Yesterday I went on a school trip with my seventh grade students. It was a blast! We had perfect weather, and the students were funny, genki (energetic) and full of life. (Those are some of the reasons why I love teaching this age group!)
The trip was just a day event via coach bus from Sapporo, so it wasn't very complex or long. We left school in the morning and drove about 25 minutes to a park called Takino, which is just south of Sapporo. The park has a lot of excellent facilities for large groups, and there's a natural waterfall there. All hiking paths are paved and flat, so it's a very accessible place for all types of people.
The plan was to cook many types of food, then walk to the waterfall. Each group made a particular Japanese food, so there was a plethora of things for me to observe! Also the outing taught the kids how to cook and prepare food outside, so I guess there was a small learning component to the trip... You can view the photos in an album by clicking here.
Let me start at the beginning. All the students and teachers met in the parking lot of the Co-Op grocery store (Seikatsukyou) across the street from my apartment complex. There was of course an unnecessarily-long meeting before the trip began, complete with bullhorn announcements and boring introductions. After wasting about 20-25 minutes of time, the grocery store opened and some students went inside with shopping lists. They bought the ingredients for the BBQ, but it took longer than expected.
Meanwhile myself and most of the other students were waiting on busses parked in front of the store. Now you and I both know that kids + busses + field trips = rowdy behavior and nonsense, which is exactly what happened on this bus. Students were slamming the foot rests up and down, and of course there was a lot of climbing over seats, pulling hair, yelling inappropriate things, etc. But I have to admit: overall they were better behaved than American students would be in the same situation!
After all the groceries were purchased, we finally got underway, but we were about 25 minutes behind schedule. (An absolute catastrophe in Japanese culture!) So when we got to the park, everyone was rushed out of the bus to try and make up for lost time, which was pretty much futile. Try moving 300 12- and 13-year-olds quickly and you soon find out that it's akin to herding cats!
After shuffling the students down the the BBQ area, things quickly became a lot more org
anized. In fact, it was like watching a military operation unfold: A mass of students quickly dispersed into smaller units, which went to work setting up individual BBQ areas and prepping the food. Each member of a unit was assigned a particular task, such as lighting the fire, cutting vegetables, etc. (I love Japanese efficiency, especially among young people!)
Because everybody was assigned a job, I didn't have much to do, other than wander around to each group and try to get them to speak some English with me. But I did manage to help a few groups light their fires. A lot of students didn't know how to properly stack and intersperse newspaper between the charcoal pieces, so I showed them how and got their fires going. Once everyone had fire, I walked around and asked each group what they were cooking.
The menus among groups were varied. For example, one group's main dish was okonomiyaki, followed by salad and chocolate fondue for dessert. Another group made curry hamburgers, yaki-onigiri and fruit-yogurt dessert. And another made yakitori, asparagus spears rolled in bacon, and strawberries in yogurt. I was quite impressed with their menu ambition and cooking skills!
Because I don't eat meat, I wasn't able to sample any of the students' food, however. (Every dish had meat in it because vegetarians "don't exist" in Japan...) But that changed after I went around to each group and asked in English and Japanese, "Does it have meat in it?" This was such a strange question for the students that it took them a while to understand what I was asking. It was even harder for them to understand why I was asking. But soon they got it: "Oh, Michael doesn't eat meat for whatever reason!"
This seemingly huge revelation sparked some conversation, which was exactly what I wanted. I told students that I don't eat meat because it hurts my stomach and I like animals. Word of this spread like wildfire, so after about half an hour I had little girls coming up to me with plates of non-meat food. It was so cute! They would make something like yakisoba or okonomiyaki without meat in it. Then with a big smile on their faces they'd offer this wonderful-looking plate of food to me. They were so proud of what they cooked, and I was deeply honored that they went out of their way to cook food I could eat! (I planned on eating some food I made at home that day, but this was much better!)
As I ate a veggie-friendly okonomiyaki, some of the girls asked why I don't eat meat. Using very basic body language, I stuck out my tongue, put my hands on my stomach and heaved - indicating that eating meat makes my stomach upset. They totally understood. To demonstrate that I respect animals and don't wish to take more life than is necessary to sustain my own, I tried to tell them that it was a Buddhist practice too. (Vegetarianism isn't really a "Buddhist" practice per se, because Buddhists can and do eat meat. But in my case vegetarianism does fit in with my personal practice and Buddhist views.) But try conveying this concept to a seventh grader, especially when you don't know the words "Buddhist," "animals" or "belief" in Japanese. It's practically impossible!
