After a few days of practice and frustration, I finally did it. My technique wasn’t perfect, but I could now spin a Japanese top, my new favorite toy. And I wasn’t alone. For the time being none of my students were thinking of their toys at home.

Japan’s traditional games are something I knew almost nothing about when I arrived in the country. Seven years later, I am still learning of new ones. From kite flying (and battling) to hanetsuki (think badminton) to karuta (a card game relying on recognition speed) Japanese culture has a wide variety of old-fashioned games to offer. But they are under threat.

“Children these days just want to play with video games or expensive toys,” a coworker said.

“They aren’t interested in the games we used to play,” one grandparent lamented.

I can’t disagree. Just go to a mall or ride a train, just about anywhere kids can be found playing with portable games or flashy new toys. I’ve even come across kids at playgrounds, sitting on benches and mashing buttons, absorbed in their miniature screens.

Perhaps the best proof of portable gaming’s popularity is the success of the Nintendo DS which by 2013 had moved almost 33 million units in Japan alone. With a child population estimated at about 17 million, that’s nearly enough units for every child to own two! Of course that isn’t true, gaming is popular with all ages. But it shows just how popular portable gaming has become.

As a result, traditional gaming is fading in the face of new technologies. But the good news is, we can enjoy both. And thanks to Japanese school curriculum many students do.

Japanese kindergartens for example, make efforts to preserve Japan’s gaming traditions. Since toys and games from home are prohibited at school, children have no choice but to use what’s available. A simple piece of paper can be turned into hundreds of different things via another Japanese tradition- origami. Give a child access to cardboard, newspaper and tape and what they come up with is amazing. I’ve seen makeshift swords, helmets, Kamen Rider (a perennial Japanese hero series) belts and even haunted houses.

On special occasions the children are given more complicated materials to work with. At my schools we decorate kites and umbrellas. Before every New Years the children are given plain wooden tops. The children give them custom paint-jobs before working on technique. The schools hold a “Koma Taikai” or “Top Contest” to give the students extra motivation.

The activity stirred memories of my own. When I was a child I had a different type of top. By twirling the stem between the forefinger and thumb and releasing it, the top would spin. Since there was no challenge my interest in tops didn’t last long.

My kindergartens have those types of tops too. The younger children played with simple tops to develop their skills. But the older class used more sophisticated tops. These tops came with a string that is wrapped around the toy to give it spin.

The wrapping process is complex and takes some practice. First, the knotted end of the string is wrapped around the upper stem once, using the tension created by the knot to hold it in place. Next, the remaining length of the string is pulled to the tip underneath and wrapped around it, careful to maintain the tension holding the knot in place at top. Finally the string is wrapped around itself in a spiral around the bottom of the top, usually until the entire bottom is covered by the string.

Now the top is ready for action. The remaining string is secured around a finger on the throwing hand, usually the pinky. With a sweeping forehand motion like in tennis or when skipping a stone across water, throw the top to the floor. The unraveling string makes the top spin.

On my first attempts even wrapping the string was a challenge. At that time a successful throw seemed like too much to hope for. But with my students encouragement and tutelage, I continued to try.

Finally able to make it spin, I took on all challengers- whose top would outlast the rest? I felt like a real Poke-master, my top substituting for the Pokemon. Time flew by. The experience was extremely satisfying – that is until we were introduced to another, more complicated top.

It happened at the Koma Taikai. A group of elderly gentlemen came to watch. After the contest ended, they brought out some toys of their own. First came a bucket. Next a piece of canvas which was draped over the bucket, creating a shallow bowl shape.

“Now everyone watch!” one of the men said. He held a small piece of metal in the air. “This is a bei-goma.” The other men had them too.

“They’re going to battle on that!” One student shouted pointing at the bucket. He was right. The men wrapped strings around the metal battle-tops and threw them spinning into the canvas bowl. It was Thunderdome without the dome. The tops knocked into one another, until only one remained.

Afterwards, they taught us how to use the beigoma which are more difficult than the tops we had grown accustomed to. The beigoma had no stem at the top and almost no tip at the bottom. The top of the beigoma were engraved with images. Among the men’s collections there were planes, butterflies and various kanji.

Since it lacks a stem, the beigoma has a unique wrapping technique. A beigmoa’s string has two knots. Instead of securing the string around the stem, the string is wrapped around the top and then secured around the two knots at the bottom. The string is coiled around these knots, creating the same swirling pattern as the wooden tops. The throwing motion is also different. A backhand motion is preferred with a quick flick instead of the long unwinding release characteristic of the wooden tops.

To battle one has to be precise, keeping the top in the canvas bowl. The top that remains spinning in the bowl the longest, often casting its opponents out, wins.

There are several types of beigoma with various widths, sizes and shapes. Some have deep swirls on the bottom while others have almost no markings at all. Some are a few centimeters tall while others clear only a centimeter. The size varies from as small as a 1 yen coin (a US penny) to the size of 500 yen (a US quarter). Aside from a round beigoma, the rest I saw were octagon in shape.

Beigoma have names that reflect their physical characteristics. Taka-ousama (高王様) is tall and heavy as it’s name, Tall King implies. Bei-ousama (ベ王様) is the smaller of the kings while Chuu-ousama’s (中王様) size lies somewhere between the other two. There’s Maru-roku (丸六) which, as maru implies is round.

Look carefully at the swirly design at the bottom of the pictured beigma. Does the swirl remind you of anything? Beigoma were once called baigoma (貝独楽) or “shell toys.” That’s right, long ago real shells were used as tops. The swirls on the bottom of the metal beigoma are a reminder of their natural past.

The whole experience left me feeling like many teacher and grandparents. It would be a shame if traditional games are forgotten, particularly Japanese tops.

But there’s hope. As long as kindergartens and Japanese school’s put an emphasis on games and activities with cultural heritage they will not be forgotten. Toy stores and 100 yen shops continue to carry traditional toys, which are cheaper than video games or fancy new toys – I bought four beigoma for 500 yen (about 5 US dollars). Manga and anime also introduce the games to new generations. Just as “Hikaru no Go” introduced many Japanese children to the game of Go, the Beyblade series brought tops, albeit fancy ones with techniques launchers, back into the limelight for several seasons.

