運命

It's early in the morning. I'm about to leave home for Japan again, this time maybe for the last time.

I really enjoyed my time here, and leaving again is hard, as it has been the last three times I have done it. I had a great time with my friends and family.

But it's time to go back.

I've realized that life is a whirlwind, always taking you somewhere new and unknown. We get lost in routine and expectations, but each day is different and new. Now I am in a familiar room in the United States of America, this evening - or tomorrow, due to time travel - I shall be in my temporary home in Japan.

All homes are temporary, really. I lived in Virginia once. New Jersey, too. I think of Connecticut as home, now, but is it really? It can't be. I'm leaving again, as I so often do. I wonder when I'll leave for the last time.

I have things to do in Japan. I know I do. I'm drawn to that place, even if this might be the last stretch of my time there.

At my art school, every teacher is asked to give a kanji describing their past year. Or the new year. I forget which. Either way, the kanji I wanted to choose was 運命, or fate. Everything happens for a reason, both good and bad, both wonderful and horrible, moments you want to last forever and moments of burning fire that make you feel as if you're in a nightmare. They're all for a reason. They all lead to a good place. They make us whole, the yin and yang.

But it had to be a single kanji, so I chose 命. 命 can mean fate or destiny, too, according to the dictionary anyway, but it really means life. Life, always changing, changing shape and disappearing as fast as clouds do. But at the same time rigidly set in place towards a wonderful grand cosmic scheme, every fading cloud or blustering whirlwind a piece of a great puzzle we can't fully comprehend. Order coming out of chaos, chaos having no true power in the end.

Life, fate. They're kind of one and the same, anyway.

I have things I need to do. Some of which I know, others of which I don't. Not yet.

I eagerly await my last six months in Japan.

I do not eagerly await the 20+ hour flight.

2018

2018 was a year of constant stress and turmoil. But it was also a year of great change and learning. Towards the first half of the year, I felt as if I were being ripped apart, spiritually, mentally, and even physically. I was dealing with a broken arm in a city of ice, slipping and sliding and fearing another fracture. I was trying to come to terms with being so far from my family after being so happy with them during the holidays. I was dealing with all sorts of other things I'd rather not mention here. It was the darkest, lowest place I have ever been in my life, or at least up there. But my father once told me a story, about a cathedral he visited in Dresden, Germany, which had been bombed on Valentine's Day in 1945. The outside was gorgeous and beautiful and lovely, and the inside was designed to look scarred, charred and broken. The interior represents the scars of that bombing, that entirely unfair and unnecessary bombing, while the exterior represents what those scars eventually blossomed into. And that's life, he said, that's the human experience, a beautiful construct made possible only through the things in life that hurt you and scar you. Even the things that should have never happened.

I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea.
Eventually, I had had enough. No more holding back. I decided I wasn't going to let life beat me down, and that I was going to give it 200% from that point forward. And I went home a second time for the summer, deciding that when I returned to Japan I would be a different man. No more holing myself up in my room, no more brooding, no more waiting to go home and get things over with. It was time to embrace where I was, then and there, adapt to it, and make the most of it.

Around this time, a song popped up on my playlist, titled Phoenix. A powermetal song about leaving the old self behind, being reborn. "From the ashes you will rise," the lyrics say. "Trial of fire, born again," they say. "Another life begins, sanctified," they say. From then, I started to see themes of rebirth everywhere. In music, in my interactions with others, in television and in games. Maybe it was because I was looking for it, maybe it was divine providence, who knows. Another theme I began to notice was the nature of this rebirth. I was sitting there in late October, just after my 30th birthday, playing Red Dead Redemption 2 of all things. One of the major themes of this game is the moral descent of one of the major characters. As the game progresses, people comment on how he's changed, how he isn't who he used to be.

But then people slowly come to notice that the signs have always been there, and that he's just finally showing himself for who he always was. Circumstance, especially unpleasant circumstance, only helped to reveal his true character. The same is true for the characters who do the reverse, and develop positively over the course of the game.

The game is about a group of old west outlaws, living at the turn of the century, finding themselves in a world that no longer accepts them.

That's life, too, I think. Change, in a sense, but more so becoming who we always were at our cores. Circumstance and experience only help us get there.

2018 helped set me on a path towards becoming whoever that person is. And because of the path I was set on, the turmoil and misery and stress slowly melted away, revealing a new world of wonderful experiences and people and places to see. I really, really cherish the people and communities I found as a result of deciding to set out on this new path in life. Especially the people. I've heard that the strongest relationships in life come not from friends or significant others or family members who strike off bullet points, like similar interests, similar mannerisms, similar senses of humor, traits we find admirable or pleasant, the things we thought we wanted from people.

