More About School

I’ve been trying to encourage the kids to blog about their experiences, to absolutely no avail. They are simply not interested. Ironically, they were very interested in blogging about our plans before we actually got here. This is a good sign, I think. In Jeremy’s words, “They are too busy living their lives to write about them.” And as Eli actually said to me last night, “It doesn’t feel like Japan here. It just feels normal.”

But Jeremy and I are both learning a lot from the kids, and love watching them experience a side of East Asia to which neither of us has ever had insider’s access: kid culture. Eli and Mikki are just blazing through experiences here—they are not worried about being impolite, they don’t get down on themselves for not understanding the language, they are not nervous about doing something culturally inappropriate. Like all kids everywhere, they just do what looks fun and what they want to do, until someone tells them to stop.

Overall, school has been going really well, so I thought I’d share some of the details that the kids have reported to us, before everything starts to feel so normal that the reports slow sown.

The neighborhood kids meet up at 7:45 am to walk to school. This means that our kids leave the house at 7:40 am to get to the meeting spot on time. A member of the local PTO waits at the meeting spot to organize everyone. And there is a system: the 1st grade goes first (much to Mikki’s delight!), then the 2nd grade, etc. And boys and girls walk separately.

Once at school, the kids are essentially in their classroom the entire day, or, at least there is significantly less moving from room to room than there is back home. Eli reports that his class switches rooms for calligraphy, music, gym, library and science. Mikki reports much less movement. Both kids tell us that they eat lunch right in the classroom.

At lunchtime, all kids put on uniforms—a white smock, a white hat to keep hair out of the way, and a mask to protect from germs. The lunch gets rolled in on a big cart. The daily lunch helpers hand out the milk to everyone, and everyone helps with serving food at one point or another. (Everyone also helps sweep up the classroom after lunch is over.)  The kids line up at the edge of the classroom to get their lunches.

The milk comes in glass bottles, and once finished, the kids rinse out the bottles and put them back on the cart for re-use the next day.

The kids seem to like most of the food, but there are different expectations for how much they are supposed to eat. Mikki reports that if she doesn’t eat something, she just heads out the classroom door where there is a big bin where you can dump the un-eaten food. Eli reports that everyone pretty much eats everything on the tray, and if you don’t, you have to walk a fairly long distance down to a different room where there are food-ready garbage bins. The incentive, therefore, is to clean your plate so that you can avoid having to do that. Eli usually complies. 

The school sends home a lunch calendar so we know what is served each day. The calendar is exceptionally detailed, and provides not only the menu, but all of the ingredients plus the nutritional information. I’ve learned how to say “sodium” and “protein” in Japanese.

For gym glass, the kids have uniforms—polyester t-shirts & pants, and a white hat—that they bring home every Friday for weekend washing. There is no locker room—they change their clothes right at their desks! So, as the kids have pointed out, everyone gets to see everyone else’s underwear. This is all fine with me, but when you take that and contrast it to the fact that boys and girls have to walk to separately to school, there is a small disconnect, no?

Gym class is either in the gym or outside, and each class merges with others of the same grade. The kids tell us that they have to stretch and run around the gym three times. Mikki reports jumping rope. And Eli reports doing soccer drills on the outside field, or basketball drills in the gym.

There are no school uniforms, but there was a long list of supplies that we needed to get for the kids. The idea is that all kids bring the exact same things to school, though sometimes in different colors. In fact, when we sent Mikki to school with cough drops for a lingering cough from the flu, the teacher told us that that wasn’t allowed. No child gets to have something that the other kids don’t. And the school nurse is on hand if there is any sort of medical need.

Here’s the basic list of supplies that we needed to buy:

 - Gym uniform and shoes

 - Shoes to wear inside the school

 - Lunch uniform

 - A special bag for transporting the gym uniform back and forth to school on Mondays and Fridays

 - A special bag for transporting the school shoes back and forth to school on Mondays and Fridays

 - A special bag for transporting the lunch uniform back and forth to school on Mondays and Fridays

 - And a larger bag in which to put all of the above-listed bags.

 - A jump rope

 - School supplies like tape, scissors, pencil, pencil sharpener, etc.

 - Pencil case

And then there are items that the school purchases on our behalf, with us reimbursing: musical instruments (in music class, Eli is learning the recorder and Mikki is learning the harmonica), flash cards, notebooks, file boxes, etc. Textbooks are provided for free.

