Moon Island and Six-Tree Hills

As we walked down the terra-yellow, slate stone walkway towards the illuminated plaza below, Matthew mused probably more to himself and the space around him than to anyone in particular, "tonight was fun; we should do it again."

This was entirely true. It felt like we were walking in the midst of a floating world, where trivial things like time and cost have no relative bearing. Where jokes and good times go down like shots of whiskey, which burn bright and warm in the otherwise sharp and cutting cold. Where everything takes on a fond, amber glow, and yesterday and tomorrow seem so far away that they almost will never matter any more.

We had taken a mid-morning train into Southern Tokyo. One of our teacher friends at 市立柏 was performing at a recital in Kachidoki (勝ちどき), an upscale area swathed in new money. So, dressed to the nines (or, in our case, 6 or 7 out of 9) we made a day of it, as we drifted from one swanky scene to the next, finding our way through romantic happenstance to Nishinaka Street in the Tsukishima (月島) district, another landfill project dredged from the depths of Tokyo Bay, famous for its surfeit of monjayaki (もんじゃ焼き) and okonomiyaki (お好み焼き) shops.

Eventually we ambled our way to the upscale areas of 六本木, Mid-Town and Roppongi Hills, to take in their Christmas "Illuminations" and rub elbows with the rest of Tokyo's young and affluent.


It has actually been a while since I've been on any trips of any length. Not even these kinds of short, one-day excursions that literally defined every weekend of my first year in Japan. That isn’t to say that I haven’t been traveling. A few weeks ago I boarded the bus for my first trip to Chiba City. Granted, that bus was the school bus and the trip was pretty much a business/field-trip to chaperone students to their 県大会. But now I can say that I've been there twice!

"I do miss this sort of adventuring," I remarked. Yet I really do love the things that I have been doing with 部活動 and, unfortunately, that means that I have to choose. But when I find myself at school every single day of the week, it's easy to see how small my world can seem to become sometimes.

And yet small doesn’t necessarily mean bad. It just means that I have to be much more intentional about exploring the places that I find myself in. In remembering to stop and try that quiet looking soba shop I pass by on my way from the bus stop before I walk into the bento shop on my way home. In planning to arrive an extra forty minutes earlier to walk through that small shrine I always see on the bus ride to school. It’s the same here as it is everywhere: I have to be intentional about setting aside time for myself to explore the more interior spaces of places and ideas.

I love traveling. In fact, I'd put traveling on my short list of "greatest things I can do with my free time," right along side of coming across a killer "shuffled" playlist on iTunes, knocking out rounds of the "Weekend Dungeon" in Puzzles and Dragons, and avoiding those putrescent puke-piles Tokyo-ites call "もんじゃ焼き".

It's just now I'm doing a different kind of traveling. I've been pouring myself into a different kind of tourism. The intimate, daily grind of 部活 and 武道 has become an essential part of my own daily grind and is an invaluable aspect of my personal experience of cultural exchange. But it needs be remembered that tourism has it's value, that the material aspect helps root and tether the abstract and etherial.

It's odd to think that the floating ephemera of Tsukishima and Roppongi Hills can tie or bind anything other than one's credit score, but the tangible and historical helps remind me that every narrative exists in a gritty, complex network, the kind of multifariousness that systems-of-thought and critical theory can oftentimes gloss over or white-wash for the sake of harmony and coherence. Even in Japan. Especially in Japan.

So, for now, I will revel in Matthew's experiences; a conduit through which I can renew my own experiences of unfamiliar tangible forms of Japan.

My Future Job (SJ: 12/05)

三年生 - A(2):

I want to be an astronaut in the future. I like space so I want to go to space. Therefore, I have to start studying about space science. I don't know about space. If I can go to space, I want to do a space-walk.

I'm interested in planets. I like Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. I'd like to study about planets. I'd like to experience zero-gravity.

On the other hand, the bad thing is space food. I don't have a good image about space food.

If I want to be an astronaut, I should study about Mars then people can live on Mars in the future.

It is difficult for me to be an astronaut, so I want to be an English teacher.

Coping with Struggle

Nick, let me tell you a story…

When I was in junior high I was enrolled in an honors math program. One day I was caught in the midst of an elaborate cheating ring. I'm not quite sure whether the teacher knew how elaborate the cheating actually was, or that it may or may not have been me that started it. However, I learned an important lesson that day: if you're not going to give it your best you might as well not try.

At least this is the cardinal rule for cheating...

---

As if peering down the darkened shaft of the well, all the darkness reflected back, I stared unknowing the true depth of the water below.
Through all of high school and much of college I was very frustrated with who I was and afraid of what I would become since nothing seemed to come easy to me. This seemed especially the case since everyone else appeared to have at least one talent or skill they relied upon to define themselves by. Because it seemed it was all I could do I did a lot of waiting, perhaps not so patiently, in the hopes that one day I would find that one thing that was supposed to come naturally. I just knew that if I could find my one gift--the talent promised to everyone of faith and conscience

¹I have Dr. Ken Berding to thank for helping me to see how in so many indirect ways my conventional interpretation of Spiritual Gifts had frustrated and stagnated my growth.

¹--everything would settle into its rightful place.

But no amount of scrimping or scraping through majors or hobbies would reveal to me this gift, no amount of digging would unearth this talent. Rather everything was an unending series of rough starts and failures. So, to me, it was only a matter of time that everyone else would eventually notice my consistent failure, read into my frustration incompetence, and perceive the inevitable cause as stupidity and inadequacy.

After all, it is known that people do smart things because they are smart: dumb people do dumb things because they are dumb. It is the natural order.

A few weeks ago, Matthew forwarded me an interesting NPR blog

²A light sociological anecdote masquerading as clinically researched reporting.

² about the differing approaches towards education that result from the differences in how "Western" and "Asian" educators perceive the nature of struggle in relation to intelligence and ability.

The crux of the article was an examination of how, in the West, children are taught that ability is the result of innate talent, and though it is never directly stated to children, one cannot help but make the logical leap to read "struggle" as "failure to obtain innate and easy success" and, therefore, is seen as incompetence.

Asian cultures, they argue, appreciate ignorance and incompetence as the natural state of origin. Failure is the logical and necessary result of ignorance. Struggle, then, is not indicative of one's ultimate level of aptitude, ability or adroitness, but a temporary state of being that can be overcome with 頑張ろう.

I suppose, then, that the differences in perspectives can best be illustrated with the Spanish copulas ser and estar. Ser is used when discussing grammatical complements that are intrinsic to the subject as an essential component of its character, while estar is used to describe more transient, temporary characteristics, such as emotions.

In this example, when a teacher calls someone バカ (which, on more than one occasion, I have observed first hand) it is a commentary on a temporary state of being

³生徒はバカestá.

³ of the student in question. Unlike in America, this would be a remark against the student's permanent character (a character flaw that acts as the original cause of such stupid behavior). In Japan, this is an acknowledgement of the stupidity of their current state: what they are doing and how they are doing it is currently foolish; consequently, the implication is that, through hard work, this behavior can and should be rectified, allowing the student to overcome the struggle and rid himself of such stupidity.

When I shared this article with some of my adult students, they remarked on how the common thought in Japan is that all children are born equal. For the most part, every child is essentially the same blank slate. Therefore, any diversity in end-product is a direct result of how much work the child pushes

⁴Or is pushed.

⁴ to persevere through struggle.

That, while Western parents would marvel at the immense talent of a 9 year old violin prodigy, the Japanese mother is insistent in attributing the success of the child to the 5 years of hard work rather than any mere, arbitrary, innate ability or proclivity.

As such, if ability and proficiency is directly attributable to effort, stupidity is, obviously, a result of a lack of effort. If you are struggling with science, the trick is to try harder. If you have trouble with math, just try again and again. And if your drawing is cockeyed, the same rule applies.

And while there is a definite lack of consideration of other exigent factors

⁵A system that virtually ignores the efficacy of educational programs or issues that arise from socioeconomic differences.

⁵, there is a lot that I can remember to take from this model before discarding it in favor of my selfish, American laziness.

---

Each prefecture in Japan has its own 柔道初段 review board, and each board has its own testing requirements. Luckily for me 千葉県 doesn't require a written test like some. However, they do require the performance of 9 standard 形 and a low-stakes 試合.

Among the simple techniques that are tested are two basic throws, 背負い投げ, an over-the-back throw, and 払い腰, which is a torsion based roll over the hip. And even though I'm new to judo, I can tell you which of the two throwing techniques I would be able to do without much trouble. I'm sure they know this, so you can guess which of the two they want me to learn first.

