Office Relations Part 3

Japanese teachers will not hesitate to tell you how busy they are. They do not complain, because complaining is a sign of weakness, but instead drop subtle hints and reminders of their ever busy schedules. However, it is my impression that they are only ‘artificially’ busy. In their never-ending zest for satisfying their expectations of one another, they have managed to confuse spending long hours in the office with actually working hard. Teachers in Japan are expected to stay at school until 8 p.m. or later, even though, from what I understand, they could leave at anytime after 4 p.m. But, it is their duty to fulfill what is expected of them in their role as a teacher. In other words, they are expected to stick around school until late at night, because that is what they have always done in the past. And, precedent in Japan is a virtually insurmountable obstacle. If a teacher were to leave at 5 p.m. every night, the others would probably talk behind his or her back.

The result of this cultural emphasis on ‘staying in line’ is that the school staff room, at 7:30 p.m., is still filled with teachers, many of whom have been there since 6:30 in the morning. I get the impression that they just sit at their desks and try to look busy; surfing the net for baseball stats, staring endlessly at old lesson plans, downloading the latest ghastly pop-music that this country so efficiently pumps out, and, reinforcing each other’s perceptions of just how busy they are. “Yes, we are very busy. We are teachers. We stay at school until 8 pm, sometimes later. Very busy…yes yes.. very busy indeed.”

But, why does the art teacher have to stay at work until the moon has lifted itself high above our little town? Is he actually planning and revising lesson ideas? “OK… ummm… first…. ahh… show them how to hold the paintbrush….then, uhhh… tell them to paint the still life display… watch them for the next hour, making occasional encouraging remarks… Oh! There just aren’t enough hours in the day to plan this madness!” (NB: the art teacher example was chosen randomly from a wide selection of teachers, and in no way is a stab at art teachers the world over).

In my two schools, there seems to be a daily competition to see who can stay the latest; like a group of stubborn children competing to see who can stand on their head for the longest period of time, no real benefit comes of it, but the winner gains the respect and admiration of the others (or, at least they think they do). Of course, I never stick around the office long enough to find out who wins.

I do feel bad, however, when I leave earlier than the others (am I slowly being socialized into the Japanese culture?!). I’m required to show up at 8 am, and I have to stay until 4 p.m. At 4 p.m., I choose to stick around, visit with the kids and play piano for an hour or two. At around 6 p.m., when I’m getting ready to head home to my cold and forlorn apartment, a surge of guilt passes through my body. Should I stay and pretend to work hard like the others? What will they think of me for leaving early, this outsider with few responsibilities, yet all of the benefits of being a ‘real’ teacher? The guilt wells up inside of me for a brief moment, but it’s never enough to keep me from walking through the staff room door. After all, I am an outsider, and I don’t have to play by their rules.

When leaving before their colleagues, a Japanese worker announces a phrase which translates roughly as an apology for not staying as long as the others. In reply, the other workers shout out a phrase in Japanese which means, “you’ve worked so hard today, thank you!” Another common saying translates as, “you must be tired- you’ve worked so hard!’ This is really just patronizing B.S! It is a very thoughtful gesture to compliment someone in this way, but when it is said day after day, it quickly loses its meaning. For example, I attended a ‘business trip’ not long ago to a school in one of the neighbouring cities. At the school, we sat and watched a teaching demonstration for an hour, and this was followed by a meeting to analyze, point by point, everything that had been observed. Myself, and the other foreign English teachers in attendance however, got to sit in a separate room of our own, where we drank tea and joked about what we thought the Japanese teachers were talking about. Surely their meeting was rife with endless speeches and abundant overanalyzing. Upon our arrival back at our own school, after a comfortable and relaxing ride in the passenger seat of my kyoto sensei’s car, I was bid farewell with that unique Japanese phrase which means ‘thank you for working so hard today.’ “Oh yes,” I thought to myself jokingly, “I am a teacher. I work very hard. I work very hard indeed!” In reality, I have the easiest and most overpaid job that any lazy man could ask for.

In the Japanese office worker’s struggle to prove their dedication to the ‘team,’ their family loses out. Their long days at work are a detriment to their husbands, wives, and children, who often see very little of each other. But, a Japanese office worker’s colleagues are in fact, their ‘second family.’ They spend the majority of their lives together at work, and, in addition, have drinking parties and staff trips after hours in order to increase camaraderie and group cohesion. I’ve been told quite frankly by my kyoto sensei that the teachers “must” spend this time together in order to ensure that they work well as a team. My fellow teachers however, could literally spend three hours less at school each day and still get the same amount of work done. Ahh… inefficiency- so imperceptible to the inefficient.

For such a ground-breaking and advanced nation, there is an incredible amount of inefficiency in Japan. The government, the road system, licensing, the school system; all are subject to vast amounts of paperwork, fact-checking, confirmation, and re-confirmation. Yes, the venomous hands of futility reach far into all aspects of Japanese decision making. Precedence and beauracracy prevent anything from happening in a timely fashion, and ensure that several hours of each person’s day will be time wasted and better spent with family.

Like the teachers, the students have a painfully long day, and spend little time at home. They have a tight schedule during the day, with a ten minute break between each of their six classes. In addition, they have club activity practice twice a day, every day except for Sunday. Every school offers a selection of extra-curricular activities, known as ‘club activities’. Each student is required to select a sport or hobby and practice for several hours each day. The result is that they arrive at school at 7 a.m., and the earliest they will arrive home at night is 5:30 pm. The teachers are expected to teach these different activities, even if they have no prior knowledge of the sport, or any particular skill. In some cases, it is like the blind leading the blind. This ‘club activity’ system is a great idea (and can likely be credited for Japan’s production of great athletes), but they’ve got to cut these kids some slack! Many Japanese people are like Michael Jackson- they never had a childhood.

From what I gather, my students out here in the countryside of Ibaraki have absolutely no social life. They don’t see their friends after school or hang out at the mall. Like their Western counterparts, they don’t sit outside of the 7-11, smoking cigarettes and ‘fishing’ for beer, or set fire to parked cars in acts of civil disobedience. They go home in the evening after school, eat, study, practice an instrument, or watch TV. Many also attend cram school in the evenings, where they study for a few additional hours every night in order to prepare for High School entrance exams (yes, you read that right- getting into your chosen High School is very competitive, and most kids are VERY studious).

In my first month here, I worked with a young girl who was practicing for an ‘interactive forum’ competition, wherein a group of students from schools around the prefecture will sit in a circle and make small-talk, scoring points for their proper demonstration of the English language. To practice, the girl, Mayu, a cute kid with a nice smile and relatively great English, would talk with me within the parameters of a few, pre-determined topics. At one point, we were talking about her friends. She told me about her best friend, who lived in the next town. Mayu hadn’t seen her best friend in 3 months! And this girl lives 15 minutes away! Here we were, in the middle of August, the poor girl’s summer vacation, and she was coming to school once a day for a few hours to study a foreign language. Instead, she could have been hanging out with her best friend, terrorizing the town’s boys and sweltering in the humid Japanese air. What a life! The students have daily homework and studying during their short vacations and then kick off the new school year with a week of testing. They can never escape the pressures and duties that rest so heavily on their shoulders. My friend Seth, a VERY liberal American who teaches nearby to where I live, says that he would rather be a Republican than a Japanese. And that’s saying a lot!