My first week in Japan is officially over. I'm starting to get the hang of day to day living and working here, though honestly, it hasn't been easy given the fact that there are apparently a million unwritten rules for various parts of daily activities. For example, when you go shopping, it's apparently not polite to hand your money directly to the cashier, and you instead have to look for a little tray to place it on for the cashier to then pick up. You must take off your shoes and put on slippers any time you walk into a home or school. If you get on public transportation, you're expected to be very quiet. And you should never use your finger to point directly at anyone or anything.
The school I'm working at is pretty keen on rules as well, which has made learning the ropes for my new job trickier than expected. The first afternoon, my Japanese assistant teacher asked my to help her set up lunch for the students. It seems easy, right? You pass out the lunch and everyone eats. Well, let me tell you, there are at least twenty different steps to setting up lunch in Japanese school. First, the students must get out their lunch bags with their utensils and drink bottles. They must then put away the bags and set up their places for lunch. When they're ready, we pass out the lunches - two plastic containers containing rice and a main dish. The rice absolutely must go on the left, and the main dish on the right. The tops of the containers must immediately be taken off and placed at a right angle above the containers. The students must take out the dessert from the lunch and place it in the tray at the top, to be eaten last. The container with the main dish must be positioned a specific way so that it is facing the student. If you put the rice on the right, everyone is painfully embarrassed for you. And if you eat the dessert first, there's definitely dishonor involved somehow. No one can eat until everyone is situated to the Japanese teachers' satisfaction. They even require the two-year-olds to follow this routine when they eat, and it's amazing how well the students follow every rule to the T. In a preschool class, I'm the only one who eats lunch like a heathen.
So I am learning a little bit every day, and I'm always on a constant look-out for any new rules lurking around the corner. On the plus side, the students are so well behaved! I can already tell that teaching here will be a much different experience than I've had teaching anywhere else.
