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Nothing says Japanese like plays packed with intense music, intense fight scenes, slapstick comedy, and intense, soap-opera-type scenes. That was my favorite part of bunkasai—or Kishikokosai, the school festival.
I had no idea what to expect for the festival. I knew there would be some kind of performances and things, but no one really gave me much description other than, “that weekend is the school festival, so make sure you come to school like a normal work day.”
As I later found out, mostly through my predecessor JET ALT and mentor, K-sensei, the students get really excited for this time of year. It’s the playtime before the storm of studying for midterms and college entrance exams. Since they wanted students to focus on their studying over summer vacation, for the first time, the school prohibited practice until two weeks before, when they let students off of afternoon classes every day so that they could get ready for the big show. Since I had less to do, I wandered the school, trying to disturb as many students as possible.
I was brave enough to leave the English department under the newfound power I have—that I am not a direct employee of the school, but of the board of education. In orientation they always preached about how you design “your own JET experience,” but I didn’t really know what it meant. It’s clearer to me now—I’m not an ordinary classroom teacher.
My job, really, is to get students to speak the language of my country, which they have a college level vocabulary in, but a primary school level in speaking. I can’t emphasize this irony enough. I’ll ask someone, “What time is school over?” and they’ll look at their friend inquisitively while I wait for an answer that won’t come. On the other hand, while I was watching students perform one of their plays, I asked what one of the characters was, and they answered, “A Japanese traditional monster.” To extend this thread, when a teacher asked a student to explain the word, “suppose,” the student answered, “Infer.” I don’t even think I could infer the right meaning of, “infer.”
So, while some of the academically focused teachers, one in particular, try to trap me in projects that involve me writing complex things to teach to students that will only put them to sleep, I’ve decided I’m taking over the school. As I understand it, the only way I can get fired, is if I stop going to class or seriously violate the teacher code of conduct, so I’m redefining my work. I’m going to start going to calligraphy club and pop music club, where I will learn traditional Japanese and Japanese pop music respectively.
It’s funny how I found out there was a rock/pop club at the school—I stopped some kid who had a guitar in the hall and asked him where he played.
“Popu curabu.”
“Pop club?
“Unn.”
Why was I not told immediately upon my arrival that there was a rock club? I knew there was a classical guitar club and a jazz band club, but I didn’t expect a rock club at the most academic school in the area.
Anyway, with my new job description, dictated by myself, I started hanging out in school. One of the English teachers encouraged it—I like this English teacher. “It makes the students so happy!” she said. “And they can practice their English.” Finally, someone who realizes I’m worth more than playing the role of a tape recorder, reading scripts in class.
I can’t say how touched I was at the willingness of students to talk to me and get to know me even though they were crazy busy trying to get ready for their festival. After teaching in America, where students try to avoid making eye contact with me in the halls, I’m overwhelmed at how easy it is to make a connection here—I just say, “hello,” to someone and they come over smiling, ready to tell me their life story or whatever else I’ll stand for. I really enjoyed this new, “hanging out” job, and I started staying at school past my required 4:30 clock-out, until students left the school.
I started my hangout one day by going into the cafeteria. I sat down with random groups of students and tried learning their names. This is the most painful part of my job—the names are impossible to remember, and when I forget them or call a student the wrong name, which I almost always do, they are either angry or visibly let down. I try so hard to remember, but having been born from hippie parents, I understandably have a fraction of the short-term memory cells as a hormal bruman nain.
In the cafeteria, I mostly just ask simple questions like “What are you eating?” “Is that your boyfriend?” “How are you?” When students are asked the latter, they always answer “I’m fine, thank-you.” I’ve made a kind of running joke out of it where in class I yell the question and they yell back the same answer. So in the cafeteria, I told a group of boys to each answer differently and gave them their answers, “Awesome,” “Great,” “good,” “okay,” “all right,” “not so good,” “tired,” “I’m dying,” and “I hate you!” I ran through the list, and at the last answer I pretended to be startled and walked away. Thus go my typical interactions, although that’s probably one of my better improvisations.
I fell in love with one class in particular, that was practicing their play in the courtyard one day. I made a very important decision, that goes against the teachings I had from Mr. C, my mentor teacher from Minnesota. The boy students are constantly testing my authority since the last ALT was very friendly with the students. As a teacher in America, you have to be a disciplinarian as well, but here I noticed a very distinct difference between the student-teacher relationship. They are much, much closer here. Teachers are not people you try to avoid eye-contact with in the halls. After classes are over, it’s common to see students and teachers hanging out outside. They’re not talking about the day’s lesson or when the next test is, they’re just chewing the fat like people do. The students are tremendously respectful of the teachers, but that doesn’t keep them from being able to talk like good friends.
And so I relaxed my iron discipline fist back to allow for some immaturity, which may have been the wrong move, I don’t know.
The class I watched was doing a twist on a traditional Japanese story, “Peach Boy.” The longer I stayed, the more students tried to talk to me and explain the complexity behind the plot and characters, a lot of the jokes and subtleties lost in translation, of course, but that only made it that much more mysterious and admirable to me.
The real miracle behind all this, is that the students took almost complete ownership of the festival—they organized and rehearsed on their own time and of their own motivation, and they didn’t slack off. They worked hard and had a good time. They respectfully watched and helped when they weren’t in scenes and cracked jokes with each other on the sidelines. There may have been some social abuse, but it wasn’t apparent to me—all students were included. They worked together in their homeroom classes without purposely excluding less popular students as would be the case in America. This kind of festival would never go on with such success in America, not a chance.