Bunka Center

Today was another eye opener. I suddenly see things from a new angle, or I think about something that never had before entered my mind.

I got my new refrigerator today! I can actually store a pitcher of water in there now. My tap water isn’t very cold and it comes out with tiny bubbles in it, so it will be really nice to have my britta pitcher of cold water whenever I need it. Got the air conditioner going now, so it’s a bit cooler in my living room as I’m writing this. I’m actually wearing clothes right now. I had to wait around my house for about 2 hours for the delivery men to come after work. Then I wanted to get to the library to see if they had the second Harry Potter book in English before I was meeting Sarah at the Bunka Center to shadow her Japanese language lesson. I hopped on my bike and made it the 3 or 4 kilometers or so to the library (which is right next to the bunka center) about 5 min. before it closed. This was the first time I had been there, so I walked up to the lady behind the desk and said, “eego no hon ga arimasuka?” which means, “Do you have any books in English?” The lady said to wait a second, then walked out from behind the desk. I followed her until she walked into a back room. I thought, this is funny… About 30 seconds later she came back out with a handful of books and set them back on the desk. There were five books in English. Five. In the entire library. And they were all by Japanese authors. I asked (half sarcastically) if they had Harry Potter in English and she actually got on the computer and checked another library in a bigger city. It looked like the nearest library with any reasonable amount of books in English was Shizuoka City 20 kilometers away. And there were 10 people on the waiting list for the Harry Potter book I wanted. I think I might have to buy all the books I want to read. Books are really expensive here though because they are all imported. Ebay might be the way to go. Or have my parents buy used books for real cheap and then spend $20 to airmail a box. I have purchased one book here “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” and it was 1300 yen.

Well, I didn’t have much time to stick around thinking about the five English books, I had to get to the bunka center. I thought I was just going to be hanging out with Sarah and her Japanese teacher, but I was far wrong. Really, I didn’t know what I was going to be doing but afterward it sure set me thinking. After a short ride in the smallest elevator I’ve ever been in Sarah brought me to a man named Hakamada sensei. We briefly met a few pairs of teachers and students who were studying Japanese, then went into a room of our own. It took me a bit, but I pretty much figured out that he was signing me up to take Japanese lessons. There was a 2 page survey sheet that I thought at first was a knowledge gauge because of how the first question was posed. It had the word namae and then in English “fast/middle/last name/nickname.” And I thought, “ok, namae doesn’t mean fast…I think it means name, but is it last name or nickname?” I decided to circle “last name” and move on to question two. This one asked me my age in Japanese and in English so now I was really confused. I asked Hakamada sensei what this meant and he said, “Name. Fast name, middle name, Last name.” “Ohhhh…I thought. First name. K, got it. I didn’t really feel like this was the time for correcting this mistake (or the several other mistakes I ran into- like “Can you lead hiragana?”). After all, I was the illiterate one.

After I finished Hakamada sensei went over the sheet with me. We spent a good 40 min. talking about what I had written. This was really enjoyable because I could tell he really cared about me and my interests and my success living here in Japan. I found out he plays darts and golf as well. He shoots around 90 and is playing on Saturday in another prefecture. That’s neither here nor there really… but this is what struck me: I was in exactly the opposite seat I was in this past fall semester. That semester I had classes on only Tuesdays and Thursdays so I decided to not waste my time and signed up to volunteer Monday and Wednesday mornings at the local literacy center LVCV (Literacy Volunteers of Chippewa Valley). There I worked with people from Mexico, Laos, Germany and the Middle East who were living in Wisconsin and studying English. It was a great experience and I know it helped me get this position teaching English in Japan. But I didn’t ever imagine myself in the student’s position. Yet here I was sitting in the Bunka Center, not even totally understanding what “bunka” meant. I struggled through talking about the worksheet with Hakamada sensei and then struggled through understanding how the classes worked and who my teachers would be and how often and when we would be meeting and how much it would cost and what I should do if I needed to cancel a lesson. I just had to shake my head in wonderment and disbelief at how surreal it felt. And thank Hakamada sensei for his patience.

There’s this exam called the JPLT? I think. It’s a government Japanese Language proficiency exam that can certify people who pass for certain jobs, etc. There’s 4 different levels with 1 being the most difficult. And it’s really difficult. Some native Japanese speakers would have to study to pass it. Hakamada sensei showed me the sheet that explained what kind of preparation one needed to pass the once a year exams. It looked like level 4 required 150 hours of preparation with each successive level doubling the required study time. He wanted to push me and he wanted me to challenge myself to try and pass the level 3 exam next December. If I study 1 hour every day for the next 15 months or 450 hours, I should have no problem passing level Three. Which really does nothing job prospect wise, but it would mean that I know quite a bit of Japanese. I think level three required a solid base of 6,000 vocab words as well (mentioning this Hakamada sensei began rambling off the words for everything in the room).

Do I have the discipline to do this?