Flashback Friday

Last year I wrote a series on Japan--what took me there, and the unique experiences I had during my three years living among the rice paddies of rural, mountainous Japan, which is a far cry from our traditional vision of a Tokyo-Japan. This entry was of November 6, 2007. Enjoy!

日本の思い出 ... Memories of Japan

Wow..it has been so long since I have even typed in Japanese that I had to enable the Japanese keyboard on my computer to be able to make the characters.

As the time going into winter is one of great nostalgia for me, I feel it fitting to delve a bit into some of my fondest memories of my younger days. I spend three years teaching ESL at two different middle schools in the town of 中之条. Nakanojo. "Naka" means "middle, center"; "no" is a possessive or, in this case, used as an "of"; and "jou" (long o, two syllables but not always romanized that way) means "road."













Middle of the road.

Just your average little town cradled in the foothills of active and dormant volcanoes where most citizens have rice paddies, know how to dance the yagibushi in the town's summer festival, and have very limited, if any, contact on a daily basis with any 外人。

Gaijin. Literally, the outside (gai) person (jin).

The foreigner.

Somehow Nakanojo and I were the perfect match. *cue rambling mode* I had been to 群馬県 Gunma-ken (prefecture) in August of 1990. I went as a member of a youth orchestra exchange, and spent two weeks with a host family that spoke very little if any English. The eldest daughter was a percussionist in the 太田 Ohta City Youth Philharmonic, the middle daughter played trumpet and the youngest daughter was, like myself, a violinist. I was selected to play concertmaster (we always called it 'concertmistress', the coveted position being She Who Gets to Sleep With the Entire Orchestra...although in those times I was waaaaaaaay too angelic to take that title seriously), which made my family very proud and they wanted me to give Ayumi-chan tutorials each night on her pieces. What struck me most was the fact that we could not look at each other, open our mouths and say anything that could be understood by the other; however, we could look at the same page of lines and, to the untrained eye, seemingly random dots and various miscellaneous markings and create exactly the same sound. This realization blew my relatively naive mind and marked the beginning of my openness to communication in all forms.

I maintained contact with my host family during my subsequent four-year tenure at University. I completed a double major, one of which was Spanish, and a double minor, one of which was Japanese, and could basically write notes and send them and, obviously, be somewhat understood in my efforts to master at least the two basic phonetic alphabets.

Upon returning from studies in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in the middle of my junior year of University, I felt at a great loss of direction. Indeed, my time in such a poor area made me yearn to go back and idealistically solve the world's problems but also armed me with the knowledge that such goals are impossible to achieve. Best to better oneself so as to be capable of offering more. But how?

In Senior Thesis hell, required for both my International Studies major and my Honors degree, I also started teaching ESL in a local school district, which also meant moonlighting as a social worker and translator. I spent countless hours transcribing interviews my primary thesis advisor had conducted with a variety of female migrants for a book she was authoring, not to mention my own interviews I held with legals and illegals alike regarding their perceived assimilation and acculturation experiences. Fascinating. But leaving me feeling, still, without a defined direction. Life without school? How could I consider my next step, post-University "real life"?

Long story short, I was told I should apply to the then rather selective Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program(me). I figured I had nothing to lose, so I did, interviewed and was offered a position along with one other from my University. As I had previously visited Gunma prefecture, that was where I was again sent, but this time out to rural Gunma perhaps due to the fact that I had, in comparison to some applicants, a decent base of Japanese upon which to grow and actual ESL teaching experience and, of course, living abroad experience.

I arrived in Tokyo in sultry July, spent three days in whirlwinds of conferences, getting to know other 外人 being sent out to my same prefecture, everyone "testing out" each other's Japanese levels in a meager effort of reassurance. The bus ride out to Gunma was interesting in that we were given a crash course in how to accept a business card that is presented to us, as was to occur following a ベントlunch...

You must bow. Try to bow lower than the person you're bowing to, as it's probably going to be your supervisor. But don't fall over. Don't bump heads, either (don't laugh...it did happen to me once!...but fortunately not that day). Don't act overly enthused; keep all nervousness and excitement undercaps.

You will be presented with a business card. That is the way people meet here. You don't just take it and stuff it in your back pocket. You accept with TWO hands and bow. After retiring to your place you keep the 名刺 (meishi) out, in your hands, "study it" or at least feign interest and admiration...a lot of money goes into each individual's 名刺 and you will also soon receive your own set.

And with that, we were off...

Three men came the prefectural capital city of 前橋 Maebashi to greet me and take me back to my new home. The gruff looking Mr. Nakazawa was the Superintendent of Schools for Nakanojo Town. He was also a musician, and brought some of his favorite Stephen Foster scores for me to look over as an ice-breaker as we settled in to a small café for an aisu co-hi (iced coffee). The other two men, Morita-san and Iyoku-san did not speak any English and appeared rather shy; Iyoku-san would, in fact, become my papa-chan, as I so affectionately nicknamed him, as he would take care of all my day-to-day issues while demonstrating worlds of patience for my developing Japanese skills, and we did a lot of things socially together as my Japanese really took off and I could communicate well. There had been two foreign teachers preceeding me in Nakanojo, so although the routine was somewhat familiar it was still far from set in stone.

That is where my stay in my dear Nakanojo begins...