Two Weeks

Two weeks left. Two weeks left of understanding language as a vague impression. Two weeks of cultural fumbles and mistakes. Two weeks of receiving stares and whispers.

There are other things that I am counting too:

Three more days of working at the chuugakko, where I am called assistant teacher and I am treated as such. M. Sensei has me sit at a desk in the classroom while she gives a lesson—something like a rote memorization worksheet verbalized. In my head, memories play of my Peruvian students who I cooked meals with and built low ropes courses with and who improved their English considerably by the year’s end. M. Sensei’s teaching is terrible. It’s arrogant of me to believe that I could teach the students better, so I tried to quell those thoughts when I first arrived, in respect of this foreign culture.

While M. Sensei drills vocabulary and makes the students fill out the same worksheet four times in a row, she talks to the students about me. My Japanese has improved. Now I understand.

“Joshua-Sensei isn’t a real teacher. He’s an assistant teacher.”

“Joshua-Sensei can’t explain this grammar to you.”

“Joshua-Sensei can’t teach these lessons; He doesn’t understand Japanese.”

Such comments are accompanied by laughs and giggles. Had the students been mine, their English would be much better by now. Three more days of being M. Sensei’s assistant.

Eleven days left of being an employee for a corporation. There are emails regarding moving out and final salaries. Your last paycheck will be subject to decreases in order to pay expenses after you leave. Return all supplies to the company. You cannot leave before submitting all the necessary paperwork.

Six days of school lunches—bland salads, miso soup so sour that it’ll put hair on your chest, milk as thick as direct from the cow’s tit.

I have two weeks left in Japan. I can’t help but count down.

 

On my drive to work, there is an old, fading poster that hangs on the side of a crumbling barn. It’s from the inauguration of the prefectural airport, which must have happened before I was born. The poster shows the airport in the background, as an after-thought, faded down from weathering. The woman in the foreground is the focus—a slender Japanese woman, traditionally dressed in a kimono that has had its color bleached from the sunlight. Her gaze is steady, her smile coquettish. She has a proud, long neck, and docile, balanced shoulders. She looks out at me as I’m lifted through the rice paddy laden countryside, to another day in classrooms filled with Japanese children. “Here you are,” she whispers. “You made it.”

Two more weeks of that drive.

In the climbing gym, Tomi-san, the owner, sits next to me on a giant crashpad. In Japanese, he asks, “You didn’t go to Dainichi Iwa on Saturday? I went there in the afternoon and you weren’t there.”

“No,” I say. “I was busy on Saturday. A friend came from Tokyo. We ate dinner. We went to Inawashiro lake.”

“Oh really? I went to Dainichi all by myself and no one was there. The weather was great, but no one was out climbing. Funny, huh? Today the weather was terrible, but still Kawamura-kun and his friends went out there.”

“It is cold,” I say. “Kawamura-kun tries his best. He is training for Half Dome. Half Dome is hard. Training is good. He should try his best.”

Tomi-san’s Japanese is still hard for me to understand, but he does not slow down for me or talk to me like I am a child. When I arrived in Japan almost two years ago and went to the climbing gym, all I could do was gesture that I wanted to climb, and he showed me the routes with the colored tape. “Yellow,” he said in English. “Very easy. Black: Very Hard.”

Despite the wall of language, he invited me to go climbing with him for two days, just a month after I had first met him. Now, able to convey most of my thoughts, I wonder how to culturally approach saying, “Thank you for that climbing trip Tomi-San. I needed friends then, and you were the first. That made Japan good and now it makes Japan hard to leave. Thank you.”

The climbers threw a going away party for me. I man who I have talked with infrequently and whose name I do not know, approached me and handed me a brand new piece of climbing equipment. “Here,” he said. “I hope you can use this in America. Are there good places for you to climb outside in Colorado?”

I bowed and said, “Hai. Arimasu. Zettai tskaimasu yo. Honto ni arigatou gozaimashita.”

He looked at me, smiled and said, “You will be missed.”

My friend Kondou-San handed me the copy of the Ishikawa Bouldering guide book that I had made for him and the others, and asked me to write him a message on the back.

“Kondou-San, I can’t write in kanji,” I explained. “And you can’t read English.”

“That’s okay,” he responded. “I just want a message from you.”

My first month at the climbing gym, there was a barbecue and a climbing competition. As we ate together people asked me questions that I didn’t understand. I sat quietly and tried to learn the language quickly. Now with two weeks left, at the going away party I could speak with my friends and make jokes and understand. Strangely, there is little sense of accomplishment. Rather, I feel tired and still very far away from a goal that I have not defined. And when I count the two weeks that are left, I know that I will not reach that goal.

