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

Now, I’m not saying that the Japanese education system is perfect (in fact, it has a whole bunch of other problems, though math doesn’t seem to be one of them), but I thought it would be interesting to talk about it while we were on the subject. In fact, if you’re a parent you might see things that you can utilize with your child as well. As we’ll learn, the parent-child relationship is a very important aspect of how Japanese children become good learners.

Japan’s Love Affair With Stress

When I think of the Japanese education system, I personally think about the college examination tests that most high schoolers end up taking, probably because I saw what it did to my friends the year or two before they had to take it. At the end of high school this single test decides your future. You get to choose one college you want to go to. That college has a certain score requirement. If you don’t reach that score you probably don’t go to college, and what college you go to decides your future fate and salary as well, much more than it does in America. So, you want to shoot for the best college possible that you think you can get into… but if you overshoot it and fail the test, you spend a year as a ronin; basically, that’s one year where you study and get ready for the test next year, because you didn’t get into college. Talk about stress.

But, the stress doesn’t only come from the test itself. The preparation for the test is much worse. Often starting from elementary school a child will begin going to juku, or “cram school.” This is school after school with the goal of getting you into a better middle school. If you can get into a better middle school, then you go to more juku so that you can get into a better high school. A better high school means a better opportunity to get a higher score on the college entrance examination. Still though, you go to even more juku in high school to prepare yourself for the test. It’s no wonder it’s lovingly nicknamed the “hell test.” And, if you fall behind and don’t get into a good school? Well, extra juku for you then, kiddo.

It’s no wonder that Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world.

Despite this, Japanese students (and Japanese society on a whole) are able to handle extreme amounts of stress. The stress a Japanese person deals with on a day-to-day basis is even infamous throughout the first world. I think that this extreme stress is our first clue, though. It hints at why the Japanese education system is successful, though in a very indirect way. In the end, I believe that it comes down to a concept known as amae.

Amae and Indulgence

One of the most obnoxious things about Japanese children, in my opinion, is how dependent they seem to be on their mothers. You see this over and over again, and this dependence is even encouraged by society! “You’re creating a society of spoiled brats!” I used to think. Recently I’ve changed my mind, though.

The word amae comes from the word amaeru, which, according to Japanese psychoanalyst Takeo Doi (he’s the guy who basically made this term a thing), can be defined as “to wish to be loved.” On top of this, it has connotations of a need for dependency and a request for indulgence of one’s perceived needs. This amae type of relationship is the ideal for all close relationships in Japan. It starts with child and mother, but expands out to student and teacher, student and upperclassmen, salaryman and boss, husband and wife, etc. It’s the senpai-kohai relationship in a nutshell. If everyone is able to indulge their needs into everyone else then everything will work out, or so Japanese society has been saying for quite a while now. Turns out they’re onto something.

Let’s go back to everyone’s first amae relationship: mother-child. Most mothers indulge their children to some degree – feeding them, changing them, calming them when they cry… etc. But Japanese moms are supposed to take these indulgences to another degree. It’s so prevalent in Japanese society that they have come up with extra ways to describe and talk about this type of relationship. You certainly don’t see that in too many other cultures. It’s kind of like how Eskimos have a ton more words of snow. The Japanese have more ways to talk about it because it’s that much more important in their society.

Here’s what I’m trying to get at, though. This dependence… this indulgence… this amae… it’s what keeps Japanese society together. It’s the root cause of the successes you see in the Japanese education system. It’s also why society is so orderly and safe (at least for now), I think, and it all comes back to how much a mother indulges their child. Let’s find out why this is so important.

Non-Cognitive Versus Cognitive

Most people think that IQ, the ability to memorize, etc., are the key metrics for determining the future of a child. These are what economists call “cognitive skills” and it turns out they are not very good predictors of future success. What are good predictors are what’s known as “non-cognitive skills.” These are things like persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence (there are a lot more, too). Think about it this way: The kid who has the persistence to practice math for 10 hours a week will do better than the cognitively smart kid who doesn’t bother doing their homework because they’re lazy and everyone’s told them they’re “soooo smart.”

The importance of cognitive versus non-cognitive skills is really highlighted in a study done by James Heckman on the GED program. He compared students who graduated from high school with those who passed the GED exam, which is a way for those who didn’t graduate from high school to get something that substitutes for a high school diploma. The thing is, though, this tests cognitive skills as a way to see if a person “knows enough stuff” to have passed high school. It’s closely linked to an IQ test (another test of cognitive ability) in many regards. That’s the problem, though. It’s assuming that high school exists to teach students cognitive skills and nothing else. With that in mind, let’s look at how these students did later in life. It’s not a pretty sight.

When Heckman looked at 22 year olds from both groups, the difference was huge. Only 3 percent of GED recipients were enrolled in a four-year university or had completed some kind of post-secondary degree. Compare that to 46 percent of high-school graduates. On top of this, GED recipients had nearly the exact same future outcome as high school dropouts. Higher unemployment, higher divorce rate, lower annual income, and a higher chance of using illegal drugs to name a few. Even though they are supposedly equal on a cognitive level to their fellow high school graduates (and considerably smarter than those who dropped out of high school but didn’t take the GED), their future successes (or lack thereof) was exactly the same.

What I’m trying to say is this: non-cognitive abilities end up being a much better predictor of success than cognitive ones. Your ability to persevere, to have self-control, and so on are the things that decide the future of almost every student, not how “smart” someone is… though non-cognitive strengths do happen to make for a higher cognitive potential later on in life.

To illustrate this, We only need to look as far as the famous “Marshmallow Test”. In the late 1960s a professor at Stanford (Mischel) decided to test the willpower of four-year-olds. Researchers brought each child into a small room and offered them a treat (like a marshmallow). They were told that the researcher was going to leave the room and the child could eat the marshmallow when they returned. But, if they wanted to eat the marshmallow right away they could ring a bell, at which point the researcher would return right away and the child could eat it. The twist here is that if the child waited for the researcher to return on their own, no bell, they would get two marshmallows! In this way, they tested the child’s self-control, a very important “non-cognitive” skill.

