In 1978, Japanese singer Momoe Yamaguchi released the song ii hi tabidachi as part of a campaign by the Japanese National Railways. I love this whimsical and nostalgic song, and when I sat down on the shinkansen bullet train almost 40 years after its release, I heard an instrumental version as a departure jingle. The train lurched forwards, the city quickly became a blur, and a little boy in the seat across from me waved out the window while calling out ‘Tokyo bye-bye!’
When I hear Yamaguchi vocalise ‘ah-AHH’ in the song, I feel this wide-open sense of awe, like seeing the countryside unfolding in front of me as I set out on a lone journey. Possibilities appear, and fade as I pass by. This seems to be exactly what the song is about, the title meaning ‘a good day for a journey’. Then, there is a sense of bittersweet hope, as she sings ‘Somewhere in Japan, someone waits for me.’ It makes me wonder what kinds of people I have yet to meet in my life. I think about those whom I have known and no longer know. I wonder what, and who will pass before my eyes when I die. How will I leave this world, and the people with whom I have shared a journey?
Arriving in Nakatsugawa, a rural mountain town as a brand-new Assistant English Teacher, I knew very little about what to expect. Teaching experience is not required for this role, but I was replacing a loud and confident woman from the US who had a degree in education. The other teachers at my two assigned schools rarely let me forget it. They were openly disappointed by the quiet and withdrawn Scottish woman who had arrived, and Japanese people are rarely openly anything. The pressure was so much that I stopped eating or sleeping for days at a time, and I still get nightmares about how trapped I felt.
After some complaints were made to the company I was hired by, the local teacher trainer arrived to give me some hands-on support. The trainer was a Chinese-American man in his 40s, well versed in both the extroverted and showy culture more commonly seen in the US, and the more inward-looking, group-oriented East-Asian way of being. Jointly, we taught a fifth grade class. I had never seen a class so animated before that day, and he instructed me to be more like a ‘clown’, to encourage the children to be interested in English class. This felt impossibly unnatural for me.
At the end of our lesson, a girl approached us. Her voice wobbled a bit as she said,
‘Next time, could you please be a bit quieter, because your loud voices hurt my ears.’
The trainer told me not to take that as a sign that I didn’t have any improvements to make. True, I needed to improve my confidence, and project my voice better, but intuitively I knew that I could make a strong connection with the students even with my natural personality. This is what kept me going, despite how isolated and defeated I felt in this quiet little town where no one would talk to a foreigner like me – the adults at least. Whenever I was outside, my students would see me and shout my name, high five me, or try to show me their hamsters or new toys. I lived right next to the primary school that I taught at two days a week, and I did not have much privacy. Thankfully, the children never came to my door, though they knew exactly when to wave bye-bye to me.
I was never privy to the students’ circumstances, whether they had additional support needs, or difficulties at home, but there were times when I could sense that someone needed a little more attention than the others. That is how I felt when I met Jonny. Of course, that is not his real name, but it is the name he insisted on being called. If I called him by his actual Japanese name, he would scowl and ignore me.
The teacher of Class 6-3 noticed my surprise when Jonny stood up in the middle of a lesson and walked out of the classroom.
‘Ignore him’, he said, rolling his eyes, ‘That’s just what he’s like.’
Other times, Jonny would carve deep marks into his desk, hide underneath it, or pull his jumper over his head and refuse to interact with anyone. He never brought his English textbook to class, and I began to wonder what his home life was like, and if anyone was helping him to pack his bag, or making sure he got to bed at night. I did not want to ignore him.
The next week, I brought a spare copy of the English textbook, and left it on Jonny’s desk before class began. I made casual conversation with him when all the other students were busily working, and he was slumped back in his seat.
Class 6-3 was very chaotic. When I tell people that I used to teach in Japan, they always say ‘I bet the students were really well-behaved!’
Here is a day in the life:
We started with a lesson about what you want to be when you grow up. Jonny sat next to a boy whose ambition in life was to become a shinkansen. No, not a shinkansen driver, the actual train itself. The girls at his table were discussing becoming models. Over much unrelated chatter, I asked the rest of the table ‘will you be a model too?’ Until I asked this question, Jonny had been absorbed in carving things into his table. Then he shouted, ‘I’m going to be a mother?!’
Eventually, he drew a detailed picture of himself fishing. None of the students practiced any English.
The next lesson began with flashcards. This time, we were learning about family, and I read out:
‘Ancestor.’