In the month before the contest, talk of tops ruled the day. Students brag about how they practice at home and how family members teach them special techniques. So maybe there’s no need to worry- tops are here to stay. And that’s great because although I was able to spin the beigoma on the floor, I failed to land it in the bowl. And that’s great because it gives me another challenge to look forward to next season, though I may just look like I’m playing with toys.

Bonus Wallpapers!

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Sources:

• Beigoma.com
• Galiton Toy Shop
• Hyougo History Station
• indexmundi: Japan Demographics Profile 2013
• Matukazekouen
• Nintendo Consolidated Sales Transition by Region

Japanese × Non Asian = 1/2 = Good looking”.

Not too long ago you read Loco’s guest post on what it’s like to be a “half child” in Japan. By reading that article you’ll learn it’s not always great to be a “half” child in Japan, sadly. However, many Japanese girls long for the appearance of a “half”; big eyes, long eye lashes, tall and sharp noses, etc… Since I married a Canadian, I bet you can guess the most common reaction I get from Japanese people.

“Oh, you married a Canadian (a white guy)? Then your child will be”half” and most likely be so cute. Jealous!”

Actually, whenever I talk to someone about my marriage for the first time, 90% or more of their reactions are the same. I personally think that it’s fairly ridiculous to say that your baby will be good looking before knowing other things, like if my husband is attractive or not, but it’s probably just a form of small-talk that people come up with.

“Half” Taking Over Television

This “half=cute” belief has probably been strengthened by those good looking idols on TV who are know to be “half”. I wouldn’t be going too far if I were to say that there has recently been a “half” baby-boom rippling across Japan. In fact, there have been so many “half” celebrities on TV over the passed few years that people often get confused who is who. Some of those celebrities even complain about how commonly it occurs. In fact, check out this “Half” special that was aired recently.

Not only TV viewers but also those who work in television sometimes believe that there are too many “half” girls and some are worried about losing their position to them. The famous comedian Hiroyuki Ariyoshi, who is known for flat-out-mean jokes, discussed this concern on his own radio program called SUNDAY NIGHT DREAMER and he said some nerd-comedians (“Nerd” because that is the actual style they attempt to portray) are losing their positions on television to these “half” girls.

The rise of cute “half” girls’ exposure is partly because there are more mixed-race kids in Japan than there used to be. According to this “List of Statistical Surveys conducted by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare”, the number of international marriages in Japan (Japanese with non-Japanese) in the 70’s was just 5,500, but it rapidly increased in the 80’s when the Japanese economy started bubbling up. Although it peeked in 2006 (nearly 45,000 couples), there were still 23,657 international marriages last year which is over 4 times that of the 70’s.

But, this doesn’t necessarily explain the disproportionate amount of “half” celebrities on television. Some of it probably comes from the number of “half” children out there, but I wonder if some of it comes from the multi-racial families that they come from. Japanese people are generally known to be fairly shy and timid, which isn’t very good for television. However, many non-Japanese ethnicities are known to be much more outgoing and “friendly”, which is good for television. The way that “half” children are raised probably makes more of them more outgoing than the average Japanese (as we saw in Loco’s article, mentioned above). So, not only are they especially “good looking” with their “half”-look, but they’re also more outgoing too. What a perfect combination for a television personality! Of course, this is only just me thinking out loud, but it seems fairly plausible in some situations.

Transformers

The more that pretty “half” girls are exposed, the more that Japanese girls will want to look like them. Although there may be some Japanese guys who pine for that “half” look, most of them don’t put makeup on themselves, so it’s harder for them to change their appearance (unless they want to be made fun of for wearing makeup).

Girls, on the other hand, are very makeup capable and some of them are very persistent in their quest look like “half” girls. Those wanna-be-half girls have created various ways to look like like they’re “half” or non-Japanese and keep posting how-to videos on Youtube, some being quite popular. I’d like to introduce some of their makeup methods today. It’s pretty impressive how drastically they can change their appearance!

God Make Ayano Saito’s “Half” Face Makeup

nuts×GODMakeup.

Naokoの秋のハーフ顔メイク！(Naoko’s “half” face makeup for fall)

“Half” face makeup

After watching these videos it’s clear that the features you have concentrate on are the eyebrows and the eyes. Since Asian faces are flatter compared to non-Asian people’s, it’s important to make your facial features more 3D. Here’s some things that they tend to do to achieve this:

• Drawing their eyebrows thicker.
• Make the space between their eyebrows and eyes narrower.
• Make the inside tip of the eyebrow a little thicker so that it looks less flat.
• Apply many grades of eye shadow, thickener.
• Create longer eye-lines.
• Apply highlight to their nose lines to make them appear taller.

In addition to “3D-ifying” their face, color contacts and fake eyelashes seem to be a staple of their tool kit. If you think about it, there’s nothing that says “half” or “not Japanese” like eyes that aren’t dark brown.

When Makeup Isn’t Enough

I’m not totally sure how much time they spend putting their makeup on, but it seems to be quite a lot. I don’t typically use makeup myself, except for special occasions, so I admire their passion for this and the time and effort they put forth. However, there are some people who want to look like a “half” but consider it too troublesome to spend so much time on makeup. For those people, there are many plastic surgeons who provide “half-looking” or “foreigner-looking” facial reconstructive surgeries. Takasu Clinic is one of them and you can see their ad for that kind of surgery.

But, paying for these surgeries can be expensive. It is surgery after all! This woman paid over $100,000 to look more Western. It turned out fairly well, but I find it hard to believe that there aren’t many problems or mistakes that get made along the way.

I’m really not sure if I can agree with doing this – you should enjoy how you look and be happy with what you’ve been given. But, I can’t pretend to know how people think, it is their bodies after all. I mean, there are some surgeries that make you look more “Western” but also have some practicality as well. For example, getting a surgery to change your eyelids to a double lid is fairly popular. This makes your eyes bigger which makes you look more Western. Plus, when you get older you’ll be able to see because your eyelids won’t be drooping so much as they start to sag.