It turns out, the correlation between how long a child could wait and their future success was very tightly woven together. When they checked on the students a little over twenty years later, they found that children who were able to wait 15 minutes for their marshmallow had, on average, a 210 point higher score on the SAT than those who rang the bell after a mere thirty seconds.

Think about it, the kids with stronger non-cognitive skills were able to work harder, had more willpower, self control (“should I study or watch TV tonight?”), and grit, and because of this scored higher on their SAT tests, which just so happens to have a correlation with future income and other success indicators. Over and over again, studies have shown that non-cognitive skills are the things that are worth developing in your children.

Amae and The Development Of Non-Cognitive Skills

Now we know that non-cognitive skills are an excellent way to predict a child’s future, but how does all this relate to amae? It turns out amae and the amount of it that is received by a baby/child directly correlates with how well someone can develop these special skills.

One researcher (Meaney) has been looking at the effect of rat-moms doting on child-rats. When a rat-mom licks and grooms one of her pups, it (amazingly) actually alters their gene expression! Certain chemicals are affixed to certain sequences on a pup’s DNA and when a rat-mom licks and comforts her child-rat, this gene sequence gets “turned on”. By turning on this particular gene sequence (through enough love and attention), the rat babies grow up to be far more courageous, curious, and less nervous. When a rat-baby lives a healthy, not-stressful life, this may not cause much of a difference. But, when scientists pick up and stress out the baby rats over and over again for an experiment, it makes all the difference.

Scientists found that the rat babies with a strong attachment to their mothers (the mother would give them licks to relieve the stress) grew up with that DNA sequence turned on. The mothers that were less attentive created rat babies that were considerably more neurotic, shy, and less courageous. This “attachment” (which I should note is very often associated with amae) made all the difference in the development of these rat-baby’s non-cognitive skills and future lives.

Unsurprisingly, this is the same with humans as well. In the 1960s, Ainsworth, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, ran a test to study just this. He had a young 1-year-old child and its mother sit in a room and play for a while. Then, the mother left the room, sometimes leaving the baby alone or with a stranger. After a while, the mother would come back. Then they categorized the reactions by the baby:

1. Child greets mother happily, running to reconnect with her with joy and/or tears (Securely attached)

1. Children who pretended to ignore the mother when she returned. Children who lashed out at the mother. Children who fell to the floor in a heap. (Anxiously attached)

Although Ainsworth theorized that this lack of attachment (#2) could “create psychological effects that could last a lifetime” (he was right, by the way) it wasn’t until 1972 when Everett Waters took this test even further. He found 267 pregnant women who all had incomes below the poverty line. When the babies were age one, they were all given the attachment test that Ainsworth did in the ‘60s. Then in preschool, he followed up again. Two-thirds of the “securely attached” children were categorized by their teachers as “effective” in terms of behavior. Compare that to only one in eight (12.5%) children who were anxiously attached got the “effective” label. Skip ahead to 10 years old. Forty eight of the students were invited to a summer camp where they were unknowingly studied. Those who were anxiously attached during baby-times spent more time alone, were less confident, and had more trouble socially. Now skip ahead to high school to see the real kicker. Using data from when the children were just four years old, they found that they could have predicted with 77 percent accuracy which children would drop out of high school… and we all know how dropping out of high school tends to turn out, GED or no GED.

The interesting thing about “attachment” is how differently the Japanese and American societies think of it. In Japan, this “attachment” is highly encouraged, even in non mother-child relationships. In America, independence is more encouraged. Though America’s stance has softened since the Spock Baby Book days, you still see this going on to a certain extent.

This is just a guess, but I wonder if this has anything to do with the prevalence of ADHD in our society. The reason I say this is because of the difference between the number of boys and girls that suffer from it. Boys in America have ADHD at a 13.2% rate. Girls are only 5.6%. If you think about the difference in how boys and girls are raised, it’s hard to ignore this discrepancy. Girls in America are doted on more, given more attention, and more likely to be taught to be “dependent.” Compare that to boys who are supposed to be raised as more independent and tough. Is it possible that the way we raise boys versus girls is what’s causing more boys to have trouble paying attention? Self control, willpower, and the ability to pay attention are all non-cognitive skills. If “attachment” and “dependency” are the things that develop a child’s non-cognitive skills… could this be why more boys have ADHD than girls? Could the “Spock’s Baby & Child Care” book craze (which encourages parents to be cold to children and not indulge them) be part of the reason why the US has such high rates of ADHD, thanks to the lack of amae? It certainly seems possible, though I’ll have to submit to the experts on this one, as it’s just a guess.

Back to attachment, indulgence, and how they negate stress, though. What’s really interesting about this (which we found out from the rat mothers) is that as long as a mother is attentive and indulges in their child’s needs, the harms of stress can be negated. It’s been shown over and over again that a stressful life is very harmful to babies and children growing up. During childhood, this stress mainly attacks the prefrontal cortex, a part of your brain that is “critical in self-regulatory activities of all kinds, both emotional and cognitive. As a result, children who grow up in stressful environments generally find it harder to concentrate, harder to sit still, harder to rebound from disappointments, and harder to follow directions” (Tough).

In fact, there are direct correlations between childhood stress and your future life. Using something called the “ACE score” (which is a way to quantify levels of childhood stress), one Burke Harris sent out a questionnaire to 700 patients of her clinic. She then turned the answers into an ACE score and found something startling. Those with 0-3 ACE score (low stress in childhood), only 3 percent had learning or behavioral problems. Compare that to 51% of those with an ACE score of 4+. Stress during childhood has an effect on your ability to pay attention, control your temper, follow directions, so on and so forth… things that are directly related to the non-cognitive skills that happen to predict your future success.

“Wait, Koichi!” you suddenly say. “I thought you said the Japanese childhood was a particularly stressful one!”

“What a focused point!” I’d reply. “I see your rat mother doted on you well as a child!”

