Another cultural difference...

In Japan, no one thinks there's anything wrong with putting a window in front of a urinal on a ground floor bathroom.

Teach them well and let them lead the way...

When you work as an ESL teacher in Japan, you tend to face a lot of the same questions again and again. Part of it has to do with the level of the language skills you're dealing with. If all you know is the present tense, your questions will naturally be limited to immediate lines of thought.

"Do you like Soccer?"
"Do you like strawberry?"
"Are you a college student?
"Do you like Japan?

Lots of yes/no questions. And thanks to a rather puzzling textbook choice, they don't learn all the interrogative words until age 14. So you can finally get gems like:

"How old are you?"
"Where do you live?"
"How tall are you?"
"Why did you come to Japan?"

Of course, thanks to the drill-repeat-drill-repeat and memorize-regurgitate teaching methods favored for language education here, by the time they get to the interrogative words the kids have largely burned do you like into their brains as a single, indivisible unit. Which means you also variations on the following theme.

"What do you like sports?"
"What do you like Japan?"
"Do you like food, what?"
"Who do you like school's cute teacher?"

In general, this has very little to do with what I'm used to as communication. It's not bad for people raised on TV interviews and magazine profiles, and given that it's usually teenagers and pre-teens coming up with these, I might even say they were doing all right. But there really isn almost no emphasis on comprehending the response and using it to continue the conversation. My adult students actually have to be trained how to ask follow-up questions, and textbooks often include formulas that looks something like

"Really? What about [previous answer] did you like best?"
"Oh? What kind of [previous answer] is your favorite?"
and my personal favorite
"I don't know much about [previous answer]. Please tell me more."

But that's really only attempted by the more advanced students. Most people peak out at "I like [blank.] What do you like [blank]?" Which is why what happened last week was such a treat. I had to conduct speaking tests for the 9th graders here. All 211 of them, at around 7 minutes per test. Of itself, that was no treat. And the vast majority of the answers were entirely adequate for people with a minimal command of an illogical lanugage taught with an emphasis on rote memorization in an educational system that discourages abstract thought.

What did happen was that more of the students than I could have hoped for asked questions that indicated they'd been paying attention to earlier replies. I must admit that I was flattered when some students made a point to ask me about eating ramen, reading comic books or playing video games, because they remembered my introduction in class. And when they actually had their own opinions about whether Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior was a better game, why Kamen Rider was a better hero than any of the Power Rangers, or what was most surprising thing they'd ever seen on the TV show Fountain of Trivia, well, I was quite satisfied.

And a few, a rare, precious few, actually gave smart-ass answers. One of the questions they had to answer what "what will you do if [teacher's name] comes to your house?" And while most said they would speak English or study history or something, a very few had the backbone to say things like

• "Lock the door."
  
• "From the, back door, run fast."
  
• "Not open front door and windows."
  

and my personal favorite,

• "Throw many many stones."
  

Now, that question was actually presented as a sample question on the preparation sheet. So the students had a chance to memorize something like that beforehand. Even beyond those, a few students had the presence of mind and confidence to give answers off the top of their heads, in another language. After three years, I had gotten used to getting blank stares, formulaic answers, and paint-peeling dullness a painful majority of the time. But these kids, well, I'd almost say they gave me hope. There was a girl who said that if the weather was nice that she "will stay home and play Tekken 5" because she "dislike[s] outdoor sport." Or the boy who would spend $1000 on "pachinko-gamble games and Aya Ueto photo magazines." And my personal favorite, when asked what he would do after he finished his studies at university, the boy who made a gesture like pulling a hood over his head while saying "I will join the dark side."

I only hope that these little sparks of anarchy and dissent from what's expected don't flare out in these kids. If only I could find some way to help them stay lit up. Some way to, I dunno, throw alcohol on their fires to keep them burning or something.

Not, you know, literally by pouring booze on them. Besides, I have faith in these kids. They're among the best and the brightest here. I feel they'll be smart enough and strong enough to find ways to get their own drinks while they're underage.

Let me see if I understand this:

On Independence Day, a day above all others to remember the ideals of freedom and liberty that America is supposed to be a living example of, I have to read that

• the press is being required to make all aspects of its investigations accountable to the government when reporting on that government or it will face punishment by that same government
  
• that the Pentagon, under a clause stuffed into an education bill, has been quietly collecting a nationwide database on all high school students to keep track of each student's name age, GPA, SSN, address, phone number and race, to better target their military recruitment, primarily at families too poor to afford college.
  