There are only two weeks left with Eriko. I could write a novel on the goodness of Eriko. On conversations in the loft above my kitchen, or during long drives on our dates together. I could write about the softness of her hands, the sweet kisses she gives me on the cheek for no reason, that long embrace before leaving one another for how long. I could write of sitting in hot springs together, and eating nabe in her apartment, and of massages in the evenings. She sometimes feigns anger and raises her voice at me, and I start to laugh and she giggles as I wrestle her down to the futon. I could write about the slight feeling of helplessness when we don’t quite understand each other, about the patience she has with my Japanese, about the language spoken with each other that has no words in English or otherwise. There is too much good to that woman and writing it all would cripple me. It’s easier to not write it, to leave it to memory and to question. That way I do not have to believe it—that such a good person can exist, and that we once shared time together in that life I had in Japan. Two weeks is not enough time left with Eriko. But I bought that ticket home.

In two weeks I will say goodbye. I will board a plane. I will sleep poorly and watch movies on a screen in front of me. I will see the Pacific. I will land in L.A. and then take off again. And very soon I will see those Rocky Mountains, and my mother and father, and I will sit down with friends over dinner. And they will ask me about the good things in Japan, and I will have many stories to tell. For there were many more good things than bad, and in the end, those good memories will be the ones that stay with me.

 

In Anticipation of a Climbing Trip

There are plane tickets to buy, and a pickup truck with a topper, and new climbing equipment. How much will you have saved by the time you get back to Colorado? What about insurance, and taxes, and nights out? Get a job and it’ll be okay. Then you can afford car payments and rent, and student loans and micro-brews and fine salamis and cheeses. A job will sort you out. Then how fat you can grow. How comfortable you can get. If you’re lucky enough, you’ll pay all your worries away and you can be bored. Just work and never stop working and you’ll be just fine stupid.

That would be a good way to go back to America. Good American culture, right? Debt and food and a shiny four wheel drive pickup. Yeehaw Amurica! Here I come!

Or I could not work. Technically I have a job. It just doesn’t start until July. That gives me three months to do what I need to do. And there’s really only one thing that I’ll need to do—figure out why I left Japan.

That still won’t be enough time though. Who am I kidding. There’s too much. There’s tatami mats and shouji screen walls. There’s the countryside life of salutations from smiling children and scowls and stares from old men. There’s the kerosene heater in my living room in the winter, the sweltering loft in the summer, and the open windows and cool breezes in the seasons in between. There’s the feeling of leaving my friends who I speak Japanese with and who I understand like reading in the dark with a strobe light on. There are ramen shops, and sushi, and grilled clams on the half shell in Matsushima. There are long drives with climbing partners through country I’ve never seen. There are kindergarten and elementary school kids that think whatever I do is superhuman. Sugoiiiiiiii! they yell. Joshua-sensei jozu da ne…

There’s also Eriko—a woman who I love, and that knows me and loves me enough to say, “Go ahead. Go where you need to. It’s okay.” That's the kind of woman that is impossible to leave. With a broken heart and the guilt of breaking another I will be sitting in a big apartment with a shiny pickup outside and I’ll be drinking a six dollar bottle of microbrew. Yeehaw.

 

There’s therapy for that kind of thing, son. Get into God’s country and you’ll be sorted out.

The American desert cleanses. Look at the white bone of a cow carcass if you need an example. That’s what it’ll do. You’ll spend weeks there and the earth will drink in your tears and pour unforgiving sun on your depression. On soaring desert towers and thousand foot sandstone walls you’ll remember that you are he who climbs, who struggles and bleeds and sweats. Your struggle will become something physical, and therefore manageable. Get stronger and smarter and you’ll be able to climb what you thought was impossible. You’ll either end up better for it, or you’ll be beat by it. Both are good for you. And you will have dirtied and banged up the truck, and the beers will have run out and all you’ll have is a tent to go back to at night. And you’ll sit by the campfire with good friends, under an open sky with living and dying stars. And that’ll get you through.

 

My whole life has been spent trying to know what I ought to do-- what's the right choice for good living. I, like everyone else, have been the winner and the loser to such decisions. But there is a resoundingly clear lesson that has come from those experiences that guides me in when I don't know either way—spending more time in the wilderness is always good. I don’t know whether I should go back to America, but I do know that once there, the best thing to do is to get out into that big, healing American West. Once there, I’ll know if I made the right decision. Nature will simplify and clarify doubt, and it’ll make me confront myself, and it will give it to me straight. Either I messed up big time, or America is where I need to be. Either way, the message will come from the wilderness and I need to get there in order to hear it.