That’s right, remember the rat mothers and rat babies? Stress can be negated by indulging rat moms. With a strong enough attachment all the stresses of home and life are negated, meaning the child can learn from the stress without all the long term issues that the stress can cause.

One study at NYU shows this perfectly. Clancy Blair followed 1,200 infants from birth, measuring their reactions to stress via cortisol level spikes. Family turmoil and other problems at home really affected a child’s cortisol levels, which is to be expected. But, Blair found that if the mother was responsive and attentive to their child, and there was that attachment, this would negate the stress and keep the child’s cortisol levels in check. This prevents the prefrontal cortex from getting messed up, which in turn allows a child’s non-cognitive skills to blossom (not to mention the cognitive ones, too!). It all comes down to the amae.

This is partly why I think that a Japanese child is able to grow up in such a stressful and difficult school system. Despite the stress it usually ends up okay! The amount of pressure a mother has to indulge her children is what’s keeping these kids afloat and (in general) healthy. I’m not saying there’s no bad eggs, because there are, but it’s hard to ignore how well so many kids cope with stress, which allows them to learn important lessons about failure, dealing with it, and becoming a stronger person. Their mothers (and all the other people they have amae-based relationships with) are there to keep them from falling apart.

Let’s Pile On The Stress And Ganbare!

So now we know that amae is allowing kids to deal with stress without the negative effects it tries to bestow. And we also know that amae is creating children with stronger non-cognitive skills, the best predictor of future success. But, this is fairly focused on very early childhood (though there are plenty of older Japanese school kids who are super dependent on okaa-san still). What about elementary, middle, and high school times? What’s going on here to develop soldiers of the non-cognitive (and therefore cognitive) type?

To me it comes down to word 頑張れ (ganbare), which means “persevere.” It’s so prevalent in Japanese society, in fact, that people will yell it out for just about any reason. If you’re playing tennis, your supporters will yell “ganbare” instead of “you can do it!” If you’re going to take a difficult exam, you’ll hear “ganbare” as well… as if trying harder will help you to get a better score right before you take the test. The difference is a stark one, though. “You can do it!” is all about hope. “Ganbare” is open to the possibility that you may not do it, but it does ask you to try your best. The possibility of failure isn’t ignored.

Actually though, it turns out that just trying harder will get you better test scores, no matter how you prepared for it. This is what psychologists call “conscientiousness,” and it is an incredibly important non-cognitive skill. I believe with the prevalence of “ganbare” (persevere!) oozing out of every Japanese orifice, they are simply reminding people to be more conscientious. They are reminding people to sweat the small stuff, concentrate, and try hard even when you don’t actually have to.

In one study during the 1960s, Calvin Edlund gave seventy-nine children an IQ test. All of them had similar socio-economic backgrounds. Then, he split the group into two and had them take the test. Seven weeks later they took the test again, except this time one of the groups were told that they’d get an M&M for each correct answer. On the first test the two groups had a fairly even average IQ. On the second test the M&M group went up an average of 12 points. Taking this experiment further at the University of Florida, two researchers split the two groups up further. The interesting part is that the “low-IQ” children, who scored an average of 79 on the IQ test, now scored a 97, which is average. In this case, what is their true IQ? Is it the 79, when they weren’t really “trying as hard,” or is it the 97 which they got because they tried?

I feel like this happens in all things. This “conscientiousness” will help a child (or adult!) to do better in all categories, not just IQ tests. Paying attention and trying harder even when you don’t have to is a sign that you have grit, self-control, and some other non-cognitive skills. Just by “trying harder” you become smarter, in a way, and this push to “try harder” comes packaged up into one word, (I bet you can guess what it is), ganbare. How important it is in Japanese society is hard to ignore, and I think it’s one thing that really shows how much focus is placed on character and non-cognitive skills in the Japanese education system (and society).

Learning Disabilities and Stereotyping

Another big difference I see between Japanese and American kids is how they’re segregated. That’s right, even after racial segregation has come to an end, we still see cognitive segregation in America. In Japan, if you’re falling behind in class, you don’t get held back a grade and you don’t get put into a “special class” (that being said, a lot of people do get institutionalized, unfortunately). No, you stay with your class and graduate with your class, and that’s final.

The thing is, “group identity” is a powerful force. If you identify yourself as being stupid, you’re going to do worse in school. If you identify yourself as “different” you are going to act differently.

In one study in the 1990s, students at Princeton were tested on how well they could complete a 10-hole mini golf course. With white students who were told that this was a test of their “natural ability at sports” they scored 4 strokes lower than similar (also white) students who were told that this was a test of their ability to think strategically. Alternatively for black students, when they were told that this was a test of strategic intelligence they were four strokes worse. When told that it was a test of natural athletic ability they did better. As you can see, stereotyping yourself can have an effect on how you perform. In American classrooms those with ADHD are stereotyped as being less able to pay attention in school. In extreme cases they may be put into special classes where that stereotype becomes stronger. In Japanese classrooms you’re in your class whether you like it or not and everyone’s expected to perform to be the same, for better or worse.

I’d like to think that this expectation to be a part of the group unit of the classroom is part of the reason why students in Japan score better than the US. That’s not to say that this focus on the group isn’t a bad thing as well. When you are different you are often ostracized or bullied more than in US classrooms, which has the same sort of effect as segregating a classroom (though possibly worse). So, while there’s some good things about this there is some bad as well. Japan’s education system is far from perfect, after all.

A Careful Balance

So we’ve seen how a mother’s attentiveness gives her child the tools to be able to take on the world. We’ve also seen how non-cognitive skills, such as perseverance, seeps through every nook and cranny of Japanese society. Then, we took a look at stereotyping and how it’s less encouraged, at least in terms of “who’s smart and who’s not,” giving everyone a more even playing field.

Japan is without doubt creating a lot of children with a lot of grit, I would say. After seeing what affect amae can have on a child growing up (anywhere in the world), it makes me wonder if this is a big part of the reason why Japanese children can take on so much stress and hardship during their education (and beyond… that salaryman life!). I also wonder if this is why they put so much stress upon their children. Do they do it because they can? I think they probably do.