Beyond things like that, though, it’s taking this craze a little too far, I think. What if one day you wake up and you’ve suddenly changed your mind? Or what if you go into surgery and they mess up completely? The negatives are just too great. Plus, you should be happy with how you look!

Giving It A Try

After getting all judgemental on you, it’s time to make a U-turn and try some of this myself. I don’t usually put makeup on (as I mentioned above), but we’ve just seen a lot of tips so I thought “why don’t I try one of them.”

There’s a problem, though… I don’t have any of those makeup staples, such as color contacts or fake eyelashes. Thankfully there is Photoshop, though, so I hit up my virtual makeup artist Aya. Are you ready? Here I go, I’m about to become “half”.

Here’s without makeup

Here’s a little makeup “added”

Now I look half?

Two thirds?

The first thing I did when I looked at the pictures above was to say “OMG!” and then laugh. I felt very strange to see myself looking like that. Well, I like the second one, but in the last two pictures where I put the color contacts in and dyed my hair….they looked kind of scary. I forwarded them to my parents and they laughed, too. This experiment turned out to be a great excuse for me to stick with black hair and brown eyes. I like being “natural”, after all.

The second picture also made me imagine our future daughter. I don’t have any kids now, but if I had a daughter, she might look kind of like her. Thank God my husband doesn’t have blue eyes or blond hair, so I guess she won’t look like the scary ones…as long as she doesn’t put this kind of make-up on!

Bonus Wallpapers!

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2013. Yasufumi Ono made comments about the state of Japanese gaming at the Infinity Ventures Summit in Kyoto. Currently, Japan controls a mere 30% of the market share in North America and only 13% worldwide. The horn of plenty has become a trombone of self-doubt. Why isn’t the world buying Japanese games anymore? Has Japan lost its touch?

There are several factors at play here. When Japan swooped in to grasp the field mouse that was U.S. gaming, that mouse was dead. Thankfully Japan brought the mouse back to life and became the sole devourer of its innards. Today there is more than one falcon-country eyeing those rodent intestines, namely the U.S., South Korea, and Finland.

Also, Japan doesn’t make the games that western countries presently want to play, games in the “Call of Battlefield: Ghost Ops II” category. Japan makes games more along the lines of Dungeon Monster DX: The Fire! Time was, you could take your Dungeon Monster games and package them so your average Todds and Brandons would buy them. That’s been a challenge Japan has yet to surmount in this modern era. But why is this such a challenge if it wasn’t before?

Instant Connection

When we hear a story, our mind does its best to connect us to the story’s main character. We want to get to know that character so we can become the hero and experience the tale explicitly. In traditional storytelling, this is no easy task. It takes a witch’s brew of situation, exposition, and time to make a character connection with an audience. And few writers ever know what’s going to work in a given story.

Video games don’t have this problem. It’s a unique storytelling medium. The connection a game character has to the player is almost immediate. My go-to storytelling guru, Scott McCloud, best explains why, by summarizing philosophy first put forth by Marshall McLuhan:

When driving, for example, we experience much more than our five senses report. The whole car—not just the parts we can see, feel and hear—is very much on our minds at all times. The vehicle becomes an extension of our body. It absorbs our sense of identity. We become the car. If one car hits another, the driver of the vehicle being struck is much more likely to say: “Hey! He hit me!!” than “he hit my car!” or “his car hit my car,” for that matter.

So, in touching and controlling the car, your mind makes the car an extension of yourself. The same happens when playing a game. That touch of the controller and your control over the avatar gives your mind the same connection. The hero is a virtual extension of you. You become the hero as soon as you start the game.

This explains why games with subpar stories can still be great games. Your connection to the experience is immediate and doesn’t require a fantastic story to draw you in. If the game is enjoyable, you keep playing because you like your role as the hero. But what happens when you don’t like the hero you become?

Different Heroes For Different Hemispheres

Back to the Inifinity Ventures Summit (we were talking about that, right?). Some interesting statements were made by Sega/Sammy president, Hajime Satomi. Read below his hypothesis on why Japanese games fail to make an impact in the U.S. And Europe:

Europeans and North Americans like strong people, so the main character has to be a fully-grown, middle-aged man. On the other hand, in Asia, people like stories about middle or high school students growing up or becoming stronger. As you make games for more dedicated players, I think you have to be aware of those differences.

This makes sense when you consider characters from best-selling games in the U.S. from the past ten years: Kratos, Nathan Drake, Master Chief, Niko Bellic, Marcus Fenix, and that hooded guy from Assassin’s Creed. All severely grizzled, middle-aged combat types.

Compare that with some of Japan’s top character picks, plucked from a Famitsu poll of readers’ favorite characters: Link, Sora, Yuri Lowell, Sakura Shinguji, and Cloud Strife. All very ungrizzled and full of youthful optimism for the adventures of life (until they enter the job market).

There is some crossover, of course. Both east and west love Chris Redfield, Solid Snake, Link and Cloud. But there is something to Satomi’s ideas. There is clearly a difference in hero preference between hemispheres.

So if Japan once ruled the western gaming market, they must have created games with middle-aged heroes. Not necessarily.

Let’s Compare Some Box Art!

This is a simple exercise. I will present three games released both in Japan and the U.S. We will observe the in-game pixelated sprites that represent the main character(s) and the art on the boxes for the Japanese and U.S. releases of the game. Let’s begin.

DOWNTOWN NEKKETSU MONOGATARI vs. RIVER CITY RANSOM

The in-game character looks pretty cartoony. Could be any age.

Japanese Box Art:

The Japanese release of the game suggests the characters are young high school students.

US Box Art:

But the U.S. release suggests they are weird 36-year-old dudes! Despite that “River City High School” sign behind them, these two are clearly just there to pick up their kids from baseball practice.

ROCKMAN 2 vs. MEGA MAN 2

The age-neutral Mega Man sprite we know and love.

Japanese Box Art:

Japan gets some great art that actually looks a good deal like our robot friend on the screen.

U.S. Box Art:

America gets a welder with a broken foot and ray gun. He’s a weirdo, but he’s a grown-up combat weirdo!

