Farewell Speech

Now is the season of farewell parties and making speeches. For the past year I have been teaching at two schools. At one school, my "base" school, people are very nice to me and treat me with respect. That is, until, they decided to schedule my farewell party on a day I told them I couldn't come. The other school, however, I refer to amongst my friends as "the evil place." I can't quite put my finger on it, but something about that school causes your soul to die bit by bit, until there's nothing left. I have a particular dislike of the place because of how I'm treated there. When it's convenient for them (i.e. when they need someone to teach 5-7 classes in a row) I'm a real teacher; when it's inconvenient for them I'm suddenly not their teacher and not their problem. They don't, for example, inform me of schedule changes or of the content for the lessons I'm going to teach. The final straw came last week, on a day when I was teaching 6 junior high school classes. A teacher informed the students that I was leaving soon. One of the students asked if the students could have a party for me, to which the teacher replied "No, because she's not a junior high school teacher."

Ironically, the party for this school was planned for a day when I could attend. All in attendance were English teachers, so I decided to give my speech in English as it would allow me to express my true feelings. Japan is a country known for subtlety, and I decided that I wanted my speech to be a subtle but truthful representation of my feelings. If you're a native English speaker, it has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, but if you're not, it has all the right phrases to make it sound like a nice speech.
Without further ado, the speech as I delivered it the other night:

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Good evening everyone.

Some of you may not actually know who I am. My name is Matcha Monkey, and I have been teaching at XXX Junior and Senior High School two days a week for almost a year now. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to get to know many of you as well as I would have liked to, as I usually had 5 classes or more a day, lots of papers to grade and planning to do for my work at my base school. Unfortunately that left us with few opportunities to interact and I'm very sorry we did not have the chance to talk more often.

I really enjoyed working with the students at XXX. They were always enthusiastic, kind, and treated me with respect. It's a shame I can't have a proper farewell party with them as well, as they greatly influenced my time at XXX. I will definitely miss the students.

Next year, I will be teaching university students in France. I'm sure that the skills of perserverance and independence I learned thanks to the teachers at XXX will serve me well there as well.

There are no words that can adequately express how I feel about my time with you.

Thank you.

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Given that many of the teachers told me what a nice speech I made, I assume they didn't pick up on some of the finer nuances of the language I used. It doesn't matter to me though; I feel like I got a load off my chest.

In hospital

While Japan may be lacking in many areas, there are a few things it manages to place on every block--convenience stores, vending machines and hospitals come to mind. Within a three-block radius of my apartment, there are about 4 hospitals. Under normal circumstances, having so many hospitals would not be necessary. These hospitals do not, however, conform to the image that an American might have of a hospital--a large place where one goes only if something is broken or death is imminent. A Japanese hospital is a small affair, and one goes there for just about any illness, be it a cold or something more serious. In addition, the hospital is only open during certain hours, say for example from 8:00 to noon, Monday through Friday, because people don't get sick on the weekend or in the afternoon.

A while back, I had to get a medical form filled out. It was a very simple one-page form, asking for things like my weight, but it had to be signed by a doctor. I was not looking forward to completing this task, since like most Americans, I have an innate fear of hospitals. In the end, I would have to go to the hospital 5 times to get the form completed.

The first time, I asked around to see what hospital people recommended. One was recommended to me. I looked at the hospital's website, and decided to go on a Monday which was a holiday since otherwise I would have to take vacation from work to go. On the website, it said nothing about being closed on national holidays, so I assumed it wouldn't be a problem. Wrong. After waking up early on my day off and driving to the hospital, I found it closed due to the holiday.

The second time, I decided to try a different hospital. I consulted my trusty JET handbook, which indicated that it was open for a period of time in the morning and a period of time in the afternoon. I decided to go in the afternoon. However, as I approached the door, I noticed that the afternoon hours had been x-ed out in marker. I headed in anyway, and consulted a nurse, who said they in fact no longer open in the afternoon.

For my third trial, I decided to head back to the first hospital on a normal day. I went after work, since it was supposed to be open until 5. I arrived at 4, and got to see a doctor at 7. I showed him my form and explained what needed to be filled out. "Ah, the doctor who does that kind of thing leaves at 5. If you come before 5, you can see him. I can't do it." Keep in mind, I had been there since 4 and had explained to the nurses what was required in this form.