While indulging your child and letting them depend on you are important for negating the harmful outcomes of stress at a young age, stress is important as well. Recently a lot of psychologists have been looking at the lives of the wealthy and their kids, and they are surprised to find that these children seem to have more issues than poor inner city ones. When you look at the rich parents of children who go to a fancy school, you start to see two “problem type parents.”

The first of these is the parents who become emotionally detached (where’s the amae?) while still expecting high levels of achievement (stress). After all, you’re going to a fancy private school so you better do well, no buts about it! These kids, who end up having attachment issues with their parents, end up with all kinds of problems later on:

To Luthar’s surprise, she found the affluent teenagers used alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, and harder illegal drugs more than the low-income teens. Thirty-five percent of the suburban girls had tried all four substances, compared with just 15 percent of the inner-city girls. The wealthy girls in Luthar’s survey also suffered from elevated rates of depression; 22 percent of them reported clinically significant symptoms. (“How Children Succeed”)

The second type of parent is the opposite of the first one. These are the parents who OVER indulge. One study shows how people who make a million or more dollars a year tend to be “less strict than their own parents.” Basically, they make life too easy on their children. This makes for a lot of indulgence and very little stress, and as we learned from parent type number one, you shouldn’t have one without the other. These parents would call teachers to try and raise their child’s grades on papers, or try to get time extensions for things, or even ask if their child can retake a test. Without ever having to deal with their own stresses and failures, these kids grow up helpless and unable to deal with the challenges of real life.

Too much amae is not good. Too much stress is not good. But, an equal amount of both… that works out well. So in a society with so much amae it only makes sense to heap on an equal amount of stress. When these two things are imbalanced you run into problems in education and society.

How Japanese Children Succeed

So here’s how I see things happening in Japanese society… at least the stuff they got right. There’s a lot that’s going wrong as well, but with America’s recent obsession with “making our school system more like Japan’s” I thought it would be good to go through all of this step-by-step so you can see why it works, rather than looking skin deep and trying to throw more money at math and science.

First, a baby is born. I could possibly go into how Japanese mothers tend to choose natural births over C-sections, and how this creates a stronger attachment between baby and mother, but I don’t know much about that, so let’s leave that part there. Then, the child and mother grow close. Through all the amae the mother gives, there is a sense of dependency from the child. Attachment is formed, and that grows through childhood. This dependency is really obnoxious to anyone who didn’t grow up in Japan.

This extreme amount of amae is what lays the foundation for their future. By the time they reach school age, they are more courageous, curious, have more self control, etc. All those non-cognitive skills are more developed. I think this is why you see three year olds riding the train by themselves, going on errands for the parents., so on and so forth. You’d never see that in America, though I think this is mostly due to all the bad people out there (maybe they didn’t get enough amae too?).

When they get into school these non-cognitive skills help them to socialize better and deal with disappointment. Kids are pretty wild and random and often do what they want. Being able to deal with other kids and control your temper is what is going to carry you through the younger school years. Right about here you really start to see a lot of ganbare too, one of the non-cognitive skills that is thought of as very important to teach every person in Japanese society. This gets beaten into you for all aspects of life, and we see a lot of middle schoolers and high schoolers who value perseverance over natural ability. In fact, have you ever seen a Japanese anime that isn’t about some kid overcoming difficult odds by just trying harder? Okay, maybe sometimes, but this is a recurring theme for a reason.

All of this personal growth crescendos at the end of high school, when they have to take their college entrance examination test. The only reason all the stress up to this point hasn’t destroyed them is thanks to the way relationships are set up: It all comes down to amae. Teachers, other students, siblings… etc. If everyone important to you indulges you, and you do the same for them, it all works out. Replicating this amae relationship beyond mother and child is the only way to balance and negate out the stress, which is stronger than most other places in the world.

What I don’t know is what came first. Did the stresses of society cause Japan to evolve in away that let them cope with it? Or, did it just so happen that the amae in their society is what allowed them to deal with the extra stress, so they add more and more on, which allows their students to learn and grow stronger. It’s the chicken and the egg problem, basically.

Whatever it is, I think we’ll see things change. In fact, I think it’s already happening as the Japanese school system becomes less and less “Japanese.” Maybe it will be a good thing, and maybe we’ll see more creativity come out of it (something that Americans do tend to do better). I have a feeling that there’s a happy compromise somewhere, though. I don’t think it’s in the middle, as I think science has spoken when it comes to a lot of these ideas. But, I do think it’s somewhere a little less stressful than where the Japanese have their dial set right now. Still, we can learn a lot from it, and they can learn a lot from us. As long as education keeps getting better with each passing generation we’ll see some good things happen, though until we can change our whole society (which is near impossible in a short period of time, I think) it’s probably going to be a while.

P.S. A lot of the American-related education stuff came from the book “How Children Succeed” by Paul Tough. If you’re interested in education I highly recommend it. As I read through it I couldn’t help but see similarities between the success stories and how a lot of Japanese society already works, which is what inspired me to write this article. There’s a lot more in Tough’s book, though, so please take a look if you find this kind of thing interesting! The more people to read about education the better prepared our future children will be!

Bonus Wallpapers!

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Sources

• “How Children Succeed” by Paul Tough
• The Anatomy Of Independence (Wikipedia)
• Is Amae the Key To Understanding Japanese Culture? by Herman W Smith and Takako Nomi
• US Students Slide In Global Ranking on Math, Reading, Science

Until I turned 8, that is.

At age 8 my father, who worked for a  Japanese trading firm, jumped on board the growing number of Japanese expatriates that worked abroad; my family found ourselves in Texas that year.

Within months I switched from drinking Yakult to drinking Capri-Sun and from watching Doraemon to things like “Arthur” and “Hey Arnold!” I attended a public school, picked up English as my second language, and made American friends of all races.

I am, what my motherland labels, a kikokushijo (帰国子女).

