious that no cars will be coming for a while. But people are people and there are some people that break these rules. Some people smoke on the street even though they’re not supposed to; some people kick and break vending machines. And I’m pretty sure that there’s a person that purposely drops a bag of rubbish every day in the middle of the street near my ward office just because. I’ve had people admit to me that they prefer to play to the beat of their own drum. So yes, while some people conform to rules here, some people just don’t want to.

So I think the message here is to consider that hearsay isn’t always guaranteed. And just because something may seem commonplace because of the associated culture, it isn't always set in stone.

Bullying ~ Is It Really Ever Over?

I managed to find a rather frightening statistic online that indicates that 46% of children in the UK had been bullied at school at some point in their lives. That’s nearly half the population - if we generalise this figure - and it seems to be on the increase. School is just another survival mechanism. What we learn and how well we do academically is supposed to set us up for the future and enable us to get the better jobs when we enter into the world of adulthood (obviously this is debatable right now in this day and age, but that’s another topic entirely). But also, it teaches us how to get along with others. We develop friendships with likeminded people; we develop our interpersonal skills; we learn what is right and what is wrong and then we do what feels right.

Obviously, however, what feels right isn’t necessarily what is right. Some people are naturally more outgoing or extrovert while others are more withdrawn or reserved. These are the people that are usually targeted by those of us who find joy in picking on others and while we could assess this behaviour until the cow’s come home, it’s never realised just how much of an impact bullying can have. Granted, children – or bullies in general – don’t consider this when they choose to act. My primary school head-teacher didn’t think that the child he took part in bullying in his youth would jump off of London Bridge because he couldn’t take it anymore. Nor have others considered that the reason why someone self harms might be because they think they deserve it – after all, everyone else clearly thinks so.

I was reading an interesting article the other day and the following statement hit close to home:

“If you are or have ever been a victim of bullying and failed to do anything about it, your confidence has most likely been deflated. If you couldn’t stand up to your bully, you probably felt ashamed, like I did… This lack of confidence can carry over to your adult life…”

I was bullied in primary school and indirectly during secondary school. I know the reasons why and knowing what has become of these people warms my soul a little – karma’s a bitch, ain’t it? But even though I feel like I may have made my peace with it all, I look at the way I evaluate myself and conduct myself and it leads me to realise that I haven’t.

The article went on the further explain how this lack of confidence generated through bullying can stop you from doing things such as approaching that good-looking guy at the bar or something along the lines of asking for a raise (this seems to be a female specific thing, however). And I realise that I do this. In my entire life, I have only ever directly told one guy that I found him attractive* – and this was over the internet. Most of the time, I’ve been pursued by someone else. When someone has rather rudely been smoking in the queues at Thorpe Park, I’ll usually let it go despite how much it irritates the crap out of me; the same goes for queue jumpers – although, I’ve been working on this. Ultimately, for the most part, I am a docile person. I don’t like to make waves or cause trouble – even when it might be necessary. I find confrontation terrifying – such like I experienced yesterday at work when an angry married couple came in first thing shouting the odds about an issue that wasn’t even my fault.

I’m not damaged to the point of depression, but I am not as assertive as I’d like to be – it really depends on the situation. At the same time, however, I am an adult and a woman at that, which means I have the ability to remove myself from an uncomfortable situation. In school, however, this is not the case. Children are forced to endure because it’s the law that they attend school, but no matter how many anti-bullying campaigns arise or how many times a teacher is told, it doesn’t detract from the fact that bullying is on the rise. And where there’s bullying, there’s low self esteem and in some cases, self-hate. And where there’s self-hate, there comes a failure to function adequately in society when is that not what society wants – its people to behave in uniformity; in a socially accepted manner?

But humans are constantly subject to human error and we continue to make bad choices as part of every day life. We try to make up for it by instigating these anti-bullying campaigns and zero-tolerance measures in school and sometimes they work, but when a child ventures outside those school gates or grows up and enters into the real world, these movements lose their power. What’s more is that society has a habit of shoving all the problem kids into one place. I remember hearing a rumour that when a school changes its name to incorporate the word “Academy”, it’s generally because it's quite a bad school. Similarly, an ex supervisor of mine now works in a school that specifically takes in problem children. These children make friends with other problem children which strengthens the nature of their issues, so to speak. They run circles around the teachers that they know they can get around and while the school may have measures in place, they’ll continue to take in these children because the more of them they get, the more money the school gets.

Imagine that. Making money out of the misfortune of others? Haven’t heard that one before...

Fortunately, children are impressionable and if you isolate a child – even a bully – and work with them, I feel that they can be reformed in some shape or...form, but society just doesn’t have enough of these resources. And with jobs few and far between, it doesn’t have the man power either. So we get trapped in a cycle. Bullies pick their targets; targets become victims; victims may even become bullies, or they grow up emotionally crippled (no matter how small that scar is) and pass this on to the next generation.

