Click
on picture to enlarge.Emails from Kirsten and Naoto
June 2002
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 03:42:30 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Vegetables and Morals
Dear Friends and Family;
Well, it is World Cup Soccer and the tv news is all about crazy fans every night. I am personally rooting for the Irish and Japanese team. I am pretty sure neither will win, or even go very far, however. Oh well.
It is getting humider and humider here as summer approaches. It is interesting to see the rice get taller and taller. One nice thing about living here is that the owner of our house has a garden right next door to us. Recently he told us to help ourselves to the onions and potatos. It is saving us a lot of money, actually. He also sells other produce at a stand infront of his house about a five minute walk away. This stand is just a little wooden box with the vegetables in bags and a tin cup for money. No one actually works at the stand, they just trust to the honesty of those around, I guess.
Which brings me to another musing; intrinsic versus extrinsic morals. This is not, I regret, something I thought of myself, but something I read about as a college student. In the United States, we are supposed to behave well because of intrinsic morals (based on christianity, etc etc.). Thus, when we do something bad, it is because we don't have morals, or because we are bad people. Interestingly enough, Japan never had the Christian influence. There is no internalized code of behavior like the United States, instead there is extrinsic morality, or pressure to do good because of society. If you do something bad here, it isn't because you are a bad person, but becasue you don't understand how to function in society or what is right. A very interesting difference. Thus, I suppose most of my landlord's vegetables are not stolen because there is societal pressure from the neighbors (who see everything that goes on in this small town) and the community.
An interesting addition to this mix are the students from Josai. They are not part of the community (many of them commute from far away, they have no roots, no bonds of obligation with nearby families, etc.). I suppose much of the petty crime (stealing bikes, vegetables, defacing of property, etc.) is done by students because they are outside the Gumyo society in a way. This is not so different from college towns in the United States, I do believe. It is just more codified and easier to see here, I think.
On our sunday walk, Naoto, Mia and I met an old woman tending a garden in our neighborhood. We just stopped to guess at what kind of fruit trees she had and she came over and started talking to us. At the end of our conversation, she asked where we lived. When Naoto explained, not only did she know our house, but also knew our landlord. It made me suddenly conscious of my visibility not only as a foreigner (can get away with stuff because I am foreign) but also of my visibility as belonging to a community (can't get away with stuff because everyone reports back to everyone.) It is an interesting dichotomy.
Anyway, its quite fun meeting farmers around here. I am hoping to make friends with the farmer around the corner who is growing rice.
love and light,
kirsten
Click
on picture to enlarge.
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 22:11:42 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Sensitivity and Lost Baseball Boys
Dear Friends and Family;
This is the first official day of the rainy season in Japan. Just like clockwork, it began raining. On top of that, it the kind of horrible, wet, muggy rain that dampens your clothes with sweat as well. Naoto keeps saying, " I don't believe this, is this what Japan is like?"
Sensitivity
Mia continually surprises me for many reasons. However, recently she is surprising me because of her sensitivity. We now have this sleep routine where we play a series of songs from a CD my friend Heather made for us. ("Aye, MIa", Hari Belafonte song w/the Muppets, "Hush Child" by Sting, and Billy Joel's lullaby song) Mia usually goes to sleep during the Sting song. However, recently, I have been thinking hard about problems at work. When I try to put her to sleep (dancing around to Hari Belafonte with her in my arms), she gets cranky. Today, I purposefully kept my mind kind of empty and she fell asleep right away. Is she really that sensitive?
Lost Baseball Boys
I am a little down this week because I lost some of my baseball boys. I have two required, fundamental English conversation classes populated entirely by freshmen boys. Half of one of the classes is populated by boys from the baseball team. Let's just say that they have , until now, coasted through school on the pity of their teachers.
I had one student who really seemed to be trying in the beginning. His name is Shinji. All of a sudden, two weeks ago, he stopped coming. I figured I would talk to the Coach to see if the Coach could talk some sense into him. (if he doesn't pass my class, he can't graduate). Lo and behold, Shinji, and another wayward baseball student appeared in my office, not once, but twice to make up for lost time. They even came to class on time. I was so happy, I really felt like I had made some kind of difference. However, this week they haven't appeared for any classes. It looks like they are out. I don't know why they stopped coming, either.
English has become such a big deal in japan, I wonder if it hasn't achieved some kind of mythical status. Half the time, I don't think my students believe in their own ability to learn English, either because "Japanese can't speak English" or because they never had a positive experience learning language in their whole lives. Anyway, I will do my best to keep the remaining baseball boys on the right track.
kirsten
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 04:18:33 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: World Cup Fever and More Baseball Boy Problems
We had one day of sunshine in the middle of rainy season, and Naoto went into super house-husband mode. He says its a genetic trait of all Japanese that if there is sunny day during rainy season you have to hang out all the laundry and futons to dry out. Maybe he is right because I saw every veranda covered with futons from here to school.
Mia 's latest trick is almost waving bye bye (not at appropriate times, just when the mood strikes her when we instigate it) and rolling all around the futons at night so that we can't keep a blanket on her. She is still the cutest girl on the block.
World Cup Fever
Have I mentioned I just realized that every country in the world (except for North America) goes crazy over the World Cup? Even I have been caught up in the madness. I can even name individual members of teams, quote results for the final 16, and tell you the first five countries that ever won the World Cup in the first place. Weird, huh? I almost think of it like the metric system. Every other country has the metric system, except the U.S. Every other country loves soccer, except the U.S. Really its crazy. We are missing out. Can any of you even name a player on our national team? I can't. But I can name players from the Senegal, Irish, Japanese, Korean, Belgian, and Brazilian team. I can even tell you how Pele got his nickname. The Japanese are really taking it hard that Turkey beat them in the final 16. Korea is still in the fight, though. I think Korea is happy that Japan is out. Considering the ill feelings between the two countries, I can understand it. I think their success has to do with spirit, though. The Korean team just got in there and fought. The Japanese team didn't seem like they believed in their own success. It reminds me of my students.
and More Baseball Boy Problems
Today I asked students to practice the past tense by writing what they did last weekend on the board. I was then going to have them translate it into English so they would have a corpus of past tense phrases to study for the speaking test. Silly me, I forgot they were TEN YEAR OLD BOYS! I got the Japanese equivalent of " I had sex" and "I heavy petted with a girl". You would think they would be embarrassed by their own juvenility. Naoto is embarrassed for them. He always shakes his head and says "japan is going to fall apart in the next ten years" when I tell him about my students. That kind of behavior poses a problem for me because I can't allow it, but I don't want to make too big a deal out of it because I am afraid it will become this thing between us. I settled for erasing it and asking students to write something else instead. Maybe I should have them go through sensitivity training....
love and light,
Kirsten
Click
on picture to enlarge.
Subject: Thank you
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 16:57:37 +0900
Hello, this is Naoto.
I'll be 33 years old on July 1st. People who snet me something, thank you very much. And people who didn't send me anything, don't worry about it. This is not a mail to cadge anything.
We are doing pretty good. Mia is now more active than ever. She tried to move but still need a practice to do that. She sit, fall down, try to move, cannot move very much, then cry. It seem she need little more time to start moving around. Kirsten had some difficult time in school because her students are stupid. I'm kind of assamed that Japanese young people are really childish. I always tell Kirsten that I would be very angry if I got to teach those students.
I will start working some programming soon. My former company, B2C2 pleased to give me a job. Right now, I am wasting a time from 8PM to 12AM. I can use this time to earn money. That sounds pretty nice to me.
Well, it was just a report of Naoto, Kirsten, and Mia's life. Please come to Japan anytime. You are always welcomed.
-naoto