I hear some horror stories about that, about ALTs with zero Japanese placed in elementary schools where communication between everyone is super chaotic and stressful. I hear good things, too, of course - and the truth is that most of my friends here in this city work at elementary at least part time and love it. Or at least... find things to love about it.
ESID is the mantra of this program. Every situation is different. You hear it so much that you get sick of it. But you hear it so much because of how true it is.
One aspect of ESID that I find incredibly intriguing is the reason the JTEs I work with became interested in English.
I have one JTE who's super into American movies. You'd be surprised how common of a reason this is. It's the exact same reason a lot of ALTs came over here to learn Japanese, because they watched/still watch anime or read/read manga or were into/are into Japanese bands or the like. Like a reverse weaboo. A westaboo.
Anyway, he is almost always telling me about movies he likes, or comparing a situation to an old movie, or telling me about his favorite actors or actresses. He's a super-fan of 80's/90's high school and college dramas. Breakfast Club style movies.
"It's like a high school drama, you know," he says to me often when trying to find a metaphor for the situation.
Not that surprising that it's an accurate metaphor, considering we work in a high school. But he'll always point out the differences between Japanese normal high school life and American movie high school life.
"If this were a movie, the student would - SUDDENLY - stand up in class and give a moving speech, and then everyone would clap for him!"
"If this were a movie, they would steal the principal's car or something!"
"If this were a movie, they would make a naughty announcement over the PA system!"
Sometimes he replaces "a movie" with "America."
Then there's another teacher who's about my age. Very "cool" guy who rides motorcycles and has two screens set up at his desk at work and LOVES American English and slang. He says "fucking" a lot, which the aforementioned JTE and I have taken note of and started to use as well, half to make fun of him and half because the fucking technology is always giving us problems.
He takes well to the ribbing, so it's not like we're mocking him in secret or anything. It's all in good fun. It's especially funny when the other teachers ask us what that means, although most actually already know.
The students definitely already know.
Anyway, motorcycle guy is also a hardcore conspiracy theorist. Not like, Bush did 9-11 levels of conspiracy, but about more obscure things, like people from Bill Clinton's administration who supposedly did something shady years and years ago and there's no way to prove it but he knows they did.
He is so into it that he prints out articles or even Youtube comments and shows them to me.
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| Not only conspiracy theories, but controversy in politics. He's way into the drama. |
"You should read that," he says.
"I've been telling people this for years and now I have proof!" he says.
He apparently lived in America for half a year, cycling across the western United States. Very interesting guy.
It's funny to see the affection for America here manifest in ways similar to the Japan-obsessed people from back home.
Humans are really the same everywhere.
As an aside, today, motorcycle guy showed me a hologram image of a beautiful woman welcoming people to an airport in China. I don't know if it was real or fake or what, but he asked me what Guangzhong meant, and I told him.
"Oh, man," he said. "That's too bad. So far away."
Don't worry, I'm sure Japan isn't too far behind on the hologram ladies.
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