One of the students furrowed his brow and shouted out, ‘Ancestor United?’
‘That’s Manchester.’ I replied.
When everyone was completing their worksheets, I walked over to Jonny.
‘Where is your paper?’
‘Rock, paper, scissors!’ He replied, and I drew scissors. Jonny lost.
His friend had written ‘I want the N700A NOZOMI Shinkansen to be my girlfriend’ on his worksheet and attached it to his chest. An improvement over becoming a train, I suppose.
After I had completed all my lessons, I was required to ask the vice-principal to stamp my attendance sheet. He was a lot like a cat, with a high-pitched voice, and a round, curious face. Before he would give me a stamp, he asked me to put out my hand, and then he tapped it with a plastic cat-paw wand.
Over time, I learned not to question things like this too much. As Halloween approached, I found my own cat-paw wand at the local 100 yen store, and took my revenge on the vice-principal by brandishing my identical paw when he reached for his. He laughed so much that the teachers’ room fell silent around us.
Slowly, I felt like I was building connections with my students. I played ukulele for them while we sang English nursery rhymes. They asked me to play dodgeball with them during lunch time. The trainer returned to see how I was progressing, and told me that if he had to score me, I would now get 100%. However, a teacher at the school who had undermined me from the start made sure to tell me every criticism he could think of. It was hard to put on a confident face in such an environment.
I began to see Jonny as a canary for how good my classes were. If he was not engaged, he would pull out a huge hardcover book about bass fishing, and openly read it during my classes. He sat in the front row, and made no effort to hide it – in fact he would slam it on his desk. When he was interested, he had a way of bringing everyone else along with him.
On Halloween, I wanted to teach Class 6-3 about apple-bobbing. Fruit is expensive in Japan, and a bag of 12 apples set me back about the equivalent of £10. I got a bucket, and as I arrived in class and began filling the bucket with water, the students watched me with trepidation. I plopped the apples into the bucket and dragged it to the front.
‘Who wants to try bobbing for apples?’ I asked the class. The usually rambunctious class was silent.
‘Volunteer?’ This is an English word which Japanese students understand and dread.
The teacher lounging at his desk beside me widened his eyes as Jonny stood up and made his way to the front of the class.
‘Try to grab the apple with your teeth’, I explained, in a combination of Japanese, English, and gestures.
If you have ever done bobbing for apples, you will know that it is much harder than it seems. Jonny giggled as he struggled to bite into an apple, and when he finally succeeded, the classroom erupted into cheers and shouts. Now everyone wanted a turn, and I only had enough apples for a third of them. In these situations, classroom law dictates that you must play rock, paper, scissors to pick the lucky ones. The ones who lost fell to their knees in disbelief. I tried to console them with Disney stickers, but the apples were clearly the preferred prize.
I had brought various Halloween accessories that day, and Jonny wanted to wear all of them at once for the rest of the day: silly anime eye glasses, cat ears, a witch’s hat, etc.
Walking home that afternoon, I heard my name. Jonny ran to catch up to me.
‘How are you?’ I asked in English.
‘I’m GREAT!’ he shouted, and pumped his fist in the air.
‘Do you like school?’
‘Sometimes…’
‘Do you like English class?’
‘Yes! I like English class!’
Now when I hear the line in ii hi tabidachi ‘on the cape, a boy is fishing’, I imagine Jonny with his stocky legs dangling above the Nakatsu river, fishing rod in hand. Then I remember that the 12-year-old boy that I knew is now an adult in his 20s, and I wonder what he is doing with his life. I have a slight sense of dread when I remember how his classroom teacher dismissed him. I hope that others saw through his initial reticence, that they encouraged his latent skills and passions, and that he has found something worth living for. For so many years, I felt like I was only watching the world around me, never fully part of it. Even when I was teaching in Japan, much of the time I felt apathetic and hopeless. I only felt a spark of enthusiasm when I connected with the children. I hope that Jonny felt the joy of participation early enough that he can grab hold of the apple of life, eyes wide-open.
I learned that a new Shinkansen line will one day link Tokyo to the west of Japan through Nakatsugawa. Sometimes I dream of returning when the route is ready, to see if I bump into someone I knew more than a decade ago. I would be returning to a place where I felt such pain and loneliness, but a place that also shaped one of my most treasured qualities: the ability to take people as they are without judgement. The students also taught me that there is always levity to be found in life, and I’m not sure how I would have got through that year without the wild freedom that Class 6-3 showed me.
Iona Grant 