Sad, isn’t it? :/

*two, if you count the confidence I gained via drinking excessive amounts of alcohol at a Staff Christmas Party

Busy Bee Syndrome ~ The Take-Off

Well, it’s all kicking off now. And for the first time in my life, it seems that I’m going to be genuinely doing things. A lot of things. Things that might even go over my head. But this is good because this is what I wanted. I wanted to be active – and not just in the gym either. I wanted to help my case so that when I start looking for work overseas in the new year, I’ll have a backlog of experience to put on my CV. I mean, I’m so used to my three day week and lounging around on Monday and Tuesday virtually doing nothing. So this should be good for me.

You see, it was always my intention when I booked my TESOL course that I would apply to the JET Programme again, but I’m actually starting to think that I might even stand a chance this year.

For those of you who don’t know, JET stands for Japanese Exchange and Teaching, which is basically a government programme which recruits graduates from English speaking countries to go and teach English to students in Japan. This programme is the finished article – if there was ever a safer and sure-fire way of working as a Assistant Language Teacher in Japan, JET is it. But as with everything government-related, it is highly HIGHLY competitive.

I was going to apply anyway, but in my mind I figured that I probably wouldn’t make it to the interviews (like the last time I applied back in 2009), but with things starting to move forward in my life, I’m thinking that maybe, just maybe, I might have a shot.

You see, I did the TESOL course, not just for JET, but for myself as well. The concept of teaching English abroad was so interesting when I booked it and now that I’ve completed it, I’m determined to leave the country and actually do it. So first stop. Japan.

But even if I don’t make it onto JET, I’m going to Japan one way or another. I’ve been interested in that place since my cousin got me into anime when I was thirteen and now, over ten years later, it’s become a must.

So what am I doing in order to increase my chances of finding work over there?

• Well, as you know, I completed my TESOL course. My certificate came the other day – the postman bent the corners of it – the wanker – but it arrived.

• I’m in the process of legally changing my name. I’ve heard that Asia is very strict when it comes to names and identification. I even read a blog post where some girl had problems retrieving items that had been sent over to her in South Korea simply because of a discrepancy with the name on the package and the name in her passport. Therefore, because all of my certificates - dating back to my school days – indicate my surname with a gap, I’ve legally included a gap in my last name. The deed poll came today and thus, I now need to circulate them to the designated government bodies or what have you starting with acquiring the forms to apply for a new passport.


Speaking of passports – I dropped mine on the street today and somebody found it. I am the luckiest person ever. I didn’t even know I’d dropped it until my mum phoned and told me that someone had phoned her. So yeah, lesson number one; there are some good people out there, and lesson number two; I’m rubbish.

• I put up an ad on Gumtree advertising for a Japanese language exchange partner. I had a mountain of feedback, but as I know what Gumtree is like, I figured I’d email  people back and forth for a bit before meeting them in person. There are people out there that are looking for a bit more than just a language exchange. I kid you not when I say I saw an ad in the Skills and Language Swap section advertising for a live-in girlfriend.


Fortunately for me, I found myself a language exchange partner who isn’t a creep. Seems like a really nice guy. He has a lot to say about things and I feel like I can really talk to him so we’ll see what happens there, but one way or another, I’m learning some Japanese and teaching English at the same time. EPIC!

• In addition to this, I joined a few tutoring agencies and got a phone call from one of them last night. As I was in the cinema watching Taken 2, I figured I’d call them today and find out what’s up. Good news! It's a boy! He's ten-years-old, he’s lazy and I've been told that I need to be strict. I spoke to the mother this evening and stupidly forgot to list some questions to ask her about her son, but she seemed very desperate for the help and our regular tuition days will be Saturday mornings at 11am.


Funnily enough, while I was speaking to her, the tutoring agency rang again so I called them back. They wanted to assign me a seventeen-year-old girl, but I declined that one considering that I haven’t even started tutoring yet. It sounds like they’re going to be throwing students at me left, right and centre, however, which is good because it’s an extra income, but I figured there’d be at least a week between new assignments.

I’ll pick up the next one, however. I’m thinking my maximum will probably be three.

~

So, in terms of the JET application and working overseas teaching children in general, this looks good. I’m tutoring children, teaching English, learning Japanese and about the Japanese culture and I’m still earning an income. I’m hoping that by the end of this year, I’ll have enough to be able to survive the first month in Japan – the month you have to wait before that first paycheck. So come the new year, post-JET application process, the real job search begins.

So how am I gonna handle all this?

Well, I’m going to have to strongly organise my life. It’ll be like university all over again – only the assignments will be lesson plans and unlike uni, they’ll be due in fast and furious. My part time job as an admin is the part time job I had at university – I was a retail assistant. Fun. The little time I spend with friends and family will be the clubs and student union nights I’d go to every once in a while. I have to fit the gym in there somewhere and my bedtimes will probably have to be earlier as they're 12am if I’m tired, 1am usually and 2am if I’ve got things on my mind.

I think it would also, be helpful if I fixed my diet as well. There’s been a dangerous influx of Chinese takeaways of late. We did the monthly shop last week, however so I have no excuse.

I shall keep you updated, however. Hopefully I don’t burnout.