 

 

Writing Motivation

I have not been writing as much as I was before, and what I have written I haven't liked much. Hence the hiatus last month. I am working on a piece about my recent trip to Thailand, however, it doesn't look promising. I'll keep you posted if it makes it to the blog.

Below is a piece I wrote several months ago, which I also didn't like enough at the time, but I'm going to throw out there in case anyone is still checking the blog and would like to read another story. The story is called "Moshiwake Gozaimasen", which is a very humble way of apologizing in Japanese. It gives a little perspective of what teaching for a coorporation looks like. Perhaps you'll enjoy it.

All the best.

Josh

Moshiwake Gozaimasen

While in the teacher’s room at the junior high school, my phone illuminates, vibrates and displays the word “Interac” on the screen. It’s my company calling.

I step out of the room and try to answer the phone discreetly.

“Hello,” I say.

“Hello, Joshua?” a lifeless voice, as if poorly reading a script, says on the other end.

“Yeah.”

“Hey Joshua, this is Phil from Interac. How’s it going?”

“I’m pretty good Phil. How about you?”

“Yeah. Pretty good.”

Phil, an American from California, was recently announced as the new boss for my division of the Assistant English Teacher (ALT) recruiting company that I work for. In Japan, native English speaking teachers usually have to be contracted through a recruiting company. Though it is the easiest way to break into permanent residency in Japan, it’s a bittersweet deal; I’m able to live and teach here, but I have to work for a big corporation. For the first eight months or so it was tolerable. But recently the experience of working for Interac has been less than satisfying.

Phil continues.

“I’m just calling to check up on how things are going at the schools.”

I pause before answering, reminded of my parents’ advice to not complain so much, my teachers’ advice to stop challenging authority.

For the last month I have not been teaching as many classes at the junior high school that I hoped I would. The Japanese English teachers have been avoiding me, not asking me to come to their classes. When a few weeks of this behavior had passed I called Interac to see if they could help me find a solution. They assured me that they would talk to the teacher and solve the problem. As of writing this no change has occurred.

There are other problems too. A week earlier the company called me on my day off and told me that I was late for work at the elementary school. I looked at my schedule from the company. It read, “Day Off”.  I tried to convey this to the voice on the other end of the line, but she insisted that I was supposed to be at work.

“But I haven’t planned anything,” I explained.

“What do you mean?” she asked in a heavy accent.

“I mean I have no lesson plan for today.”.

“Well, why not?” she asked.

“Because it’s my day off.”

The conversation repeated that pattern enough times that I felt like it was going nowhere. Her solution was to just wing it from the textbook. This is something I can do, but hate doing; It’s bad teaching. But the lady on the other end of the phone gave me no alternative.

I went to work, making up a lesson from the textbook.

 

When Phil asks, “How are things going at the schools?” I pause, thinking of the past events and of my antagonistic pattern with authority figures.

“Yeah, it’s going fine,” I reply.

“Great,” Phil says, in a voice that does not convey ‘great’ so much as ‘good, I don’t have to ask follow up questions’. He continues, “I see here that we haven’t asked you the Happy Questions yet.”

I ask, “Happy Questions?”

“Yeah. For the company survey,” he responds.

I hesitate, considering whether he is joking or not. I conclude that he isn’t. “No, you haven’t asked me the Happy Questions yet.”

“Well, I’ll ask you now.”

The other teachers in the teacher’s room are now looking out at me, wondering why I am on the phone.

“Okay,” Phil says, “First question: Do you feel confused, anxious, or unsure of anything?”

This question doesn’t sound happy. I ask for clarification. “You mean at school, or in my daily life?”

“Uh, let’s say your daily life,” Phil responds.

Without a thought I say, “Of course. I’m living in Japan. I don’t speak Japanese.”

Phil shows a glimpse of personality, “Ha. I guess that’s right.” Then he quickly returns to the call script, “Is there something in particular that confuses you.”

“Yeah. Grammar, vocabulary, expressions. Language. Culture. Just about all of it.”

Phil appears to consider what I’m saying. “Well how are you coping with it?”

“It’s great. I love it. That’s why I came here.”

“Oh. Well, good. So there is no problem?” he asks.

“Not really,” I say, wondering if I’m being honest.

Phil continues with two more Happy Questions, both in the same vein as the first. I answer with a voice that hopefully quells my sarcasm.

When the conversation finishes Phil reminds me, “See you at the meeting on Saturday.”

Oh, yeah. Weekend meeting.

 

 

The meeting is in Sendai, a one hundred dollar, and one hour bullet train ride from where I live. The company will reimburse me for the expense in two months.

