I have been busy lately so I haven't updated in a while. I realized that only people that have Japanese language support on their PC's can view the Kanji in the previous thread. Sorry....

Sometimes I am suddenly reminded to what degree that I am and always will be an outsider in Japan. There are things that happen here that are totally beyond my comprehension. In some case, it is a minor situation that seems peculiar to me because of my vastly different cultural background. These things I can deal with. I consider myself to be more culturally sensitive and adaptable than the average person so I usually don't mind the differences too much. That being said, there are some points that I can't compromise and practices that I will never get used to.

Wednesday was a very bad day for me. While physically punishing students is strictly prohibited in America, it is very common in Japan. This practice is typically explained as "the traditional Japanese method of instilling discipline". Wednesday, I witnessed a scene that I will never forget. It started when 3 students did something wrong (My Japanese isn't so good that I can understand an old man yelling furiously but I did pick up that it was something to do with being disrespectful). Kiriki-sensei, one of my favorite teachers incidently, started to yell at the students loudly. This soon progressed to him screaming in thier faces at the top of his lungs and smacking them across the face and top of the head. He grabbed one boy by the collar and swung him into a wall several times and I broke down. As part of my own personal ethical code, I am anti-violent. I don't think that violence ever solves any problems and it always upsets me to see it. I especially believe that there is no place for it in schools. I was so upset, I was physically ill and shaking. I decided that I needed to leave the school to avoid losing my own temper so I just got up and walked out, 2 hours before school was finished for the day.

The next day, I explained my position and why I left. True to non-confrontational Japanese worlplace culture, my co-workers just wanted to avoid the situation and any potential conflict. I was still upset so I pulled one English teacher aside and explained my feelings in English and Japanese. He replied that he understood how I feel but that I needed to try to understand that the role of teachers in Japan is different than that of their counterparts in America. Here, teachers take on many roles and duties that Americans would consider parental. He also said that the students don't have any bad feelings towards Mr. Kiriki and that I shouldn't either. Intellectually, I understand his argument but emotionally, I can't forget the look of fear on the 12 year-old students' faces as they were being hit and verbally abused by a man twice thier size. This is an area where my preference for being a cultural relativist and non-judgmental collides with and is in conflict with my own ideas and values concerning personal conduct and especially the special position of role model that all teachers occupy. I have decided to try to forgive the teacher in question but I made it clear that if a similar situation occurred, I would likely react in the same way. I know that it is not my role to discipline students here (I am grateful for this because I don't think think that the foriegn guest teacher should be a disciplinarian) and it is not my place to tell Japanese people how to run their schools. I also can't abandon my own principles. This is a difficult problem that I am resolving in my own mind still. Perhaps later I will update my three readers.

Another thing happened today that I found very odd. First of all, Japan is a cash society. Most people don't use credit cards and carry large sums of cash on a daily basis. Japan is also much safer than America and crime is far less common. My Board of Education is paying for my flight home and they knew I was going to buy the ticket this weekend. Today, when I was in class, an employee of the Board of Education came by my school and dropped of the money. He literally, dropped it off! He just left 275,000 Yen ($2750.00) sitting on my desk right out in the open! I returned to my desk 2 hours later to see it laying there untouched. Probally 400 people, mostly students, walked right by my desk in that time period. There was really no danger of it being swiped but I still thought it was really strange that it was just left there unattended. Japanese people are so used to a safe and secure society that the idea of someone stealing this huge sum of money never occurs to them. I couldn't help but think that if these Japanese country bumpkins go to an American city, it would be like lambs going to slaughter. One thing that I will miss about Japan is this security and innocence.