Reflections on my first full-year in Japan

I have been in Japan for one year and 156 days now, a little over 17 months. 2009 was my first full year here, and while the rest of the country tries to forget about the past 12 months in their bonenkai (忘年会), I’m trying my best to understand just what has happened to me this year.

Work

I’ve been through a difficult learning curve. Teaching young kids from day one, I began to find my ground in 2009. I’ve discovered which students and classes I adore, and which ones cause me problems. I’ve found a rhythm of games and work that is serving me well. If anything, I am better than ever with my very young learners, but I’ve yet to find the correct formula for older elementary and junior high school kids.

As for my working life, I feel appreciated and largely respected by my bosses and peers. This is very important for me: in such a decentralised system, your relationship with your colleagues can change the tone of your day significantly. I’ve also consolidated my teaching days into three schools, two of which are close to my home. Working 20 minutes from home as opposed to an hour away is the difference between being home just after 9pm, or being home at 10pm.

That said, I am considering what will come next. The job market is idle at the moment, but if I were to see a full-time job teaching adults for about the same pay, I would start looking to jump ship. I’m in no rush though, I don’t hate my job, it’s just that it is the kids that can ruin my day. Adults much less so. Yet, like I said, there is no rush.

On Keiko’s side, her work is moving in the right direction, if not quickly and smoothly enough. The poor girl has been working solid and much harder than I have. She deserves a long holiday and a big bonus, but neither are going to happen.

Verdict: Positive

Resolution(s):

• Find a less dry way to teach higher-level concepts (such as tenses and adverbs) to older children.
• Consolidate more working days closer to home.

Family

We started off 2009 by purchasing Ebichu, our hamster. He’s been an adorable and lovely addition to our family. He never bites and is low maintenance. So far, he’s never been sick, and he’s great to have around (even if he’s a pain to arrange a babysitter for). We love him as a family member. He might even be considered a substitute for the child that we’ve long wanted and came close to having this year.

The day I found I Keiko was pregnant, my heart pounded with anxiety… the doctor doubted it would come to term and Keiko was suffering from pain. After a few weeks, another doctor told us we would probably be fine. I felt myself ready to burst out with joy: I was going to be a dad. Only, I wasn’t.

The slow and painful moments that it took to acknowledge the doctor’s news, the floods of tears that followed, and the inevitable dive into depression I will never forget about this year. We learned this just two days before we were to move home. Our new house still reminds me of our loss. We chose it knowing that we would have a baby here where they could spend their first few years pottering around our small garden, playing in the nearby parks, and walking along the river. The house is great (although it’s much colder in winter than we expected), but until I fill that gap in our lives, I will always be living in that moment.

Verdict: Negative

Resolution(s):

• None (yet).

Friends

This has been a pretty good year for catching up with friends. Chikara was here for most of the year so we spent a good deal of time together. Nori came back in the summer so I was able to see both of them together, a throwback to our Aberystwyth days. But now Chikara’s back in the UK and Nori’s hard at work, so it’s not easy to see two of my best friends as often as I’d like.

As for friends back home, Rory came over (twice in 12 months). Although I didn’t get a chance to get to know him while we lived in Aber, it’s great to have that chance even though I live abroad. On the other hand, despite deciding to get a job here, Andy hasn’t made it to Japan yet. I hope that 2010 changes that.

Finally, I’ve networked a lot more this year, and it’s paid off. Earlier in the year I met Bryan (sadly, just before he went back to the States) for a drink, and I love the idea of catching an after-work or Saturday night drink with anyone following me here or on Twitter. (Just no murderers, please!) In addition, after learning some lessons from last year’s Christmas parties, I’ve managed to get more people into my contacts list.

Verdict: Positive

Resolution(s):

• Try to get out for drinks more often and meet new people.