The one item we did not have to buy was the classic backpack. Standard school backpacks are hard covered, and meant to last for all of elementary school. As such, they cost about $300 a pop! Given that we’re only here for six months, the principal gave us a bye on this, and we were grateful.

The teachers are very kind and have been trying to help the kids get the hang of things. Mikki’s teacher, in particular, is pretty hands-on and helps Mikki determine what to bring home every day. Both teachers use translation apps on their phones to get quick, brief information to the kids in English. So Eli knows when his class is going to have history, or moral education, or science. The other kids in the room try to help him understand, too.

At the end of the school day, the kids have to copy down their homework for that night from the blackboard into their notebooks. They copy this in Japanese, without knowing what it means, and it has taken Jeremy a couple of weeks to figure out both their handwriting and the system of notation that the teachers use on the board. The homework amount is not bad, mostly because our kids are excused from any reading exercises. The math homework is comparable to what the kids were learning back in the US…maybe one step ahead. Their teachers also use this notebook to communicate with us if there’s anything specific they need us to take care of.

The daily homework assignment that occupies the most time is the Japanese writing system. The Japanese written language basically has three parts:

1. Hiragana—the alphabet of 46 syllables that make up all Japanese words. Kids here learn this writing system in 1st grade, so Eli was way behind on this, and Mikki only slightly behind.

2. Katakana—the same 46 syllables, but written in a different way, used when writing foreign import words, like “ice cream” (a-ee-su-ku-ree-mu). Again, typically learned in 1st grade here.

3. Kanji —the Chinese characters used for many verbs and nouns. Japanese kids typically start learning these in the 1st grade, but things really take off in 3rd and 4th grade.

So, while our kids escape Japanese reading homework, they do have extra hiragana- and katakana- learning exercises meant to try to catch them up with the rest of the class. Learning these is essentially rote memorization, to which Eli responds very well and Mikki not so much. Eli has already gotten most of his hiragana down, and so is starting to be able to read signs while out and about.

Both kids are TIRED when they come home from school…Eli, in particular, since he gets home after 4pm. They both seem to like school and thanks to help from friends and their teachers, they are managing to understand what’s expected. But it is exhausting being around a language that you don’t understand all day. And there are parts of the day that are very boring—both kids have expressed this. Neither has ever protested going to school. There have been no crying fits in the morning. But I do sense some serious relief from the kids on the weekends, when they get to take it easy and be with their English-speaking family.

Eli has made some friends, one of whom lives right across the street. They play together at school—soccer, catch, basketball, card games, etc. Thanks to his friends, Eli is hearing certain Japanese phrases enough that he comes home asking Jeremy what things mean. Eli’s teacher also told us last week that some of the boys have expressed interest in playing with Eli after school, but haven’t known how to ask. So Jeremy talked with him about how we might set this up. No play dates yet, but we are all hoping that will happen soon.

Mikki doesn’t talk much about friends, but when I asked her if she had friends at school, she said, “Yeah, a lot!” She jumps rope with friends on the playground and the girls in her class seem excited about her.

One thing that helped all of us was last weekend’s neighborhood gathering. It was sort like a block party (a sacred event where we live in Michigan!), but on a Sunday morning and centered on the pounding of mochi (sticky rice, usually served in little balls with a flavored coating—like peanut or green tea). Thank goodness Jeremy likes to read bulletin boards, or we would have missed this event. From what we can gather, the event was put on by the local community organization. It was in a park a few blocks from where we live. There was a campfire to keep everyone warm and lots of food. Everyone had a chance to pound the sticky rice with a big wooden hammer. And oh my, it was gendered! The men got to use the real, bulky hammer. The women and children used the smaller “symbolic” hammer. Of course, this utterly offended me, but the hammer was actually pretty heavy, so I kept my mouth shut. Cultural immersion and all…

The kids saw some classmates from school, and Eli ran off with his friends immediately after we got there. Mikki was shy and somewhat clingy for the first hour, but then got her footing, and went off to play with some girls. Jer and I chatted with some of the neighborhood folks, many of whom wanted to practice their limited English with me. No problem!  Much like the very first block party that we attended after we moved into our house in Grand Rapids, the mochi-pounding party introduced us to the neighborhood and got us all feeling more comfortable here.

That’s it for now. More to come soon…