Home visits and Cultural Differences within Japan.

Hello!

On Monday this week, I noticed that I did not have any lessons in the afternoon and students went home after lunch. It was not until Tuesday when I went back to my main school that I learned that it was because teachers were conducting home visits during the afternoon Monday through Thursday.

During the home visits, teachers will visit a student's home, meeting with his or her parents. From what someone told me, the teacher will spend about 5-10 minutes with the family at their home before moving on to the next family. By the end of the week, the teacher will have visited all of the students.

Because of the home visits, I did not have classes in the afternoon this week, which caused some lessons to be cancelled. Next week will be a holiday week - Golden Week in Japan. It is one of the major national holiday weeks with many Japanese people traveling.

The way the holiday is setup is a bit inconvenient calendar-wise - Friday, April 29th is a holiday. Then Monday, May 2nd is regular day, then Tuesday through Thursday is a holiday. However, my school is having students come for class on Friday and then will be taking the Monday off, which will give students and teachers almost a week off (Saturday through end of day Thursday).

Company provided paid time off can be somewhat lower in Japan as compared to the US - it seems that 10 days of paid vacation is pretty standard here. However, several extended holiday periods help supplement it. Golden week is one of those periods; obon time in August is another along with several public holidays around New Year’s.

For JET Program teachers, we can use 20 days of paid time off (usually only to be used when school is on “break”) and Kobe teachers get an extra 5 days we can use during the summer vacation.

During Golden Week, I will be visiting the Lake Biwa area, which is Japan's largest inland lake and located by Kyoto - about a two hour train ride from Kobe. I recently bought a new bike and will be taking it to Lake Biwa.

Speaking of Kobe, when I moved here, I was surprised to learn about the regional differences across Japan. Kobe is in a region referred to as "Kansai" and, despite only being a few hour train ride away from Tokyo, there are several cultural things unique to the area.

I recently read a book about this (called "Kansai Cool" in case you are interested) - it talked about many things unique to Kansai. I believe that I read that many of the differences arose because of Japan's geography - even though it is one island about the size of California, there are major mountains throughout it, which caused transportation difficulties between regions. Because traveling between regions was not easy, some differences arose between regions.

Also, Kansai is home to several major international ports (Kobe and Osaka being the main ones), so these cities tended to receive more influence from the outside world.

Casual visitors to Japan will be told about one of the major differences between Kansai and the Tokyo area - when it comes to escalators, Kansai people will generally stand on the right whereas Tokyo people will stand on the left. The book explained that this might have origins in the the class of people within each region.

Tokyo historically housed many samurai and fighters almost exclusively used their right hand. While walking, they carried their sword on the left side of their body so that the right hand could easily draw the sword. Walking on the left prevented the sword's scabbard from bumping into another's when passing on pathways.

On the other hand, the Osaka/Kansai area, being mainly comprised of merchants, walking on the right side afforded a right handed person better chance to protect his/her wallet (generally carried on the right side).

Now, although this is what the book said - I do not know if this is actually true and if you look into it, there are actually a few other theories as to why this difference developed. But, either way, it is a nice story and an easier way to remember the proper practice.

And, in reality, which side you walk on and such seems much more confusing - I think the Japanese are also somewhat confused about this. It is never especially clear to me what side of the side walk I should be on and it does not seem that Japanese people in my area follow a certain standard.

Cultural differences have also grown within the Japanese language. Japanese generally consider Kansai people to be more friendly than their Tokyo counterparts. You see this expressed in language - Kansai speakers tend to use more casual phrases. There are also different words used in Kansai that Tokyo people may have trouble understanding.

How one expresses negation through language can also be different. In Kansai, if you want to say "I do not understand" - you might hear people say "wakarahen" (wa-ka-la-hen), whereas Tokyo people would say "wakarimasen" (wa-ka-lee-ma-sen).

That is all for this week - again, no photos with this week’s update but I will have a lot next time from Lake Biwa.

Until then,

Tom

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