I spent most of yesterday and today at a teaching conference in Fukushima City. There was definitely a different vibe to this event when compared to the last orientation conference we had in the first half of August. I think what set this observation off for me was a new ALT who had just arrived from Boston one month ago.
Most of us are all fairly settled into our new lives, nothing really freaking us out. If anything, we needed a break from work and a chance to be around other foreigners (yeah, i'm a foreigner -- i am part of a very small fraction of the population of Japan). People's hair is getting longer, and we seem to be wearing more clothes because of the weather. Where everyone would select the "Japanese" menu options in August, more and more people seem to be taking the "Western" style meals. We take less pictures, and we've formed cliques based on our different regions. We're not just wide-eyed tourists anymore; we've got lots to share, brag, and complain about. We're all still excited, but also just a bit jaded in our love for Japan. It's easy to tell who's been here even longer than us because these people don't even bother to wear suits anymore.
Contrast this with our new ALT: he's all smiles and looking to make friends with anybody. Everything is new and awesome for him. He wants nothing but to share and to be shared upon. As another ALT mentioned, "he's got Tokyo orientation written all over him." There's nothing bad about this, but he's still got that glow. In a sense, he's a celebrity among us. He's new and ready to be taken care of. We've all gone through almost 4 months of JET -- many more have had several years. We know how challenging it can be to leave one's home (in my case, for the first time) and we know how important we are to each other to make this our new home for the time being.
As for people taking care of us, I feel a bit sorry for all of the Japanese English Teachers who decided to attend this very ALT-centered event. Not only did it seem, at times, like it was a place for us to vent frustrations about our work as ALTs (which often had a lot to do with our relations with teachers), but the presentations were exclusively in English and usually spoken quite fast. The presenters even directed their points to “us” and “we” in ways that were clearly intended to refer exclusively to ALTs. I found it ironic that we all sat on our side of the auditorium and complained about being misunderstood and ignored while our JLTs sat on the other side politely trying to keep up with the dialogues happening in the room.
It’s been very busy at my school over the last few weeks and it’s been difficult to get much face-time with the teachers that I work closely with. The teacher who escorted me to the conference, said that he’s been getting only about 4 or 5 hours sleep each night. When I apologetically told him that I had signed up to go out with several ALTs for the evening, he said that was fine because he was looking forward to getting good nights sleep in the hotel. He also drove for about an hour into Iwaki to pick me up at 7am, so that we could drive two hours to the conference in Fukushima – and he bought me a coffee at a rest stop. I have to admit that I’ve felt a bit neglected in the past couple of weeks, but this is more due to the nature of our business. But really, I don’t need to be babysat – I probably wouldn’t like it if I was. I’m glad I was able to spend this time with my JTE because it reminded me to appreciate the extent to which these people have taken care of us.
Here’s to taking care of each other.
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