• and that once again the nations legislators are finally taking a stand on the inexplicably-timed issue of flag burning, rather than publicizing who they'll support to take O'Connor's place on the supreme court or why they're continuing to give war-profiteers Haliburton and KBR billions of dollars to provide over-priced supplies to troops in a war that their former CEO pushed for while working as Vice-President.
  

This isn't even irony.

This is hypocracy.
This is lying.
This is the citizens of the United States getting fucked by their government again.

Happy birthday, America. You think you'll get a holiday reach-around?

What did Roosevelt say about opportunity?

Oh yeah, something about

"We know that equality of individual ability has never existed and never will, but we do insist that equality of opportunity still must be sought."
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Which, I guess, could be read as saying that everyone, even the poor, the non-white, the female, the stupid, the crippled, the belivers in different religions, and the members of the political party that is out of fashion all ought to have a fair shot at life.

Of course, money tends to skew things, but it's a nice enough sentiment, and it sounds especially good when you slap it on something like education. Who could be against a fair chance for children? Even for those truly, butt-ugly children. Naturally, there've been causes for improvement in the execution of this fairness idea, but generally, it's a pretty straightforward concept.

I bring this up because the principal of the school where I work has been chatting with me about his school and schools in Japan in general. As a foreigner, I can offer him the perspective of an outsider as well an aspect of the confessional. Since he speaks to me in fairly rapid English the other teachers can't understand what he's saying. And even if I did want to tell someone else what he said, no one would really listen to me or take me seriously. I'm not Japanese, you know.

To get back to the point, he explained that there is nothing like gifted and talented or AP classes available in Japanese public schools. During the post-war reconstruction of Japan, the education system was totally re-organized with 1940's America as a rough model. While this did mean giving up the Imperial German style of education adopted during the Meiji restoration, complete with unthinking monarch-obediance and a military-preperatory emphasis, it did allow for a greater sense of opportunity. Under the new system, education was supposed to be available to all children, regardless of ability or gender.

But as the revolutions of the 40's ossified into the policies of today, there has been a similar hardening of ideas. According to my principal, most parents today insist on an equal treatment for all students. Even in cases of wildly different ability. A dyslexic child will be kept in the same class as his peers, just as a math prodigy will be kept in the same class, regardless of ability. There is no variation in curriculum within an age level. There are no advanced placement classes, no accelerated courses, no college level courses for those nerdy kids in the high school who were always wrecking the curve. Nothing. Most school districts do have one or two schools per age range that offer a class for developmentally disabled children, and occasionally an entire school for a specific disability, like blindness or deafness. But in general, the kids are kept together by age. Period.

It seems puzzling to me that a child with extraordinary talents would not be allowed to move as quickly as their mind would allow, but the idea of wasted potential never even enters the debate. Maybe it's just an expression of the "sticking out nail gets hammered down" idea, but that really strikes me as wrong. Especially given the tendency to spoil children in Japan. As long as a person is considered a child, they tend to be indulged far more that seems usual from an American point of view. And it strikes me as sort of, well, callous to keep a kid in a class that's below what they're capable of. Having been stuck in manditory lessons myself, I can tell you it's no picnic.

But maybe I'm just viewing this as a synecdoche of one of my biggest problems with both Japanese and American society. People are expected to applaud and appreciate and even worship people who are set up as special for some reason or another. But if a person should actually demonstrate some measure of superiority it's considered in poor taste. Why else would so many people in Japan, more than are statistically possible to fit into a "median group," claim that they were middle class? Why else would people in the US who make several hundred thousand dollars a year say they were "just, y'know, kind of upper-middle class?" Why would it be considered offensive to act superior if you are, in fact, better than someone at something?

Of course, I'm trying to cover a bit too much here. The point is: kids here have to stick together, whether the class is too easy or too hard. And the educators don't like it, but there's not much anyone thinks can be done about it...

I thought this was going to be a different topic...

...but sometimes you have to take what the world gives you. In this case, a minor story about the re-issue in Japan of a book that was banned mainly due to US pressure: "Little Black Sambo," a story that is presumably about a boy in India outwitting a pair of tigers. But it's most famous for it's presumably racist illustrations of a golliwog negro, complete with large red lips and bulging white eyes. In the US the book hadn't been domestically published for quite some time, but new editions are easily available from online distributors.