I used to take losing very personally, as if losing was a public performance if my inadequacy. So it would be a complete untruth to claim that I no longer mind sucking. So it would also be a lie if I said that the past few weeks have been anything less than a trial.

Whether it is from just being worn down and tired, carbon monoxide poisoning from the kerosene room heaters, or the standard U-Shaped acquisition curve, things just haven't been clicking. Despite the 三年生's encouragements and positive feedback, between the technical aspects of the 方, physical weariness, and the nexus of verbal commands--"リラックス" and "チャンス"--nothing seems to be working.

Actually, the embarrassment of sucking doesn't get to me so much anymore. I mean, it's factually true that I suck; I expect to. It's only natural. Sure it's frustrating to still be sub-functional

⁶And now it sounds like hedging..

⁶, but I don't think anyone else is expecting me to be much beyond that level yet, so it's absurd to expect myself to be. What is the biggest bother is that I feel that my suckiness is a burden that others are made to bear.

Anyway, last night was the end to a moderately mild week of practice since the coming weekend was the prefectural tournament. Because of this, I also knew that it would be a hard week for me since there'd be a lot more "free time" in practice, meaning that 小原 would have extra time to work me into the rotation.

Earlier 小原 had given me an impromptu list of things he wanted me to try to remember to do, and when I started I was fully committed to trying to do those things, probably to the detriment of the overall "success" of my performance. But by the end I was a little beyond being worried about that. By the time the buzzer sounded, weary and sore, I was not so much indifferent about the results as I was just glad to have survived the 乱取り. So I was surprised to be told by Ukyo that 小原先生 was talking to me. Or at me.

『ケビン、良かった。いいだった。』

So that's that, then…

鬼面仏心 (きめんぶっしん)

[TL;DR: Critical Theory piece. You have been warned.]
In the October 27th edition of This American Life, a middle school girl named Annie was talking about the hardships of the tween years. To her, what was so stressful about the 6th-8th grades was that while she was trying to figure out who she was and who she wanted to be, she was often paralyzed with the fear of what her peers might think or say about the things she wanted to do, the things she wanted to try, or the things she wanted to wear. She told a story about how she had a pair of ankle-high moccasins that she thought were the coolest, but it took her two months to build up the courage to face the potentiality of ridicule.

I find I tend to do this with the things that I am the most passionate about. Often the things that I talk about the least are the things I'm most worried about people rejecting or misunderstanding about me. It feels that, often, the less that I talk about something the more I want to be talking about it.

Or not. I guess. It's just stupid anyway.

Whatever.


I had intended only to stay long enough to make sure that there was practice on Friday since we were hosting a city-level tournament later that weekend. So it was a delightful surprise that I happened to run into the 柔道着 dealer on my way into the dojo.

With 小原先生's help (and insistence), we had ordered a team-gi for me a few weeks ago and, though I had suspected it would be in sometime early in November, this was a few days earlier than I expected. But what surprised me the most was how happy it made me feel to see my name written in bold, black kanji-script (新納

¹There was a little discussion about whether or not I should get a name plate because of the cost, but 小原 said that I'd need it if I wanted to compete or test and I, mostly, wanted one because I wanted to clearly mark my affiliation.

¹) above the 市立柏 school lettering.

It has never been lightly that I take being counted among the "柔道部-Family," both in acceptance and support, but with the 柔道着 in hand, it felt real. It felt official. It felt tangible.

In the late 19th century, early-modern, Swiss linguist, Ferdinand De Saussure, suggested that, in linguistics, words are nothing more than mere arbitrary sounds used to refer to ideas and concepts that exist in tangible form in the world. So the sound "tree" only has meaning in a system where the image of a tree is conjured up in the mind of the speaker/hearer. The sound of the word is the "signifier" that points to the idea of a tree, "the signified," and together this creates the word, or the "sign."

While de Saussure's semiological construction of linguistics as sign-signifier adequately explains the arbitrary nature (and yet abstract power) of language, about 60 years later, Roland Barthes wrote

²His writing always seemed more like suggestions than arguments.

² in his 1957 collection of essays, Mythologies, that de Saussure's model can be improved upon by adding a third layer to the "signifier-signified" relationship: that of Mythology.

In his essays, Barthes suggests that in all societies, some words take on additional meaning, a greater significance than their mere "literal" signification. That, so, in France, "red wine" is not just a cool, refreshing drink to lazily sip from a wide-mouthed glass, but it is rather a representation of France itself. That when you think of "French red wine," you do not just think of an image of a bottle of French red wine, as would be suggested by de Saussure's model, but rather you would think of a romantic bottle of wine, brown-green in color with a sketch of some distant pastoral chateau for a label, standing at attention on a serious, black-painted sidewalk bistro table overlooking the Champ de Mars: liberté, égalité, fraternité; baguettes, berets, and mimes.

As a society, we have allowed some words, more than others, to represent things far beyond their literal sign-signifier relationship. They no longer represent things, but whole ideas. They no longer exist as linguistic binaries, but as the central node within a nexus of meaning; the star around which whole constellations are built and named.


I have found that I tend to give such kinds of gravitas to certain things

³And I prefer to pretend that I am not unique in this.

³. Certain songs are more than just tunes, but art that acts as a reliable conduit to transcendence. Or certain clothes have the power to make me look cool or slovenly, just by their combination (or lack thereof).

Freud would intone that this process of ascribing great, personal significance to arbitrary items as a means of satiation is called "cathexis." Jung would argue that this is a universal human trait to attempt to recreate instances of emotional and psychic stability in a world of unsurity. All humans, then, find objects and ascribe onto them ("cathect") deep emotional value as the physical embodiment of abstract and intangible hopes and desires: wholeness, belonging, understanding, control.

In that way, tchotchke objects like souvenirs become representations of vacation experiences, luxuriant jewelry is allowed to become symbolic of a loving relationship, and mundane, monotonous uniforms an outward expression of fellowship and inclusion.

Thusly, Jung (and Freud) argue that, while people are the recipients/victims of larger social myths--archetypes which are written onto us forcefully, without our consent--since we are the ones who ascribe value onto things at the personal level--we write our names onto things we find to claim meaning and value--we should have the power to control them.

So it is with that understanding that, despite (or because of) the immense waves of joy that washed over me when I received the tightly packaged heavy cotton gi, mere hours later I felt silly. Silly to think that something so objectively meaningless and so arbitrarily assigned should bring me this kind of happiness when inclusion was already secured. Silly to think that I had given such a meaningless thing such power over my feelings. But most silly to think that if I had given such a meaningless thing such great power to make me happy--that it was merely returning to me the happiness that I was giving to it in the first place--then how come my life isn't that happy of my own accord more often?

Maybe it's because of the unsurity of the "Incommunicable Distance" between people; the idea that one can never truly, accurately communicate an idea or a feeling to anyone else so that when you hear an idea or a feeling being communicated to you, you can never really know if it's accurate, let alone true. And maybe it's as simple as cathexis allows us to pretend that we truly understand and know things which can never really be known by providing us with a tangible nexus for our focus. Or maybe there is a very real aspect of investment and return: that what you get back from cathexis is never just 1:1, but magnified and emboldened by the distance traveled.

When phrases like "arbitrarily assigned" come up in regards to "emotional response," my first impulse is to do away with the emotion. To bury it in a tome of linguistic analysis. To scoff at my feelings as the result of a momentary weakness and lapse of critical judgement, like some sort of academic, critical-theory hipster.

And while I understand that impulse towards iconoclasm, especially for those people whose lives are often shaped by the weight of the mythologies that are written, forcefully, onto their bodies

⁴Whether that be abstract with things like sexism or heteronormavie expectations, or much more literal with the stealing or ascribing of family names.

⁴, I'm always hesitant to move into deconstruction because I do think that there's great value, and perhaps beauty, in social and personal mythologies.

I think as long as we are cognizant of the arbitrary nature of their meaning and every body is allowed agency to negotiate the framework of the constellation of meaning, we can use mythologies to enrich our lives with an ever-increasing complex of integration that constantly asks us to reframe ideas and systems of knowing through juxtaposition and conflict.

The risk we run is when we allow our mythologies, personal and social, to become non-negotiable, or disenfranchise certain bodies from any such negotiation. When we promote mythologies--which are always discordant and irreconcilable--into the realm of the sacred, disparate narratives must be discarded and then negotiation becomes impossible. To move from the mythological to the sacred, as Jean Baudrillard would add decades later, is to elevate the signifier far above the signified, creating a sign with no more attachment to its referent in reality. It moves from a sign (a symbol referring to something real) to a simulacra, something that points to an idea that has never and can never truly exist in the world, such as ideal forms of being. Or Disneyland. Or religion

⁵Though some would argue all three of those things are the same.

