Bump

My father always loved speed bumps. Whenever we were driving, and we got to a bump in the road, he would speed up a little so we'd fly off the bump a bit, using it like a mini ramp. There was one particular bump in the road he liked, on a little road on the way back from church, that was a bit bigger than the others, and isolated, meaning we'd usually take it alone.

He'd fly a little higher off of that one. I used to love watching him enjoy such a seemingly trivial thing, and I used to love how he took a tiny thing like a speed bump and made it fun.

It felt like this. We felt awesome. My mom hated it, though.

That bump in the road would have metaphorical significance for the rest of my life.

I've written before about how finding your footing as an ALT is a gradual, difficult process. But there's a caveat to that, and to teaching, and to jobs in general, really. Even if you have your footing, there will still be pitfalls. Roads are still bumpy even when you know how to drive. Sure, you can manage the bumps now, but they still exist.

One of these ever-present bumps is teaching a lesson for the first time.

No matter how prepared you are, mentally, or how sound your lesson is, conceptually, it will always be awkward teaching it to that first class.

Winter vacation just ended, so I have students writing about their winter vacations. Last year I gave them a composition assignment that I created from scratch. I gave them a sample essay, pointed out simple things like where/why/when/how long, and let them go. I realized it wasn't structured enough for their level of English, and their essays were full of grammatical mistakes.

This wouldn't be nearly enough for my students. Not enough structure, not enough explanation. ESL requires a different mindset, as does teaching in Japan.

This year, I'm in full ALT mode. I know they need more help and structure. So I had them do an activity where they practice the structural building blocks of their essay before they write it.

Task 1: practice wh- words, where/what etc.

Task 2: practice auxiliary verbs, was/wasn't/did etc.

Task 3: practice superlative form, happiest/most boring/best etc.

Task 4: take a list of adjectives like lovely/horrible and categorize them as positive or negative.

Converse with a partner using what you just practiced. "What was your happiest moment?" "Where did you go?" "How did you get there?" Etc.

THEN write your essay. A short essay, only 120 words. Then we get together and share it as a class.

They get to practice grammar. They get to practice speaking. They get a nice list of adjectives to use. They get to talk with their friends. They get to write about their personal experiences.

Perfectly balanced, like all things should be.

Like Thanos, my reasoning was flawed. I ran out of time to do everything, and the students only got to do the boring parts. There wasn't enough time to talk about their vacations - they only had time to do the drills, the practice, the dry stuff I had only had them do to help them do the fun stuff at the end.

They still got something out of the lesson, but it wasn't fun like I intended.

Ok, so, take two will be better. Right?

This time I nixed task 2 and did task 3 and 4 together as a class. This gave them more time to talk with each other and write their essays.

But this class has its own atmosphere. They don't want as much freedom in their essays. They need an even more rigid structure. So I had to create a guideline for them on the fly.

A strict set of rules. I went to ~. My best moment was ~. The most delicious thing I ate was ~. ソーユーこと, that sort of thing.

It took a few classes and a few tries, but I smoothed out the edges after a while.

Now I can do the lesson with relative ease. I have different adaptations of it with different levels of freedom or structure for different classroom atmospheres. It has a place in my head, a method of execution I've practiced and understand and can take out at a moment's notice, even when I suddenly get scheduled for three surprise classes in the morning like I did today.

That on-the-fly restructuring, that need to read the air and make a split-second judgement, the students' ever-changing level of interest and motivation - it keeps you on your toes.

It's kind of exciting, though. You hear about soldiers getting a sort of combat high in battle. I think teachers get a combat high, too, dancing to the notes of the classroom like that. It's got a particular thrill to it despite being stressful.

THEY AREN'T PAYING ATTENTION! FALL BACK

Kind of like that speed bump my father used to joyfully launch off of. It wasn't in the road's design, and it should have been a nuisance, but he found beauty and excitement in that would-be nuisance.

A bump in the road is a part of life, always. Might as well make it fun.

Soup

"Hey, are they still selling bread?" I ask my JTE.