But the point I'm curious about is the question of intent. Most of the defenders of the book seem to fall into two categories. The first group says that it's not really racist because the original author and illustrator had no racist intent. The second is that it's a beloved piece of nostalgia, and Sambo outwits all his opponents and wins in the end, and anyway the story's setting in India makes Sambo Asian and not Black to boot.

But trying to decide if racism can be eliminated from a situation by deciding on intent is tricky. Kazuo Mori, an educational psychologist at Shinshu University in Nagano, re-illustrated the story, but

with the central character drawn as a black Labrador puppy. The test groups [in Japan] found both illustrated versions equally amusing.
Ergo, no racism, Mori concluded.
He then fine-tuned the drawings of the puppy, found himself a publisher, and in 1997 released a "nonracist" version of the tale, titled "Chikiburo Sampo."

It's worth noting that the name, Chibikuro, literally translates as "Little Black," but with a ring of affection. Not unlike "L'il Abner" or "Little Lulu." And "Sampo", which can also be transliterated as "sanpo," means walk or stroll. Thus, the new name comes to mean something like "Walking the Black Lab Puppy" in Japanese. And even this wound up being argued over.

I guess the only thing i can add is that most of these disputes seem to boil down to perception, both of things and of the intent of others. I'd like to sum this up, but it's too broad and too sprawling. Should the history of America and Europe have anything to do with the book sales in Japan? Can the anyone take something that's so loaded with meaning for one group and use it somewhere else with no problems at all? Is it even fair to expect understanding of why something might be inflamatory from a group that has no real history with any of the root issues? And is it possible that all this thinking and guessing and examination is just making things worse?

Fuck, I'm starting to understand Rodney's feeling when he uttered those famous words, But I keep wanting to change it a bit.

"Why can't we get along here?"

Why?

Racism. Mine, that is... (continued)

I suppose that some clarification is in order. It wasn't my intent to cast doubt on the sincerity or depth of my friendships. But the problem with race is that, as an issue, it is so loaded, almost any sentence is likely to raise all sorts of unintended and unforeseen reactions in the people who read it.

For the record: I don't actually have mental categories of "bad whites" and "good whites" to file people in, and I don't generally have a compulsion to start with race as a classification when I'm trying to describe someone. The people I grew up with, I'm talking about those unfortunate few who knew me way back when, they exist on their own, beyond the traps of race that we all had to learn together.

But you have to understand that in America, the sociological default image of a person is someone white with a Christian-background. That's what is assumed about the characters in any screenplay, unless specifically mentioned otherwise. That's who the target consumer is, unless specifically mentioned otherwise. That's who the laws are intended to protect, unless specifically mentioned otherwise.

Oh, sure, other groups can fit into those categories. There was no reason that the lead in 'I, Robot' couldn't have been a Portuguese guy, with the possible exception of Will Smith's marketability. There's no reason that Hispanic women or Laotian men can't shop at J. Crew, with the possible exception of not wanting to look like dorks. And there's nothing to stop anyone, regardless of race, from seeking redress in a court of law, with the possible exception of not having enough money for a court battle. But if you look at the laws, the people who write them, and the people who most often receive unequal treatment under those laws, some things start to seem, well, most easily described?and explained in terms of race.

My goal, however, isn't get into the finer distinctions within the law. My point is that history, culture, religion and habit still affect, tinge and distort the way people get treated. Being out of a predominately white social setting has made me realize a lot of things about my own preconceptions. And saying them out loud sounds as ludicrous to me as hearing these things in reverse from other people sounded. But it's the clearest way I can think of to articulate what it's like to be reminded every single day that you're not really who was meant in the official idea of society.

After I really got to know some people, after we really got to be friends, I found I honestly was able to forget that they were white. I could think of them as just Stephanie, Justin and Mark, and not "Stephanie the white girl," "Justin the white guy" and "that white Mark."

Oddly enough, when I really try to think about my attitudes concerning white people, I find they're mostly directed at Americans. I'm sure there are plenty of stereotypically white people in Europe and Canada, to say nothing of New Zealand, Australia and that island populated by descendants of the mutineers from The Bounty, any of whom may behave just like Americans in terms of race. But I don?t find myself prejudging them in the same ways that I do Americans.