DRAGON QUEST II vs. DRAGON WARRIOR II

Here’s the in-Game Characters – Japan & U.S.

These in-game characters could be impetuous teens or seasoned adventurers.

Japanese Box Art:

The art for Dragon Quest II features Akira Toriyama’s youthful depictions of the heroes, which have become a staple of the series.

U.S. Box Art:

The American release of Dragon Warrior II is, again, a band of fully-grown adults. These heroes promised each other in college that when they turned 40, they would reunite for a quest to Las Vegas.

Finding Ourselves

So what does this box art comparison mean, exactly? I’ll get to that in a second.

The heroes on our TV screens during the 8-bit and 16-bit eras were less defined and more iconic, and thus more easily interpreted. I touched on this in my article about Hello Kitty, so for a more detailed and Tom Hanks-oriented explanation of icons.

But there was another force at play, helping us interpret our pixel friends. That force is confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is the psychological effect of your mind to favor information that coincides with your preconceptions. Traditionally, confirmation bias is used to describe how we gather information to make rational (or irrational) decisions. Recently, however, a young philosophy blogger named Sam McNerney introduced this idea:

If we are defining confirmation bias as a tendency to favor information that confirms our previously held beliefs, it strikes me as ironic to think that it is almost exclusively discussed as a hindrance to knowledge and better decision-making…With such a broad definition, I think it also explains our aesthetic judgments… Put differently, confirmation bias influences our aesthetic judgments just as it does any other judgment.

Since the pixelated hero images transmit so little information as to what they are, players needed the box art to confirm their bias of what they wanted to see, in this case, their bias of what they think, aesthetically, a hero should look like. Japanese gamers’ biases said, “this pixelated image is a youngling,” and the box art confirmed their bias. Western gamers’ biases said, “this pixelated image is muscular manbeast,” and their different box art confirmed their different bias.

Since video games, as we said earlier, offer an instant connection for the player, it is imperative that the player like that connection. Giving players the chance to connect to the heroes they wanted to be helped to ensure they would not put down the controller and, furthermore, keep buying games.

The Beginning Of The End

So that’s it. Everyone was happy, and all it took was paying two artists to do the same job. It’s easier to sell people what they expect than to challenge their perceptions. Unfortunately, this box art trick got harder to pull off as console gaming entered the world of polygons in 1995. Keeping the hero’s in-game appearance ambiguous got a little trickier.

Such was the case with The Legend of Zelda‘s transition from 2D to 3D. For the most part, early polygonal models could still be interpreted by both cultures as the heroes they wanted to be. And so it was with 1998’s The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on Nintendo 64. EVERYONE loved this game. The main character, Link, started out as a kid but later grew into an adult. But what kind of adult? A grizzled one, probably.

How old is this adult Link? Fifteen or thirty-five?

When the first Zelda game for the 128-bit Gamecube was announced, Americans eagerly anticipated their powerful adult Link to appear in new, beautifully rendered 12 million polygons per second! It was at this point Nintendo thought it would be a good idea to have Link represented as a very cartoony boy child in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Americans went nuts. Angry nuts! Link had always been an elfin lad since the very beginning, according to the series’ story, but in pixel world and the American mind, he was nice and grizzled. For the first time, gamers were faced with a Link they could not interpret to their liking. Despite The Wind Waker being a gaming triumph, it sold a mere 3.07 million copies worldwide, compared to Ocarina of Time’s 7.6 million.

It was around this time, Japan’s control over the gaming industry began to wane. Of course, it was not solely due to the unambiguous heroes. The Xbox launched with incredible success in 2001, eating away at a large part of the North American market share previously held by Nintendo, Sega, and Sony. American video game companies, having learned from two decades of great Japanese games, started making games just as good or better. The spike in popularity that Japanese pop culture saw in 1999 was diminishing by the mid 2000’s, banishing anime from general acceptance back to the cavern of the nerds, which also meant the unmistakably Japanese video game heroes were banished as well (unless they were grizzled).

In our modern era, we have our two camps making games for themselves. American game companies churning out gritty power lunks and Japanese companies churning out sleek action teens. And we like it that way, apparently. Only a small fraction from each side is interested in games from the other.

The Sun Also Rises

2014. In a few months, the next Infinity Ventures Summit will be held in Sapporo and the Japanese gaming industry will gather once again to discuss the future, the past being a non-issue. The truth is, Japan will likely never again rule the video game world as it once did. The special circumstances of an evacuated market and technology that was easily localized is gone forever. Global competition and the advent of mobile/social gaming has changed the industry so nobody knows what to expect anymore. (BIRDS being angry at PIGS?! Nobody saw that one coming.)

But that’s okay. Industries change. When Georges Méliès and the Edison Trust dominated the film industry, it was only a matter of time before other artists from around the world said, “I want to do that, too!” Film expanded until people loved it so much that certain individuals began making films simply as artistic expression.

The Infinity Ventures Summit is a gathering of companies, so their primary concern should be how to sucker people out of money (using video games, hopefully). But games are made by artists, so I hope when these artists gather in May, they will talk, at least individually, about how to move video games forward as medium, how to push boundaries and make something people have never seen before. There will always be success in giving people what they expect. But there is a truer reward in creating something that changes peoples’ minds.

Bonus Wallpapers!

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Sources:

• Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud
• Why doesn’t Japan like first-person shooters? Old characters and World War II, says Sega exec, by Casey Baseel
• Confirmation Bias and Art, by Samuel McNerney
• LVLs. Cultural Anxiety Features
• Famitsu’s Top 50 Video Game Characters

What you expect: Classrooms filled with studious children, enthusiasm for English, tag team efforts with Japanese teachers, effective curriculum from your amazing brain, and a job well done each day.

What you find upon arrival: Classrooms filled with the screams of not learning, little interest in English, Japanese teachers with their own agenda, and gangs of yankis (bad kids) roaming the halls, telling you to shine (die) every chance they get.

Congratulations! You got placed in a troubled school.

And so did I. Unlike my peers who had great stories about their students’ enthusiasm for life and learning, I had stories about broken windows and broken dreams. When I told people in my town where I worked, they usually said zannen (too bad). In my school, there were 900 students, 24 homerooms, and only five of those homerooms were dependably well-behaved.