They come from people who react to the world around us in similar ways, people who deal with life's problems and questions and wonders and come up with similar answers.

Maybe there's some truth to that. I've met some really great friends in Japan, and very few of them are all that similar to me in terms of what music or media we like or what have you. Something about acclimating to an entirely new world together creates bonds with people stronger than ones created based on smaller things like taste in music, or hobbies. I've even found their interests rubbing off on me, rounding me off as a person. I hope I'm doing the same for them. There's some overlap, obviously, but you get the picture. Spending 2018 in Japan threw me way out of my element. But like the lyrics of that song said, "Trial of fire, born again, "Another life begins, sanctified." The new life I found was much better than the old one. I think living in a foreign land is a bit of a trial by fire for everyone. Even if my experience was especially unique in how many things went wrong, consecutively, being thrust away from home - so far away from home - will be hard for most people. It's tough, but so is life in general, really. Might as well jump in the fire and get it over with, right? That sanctified life at the end is so nice. Ok, I guess it doesn't have to sound that extreme. Moving away from home is fun, enlightening, and rewarding despite being difficult. That's the point I'm trying to make. I hope 2019 is a little softer, though. Knock on wood.

Class

This is a typical activity I'll do as an ALT.

I tend to do it for different seasons or holidays, every once in a while. It's very easy to modify it to be easier or harder for classes with different levels of English ability.

Brain

I'm going to touch on a sensitive topic, and one that is very important to me, personally, which is that of mental health, and particularly on mental health in schools, and even more particularly on how mental health is seen in Japanese schools, based on my anecdotal experience.

In my experience, mental health awareness in Japan is near non-existent, especially for the more subtle disorders, and especially for those with no apparent physical component.

People are aware of it, vaguely, on some sort of conceptual level. There are movements and attempts at progress being made. But they are few and far between.

I have one student who I am 95% sure has autism or some mild form of autism. It is completely normal for other students to laugh at him for being "weird." Even the teachers - who are nice people otherwise - make statements such as "oh, he's just a little different," or "he's a strange one." Some of the nicer teachers call on him often to give him a chance to participate more, but as for any sort of special needs program or any real recognition of whatever it is he has, forget it.

I get so angry when the students laugh at him. I didn't know how to handle it at first.

"Don't do that," I'd say in Japanese, and they didn't listen.

Now I just hold up my hand and say "stop" or "hey" in English and they get the picture. It took some level of comfort with my students to get there, though.

I have another student who is terminally shy and breaks down when asked to answer a question in class. We do this game, criss-cross, as a warm-up. Students raise their hand if they know the answer to a question, and choose column, row, or "just me" to sit down if they get it right. It's a very simple game. By the end, there's usually two or three students standing, and they all have to answer a question.

One time, the terminally shy kid was one of the last ones standing. I gave him a super easy question to make things easier for him.

"What color is my shirt?" I asked.

Dead silence.

"Ok," I said. "What is the weather?"

Dead silence.

"What is your name?"

Dead silence.

All periods of silence lasted for two or three minutes. It was deadly deafening. The other students looked as confused as me, and my JTE refused to intervene. Every time I said "ok, it's ok, you can sit down," the JTE said "no, they can do it."

Eventually the JTE had to walk over to the back of the classroom and have the student whisper the answer in their ear. He was beet red by the time the ordeal was over.

I was mortified at how they could basically torture the poor kid like that. I really wanted to just let him sit down.

After class, I asked my JTE if he had any issues.

"No," they said. "I don't think so."

Yeah, well, I think so.

I knew and was very close with a special needs student in America. He had all sorts of issues, from OCD to anxiety to depression. He also had very poor spatial recognition and an organizational disability where he had trouble organizing not only material things, but thoughts in his head.

He was absent a lot in high school because of it.

His parents were caring enough people that they found him a great support network. A therapist/psychologist combo, with the therapist in particular working very closely with the schools to make sure he had things like extra time on assignments, testing spaces where he could take the test by himself instead of in class, doing independent studies instead of elective classes, help organizing his folders.

He wouldn't have graduated high school if it weren't for the intervention of his parents and this group of specialists.

By college he was living a much more normal life and functioning on his own.

I get the feeling that in Japan, he'd have been labeled as "disinterested" or "lazy" or something similar, and left to his own devices, and probably have failed out of school.

I've had skirmishes with this sort of mentality. Weakness is often seen as one's own fault, regardless of circumstance. Caught a cold? You should have worked to prevent it better. Anxious? Shape up and stop disrupting the atmosphere of the room. Forgot an assignment or somewhere you had to be? Irresponsible and careless.

