Teacher Tennis, Swimming, More Formality...

Hi There!

Photos from last week are in the link below! I visited Tonomine Kogen which is a pasture-like area with several mountain peaks!

In this week's update, I will write about a few different topics.

Teacher Tennis Tournament

On Saturday, we had a teacher tennis tournament. This was similar to the softball event held back in last November that I wrote about here.

About 10-15 teachers plus the vice principal from my school gathered and played doubles tennis versus teams from other city elementary schools. Apparently, a lot of the people there, even teachers from other schools, remembered my softball home run from the fall - they brought it up several times.

It seems that someone has even told the new teachers at my school that arrived in April the story about it.

We played tennis with a rubber tennis ball that was less bouncy than a normal tennis ball, so that slowed the game down a bit and made it more accessible. Japan tends to take this approach in different areas.

In baseball, for instance, many youth teams (most likely Junior High and below) play with a rubber baseball. This helps keep things safer and also works better with Japan's urban environment.

There is usually less area to use for baseball in Japan, so it makes sense to use balls that would cause little or no damage if they were to hit a window, person or player.

I do not think anyone will be talk about my tennis playing after the tournament, it was quite difficult, but made for a short match.

Preparation for Swimming Instruction

Earlier in the week, the teachers participated in CPR training to prepare for the upcoming swimming season at school. All of the teachers teach swimming to their students as part of the school curriculum.

I believe it will be handled similarly to a "gym class" activity. The lessons will start during school on Monday and will run for several weeks.

From what I hear, the teachers end up getting into the pool with students and everything.

Language Learning

I also wanted to write a bit more about language learning. I have noticed development recently in this area which I think is linked to going to the weekly in-person language classes in Kobe.

I am still learning a lot, but the big development lately has been that I feel like I can now ask various questions in Japanese to learn other Japanese words. Knowing words like how to say "opposite" in Japanese helps. For example, if you know the Japanese word for hot weather (atsui あつい) and you know the word for opposite, you can ask something like "In Japanese, what's the opposite of hot." And get the answer back in Japanese without having to switch to English.

Also, the word "for example" (tatoiba たといば) is helpful because if you forget a particular word or want to know how to say something, you can use "for example" to help express it. For instance, if you know the words for sunny, cloudy and rainy but don't know the word for weather, you might be able to say something like "For example, sunny, cloudy and rainy, what is this?" and get an answer.

I have found that language learning, at least at this stage, is sort of like problem solving - you are trying to find ways to express things and also trying to figure out different ways to say something if you forget a particular word and want to figure it out in Japanese.

But I also had a struggle this week while trying to speak French. Some of you might remember that I minored in French in college and spent a study abroad semester (four months in Paris). I did not do anything to maintain my French over the years, but I was always surprised by how much I remembered despite never using it. It seems that learning at a younger age might help in this area.

I had been curious as to what would happen to my French abilities when I started to learn Japanese. At first, I was frustrated because I felt that there was so much more that I knew how to express in French versus Japanese. Now, though, I think my Japanese has started to catch up.

But, the problem is that now if I try to speak French, it almost feels like Japanese words have overlayed some of the French. Like if I want to say "I do not know" in French, the first thing that comes to my mind is "I do not know" in Japanese.

There was a French speaker who joined my Japanese lesson this past week and it was quite frustrating to experience this - Japanese coming out rather than French, or only remembering the Japanese version of a phrase while struggling to remember the French version.

He did not speak much Japanese at all, or English for that matter. I felt that I could understand his French well, but I struggled to formulate responses or conversation.

Formality in Japan

The other thing that I will mention this time is some of the formality expressed to school parents. As I wrote in prior updates, Japanese teachers will usually act extremely politely towards parents, using honorific-language like calling them "mother" and "father" rather than their actual names when talking to them.

Two things related to this that I did not mention previously - teachers will also change their pronunciation when talking to parents. For example, if you say something like "thank you" in Japanese and you want to say that formally, you would say something like "arigatou gozaimasu."

When you pronounce this and want to be just "regular formal," you would pronounce gozaimasu as "go-za-e-moss." Even though there is a "u" at the end of how it is written (gozaimasu), you typically don't pronounce that sound. The ending is more of an "s" sound rather than a "u" one.

BUT, if you want be extra formal, like you are talking to a parent on the phone, you would pronounce that U sound - so the gozaimasu would sound more like "go-za-e-moss-suh." (you add some extra stress and pronounce the ending of the word)

Beyond that, the other small, but interesting thing politeness-related thing that I have noticed is that whenever someone calls the school and the vice principal answers, after the conversation he always specifically listens and waits to make sure that the person calling has hung up the phone before he hangs up the phone.

I have only noticed this with the vice-principal, it is possible other teachers do this as well, but I will always see him holding the phone for a few seconds after the conversation to hear the person hang up before he hangs up the phone.

A video to watch...

Lastly, I randomly watched this video about Japanese office equipment - I learned a lot and thought I would share! Tim was actually part of my two-week JET quarantine cohort in Tokyo.

He talks about a few things I knew about and a few things I have come across in stores but had no idea what they are about. Even in office equipment, you can see some of the Japanese cultural values expressed (resource conservation, for instance).

Until next time,