"I think so. Hurry. Run!" She answers.

I hurry. I run. I get to the bread desk (I don't know what it's really called, but they sell bread at a desk). I see fried rice onigiri. Sweets. Melon bread. Chocolate bread. Nothing lunch-worthy. No sandwiches.

I buy a coffee and go back to the teacher's room, defeated.

Some time passes, and the teacher comes up to me.

"Did you get your bread?" She asks.

"All they had was sweet stuff," I answered.

"Oh, the sandwiches sell out fast. Would you like some soup?"

"Would I like... what?" I ask, confused.

"I have a lot of instant soup packets. Look, I have pumpkin, corn, clam chowder... would you like one?"

"Uh, sure," I answer. "Pumpkin sounds good."

She gives me the soup packet. I make my pumpkin soup over in the break room. Despite being instant soup, it's really good, probably better than any conbini-tier sandwich would have been.

"Thank you so much," I say.

"Anytime," she says with a laugh and a smile.

This isn't the first time I've been shown such kindness. This particular JTE is always helping me out. She's given me fruit before when I said I hadn't eaten all day. She gave me a translation of grocery items when I said I had trouble finding certain things. She helps me practice my Japanese. She tells me about interesting things to do and places to go when I tell her I have no plans for the weekend. She talks to me every morning and every afternoon, on the way to and back to the bus stop.

All voluntarily, and all with a laugh and a smile. All without me asking for a thing.

It's really nice to work with kind people. They can make or break a day or a job.

Update: Mere hours after making this post, another JTE came to me, bearing a gift.

"It's pumpkin soup," she said. "You can make it in the break room if you'd like."

I love my co-workers. Double soup in a single day. Jackpot.

Atmosphere

空気を読む.

"Read the atmosphere."

This is the first thing that shows up on Google image search when you put in that phrase. I don't know what the frog has to do with anything.

This is something you're generally expected to do in Japanese society.

This is something I was bad at doing even in American society.

Japan is all about subtext. Nuance. Implied meaning. Hidden meaning. Sometimes opposite meaning. You say "sorry" to say "thank you" sometimes.

This nuance is everywhere. This was absolutely terrifying for me during my first year here. I am God awful at recognizing context clues even when they're really obvious. I have to have people point things out to me all the time that most people can figure out on their own. Back when I was a kid, a girl once called me on the phone, on the house phone, going through my parents, that I had never really interacted with too much, and nervously said hello and asked me if I knew any good jokes. I was like "nope, sorry," and hung up the phone, thinking, "that was weird."

Things did not improve from that point forward.

A hard-headed guy like me living in a world of hidden meanings was a nightmare in the beginning. "Would you like to" means "you should." "Aren't you hot?" means you missed the memo that it's cool biz (summer clothes) now. "Some people do this" means "you should do this." I had to have this all pointed out to me, and by other foreigners, because Japanese people were too polite to tell me I was doing anything wrong.

And it goes far beyond words. Sometimes people will just inhale through their teeth, like a hot air balloon inflating. That means no. Actually, it specifically means they want to say no but they don't want to be impolite about it so they just do that noise until you get the picture. You can stay outside a restaurant that's full or ask a teacher a question in front of the entire class and get that response. And, in my case, stand there like an idiot repeating the question over and over as the air in the room gets increasingly awkward and they just keep making the noise, only louder.

I once sat in on a world history class at one of my schools, on a lesson on cultural differences. "Americans say what they feel," the teacher said, "but we Japanese like to read people's faces."

"Americans don't really do that, do they?" She asked me.

"Oh yeah, we do," I answered instinctively. "Well, I guess not compared to Japanese people," I added.

By comparison, we Americans must seem like we don't read anything. The subtext puddle in this country is deep, my friends, like an ocean.

Looking back at the loud and boisterous and culturally insensitive things I did in my first year, it's hard not to feel stupid.

But at the same time, I know it wasn't entirely my fault, and that I was acclimating to a new environment. Sometimes you need to go easy on yourself and accept that there's no way you could have known at the time, even if it is embarrassing in hindsight. And the truth is, most Japanese people that I've met are very understanding and forgiving, because they recognize that we're a fish out of water.