⁵.

When mythologies lose their real-world referent, the sacred, then, becomes its own ultimate ideal. The methods of accessing and achieving satisfaction from cathexis become ritualized and codified. The sacred dictates for itself that there is a way things should be because that is how they have always "should have been." There is no longer just "French red wine," but there is "French Red Wine," and with that, ways that French Red Wine can and should be approached, assessed, tasted, treated, served and savored.

To me, I want to say that it's not about controlling or hedging against cathexis. To not see "arbitrary" and think necessarily "insignificant." Rather I would prefer to recognize and exert the immense privilege of my agency in negotiation, in understanding the arbitrary nature of my own personal mythologies, with the goal being to get the most depth and richness out of it as I possibly can. The reticence, then, is in the fear of emotionally enshrining these things into the realm of the sacred.

Then the next step after that is to build up the nerve to actually wear the thing.

Then not get blood on it.

     

My Favorite Sport (SJ: 11/14)

三年生 - A(2)

My favorite sport is baseball.
I'm a girl so I can't play baseball.
If I was a boy I would play baseball every day because I want to become a strong baseball player.
If I was a boy, I would swing my bat every night.
If I was a boy, when I was in kindergarten I would play baseball.
I would want to go to a strong baseball high school so I could play baseball everyday.
I want to play second or catcher because to become second or catcher is my dream.
Baseball's good points are team play and excitement of the game, so I like baseball.
If I am reborn as a boy, I absolutely want to play baseball because I never played in a baseball game.

My Favorite Book/Manga (SJ: 11/12)

三年生 - Elective:

My favorite book is a love story because I don't have a boyfriend so I want to sympathize so I read this book.
The boy is my type so I want him to be my boyfriend but it is impossible so I give up.

弓道 in 柏

Nick, it's not the article I wanted; it's the article I deserved.

We have been in a bit of a crunch at work. I've even had to cancel my gym membership because I haven't had time to go. This will mark the first time since before compulsory PE at Biola that I will be without a membership to any sort of fitness center.

Then again, 先生 would say it would all work out. That is if he ever said anything other than "you're doing it wrong."

That being neither here nor there, what you need to know is that I found out that I was now taking 書道 and am somehow running the English Conversation Club

¹± "into the ground."

¹, all while managing to fall behind in my writing for TSCA despite starting my article two weeks ago. I just haven't had the time to vet the information. Or make it interesting. Or readable.

But, hey, I did just get "The Very Best of Daryl Hall & John Oates

²Remastered.

²." Oh yeah, I'm back on the Yacht Rock!

Anyway, so what to write about? Especially if I've spent the last 19 consecutive days at Ichikashi…


Every couple of days you'll see them walking to or from 北柏駅, replete in traditional Japanese clothing with a bow in tow, slung across their back in a leather case like a pool cue or a fishing rod. For the longest time I had no clue who they were, what they were doing, or why they were doing it in or around Kita-Kashiwa. That is until I figured out that the giant building on the other side of Teganuma was the 柏立中央 Gymnasium: one of the biggest municipal gyms in Kashiwa city.

When Ken and I checked it out in June, we were told that they had daily basketball leagues, two or three halls of semi-competitive (to highly-competitive) ping pong tables, three dojos (for judo, kendo and/or karate), a sumo stable that housed children's sumo lessons on the weekends, and a competition-size kyudo range.

Kyudo. Of course.

---

胴造り. 引分け. 会. 離れ. 残心.

Actually, in all, there are eight formal steps to 弓道 (kyudo), traditional Japanese archery. Each of the eight steps, from the initial placing of the foot (足踏み)--breathe in, breathe out--to the readying (弓構え) and raising (打起し) of the bow--breathe in, breathe out--to the final release, is deliberate and drawn. And despite it's inherent violence, there is a remarkable peace that covers the 弓道場 like a thick woolen blanket. Silent but for the twang of the long, uneven wooden bow and the hiss of the arrow and breath of the archer.

Even though the sharp cries of kendo peeled across the empty lot, carried into the open-air hall on the soft, early autumn breeze, it was hard to ignore the sacredness of the space radiating with a thoughtfulness that, like light splashing into the humid dark of the night air, cascaded out onto the soft grass range below. It felt wrong to move or speak. It even felt invasive to be there to watch.

Though standard ranges, from hall to 的場 (target house), can span up to 60m, the length of the range at 柏立中央体育館, we were told, was just about 28m, or what is termed a "short" matoba. As it was, the archers we had the privilege of watching were struggling with 10- and 20-kilogram 弓, bows that seemed "just right" for a range of under 30m.

"構いません," we were told. "It does not matter."

Photo illicitly obtained from benoist via Flickr.

As it is with all of the 武道 sports, there is as much emphasis placed on moral and spiritual development as there is on physical accomplishment and mastery. In fact, the first words of explanation out of 先生's mouth were all about the spiritual components of 弓道. Well, that's what Matthew told me. Of everything he said, I understood no more than 6 words. One of them was "かまいません."

Kyudo, we were told, was as much stoic, contemplative meditation-in-action as it was the violent launch of missiles. Actually, the loosing of the arrow from the bow seemed mildly incidental to the entire process. Rather, from the moment the archer places his foot, to the motionless, thoughtful moments after the arrow has rattled itself deep into the 巻藁 bale, the archer is in a still, silent pursuit of the Platonic ideal of 真善美 (shin-zen-bi): truth, goodness and beauty.

To put it simply, the pursuit of shin-zen-bi is the embodiment of the endeavor for and application of truth. Though circumstances and situations are variable, though wind and light may change what the eye sees, when one can see the absolute truth of things as they are, the archer is unperturbed (冴え, さえ: clarity). Practice must then be conducted in trust and faith in the rightness of truth. From that honest pursuit necessarily results in good action, lest the revelation be meaningless. Goodness is this wholehearted intention (誠, まこと: sincerity) of seeking the rightness of action once truth has been revealed. These actions that stem from the solid roots of truth give blossom to the flower of beauty, which is the spiritual goal not just in kyudo, but in all things in the life of the archer (平常心, へいじょうしん: one's presence of mind).

Whether the arrow hits the target is of no matter, 先生 intoned. After all, 正射正中 (せいしゃせいちゅう): correct shooting is correct hitting. "A spirit settled," the Shaho-Kun says, "becomes a harmonious unit."

This is the ideal, from 足踏み to 残心, or the returning to the body from the state of spirit concentration.

Of course that's easy to say when every arrow you loose manages to hit the minuscule 36cm wide target.

一生懸命

I know it's been a while since I've last sat down to write, but things have gotten incredibly busy with work and 部活 and all that.

"All that" also includes breaking in the new ALT

¹The "ALT" title has always kinda irked me in terms of our job and its description relative to similar positions as it has acquired a rather negative, entry-level/slacker connotation. A few months ago I petitioned the principal of the school to recommend that, with the change in positional status a few years ago, there should also be a corresponding change in job title to reflect such differentiation. Now this is probably not that big of a deal to the people of Japan, which was probably why it was easy enough to acquiesce to, but when it comes to describing the job to future employers--as well as to potential recruits--it's important enough to be seen as separate and distinct from among "standard" ALTs. Especially as we are fully licensed teachers with equivalent status.

That being said, we have to figure out what we want to be called. There is an old term, ELT, which stands for English Language Teacher, which, apparently, is an archaic moniker for the position that seems well suited for the task. We might go with that one.

¹. It's too bad because one of my goals for before the new recruit showed up was that I wanted to have a more concrete idea of what my term as ALT/ALT-先輩 would look like. Ever since we first talked about the inevitable end of Ken's term I'd been thinking what my personal vision for the TSCA-ALT program was going to be: the long-term direction I wanted to take my stint at Ichikashi in.

And while I hadn't really gotten around to putting anything in ink yet, I have been thinking it through and adopted a personal motto of sorts that has directed much of my decision-making process for the past few months: 一生懸命, "with all of my being" (all of one's existence at risk).

It's a motto that I used when trying to decide how "invested" I wanted to be when joining 部活, in trying to decide how selfish or generous I wanted to be with my business and personal time, what limits to put on work and work relationships, and whether or not I should assume the publicly humiliating task of dancing at 文化祭 with the other 三年生先生.