The increasingly globalized economy has forced many Japanese companies to send their workers abroad. Countries of destination range from anywhere in the world, such as neighboring Asian countries (like Singapore, where I lived for 2 years), America, and even Africa for some. And when these employees go abroad, what do they do with their families?

Bring them along, of course!

Children of these Japanese expatriate families thus gain the label of kikokushijo, or literally “repatriate children”. These Japanese children experience most or parts of their education abroad in international and local schools; some, if available, choose to attend Japanese schools in their localities. Regardless of what type of education they receive overseas, these kids are plucked out of their motherland and raised in a society completely foreign to them. In the US, a similar term, “third culture kids,” has also come about as a way to distinguish these children who spent significant time out of their parents’ culture.

Because of their unique and globalized upbringing, kikokushijo have gained somewhat of a particular image among the Japanese media and society–but despite few stereotypes that portray these kids as “special elites”, some kikokushijo find their motherland not as welcoming upon their return. That brings us to the question: who are the kikokushijo, really?

Kikokushijo In Media: Super-Children!

The Japanese media — especially in anime and manga alike — often use the kikokushijo label on major protagonists.

Perhaps one of the most famous kikokushijo of all time is the tennis prodigy Ryoma Echizen from Prince of Tennis, Konomi Takeshi’s best-selling manga with a cult following of fans all around the world. In the story, he’s set as a tennis prodigy who grew up in Los Angeles. He then moves back to Japan, tries out for his school’s tennis club, and becomes the number-one freshman rookie of his team, unleashing some mind-blowing tennis moves that are probably scientifically impossible to mankind.

Or perhaps some may recognize Taiga Kagami from recent popular series, Kuroko No Basuke. Like Ryoma, Taiga hails from Los Angeles and moves back to attend high school in Japan. And again like our favorite tennis prodigy, he joins his school’s basketball club as an eager freshman, talented with skills that he’s learned through playing ball in the States.

Some of you might recognize this familiar character from one particularly infamous anime — Asuka Langley Soryu from the Evangelion series is also considered a kikokushijo. Oh, and she happens to be part German, which just puts more emphasis on her “foreign” background as well.

We’re not crazy maniacs, I swear.

Somehow, the kikokushijo labeling finds itself in popular manga and anime– and it’s tacked onto protagonists who are often unusually talented in one particular activity, whether it is sports or manipulating giant, humanoid robots.

In short, kikokushijo are seen in the media somewhat like super-children with special talents. Of course, not every kikokushijo comes back to Japan with special abilities, though I guess I wouldn’t mind trying my hand at a robot or two.

“Saving” Kikokushijo

But snap back into reality– these kikokushijo are no super-freaks of nature. In fact, the Japanese society saw them in a much more negative light during the 1970s.

Japan, until recently, had a tendency to lean towards homogeneity, with a particular desire to keep their country relatively “Japanese”– and such was the case four decades ago, when returnee children were seen as “too individualistic”, “too different”, and “too Westernized”. In the eyes of the Japanese public, these children needed to be “saved”– they needed to be reintegrated back into Japanese culture. All foreignness had to be stripped away from these returnee children; the languages they’ve learned overseas, the ideas, norms and values they became accustomed to during their time abroad was seen as “unfit” for these kids to have if they were to return back into the Japanese society.

Perhaps this is the reason why the term kikokushijo was invented– in order to categorize the children for easy detection by the public, so that they could be salvaged from their doom of being “un-Japanese”.

Of course, such narrow-scope of views on returnee kids didn’t last very long. As the world became globalized and interaction with the international community increased during the 1980s economic boom, the Japanese society began to see these children as an important asset to the future of their country.

After all, many of these returnees came back with language skills and were comfortable interacting with different cultures– and Japan realized that it needed such assets to uphold the country’s presence in the international society as a global, modern country. Because these children often times came from well-to-do, educated families with high-income earning parents, the Japanese public began to see kikokushijo as belonging to a certain “elite” class. In the eyes of the society, kikokushijo were  children who had access to different opportunities abroad, especially in terms of gaining fluency in a foreign language.

One way Japan began to embrace their kikokushijo more can be seen through their education system. Japanese middle and high schools as well as colleges began to accommodate returnee children by instituting special category in their entrance exam procedure, dubbed as kikokushijo-waku (repatriated student category). Those who apply through the category are given special attention to their background living and studying abroad. The exams also takes into account the difference in educational systems that these returnees have been raised in, since some choose to attend international and local schools, while others stay within the Japanese educational system via Japanese schools in their localities.

Hostilities Still Remain

Shift in attitude towards these returnee kids doesn’t necessarily mean that the old stereotypes and prejudice went away. In fact, it’s very much still present.

Growing up as a kikokushijo myself, I’ve heard countless of horror stories involving fellow returnee kids being bullies and shunned at school, simply because they’re… well, different.

Blurt out a word of foreign language and you receive intense stares from the whole class. Talk about your experiences living abroad as frankly as possible, and you’re perceived as bragging. Bullies force these returnee kids to speak in a foreign language to “prove” that their life abroad is the honest truth, when a good chunk of kikokushijo do not learn a new language because they attended Japanese schools in their localities overseas.

Some teachers in local schools fail to help their class understand and welcome the returnee into their community. A friend of mine who returned to Japan during middle school once mentioned that her teacher simply shrugged off the situation as shikata ga nai, or “it can’t be helped”– that by living abroad we automatically become subject of bullying, and that it’s no surprise because we’re “different”.

I remember in 5th grade my parents, who predicted that they too will return to Japan sooner or later, discussed placing me in an international school so that I could avoid this grim fate of being yet another victim of bullying in a local school. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I did return to Japan for schooling, and find myself shuddering at the ominous thoughts and stories I’ve heard of the negativity kikokushijo face in their own motherland.

Bringing An End To Kikokushijo Dilemma?

Kikokushijo are becoming even more common in Japan, and it’s no surprise. With the ongoing globalization and Japan’s positive attitude towards being more open to the international community- be it cultural exchange, trade, and business- there is bound to be increase in the number of expatriate families being sent abroad.