There are three ways to go when you experience culture shock this severe.

1. You can become bitter and hate Japan.
2. You can pretend nothing is happening and Japan is still perfect.
3. You can deal with your experiences and grow.

Sadly, I saw option 1 and 2 happen a lot, and they usually happened when the person did nothing. Option 3 is the hardest and is only achieved when you start viewing your bad situation as an opportunity for personal growth.

Easier said than done, right? Incredibly right. Below I will elaborate on 5 practical tips you can use in your tough situation. I admit I am not an expert in Japanese relations or classroom teachonomics, so please compare what I say here with the advice of other people in these situations

But to my credit, I was placed in the biggest school in my town, which also happened to be the most horrible (what luck!). And to speak of the psychological effects, I spoke no Japanese in the beginning and had just come from my first experience in Japan as a teaching intern at Kasukabe Kyoei, which is a high level school filled with well-behaved geniuses.

All that to say, I returned to the U.S. feeling comfortable with my infamous school and loving Japan less as a magic lollipop kingdom and more like an old friend. I hope the tips I used will help you accomplish the same.

1. Re-Define Your Goals

As a brand new ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) I had a few simple objectives: to have meaningful interactions with my students, make them all English experts, and teach them about the wide, wide world (specifically America). Realistically, this is impossible even at a good school. The advantage of a troubled school is that it will crush these dreams for you early on, like so much egg salad sandwich under foot. This is a good thing. You get the opportunity to realistically redefine your goals.

After fruitlessly pursuing my goal of “real teaching” for several months, I learned an important lesson. You can’t teach if it’s not a learning environment. And my school was not that. It’s hard to keep children’s attention when a student is riding his bike on the roof (even I wanted to see that).

The change came when I asked each individual teacher what they needed me to do. I was trying to be a one size fits all ALT for each class and that didn’t work with 24 wildly different homerooms. The Japanese teachers who were my partners knew these classes better than I did, so I became what they needed for each class. This didn’t solve everything. Some teachers wanted me to do virtually nothing, which was not what I wanted. But other teachers wanted me to do puppet shows and make PowerPoint presentations featuring Mega Man. I focused my efforts on them.

This may not seem like a big deal, but I felt better when I was useful. For one teacher, I was literally a bodyguard, batting down papers thrown at her and escorting students back to their seats. It was exhausting, but felt good protecting a sweet old lady from maniacs.

The point is, give yourself a role regarding each teacher and name it, like a job title (For Matsuda-sensei, I am pronunciation manager; for Katayama-sensei, I am a bouncer, etc.). Even if you don’t like the particular role, it will feel better knowing you are being a useful part of the team and give you attainable, satisfying goals.

2. Draw Out Your Good Students

I had two first impressions of my school:

1. My school was insane.
2. All my students were bad.

The first impression remained largely true, but the second was not. In my first week I met four exceptional students, one who is currently attending Waseda University! They were my saving grace, but if I was going to survive, I needed to find more of them.

If I had to guess, I would say my school consisted of 100 yankis, 600 neutral students, and 200 good students (and about three sociopaths). But even with only 100 bad influences, it was enough to keep the insanity percolator at full boil.

But the fact remained, there were 200 good students in there somewhere. Drawing them out was the challenge. Calling on good students or talking to them outside of class worked only sometimes. I eventually noticed they could write English very well, but rarely spoke it and loved passing notes to each other.

Enter: Michael’s Mailbox System. I constructed a large cardboard mailbox and explained the system to each homeroom. The response was overwhelming. I began corresponding with at least 30-40 of the suspected 200 good students and that was enough for me. It gave me at least a few kids in each homeroom I could focus my attention on. This may be seen as playing favorites, but I saw it more as putting my efforts to good use.

Other ideas might be to join a club (good kids open up when not in a classroom environment) or start an English club (you’ll attract the kids who care enough to learn English in their free time).

3. Build Your Personal Confidence

I was pretty nervous about teaching from the get-go. To make matters worse, after my self-introduction speech to the students (during which I mumbled Japanese words I had yet to learn the meaning of) I fell off the stage.

I slipped off the top step and slid down the stairs to the gym floor in front of 1,000 people. That was my school’s first impression of me.

Thankfully, a few days before that, I was sitting at an izakaya with a fellow ALT teacher who was giving me advice. The main thing I remembered her telling me was “freak out the squares.” Basically, fight loud and crazy with loud and crazy.

My glorious hiney slide in front of the 1,000 people was immediately followed by my first lesson ever. Talk about nerve racking. I was only three words into it when a student yelled an obscenity at me and the class fell into uproarious laughter. This was it, I had to freak out the squares. And freak out I did. “My name is…MICHAEL!” I yelled, clicking to my first slide, thankfully a wacky picture of me. The class reacted to my energy. I had them. I was all big noises and big movements. I felt small, but I acted big. When a kid yelled out of turn, I made him my ally in craziness. All in all, it was a fantastic first class.

Granted, this technique did not always work, but it worked surprisingly well most of the time. Recently I found out the reason why.

In a 2012 TED talk, Amy Cuddy exposes a simple truth: our stress and confidence hormones inform how we act, but acting confident reverses the process and informs our chemicals. I didn’t feel powerful, but I acted it and eventually became it (boosting my testosterone and lowering my cortisol). Doing this over long periods actually changes your behavior and your success rate. It’s not “fake it till you make it”, but rather “fake it till you become it”. Amy Cuddy explains it much better than I can.

I now consider being trapped in that crazy school to be one of the greatest blessings of my life. Because I took that first shaky step of power that day, I spent two years becoming a better presenter, which still serves me today.

4. Find Compassion For The Yankis

Yankis were the bane of my existence for a good long while. I mentioned them earlier, but allow me to elaborate here: they are the punks of Japan. Tall orange hair, baggy clothes, and an attitude. They always struck me as silly and never physically dangerous, but they were emotionally degrading and obnoxious. They interrupted my classes, yelled obscenities at me, and wouldn’t leave! They didn’t attend class, yet stayed in the school. That still boggles my mind. If you’re going to skip class, go to the mall! In a nutshell, they were the bad kids.

