I, JET

So just for funs and giggles, and also because I think that I am already having an interesting day, I'll walk you through a school day in the life of Ray.

The alarm on my keitai (Japanese word for cell phone) goes off at 6:25 playing “Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies.” I hit the one-minute snooze once, before a reprisal. The alarm is then turned off altogether. Then the second alarm on my keitai goes off at 6:30. Again, snooze, reprisal, off. This is followed by my old North American Nokia's alarm going off at 6:33. This one has a bit more of a piercing sound, and so that gets off immediately.

Long story short, my brain gets the message that I've got to get up. My body has other plans though. Therefore, at 7 AM, I finally roll out of bed. I should point out here that I have to leave my house between 7:15 and 7:30 to catch the train. A scene of madness ensues which a casual observer would assume to be a man out of sorts or perhaps one that has totally gone mad. Somehow in the 15 minutes that I have, I manage to shower, dress, shave, and pack my bag for the day ahead. In retrospect, I'm still in awe.

Out the door I go at about 7:21 and down the street to the train station. By fortune, my apartment is but a seven-minute walk from the station – five by way of running. I purchase my ticket from the machine and bump into Phil and Kristen doing just the same. At least once a week will us commuting JETs run into one another at the station. Two flights of stairs later, I'm on the platform and wedge myself into one of the last free spaces on the last of three cars of the train.

I should explain the train in the morning here. As we're more “in the country” than other areas of Japan – the fact that we're the prefectural capital be damned for the moment – our trains run less frequently. Every hour or so is the norm, even during morning/evening rush. And so we all have to pile up into this train at 7:31 in the morning, students, salary men, and traveler alike. On any given day, the train is about 94-96% students. And for whatever reason, it's just the three cars. The result is a sandwiched mass of humanity the likes of which you may have heard of (stories of people being forced into subway cars in Tokyo and the like). Now, mark that I don't claim that this happens everywhere in Japan, or indeed that it is like this everyday. Some days it's crowded but not pushing crowded. This has just been the case nearly every morning since I've been here.

After feeling grossly uncomfortable for about 15 minutes, the train stops at the third station and nearly empties to the tone of about 90% of its occupants departing, myself included. In our place go other students bound for another school down the line – which happens to be my second school – but it isn't nearly as crowded. Another 15 minute walk and I'm at my school nestled in the mountains.

First thing is changing shoes as you don't wear your outside shoes inside the school. We have a teacher's entrance where there are little boxes with our names on it for our shoes. We take from them slippers that we wear inside, and put our outdoor shoes in them. The idea is not to bring in dirt and rain and snow and the like into the school. Funny thing about this is that you can wear your indoor slippers to go to the parking lot, or to run into the field quickly for whatever reason (you're not supposed to, but it happens), and so it's possible to bring in the very dirt that you're trying not to; however this is just one of those “that's just the way it is” things about Japan.

After shoes is the walk to the office, and subsequently to my desk. One might recall from a previous post my telling of arriving in Tokyo and running a gauntlet of bowing? Well, coming to school is the same thing, albeit done vocally. As with Canada, it's customary to say “Good Morning” in the mornings. Same thing is done in Japan, except that here you say it to EVERYONE that you pass, student and teacher alike. As well, if you hear it being said, even if the person isn't addressing you, you just say it back. Indeed, often it is said not to anyone specific, but just to announce it to anyone in hearing distance.

So another teacher arrives to change her shoes as I'm leaving, “Ohayou gozaimasu”. I pass the main office, “Ohayou gozaimasu”. Two teachers passed me on the way to the office, “Ohayou gozaimasu”. And then you get INTO the office. I've just started saying, “Ohayou gozaimasu” indiscriminately as I go past the rows and I hear a chorus as my reply. Although I can finally sit down at my desk, there are teachers who pass me, so I have to go back to their “Ohayou gozaimasu”. All and all, I probably utter it about 30-40 times in a given morning, including to my classes and random students that cross my path.

Every morning we have a morning meeting. It's akin to morning emails that one gets at work. First the principals and staff address the whole room, and then we break into our grades and have another, more exclusive one. I understand maybe a collective 10 seconds out of 10 minutes worth, but the teachers usually fill me in on the important stuff.

Before the morning meeting though, I have one of my teachers already standing by my desk as I arrived. She gave me a few worksheets and explained that this is what we'd be doing in first period. This doesn't sound like much, but considering it's 8 in the morning and I was sleeping not one hour ago and still have a swimming head and haven't even sat down yet, this is a lot to take down first thing at my desk.

