Onna gokoro to aki no sora: "A woman's heart/mind and the autumn sky are unpredictable!"

In an attempt to broaden my Japanese education, one of my JTEs left this charming saying on my desk. Believe it or not, I don't think it was a pointed statement about me. 

A lot of people (OK, two people, but theirs is the only feedback I've gotten) seem to want to hear more about "how the teaching is going."  For those of you who aren't interested in my long spiel, I'll sum it up quickly, and you can skip to the next section.  Basically:   In many respects, this is the hardest job I have ever had.  Which is not to discount my former jobs, all of which were demanding (Dragon Lady, I'm thinking of you) and instructive in their own ways.  Teaching, however, provides a unique set of challenges. 

No matter how smart, educated, hardworking or entertaining you are, none of those things alone means that you will be a good teacher.  In fact, if you are like me, there are many, many days when you think, "Wow, I am spectacularly bad at this."  My aunt recently wrote me and said, "Simple is good.  If they only learn 2 things from you a week, you are doing well."  She's right, of course.  But it's hard to not feel that those are low standards, when what the liberal in me really wants is a To Sir, With Love moment where all my students magically show up to school one day speaking in posh English, with jobs and life goals, referring to each other as "Miss Yamamoto" or "Mr. Matsuda."  A musical number would be nice, too.

Excerpt from a student's homework last week.  Under "What kind of music do you like?" she wrote, "I like soul music because I like the husky voice of a black person."

My biggest challenge is trying to figure out what the students' level of English proficiency is.  For four days, I did the same lesson over and over, elaborately explaining what a credit card is (they really aren't used here in Japan).  On the fifth day, the JTE for that class piped up and said, "Um, they know what a credit card is."  Which made me feel like a jerk, because it seemed as though I had been patronizing them for five minutes while wildly pantomiming swiping a credit card and signing for a purchase.

On the other hand, I might say, "There are 100 cents in a dollar.  If a quarter is worth 25 cents, or 1/4, how many quarters make a dollar?"  I then write a quasi-algebraic equation on the board to illustrate what I'm asking, and they still have no clue what is going on.  Interestingly, the hardest thing to get them to do is guess something.  I asked my first years to guess how many yen were in one dollar.  "Guess any number," I told them.  Crickets.  I wrote on the board, ___?____ yen = $1.  More silence.  I called on students, asking them to tell me a number.  Nuh uh.  Are they just shy, or intractable?  It's hard to tell. 

More homework.  "What are you interested in?"  Response: "I'm interested in liquor because my parents say 'It is very yummy,' so I [want to] drink liquor."  A future leader of Japan, no doubt.

In most professions, it's widely believed that if you work hard and prepare in advance, you will be successful.  In teaching, there are no such guarantees.  It's a bit like being a standup comedian in that your painstakingly thought out material (your lesson plan) could (and often does) completely bomb.   This isn't always the teacher's fault.  You can't predict that your kids will have been given a particularly grueling workout in PE the period before, or that some of them are so tired they become narcoleptic at their desks.  It's also difficult to know how advanced your lesson is until you try it out on an audience.  Even though the JTEs review all my lesson plans before class, there are inevitably classes that sit there and stare at you blankly when you ask them, "What did you eat for lunch today?" [Learning how to work with the different teaching styles of the JTEs is an entire post in and of itself.]

