Newspapers, graduation, and the joys of buying a car in Japan
Not too much to report since my last blog entry, but I’ll try and give you a small update or 2 on what I’ve been doing. I’ve got a lot of time on my hands this week as the students have been off since Monday. 3rd years have now graduated (more on that in a sec), the 2nd years are on their school trip to Singapore and Malaysia, and the 1st years are off because the teachers are all consumed with running and marking school entrance exams. Although we are a public school, we do have an entrance exam to get in. Got to keep out the rabble!!!
Right - first up is a little writing project I was given. Cast your mind back about 2 weeks and think about what you were doing. For me, I was having a standard Thursday at school with a fairly average workload on. Just before lunchtime, our principal comes over to my desk and starts talking to me. “David, you remember last year the English department made a newspaper?”. This was an English-language newspaper (entitled “The Koyo Sun”) 
project started by my former co-worker. “I would like you to make it again. (your co-worker) is very busy at the moment, so I would like you to make it. Is that OK?”. And you see, this is where I should have asked for more details about what I would be expected to do, rather than just saying “OK, I’ll give it a go” and thinking it can’t be that hard with some help from students in writing articles and some time editing them and laying everything out. In fact, if I started talking to students the next day, I could probably get an issue ready for the start of the school year in April. But it was never going to be that simple! “Thank you David. I would like the same amount (i.e. an 8-page B4 newspaper), and you need to complete it by tomorrow at 12:00″!!! I have no idea how he kept a straight face when he told me that, as he was pretty much asking the impossible. But I’m like a Jimmy Saville at my school and I was determined to “Fix It” for them!
It was only a little while later that I realised the magnitude of what I had to do. The newspaper had been “in production” for months now, but only 1 page of articles had been submitted by students and there was still no idea for the layout. And so I came to the conclusion that I would have to write most of the articles myself, and with that in mind I set to work. I had trouble getting started and the first article (a horoscope for 2007, using various sources on the net) took about 3 hours to research, write, get images for the article, and finally set it all out on the page. 2 things should also be noted at this point. Firstly, I had no real knowledge of desktop publishing, so I had to download the software from the net, install it and learn how to use it on-the-fly. Not a nice thing to do as I like to get to know software first before using it for a big project. And secondly, this had taken my previous co-worker about 2 months to do, and I had about 23 hours. I knew it was going to be a long day & night! And so it proved, with me writing article after article, finding photos from my collection over the past 3 years, trying to lay them out on the page in a good format, cursing when the program crashed and I proceeded to lose work etc. I used the layout and style from The Times newspaper as I really couldn’t afford to spend any time thinking of anything really original. As day turned into night, and night started to turn back into day I worked, and I eventually completed the article, saved it all and crawled into bed at about 5:45am the next morning. I was surprisingly not tired until I got into bed, but then I think it took me all of about 3 seconds to fall asleep. The next morning I submitted the newspaper to a pleased and rather stunned English department and principal, who proceeded to look through it. 10 minutes later, he returned to me and showed me the horoscope page. “David, you don’t need this page. We must have a Chinese page in here too. This is an international newspaper”. At this point, hysteria was very close and I almost just broke out into laughter but I managed to contain myself. I did tell him that I wouldn’t be able to learn enough Cantonese before lunch to write a whole B4 page of articles though, but if he wanted me to I could try! His reply was that the Chinese teachers would write one, and submit it to the printers later. So, why wasn’t I given this later deadline that the Chinese teachers were afforded? I don’t know, and to be honest I was past caring as I’d got the job done and had done a fairly good job considering the time restraints and limited number of articles ready for me to publish. As tired as I was at the end of it all, it was quite rewarding. I am now taking this project fully by the reins as it will be quite enjoyable to do when I’ve got a realistic timeframe to work in, and I can get students to write articles and submit photos to me well in advance. If you’re interested, you can actually download and view a PDF copy of the newspaper by clicking here .