Maybe it has to do with the relatively small amount of time I've spent in the company of people from different places. The few folks I've met have, by and large, been open-minded, fair, and rather intelligent. I don't have enough experience with racist Swedes, for example, to have formed a predisposition concerning Sweden. And you could probably say that, in general, people who choose to live abroad tend to be more open-minded. Or at least, more open to new experiences.

Maybe it's because I expect more of my countrymen. I don't feel the same sense of offence from a Korean person asking me why there are dark brown people in my country, or from an Iranian person asking me where in the world my family comes from. Maybe it's because I don't feel there's any reason to expect them to understand the separation between race, nationality and identity that pervades American life.

I do expect some degree of that sort of understanding from white people from the Commonwealth Nations, though. One of the legacies of the British Empire, apart from the sacrament of Gin and Tonic and the communion of football, was a lot of forced interaction between Anglo-Saxons and damn near everyone else from outside of Europe. Exploitative or not, as those people had to live around each other, some sort of mutual awareness should have arisen.

In Japan, well, there are a couple of different flavors of racism, sexism, and nationalist discrimination that show up in different levels, concentrations and expressions just about everywhere. But I can sort of understand why it still exists here. Some days it�s easier to deal with than others, but in general, it seems to be ignorance instead of maliciousness. That said, however, I have a hell of a lot of trouble tolerating ignorance in people who ought to know better or who have had opportunities to learn better. Willful ignorance is just about the only thing I find unforgivable.

Of course, some people, regardless of race, creed or gender, are just assholes.

Maybe that�s enough of that for now, huh? Next time: more senseless griping about something trivial. Or an observation about pop culture that I can�t adequately explain.

Paranoia and racism.

On Sunday my girlfriend and I went to see a play put on at the Canadian Embassy in central Tokyo. It was a very clever one-act about a self-centered ass of a nephew who has come to visit his aunt in her final days and wait for her to die. It'd been a while since I'd seen a play, and it was a pretty good one. Even if I didn't like the music they chose for the scene transitions.

But since it was an English play that was staged in the Canadian embassy, the audience, which wasn't that big, only around 40 or 50 people, was overwhelmingly non-Japanese. And with the exceptions of a neatly-groomed middle-aged Japanese guy, a Bohemian-stylish Japanese woman and me, they were all white.

It took a few minutes to work out what was so unsettling about the audience. It was like stepping into one of those trick rooms where all the furniture is painted with a pattern that makes it look too large and the wallpaper lines make the room look like it shrinks towards one end. My mind wasn't processing some bit of input data properly and it was skewing all the results. Then it hit me. All those round, watery, blue eyes. That weird, irregularly pigmented pinkish skin. The noses: ships prows and cathedral arches and great cavernous icebergs, paused in the act of calving off of glacial faces. There was so much meaty, pale bulk in that room. The heavy set people seemed saggy and soft. Living versions of those craft-store dolls made of cleverly stitched pantyhose stuffed with cotton. But even the few slim people seemed somehow unnatural-looking and out of proportion.

Have you read the original Planet of the Apes? I recently finished a good translation of it, and the protagonist suffered a similar predicament after living in ape society. His former surroundings, his former peers no longer seem normal to him. He becomes acclimatized to the apes, and is unable to relax in human company.

But I can't say I ever felt like a human among apes here. Then again, there were precious few times I felt like a human among humans in America. Race always threw an irregularity into things. And there in that theater, where I should have been able to suspend disbelief and feel like I was actually observing a man hoping his elderly aunt would kick off, I kept flashing back to the fact that I was surrounded and outnumbered by white people. Homogeneous, fleshy, white people with Midwestern American and Canadian accents.

White western-hemisphere people, you don't all look alike to me. But in groups, you make it nearly impossible to relax in your presence. The vast majority of you, by default and without realizing why, treat me differently than you treat each other from the moment you lay eyes on me. It's not that different from Japan, but they've got centuries of isolation and a limited level of interaction with other races outside of the context of war.

But growing up in America, where we were supposed to be rubbing shoulders with everyone regardless of race, creed or color, has left me with this kink in my vision that I can't turn off. Some, hell, most of my best friends are white Americans. But I can't get past this issue yet, and it was surprising to have it pulled up here in Japan.

Just for the record...