At the meeting, nearly a hundred other teachers are crammed into a meeting room with tiled floors, flat, square fluorescent lights overhead, and the first slide of a PowerPoint presentation projected at the front. The slide says “Training Meeting”. Everyone is dressed in business casual. Their facial expressions are the same dress code.

The room is an awkward size where using a microphone is too loud, but normal talking isn’t loud enough. The bosses choose to use the microphone. One particularly zealous young man, the Head High School Teacher, with hair just as jumpy and awkward as his personality, encourages us to move to the front.

“Hey guys! Plenty of space up here. Please move to the front. Don’t be scared.”

No one budges.

The young man laughs uncomfortably.

He tries again, “All right now guys, we need people to come sit up front. Someone has to sit up front.”

No one moves. It’s him against us, and he’s losing. What happens when a boss loses?

“Nobody wants to come to the front?” he asks rhetorically. He pauses, thinks, and says, “C’mon guys! I don’t smell that bad!”

Still, no one laughs.

A few late arrivals are herded into the front seats. The head high school teacher looks pleased. He is victorious by default. There is an illusion that someone has listened to him, that he is in control.

Phil stands at the head of the room, welcoming people to the meeting. He asks the late arrivals to stand up and come to the front.  The late arrivals are hesitant, but do as they’re told.

Phil asks, “Do you guys know what happens at a Japanese company when you’re late?”

Some of the seated teachers, ones who weren’t late, laugh. Whether they laugh because they think it is funny or because they want to show everyone else that they know the Japanese punishment, I am not sure.

Phil continues, “At a Japanese company, late employees stand in front of the others and say, ‘Moshiwake gozaimasen’ while bowing. So now, we are going to ask those who were late to do the same.”

I consider the cultural lesson. Interac is hardly a Japanese company. They come from Utah, allegedly as an undercover Mormon conversion mission in the 70s. All of the bosses and the CEO are foreigners. In fact, much of the training that follows will encourage us to not act Japanese, for reasons that are blatantly racist.

“Japanese teachers don’t have fun in their classrooms,” they’ll tell us.

“Japanese teachers don’t know how to create student centered activities.”

The list goes on.

But now Phil is telling the late arrivals to apologize in front of everyone. It’s a cultural lesson.

One by one they are handed the microphone, and one by one each says, “Moshiwake gozaimasen” while bowing. Some members of the crowd clap and cheer for the especially good bows and pronunciation. There are eight people that have to perform the punishment. The process takes about a minute. When the last one finishes, the crowd claps, happy for the demonstration but ready to move on to the meeting. That is, after all, why we came here on a Saturday.

The late arrivals start to move to their seats. Phil stops them.

“That wasn’t really good enough guys. You really need to bow. Hands on both sides of your body, look down, and enunciate clearly. You’re going to have to do it again.”

The late arrivals aren’t sure what to make of the idea. Some scoff. Others look blankly at him, trying to read his intent. The microphone is passed back to the front of the line. The first late arrival repeats his first way of bowing to a tee—an intended act of rebellion. The second and third late arrivals do a similar prostration. As the microphone goes down the line, the effort improves. Finally the last late arrival bows, says, “Moshiwake gozaimasen” and hands the microphone back to Phil. This time the late arrivals do not assume their right to return to their seat.

Phil remarks, “Much better. Much better. But you first three, you really need to bow.”

Two of the three late arrivals are clenching their jaws tightly. You can see them processing whether to bow, or storm out of the room, or leap at Phil.

One of the late arrivals asks, “Seriously?”

Phil nods his head. Yes, seriously.

Now the three do their best bows and say in their clearest pronunciation “Moshiwake gozaimasen.” They wait for Phil to accept it.

I imagine myself in the place of one of the late arrivals. The third bow would be it for me. But it’s not my fight. Or is it? Should it be? No. Not this one. If this keeps up, my fight will come. But this one, now, is not mine. I wish one of them would stand up to Phil. I’m also glad that I wasn’t late. This time it would not have to be me. My blood goes copper and molten.

Phil gives his decree, “Okay, go sit down.”

One of the three says something loud and angry that I can’t pick up, but is a threat to Phil. Phil seems to have not understood the words, but sees the rancor with which they were spoken. He makes a kind of surprised face, then regains his composure and starts the meeting. The late arrival sits in front of me and starts venting to those seated next to him.

“Fuck this! I’m not going to work for a company like this. That was ridiculous.”

The PowerPoint presentation starts and my brain quickly numbs to slides that tell us not to drink and drive, and to play games with students, and to make sure that the students enjoy their English classes.