Actual photo of new ALT at their desk.

Japan has taught me a lot of things, and I think recognizing context clues is one of them. Life is a lot less awkward once you quiet down and try to read the atmosphere before talking, not just in Japan, but everywhere.

I think I'm a bit better at nuance after finally getting used to how important it is here. Maybe when I go back to the U.S. I'll be at the level of a normal person, now. Maybe.

Sandwich

This post is less about Japan, and more about the journey. But so much of that journey has been wholly realized here that I still feel it to be appropriate to post.

I vividly remember the moment I left my high school self, the last remnants of my boyhood, behind.

It was my first year of college. I commuted that year. Every morning, I'd barrel down the stairs and eat an egg sandwich that my mother would make for me. A simple sandwich, just two pieces of wheat toast, a fried egg, and some mustard. I twirled at the end of the staircase and met my mother's eyes, and I felt her realize that I wasn't her boy anymore. I was a man now, a young man taking his first steps outside of home, getting ready for the real world.

And life did change from that day forward. College was very different from high school. I became a new person, the world and people I knew were different, and what I was capable of and expected to do was different.

It's hard to nail down why I felt such a metaphysical thing so strongly, and in such a bizarre, benign moment in my life. But I did. I definitely did, and it wouldn't be the first time, either. Getting that egg sandwich was the first in a series of definitively ordinary moments that would mark huge changes in life.

Another moment I can remember, where I felt the doors of a chapter in my life close behind me, was when literal doors closed behind me. We had a "booze cruise" at the end of my senior year in college. We got on a cruise ship with an open bar and went cruising around New York harbor. It was pretty fun, from what I can remember. We got on the bus to go home, and when I left the bus, and those doors closed behind me, I felt my college self die.

That chapter had ended. No more erratically scheduled classes, giving me free time in the middle of the day or allowing me to get them all over with in the morning if I wanted to. No more classes, period. No more restaurant or bar hopping with my college friends, that's for sure.

I never saw some of those friends again after that.

Like the sandwich before them, the doors on the bus became a landmark for what was old and what was new.

Almost immediately after getting my B.A. in English, I ended up working food service at the local supermarket, cleaning greasy chicken skin off of the bottom of a rotisserie machine, emptying chicken grease out back, and making sandwiches. I had gone from Dickens to chickens. In the blink of an eye, life was again different, and I was once again expected to do different things.

I certainly wasn't expecting to do those things.

I will now hate rotisserie chicken on mere principle for the rest of my life.

Life would be full of moments like this, going forward. A party at grad school, talking with people in my field and eating crackers and cheese. Another tiny little sandwich marked another shift in my life. Shortly after this, I found myself at academic conferences. Student teaching. Writing a thesis, or a "special project" as they called it in the Education field. Doing bigger and heavier things than I had before. Things that bigger and more well adjusted people were supposed to do, not me.

I guess I have a very strange metaphysical connection to sandwiches. But I digress.

I felt it again when I got the acceptance letter to JET. At this point, I thought I was ready for these moments of change. I knew it would be a big experience. I knew it would be life-altering.

I wasn't ready. I don't think anyone ever is. And we're lucky if the moments that mark these shifts in our status quos are as well telegraphed as an acceptance letter. Most of the time they're stupid little things like doors or sandwiches.

I felt it again signing my contract to go home in the summer. I don't know what's ahead of me, and this time I know to let go of any pretense that I'll be ready for it, but I know that the moment has passed. I felt it looking at a sign that said "lifelong learning office," hanging above the cubicles at the board of education.

That time it was startlingly well telegraphed. I'll be lucky if I ever get another moment as blatant as that.

Things are shifting again. As they will until the end. Lifelong learning, eh? I suppose.

Ever since I went to grab that sandwich, the world has felt alien. Every landmark moment since that sandwich has felt progressively more alien. I assume it will be like this for the rest of life.