Moving on, and last Thursday was the school graduation ceremony, and it was a pretty big one for me. The students who were graduating were first years when I came to this school, so I’ve taught them through 
their entire high school lives. I had very mixed thoughts on the ceremony: in some ways I was really pleased that these students had matured into adults and were all ready to move onto the next stage of their lives; on the other hand, I was really sad to see some of them go. I get on with the students I teach really well, and a couple of them have come to talk to me when they didn’t feel like they could talk to Japanese teachers. It was nice that they felt they could confide in me about their problems about school and life. If, in 5 or 10 years time when they all meet up, one of them can remember “David sensei”, their sometimes crazy-haired foreign teacher who taught them about child labour and AIDS in Africa, then I’ll be happy.
The graduation itself was pretty straightforward, but I’ll give a brief description of it, just for the records. On entering the gym hall (where it all took place), parents and guests were issued with a graduation booklet, a PTA newsletter and the latest & greatest edition of Okinawa’s number 1 school-produced, English language newspaper(!), and just to take that Hollywood sheen off things, a plastic bag for them to put their shoes in. Of course, you can’t step foot in the gym with shoes on, so everyone is in socks/slippers/bare feet etc. The ceremony starts and everyone welcomes in the 3rd year students with a round of applause. There is then the singing of the national anthem and the school song. Now when the national anthem plays in Japan, there is a mixed reaction. Some people will stand and sing (as expected), but some people (and especially in Okinawa) will not sing, stay sat down or even look the other way. The teaching staff are pretty split on this, and the students have the option although most of them stand, probably due to peer pressure. I was told I can do what I wanted though, which put me in quite a quandary. I elected to stand, as I would for any nation’s national anthem. The reason for the silent protest is that they feel the national anthem goes back to Japan’s pre-WWII imperialistic past and the militarism under Emperor Hirohito, considered a deity in Japan during the war. In Okinawa the feeling is heightened because of the way Okinawa was treated by the Japanese government during WWII in the buildup to The Battle of Okinawa. But with that rather uncomfortable start out of the way, the rest is pretty much standard. You’ve got speeches by the principal & vice principal, then each student going up to receive their graduation certificate, before a rather bizarre, let’s throw our jackets in the air ritual performed by the 3rd years. They then proceed to leave the hall and through the school, where parents, teachers, friends and fellow students will cover them with confetti, flowers and shouts of congratulations. I got to see a few former graduates of the school and was chatting to them about their lives since graduation and how they are finding university. The common consensus of them seems to be that university is enjoyable but they usually say they have little work to do. This is in contrast to most students in Japan who say they have loads of work at uni, but I suppose at my school we do tend to drive them into the ground!
With graduation out of the way, I started to look at cars again to replace my dead Carol, and I finally decided on one last Thursday. The car in question was being sold through a garage by a Japanese English teacher at my school and is a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution. At first glance, people would say the car has been “Barry’d” or “Kev’d” up, although that statement wouldn’t be entirely true. I would see those cars as ones having a huge stereo taking up most of the rear of the car, a completely plastic and tacky looking body kit and some blue neon lights inside to make all the other chavs in the street say “ooooohhhhhh”. And while this car does have a big spoiler (aka carry-
handle) at the back, it’s upgrades are all performance ones. Indeed, my co-worker used to race this car up in Nago and it won an Okinawan road race back in 2002. The engine was reconditioned only 20,000km ago, and so is pretty much brand new. It’s got almost every race-specification add-on you can get and is quite a buy. It’s a little more than I was going to spend, but will be a nice investment, and at the end of my time in Japan I can either sell it on or even look to bring it back to Blighty at a push. I’m reliably informed it’s quite famous throughout Okinawas racers, and very few in the know will try to beat me off the lights. But don’t worry ladies & gents, I don’t intend to be either: a, wrapped round a tree; or b, getting pulled over by the police for speeding. Incidentally, if the latter happens, here is an excellent article to show you what will happen to you in Japan.