          
So this motto has become a de facto strainer through which I have started to filter out tasks and hobbies from among the dross. It was also, I realized last night, a rather handy framework around which to build my ELT-manifesto.

Currently, I have an odd assortment

²I have decided to frame it according to a standard carnalistic-dualist split, as it's simple and doesn't require me to invent a third spoke around which to model.

² of non-assessable goals which, by definition, makes them bad goals. Except in Japan, where unobtainable, non-assessable goals are the norm. After all, if they're un-assessable, they're unassailable! Rather than see them as requirements or achievements, I suppose, they're really more like reminders of what it means to me to 一生懸命 at my job.

一生懸命 Heart

Increase our presence within the Ichikashi-teacher's community, ingratiating ourselves as:

1) Coworkers ("co-sufferers") - attending all school-wide faculty meetings and contributing a positive and involved presence at community functions, events, and extra-curricular activities, especially those that teachers are socially required to participate in.

2) Colleagues - taking an active interest in the working (and personal) lives of teachers both in and out of the Foreign Language office by being intentional with interactions and generous with our time and energy.

一生懸命 Mind

Increase our relevance as a program academically by:

1) Increasing the efficiency of our program - writing an overarching unit-plan for the three major courses (3年生 writing, OCI-2A and OCI Elective) that can be used as the basis for lesson plans (inherited, redesigned or rewritten)--ones that more accurately address the stated needs of each individual program. We would then be able to avoid the constant reduplication of effort and work that occurs on an annual (or even monthly) basis.

2) Increasing the quality of our program output - by having a more efficient planning process, we can spend more effort in improving the accuracy, usefulness and scope of lesson materials--including (but not limited to) teacher outlines or OCI-2A International-Travel "handbook" pages--as well as begin to implement assessment protocols. Finally, by creating space in the annual calendar, we would be able to conduct ongoing training and research into contemporary educational theory, allowing us to incorporate progressive teaching methods, such as multi-media.

3) Increasing the perceptive efficacy of our program - by continuing to address the (felt and programatic) needs of our programs, we would also look to take steps to promote the positive impact that ELTs have on campus. This includes continuing to make concentrated efforts in preparing students for English language testing and university entrance examinations either through direct tutoring or through the introduction of advanced, elective programs, as well as continuing to encourage the English Conversation Club to become a more academically relevant institution by promoting regular and practical English for general and specific purposes (casual--through language projects such as videos, pen pals, and writing--and academic--through assigned/mandatory testing or high-level language use via speech contests). Additionally, we should seek to continue to increase the breadth of impact that the ELT program has on campus through more concerted efforts to use English with and provide services to students not directly impacted by International Courses or ECC.

Personally, I think it's important to recognize the unique mutability of the ELT program that marks it as such a remarkable program within the context of the Japanese public educational system. I find it fascinating the liberties that we are afforded as a program within the normally rigid hegemony of the larger institution and we have been provided, both through neglect and ignorance, a fantastic opportunity to make appreciable changes that can make a real difference in the lives of students academically and interpersonally.

Historically, the TSCA/KIRA-ALT partnership has seen more than its share of strong, smart personalities that have worked to bring the program from its excited beginnings to the luxurious place of honor (and compensation) it currently holds within the immediate Ichikashi community and the broader municipality.

It is my heart's desire

³一生懸命.

³ to add my two cents and a bit of elbow grease and try to leave the program in a better position at the end of my three years.


There are three reasons why I feel so compelled.

The first of which is by far the most tenuous. Over the last couple of years Ichikashi has been blessed to have Suda-校長 at the helm. Actually, the ALT program has had this exorbitantly good fortune as Suda-先生 harbors a not-so-secret love for international education and exchange. But, as the Japanese educational system would have it, he is coming to the end of his stint, having to change schools at the end of the school year in June. Suda-先生 has been a boon to our program (and other such ones like it on campus), and we have been very lucky to have him at our vanguard. And while it is extremely unlikely that the next principal who comes will (or can) do away with our program, it would behoove both me and Matthew (and anyone who comes after us) to ingratiate ourselves to the incoming administrator. That way, when the ELT program and its affiliates come under the scrutiny of a brand new administrative eye, we would be above reproach in terms of relational and fiscal economy.

Speaking of relational and fiscal economy, one thing that has been crossing my mind recently

⁴And this is number two.

⁴ was the difference in how I treat this job and how I treated my previous job. Really, I cannot imagine loving any future job as much as I do this one. Every day I wake up happy to go to work, happy to come home tired on the bus, and happy to look forward to doing it again the next day. As true as all that is, this has more to do with how I now realize how ungrateful I was about my last job.

I liked to talk about how my last job was a godsend. How it practically fell into my lap "just in time" so that I didn't have to declare hardship on my loans, and how it subsisted through my four years of indentured servitude. But I was far from in love with the job. And at times my behavior made that quite clear.

I constantly think about how ungrateful I behaved. How ungrateful I seemed. How ungrateful I was. And it makes me sad to think that I put my coworkers and bosses through that. So it isn't with temerity that I send my thanks and well wishes to them. And yet it is that same heavy-heartedness that I carry with me into this job, a job I love passionately.

In a way, since it defies physics to go back in time and fix my attitude

⁵And, conveniently, my core desire to move on from that job.

⁵, I am trying to make up for my double-douche-bagginess by double-loving the job I have now.

There were really ever only two reasons. But I figured that if you had prepared to drudge through three reasons that you'd be so much happier knowing that you were done that much earlier.

Anyway, that's all I have for now. I'm working on a post which should be up in a couple of weeks. So, until then, また、ね。

Jan and the Speech Contest

Meet Jan

¹ Sorry, she didn’t want to take a picture!

¹.

She's one of several 外国人 students (non-citizen residents) enrolled at Ichikashi. Ichikashi has a very limited number of seats available for students who wish to enroll as 外国人, usually around five every year, as they require special language consideration both in their enrollment testing as well as "linguistic academic support" (which includes a supplemental Japanese language course).

This is interesting because usually, at least when it comes to English (and other foreign languages in general), these students are often quite high-functioning, probably because many of them come from countries where English is a semi-normal facet of every day life. It's easy to forget in my limited exposure with them in OCI/Composition class that life outside of 英語の練習室 is quite different.

Over the past two weeks we've had the privilege of working one-on-one with Jan to help her prepare for the Kashiwa Speech Contest in October. Ken and I had done some pre-planning with Jan before summer break began so that by the end of summer we could have the makings of a workable draft, thinking that we'd run into the normal hem-and-hawing of speech-writing. Before we left in July she decided she wanted to write about how hard school in Japan, academically, was as a foreigner.

Cool, right?

However, last week when Jan sheepishly slid the door to the Foreign Language Office open, I knew something was up. Maybe she hadn't worked on anything at all over the last two months. Or, even worse, maybe she had gotten cold feet and wanted to pull out of the contest.

In actuality, she had a small notebook stained in pen with ideas scribbled across whole pages. Really, what she had come to say was that she had changed her mind: she didn't want to talk about how hard coming to Japan for school was anymore. Rather, she wanted to talk about how hard it was for her mom.

Even better.

I asked her if I could share what we have written. This is what we’ve come up with so far:

My mom is very important to me because, first of all, she was the one who gave birth to me. She changed my diapers when I was a toddler and made sure that I was healthy and active. She would take care of me when I was sick and made sure that I had everything I needed. When I was little, she would read books to me every night and made me feel loved with lots of hugs and kisses. She would always cheer me up and comfort me when I was scared, teaching me to do my best and not give up when things are scary or get hard.

If it were not for her, I wouldn’t be here. I’m really grateful that I have a mother like her. She really means a lot to me.

But this is why she is my biggest inspiration:

You see, when she was in Manila, my mom got pregnant with me at a very young age. Because of that, she had a very big decision to make: she could take a year off of high school and put me up for adoption or put aside her friends, high school parties, and dreams of becoming a cabin attendant, making lots of money and traveling all around the world, to raise me as her daughter. For her, though it meant things would be difficult, it was not a hard decision.

She decided to quit high school and get a job so she could raise me. When she was 8-months pregnant, she got a job at 7-11, but the pay was very low. She realized that even with this job, she would not be able to afford a great future for me. So when I turned 3-years-old, she packed up and left her family and friends and moved to Japan to find a better job.

Moving to Japan was very hard for her. She didn’t even speak the language, and so things like kanji were very difficult for her. She will readily admit that it was tough, but she always said it was worth it because it was to offer me a better future. She always made her decisions based on what was best for me, not what was the easiest.