I hate to admit this, but for a time, I hated the yankis. They targeted me for ridicule, which I deflected but ultimately internalized. My turning point came when I began reflecting on problem students I went to school with and what (probably) made them act out. I didn’t know a lot of details about the yankis, but over time it became apparent that these renegade miscreants didn’t have much to look forward to. Their loud shows of bravado were mostly covers for what they did or didn’t have going for them outside of school.

This made them seem a lot less threatening and a lot more pathetic. And I mean that to say, it gave me sympathy for them.

Sadly, I never found a solution to the yanki’s behavior problems. If 65 teachers couldn’t keep a lid on the situation, it’s unlikely I could have. However, my perspective shift gave me more compassion for them. If they were harassing a student or teacher, I would do my best to stop it. But when they weren’t behaving badly, I didn’t treat them any differently than the other students and I even tried talking to them. It worked a few times. While most remained hostile and insane fools, I found a few good-natured yankis that, for whatever reason, just had no drive to succeed. I still think of them from time to time and hope they have found good things.

5. Understand And Make Peace With The Japanese Way Of Doing School

This goal was the hardest for me to achieve. After my first year, I had formed my conclusion about the Japanese school system: it was wrong and bad and awful! And it didn’t work. And also I hated it. Furthermore, I had the answers to fix all of their problems. But for all my “genius” fixes, I was powerless to change the system.

My anger at the school system had a threefold balm:

1. Many of my creative heroes are products of the Japanese school system, as well as some very wonderful Japanese people who have become my friends. So something was working somehow.
2. The system needed change before I got there, but it wasn’t going to change just because I showed up with my ideas. Even if the schools decide to change based on ideas from Western schools, Japan has to come to that realization and change in its own way.
3. I didn’t attend a bad school in the U.S. but maybe some things that worked for me in my good school were not working for other kids in bad schools. Maybe some changes need to be enacted in my own country’s school system.

Frankly, these epiphanies came to me and took hold very slowly. You will have to wrestle with your grievances against Japanese school yourself and take time to make peace with them. No matter the conclusion you come to, however, you will become a more well-rounded person for spending the emotional energy to deal with these objections.

Here are few exercises you can do to help you wrestle:

• Write down the things you don’t like about the Japanese way of doing school. Acknowledge that these objections are not frivolous. They are your convictions and they matter! Put them away somewhere (a book, a drawer) as an act of setting these grievances aside. You are not destroying or dismissing these feelings you have. That’s why you are keeping them. But you are putting them away in favor of accepting the system for what it is, so your grievances won’t get in the way of your greater mission as an ambassador.
• Read some articles about problems in your own country’s school system. How many were in your blind spot? How many of the problems in Japanese schools may be blindspots to Japanese people?
• Read Koichi’s article on the school system! It outlines what the Japanese way of school is trying to achieve. It helps to know how the system is supposed to work, even if it’s not working in your school.

In The End…

Let me add as I close, that even though my school was crazy and disturbing, I did not feel I was in any physical danger. The tips I outlined are not meant to help you accept or ignore a dangerous situation. If you feel you might be in danger of any physical harm, and this goes for any time in your life, get help or get out of there!

This batch of advice is just to get you started. Read other articles and forum posts by people in these situations. Even if you implement my suggestions, it will take a lot of patience, practice, and soul searching before you figure out what works best for you and your circumstances. You will still have bad days (those never went away for me) but you will deal with them and learn from them much more effectively.

In the end, if you can avoid denial and bitterness, you will find yourself to be a stronger and more holistic person than when you started. It sounds weird to say, but I’m glad I was placed in my insane school. It forced me into situations that built my self-confidence and life skills, as well as brought me face to face with a not-so-easy side of Japan. I was made to wrestle with things that made Japan seem less magical and more like a country filled with human beings. And that is what you will want at the end of your time teaching English, to know that you lived and experienced real Japan.

Now before I begin I need to state where I come from. I’m from Singapore (no that’s not in China) with a similarly brutal Asian education system. That means that I will probably have a very different perspective on Japan’s education system compared to the other writers. For example, one striking thing to Americans in Japan is perhaps the relatively low school dropout rates. To me however, that’s taken for granted, as is the exam stress of the Japanese system.

But, anyway. As Koichi stated, there was (and still is) a trend to hail the Asian countries’ education system. It may have shifted away from Japan specifically, but US President Obama’s praising of the Korean education system shows that this trend is still going strong.

However, and to be very frank, whenever this happens, many of us on the other side of the Pacific just simply arch our eyebrows. Partly because we don’t know how “bad” it is over on the other side – my friend talking about gang fights in his Los Angeles school was eye-opening to me. But also partly because on the flip side many Westerners have an overly rosy view of Asia and its education – it seems as if the education systems of Asia are praised more outside of Asia than within it.

Some of the stuff in this article is very generalizable to other Asian countries as well – there really are a lot of similarities. Some of it is specific to Japan – read on to find out.

Non-Cognitive Skills

Koichi in his article (I’m very sure I’m not doing it justice by summarizing here) pointed out that the amae as well the ganbare culture in Japanese society are the core reasons why the the Japanese youth tend to stronger non-cognitive skills, which in turn leads in the long run to higher personal performance. This also translates to their ability to endure the punishing stress of the Japanese education system and life thereafter.

This is true in terms of perseverance, stress tolerance and conscientiousness. However, there are also other non-cognitive skills which cannot be lumped together with the above. Consider the following:

Self Confidence: A survey published in 2011 (Source in Japanese) stated that 37.3% of Japanese high-schoolers “somewhat agreed” or “completely agreed” with the statement “I am a human being with worth” (私は価値のある人間だと思う). This is contrasted with 75.3% in South Korea, 88.0% in China and 90.4% in the US.

Furthermore the same survey also asked whether participants agreed with the statement “私は努力すれば大体のことができる” (I’ll be able to do most things if I put in effort) – 44.4% of Japanese participants agreed as compared to above 80% for the other countries. Therefore it’s questionable whether Japanese students work so hard because they really believe they can achieve or because they’re simply being pressured to do so.

