That`s Japanese for November! Though now it's already jyu-ni-gatsu...
I have two drafts for entries from this month that will have to wait. I just haven`t found the opportunity to fully hash either one of them out up to this point. You see, I`ve had quite a full plate for this past week, constantly bouncing back and forth between studying the slight variations in shades of matte gray that covers my desk and every once in a while standing up to walk around the teacher`s room frantically, so that everyone gets the impression that I`m equally as stressed out about this week as them. That`s what I feel the need to write about right now.
So it`s testing week for high schoolers here in Yamaguchi-ken. You can tell it`s testing week because the droves of kids marching from the train station to school are making the morning commutes from automatic-muscle-memory, their eyes and minds buried in the books relevant to that day`s test subjects. What this means for teachers is that regular classes are cancelled in favor of half day test-o-thons where everyone runs around looking really stressed for the first half and then for the other half of the day they bury themselves in these monstrous stacks of papers and use only small, red pens to dig themselves out. It takes hours and looks terribly tramautizing for everyone. Anyway, as usual, I`m not completely clear about what exactly is going on around me from moment to moment. But, as usual, I know that it`s important and everyone is really worked up about it.
What testing week means for me, though, is absolutely n-o-t-h-i-n-g.
I`ve been through a week like this before. In fact, during my first month here there was a testing week, but I only vaguely remember it. Obviously, during my first few weeks here there was a lot going on and paying attention to variations in my workday somehow managed to fall through the cracks.
This time, however, I saw testing week coming. I didn`t know what to make of it, but as I watched that big, blank, empty page on my weekly planner move closer and closer I felt something akin to the feeling you get when you jump out of an airplane and you don't notice you've left behind your parachute until you're close enough to the ground to realize that it's really going to hurt when you hit it.
So I had the weekend and Thanksgiving came and went (more about that later). Then, like always, I sat down at my desk on Monday, 8:10AM, casually pushed the power button on my computer and pull out my weekly planner while it loads... I open the planner... Nothing but blankness stares back at me...blankly. And I stare blankly back at the blankness, and it stares back at me. And... Hmmmmmm... The wheels started turning. Nothing to do this week. Nothing to do... Hmmmm... Maybe I`ll just get online here and check the news... (10 minutes later) Maybe I`ll just get online here and check the news again... (repeat, for eight hours, then repeat again, this time for three days). Truly, I don`t mean to oversell it when I put it this way, I don`t think my time has ever felt so entirely meaningless in all of my life. Even compared to that summer after freshman year where my job was literally sweeping the dust off of the lumberyard parking lot (which, in retrospect, actually was a good job).
Gradually, excruciatingly, the week passed in shades of gray: I`d awake in the gray light of the morning and put on my grayest suit, eat a gray breakfast, put on my gray shoes and sit on my gray bike seat, pedaling through gray air on my way to gray building where I`d put my gray jacket in a gray locker and go sit in my gray chair at my gray desk and tap away mindlessly at gray computer keys until gray matter dripped out of my ears and piled up on my desk in front of me, where no one noticed it because it was gray on a gray background. I became depressed.
If you know me, you could've seen this coming. You would know that I shamefully SUCK at having nothing to do. Unfortunately, I don't know me as well as you, so I didn't, and it SUCKED.
So, it's likely that you are by now wondering why I decided to make my November update about the most boring, meaningless week I've ever experienced. If you're not wondering, I'll help you: this was the month of Thanksgiving and of working on the farm at my agricultural school and of school festivals and trips to Hiroshima! Are you wondering yet? Because you need to be wondering for me to need to write the next part.
OK. I'm writing about this stupidly mundane experience because 1) it feels like much needed therapy to write about it because last week was seriously very tramautizing in the degree of pointlessness I experienced as time slowly ticked by and 2) it really says a lot about what I'm doing here in Japan and I think it might have been somewhat of a pivotal week for me in my time here. I'll say a couple of things about the latter and hopefully the first one will continue to take care of itself.
I came to Japan mostly for the job. Yes, I wanted to travel, but I could travel anywhere and (truth be told) hold no deep, abiding interest in the nation of Japan specifically beyond the fact that it is not the United States. Erin and I chose Japan, then, primarily because of the sweet career opportunity that the JET program represents. It's competitive, it pays well, and it's a huge, challenging adventure; a perfect fit for a freshly minted college graduate, right? Definitely right. Except there is no JET Program in any meaningful sense. To ask "what's it like to work for the JET program?" is in some ways similar to asking what it's like to work for a temp. placement agency. The only honest answer is "well, it really depends on a LOT of factors." That's because the JET program is only little more than the placement agency that gets you a job with a local school district or board of education. What your job is, then, depends almost entirely on what specific school or schools you end up in. Sometimes it is the "adventure in inter-cultural exchange" advertised on the JET program webpage, and sometimes it's...different than that.
When I got here, and for the first months I was living and working here, I definitely expected the "JET program" to be the adventure of a lifetime as, one could argue, it is advertised. I expected it to be like any job you get in that adventure: Congratulations, you're hired, here's your placement, here's what we expect, this is what your job is, you're not quite meeting our expectations, could you please do a little more of this and a little less of that, you're doing this really well, etc, etc, etc. Like any job, only with more amazing, awe-inspiring, life-changing inter-cultural learning and exchange happening. But the JET program isn't a job, it's a placement agency and what your job is is an entirely different question. My job, it turns out, is to show up for class on time, speak English when asked, and generally be foreign. The JET program does present the opportunity for adventure, of course, but this job is most definitely not the adventure...
To put it another way, what I finally learned in an agonizing fashion this week is that my job is basically entirely up to me. My school really doesn't expect anything of me besides being present during the work day and going to class when one is scheduled. That means that I have to truly come up with my own objectives and find ways to spend my own time if I want to take anything away from this opportunity. That was not my understanding of any of the Japanese way of doing things, Japanese schools, Japanese work-places, etc. In fact, it was so not what I expected that it really has taken me until this week to learn that what I do in this job is up to me.
Friday afternoon, I finally took all of this to heart and the day flew by as I started a craft project creating an English message center where I'll post weekly or monthly discussion questions and the kids can either post public responses or write personal messages to me. I'm really excited about it, and no one assigned it to me and no one ever would because no one has any idea what my job is supposed to be. It's supposed to be whatever I make it be. I`ve heard a big, strange sounding, conjunction of a word used to describe situations like this before. Supposedly, it`s valued by employers and most folks in general. I think it`s called being "self-directed." Hm.
Anyway, that`s what I learned this week.
Also, life is generally good and mundane. I`m still way up in the air about an actual career choice, and for some reason that seems to have been weighing down on me a lot lately. I can`t stop thinking about what I should be doing with my life after the JET program. Any tips will be greatly appreciated.
I`ve had the chance to milk a cow, tend to greenhouse tomatoes, plant flowers, feed a calf, and generally enjoy some other farm-related activities at my agricultural school. That`s definitely my favorite school. Erin and I got the chance to experience three different typs of Japanese festivals in one day on a day off this month. There will be more to say about that later.
And, Thanksgiving was awesome, both of them. For one we went over to another ALTs house and for the other we had this fusion-Japan-American Thanksgiving at the house of a retired Marine and his Japanese wife. Details to follow soon!