My mom always does her best for me and it makes me feel so special. It inspires me to work hard in school so that one day I might be able to fulfill her dream of becoming a cabin attendant.

However, like for my mother, sometimes it is very hard for me to understand Japanese. All of the kanji in school is very hard, but most especially the sciences. It is very discouraging to score so low because of the language barrier. Even if I understand the idea in the textbook, I find it hard to pass tests and assignments because the kanji is so complicated.

Last semester was particularly difficult. Even though I studied every day, practicing and memorizing kanji, I was unable to pass my biology test. It is very disappointing to spend so much time studying and still not pass the exam. Sometimes I want to quit because failing feels inevitable. But just when I feel like giving up, my mom tells me, “kahit anong mangyari wag kang susuko, kasi alam ko naman na kaya mo eh”: “do not give up. I know you can do it.”

Even though the kanji used in science is challenging, I will not give up studying. I know I can do it because my mother has shown me that it can be done. She gives me the confidence to work through adversity and study hard. Like her, I want to do what’s best, not just what is easiest.

But it isn’t always easy to choose to do the best. My mom and I argue sometimes about me hanging out with my friends instead of studying. She is always worried about me, telling me to be careful. It used to make me mad, her constant questioning, but now I realize that she wants me to be safe, that she wants to make sure that I don’t make the same decisions, the same mistakes, that she did. She always tells me that I can do better, and that I should make the most of my opportunity.

She has given me so much already, and for that I am very grateful. By this I know that she loves me, so I want to make her proud by fulfilling her dreams, not just of being a cabin attendant, but by making the most of the bright future she has given up so much for me to have.

The speech-writing portion of prep is always hard. But the actual speaking-training is always the most cruel. Yet I do not doubt her resolve.

“Are you getting tired,” I asked, my own tongue feeling thick with cotton, my eyes strained with furrowed brows. “Are you sure you don’t want a break?”

We had been working on rounding out vowel sounds and enunciating hard consonant clusters for the better part of an hour. I was worried we were getting close to “the end” working on words like “inevitable” and “particularly.”

“We can take a break,” I added. “You’ve been doing a good job so far.”

“No, I don’t need a break,” she said. “Let’s keep working. I mean, I don’t want to do just a good job. I want to win.”

Umi no Hi

The spring events calendar is relatively light compared to those of the fall and winter.  Sure there's the Freshmen Welcome procedures and orientation.  But when stacked up against the school excursion to Okinawa in November, the trip to Yokohama in May is just mere "practice."

The crux of our spring program, though, is the host segment of both of our exchange programs.  By the end of July we have hosted two separate groups from Torrance for a total of five days in an attempt to simulate and summarize a day in the life of a normal Japanese high school student.

          
For me, the best part of these trips isn't so much the rare opportunity to riff in English to nearly unanimous groans

¹ As opposed to confused silence.

¹, but to, again, be reminded of those amazing, subtle differences of culture that I have grown more or less accustomed to.

I mean it's hard not to be consistently wowed by the quality of our Brass Band club and it's massive wall of trophies and the accordant dedication to practice and perfection literally unavoidable as the persistent clacking of metronomes and the haunting whine of woodwinds echo through the halls, their tick and twitter a constant reminder of my own lazy mediocrity. And, of course there are the unique cultural experiences of Tea Ceremony, Ikebana and Shodo. Even still, what seems to surprise the students most are the sports clubs.

I suppose club is the right word for it.  In Japan, when you commit to a sport, you're committing to the club team, whose only, unconditional requirement is your daily commitment.  There is no such thing as a multi-sport athlete because, within the system, it is impossible for a student to be committed to more than one club at a time.

To their credit it should be mentioned that no student is ever turned away from a club due to lack of ability or performance

² Neither physical nor academic.

² and very few players, if any, are ever cut.  Notwithstanding, as each school carries only one team, and while some teams can carry upwards of 30 or 40 kids, only the best players have the honor of being "jerseyed," or selected to be eligible for the game roster, to play in the actual games.

Regardless of a student's status, clubs meet virtually every day, some multiple times a day, throughout the entire year, as freshman until the day they must retire midway through the summer of their senior year.  There are no "seasons" when it comes to sports, and likewise there is no break from practice. Even still, invariably, the athletic calendar centers its axis around the prefectural tournament. For the bigger sports like baseball and basketball, the schedule finds its heart in the heat of the summer "大会" ("taikai").

Sure there may be a spring invitational tournament or a conscripted scrimmage between two schools, but inter-high school athletics come down to these athletic "tests": the Prefectural Tournament (県大会) and then the National Tournament (全国大会).

Two weeks ago, Ichikashi's boy's basketball team took first place in the Chiba Prefectural Tournament earning them a spot in the national tournament.

Around then, Taiga, a boy in Ken's composition class, ran a 14:20.44 5k

³ A number that would put him at the top of the charts in California.

³, qualifying him for the national meet.

And then last week saw the first pitches of the Chiba regional qualification for Summer Koshien, arguably Japan's biggest sporting event.

Way back in the early 2000s, when my only previous, direct exposure to Japan was limited through Harmony Gold VHS adaptations of classic Japanese animes and documentaries on PBS about national treasures (both historical and living), Discover Films: POV released a short doc on the all-Japan national inter-high school championship tournament, the Summer Koshien.

          
First played in 1915

⁴ And even then it was the penultimate sporting event in Japan.

⁴, the Zenkoku Koto Gakko Yakyu Senshuken Taikai (全国高等学校野球選手権大会), pits the best high school baseball teams from every prefecture in Japan (one team from every prefecture: two from Tokyo and Hokkaido) in a single-elimination tournament for the title of "Champion."  It remains the single largest scale amateur sporting event in Japan and stands as an enduring symbol of democratic meritocracy

⁵ The tournament is aired on national public television with no commercials or commercial sponsors; even the use of the stadium is donated.

⁵ as virtually every single one of Japan's 5000 high schools is eligible.  Of course, all they have to do is have a baseball team and then have that team win their 県大会...

Undoubtedly, sometimes what gets lost in the fervor of the literal aspect of sport and its purported inherent, absolute cultural value is the fact that the game is still played by children whose identities and relationships are deeply tied to whatever 部活動 they find themselves in their freshman year. It's easy to forget that high school is a transitionary period from childhood into adulthood, and the summer retirement of the 三年生 is the first and most heavy-handed of the many milestones that mark this passage.

Koshien and 全国選手権 are mere dreams for just about all of our sports teams.  Not only is the success of the club pegged to your team's ability to survive deep into a single elimination tournament, but for just about all of the jerseyed athletes (a preponderance of whom are 三年生) these tournaments are their last event before they are forced to "retire" from the club to make way for their juniors. For every single one of our students, winning that proverbial "next game" is as much about getting to play one more game with their friends as it is winning the title of "National Champion."

               
"This weekend is our last tennis tournament," one girl wrote in her journal way back in May.  "I want to win because I love playing tennis."

Girl's tennis turned over their annual calendar more than a month ago and was among the earliest of all the sports to retire out their seniors.  But I remember recently catching her gazing longingly out of the window of 練習室3, a room that happens to have a beautiful view of the courts on the south side of the campus, her eyes ladened with tears.

"I miss tennis," she said.  "But I miss tennis club most of all."

Chiba no Hi

It's been maybe 9 months since I moved to Kashiwa and, for various reasons such as rain, laziness and not being physically fit enough, I still hadn't taken the time to bike all the way around 手賀沼 (the marsh down the street from my apartment).


Last weekend I saddled up to the challenge and managed the 20km circuit, going so far as to getting slightly lost in the spirit of adventure and turned the trip into one closer to 40. Shrines built on spry hill tops, baseball fields butting up against gentle streams, and fresh eggs sold in vending machines, it was all worth it.

           
It was nice to finally get that far out of town on my own, to see what the other side of 取手 looks like and get a better sense of what life on the outskirts of a city like Tokyo is like by just making the conscious effort to get out and look. Then again, there is still so much to be seen just across the river from my apartment.

A few weeks ago, one of our students mentioned playing in a dodgeball tournament at a gym close to ふるさと公園, where we had our English Freshman Welcome. Neither Ken nor I knew what he was talking about. 柏市中央体育館 (Kashiwa Central Municipal Gym), replete with basketball/volleyball courts, a small gym for ping pong, a children's gymnastics room, a kendojo, a judojo, a kyoudojo (traditional Japanese archery range house), and a sumo stable! A SUMO stable. For children!

Every Saturday and Sunday morning they have children's sumo training. It's the bee's knees! Kids. And. Amazing.