For a mentally healthy person, these might be appropriate responses.

But for someone suffering from difficulties, they are insensitive, and likely only worsen the problem.

Weakness is not tolerated very well here, regardless of the reason, and this is partially due to the group mentality that everyone is supposed to adhere to. Some people are wired differently, and this clashes with that mentality, causing a lot of friction when it comes to recognizing mental illness or even different ways of thinking, like Asperger's Syndrome.

I feel like this is one of the areas where a foreigner - an ALT, in this case - can be a great help to the Japanese classroom.

In western cultures, we have a much greater awareness of mental health and how it should be handled. We can bring this to the classroom in small ways.

Paying extra attention to students we know probably have some sort of difficulty, giving them a little extra guidance when answering questions in class. Being more gentle with certain students. Comforting students who are crying after being forced to apologize for handing in their homework late, when you later find out they're having problems at home. Simply taking the time to talk to these students outside of class.

Even just being here and discussing the topic with others, whether they be our students or JTEs or whoever, is beneficial towards progress. If not towards overall progress, then definitely at least for that particular situation with that particular student, even if to a small degree.

You can't shake the nation, and you can't change the culture, but you can help in small ways. And those small ways make it worth being there, I think, even if I often feel like I'm not able to help as much as I want to.

Every little bit helps. Baby steps are better than no steps at all.

Place

I'm sitting here at my home in the United States, drinking a can of Seltzer, roasted veggies in the oven, listening to music over nice, quality speakers in a nice, spacious room.

Home for the holidays.

Sparkling water, or the Seltzer equivalent, is relatively expensive in Japan. I can't make roasted veggies in my little microwave and tiny kitchen, and even if I could manage it somehow, I couldn't find all the ones I'm used to. I'd be listening to music via my laptop speakers, and the sound would consume my entire apartment, which is smaller than the one room I'm in right now.

I just got back from a doctor's appointment. Well, I had to get my blood drawn. I walked in and they were doing construction work, so the reception desk and blood draw office were in a different spot from usual. I walked up to the receptionist at the entrance and asked where to check in. I checked in and was directed to the waiting room. I got my blood drawn and left.

Not one look of surprise upon seeing me. No awkward attempts to speak English. No slight panic as I realized that not everything was as it should be, leaving me to ask where things were. No awkward looks from other patients upon entering the waiting room. Paperwork I could fully read. No haphazard exchanges with the nurse as I tried to explain what I was there for.

There's cars in the driveway. I recognize everything at the supermarket. I can ask for directions or things I need flawlessly. I'm not commuting on a crowded sardine bus every morning, and although that's partially because I'm on vacation, I don't think it would be happening even if I wasn't.

It's comfortable here. Comfortable and familiar.

Oh, beautiful New England.

I'm surrounded by people I love. On the off chance I met some random asshole, I'd have them to go back to at the end of the day.

In Japan, I have met dragons, and had nobody to go to for solace.

It's not comfortable there. It's lonelier, harsher, awkward and unpredictable.

And in Akita, it's frozen. The kitchen is cold and the bathroom is colder. The streets are sheets of ice and the city is white as a sheet. Central heating is nothing but a myth there.

And yet, I cherish the time I've spent there, and look forward to the remaining time I will spend there.

Obviously, not because it's comfortable.

The fire of that land has helped me grow in ways I could have never done had I remained in this comfortable place. Or should I say the biting cold?

I am here at home, loving each and every one of the comfortable things I have mentioned with unbridled affection. Before I left, I took them all for granted.

Japan is no inhospitable wasteland. It's a country full of (mostly) friendly people, conveniences we don't have, natural beauty and wonderful food. And in Akita, the snow is nearly constant, and always beautiful. It falls often, and vanishes before it can turn into that ugly brown color that snow does the day after. And then it falls again, as beautiful as before. I really love the snow.

But it's also an alien place. And while I am there, it never lets me forget that.

I would have stayed a bit longer, another year, perhaps. I would have shoved that biting cold lance further into my heart in order to learn and grow and change into an even better person who cherished the things from his home even more deeply. And despite the lance, I did - I have - grown to love it there, especially its people and its communities, their inherent value of which none of the discomfort can dilute.

It's not over yet, but it will be, soon.

I gave up a lot to be there, and I gave it my all while I was there. And I'd do it again, too.

But I think I have other places to be.

I just wish I knew where.