Often you can see the trainwreck before it hits,  You'll be giving directions about how to do something, and as you're speaking, the gaps and loopholes start becoming clear.  "Write your NAME on your paper." OK, I'm about to receive 20+ papers with the names written in Kanji. "Please write your name IN ENGLISH, NOT JAPANESE." "Here are some sample questions that you might be asked on the test."  Whoops, they think that these are the only questions that I'm going to ask them.  "The questions on the handout are SAMPLE questions. They are EXAMPLES.  I will ask you DIFFERENT questions on the test, so please study ALL the material."  Thus, I'm convinced that improvisation is the watchword of good teaching.  You thought that explanation was simple, but the students are cocking their heads to the side the way your dog does when you lay out a three-minute rationale for why you want him to do something, and then realize he doesn't understand anything that doesn't involve "dinner," "go out," or "treat."  Therefore, you need to think of an alternate explanation...in two seconds.  The activity you thought would take 20 minutes just took 8. Add new conditions to the activity, or be ready to entertain them with a game. And when the rest of the class can't hear you over the magpie chatter of two unruly first-years, take the opportunity to diverge from your lesson plan and lay down the law about talking in class, impressively brandishing red cards over your head and telling them that the next person to speak out of turn will receive a red card and have points taken off their grade.  And that would make you so sad. Boo hoo.

All this is really just to say that the teaching is going fine.  It's an uphill battle, but so rewarding when students ace a worksheet or a quiz, or laugh at a goofy joke I made (my physical comedy skills are really making leaps and bounds).  It's also nice that no matter how bored they were in class, or how badly I think I did that period, the students don't hold it against me in the halls, and still greet me with choruses of, "ERI-SENSEI! HELLO! IAMFINETHANKYOUHOWAREYOUUUUU?!" 

I HAVE A FEELING WE'RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE

This next story takes us deep into the seedy underbelly of Japan.

All right, that was really just a ploy to get your attention.  Last weekend I attended my first Japanese baseball game, and afterwards explored Osaka at night with a group of friends.  On our itinerary: visit a maid cafe.  Maid cafes, if you're unfamiliar, are restaurants where (usually men) go to be served food and drinks by cute, young girls in frilly maid outfits.  It's a fetish thing, but there are no sexual favors involved.  Depending on what kind of restaurant you go to, the maids can be really eager and sweet, or kind of mean to you at first, and then sweet and charming as you're leaving, trying to get you to stay.  Maid cafe spin offs include "butler cafes," "Mom cafes," where older, matronly women scold and nag and listen to your problems, and "little sister" cafes, where again, young, sweet things wait on you and call you "older brother."  That one is the creepiest.

We arrive at MaiDreamin', a cafe recommended by a second-year JET BL, and are welcomed inside after being told that we all have to keep our hands to ourselves. NO TOUCHING of the maids.  Nor are we allowed to take photos inside, unless we want to pay an extra $5 per person to have a Polaroid taken with our waitress.  Our party consists of me, a married couple, and three other friends, two of them male, one of them female.  The place is full and so small that we have to sit at separate tables: our married friends at one, the rest of us at another.  A maid comes over, introduces herself on her hands and knees, and pulls out a small electric candle.  She tells us that when the candle is lit, the girls will become princesses, and the boys will become masters.  We count to three, the candle is lit, and our night of magic begins.

The menu is ridiculously overpriced.  Most of the meals come in sets: mediocre food on which the maid comes by and draws a heart or an animal face.  There is also a drink menu where if you order off a certain section, a maid will come to your table and mix your drink in front of you, while saying your name over and over.  I watched a gentleman who requested this service, and he was far too transfixed by the rhythmic repetition of his name for it to be proper.  When the maid serves your food, you're required to chant something in Japanese with her while making a heart shape with your hands.  I can't remember what it translates to, but it has something to do with blushing. I think.

An example of maid couture from www.cryosites.com

What I loved about the evening was that the girls were able to enjoy it for what it was: a completely bizarre, surreal cultural experience.  We embraced the discomfort, and reveled in it.  The guys, on the other hand, were practically crawling out of their skins with mortification, and couldn't wait to bolt out of there.  The turnover of the tables is quick (there's a 500 yen per person surcharge for the first hour, and then you have to pay more per person per hour subsequently- this is a racket).  To protect our wallets and the delicate sensibilities of the menfolk, we escaped after about an hour.  Because of the cost (and the weirdness), I'm not sure I'd go back to a maid cafe, but it's one thing off the Japanese bucket list!