It's quite the scene. The gymnasium complex, not just the sumo-くんs. And it's really close. Quite convenient. Maybe I will inquire within about their classes. Probably not sumo. Maybe judo.

---

Just like most martial arts, judo has come to develop an intricate colored-belt hierarchy (段, dan), starting at white and ending in various "degrees" of black"

¹ 十段, to be exact.

¹. Each belt color indicates a certain level of advancement and achievement, beginning with "initiate" and "novice" and ending, eventually, with "master." This color ranking system was introduced to help inspire progress and make matching skill levels for sparring much simpler.

In more traditional judo schools, when you step out onto the mat for training, regardless of your ranking, you can only wear one of two colors: white or black.

The message is clear: you're either a master (有段者, yuudansha) or you are not (無段者, mudansha, literally "ignorant person," or "having no rank").

Technically modeled after the public school system itself, judo schools were traditionally divided into two groups: underclassmen (mudansha), who are ranked in descending "級" (kyuu) grades of 9-1, and upperclassmen (yuudansha), who are ranked in ascending "段" (dan) degrees of 1-10.

This white/black dichotomy is so strong that many 柔道場 in Japan

² Especially at Kodokan, 講道館, the birthplace of judo, and Ichikashi included.

² only use white belts and black belts. It's also interesting to note that the judo instructor at our school is only a 3rd degree black belt (三段) and the Ichikashi student who won 全大会 last year (that's "nationals" for the two of you remaining Gleeks) was only 初代 or 二段.

There is often a misunderstanding of what is implied by possession of a black belt

³ So much so that there's even a short entry on it in Wikipedia's Common Misconceptions catalog.

³. Often, what we assume of "mastery," in western terms, is the romantic image of the 100 year-old man living in the 1,000 year-old cabin 10,000 miles away from the nearest town who has dedicated his life to the study of his art, forgoing all other earthly wants and desires and only trains travelers committed enough to conquer the 100,000 stair climb to his mountainside dojo/sanctuary. This kind of master "exists," but is awarded as the "master" title of "教授," or Kyoju, and is often earned at around 五- or 六- 段.

Of course, even with the lowest level of black comes the expectation of leadership over their mudansha counterparts (this is usually signified with a title like 師範, "shihan"). But the biggest distinction with the black belt is that it signifies a "mastery" over the 67 投げ技 (throwing) techniques, the 29 固技 (grappling) techniques and the 8 forms of 柔道の形, not mastery over classmates or the craft. The acquisition of the belt signifies a shift away from childish rote memorization towards more mature techniques.

The only things the white belts are expected to do

⁴ And are allowed to do.

⁴ is observe and repeat.

This master/student dichotomy is so pervasive throughout all of the arts in Japan that it even shows up in 書道 (Shodo, Japanese Calligraphy). Students are graded and ranked according to their ability to replicate stroke weight, balance and design, and assessed on the correctness of submitted patterns as reviewed by a master.

In Shodo once a student reaches shodan (first master-level) it is expected that the student now solely uses more strict 楷書 (kaisho, regular) scripts rather than the beginner's models. By san-dan, they are allowed to begin using 隸書 (reisho, clerical) and 篆書 (tensho, seal) styles. By san-dan, they can also begin using more free-form styles in their writing.

According to many practitioners, one is not "supposed" to teach another person calligraphy until they have reached a minimal rank of 初段 (the equivalent of a first-degree black belt), and even then, only to elementary school aged peoples. Adults require a minimum of 三段.

The final stages of ranking

⁵ Above 5 or so.

⁵ require actual in-person examinations.

Just as an aside, with a passive interest in shodo, myself, I found this outstanding website (Beyond Calligraphy) that helps break down stroke order and design balance based on the character's specific etymology. Most notably are the sections on the development of the shapes of basic hiragana.

Anyway, back to that shodo-ranking chart, I was surprised to realize that these rankings are the same rankings that the 英検 (Eiken) English Language Proficiency exam uses.

The table is divided into a top-half and a bottom-half: the top being the masters [those who have acheived a 段 (dan) ranking] and the bottom being 級 (kyuu) (those who have not). Kyuu's begin at Grade 10 (十級) and level their way up to Grade 1 (一級)

⁶ With the Eiken, every level requires a half-step, meaning that between going from Grade 2 to Grade 1 you must additionally pass the 準一級 (Pre-Grade 1 level test).

⁶ before entering pre-master level (準初段), working their way up to 六段 (or 八段 in some cases).

I haven't yet met anyone who's passed 準一級, let alone 一級. The highest level I've seen are a couple of our students occasionally try their hand at 二級. But since most universities don't look for much more than 二級, there is little incentive to try. Especially since the last time the students can take the Eiken to qualify to test for university entrance is three months into their senior year, there isn't a whole lot of opportunity to prep a student to take the test unless they've been practicing over the break by themselves.

And all of this without ever being close to "pre-mastering" (準初段, jun-shodan) the basics of English.

Which is fine because if I think back to my high school years, of what subject, exactly, would I have been qualified to be called a "master" of of even the most basic of skills? P2P music and LAN-parties, maybe. Maybe even canasta.

My Imaginary Animal (SJ: 6/29)

三年生 - A(2)

Do you know who this is? This is a boy. His name is Akichan. I named him Akichan.  He is very big; maybe his height is 100m. So he walks slowly but he can make big jumps and fly to the sky. He likes to play the guitar. So he has good music sense.

He only has a few friends. Why doesn’t he have more than a few friends? His face looks scary. 

His favorite food is potatoes, chicken, beef, pork, chocolate and cake. He has many favorite foods. He usually drinks a beer. He likes to drink. He is 125 years old but he looks very young.

He has a girlfriend. His girlfriend’s name is Akiko. They are very lovely. He does twitter. His account is @xxxxxx but he can’t understand any language. So he can’t use twitter.

My Best Friend (SJ: 6/18)

三年生 - Elective:

My friend's name is Shin.
He is kind but he is always fooling around with women.
He likes parsley.
We are classmates.
He is good at singing songs because he likes music.
He joined brass band.
He is the bass trombone player.
Shin wets his bed every night.
He does not like eggplants because they are bitter.
He has a big voice but he has a narrow mind.

If I Could Have a Super Power (SJ: 6/13)

三年生 - A(2):

If I could have a super power I would want the power to transform.
If I had that super power, then I would change into a man so I can play baseball.
We would go to Koshien.
Then we would win.

Kokumin no Kyujitsu

First and foremost, I want to congratulate my beasties on all of the hard work they have done to get to this point of graduation and, for those of you with post-high-school-graduate plans of either immediate employment, military service or continuing education, the best of luck and an extra dose of がんばって.


But, with high schools across America coming to a close, the internet has gone agog with articles regarding colleges and continuing education.

An interesting article came across my desk a few days ago from the Daily Yomiuri, which noted, briefly, that the Ministry of Education is looking to advance a two-year graduation option for high schoolers who meet a minimum academic benchmark.

The idea is that early graduation makes it possible for students who qualify for university (especially those applying for international education facing a seven-month gap between the end of high school in February and the opening of universities in the fall) to forgo their last year [either partially, after the spring (first) trimester, or entirely] of high school in order to pursue a tertiary degree and still receive an equivalent high school diploma. The change in the law would allow students to take advantage of an early-graduation policy that has been in place since 1997.

Currently, students who take advantage of such early admissions are considered to have "dropped out" of high school.

As it stands, 三年生 are forced into club "retirement" at the end of their first semester and then given the entire final (winter) trimester off to prepare for college entrance exams

¹ Entrance exams that are notoriously scheduled only twice a year and often in opposition of competing schools, forcing students to "choose" which schools they want to test for between similarly tiered universities.

¹.

In this recent article, Kouichi Nakai argues that the current system, while rooted in the post-war, reconstruction spirit, has outlived its purpose and no longer serves the betterment of the people and society, rather serves the ambiguous interests of "tradition." The system, rather than promoting education, is based on a failing relationship between higher education and Japanese Big Business.

Post war, he posits, saw Japan's second wave of westernization. Thanks in no small part to its forced inclusion into the global economic community, the country enjoyed a "rapid, dramatic [GDP] recovery" at an annual rate of 10% or more for nearly 20 years, clawing its way to the second highest GDP, behind only the USA by the early 80s. As it was economically, Japan was forced to "catch up" with Western educational policies, deciding to anchor its education on literacy and mathematics, using efficient, rote-based/input-output models of education.

As the forward-looking benefits of education in a post-war economy began to take hold, Kouichi notes that this saw a dramatic increase in rates of education throughout Japan: upwards of 98% of all students elected to attend high school, while 50% went on to pursue tertiary education, a number that would rise to 80% if it included technical and trade schools.