For the fourth time, I decided to head to the university hospital, the biggest hospital in town. According to the JET guide, it was supposed to be open from 8am to 12am. 12am, based on my understanding, meant midnight. I know we learned that kind of thing in frist grade, but I had a shaky grasp on it even then, and wasn't too sure. Finally satisfied that 12 am meant midnight, I headed off to the hospital after school. I knew something was wrong when I entered an empty lobby, with no one at the reception desk. I looked around for a while and finally found a sign indicating that the hospital was open until 12pm, i.e. noon.

A few days later, exasperated and in tears, I decided to take some vacation time and head back to the first hospital. I arrived just as they opened for the afternoon session, and told the nurses exactly what I needed. It took approximately 10 minutes. Two weeks of frustration, 5 trips to the hospital, a couple of hours of vacation, and all it took were 10 minutes.

I bring up the subject of Japanese hospitals, because this weekend I went to visit a friend in the hospital, and it was one of the more bizarre experiences I've had in Japan.

I asked my friend when I could visit him, assuming there would be visiting hours, but he told me "Any time is fine." I arrived at the hospital at 7pm, expecting it to be pretty empty. It wasn't pretty empty; it was completely empty. I walked up to the front doors and all the lights were turned off. I tried the door, assuming it would be locked, but it opened when I pushed. There was no one at the front desk, nowhere for me to sign in.

I headed through the dark lobby and into the elevator to get to my friend's room. I didn't know which room he was in however, so I called him to ask. "Room 302. I'm the only person here." Sure enough, all the other rooms were empty and he was the only patient.

We talked for a while, and then he needed to ask the nurse a question, so he pressed the buzzer. No one came. At first we thought she was on her way; then we thought she had fallen asleep; and a last we came to realize that perhaps she wasn't there. My sick friend had been left alone in an open, unguarded hospital. Our suspicions were confirmed when we saw a car pull into the parking lot a little while later, and the nurse got out of it and ran upstairs.

There are two morals to this story. The first is, don't go to a Japanese hospital if you can aviod it. The second is, Japan is a third world country. Well, maybe that's going too far. I doubt there are many empty hospitals in third world countries. But the level of efficiency and the number of hoops that have to be jumped to get a simple form filled out is the kind of thing one would expect from a much less developed place.

Lies, all lies

Each workday begins with the morning meeting. I usually take advantage of this 2-5 minute period to stare blankly at the wall; I consider it a warm-up for the day ahead. Last week, my practiced wall staring was broken when an interesting phrase was mentioned in the meeting.

"...rei no mondai..."

Loosely translated, "rei no mondai" means "the unmentionable problem." I immediately perked up. This sounded juicy.

"So we had a PTA meeting last night to explain the unmentionable problem to the parents, and we'll have an assembly today to explain things to the students," the vice principal announced.

I wasn't able to glean any further information about what the problem was, being unmentionable and all. So after the meeting was over, I asked my supervisor what all the fuss was about.

"The sprinklers in the gym aren't working. We asked the Board of Education for money to fix them, but they didn't respond, so we assumed they were sending the money soon. When the fire department asked if we had fixed the sprinklers, we told them we had, since we thought the money was coming soon. The newspaper found out about it and published an article that was very critical of the school. But they didn't mention that we had asked for money from the Board of Education." Ironically enough, they were planning on gathering the students in the gym to explain to them that if there were a fire in the gym they would all die, but that this was not the school’s fault.

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Before we progress any further, I’d like to back up and explain something about Japan, and my school in particular. They are extremely by the book. If a teacher goes on vacation, he has to tell the principal and vice principal exactly where he will be and when. No one sneaks out of school early or without taking vacation (myself excluded, of course). When it comes to the relationship between the teachers and the administrators, the name of the game is full-disclosure. This does not extend, however, to the relationship between, say, the school and the fire department. Why tell someone the truth when it actually matters, when lives are at stake?

To recap, here is a list of things that are allowed and things that are forbidden at my school:
Having dyed hair (as a student): forbidden
Smelling “sweet”: forbidden
Failing to tell the foreigner what to do in the event of an emergency: allowed
Painting one’s nails: forbidden
Not telling the principal where you’re going for vacation: forbidden
Lying to the fire department about the sprinklers: allowed
Having pierced ears: forbidden

Sleeping at one’s desk: allowed