Everyday embarassments

(Before I start, just wanted to share this pic with you. It's the view from the third floor (where I teach classes) of Naru High. Looks across the multi-purpose field to the elementary school and oh yeah, that's the ocean right there. Subarashi! This is NOT embarrassing, but I wanted to share it with you!)

There are so many things that I have learned to accept quickly as part of life here, but then on the other hand there are quite a few that are really taking some time to sink in for me. These are mostly everyday sorts of things that one must live and experience everyday to really appreciate living and being fully immersed in another culture and country. I will try to highlight some of the everyday examples I have of not adapting to these very well and working through the embarrassment. (again with the embarrassment I know, but I don’t see it stopping anytime soon…)

I start every school morning by walking to school. It’s a nice walk as I have said before. I walk on the side of the street (not the sidewalk, they don’t have those in Naru. The sides of the stripes on the streets are the sidewalks, seen here.) and it is sometimes very close to the cars that are passing. I hate to admit but I have more than once looked up at the oncoming traffic and begun to raise my hands in desperation at the driver to let them know that they are on the wrong side of the road only to remember that I am in Japan just in time to save myself with an energetic wave to them instead, which still kind of freaks them out because people here don’t wave, they bow. Yes, driving on the wrong side of the road is just hard to get used to, especially when you don’t drive. In my defense though, this usually only happens when I'm plugged into an old Dead tape on my walkman and lost in a jam...(thanks Sam!)

After my short walk up my big hill to the school the first thing that I must do when I enter the building is take off my shoes and replace them with my “inside” shoes (which are kept in these handy little cubbies seen to the left). This is not too hard to do, since it is the first thing that you see when you

walk into the building, but this IS hard to do for me when I am on my way out, because I don’t see the little cubbies and am often just focused on leaving. I have walked out in my “indoor” shoes more times than I can count, I have even made it all the way home in them only to realize it when I get to my front door! Drat! I’ve done it again! I’m starting to get better at it and have managed to not leave with the wrong shoes on for about a week now! One small success!

So after I change my shoes I enter the staff room, give my most energetic “ohayoo gozaimasu!” and settle at my desk. There is heaps of tea to be had and always cookies or some sort of sweet to have at the tea table so very soon after arriving I usually have to hit the head. This little saying has taken on a whole new meaning (Erin!) for me since I have arrived at Naru High school’s toilets. When I stand in the bathroom my head is literally three inches from the ceiling and if I am in a hurry and forget I hit my head on the bathroom door if I don’t crouch down before leaving. I have never felt tall in my whole life until now. I am a freakin giant here!

As the day rolls on there is lots of bowing and lots of thanking and apologizing for, well, everything. The students who need something from the teachers must first knock on the staffroom door and then stand at the door before entering. They then must ask permission to enter and for the teacher with whom they have business with by saying, please be kind to me “oniguyshimasu”. I have to each day before le

aving say the following to all of the other teachers with whom I work with because I need their forgiveness for leaving early, “osaki ni shi tsu, rei i shi ma su”. It is all about politeness here and it is taking a little bit of practice for sure. They all reply with the same thing everyday in unison as well, though I am still working on exactly what that is and what it means!

I have messed up the following a few times, but am proud to report that today I finally got it right! The Japanese apparently do not believe in paying janitors to clean their schools, especially when they have many able bodies ready to work! Each day at 15.00 the whole school takes broom, mop, dusting cloth or whatever they can and cleans the school. No one is exempt from this task as I (tardily) helped the vice principal clean the staffroom floor yesterday and the principal clean the entryway today. It’s really something to see the whole school at work and nobody complaining (they wouldn’t dare complain really). Like I said, I only sat at my desk listening to internet radio for a few days before I realized that everyone was gone and off working, and I, the lazy American was still sitting here in a daze. (Picture is of the nice clean entryway, thanks to yours truely today!)

After school lets out I usually take a stroll down to one of the markets to find something for dinner, since I can only fit about a day's worth of food in mine at home, one must really shop everyda

y. I have managed to 'jaywalk' a few times being completely unaware of it. See, there is exactly ONE stop light in Naru and I have only seen it red once, for a little old lady who was walking across the street. Roads really aren't that busy here so I never remember that if I'm going to cross right there I need to hit the button...well, I haven't caused any accidents but I have gotten some stares from some of the kids on the island and some smiling 'crazy gaijin' faces from adults in that intersection. I am going to try really hard to remember that light there now. Really, I am.

I've only managed to mess up my trash twice, whew! It's kind of a tricky thing here (Portlanders will understand, everyone else, not so much...). There are different days for differnt pick-ups, not too hard, right? But there are about 6 categories of kinds of trash and three differnt bags that they must go in which are all color coded and must be bagged and deposited accordingly. Oh and once you figure all of that out, you have to sign your trash. Yes, that's right, you have to put your name on the bag so they know who's trash it is, in katakana (one of the Japanese alphabets). First I couldn't figure out where to put the trash and took a stab at it and left it on my front porch. No good. My elderly neighbor rang my doorbell one Saturday and let me know that it was so. So I dragged said trash back into my house and waited for someone to help me. After getting in the know from much questioning of my supervisor at school I thought I had it down. I took the trash to the proper place only to have my other neighbors who were outside give me the big "X". You know you've done something wrong when a Japanese person does this to you, holding their arms up in a big X sign meaning, "NO!". I understood with my little knowledge of Japanese that I was a day early and that depositing trash in the dumpster before the pick-up day was "X"! After an embarassing dumpster dive to retrieve it, I think I have this one down.

So friends, you see it's really so easy to live in Japan. You simply must remember the small things and everything else falls into place. It's all different, but like they say in the USA, "it's all good".

Namaste,

Beth