A Little Shangala Bangala in Japan

Last week I taught a total of 19 classes, about 4 a day. The average for JETs, and my usual course load for the week is about 10-12. But last week I taught 19, all but 4 of which were at elementary schools. In most cases, that means I will be planning the lesson, teaching the class, and trying not to kill little children while the home room teacher sits in the back of the class quietly ignoring the chaos otherwise known as English class. I certainly have students who are perfect angels, well behaved, interested, even willing to try and speak some English. But there are also quite a number of children (boys especially) who take delight in running around the classroom, going through my materials, taking stickers, and imitating everything I say. I'm getting a lot more used to it, and learning what to say in Japanese to make them stop (One of my homeroom teachers the other day was thouroghly delighted with me when she heard me say "SIT DOWN!" in Japanese the other day.) It has gotten a lot easier to tolerate, and certainly easier to laugh off, but there are still classes I leave feeling shell shocked, like nothing in the world could convince me to ever again enter the classroom.

I have been asked "Are Japanese and American children different?" more times than I can count. I usually give people a rather brief response, the truth is I couldn't really say. I don't have much experience trying to teach or control children at home. What I, and many other JETs, seem to notice is the difference in discipline and ability to deal with learning differences, ADD, etc.

ADD, ADHD, and learning differences also seem to warrant either end of the scale. In the worst cases the kid ends up in the special class, or worst of all doesn't attend school at all but will still graduate. In my schools in the mountains especially, the schools do not seem to have the facilities or staff to know how to cope with kids who are different, and the result is a permanently empty seat at the back of the class. In other cases, nothing is done about it, they are in normal classes, without medication, and their differences and needs are ignored. Obviously, I can only guess which kids may have some sort of learning difference, but it does seem that overall they are dealt with through one of these extremes.


The first graders at Akizugawa minus one boy.
Anyway, I was at Akizugawa Elementary the other day, one of my smaller schools with about 40 kids up in the mountains. It is usually one of my favorite schools because the kids are fun, the teachers are not often all that helpful, but they are nice, and the principle is funny and likes to talk, sometimes inserting random english words. Well this particular day I was doing a Christmas class, where I read Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and then sing the song with them. The book is in English, but I got some help doing simple translations, and then printed out a copy of the song lyrics with Japanese under them so the kids could read it. This class is so small I teach the first and second graders together, but that is still only about 10 kids. They listened, on and off to Rudolph, but the song was the best part. A few of them tried to sing, but most found it difficult, one second grade boy in the back belted out what sounded like jibberish as loud as he could, while a few others got a verse or two. You can't really blame them, for 6 or 7 year olds, it is pretty hard. My favorite part were the two boys in the front of the class. Even if neither were singing, both were dancing! And not just any dance..... the "Sonna no kanke ne" (But it doesnt matter) dance.


Kojima Yoshio doing the "Demmo Sonna no Kanke Ne" Dance.

Kansai (the area around Osaka and below-- where I am) is well known for comedy, and a general informality and humor. Comedy acts become extremely popular! Sonna no kanke ne is a dance where the comedian says something irrelevent or funny and then says "Demo sonna no kanke ne" while tapping his foot and punching his fist downward. Its a bit hard to describe, and not really even all that funny, accept that ever since I got here all, and I do mean ALL, of the kids I teach are doing this dance. I get asked all the time if I know it, at every school in every class, almost without fail. Well these two 6 year old boys were dancing around the room doing "Demo sonna no kanke ne" to the tune of Rudolph. It was pretty much chaos, with the jibberish boy in the background, and the two boys in the front dancing, but it was just about one of the funniest things I had ever seen. Not only the funniest, but the most descriptive of exactly what it is I do here. It was shangala bangala, in a wonderfully hilarious way.


Later that day after I left the school I forgot to put my real shoes back on. This is the moment I realized I was walking around in the school's plastic slippers.




Pictures at the gorge near Akizugawa. Unfortunantly I missed most of the fall leaves, they had already fallen.

*** To see Kojima Yoshio, the comedian that has taken the entire country and all my students by storm, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqLykQoVo6k