P.E. in Japan is awesome!

I just watched a 研究授業 (kenkyuu jugyou), a special observation lesson where a teacher-in-training taught a class.  It was a P.E. class, and it was so cool!  I had never in my two years here actually watched an entire P.E. class, and now I have an example of great physical education.  I wish my gym classes had been like the ones they have here in Japan.

Okay, lemme 'splain.

First, a little context.  As I've seen, gym classes are generally split up by gender so only girls have classes with girls and boys with boys.  Also, P.E. is a serious class here treated like any other class, and P.E. teachers get a lot of respect.  Often, P.E. teachers are the ones who are given the role of disciplinarian and are seen as moral role models for all the students.  They usually are super involved in students' lives and scold them when they act out whether or not it's during their class and praise them for the good they do, again, whether or not it's during their class.  It's really nice.  And, I feel like students here are very well-rounded since they are educated in the basic subjects, a foreign language, physical education, music and art, and morality.  Very "Renaissance Man" or polymath.  I think it's an ideal we humans should really all strive for.

Anyways, so the lesson I went to.

Japanese Work Clothes for School

こんにちは。よろしくお願いします!

Winter has come, and that means winter fashion!  Yay!!

So this post is about what people wear to work when work is a Japanese public school and when it's cold.  ALT and JTE #OOTD, if you will.

ALT= Assistant Language Teacher (so usually the foreign teacher who helps teach English)

JTE= Japanese Teacher of English (usually Japanese native teachers who teach English)

OOTD= Outfit Of The Day

This post is mainly to help those who are thinking about coming to Japan to work as an ALT, like through the JET program, Interac, direct hire by a Board of Education, etc.  But I guess it's interesting just to see what people wear, too, right?

As always...
DISCLAIMER: ESID (Every Situation Is Different!)  
I actually dislike this acronym because I feel like it states the obvious.  Of course, ESID applies to working in Japan or working anywhere really.  Everyone knows you should wear a suit and tie or whatever other professional clothing that customarily matches a workplace position, but, especially for those who are new graduates or new to the working world or new to Japan's working world, we need examples!!  We want a general idea!  Some work places provide a very clear-cut dress code or even uniform to make it easier for us newbies while others don't seem to specify a thing.  

So yeah, ESID, or whatever.  Just know that the following examples are what I choose to wear and what other individuals choose to wear at my junior high school.  I feel that I would categorize my school as somewhere in between those super formal schools where everyone wears suits and the more casual schools where everyone basically shows up in sportswear since it's the most comfortable (and makes sense to wear when you're a sports club supervisor before and after classes, so why change clothes, right?)

Okay!

ALT #OOTD

If you're interested in what an ALT might wear to work, please watch the video below.  It's me!

JTE #OOTD

If you're interested in seeing what everyday teachers, including JTEs, wear to work, please scroll through the following pictures.  Each picture is labeled to give you a little more information about the teacher, but faces, names, and other identifying information are not given to protect the privacy of each individual, of course.  They all are or were my coworkers, and they all so kindly allowed me to take their pictures anonymously to help me out in making this blog post.

Here they are!

Female, English

Female, Math

Male, Vice Principal

Tips for Joining the Japanese Workplace (School Edition)

Hey, so it's that time of year when many fresh graduates in the West are looking for jobs, and some are looking abroad...specifically, towards Japan.  For example, recently applicants for the JET program have been notified of their acceptance (or not) into the program, and many others are applying to work at eikaiwas, or conversation schools (they're kinda like the Sylvan learning centers or Kumon of Japan for English conversation).  I'm not some kind of cultural expert or claim to be any kind of pro at interactions in the workplace, but I thought I might share some tips that I've learned as I've been working and living in Japan for the past 9 or so months.  So here we go!

Aisatsu  (Greetings)

Aisatsu is the Japanese word for greetings and goodbyes, and aisatsu is very important.  The way you greet and leave a person or situation makes the biggest impressions and can set the tone for all the interactions to come.  Thus, it's really important to greet everyone with a hearty おはようございます (Ohayou gozaimasu) in the morning when you first arrive at work and nice clear お先に失礼します (O saki ni shitsurei shimasu) when you leave the workplace at the end of the day.

In fact, there have been reports of Japanese school employees feeling as if the foreign coworker is standoffish or cold because they don't greet anyone in the mornings or say anything when they leave at the end of the day.  (I know...I don't have a citation for this one, but I learned about it through my work orientation and trainings and from talking to Japanese coworkers.)  To the Japanese employees, it's rude and the opposite of friendly.  Sometimes it may feel like you have to initiate more often than not or that it's really scary to almost yell out Good Morning, but, I promise, your greetings will be returned and greatly appreciated, which will help your coworkers feel more at ease and more willing and excited to welcome you to the workplace.

Staying Positive

Hiiiii my dear readers,

So one of the things about how happy you are in life is how you perceive situations. If you focus on the negative, then the situation will suck, and you'll feel like everything sucks, and then everything actually will suck.  If you focus on the positive, a.k.a. look on the bright side, then even if there are negatives, you won't feel as suck or even you'll feel better even if it did suck.  At least, I feel like perception functions this way for me.

Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that I'm normally a cheerful person, but I will gossip and bash things and actions so quickly.  If I start even looking at one negative thing, then the rest of the conversation goes to shit, and it becomes a "misery loves company" gab fest.

This is what I mean.

I was planning a lesson with a teacher, and the thing is, our students have finished the textbook, and the last grammar point in the textbook was past tense, both regular and irregular.  We've been doing activities to practice the past tense for like three weeks now.  So I asked my teacher if maybe we could change it up a bit and review some other topic or just not make past tense the focus of the entire class time.  She agreed that past tense was getting old (ha ha).  Then I asked her what we should do, and she seemed to be at a loss and kept passing the idea ball back to me.

I suggested that maybe one activity we could do is listen to a piece of a popular American song and have students fill in the blanks for words they should know in the song.

Ah, that's too difficult for them. (In Japanese)

My teacher training kicked in.  Then I suggested how to scaffold the activity- how we could modify the activity to still address the same listening objective but put the task to the ability level of the students, "Okay, how about instead of blanks, I'll give them two or three words to choose from and they have to circle the word they hear?"

Hmmm, but that sounds not fun.

feeling a little down

Hey party people,

So this week is going kinda bleh.  I taught four periods of third years yesterday and one period of second years today.  Yesterday, for all four classes, all these kids would just not shut up.  Like, every time either I or the other teacher spoke trying to give instructions or just transition to the next activity, the volume of the room would just increase so that no one could hear anyone clearly.  It was really annoying.  And I don't like to yell.  I wait.  The third years' classes usually proceed this way with the other teachers yelling for everyone to be quiet and me just quietly waiting bored at the front of the room wondering if we'll get to finish everything on the lesson for the agenda.

Anyways, this time I got really mad because they were being really rude, and I yelled a little.

Tales of Kyoto

Hello beautiful darlings,

So I need to explain a little bit about the positions in a public school in Japan.  It's pretty similar to most American schools, but I want to provide some different label names and some information on the hierarchy.

Okay, everyone who teaches at the school is called sensei.  Sensei means teacher.  So we got our Tanaka-sensei, Kimura-sensei, Hashimoto-sensei, A-sensei, B-sensei, C-sensei, etc. etc. etc.  And they basically equate to our Mr. Smith and Mrs. Gomez and Ms. Brown of American schools.  (I'm seriously just using any name that pops into my head.)  Anyways, so sensei is reserved for teachers in a school setting (and also doctors, Ph.D's, and other positions, but that's a different story for another time).

The Night Before the First Day of School

Sooooo….tonight’s the night before the first day of classes for the spring semester for international students at Kansai Gaidai.  Most Japanese students won’t be around since they just started their spring break between semesters just a couple days ago or so.  The only Japanese students who will be around are those who have decided to take afternoon lecture courses with us international students.  Kinda sucks…less break, you know?

Anyways, I’m sitting here at the kotatsu in my shack enjoying the warmth of my last school-free moments.  I’m a bit anxious, as usual, because I’m excited for school to start, but I’ve been a lzy bum all winter break long.  Thus, I’m also anxious because I haven’t studied much at all, and my Japanese is going down the drain, as is what’s prone to happen during any school break.  I did make one good productive choice and reviewed 2 out of the 6 lessons of kanji, but that’s about it.  No grammar.  No vocab.  No nothing…. (｡ŏ﹏ŏ)

This semester I will be in level 5 reading/writing (aka kanji class) and level 5 speaking (aka grammar and vocab class).  I’ve signed up to take two lecture courses: Monsters, Ghosts, and the Making of Modern Japan, which covers Japanese folktales and creatures of myth, and Intersection of Fantasy & Real Life in Modern Japanese Literature, which is a literature class in which we read the professor’s favorite obscure Japanese books translated into English.  Lengthy titles, right?  I actually didn’t get into the first class, and instead I’m in Survey of Japanese Art, a class in which an old professor lectures you to sleep while describing all the art since Japan existed.  I hope that maybe I can get into the Monsters class before the end of the week….we’ll see.  I’m on the waiting list, and I asked the head of the Japanese department back at my home institution to see if she could get me into the class via emailing the staff here at Kansai Gaidai.  We’ll see.  If not, I’m pretty happy with my class schedule because I’ll be done by no later than 3 pm every weekday.  ^__^

Right now, I am getting ready by pretending to review grammar and then picking out my outfit for tomorrow, the first day of school, which is also forecasted to be a cold and gloomy day.  Oh yeah~!  :P  Heh heh.

I’ll get back to recapping how Tokyo and Seoul went.  To tell you the truth, Tokyo was meh.  If you want to visit Japan, I really recommend the Osaka/Kyoto/Nara area.  It’s so much more cultural here in the Kansai region, and there’s so much more to see, both modern and historical.  Tokyo’s cool for like 2 days.  Then…it’s pretty much Times Square x50 and too expensive.  Thus, my Tokyo post will be kinda meh, and then I will write as much as I can about Seoul!  I loved Seoul, the good and the bad…except maybe the pollution, but, yeah, Seoul.  Awesome.