Travel

I still have many places to visit in Japan. I didn’t do much sightseeing in 2008 as I was adjusting to work and married life, but this year I’ve made it to a few places: Enoshima, Odawara, Sagamiko, and more. I like local tourism, seeings things that are nearby on a day-trip or long weekend. Whereas many Tokyoites jet off to far-flung regions of Japan, that just stresses me out. There are still many local places that I want to visit this year, and I’d like to arrange another longer-stay holiday at some point in the year.

Verdict: Positive

Resolution(s):

• Visit Nikko, Karuizawa, and Ikebukuro (I can’t believe I’ve still not been there).
• Try to go on at least one longer-haul holiday.

Language

This year has been difficult for my Japanese skills. I’m still improving, but for months I had no teacher after the move from Sagamihara to Kawasaki. Now I have one, but she doesn’t teach on national holidays which, when you have a lesson on Mondays, is a constant annoyance.

I’m still overly shy and embarrassed by my Japanese, but if the alcohol’s flowing then so can the language. On the plus side, I can to talk to Keiko’s parents on the phone more fluently than ever. However, I need to talk more to help overcome my insecurities, so I’m trying to find a local language exchange partner. No luck yet.

Finally, I’ve succumbed to the idea that I should take a Japanese test. I have two options: JLPT5 or the J-Test. I don’t feel like I would struggle too much to pass JLPT5, but I’d like the experience of taking that kind of test. The higher-level tests (Levels 1 and 2) are important to employers, plus a pass might increase my confidence.

Verdict: Positive

Resolution(s):

• Try to supplement my private lessons with a group lesson.
• Find a language exchange partner or someone whom I can talk to entirely in Japanese.
• Apply to take a Japanese test.

Health & Lifestyle

Finally, I’d like to note that 2009 has been an excellent one for my body. Having grown up a fussy child, I’m only now beginning to eat most common vegetables. In addition, I’ve been trying to lose weight: I started this year in the gym, but gave up my membership as work became busier in the summer. However, since finishing at the gym, I’ve been losing weight due to better eating and my better understanding of calorie intake. This is a first for me, and it’s something I really hope I can continue.

Verdict: Positive

Resolution(s):

• Go out running more frequently (at least in the warmer months).
• Drop 5kg in a sustainable fashion.

Summary

On the whole, I had a rather good year. I’m fitter and healthier than ever, living in a cosy apartment and getting on well in my work. The things I wanted to do in Japan are being done, even if it’s happening slower than I expected. Even though we went through the toughest experience of our lives in the summer, we are nevertheless stronger and more determined because of it. In sum, not a great year, but not too terrible either: there is still room for improvement in 2010.

Happy New Year everyone!

Coughs and Sneezes

Face masks and the Japanese go hand in hand. You can see them everywhere: in schools, in the office and on the trains, even outside (which is rather pointless). With H1N1 sweeping through our school system (a good 80-90% of my school-aged students have had it), no one is taking any chances.

At first, seeing all these people with masks can be disconcerting. They have become popular as an anti-flu aid mainly due to how common they are for use against hay fever, even if they don’t work so well in this new role. Worse still, if you teach or if you visit a shop (particularly a chemist’s), talking to them is pretty hard – for a foreigner at least. For me, it spoils the customer service experience: I have to listen extra hard and I can’t quite get over the feeling that I’m being served by the Shredder or a reincarnated Michael Jackson. This ubiquity of masks is just unlike anything I experienced back home.
Ubiquity doesn’t suggest proper use, however. It is very common to see people stuffing their masks into their bags as they leave the train. Anything the mask kept at bay is now festering in their bag, touching their hands as they look for their wallet, and then perhaps spreading to their face once they put their mask back on. Hospital staff, who dispose of their masks after a single use, do it right. Hiroko and Keiko the OLs, however, are really doing it for peace of mind. As one of my students related to me the other day: “People who cough on the train are scary!” I beg to differ.