Nowadays, the Japanese society is more understanding of these returnee kids than the past– there are certainly more schools that understand the needs of these returnee children, accommodate them, and give them a good experience coming back to their motherland. And certainly not all returnee children become bullied just because of their different background. Many of them settle down with no particular issue, make friends, and their life goes on as usual. But certain stereotypes do remain, which can lead to misunderstanding between returnee children and the local Japanese communities.

Preexisting stereotypes and prejudices are not easy to let go– and some will surely continue to see us in a strange manner. Contrary to popular forms of media, kikokushijo are ordinary Japanese children—just because they lived abroad doesn’t automatically make them any better at anything, be it tennis, basketball, or… operating huge robots.

Kikokushijo may be a different batch of kids within the Japanese youth, subject to pros and cons of being “different” in one way or another– but as Japan learns to actively interact globally, perhaps such dilemmas that these kids face when returning back to their motherland will die out.

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Chances are, you’ve probably met a few non-native English speakers in some of your classes who were learning Japanese or Spanish or Swahili alongside you. You probably thought, “Rad. I don’t think I could learn Spanish or Swahili if the teacher was instructing in Japanese.” I’m here to tell you that you definitely could do such a thing, that it will help your Japanese abilities if you try, and then I’ll outline an easy way for you to get started.

This post will be helpful for intermediate and advanced learners, but beginners who are reading this should still find useful information here. This also might be one of the strangest Tofugu posts yet because I’m talking about how to learn a language that isn’t Japanese: Japanese Sign Language (JSL / shuwa 手話). While there are generally awesome things to be gained from learning a language through another language, shuwa makes the task easier because of 1) an abundance of learning materials with subtitles and 2) grammatical similarities to spoken Japanese.

Agar Mode: Learning A Language Through Another Language

In microbiology, agar is the jelly-like algae medium used to hold bacteria in petri dishes so they can be observed (without destroying the world). It’s also used in Japanese confections, like yōkan. So, as a way to shorten the phrase “Learning a language through another language”, let’s just call that “Agar Mode.” While there isn’t a lot of research on the added benefits of this mode of learning, there is research that suggests foreign language learning is easier the second time around.

Why is that? How does that even work when you’ve been stuffing the jōyō-kanji plus hundreds (thousands?) of vocabulary words and shadowing dramas and news programs for pronunciation? How can you learn a third language more easily, with a still-in-progress Nihongo squeezing up against whatever English knowledge, physics equations, quilt patterns, and “that one story that makes everyone I’m drinking with do a spit-take”?

It comes down to practice… kind of. Second language learning is one area of research that has a lot of conflicting evidence. Some of the surer things are “We don’t know what kind of motivation works best for everyone, but we know there has to be some of it somewhere for people to get anywhere in language learning.” Similarly, it’s been concluded that people who do okay at picking up one foreign language do okay a little more easily at the second because they’ve already learned and practiced successful study habits. The reason it goes smoother the second time around is because you already know that you need: vocabulary lists, listening practice, writing practice, websites and apps to feed you new challenges, and maybe small increments work best, etc. Believe it or not, the specifics of these study habits, and which ones work best for you, are the non-language things you’re learning while learning Japanese.

Okay. So you can get started with another language easily. Now you might be thinking, “Why should I?”

There are some people out there (again, the research is hard to find, but this guy backs me up) who find that the Agar Mode makes you practice Japanese in a new and impressive way. While immersive experiences are great (e.g., taking photography in Japanese, or taking Japanese in Japanese), the immersive language-learning experience specifically draws on vocabulary and expressions you’re already familiar with in Japanese: verbs, adjectives, modifying phrases, て-form, formality, etc. In the end, your head isn’t translating Japanese > English, English > Japanese, it’s translating Japanese > Language-X, Language-X > Japanese. Other posts on Tofugu mention passive learning, translating all the time, and thinking in Japanese. Sounds similar. Sounds like an integrated way to get better at Nihongo.

Exhibit A: Japanese Sign Language

Obviously, any language would work as the specimen in the Nihongo agar. But I’m going to outline resources for use with Japanese Sign Language in this article. In addition to working well with Agar Mode (so many subtitled materials!), Shuwa is as much a part of Japan as Shinto shrines and Kansai-ben. The people who use it daily read and often speak Japanese regardless of whether they can hear or not. Some Shuwa users went to schools for the deaf, but many such schools have been closed down over the years (see Karen Nakamura’s Deaf in Japan for more background on this), and now many have gone to the same schools as any other Japanese person you might meet.

For those interested in going to or living in Kyoto or Tokyo, you’ll run into a few more people using shuwa; the first Japanese school for the deaf was established in Kyoto, while Tokyo boasts the headquarters of the Japan Federation for the Deaf, as well as a number of active college circles and even academic programs (Tsukuba University, for example) for shuwa users. Furthermore, you’ll see shuwa lessons on Japanese TV and on the railways, not to mention in the popular 2004 drama Orange Days.

Again, the best part about trying this Agar Mode out with Japanese Sign Language is what kind of materials you’ll have available. Also, the grammar is going to be similar.

It should be noted that at the beginner level, most of what you’ll run into is a pidgin between shuwa and spoken Japanese called Nihongo Taiou Shuwa (日本語対応手話), which is more like Signed Japanese than Japanese Sign Language. But for getting started and practicing Japanese, this will do just fine.

Getting Started

Just like you start Japanese by learning hiragana and basic vocabulary, most people start learning shuwa with yubi-moji (‘finger-spelling’, 指文字) and vocabulary in categories like colors, food, places, relationships, etc. Here’s a chart for the yubi-moji; illustrations depict someone facing you directly with these hand shapes. Right or left-handedness doesn’t matter.