So I thought of a way she might understand. I said the word "Buddhist" in English many times. Then I told her to watch me. I stood up, bowed, clapped my hands, and clasped them in a prayer pose for a moment. (This is what you do at a Japanese Shinto/Buddhist shrine.) Instantly the lightbulb went off in her head and she understood. Then she was so shocked/impressed that she had to tell her friends nearby. I love non-verbal communication!
When lunch wrapped up, each "unit" cleaned up its BBQ area as fast as they prepared it. Then there was another post-lunch bullhorn meeting where more time was wasted on boring announcements. After the meeting, all the students and teachers walked over to a grassy hill for the obligatory Japanese group picture ritual. A crazy photographer set up a huge camera on a tall tripod and snapped photos of the whole group. Then it was off the see the waterfall.
On the 10 minute walk to the waterfall, some of the boys captured a cicada. It was crawling on his hand and he just had to take it over to a group of girls. Of course they totally flipped out when they saw the insect! There was lots of screaming and chasing and running around, which I thought was hilarious. It's refreshing to watch kids just be kids, no matter what culture you're in!
After we got to the waterfall, each class had its picture taken on a footbridge in front of the waterfall. (Like many parks in Japan, the footbridge serves no purpose and doesn't lead anywhere. Its sole purpose is to look pretty and be in front of the waterfall. Even the stream under the footbridge was concrete!) The kids were really goofing off, and so this took a bit longer than was expected. (For instance, one boy shot the finger as the photographer snapped the picture. I told him "No, don't do that! In America it's really, really bad!" But of course in Japan the finger doesn't mean much...)
During the bridge photos, something dawned on me: throughout the day, two teachers were constantly video recording the students. I know it's normal for Japanese people to record everything - even the most boring and mundane things. But the teachers were often focusing on the rowdiest kids, leading me to believe that they videotape not for posterity, but for discipline purposes.
If cameras are always combing the crowd, then there's a high chance misbehavior will be caught on tape. I felt bad for the students, because their every move was being watched. And I'm sure the tapes will be reviewed, and minor or even just slightly minor misbehavior will be pointed out to students individually at a later date.
Allow me to digress here for a moment: I don't know about you, but I remember field trips being times to act up a little bit because we were excited to be somewhere else. Yes, sometimes students did dumb things on school trips, but it was never recorded and then shoved back in our face later. All that mattered was that we were safe, showed up on time, and stayed together. (And if something happened to you on the trip because you did something stupid, to hell with it: your parents signed a school permission slip!)
If you were caught doing something bad, then you'd have pay the consequences. It's a simple system really: don't get caught doing bad things; don't let the teacher see you doing "that." With this system there's an opportunity to make a personal choice: If you do it and get caught, then you pay the consquences. If you do it and don't get caught, then nobody's the wiser and you learn something about the limits of control and supervision. Meanwhile the teachers' jobs are to watch out for bad behavior, but not worry too much about what every single student is doing at every minute.
Contrast that with the Japanese system of supervision, where students are always being watched (via video tape) and have no opportunity to act out without it being caught. Obviously the "instant replay" threat immediately improves overall behavior within a group, but at what social/human cost? Where's the personal choice? Where's the part about learning how to push the line and occasionally circumvent the forces of power and control? This is an important part of being a teenager. I felt like asking one of the teacher to just turn off the cameras for once, but of course I couldn't say that...
So I guess some poor teacher is reviewing hours and hours of boring school trip footage today, looking for bad behavior or minor infractions. But in my opinion nobody misbehaved or did anything really bad. (I'm sure there are some teachers who will find plenty of things to criticize though...) We all had a nice time, and many of the students were willing to speak English with me more so than they ordinarily would in the classroom. Perhaps this is because they aren't in the classroom and don't have to worry about making mistakes. Also non-verbal communication (like pointing and grunting and gesturing) really helps.
So that's what I got paid to do on Thursday of this week. Pretty cool, eh? I sometimes can't believe that I'm paid to do these fun things with kids. It's so fulfilling and is a wonderful way to bring cross-cultural learning directly into students' lives - even if it's all on tape! ;-)
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