“Coughs and sneezes spread diseases,” so the saying going. In Japan, I might add, “… especially kids and men who don’t bother to cover their mouths”. I frequently see people hacking away without covering their mouths. Nine times out of ten it is either a young kid (which is largely forgiveable – up to a certain age), or a middle-aged guy (not at all forgiveable). The projectile spit particles and their bareback germ riders are invisibly (mostly) sprayed out of their mouths and across the people in their path. It’s disgusting. Almost makes me want to put on a mask…

With Japan Rail’s war on bad manners, I hope one day they will put up a poster addressing this issue. Until then, at least there are now copious amounts of sterilising sprays and soap in my schools and shops. However, most train stations do not have any soap for washing your hands, and too many places don’t have any hand-driers. Doesn’t sound too sanitary to me. The only really good thing to add is that at least there is a custom of washing one’s hands when you get home, although the less that is said about the gargling (a brown liquid: iodine?) the better.

Here’s hoping I make it to the end of the year without catching the swine flu.

Taking it Outside

Summer is winding down across Japan. After a short rainy season and a surprisingly bearable summer, I am eager to see the temperatures plummeting. At several times in the past few weeks, the humidity and air temperature have been at almost spring-like levels. That means it’s time to turn off the air conditioner and venture out of the house for some waning sun and relaxation. I have taken a two-pronged approach.

On Sunday, after Keiko finished a half-day at work, we went for a picnic on the banks of the Tamagawa. My tarp was a bit sandy because I forgot to clean it after getting back from Katsuura, plus we had no parasol or anything, so we were sandy and burning, but it was nice to just get out, lie down and relax.

The river has always been a favourite place of mine, no matter where I’ve lived. The difference with the Tamagawa (at least where we live) is that you can’t really see the river all that much, yet still, it has grass and fresh-feeling air, which is a lot more than can be said for the rest of the country. Elementary school kids were playing baseball up-river, people were gardening in their allotments not far from our position, and a whole wealth of people were playing more informal games with their kids, or insect-catching (a popular pastime for Japanese kids). There was also a sizeable male contingent running, cycling, walking, stretching and sunbathing topless… It was ‘shirtless Sunday’ after all.

After a few sandwiches and a couple of bottles of water for me, Keiko got down to the heavy business of reading, and I started studying. In the past few weeks, I’ve really tried to get my study cap back on. A year has passed since I arrived in Japan, and 2 months have passed since my last Japanese lesson. Wanting to change the tide, I bought Genki II in July and started to do what I could to keep my skills up, if  not improving. Every day I try to fit in at least 30 minutes, but sometimes it’s not possible. Yet still, my notebook has become filled with Japanese text and my handwriting and particularly my kanji are improving significantly. As I write this, I’ve just applied for another trial lesson with a private teacher. I hope to get the show on the road soon.

Keiko checked through my notebook and gave me a few corrections, and while she didn’t seem overly impressed, I am at least content that she wasn’t horrified. After passing me back my book, she collapsed into nap mode while I got to work, my iPod quietly keeping me company.

The sun eventually beat us into a retreat, but at least it was a nice relaxing afternoon, which is in stark contrast to my other outdoor activities.

Despite enjoying going to the gym, it has become increasingly difficult to find the time to do so given both my work schedule and social life (bah!). We no longer live a couple of stops from a gym, and I only work near one twice a week now. So I’m trying to wean myself away, and soon enough we’ll cancel our subscriptions. Currently, at the gym, my workout consists of a warm-up, stretches and 5 km run, all of which I can do outside. So I’ve started running along the river at night (when it’s cooler).

I’m actually enjoying it. I have a neat rout worked out which is somewhere between 4.5 and 5.0 km, but I have no real way to know. My Nike+ device, which syncs my running data to my iPod, is not so accurate off the treadmill as a result of constantly changing speeds and shorter strides (to help me calibrate the device frequently, I’m looking to get GPS on my phone when I’m able to change contract, but that’s a while off yet).