I thought choosing the car and heading over to buy it last Friday would be a fairly simple procedure, but once again Japan was to surprise and baffle me. I headed to the garage with a co-worker, partly because I couldn’t get there myself and partly to act as a translator incase there were any problems with sorting things out. The rather unhelpful people at the garage told me that we would need permission to park it at my apartment, because it was a white-plate car (there are 2 types of car in Japan: yellow-plate cars with 0.6l engines; and white-plate cars with engine sizes larger than that). To get this permission I would need a form from my estate agents and stamped by my landlord (in Japan, everyone has a stamp or inkan, and they use that instead of a signature) which says it is OK to park my car there. I would need to give the estate agent a 250 pound returnable deposit for some reason that nobody could really explain (”It is Japanese culture” was one response!). I then had to take this certificate to the police who would then come and draw a map of the parking area, and also the surrounding area, before they would give it the all-clear. Once that was done I would be able to go back to the shop and they could start getting the car ready. So after that first trip to the garage I was feeling a little down and like it would take forever to get some wheels again. But the following day I went to the estate agents, handed over my money and got this form with a red stamp on it, saying I could park there. The next day I went to the garage and gave them the stamped form, as they later revealed they could go to the police for me. I was then told to wait for about a week while events took their course.
But then 2 days later I got a call from the garage. Apparently, they had been to the police and because my village is so far out in the sticks, I don’t need special permission to park at my own apartment! “So why did the estate agent give me the form and take my money?” I asked. No answer was forthcoming, but hopefully it would mean the procedure would speed up slightly. So after work I posted the other 2 forms off to them (proof of registration of my inkan, and proof of my address), and waited for further contact. The contact came yesterday with yet more issues. “You don’t have a Japanese name” was the problem this time. I thought the blonde hair, green eyes and British accent would have given it away, but apparently some still do not realise that I’m not Japanese! I must blend into society so well. Actually what they meant was that I’d been asked to write my name in Japanese on the form, yet proof of my i
nkan and address were in English, and so I had to fill them in again. Filled in new forms and sent them off, and waited to hear about the next problem, which had to be forthcoming… and so it was! Got a call from them today, saying my paperwork was in order (yay!) but there was another problems (nooooo!). The spoiler/carry-handle on the back of the car would mean that the car would not pass its inspection and is only borderline legal, so they had to take it off for the inspection. I told them to put the wing in the back of the car and I would attach it myself after I’d bought it - there are only a few bolts connecting it to the boot. If I did get pulled over by the police I’d just play the dumb foreigner card. I did some research into the inspection system here and it amazes me at how many Japanese cars should fail this inspection. There are requirements that the driver and passenger windows cannot be tinted (that’s a good proportion of cars here in Okinawa failed already), and also that there cannot be any stickers in the front or rear windscreens. Now that 2nd one means that at least 50% of cars here should fail. But the car could be ready by Monday or Tuesday, but I’m not holding my breath just yet. There’s over 2 hours before close of business today and anything could happen in that time.
Well I’ve wrote much more than I thought I would so I’ll be heading off now. Will report back after I either dive or get my new car, whichever one comes first. Take care, and dive safely.
or Discuss this Article
Dave,
Well done on the school paper, looks good. Agree with your review of Blood Diamond, Jue and I saw it a couple of weeks ago. “Enjoyed” it isn’t the right phrase for such a hard hitting film. Let’s just say, as we walked out, we said “they’re only sparkly things, is it really worth buying them when you see what could be behind them?” So I guess it did what it should have done.
Love your pic with your graduating students. And what is the fab red dragon-type creature on the other pic?
So the big question, have you got your car? - I’ll send you some fluffy dice! So the art police didn’t have to call round, I bet you had the easel and paints set up for them! Hmm, so do you think you’ll get to see the “deposit” to the estate agents again?? Hope you’re now mobile again.
Take care
Bim x