When you’ve learned all the hand shapes for the hiragana and have properly associated them, try spelling out some words that you know. By hand-spelling out たべます, for example, you’re not only cementing the hand shapes into your mind, but the concept and idea of たべます as well. When you do this, たべます isn’t “to eat” in English, it’s the idea of “to eat” without the “to eat.” You’re helping your brain to really know the word and idea, rather than telling it to recall the information based off some other information that’s in your brain. It’s Agar Mode in action.

This can help you to learn words you are having trouble memorizing too. For example, when I was having trouble remembering 都/みやこ, I found that when I started signing the word I could suddenly memorize it. So, this concept can have benefits even when used in small doses as well.

Continuing Your JSL Education

There isn’t going to be one single way to learn JSL along with your Japanese, especially if you’re looking to supplement it in this Agar Mode way. It really depends on how you’re learning Japanese. Luckily, Agar Mode is flexible and can mold (ha ha!) to just about any Japanese learning method that you do.

If you’re looking to move beyond the yubi-moji hand shapes, there are a number of resources I’ve found to help you out:

Youtube:

• Shuwa songs: Search for these with 「手話ソング」 or 「手話歌」. My favorite so far is this.
• HeartfulPowerHideo channel: This couple is funny, adorable, and effective at teaching Shuwa through subbed skits.
• Clark Chiba: You won’t be alone in the crowd of foreigners seeking to learn JSL. This person, American, has done some lessons, in Japanese, for people wanting to learn, along with some Shuwa Songs.
• jslvideodayo: this Japanese woman knows Shuwa and learned ASL after coming to the U.S. Her videos feature translations between each (JSL/ASL) with English subs

Drama:

Orange Days: In the words of most Japanese people I talk to about this show, it’s filled with all the great and also difficult things about college life in Japan, especially when facing the dreaded job hunting, but adds in the dilemma a semi-pro musician faces now that she’s deaf.

Shuwa Jiten

Like any other language, there are dialects and regional differences, and the list of words isn’t exhaustive, but this is helpful for looking up illustrations and videos of Shuwa words you want to learn. Try learning the JSL version of a word as you learn the Japanese version of a word at the same time. Or, as you make sentences in Japanese, throw in JSL words as you’re speaking it out loud. Even one or two per sentence will surely help! [Shuwa Jiten]

Academics:

• How about the Wikipedia page on Shuwa?
• Ichida Yasuhiro is a sign linguistics researcher who lectures at places like Todai and Osaka University. His website features a glossary of terms relating to sign language and the linguistics of it. Try out your reading comprehension! For advanced Japanese learners / linguistics students, check out his reference section.

Your Experiment

JSL would help you learn more about Japanese culture while practicing Nihongo, but at the end of the day, it’s your experiment. If you aren’t interested in JSL, have you ever wanted to learn French? Korean? Chinese? Consider using the Agar Mode as a way to start thinking in Japanese more. Crawl the internet with Japanese search terms, and you’ll be taking a dynamic new approach to your studies as you pick through the results.

Or maybe you’re reading this and are yawning because you’ve been here, done this. If so, tell us about your ‘learning a language through Japanese medium’ experiences in the comments!
We want to know: Was this approach effective? What kind of challenges did you face, and how did you navigate them?

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Bonus JSL Hiragana Chart!

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Cram schools are specialized schools that train their students to meet particular goals such as achieving good marks or passing the entrance examinations of high schools or universities. Many Japanese students feel relentless pressure to get ahead of the 受験戦争 (Juken-sensou), also known as the “entrance examination war,” so many kids attend a full day at school and then a few additional hours of cram school in the evening before doing a couple more hours of study at home so they can get to bed right around midnight. That’s a pretty heavy load for a child, isn’t it?

KUMON

Look at how sad that Kumon logo face looks…

My first cram school was 公文 (KUMON), which is a math and reading cram school. I forget exactly when I started it, but I’m going to say it was around my third grade of elementary school. Following that, I moved on to another cram school when I began junior high school. Unlike usual cram schools, KUMON is intended to supplement rather than replace school lessons, so students work individually and progress through the program at their own pace, advancing to the next level when they have mastered of the previous level.

The system was pretty well suited for me since I prefer studying at my own pace and the sheets that we worked on were kind of like a fun puzzle for me to complete. When I was a university student, I even worked at KUMON as an assistant teacher, so I’ve spent a lot of time at Kumon schools. It’s now even present worldwide, and I was even able to find a couple in the Canadian city close to the town that I’m currently living in. So maybe you’ve seen it before even in your own home country?

For The Entrance Examinations

Despite all this Kumon time, I found myself wanting to go to a different cram school when I reached junior high school. I needed something that would specialize in high school entrance examinations. In order to go to the new cram school, I had to take a train every evening, so my parents at first didn’t want to enroll me there. However, I begged them because many of my friends were there. Wanting to hang out with my friends was not the only reason, though. I also didn’t want to find myself academically lagging behind my friends. Keep your friends close and your high school entrance examination enemies closer, eh?

Although the new cram school was much more competitive, and everyone could see how well you did on the mock examinations by looking at a board with all the student’s names on it, I honestly didn’t dislike the school. As I mentioned earlier, the school was a couple of stations away from my town so I had to take the train which was sometimes a bit troublesome, but it also allowed me to make new friends from different schools. The teachers were great, too. I enjoyed that school a lot and was glad that I made the move. When I became a high school student, I once again changed cram schools to focus on the upcoming university entrance exam. At this point it wasn’t that big of a change, so I enjoyed the new school as well.

Special Events

As for special events, both KUMON and the cram school I attended during junior high school had a “New Year’s Eve All-Night Studying Event” (年越し徹夜勉強会/toshikoshi-testuya-benkyoukai). The teachers encouraged us not to fall asleep and to keep studying until morning. There were even a few games to help stimulate and relax students as well. It was a lot of fun to stay up late with my friends, but everyone reaches a wall and you would get sleepy at some point and find it nearly impossible to keep studying. Granted, it wasn’t an effective way to study at all, but it did teach us some discipline.