Enjoyment aside, my big problem has been adapting to the different running surface. A treadmill provides a flat surface that is very easy to run on, but the real world is textured with bumps and littered with rocks, and as someone who hasn’t jogged outside since secondary school, it has been beating me into submission. On my third run, which took place on Monday, my left leg ached consistently throughout. When I got home, it still ached. A quick Google has led me to believe I’ve got a shin splint, so I’m currently letting it cool off before heading out again. It’s just a reminder to me of how important it is to warm up and stretch first, and I’m definitely going to have to take more care in that area.

On the whole, however, the nights are cooler and its an excellent time to get out and about. The riverside is filled with cyclists and runners, and being able to chase other joggers is its own reward. I’m going to enjoy it as much as I can before winter sets in.

Priorities – Swine Flu and North Korea

It never fails to surprise me just how short-sighted public attitudes can be. In May, the world fell around our heads on several occasions, but none more notably than when swine flu started to rattle its way through Kansai, or when North Korea pulled out the big guns.

Swine Flu

The WHO reports that as of June 3rd, Japan has had 385 cases of Influenza A (H1N1) – better known as swine flu. For all those cases, just higher than Britain’s 339, Japan has suffered no fatalities. Not one. Given the hysteria that swept the country, you should not be surprised . It is difficult to separate cause from effect, but face masks (a constant feature of Japanese commuting life) and anti-bacterial handwash flew off the shelves. In Golden Week, Keiko received a call from her mother, who was trying to buy face masks for her father’s trip to Tokyo. They were all sold out, in the ass-end of nowhere in Hokkaido, where everyone drives everywhere. It was ridiculous, and there hadn’t been any cases at that time.

People freaked out when the first possible cases came in. Everyone began to worry because they rode the same train lines as these suspected sufferers.  Wear masks, gargle, sterilise you hands… The mantra was behind the panic buying, ignoring WHO advice as to the possibility of harm in using masks (which provide peace of mind more than actual preventative benefit). Eventually, the cases began rolling in exponentially among high school students in Hyogo and Osaka causing schools to be shut down. The world’s press had already been reporting the disease’s low mortality rate (outside Mexico, only the US, Canada, and China have suffered deaths – a total of 20 among the four countries, Mexico had 97), but it took another week for the Japanese government to loosen restrictions. In the meantime, PM Taro Aso urged for calm in a very short TV message shown in commerical breaks, and JR stations and schools continued to urge people to wear masks for a further week.

North Korea

As the swine flu panic has begun to subside, North Korea has made dozens of severe threats, launched a few missiles and tested a nuclear warhead. The public hasn’t batted an eyelid. No-one discusses it: it’s an abstraction. It’s plastered across the news, but people don’t believe it affects them so they don’t worry. I believe in an underlying anger held by the Japanese public towads North Korea as a result of the abduction issue and missile threats, even if it is not expressed frequently, but I am surprised that people are quite so unfazed by it all.

June 3rd’s International Herald Tribune contained an op-ed piece which, although not taken from the Japanese perspective (instead that of the ASEAN members), addresses the issue quite well:

As for nonproliferation, the Asian attitude is why worry about North Korea when Pakistan’s bomb met no such reaction? Like Israel’s bomb, North Korea’s is seen a means of deterrence and a symbol of isolation. The regime may be appalling, but its only goal is survival.

These views may be a bit naïve, but they are understandable, given so many cries of “wolf” over North Korean arms and so little ability in the West to stop them. Why not ignore the attention-seeking Kim, goes the Asian thinking?

The Japanese government, unlike its people, are fuming, but are also no doubt quietly relieved: North Korea’s growing intransigence is bringing the other four parties to the Six-Party Talks closer to Japan’s hardline stance. They understand the pressing need to address the regime, but they lack the capability to deal with the situation after marginalising their position so thoroughly for the past few years.

A Matter of Perspective

“Why is he ranting?”, you might ask. Swine flu was an unknown variable, if we had been unlucky it could have meant a global plague, but it didn’t. As a Master’s student, I looked at SARS and what it suggested about society’s approach to risk, the similarities are unsurprisingly striking: experts are as clueless as you and I, the risk is transnational, and is entirely reflexive (that is derived from our way of life, i.e. intimate proximity to swine).