The adult world is a weird place. There is some comfort in knowing that it will stay weird, and change in how exactly it is weird. It's even kind of exciting, knowing that another level of weird waits around the corner all the time.

I personally believe in an afterlife, in a heaven, and part of the reason I do is because there has to be a place that feels like home, away from all this weirdness and awkwardness and constant transition.

But that's another story. Recognizing the weirdness is the point, here. Life is weird. Weird enough that a sandwich can become a deeply metaphorical experience. And the sooner you embrace that, the better. You don't need to move halfway across the world to realize that.

It does help, though.

Self

Japan is all about conformity. Fitting in. Doing what you're supposed to.

Being on JET is all about being an ambassador. You represent your country. What you do reflects on your country, as well, and you are always being watched, like a hawk.

Or should I say an eagle?

For someone like me, this has been very hard to become accustomed to. I have always been a weird guy, even in my own country, and even among my own immediate family. I have found myself constantly telling my students and JTEs that I am not a "normal American." I don't watch football, I don't even play sports. I don't like the latest pop trends. I don't really follow politics all that closely outside of what's common knowledge. I don't eat hamburgers and pizza, really. I know that we're supposed to do that all the time, but I don't really do that at all, or very rarely.

Japan loves fitting in. But I've noticed something peculiar. Humans are the same everywhere, so you have your misfits and loners here, too. They're just pressured to join the group more closely. So they clam up, play their role, and open up to you very fiercely if you let them. Like they were waiting for their moment to be set free.

I have a student who loves cryptozoology. I have a student who's way into niche anime and manga. I have a student who won't talk to anyone, but if you share his interest in One Piece (a manga) he won't stop talking, so glad to be set free. Once I let them know I was willing to listen to them about their interests, they weren't only willing to talk about them, but eager to. They barrel into paragraphs about them whenever I see them now.

Extremely popular in Japan, my students always love hearing that I follow this series.

You hear about it all the time. Japan is all about the atmosphere, the group mentality, the 和, the need to belong. But people are the same everywhere, and individuality blooms in other ways in this sort of culture. Restrained, restricted, so restricted that when set free, it's enormously powerful.

I think this is why Japanese media is so popular. Everything is dramatic, over-acted, played up to extreme proportions. The inner self, the creative spirit being set loose from strong restraints.

As an ambassador of western culture, I can't represent America very well, but I can do my best to show them the value of being an individual, which is something we value very strongly.

I like to write. I'm quiet. I like Japanese culture and food. I'm a health freak. I'm a dozen other things Japanese people would never expect of an American.

I like to show them I can be a different sort of American. Still raised there, with their values and mannerisms, but with my own unique identity and interests. Since I'm basically a model on display for them to judge Americans by, I think this is immensely helpful in showing them that there are ways to be different without completely disrupting the framework you exist within.

I'm definitely American. I like to do my own thing. I like to talk about myself and my own opinions a lot, and I love food. But I'm also distinctly different from a stereotypical American in many, many ways.

Individuality isn't valued here. But everyone has it, because they're human. I think one of the best parts of being an ALT is showing and proving that that individuality is something special, something worth clinging to, and something that you don't have to give up the group identity to embrace.

Direction

If one thing has been constant while on this program, it has been that nothing has been constant.

At work, at home, on vacation, even in your local circles of friends and in the community. You never know what to expect. And if you expect anything, be prepared to have it be totally off base.

Sudden cancellations of a lesson. Sudden surprise lessons. Lessons that went well in the morning but badly in the afternoon. Suddenly being asked to teach a class by yourself because a teacher is absent. Suddenly being asked to run a club with someone else, just kidding, that person is never there and you're by yourself.

Suddenly having your heater break in the dead of winter. The gym being closed for reasons you can't read. A doctor's appointment that makes you run late enough to miss the supermarkets that close super early, leaving you with no food for the evening. The NHK man stalking you always, like a ninja who comes when you least expect it.

Flights that get delayed. Guided tours that guide you away from all the places you want to be. Flights that say they're going to turn back because of too much snow and then don't. Suddenly finding a heavy metal band you like at the Snow Festival in Sapporo, of all places.