On Friday night last week I was able to go to a teeny-weeny club on the second floor of a mixed use building in Ogikubo, a part of Tokyo that feels like the good parts of the Nob Hill/university area in Albuquerque. For a one-drink minimum I got to hear five hours of good music in a comfortable, clean, smoke-free room. All the guests were well-behaved and generally decent dancers. And after it was all over, it was quick work to catch a clean, fairly priced cab for a ride back home.

There are, in fact, many good things about living in Japan. I just find it easier to channel rage and bile into the will to write than I do contentment and satisfaction.

In summary: Elementary school lessons are bad for me

I have recently had to go through the process of introducing myself to elementary schools again. This time there was enough about it I recognized so that I could not focus on the procedure so much, but on what surrounds that procedure. Will you excuse my going into some detail here? Thank you.

The two schools in question are fairly large; each has approximately four classes of 35 students for each grade, grades one through six. One homeroom teacher per class, a head teacher, principal and vice-principal, a school secretary, 3 or 4 maintenance staff, and a few specialized teacher/counsellors. And me, who will be coming to the school every other wednesday for the next 10 1/2 months.

Last year there was a different foreigner doing the job I have now. "Skip-sensei" was much liked and quite well known in this town. And all the students, with the exception of the youngest classes, are aware of there being a change, because the first phrase most of them had to say was something like "the foreign teacher is here, but it's not Skip."

Please don't think I begrudge Skip his lasting popularity. It sounds like he worked hard and was a decent person. But it would seem that, even among the older students, there is still something lacking in their familiarity with foreign people. For one thing, there were an awful lot of students who wanted to touch my hands and arms, sometimes for a handshake, sometimes to compare relative hand sizes, and sometimes with the same tentative pressure you might give an avocado to check its ripeness. A touch meant to find information about the composition of a thing. And their cry afterwards was often something like "I did it! I recieved a handshake from the new foreigner!" or "Whoa! His arms feel like my uncle's..."

The whole thing reminded me of the guy who brought his lizards to my elementary school for an assembly, years and years ago. After grabbing our attention with his bug-eating iguana, he brought out a python which we were encouraged to touch, if we felt brave enough. The buzz around the kids who did go up felt about the same as here. Except I was on the other side this time, with the turtle and the iguana, basking in the 100 watt glare of children's curiousity and the reverberating echoes of "cool" and "whoa" and "wow" elicited by every action.

I am convinced I am not a celebrity, and I am well aware of the fickle way in which kids are motivated by novelty. That said, this whole process could easily mess with your head. Teachers who think you're some kind of entertainer may encourage the class to applaud you for merely showing up to do your job. You may be asked, with rapt attention, if you can eat rice or bread, what your favorite color is, and how many people are in your family. You might be paraded in front of the entire school, faculty, staff, parents organizations and local government, like a visiting dignitary (I've seen them do it to Chinese diplomats) or a school pet (I've seen them do it to rabbits and turtles). They may serve you separate meals in a room all by yourself, or they may hustle you from class to class with the express purpose of letting the chidren watch you and ask you questions while you try to eat.

Is this what feminist writers talk about when they use the word "objectified?" Because there is very little introduction of my self in situtations like that, and a lot more comments about the physical dimensions I occupy and whether or not I would be able to use a bed, bath, clothing store, escalator, chopsticks or doorway. The whole process must look good once the itinerary had been written up and filed away (generally under "experiental education" or "pending investication"), but it ain't so good for a person's spirit.

They go together like, well, like something, I'm sure.

Okay. On a completely different note, when I lived in LA, I had enough free time to waste it on some profoundly stupid things. For example, there was an episode of the Simpsons where Homer asked Apu if he had "any of that beer with candy floating in it, y'know, Skittlebrau?"

Well, one of my then-roommates and I decided to test the Skittlebrau idea one night. As it turns out, Skittles are too dense. They sink right to the bottom of whatever kind of beer you put them in, and stick together like a fructose coral reef. And their delightful candy colors are highly water and alcohol soluble. We certainly could "taste the rainbow," as it was leached right off the candies and formed a brownish-gray cloud at the top of the beer.

And the Root-Beer-Floats-with-real-beer didn't work any better. The bitter of the beer clashed with the creamy of the ice cream to make a curdled flavor fandango. It was like a party in my mouth where everyone was pouring wallpaper paste and vinegar on the floor.

As culinary booze-hound experiements go, it was strictly 5th grade science fair stuff.

But this guy has set a shockingly high standard with the "pork martini" tests. Well done, Mr. Karpf. Well done.