After the meeting, I go to one my teacher's class to read three sentences every morning. His students learn new vocab everyday, and he gives me three words in the morning with which to form sentences and read to his class for listening comprehension. So I make the sentences, go to his class, and then come back to the staff room to chill for a few more minutes. This is followed by cleanup time, which I also have to explain. So! In most Japanese schools, there's no dedicated janitor. At least there isn't that I've seen. So for ten minutes in the morning, the students clean the school. They sweep the floors and wipe down the boards and clean the bathroom and everything. My task in helping one class is to go onto a section of the grounds and pull out weeds. An exercise in futility if I've ever seen one, but that's just the ways it is. I chuckle to myself wondering how Canadian kids would rebel if asked to clean their classroom. On the surface, this seems absolutely heinous, but considering that we don't trash the school by the end of each day, the daily upkeep isn't that strenuous in the least.

As cleanup time ends, we finally start class. For my first period, we did an expansion of emotion/feeling vocabularly which culminated in me acting out various emotions much to the students' delight. My second class was switched from second to third period (With no one telling me. Although class changes are posted on a board every morning. In Japanese.) and therein we read from a book, did conversations, and I answered questions while they did English activities.

Any given day I'd have had fourth period on Thursdays off, but a cancelled class on Tuesday was moved to today, so I had to do yet another self-introduction class. Self-introduction wears on you. The way an army fatigue wears on a soldier after three weeks in the field and no change of clothes. You do it for each class you have – call it five or six or seven different classes per school – and times it by however many schools you have. I have two, so in theory I've done this anywhere from 10 to 14 times. I've created a slideshow of pictures that I explain concerning myself, Canada, Jamaica, my family, my friends, etc (A few of you reading this are in it, by the way). I've been told by the teachers that the students really enjoy it, but you'd never know from looking at their dull, cow-eyed expressions. Self-intro ends and I ask them if they have any questions. You could hear the current running through the power cords it's so quiet. If I'm lucky, I'll get two questions. The same two questions: “How old are you?” and “Do you have a girlfriend?”, which garners the two response of "Wakai ne" (Young, isn't he) and giggles, respectively. I didn't even get those today, so we resorted to picking on kids to ask me. Then they introduced themselves to me: “Hi, my name is Akira. I like sports.” The most popular response was, "Hello, my name is ~. I don't like English." Three kids said, “Hi, my name is ~. I like Raymond”, to which the entire class would erupt. I'm glad that I can at least get a laugh out of them, albeit at my expense.

Lunch followed, but I was talking with so many teachers and kids that I hadn't a few minutes to eat. I jumped right into my next class with the sports kids, and that involved me reading while they answered questions based on what I read. Every so often, the entire class would randomly start giggling and staring at me for what I perceived to be no reason. After convincing myself that I don't have food on my face, or that my fly isn't down, I just shrug and ignore it.

Lo and behold, a fifth class then follows. This was an oral class, so I spend the class reading phonetic symbols of English and words using them. You'd never think that the difference between hearing 'lock' and 'luck' or 'lock' and 'rock' would be so profound, but just wait until you see 40 contorted faces looking at you.

Oh, by the way, about half my classes are 40 or so kids, usually a split class that combines just for me. A few classes that I have are about 10-20, but 40 is what I consider the norm. For me, at least.

My classes finally over, I hit the cafeteria for my lunch at 2:20 finally, chilling with a teacher while there. Then came back here to finish up this blog. I started this at about 8:30 this morning. It's now 3:50. I want to post this, so I won't keep documenting until I leave. For now, I'll probably check out a few sports clubs and see what they're up to, then mosey on the 4:20 or 5:10 train home for meager dinner and decent sleep for once. Oh, perchance to dream...

So this is a more or less typical day for me. Mark differences are that I usually don't do five classes in a day; it's more around three or four. I usually have time for lunches. Also, my classes usually don't go so back to back; I've got breaks and such here and there. I just thought that this day was a bit out of the ordinary, so decided to share it. Pray for Mojo.

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A short epilogue: I just noticed that I'm wearing my high school uniform - white dress shirt and grey slacks - the same grey slacks that I wore back then, too. Laugh if you will, but dropping $60 a pant times four pants? I'm wearing these badboys 'till they fall apart.