Especially as relationships between many of the top schools and sponsoring corporations began to tighten

² Here's a prescient 2009 article about the failure of this nudge-nudge relationship.

², companies began promising Salaryman positions to a certain percentage of graduates from partner institutions. Get into the right school and a job would literally be waiting for you when you graduate. "Stability" in the form of Salaryman jobs became the "white picket fence" in post-war Japan and education was the cobbled road.

The college entrance exam then became the first stepping stone.

Actually, college entrance exams became the only stone. There would be no application process. Just a truncated series of Uniform (national standardized)

³ In 1990, the Ministry of Education began proctoring a national standardized test in an attempt to help private universities move away from college-specific entrance testing requirements. The thinking was that by deemphasizing college-specific tests, schools would better be able to seek alternative forms of admission, thereby opening admissions to students returning from lengthy stays overseas, to students in areas that do not have easy access to the university's proctored exams, and to students who have been out of high school for more than two years.

³ and university-specific entrance exams.

Logically, since high school in Japan is non-compulsory and selective to begin with, this affected student enrollment, as students pursued enrollment to high schools often based on historical matriculation rates. The educational climate no longer judged a school on the quality of its instruction in the basics of math, science and letters, or its ability to produce thoughtful, mature leaders, but how well the school prepares students to pass (or circumvent) the university entrance examinations. Kouichi argues, this shift transformed high schools into little more than entrance-exam prep schools.

In the early years of this program, the public schools with the best reputation for acceptance into the top universities saw fierce competition, skewing attendance and the distribution of test scores (and, implicitly, wealth). This led to an attempt in the 60s and 70s of local boards of education to democratize access by smoothing out high school acceptance rates (which are, not ironically, based on high school entrance examinations) among the most competitive public high schools with quotas and regional restrictions, which in turn, sent many of the more affluent families scuttling towards private schools

⁴ Not unlike the current state of East Coast public education today.

⁴. This doesn't even raise the issue of "feeder" high schools that guarantee admission to partner universities.

Throughout the 80s, it was determined--at the administrative level--that the "current system" was failing to produce educated individuals. "The phrase '7, 5, 3' emerged to describe the ratios of students who actually understood their classes," Kouichi notes: "70% of elementary school students, 50% of middle schoolers, and 30% of high schoolers."

These shortcomings have become all the more apparent. It's a striking example of how the needs of a third-party institution that controls a vast majority of the potential job market greatly influences unaffiliated institutions. But it also speaks to how damming up a stream can wash away an institution's philosophical underpinning Takehiko Kariya argues, in the age of advanced globalization

⁵ TL;DR? Think "NBA Eligibility: One-and-Done."

⁵.

Takehiko goes on to conclude that Japanese universities have allowed outside interests to dictate educational policy decisions, which, in turn have washed away any semblance of an effective vision, threatening to condemn the concept of a four-year liberal-arts-based Japanese education to little more than a joke, internationally. What matters to Japanese universities is how accepted students parlay their university contacts into job offers, often times cajoling faculty into passing students through classes based solely on their prospective job offers.

I've always been a fan of the theory of a liberal arts education, as a subscriber to the renaissance-humanist notion that a university should be about forming human beings, preparing them for life after academia, and not just mere technicians, number crunchers, or reporters. Acknowledging that liberal arts education isn't for everyone, I've also been an ardent supporter of technical and trade schools as valid alternatives (one of the few areas that the Japanese education system is vastly superior).

As someone who would like to think that my diploma signifies a level of competency and achievement of academic rigor, it's certainly disappointing to see institutions of higher learning make decisions that water down the value of something I worked so hard to obtain. And yet

⁶ Apart from the important issues of equity and accessibility.

⁶, the issue of the "value of a degree" is ultimately a matter cynicism.

However, it's hard not to be greatly bothered when the system is built in such a way that it lets your students down.


His name invokes the image of a roaring river: strong and powerful, yet fluid and smooth. As the captain of the basketball team his senior year, those remain apt. His name meant "quick water" and he was just as quick in the class as he was on the court, always reading, always trying, always pushing forward, always among the first of his class.

But the title that he most closely associates with himself, now, is that of "浪人." Ronin: a class of masterless samurai, shamed either by the death or demotion of his feudal lord. The mark of a samurai who was unable to protect his master or his honor and now wanders Japan in inherited shame.

Literally meaning "wave man," the term came into usage during the Nara and Heian periods when it was applied to a feudal vassal who abandoned his master, invoking the image of one who has become socially adrift. It has come to be applied to both salarymen who have become separated from their corporations and high school graduates who have not been granted university enrollment.

For my student, and the thousands of students like him

⁷ The National Center for University Entrance Examinations notes that in 2011, 110,211 ronin students took the Uniform test again.

⁷, the body of his high school efforts were wiped away, casually brushed aside and accounted for as nothing.

Rather than being accounted for as a person with potential skills to be tapped and developed, his worthiness was reduced to his ability to regurgitate information in a two hour block. For someone who had spent three years helping to build a community at Ichikashi, who helped lead the high school basketball team deep into the National Tournament, I remember feeling angry that the system had all but washed its hands of the kid. The system had nothing more to offer him until he passes the exam. Until he passes the entrance exam, he is condemned to 予備校-purgatory. At least until his will gives out.

Then again, it's never as dramatic as it seems. After all, this non-meritorious, exam-based system, he theoretically stands on equal footing with students taking the test for the first time this year. He'll just be put out a year. Of course, assuming that he can afford to put everything off for a year.

Constitution Day

We talked about it a couple of times when we were out in Kansai, and then an off-handed comment by Junpei seconded my suspicion: in temples and shrines, which both serve a religious and historical purpose

¹ And are, presumably, both heavily invested in tourism for their fiscal survival.

¹, there seems to be a strong divide between those temples and shrines who have "figured it out" and those that haven't.

That isn't to say that there is a "right" or a "wrong" way to posture oneself (either as devout or touristy), but that there are many that haven't quite decided what they want to be and then, painfully, try to be everything.

As we wandered the sublime halls of Kennin-ji (建仁寺), Kyoto's first Zen Buddhist temple, located just south of Gion (祇園) in the Higashiyama district of Kyoto (東山区、京都), in breathy whispers laden with guilt and shame, Junpei said it most succinctly: "everything here is a replica."


Granted, the original temple (like most everything in Kyoto

² Which, singularly, is the reason it was not firebombed by the allies in WWII.

²) was founded in 1202 AD. As an active temple, Kennin-ji has been managed with great care, attempting to cultivate the grounds true to it's Zen roots while remembering to grow with an eye towards future, with new buildings added to the site in the 16th and 18th centuries.

There is never a sense in most of these temples that history remains a force of stagnation. In fact, at virtually every shrine and temple we visited

³ From Nagoya-jo to Kiyomizudera to Miyajima in Hiroshima.

³, there were large building projects dotting the landscape. Really, the Toyota museum of technology in Nagoya seemed to be the only place we went that wasn't under some form of renovation.

Rather, historical reverence and practical progress seem to go hand-in-hand in Kyoto, a place where one block you may be wandering through blinding Karaoke halls, a confusing maze of love hotels and UFO-arcades, and the next you're weaving your way through maiko-laced streets lined with sakura bunting, listening to the soft metallic clink of 5円 pieces clattering through slats into wooden offering boxes.

In 2002, for it's 800th anniversary

⁴ I'll let that sink in…

⁴, Kennin-ji celebrated by "plussing" their grounds with a breathtaking ceiling piece called "双竜図" ("Souruyuzu," or "Twin Dragons") by master painter Junsaku Koizumi (who was 77 years old at the time of completion). This piece, at a stunning 11.4 x 15.7m, was installed in the main hall, the last Rinzaishu temple in all of Japan to feature such art work.

Curiously, Masaaki Uematsu, the administrative president of the now 810 year-old temple, was quoted as saying "it looks as if the dragons have been here for more than hundreds of years."


Personally, I find this tension fascinating. Everybody agrees that the history of a place (especially a place that's older than every currently existing codified constitutional government on the face of the earth) should be preserved. But how best should it be preserved?

Exactly as it appears today? Old, like Nijo Castle (二条城) and it's outlandish Ninomaru Palace Collection of 954 original 17th and 18th century Kanou-style woodcarvings and panel paintings

⁵ If their brochure is to be believed.

