Thursday, July 9, 2009

Botchan, and a bike in distress

Oh, hello there. I just finished a novel by Natsume Soseki, that he wrote around 1905. It's very famous in Japan, and is maybe a story akin to America's the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It was gifted to me through my good friend Zensho, and it was so good that I devoured it in two days. But, that's not surprising. I knew that I would get into it, as Japanese literature is almost always amazing (if you don't believe me, read Haruki Murakami).

What was surprising is that the book captures perfectly a lot of my experience in Japan, despite what I would assume to be a huge cultural rift, as well as a hundred years seperating Botchan's story from my own. The basic story is this, a young (23 year old!) Botchan gets out of university at the dawn of the 20th century, and becomes a teacher in a far-off prefecture do to a lack of serious life-planning. A page out of my own life, only the prefecture was a bit farther for me than Botchan. Even though the young protagonist speaks Japanese, the dialect of the new prefecture is so strong that there are often communication problems. Additionally, the fast-talking Tokyoite Botchan has a completely different notion of how to go about doing things than the backwater staff and students, and is constantly seen as rude or pushy, which is a common problem for foeigners in Japan. We're used to straight talking, and clear directions from our bosses, which in Japan is avoided as it seems pushy. Additionally, there's one other young teacher that becomes his confidante and happens to be the only person he can speak freely with. This young character corresponds to Nigel in my situation.

It even has a situation wherein the shithead, crafty, pansy boss is lying and sneaking his way into forcing a teacher to leave. Basically it boils down to the two against the crafty boss, with a lot of parallels to my situation over the last year.

I guess it's just interesting that, in fiction, you can find something so far removed from your life in general that can still apply. Finding this novel at the end of my trip has really mellowed me out about my impending return. It's kind of given me a little space to appreciate the my situation in an abstract scenario, which is pretty excellent.


Additionally, riding home from work today I was thinking about my mama-cherry, which is rapidly deteriorating, and how it can stand as a metaphor for my experience in Japan. Basically, my bike has just been breaking one piece at a time over the months, keeping pace with my slackening desire to keep teaching. Although, I sometimes wonder if I'm not making a mistake coming back to the states after only one year, I've lately found that the Jr. High classrooms can be kind of uncomfortable ... just like my bike. Additionally, the other day, something just snapped; in my bike's case, it was one of the rear spokes. In my personal case, it's the realization that my brother Joe will be in Japan in less than two weeks, which kicks off the start of the European Tour. As a result, I've totally lost it at school; full of jokes and enjoyment, and a total loss of professional spirit. In fact, yesterday, I was kicking off a class with a song, as we usually do. It was a song from Aladdin, "A Whole New World." I was with one of my favorite teachers, and I just ... kind of lost it. I told him "You be Jasmine, I'll be Aladdin! Let's do this!" and jumped on a desk and began to serenade the 45 year-old teacher in front of a bunch of bewildered students.

After we were through (with gestures!), one student looked around and began to clap. I totally got a slow clap, although I did instigate it a bit. As the student looked around, I just said "No, no, no. It's totally okay to clap. We're amazing. That was amazing, really. We're excellent," and much to everyone's surprise, it started the whole class off.

Man, my life is just ... not gonna be weird enough for me when I get back home.

1 comment:

nickyj said...

First off, Japanese literature is almost always amazing? BS.

Secondly, it pisses me off that the japanese work environment seems to be all about secrets, lies, and suddenly telling your employees that they're either relocating, fired, or have to put up with some pointless new rule- and they have the audacity to call us rude? Well I call them bitches.

Fuck those guys.