All work and no play = a regular day in Japan

If it's one thing that Japanese people know how to do, it's work, and work for long periods at a time with no breaks.  Our program is no exception to this concept, as they have tried to cram in as many Japanese cultural events and activities for us to do as possible.  Between all my club activities, the full school course load, my part-time job as an ECO tutor, and the cultural seminars and field trips we keep going on, I haven’t really had much of a break.  It’s been lots of fun, but at the same time really exhausting!  

After only our 2^nd weekend and first full week of being here, we went to visit Ninchoji Elementary School during their Sports Day (aka Undoukai).  The Undoukai is a festival that they often have at schools to help encourage kids to get active.  They run, do relays, toss beanies, and essentially do a Japanese version of what would be a track & field day in Canada.   

Undokai Opening Ceremonies

 The kids often split themselves into two teams, red and white (the colours of the Japanese flag), and face off against each other.  In addition to standard running sports, the kids were asked to do a series of group dances, and very difficult pyramid-like stances (aka-kumitaiso).  I was impressed by the level of athleticism the kids were expected to portray.  I could barely do a 3-person pyramid, let alone a 10 or 15-person one!  Our class was also split off into either the red or white team and expected to participate in 3 different events: Tama-ire, where we had to throw as many bean bags as possible into an overhead basket within a limited time frame, a bean bag towel throwing game which no one knew the name of (including the Japanese people), and a final traditional dance around in a circle.  While it was fun to watch the events of the Undoukai, it was a little bit awkward for us since it is primarily a family event, and the kids didn’t really understand that we were on their team.  Nonetheless, it was interesting to see.  If you're curious, more information on what an Undoukai is like can be found at this link here.

Kumitaiso at the Undokai - One of many difficult group pyramid stances that the kids performed

On the Sunday, the CIS director invited us to visit Kiyomizu-michi temple and join a Tea Ceremony viewing in Kyoto along with a bunch of other Australian high school students.  The temple was under construction still so the views were not as spectacular as they normally are, but it was still an interesting place to visit.  Even though the temple was packed full of tourists, the temple somehow still managed to retain its somber and reflective atmosphere.

  

However, I found the various charms they were selling highly entertaining.  The charms, for example, promoting things like health, wealth, and luck and were 500 yen a piece.  If you wanted the charm for promoting pregnancy, it was suddenly 1000 yen.  I didn’t realize that deities were charging a premium for babies.  :P  Other prayers and wishes consisted of writing your dreams or wishes on a block of wood, or writing your worries on a piece of paper and dissolving them in a bucket of water to wash them away.  A tiny piece of paper alone cost 200 yen.  Do people actually believe these things work?  Or do they do it just for fun?  Anyways, I suppose the temple does need to pay for its reconstruction, and if paying for such a prayer or wish gives them that false sense of security they desire then I guess everyone is happy.

My first (properly made) matcha tea!

The tea ceremony was also a lovely experience.  The facilitator explained the history of the tea ceremony, the different tools, how the matcha was mixed, etc.  The entire process looked beautiful and elegant while emitting a zen-like aura, a common theme I find in most Japanese cultural arts, and I appreciated the fact that I got to make my own matcha.  She served us this strangely delicious tea ceremony sweet.  It was crusty on the outside but soft and crumbly on the inside and quite mild in flavor (as many Japanese sweets are).

The following weekend they took us to a Japanese Abacus class in Osaka.  Thankfully the classes were in English and the teachers were extremely nice.  Admittedly I wasn’t too keen on the idea of doing math, and the class was definitely a mental brain workout, but it was still interesting to see how people did calculations before the time of digital calculators and computers.  It certainly required a different level of brain power, that’s for sure!  One of my friends ended up really enjoying it while others hated it.  I think it was worth trying once, but I’m not sure if I will go back.  Watching some of the more advanced practitioners do calculations, however, was impressive.  I think in my youth I would have enjoyed math more if I had something like this.

Main entrance to the temple and Mibu-kyogen amateur theatre. (Pictures of the actual stage were strictly prohibited.  Sorry!)

Then we had a field trip to Kyoto the following day.  There we went to see an amateur Mibu-kyogen play.  Here the actors use distinct body gestures and movements to help convey a story.  I’m not going to lie, because I was sitting at an awkward angle from the stage, it made it difficult to see what was happening and I got extremely bored.   I probably won’t see that type of play again, but the Netsuke museum, however, was quite nice.  Netsuke began as a practical need for a way Japanese people in feudal times to carry their items without them being lost or stolen.  However, it soon became an art form.

While I found the field trips to be very nice, I also found them to be extremely exhausting.  Between classes, club activities, social outings and field trips, we had basically been out everyday for the past 3 weeks.  The thing that is also really weird is the fact that our school events and field trips are on the weekends.  Back home our field trips were always from Monday to Friday, never on the weekends.  Field trips can be fun, but not after 5 days of school.  The other thing that surprises me is that we consistently have classes on public holidays, which essentially means no break for us.  I never realized just how important having my weekend off was until I came to Japan and the filled every weekend with a school trip!

The work, work, work philosophy of the Japanese further reinforced in their long school days and short breaks.  Classes can run anywhere from 9:30am to 6:10pm on a given day.  Each class is 90 minutes long with only a 10-minute break in-between, meaning you literally only have time to move from one class to the next.  After that, there are club activities.  Normally, you might be thinking that a 90-minute class isn’t so bad: there will be opportunities to take breaks in-between, right?  Not really.  A professor will sometimes lecture for 90-minutes straight.  Even the lunch hours are hasty, with only 40 minutes to eat.  If you’re eating at the cafeteria where you have to line up, this means you have to wolf down your food before going to the next class.  No chatting or enjoying lunch hour for you.  Up until this point, I’ve either had spares in-between my classes or max 2 classes for that day.  However, next Monday I will literally have classes from 9:30am to 4:30pm, I wonder how I will feel after that?  This is a huge change of pace from my 45-minute lecture slots and 1-hour lunch breaks in Finland.  Will I be more or less effective?  Given how burnt-out I already feel at the moment, I imagine it will be the latter.

Of course, what seems to me like being overworked is a perfectly normal thing for Japanese people.  I’ve seen my Homestay representative meet me as late as 6 or 7pm at night for the sake of her job.  My host Dad leaves the house at 6am every morning on the weekdays and often comes home as late as 8 or 9pm.  This past Friday he didn’t even come home until midnight.  And my host family has told me the average standard vacation in Japan is one week.  One week!  My boyfriend gets 5 weeks and that’s very typical in Finland.

My busy schedule, however, doesn’t mean I’m not enjoying my time in Japan.  The food is awesome: the bread is nice and soft, my host mom cooks me all sort of interesting flavours that I haven’t tried before, there’s nothing you can’t find that isn’t matcha-flavoured, and I’m in the homeland of one of my favourite candies: the hi-chew.  I just found a pimped-up version of the hi-chew: the sour-chew, and I loved it.  Kyoto and Osaka are both short trips away, and unlike when you’re traveling here on vacation, you don’t feel the pressure to experience those places all at once, so I get to soak in each place at my leisure (well, when I have a free weekend off anyways).  My friend Sherry even took me to Nipponbashi (Den Den Town) and Namba where I (unfortunately) became a victim of Asian mob shopping and bought one too many bags, but nevertheless enjoyed it.  Both the Japanese calligraphy club and the Judo club have welcomed me with open arms, despite us not being able to communicate with each other all that well.  

Overall I would have to say my experience has been generally positive so far.  I would definitely travel back to Japan in a heartbeat or maybe even do another short term stay… working here on the other hand is another story.