Jessica Bleeker's Teaching Assignment In Japan

 

Well, it has been a crazy six months since I left for Japan! My time is half way over with and I am now just finally able to begin sending e-mails about the things that are happening here. So first I better mention how it is that I am actually able to send this letter. God answered our prayers for a better way to access the internet! Those prayers were answered faster and with more ease than any of use could have imagined. Before we had a very slow dial up connection that could only be used with a very old Japanese computer that deleted your message half the time. Now we have our own wireless connection for just the teachers, so that we can use our own computers.

My time here in Japan has been crazy. It seems to be going very slow and very fast at the same time. There have been many challenges and many joys. We teachers live in close quarters and are all from different cultures, so people are constantly stepping on each other’s toes. But this same closeness that drives us nuts also brings us together in many ways and allows us to support one another. Although I will be happy to see my friends and family when I return home, I will be very sad to leave behind my new friends.

 

At the moment I teach 22 classes a week and have 77 students. My youngest students are two groups of 5 year old pre-schoolers, and my oldest student is over 70. although I don’t know how old because I don’t make them tell me their age if the don’t want to. Classes can range in style from being very structured lessons with a text book to free flowing conversation depending on the English level of the students.

I have made some good friends within my students and the Japanese members of the church. Occasionally the church youth group goes on day trips around Japan and we English teachers take these trips with them. it is very comforting knowing that they do consider us a part of their youth group and treat us like members of the church rather than employees. I have also traveled on day trips to areas like Kyoto with students so they could show me some of the wonders of Japan. I enjoy getting to know my students out side of the classroom because they act more natural and are less afraid to talk for fear of making a mistake when not in the classroom. My favorite time that I have spent with a student was on my birthday. One of my female students took me out to dinner at this restaurant in a nice hotel in Osaka, and we went to a lounge that gave almost a 360-degree view of Osaka light up at night. It was beautiful.

The culture in Japan has been both enlightening and trying of my patience at times. It is very, VERY different from the culture at home, and some times things that are normal here seem to be completely against what I think of as common sense. The most memorable of these experiences happened this last weekend.

For the past month there has been a celebration occurring in Japan that is referred to as the Danjiri. During this festival portable shrines on carts (the danjiri) weighing up to a ton are pulled, and sometimes even raced, through the streets of each city. These shrines are accompanied by the music of drums and flutes, and are pulled by up to 1,000 people. The festival begins at 6 am on the first day of this two day festival by the carts being raced through the city, and around corners, with the men who built them dancing on top. It has been a tradition that each year at least one person dies while doing this, which is considered a very honorable death. In the evening, the carts are decorated with lanters and slowly walked through the path that they raced during the day. Each city holds it’s own festival some time in the month of September or October. The festival lasts for two days.

During the evening stroll of the danjiri, beer and alcoholic beverages are freely passed out to those pulling or following the danjiri’s who are above the legal drinking age, or at least look like they could be. This was quite shocking to me because by the middle of this night time event, the streets were so littered with cans of alcoholic beverages that I could not take a step without my foot hitting a can every time. By the end of the night all the adults who had been pulling were no longer to be found, and only those who looked to be younger than 20 (the legal drinking age) were left.

I attended this event about four weeks ago in a city named Kishiwada, which is where this festival originated. I was only able to attend the lantern lit night parade because of classes. However, this last weekend Takaishi (the city I live in) held their own Danjiri festival and I was able to see the daytime events of this festival then. What I found to be the most memorable of all of this was sitting in church this past Sunday morning and as I was listening to the pastor speaking, behind me I could hear the music and chanting of the people as the danjiri passed by on the street in front of the church. It made history come alive for me, and it helped me to see life from a totally different perspective.

This morning was a little bit stressful for me as I taught a cooking class on how to make an American Thanksgiving meal. There were about 20 students in the class, and 10 women from the church there as well. I was very nervous, but it all turned out well, and the food tasted very good. Everyone was a little shocked though when I explained that the candied yams were not desert, but to be eaten with the regular meal, and that there was actually pumpkin pie waiting to be eaten for desert. Even with the shock of having yams as a side dish (they are pretty much just used for deserts here), the class was a huge success, and I would like to thank everyone who took the time to say a little prayer for it.

Well, I will wrap this up quick by letting you know about some areas that could use prayer here.

• Making wise decisions as it is easy to get confused in such a foreign place to me.

• Peace of mind.

• Restful days off since my weeks can be slightly stressful.

• Unity and peace among the teachers.

• Opportunities to be meet the spiritual and physical needs of my students.

Thank you for your continued support of me. It means so much.

God bless, Jessica

The last update for this page was on October 13, 2005.