Shyness: described as an “overgeneralized response to fear” in this article, Carducci and Zimbardo continue to say that Japan (along with Taiwan) display the highest shyness among surveyed countries and that:

In Japan, if a child tries and succeeds, the parents get the credit. So do the grandparents, teachers, coaches, even Buddha. If there’s any left over, only then is it given to the child. But if the child tries and fails, the child is fully culpable and cannot blame anyone else. An “I can’t win” belief takes hold, so that children of the culture never take a chance or do anything that will make them stand out. As the Japanese proverb states, “the nail that stands out is pounded down.”

Curiosity: An international survey conducted on adults by the OECD over 2011-2012 asked the question “Do you like learning new things”. Japan had 20% of respondents answering “Not at all” or “Very Little”, the highest number excluding South Korea which had near 29% answering so. 36.8% in Japan answered “to some extent”, however the total for “to a high extent” and “to a very high extent” (42%) was significantly lower than other surveyed countries, except for South Korea.

Whether the education system is the main factor in this is unclear. However, rote memorization based exams may disincentivize students from exploring outside the fixed curriculum – after all, extra knowledge does not beget results.

There’s a lot to be said about the interpretation of data because perhaps the above is just reflecting Japanese humbleness. Nonetheless, the margins between countries suggest that in the field of non-cognitive skills the field is rather mixed when you add the above to perseverance.

Curriculum

Moving on to the education system proper, it’s also worth looking at what cognitive skills – and skill sets – the education system imparts. While Koichi stresses that non-cognitive skills play the largest part in a person’s success I think it’s also important to also stress that cognitive skills play a significant role as well. For example, a study by Heckman, Stixud and Urzua in the US (accessible here) suggests that both cognitive and non-cognitive skills play heavy roles in a person’s wages.

As Koichi did argue, non-cognitive skills do tend to lead to cognitive skills, which are important for future successes. Non-cognitive may be the “origin” of my success – working harder at math may improve my math skills enough to qualify me to be an accountant in the future – but without those cognitive skills eventually developing I could not have been an accountant.

Therefore, the cognitive skills taught in an education system are important too. Japan has clear successes in literacy and mathematical ability but there are some drawbacks to the Japanese system as well. These include:

Foreign language skills including English: ’Nuff said. This can be an entire article by itself. Despite all of the years spent studying English, the average Japanese person is nearly helpless when put in an English-speaking-related situation.

Presentation Skills: Actually a mix of cognitive and non-cognitive skills (likeability etc). Not very well taught at all. There’s no data on this but a majority of my classmates say that the first time they’ve ever done a PowerPoint presentation was in University. Body-language, reading-from-a-script and extremely wordy PowerPoints are still very common from my experience.

Written expression: Sumitani and Robert-Sanborn have written an interesting essay here (In Japanese) about the role of essay-writing in education and society. Anyways, essay-writing is not emphasized greatly at the pre-university level given that the University Entrance Examination (センター試験; 2013 sample can be found here) have no essay based component and are entirely multiple choice. Individual universities may choose to add essay-components in their additional secondary entrance examinations though.

IT education: Perhaps a surprise? The PIAAC survey published in 2013 noted that while Japan as a whole scores average among surveyed countries in terms of “problem solving in technology rich environments”, the group aged 16 – 24 years old performed below average compared to the youth of other countries. IT education is a subject in school so it’s not as if they have zero technology education. My view is that the lack of personal research projects, computer presentations etc in other subjects inhibit Japanese youth in developing these skills.

So as with the non-cognitive segment, the cognitive skills segment for the Japanese proves to be mixed in terms of its limitations and successes (reading, writing, numeracy). As you can see, the Japanese education system’s effectiveness really gets hit hard when you step outside the bounds of “facts that you can learn.” Creativity, the ability to take those facts and apply them to something else (language speaking, presentations, written expression, etc) are all what I’d consider weak points of the Japanese education system.

How The Japanese View Their Own Education System

But perhaps one linked (but important) topic that needs to be touched on is how the Japanese evaluate their own education system.

The first thing that needs to be said is that in Japan now, there’s a lot of pessimism about the future. Part of this pessimism is a tendency to blame and criticize the young. Perhaps the pessimism is justified by genuine issues among Japanese youth but then again the general pessimism may tint the evaluation of the youth by the people living in Japan (including me as a resident).

We don’t know how strong the effect of each direction is but any self-evaluative surveys must be qualified by this possible bias. However, one question which I expect many Japanese to ask is: if our education is so good, why is our economy still doing so badly?

There is in general a perception that Japan’s academic standards have been declining. Nakai has written a very complete article here about the debate and its history. Furthermore, there was a survey published in 2004 showing that employers were by and large very dissatisfied with the skills of high-school and university graduates. Given that the Japanese economy has not experienced any significant improvement so far I doubt if the appraisal today would be significantly different.

Given this, it probably would seem odd to many Japanese to hear their education system described in such a positive light. In fact if it were not for widespread dissatisfaction with or fears about the quality of education in Japan, the government would probably not have announced wide ranging reforms last year.

Given The Above…

I really have to caution people about treating Japan, or any other Asian country, as shining beacons of academic excellence. We all have our problems and unless you know a lot about the other side, it’s very easy to fall into “grass is greener on the other side” pitfalls.

So while we may laugh at articles from the Onion titled Chinese third graders falling behind US high school students in Math, Science, let me just end by saying that there’s actually a lot that Asians (at least those that I know) admire about Western education too. Like the high emphasis on debate, discussion and communicative skills, for example.

But not the math, oh no no no certainly not the math standard. But that’s for another article someday.

Other Links:

• Japan Times: Education in 2013: an “A” for ambition but Japan will have to do better
• The Guardian: Why do Japanese children lead world numeracy and literacy
• Higher Education and the Japanese Disease

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Anyone living in Japan can tell you that the words internationalization (国際化›) or globalization (グロバール化) are popular catchphrases now. Schools, companies and wider society are all caught up in this great wave called “Go Global”.