⁵ that speak to a legacy of craftsmanship that continues to cast its long shadow over culture today. Or as it was intended to be seen--and used--when it was first built, like Kennin-ji, with its painstakingly manicured Circle-Triangle-Square zen garden that just oozes with a transcendence that monks must have felt after their own arduous journeys from mountain villas to the Capitol of Tranquility and Peace. A living culture that doesn't just take you back 800 years but invites you to step into timelessness

It's hard to know which model would best suit each

⁶ Except maybe in Nara where everything should probably just look old. And covered in deer poo.

⁶.

Merely that it probably shouldn't be like the Kyoto Imperial Palace, which is wracked with so much self-importance that they won't even let tourists indulge in any immersive experiences, keeping them at arm's length, allowing them to mill about the outskirts of the imperial grounds, despite the site being completely reconstituted in the late 19th century and repurposed a number of times since, once even as military headquarters during WWII.

In some instances "reproduction" is is a dark little whisper smilingly hinted about in the corners of museums amongst friends, akin to the speculative Hollywood titter of "natural" or "surgically enhanced." And this certainly was the buzzword of our tours through both the Imperial Palace and Kennin-ji, as we giddily snapped away with our cameras (a feat expressly--reverentially--forbidden in the more delicate settings of Ninomaru and Sanjusangendo [三十三間堂]

⁷ A shrine famous for its 1001 statues of the Kannon, each with their 1000 arms… though, technically, they only have 42 arms, but if you multiply that by the 25-planes-of-existence that the Kannon exists in you get a nice, even 1000.

⁷).

But it just didn't bother me at Kennin-ji.

In fact, I think I may put the fifteen minutes we spent contemplating the 潮音庭 near the top of my "would do again if I found myself back in Kyoto 9 months from now" list.

The Imperial Palace? Definitely not.

Midori no Hi

さしぶり Nick,

I'm closing in on my sixth load of laundry this weekend. Granted, in addition to washing all of the sheets you used, I decided to wash and store my duvet covers and comforters for the summer. Then again, four of those loads were certainly of the clothing variety.


Normally this wouldn't have been a remarkable story

¹ Well, normally that would be because I would really only do two loads of laundry instead of six.

¹, except that I received this ominous text early Saturday afternoon:

"We might be out of water soon. They found some poison or something."

Luckily, at that time, I was already well out of the house, having to teach an adult class in Kashiwanoha (柏の葉). Well, technically at that point I had headed out to Kashiwanoha for an early lunch and to do some shopping at LaLaPort. But that also allowed me some time to kick up some Google-dust about the issue, in between chapters of Mockingjay.

It turned out that two or three water processing plants in Chiba and Saitama and Gunma (the prefectures just north of us) discovered elevated levels of formaldehyde in the Tone River. According to one of the guys in my class, he postulated that the chemical chlorination process bonded with a pollutant from a factory up-river, producing elevated levels of formaldehyde down stream that are too high to be dealt with by mere activated-carbon treatments.

So, until the source of the contamination could be discovered (and stemmed) and levels be curbed, processing would be halted.

It wasn't more than an hour after that announcement was made than the McDonalds that I had eaten at had closed up for the day

² No お水: no おビッグマック.

² and the FamilyMart across the way had sold out of bottled water.

This left me in a lurch. I very well could have gone home to wait it out: maybe bought something microwavable at 7-11 to eat for dinner and just avoid using the toilet in my apartment… or just plan not to flush. Rather, I decided to stick around some of the malls, banking on the fact that if they were going to stay open it would be because they all have ready access to a secondary water supply.

Little known fact--well, little known to me--is that most of these new malls are built on sites called "Smart Cities." Smart Cities are built with a number of environmental issues in mind

³ Among which are Energy Optimization and Environmentally Friendly Urban Development.

³, but the most impressive of which is their eye on Emergency Sustenance.

One of Kashiwanoha's charter principles is its commitment to being a fully self-sufficient campus in the case of an emergency. The town produces its own energy, grows its own food and manages its own artesian well in the event that there is a catastrophe that severely limits any assistance from prefectural or federal governments.

Anyway, I ended up staying around Kashiwanoha and Ootakanomori for the remainder of the day, eating dinner, walking around the mall shopping for "CoolBiz" dress shirts, and even considering taking in a movie

⁴ Until I saw that they were really only showing things like "Family Tree" (The Descendants), "Terumae-Romae," and "Space Brothers," none of which were "The Avengers" or "Hunger Games."

⁴. I got home a little earlier than I would have hoped, only to hear an overly complicated set of instructions being blasted over the Municipal Public Address system:

[17:40] 北千葉浄水場では，午後 5時30分に江戸川からの取水を再開しました。柏市では午後11時前後には復旧できる見通しとなりました。なお，本日の応急給水については，水道が復旧するまで行います。

More or less, I assumed that this was talking about our water, either being reinstated or forestalled.

But, in no time (and after a little more googling), the water was back on and my dirty laundry was not the worse for wear.

It left me wondering how I would fare in the advent of an emergency, whether it was something as mildly inconvenient as "no water" for as many as two or three days, or something more drastic like "no Pepsi, all Coke," and whether I would make it to LaLaPort on foot. So I took the opportunity to check and replenish the emergency-preparedness bags and water bottles that Geoff and Mickie had installed around the house.


Oh, and sorry for not writing for the past few weeks

⁵ Nee, month.

⁵. I'll get around to those stories sooner than later. I promise. I have a "tickler" folder seven entries deep. I just haven't figured out how to work them into interesting-enough stories. Sorry. But it's time to get back to reading: Hunger Game of Thrones. A Katniss always pays her debts…

Shunbun no Hi

Hey, Nick,

While on a road trip last week, while experimenting with my Japanese vocabulary, I learned a new saying: "猫を被る"

¹ "Neko o kaburu," which literally translates into, "he wears a cat on his head," or more simply, "to put on the cat."

¹. This, apparently, is a disapproving statement implicating someone who is normally wild and outrageous of pretending to be polite and mild-mannered to impress or placate the expectations of someone who needs to be impressed.

And though Japan may seem to have quite a favorable relationship with the Felis catus

² With the 招き猫 (maneki-neko) and everything.

², this saying harkens back to a time when Japanese people were more suspicious of their fine feline friends, much like it's Western/European counterparts.

Early in Japanese folklore it was believed that cats were capable of transforming into monsters. And though my mother could attest to that possibility still being quite true with even modern house cats, there were a fair number of evil-doings in such stories attributed to the " 化け猫," or the "Goblin Cat," a youkai (妖怪) that was known to terrorize households with their supernatural abilities

³ Wikipedia conveniently lists common traits of the type of cat that qualifies for such a Pokemon-esque bake-evolution, and, likewise, we should all be a little more wary of Milo.

³. Among the bake-nekos more illustrious powers are walking on its hind legs, menacing and eating sleeping humans, zombification and shapeshifting, in addition to flying and talking. The bake-neko (and all cats who have the potential for promotion to bake-neko status) are revered/feared akin to the kitsune (狐) and tanuki (狸) (which are responsible for "moshi-moshi" and other more curious Japanese habits).

And so, according to folklore, cats were(/are) monsters capable of transforming into more terrible monsters capable of terrorizing families for generations through deception and burning things (+/- zombies). Thusly, someone who "puts on a cat" (or wears a cat-mask, I suppose) is someone who is putting on an air of placidness that hides a terrible potential for going wild. Sort of like a "wolf in sheep's clothing."

Similarly, other resources suggest a more situational "wearing of the cat" in "借りてきた猫," or "borrowing a cat," which suggests that the person is only behaving well mannered contrary to his nature in circumstances and situations that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable. So pretty much like everybody in Japan.

Other more interesting "cat" sayings are "猫の額" ("a cat's forehead," meaning "a tiny space"), "猫の子一匹いない" ("not even a kitten around," which sounds like "nothing was stirring, not even a mouse"), "猫の手も借りたい" ("to want to borrow a cat's paw," or to be so busy you'll even take a cat's assistance), and "猫も杓子も" ("cats and ladies," which is akin to "every Tom, Dick and Harry").


All that to say I went to Ibaraki (茨城県) last week as a farewell-trip of sorts for one of the teachers who has always taken special interest in making sure the TSCA ALTs are feeling at home. It turns out that at least every 10 years a teacher has to change schools (3 for administrators). This is her 10th year so she'll be moving to a different school at the start of the new academic year next week so a few of us went out to have some fun: one last fling of sorts.

We went to Ooarai (大洗), ate at this really famous kaitenzushi place and followed that up with a trip to their also famous aquarium (the irony is apparently lost on the Japanese people).