I Write, and What's Better, Express
Even the most extroverted (as much as I hate using the words, “introvert” and “extrovert,” I do here…), friendly student in class will not let out any kind of expression beyond looking straight forward and using their tape recorder voice in class in their responses to me. I’ve tried everything I can to get them excited about sharing something in English, but they’ve been trained so well by Japanese culture, that only outside of class can I succeed in this. It’s discouraging because this is how I like to teach, and I know some students want to learn this way in Japan, but I can’t give the chance to them.

This is what’s on my mind—that and trying to desperately learn Yamamoto’s name and Kitagawa’s name and the complex characters that stand for them. Sometimes I can’t come up with any image or mnemonic device to remember them and that’s trouble.

This, and one of my teachers was critical of my participation in class. I barely have any involvement, but I try to shine when I’m on. It’s hard to pay attention when all the directions are in Nihongo, and so I start trying to do something useful like learn a name or two, but then I’m distracted from the lesson.

I try to involve the students and get them to speak whenever I can because most of the teachers never ask them to, unless they’re asked to translate something, in which case they speak in Japanese and in the quietest voice imaginable. I seriously cannot tell which student is speaking unless I know where to look.

So I went to a student that I knew from calligraphy club and got her name wrong, but quickly recovered.

“Do you like calligraphy club?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you like about calligraphy club?”

“Ahh. Misuta (whiteguyinjapan) ees een carigurafee curabu.”

“Oh, great! Thank you very much. Okay,” I said, going to the board. And I write in penmanship more ugly than the teacher’s a sentence that relates to the relative pronoun construction of the day. Miss Yamamoto likes calligraphy club, and what’s better, Mr. Bly is in calligraphy club. My plan is that the students will wake up since I’m talking to one of their classmates, and also the girl can feel proud because she contributed to class. My teacher, who is one of the teachers I enjoy teaching with, doesn’t think this is so thrilling.

After class, she criticized most of my participation, especially this sentence, the only one I got to make.

“It has very mild relation,” she explained. Maybe she’s right, maybe I shouldn’t risk asking students things, at the risk of making a difficult sentence. (She was looking for something like, “Tom is smart, and what’s better, clever.”) I don’t think I can change the way I teach—no other way makes sense to me, but I am in a foreign culture, so maybe I’m not giving enough and trying to force what’s natural to me. And so, I will not bother the students. I will teach simpler, and what’s better, not controversially.