Suddenly being pulled into a side room of a random building only to find they're recruiting people for a musical (I gave them fake contact info and never saw them again). Religious missionaries from across the street constantly bringing you cookies and sweets and asking you to convert. And then there's the ALT communities on JET, which can be a lot like high school. People form cliques and there's drama sometimes. This isn't all bad, but it's a very bizarre return experience to that. I can assume that you can assume that that's pretty unpredictable, as well.

"Be ready for anything" should be a mantra of the program.

Even now, these past four months have probably been the most unpredictable of all. I had plans for the future that fell through. I don't know where I'm going when my contract is up. I don't know what I'm going to do with the six months I have left, and if I've learned anything, it would be to accept that and to stop expecting anything.

I think this is good life experience in general. We play out events in our head, we think we understand the world or other people. But then it can be turned on its head in an instant. A situation you thought would go one way ends up going in a totally different direction. A vacation you wanted to take ends up not happening, and you go somewhere else instead. A person you thought you knew reveals themselves to be someone with a side to them that you could have never seen from the surface.

I preach a lot in my life about a grand plan, fate, God's will, and what have you. I preach a lot about everything happening for a reason. The only reason I can do this with such certainty and such drive is because NOTHING that has happened to me over this past year and a half has made any sense to me, and all of it, both good and bad, has come from nowhere, from the side or from the back, ambushing me, surprising me, and sometimes leaving me flat on my face.

On this program, you often hear people ask each other why they applied for it. People have different reasons. They love Japanese culture, they want to travel, they want to take a break from their regular lives for a while, or they want to go on a journey of self discovery. It's often a mix of things. Mine was mostly that last one, a journey about finding myself.

I was trying to make one post without showing the nerd inside of me, but I guess I can't resist. I think back to Lord of the Rings, where Frodo and his friends left their comfortable Shire to see the real world outside, to go to very uncomfortable, and often frightening places, in order to see a good deed done in the end. Coincidentally, that entire film trilogy is now on Japanese Netflix, while only the first movie in on the American Netflix. I could only finish the journey by leaving home and going to Japan!

I still question a lot of the things happening to me, even right now as I type this post. But I have faith that my own sense of direction is worthless, and that the universe knows better and is putting me in the right place. A place I couldn't get to by myself.

You don't need to go to Japan to get to that place, but you do need to step outside of your comfort zone and embrace the unknown.

Solitude

Living in Japan is the first time I have lived by myself.

I don't follow Superman, but I do know he has a fortress of solitude made of ice where he goes to be alone. In northern Japan, I found myself in my own Fortress of Solitude.

Wait, you ask. Didn't you say you're 30 years old?

Yes I am, shut up. Before this, I have lived either with my parents even if I had a job, a roommate, or someone else.

This is the first time I have been truly by myself.

That doesn't just mean cleaning, bills, shopping, and all of that, all of which are a major adjustment I'll get to later.

It means you're far away from everyone and everything you know. Way more so than moving to, say, New York or Chicago. Or to Vancouver if you're Canadian and need a Canadian reference. Or Hotland Deserttown or whatever they have in Australia, I don't know the towns there, I literally know someone from Townsville and I'm just going to assume all places that aren't Sydney are all named like that.

This is a real map of Australia.

THE POINT BEING, it's much farther away than going to a new city, or going across the border, even.

Not only are you removed from your family, you're also removed from familiarity. The food you can buy is different, the utilities you're used to (like gyms) are different, and, obviously, biggest of all, the people speak a different language.

This makes you feel extremely isolated. Especially at first. In fact, it took almost a full year for the feeling to diminish for me, and that's only because I actively put myself out there and started looking for ways to get involved with the community.

That isolation is something most people aren't prepared for. It also makes simple things, routine things like commuting to work or grocery shopping, harder to deal with. I'm a health nut, so I went a little stir crazy trying to find nonfat yogurt, healthy fruits and vegetables and the like when I first got here. I ate a lot of chicken at home. I bought chicken here once, and it had skin on it.

