Halfway Through; The New Normal

What do our blog and a city bus have in common?  You wait forever for one to show up, and then two come.

The other day, my supervisor swept by my desk and left me a form with a smile and an "onegaishimasu!" (You can think of it as a polite one-word way to say, "please do this!")  Glancing down, I saw that it was none other than the famous re-contracting agreement.  Having discussed this with Jorden some months ago, and coming to the agreement that three years is the perfect amount of time for us to spend teaching English in Japan, I slapped on my signature and handed it back in.

I glanced at the Lego-block calendar on my desk and thought, "Wow, we're halfway done." Then I thought, "I should write a blog to commemorate this special occasion." 

English teaching is serious business.

But I got sidetracked on wikihow.com and forgot about it.  Then today I found myself with some spare time, and decided to get it done.

Having been here for a year and half, I think one of the most interesting things is what we've come to see as normal.  When we first arrived, we were dazzled by everything - the people, the buildings, the language, you name it.  Now, however, it all seems so... normal.  Consequently, this is one of the best reasons you out there should come visit us in Japan - when we have friends and family come here, we get to experience our Japanese life through your eyes, and see all the unique and exciting stuff anew.  Book your tickets today!

I brainstormed for a bit and came up with the following items as good examples of what we now view as our "new normal."  Enjoy!

-Temples and Shrines

When we first got here, the temples and shrines dotting the city around us always caught our eyes.  We'd pause to look curiously into the gardens and gaze at the lanterns and statues, often snapping pictures.  These days, we hardly notice them.  There are no less than twenty temples on the route we usually take to get downtown.  I guess you could equate it to churches in the south.  A Japanese friend of ours studied for a few years in Georgia, and he mentioned how strange it was to him at first that there was a church on every corner.  Now, we'll breeze right past a sprawling temple with gardens, lanterns, and huge stone statues without a second glance.

-Carrying Cash

I don't have a Japanese credit card.  I don't think our bank offers debit cards.  The only time I use a card these days is to buy plane tickets and shop on Amazon.com, usually for digital content, and I use our US account.  Everywhere in Japan runs on cash.  You buy train tickets with cash, pay for hotel rooms in cash, and even pay cash-on-delivery for goods from Amazon.jp.  Most of our recurring bills are set up to automatically withdraw from our bank account, but not all of them; I still go to the nearest convenience store with our electricity bill and some money to keep the lights on   (oh, yeah... and you can pay your bills at convenience stores.  That's something else that's totally normal for us now.)  As such, whenever Jorden and I need to make a big purchase like train tickets to Osaka or a block of cheese, we'll grab what can only be described as a gangster wad of cash and go on our way without batting an eyelash.

-No Wifi

While we technically have the capability, since a co-worker of mine gave us a wireless router, we don't have wifi in our house.  I've been able to find two places in our city of 450,000 people where you can get no-questions-asked free wifi.  Many places like McDonald's, Stabucks, and other cafes, will advertise free wifi, but you have to set up an account with whatever internet provider they have first, and even then it tends to be limited to a set amount of time.  Point is, it's a lot harder to come by than it is in the States, and it feels completely normal now.  I no longer have the expectation that a coffee shop or restaurant will have wifi.

-Beginnings and Endings

Japanese culture is really into set, clearly defined beginnings and endings to things.  Each class starts with an opening greeting and ends with a farewell.  All the students will stand up and I'll say "Hello, everyone" "Hello, Daniel" "How are you today?" "I'm fine, thank you.  And you?" "I'm great, thanks."  Then at the end of class, "Good-bye everyone!" "Goodbye, Daniel."  Each meeting starts with someone saying in Japanese, "This meeting is now starting" and ends with someone saying "This meeting is now ended."  Even our church service starts with a deacon saying, for example, (in Japanese), "This Kanazawa Baptist Church's meeting on January 19th, 2014, is now beginning."  Perfectly normal.

-Work Parties

For those of you out there who work in schools (or if you don't, just remember back to when you were in school), when's the last time you and your co-workers kicked all the students out of the school at the end of the day, then, not caring about secrecy, loaded up on a bus and spent an entire night drinking?  Because for me, it was December 21st, and I've got another one coming up in March.  The work parties here are just part of the gig.  I mean, we're not being loud about it and saying "everyone leave, we're going out drinking" or anything.  But everyone knows exactly where all the teachers go on that Friday after the big test week (funny, it's the teachers and not the students who need a break after testing times.)  Nothing strange about that.

-The Things We Say

Japanese is really, really different from English.  Different writing systems, different pronunciation and different syntax.  So obviously, the way they work is hard to compare.  But, there are a few things about Japanese that I originally thought very strange that now we just go along with.  For example, in Japanese you rarely refer to someone using the pronoun "you."  It's considered to be very rude unless you really know what you're doing.  The correct way to refer to someone is by their name or their title.  For example, if I was talking with my co-worker I would say this: "I often eat french fries.  What about Mrs. Fukami?"  I would say this even if I was talking directly to Mrs. Fukami.  Also, we call our Vice-principle, "Vice-principle."  So if I need to ask her a question, I say "Vice-principle, where is the nearest Taco Bell?"  Technically you can just drop the name all together in Japanese since you're talking to them and the subject is therefore inferred, but this is slightly less polite, so I wouldn't do with with my co-workers.

Similarly, the Japanese often strip down grammar to the most simple form.  So if a student enters a room and it's cold, they'll simply say "Cold!"  Or if I tell them I get up at 5:19 in the morning, they'll exclaim, "Early!"

-No Central Heating and No Insulation

This one's kind-of cheating, because I sure as heck still notice it, and it still bugs me.  I will never consider this "normal."  Our house has a wall-mounted heating unit and a kerosene heater.  They have timers and automatic temperature gauges, but I still wake up in the morning seeing my breath, and have to turn on the heater and then wait a good five or ten minutes before emerging from the covers.  Worst of all, if we shut off the heater, the room goes cold easily within 15 minutes due to the thin walls and lack of double-paned glass.  Also, only (certain) classrooms and the staff room are heated in our schools.  The hallways?  Gym?  Bathrooms?  All about the same temperature as outside (right now it's a balmy 39 degrees; when I got to work this morning, it was snowing.)  Even in the classrooms, you have to show up early and turn on the ceiling-mounted heaters... they don't have automatic thermostats or timers.  Added bonus for the summer: absolutely no air conditioning in the classrooms.  And it gets up to 90 degrees here with well over 80% humidity.


So as you can tell, Japan is crazy, unique, and now fairly normal.  We've really enjoyed living here, and we look forward to the next year and a half.  Heck, maybe by then we'll consider shirako to be a normal food.  Maybe.