One of the main features of sociological risk theory is that the role of experts becomes one of the talking-head, eroding public trust and ultimately adding to the public’s inability to assess the future (the corner stone of the theory). It makes it impossible to judge the severity of a threat: swine flu was quick to spread but relatively harmless if treated early on, yet the people mobilised with the SARS and avian flu scares weighing heavy in their mind. Experts had no good advice, reporting was frenetic, and that led to panic buying and a paranoia which has yet to really subside. In this case, the future was unknowable but increasingly revealing itself with each passing day: we have nothing to fear from H1N1 (yet).

By contrast, no-one can assess the North Korea’s future because no-one has access to the regime’s decision-making. There is very little triangulation in the reporting, and we, the interested reader, are left with rumour and speculation. We cannot know what the nuclear test signals, but I am not happy to know that they have seemingly improved on their feeble first test, nor that they have a missile that is within striking distance of my home. Who cares if it’s a threat to me now or in 10 years, or perhaps never; for a country that likes to talk about peace and disarmament, the experts are still clueless (the good ones can admit it) and the Japanese public are resoundingly mute.

The Family Grows…

I imagine there are few things more exciting to an aspiring father and family man than the announcement that he’s going to be having a baby. Keiko and I have talked and talked and talked about having one, and we are happy to say that we’ve got this show on the road: come January 2010, there will be heck of a lot more tears in the Simpson household.

"Good News Everyone!"

Happiness aside, there are so many things that I never expected. For starters, I never expected that hearing that my wife was pregnant could be so bittersweet. Keiko only found out when she went to the doctors’ about an abdominal pain she’d been having. The doctor shouted at her (‘Why didn’t you test yourself sooner?!’) and then told her that the pain was probably because the zygote was stitching itself into the wrong part of her womanly bits. He said that the baby probably might not be able to come to term, and Keiko would probably suffer some sort of problem as a result, but that he couldn’t say for sure because his clinic didn’t have a ultrasound scanner.

Imagine hearing that on what should have been the most happiest telephone conversation of you life, and then imagine that you had only a couple of minutes to make that phone call because your student was waiting for his lesson. I felt the blood drain from my face, and for one of the few times of my teaching career, I was struggling to put on that warm demeanour and feigned interest you must bring to every lesson.

I had a beer with Gaoshancha of Conversations with Myself at the Tea House, and I told him that I’d too might be a daddy, but instead of feeling happy, I felt sick to my stomach with worry. Would Keiko be okay? Were we having a baby or not? How was I meant to feel? A million questions plagued my mind. It wasn’t a question of wanting it or not, it was unexpected news for sure, as I had put down Keiko’s pain to other things.

The next day, with very little sleep, as it has been since I heard, we trudged over to the state hospital for a second opinion. The nurse told Keiko she was definitely pregnant and the doctor expressed extreme concern about the doctor at the previous clinic: how could he have shouted at her? What kind of hospital doesn’t have an ultrasound? How could he have made her worry like that?

He whipped out his transvaginal ultrasound (a line if ever I heard one) and you can clearly see that little millimetre long spot where the zygote had developed a pouch. Yet even with physical evidence of its existence, the doctor was being cautious and penciled her in for Friday 21st.

A lot of the weight came off my shoulders, but still, deep down, I was worried. He couldn’t give us a definitive answer at that stage and the week long attempt to be happy while being worried began. For the whole week I felt like I was carrying a burden, it stopped me from sleeping, it affected my concentration, and it wasn’t until Friday this week that I was relieved.

We headed over to the hospital again, and Keiko went back into the doctor’s office. The news was good. Everything is okay, she’s at nearly 6 weeks, and we have to start planning for the medical check-ups required as part of the pregnancy.

We’ve got a long road ahead, and I imagine its a road well-trekked by transnational couples. I’ll keep you informed of developments, as well as address the various facts of having a baby in Japan. Watch this space!