My time in Hyogo is coming to a close. It's nearly been a year already, somehow.
So...
Has the time lived up to my expectations? Has living in Japan been as good as I thought it would be?
Well, working in Japan in many ways has not been what I had expected. But this does not mean it has not lived up to my expectations. In many ways it has been just as good or even better than I thought. But it definitely has been different.
First of all, I've never spent much time in any parts of Japan except the touristic areas. So, moving to a super quiet suburban area was not exactly what I expected. When I found out I was moving to Japan, I thought I would be living in an area similar to all the areas I had seen, surrounded by restaurants and cafes. I knew in theory that Japan was not all busy cities, but even knowing this, my image of what a smaller suburban town was something like central Takayama or Himeji, where the streets are still filled with restaurants and the like. I had never really seen an area unlike this.
So when Jason and I arrived, we were so excited to walk around our neighborhood, discovering what we imagined would be an infinite amount of hole-in-the-wall tiny restaurants, and traditional Japanese bars. With this expectation, of course, we were pretty disappointed when, upon a long walk around our neighborhood, we came across only a few restaurants.
Of course, Akashi city has lots of restaurants and is only 20 minutes away by train. So we aren't exactly in the middle of nowhere. But sometimes you just can't be bothered with public transport, you know, and so we had to slightly alter our ideas of regularly going out to restaurants and bars.
The work itself was also an adjustment. Working at an Australian school for 5 years, you get used to the workload and expectations. So being told that I was going to be working at a Japanese school, I was worried about the increased expectations and hours that I knew plagued Japanese teachers. I remember emailing my new Japanese boss while I was still in Australia, asking what classes I would be taking and requesting a copy of the curriculum so I could start planning my lessons. I was simply told that I did not need to. No advance planning?!? This in itself, had me even more worried about the work. Was I going to have to plan all my lessons when I arrived? Would I need to make the lessons as I went, spending hours working late in order to have my lessons prepared for the next day?!
Short answer: No. I did not have to do that.
I arrived at school and was pleasantly surprised at the fact that they expected me to prepare for exactly 0 classes in advance. When teachers wanted me to join a class, they usually approached me on the day, and simply told me what they'd like me to do, or teach, or assist with. Unlike in Australian schools, where I needed to plan for behaviour management, and throttle my brain trying to come up with engaging, original lessons so that the kids wouldn't run amok, here, I just simply had to teach the content. Just teach the content! Can you even imagine?! I doubt any Australian teachers can...
Not only were lessons very simple and relaxed, but my timetable was also extremely chill. On average, I taught 2 lessons per day. Quite often less. Every Thursday I only participated in one lesson. The rest of the time was desk time. Free time. Although I was sometimes given a little marking to do, I had little to no lesson planning needed, and so usually had between 5 and 7 hours of free time at work per day. During this time I would study Japanese, do preparation and lesson planning for my Australian school, go to the school gym, and of course, waste time. There has to be some time wasting in those long, free hours.
My work at the Board of Education was just two times a week and again, I was quite apprehensive about the work. I am by no means fluent in Japanese and was quite worried about what the work was to entail. I was told that it had elements of translating, and event planning for educational camps and the like. In my head, I imagined the planning to be similar to what was done for the Japan Tour at my Australian school and I was worried about how I would be able to plan an event in another country with little knowledge of the facilities and resources available. But it was not like that at all.
The staff at the BOE eased me into the event planning. The first project was an event that had already been partially planned by my predecessor. The expectations for me on this project were very low, and yet when the event was finished, I was heaped in praise and told that the entire event had been a success because of me, despite my contributions at that point being very small. The responsibilities increased gradually as I became more familiar with the expectations, although there was definitely ongoing confusion in regards to some events.
Because events were planned in groups, and each event was new to me, I had to rely on other people to fill me in on what was needed and what was supposed to happen, and what the event was supposed to look like in the end. When this didn't happen or people were too busy to help me, it meant periods of time when I had no idea what else needed to be done. At times I was waiting on parts of events to be completed by others so that I could move on with my parts, or parts that needed to be checked by people too busy to check them, before I could progress. Sometimes this has meant parts of days, or even full days without any real work. Bureaucracy... What can you do?
My other expectation was that I would quickly become completely fluent in Japanese, living in an environment where people were speaking Japanese around me. This is not the case. The reality of the situation is, language learning as an adult is a very gradual process. And although language you use every day is easy to acquire, fluency is not. There are an infinite amount of topics that you will not hear regularly enough to become fluent in the vocabulary. Just infinite. Japanese study is a long and painful process of learning words in books that you then forget because you don't often use them. So you relearn them again. Despite this, you do become more fluent in small ways that you barely notice. You pick up kanji for every day things that you realize you had no idea about before. Like the symbols for wheat and train suspension. You don't notice these things, and the small bits of conversational phrases you pick up unless you reflect really hard. It's just easy to focus on the fact that there's still so much you don't know.
Despite this, in many other ways, living in Japan has surpassed my expectations, or impressed me in ways where previously I had had no expectations. The students were so amazing. The teachers were so kind. The food was so varied. The seasons so vibrant and all-encompassing. The nature so wild. The animals so plentiful.
The nature and wildlife especially were a shock to me. When I arrived in Winter, the land was barren and gray. Shortly after, Spring arrived, followed by the wet season, and I had never seen such lush, dense, wild nature as I have in Japan. Vines overflowed from every possible place. Jungles greener than your eyes could have imagined covered any free space. Everyone always talks about Australia being rich in animals and birds. People don't often think in Japan in the same way. But outside of the big cities, Japan rivals Australia in this respect. I saw more snakes, more eagles, more rabbits, in just one year in Japan, than my whole life in Australia. This is a side that most tourists don't get to see in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka.
The seasons as well were a surprise. Again, Australia prides itself on being a hot country, and that's true, but I've never suffered more in Summer than in Japan, The extremes of this country are huge. AT the moment we have just entered Winter, and already the days are freezing, just a few months after I was getting sunburnt.
I've visited over 20 prefectures in my time here, and made so many amazing, incredible memories. Memories that I'm proud of, memories that make me cringe, memories that make my heart swell.
Knowing that our time here was limited, we tried to make the most of every weekend. Every holiday period. We tried to appreciate every day, knowing that soon we wouldn't be able to see this view, eat at this restaurant, or talk with these people. And so this trip has left me with a desire to travel even more. Making the most of each day should not be relegated to a year. It should be how we live our lives.