That was actually a landmark moment for me. I thought I could look at something and say, oh, this is chicken, I know what this is, at least, but it wasn't the chicken I knew. It was different. And weird.

From that point forward I realized all the little things made me uncomfortable, reminding me I was on a different planet. Oh, I mean, a different country. It certainly felt like a different planet, though.

Everything came with white rice. Go to a restaurant and order a hamburger and THE HAMBURGER CAN COME WITH WHITE RICE. Oh, and it has no bun. No, the rice isn't a substitute, it's kind of just a little steak.

Rice. Rice everywhere. Always lurking behind every meal. In your other food! There is no escaping the grain!

The gym I found - which I was extremely lucky to find - is extremely expensive, chock full of really, really old people, and extremely cramped and crowded. I was used to working out in my own home. The claustrophobia in that place nearly suffocated me at first.

Four months into my time at the gym, in the dead of a snowstorm, an attendant stopped me on my way out to lecture me about the need for indoor shoes. "Here at this club, we have certain rules, certain ways of doing things, and you need these shoes for this reason and those shoes for that reason, and-" and it continued, in my gym clothes, in that whirling snowstorm, as I was covered in sweat and freezing and trying to apologize in my broken Japanese.

The need to bring indoor shoes was frustrating and extraneous to me at the time, and made me even more uncomfortable going there.

I won't lie. A big part of the reason I wanted to go home so badly back then was to get out of this bizarre place and go back to the things and rules and comforts I knew and grew up with.

But you know, you get used to it after a while. It's a bit like being born again. All it takes is time and experience. After a while, you learn which chicken doesn't have skin on it, what yogurt is nonfat. You find new things that you enjoy if you're willing to be a little adventurous (which I hope anyone who applies for JET is). I found out I like kimchi and natto. Now I eat them all the time. Who woulda thought?

The other people at the gym don't bother me anymore. They're just background noise. Bringing shoes is a hassle, but I understand the reasoning. They just want to keep it clean inside.

Doing all of the chores alone sucks. Doing chores period sucks, and it always will, no matter how old you get or how many people you live with. But being the sole being responsible for everything at all times wears on you if you're not used to it, and I assume it would even more so for someone not used to working full time as well, like many JETs are. It seems like every time you finish something, you have to do it again. Vacuum, dishes, laundry, garbage, vacuum, garbage, laundry, dishes, dishes, laundry, vacuum. Forever. FOR ETERNITY

I also fractured my arm when I first got here and had 300% more difficulty doing all of those things than most people for a while. But that's just me.

But you get used to chores too. Routine helps make any unpleasant task easier. I do most of those things without thinking too much about it, now, just because I'm used to it. This sounds like something you'd tell a 12 year old, not a 20-something or 30-something, but trust me, between culture shock, work, and everything else you're dealing with when you first get here, the chores bite at you like an incessant mosquito.

Experience and routine are your bug spray. Or they were mine, at least.

Right. Isolation. Solitude. The point of this post.

Dealing with all of these things makes you feel very alone at first. So alone that it's frightening. But it does go away, after a while. At least to a significant enough degree that it's no longer debilitating or scary like it was at first.

You never stop missing your home. That's true of everyone, everywhere, at any time. That lingering homesickness never goes away.

I feel very blessed to live in a world with Skype and social media, where home feels distant, but still connected. Staying in touch with friends and family has been essential to helping me survive here.

I just came home from winter break. Two weeks back with all the things I missed and knew and wanted. I'm still alone here, in my tiny little apartment. But it's not so bad. I didn't just get used to it. It kind of became a second home to me.

Culture shock can be defeated. Solitude can be defeated. But I'll always be an American, even if the USA blows up tomorrow and ceases to exist. In fact, I never felt American until I moved here. Now I feel disturbingly American, even compared to Canadians, who are quiet(er) and friendly and gentle by comparison.

Solitude, culture shock, and overcoming them can help you realize who you are, who matters to you, what matters to you.

It's an eye opening experience.