Reflection

Being an ALT is a mysterious job. It exists more as a concept than an actual thing. The Japanese government thought that foreigners would be good "soft power" for Japan - they come, they find things to like about the country, and then they leave and go back to wherever they came from, spreading the word about how awesome Japan is.

But what can a foreigner do? Japanese is a difficult language. Few foreigners speak it.

BUT!

They can speak English, and English is a global language.

So what do we do with them, they ask?

The answer is stick 'em in a classroom and tell them to do English.

That's the JET program.

This man was hired to make weird foreign sounds at Japanese kids.

But the actual schools associated with the program are different. They have no idea what to do with this random foreigner that they're mandated to teach with. And the other, non-English teachers? Forget it - they REALLY don't know why you're there, what you do, or how to approach or interact with you.

An ALT mostly plays English games with their students.

An ALT also has very little training, orientation, or direction outside of that.

So that means you have people with little to no Japanese, no teaching experience, and no idea what they're really supposed to do outside of "play games." It's a real sink or swim, trial by fire situation for many ALTs.

For me, I had a little Japanese and a little teaching experience, so I was in a better position than some.

I still had absolutely no idea what I was doing when I came here.

Literally me.

Students didn't understand my directions. JTEs would refuse to translate my directions. Students would often stare blankly at me as I fruitlessly played charades trying to explain myself. I had no idea what the average Japanese student was capable of at my school. My activities were often too difficult or too simple or fell flat.

There's this thing Japanese students do that throws you off. You can ask them questions - even IN JAPANESE - and they will sit there, silently, staring at you blankly. Sometimes they know the answer and they don't want to speak. They can be intensely shy, or afraid of making a fool out of themselves for getting a wrong answer, God forbid. It's like they adapt to a "if I don't say anything, the teacher can't see me" mentality, and even regular Japanese teachers end up talking to a wall of mannequins, all in uniform.

Imagine being a foreigner speaking gibberish. Now imagine all those mannequins look scared and confused.

To tell the truth, I wanted to quit after a month. I felt like I wasn't helping, nobody knew why I was there, and like I wasn't welcome or appreciated.

You hear this a lot on the JET program. Everything outside of school is great - travelling, experiencing the country, going to parties and restaurants and making Japanese friends. But school is frustrating, weird, and often uncomfortable.

For a long time, this didn't change. No matter what I did, my lessons, when I was allowed to teach and not just recite vocabulary, felt awkward.

It was towards the end of my first year that things started to change. I found my rocks. My few JTEs who opened up to me, coming to me before class and planning activities with me and not just saying "come to class and do whatever today." I grew to know the students and what they were capable of. I acclimated to the atmosphere of the classroom and learned how to confront and overcome the Mannequin Wall. My Japanese got better, and I could respond to students' questions, even if in English.

It felt like swimming towards the surface after sinking for a very long time.

Yeah, I just went to stock photos on Google. What are you gonna do about it?

 I learned that the ALT can have value in the classroom. I also learned that this job requires initiative and constant adaptation. You need to put your foot down and ask teachers to plan with you. You need to make an effort to talk to students and show them you're a human and not just a scary, blabbering alien. And most of all, you need to leave your pride behind and let kids laugh at you and think you're weird.

I don't think the kids or the adults here will ever truly see me as 100% human. You start off as 100% alien and can become about 80% human, 20% alien if you try. But there's always that wall there, that wall of being different in a homogenous world.

Portrait of John-sensei done by student.

The point I'm trying to make is that you need to learn to work with that. This was especially difficult for me, who had an inflated sense of self-importance, I think. I have a teaching certificate. I've taught classes before. I went to grad school. Why am I doing charades and being laughed at, only for my co-workers to avoid me out of fear?

But leaving behind that pride is a good life experience, I think. I learned to laugh at myself for the benefit of my students. I learned to have fun trying to explain what a fire hydrant was through charades, pronouncing hose with a very, very strong OOOOOZZZZEEEE to make sure they didn't think I was telling them to connect a horse to the ground.

Eventually, most of them laugh with you instead of at you. You can get that 80% human real fast, leaving your pride behind.

It's definitely not all roses, and some problems persist. There are still co-workers here who wonder what I do. They see me sitting at my desk between classes and openly wonder about it. Sometimes they even pass me by and say I'm slacking off again, even while I'm working on an activity for class.

That would frustrate anyone. But I stayed a second year for my students.

Teaching here has been a fantastic experience for me, one that's helped me grow personally and professionally. I'll probably take it with me for the rest of my life.

Perspective

As a high school ALT, you end up working with JTEs who are bonafide English teachers. This is opposed to the poor ALTs working elementary, who work with homeroom teachers who might want nothing to do with English.

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.

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.