As a foreign student in Japan though, I can’t help but wonder – for a term that has gained such traction, no one has actually defined what  “internationalization” means. At first glance, it may seem like there are many credible attempts at increasing the international input in Japan but the inside story is far more mixed.

In essence, does my presence make my university make it a global institution? Does a good TOEFL score make someone a more global person? Do companies with many foreign employees automatically become global enterprises?

The Background

Right Outside the United Nations University in Tokyo

Let’s start at the background first. The current wave of  internationalization started a few years ago and has been first and foremost driven by economic reasons.

While Japanese car makers have still been doing relatively well, electronics makers have been doing very poorly. Sharp, Sony, Panasonic and Fujitsu have all been facing losses in recent years. The problem is even clearer when contrasted to the successes of Apple, Google and other silicon valley enterprises in the US and Samsung in Korea. After all, while Japanese phones used to be considered as the best – now the the best selling phone in Japan is the iPhone.

Other economic reasons include increasing moves towards free trade (like for example the Trans-Pacific Partnership) which Japan is negotiating about. In addition, a shrinking population has increased the need to increase overseas business for many Japanese firms.

Outside economics, Prime Minister Abe has also stated that it is his aim to put at least 10 Japanese universities in the global top 100 rankings by the end of the decade. The lack of international faculty and a sizable international student body hampers this. The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are also another reason for the sense of urgency in internationalization.

So What’s Being Done?

Mikitani Hiroshi, CEO of Rakuten

Japan as a country has realized (belatedly) that a long reliance on a large domestic market, the homogeneity in the workforce and poor language skills have been reasons for stagnation and poor competitiveness. It is because of this that many Japanese firms are increasing their attempts at hiring non-Japanese employees.

Some parts of the business world have also been expanding their operations overseas – and I don’t mean just shifting manufacturing to where it is cheaper. Rakuten’s buying of Viber, Softbank acquiring Sprint Corporation and LIXIL acquiring multiple overseas companies are all examples for a recent trend where Japanese companies purchase foreign ones.

Rakuten in particular deserves special attention because they have made their company language English. As Japan Times reported, even internal meetings are to be held in English. Both praise and criticism have been directed at it though – Honda’s (yes the car maker’s) president once called the plan “stupid”.

Universities have also come under pressure to develop  global leaders and “internationally capable manpower”. Many have for example, made taking the TOEFL (an English proficiency tests) compulsory for all enrolled students – even to the extent that my American friend studying in Nagoya had to take it.

Some universities have also implemented degree programs in English to increase the international study body. The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) has also been supporting these programs with their Global 30 program.

Similarly, there have been increasing attempts to increase the number of Japanese students going abroad for their studies – which is at the moment far fewer than the number that South Korea and China send. Including for example, this video produced by AKB48 in conjunction with the MEXT to encourage people to go overseas to study. (My school makes an appearance too!)

In addition, MEXT also announced that they would be revamping the much criticized English education system in Japan – because if you can’t communicate with the world, you can’t possibly internationalize. Proposed measures include reforming the English syllabus, lowering the age at which students start having English classes and even implementing the TOEFL as a component of university entrance examinations.

But Is It Enough?

But first my own definition. As I said before, while everybody is talking about “globalization” and “internationalization”, no one has actually defined it properly. By “internationalization” here I mean gaining the ability to operate – and compete – on an international stage. It also means being actively engaged in the world, and accepting of the wider world as opposed to looking inwards. Regardless of the actual definition of what internationalization is etc., it’s often more clear what it is not.

Back to the question. The efforts above are pointing in the correct direction and I don’t mean to say otherwise. Increasing the numbers of foreigners in Japanese companies and schools is certainly important because without foreigners there can be no foreign input.

However, a lot more needs to be done and there are deeper issues that have to be resolved. Consider Japan’s immigration system for example. Japan remains one of the hardest countries around to gain permanent citizenship for without marriage to a Japanese person. One acquaintance of mine has been living in Japan for more than 10 years and did his professorship in a Japanese university. He was denied permanent residency last year.

Many companies may also be open to hiring foreigners but utilizing them after they enter the company is an entirely different question. After all, the one thing that I keep hearing from other foreigners working in Japan is that they are treated “like Japanese who just speak another language”.

This may sound good but it is not. For one, this means that many Japanese companies expect compliance to Japanese hierarchy and unquestioning top-down company culture even towards their foreign employees. And if you can’t question and voice your opinions, what internationalization can there be?

What About Schools Then?

Cherry Blossoms at the International Christian University in Tokyo

Schools (I am more familiar with this subject) present an entirely different set of problems. For one, there are some schools which offer “English courses” – taught by Japanese professors with an inadequate command of English. Being able to read and write papers in English does not automatically qualify someone to teach in it.

Furthermore, foreign student integration is an issue. Now, this does not apply to all schools – some are quite successful in integrating the foreign and local student bodies. Furthermore, if the student is studying in Japanese this isn’t that big a problem.

However, it is not uncommon for foreign students to be living in entirely separate dormitories from Japanese students. The classes that foreign students take may be entirely closed to Japanese students. Alternatively, even if they are open to enrollment by Japanese students, the fact that they are in English puts off most Japanese students such that only a small, select bunch participate in them.

What this leads to is foreign students living in a virtually separate world from their Japanese classmates. This does not just tend to socially isolate foreign students and alienate them, but this also adds zilch to the “internationalization” of the education of Japanese students.

There Is A Lot More To Be Done

Narita Airport

This topic is far more complex than can be summarized in a single article and there are many factors mixed and scrambled around here. For example, there are problems in the systems (eg. the permanent residency system and school class systems), the numbers of foreigners (even Tokyo has only 3% foreign population) and deeper cultural problems (eg. Japanese company culture).

It seems to me that Japanese attempts to internationalize by bringing in more foreigners, enforcing standards of English etc. are simply fulfilling the prerequisites of internationalization. This does not necessarily mean internationalization itself. Because yes, without foreigners, there can be no foreign input. And without a degree of English, global communication is often difficult.

But there are deeper problems such as homogeneity which need to be addressed too. To me at least, how global Japan will become will largely rest on efforts to tackle the deeper problems and not just those on the surface.

Bonus Wallpapers!

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