I know you’re probably sarcastically thinking “Right on! That sounds like a fantastic way to spend New Years Eve!” However, after saying that, studying all night together actually made us feel as though we achieved something great and it was a real confidence booster. The New Year’s sunrise, known as 初日の出 (hatsuhinode) was quite memorable, too. Everyone made the same New Years resolution: study hard to achieve good marks on the entrance exam.

The Interview With Juku-experienced People

Now, you may think I’m a bit of an oddball because I actually liked juku (cram school), but I’m not the only one. I interviewed some people who attended cram schools when they were younger and I found that every single one of these girls really enjoyed going, at least in retrospect.

Rina (pen-name), who is 19-year-old female, went to cram schools while she was in elementary and junior high school. Although she had to go there every day, except on Sundays and summer vacations, she said she liked it. 

塾は好きでした。他の人と楽しく勉強できて行くのが好きだし楽しかったから。勇気づけるための言葉とか目標とかをいつも言ってくれたり、壁に紙がはってあったり、先生が面白いから毎日塾に行きたがってた！
I liked my cram schools. It was enjoyable to study with my friends. Teachers also gave us many quotes, posted phrases on the wall and set goals for us, all with the purpose of encouraging us.  I found it fun and funny so I wanted to go to the cram school every day.

Paeja (pen-name), who is 28-year-old female, also liked her cram school. She went to her cram schools during all of her elementary, junior, and high school years. Her cram school also had a New Years Eve camp-in for working on a collection of past entrance exams from many choice schools.

他校の友達としりあえたし、塾の先生が好きだったから塾は好きでした。
I liked my cram schools because I was able to get to know students from other schools and I also liked the cram school teachers.

I also asked her why she liked the teachers. She answered they were nice and funny and she gave me a couple examples of why she thought so.

・夏期講習の最終日に友達が家出をしたが、塾の先生が親身に面倒をみてくれていた。
・同じ塾に通っていた兄が通塾を拒否し無断欠席を繰り返したら、塾の先生と学年主任が夜中にアポ無しで家庭訪問に来た。
・地理の授業で地図の特産物マークを「ワカメちゃん」「綿花ちゃん」と擬人化する先生がいた。
・On the last day of the summer program, one of my friends ran away from home. The cram school teachers were genuinely worried about her and looked after her after she was found.
・My brother went to the same cram school I did, but he rejected the idea of cram school and was repeatedly truant. His teacher and the head teacher of his grade worried about him and unexpectedly visited our home at night after the cram school closed.
・In a geography class, I had a teacher who always personified the principal product of each country’s district like ‘Wakame-chan (Seaweed-chan)’ or ‘Menka-chan (Cotton-chan)’. I found it funny and it helped me memorize them.

Surprisingly, she confessed to liking the cram school teachers so much that she even fell in love with one of them. She ran into him 10 years down the line and they actually dated for a while. She also told me that it’s fairly common for a student to develop a crush on a cram school teacher. She had a friend who had a crush on a teacher while going there, too. She remembers that she dreamt up an imaginary love story between her friend and the teacher and wrote the short story out for her, but it was discovered by the teacher somehow and both of them felt monstrously embarrassed.

Yukari (pen-name), who is 28-year-old female, also liked her cram school, though she had a rather bitter experience there.  The teacher scolded her for having a secret Christmas party in the self-study room with her friends. As you might presume, she had a lot of friends there and that was the reason that she liked the cram school so much. She also worked at a cram school when she was a university student. She often looks back on that period in her life and remembers how busy her days were. 

３年間進学塾で中学理科を教えていました。塾の講師は自分のプライベートな時間はほとんど取れなくて塾内でのコミュニティが全てという感じになっていました。
そのため、昼ドラのようなドロドロした恋愛模様がそこら中でありました。”
I taught junior high school level science at a cram school for three years. Being a teacher at a cram school means being very busy. I barely had any private time and  neither did the other teachers. Our whole lives existed within the cram school. Therefore, there were actually a lot of complicated, soap opera-esque relationships among the cram school staff.

However, there are of course some people who don’t like cram schools and 8-chilis (pen-name) is one of them. He didn’t like cram school because you are bound to a lot of things. He once attended a winter session when he was in junior high school, but he thought he could do it by himself because a cram school is just a tool and not necessary.

稲田塾憲法249条: Article 294 of the Inada-Juku Constitution

Although he succeeded in doing well on his high school entrance exam, he failed the entrance exam for university which resulted in him becoming a 浪人(rounin). Rounin means a masterless samurai, or a jobless person / high-school graduate who has failed to enter a university and is waiting for another chance to obtain a place. While he was a “rounin,” he finally went to a cram school because he felt that he needed to regiment his studying and also thought it would have been fruitless to continue studying by himself for one year without seeking any assistance. After doing so, he successfully rewrote the entrance examination and was accepted to Kyoto University a.k.a Kyoudai, which is the second oldest Japanese university and one of the highest ranked universities in economics in all of Asia. It is also one of Japan’s Seven National Universities. However, he told me that he still didn’t regret his decision of not going to cram school when he was younger.

たらればで、もし塾いってたらどうなってたかなーとは考えたけど、行ってても落ちてたと思うわ。
ちゃんと受かった人って志望校も目的意識もはっきりしてたけど、俺にはそれがなかったから何回やっても結果はだめやったと思うねん┐(￣ヘ￣）┌
そんな状況でよく浪人して受かったな～と思ってるぐらい(笑)
He continued, “Of course I imagined the “what if” stories, but I probably still would have failed the exam, even if I did go to a cram school. The people who did move on to university had a clear goal in their minds, but I had no such goals. I figure that even if I could go back to that time and try the exam again, I would fail it. So I kind of impressed myself when ended up passing the exam after one year of being a rounin”, he chuckles.

Remember, he still ended up going to Kyoto University, so he was a smart guy after all, but we can’t be sure how a cram school may have benefited him on his first exam, if he had gone to one. Initially he told me that he disapproved of cram schools because he didn’t want to feel bound to it in order to succeed, however, after one year of being a “rounin,” that is the exact reason why he placed himself there. He utilized his time and motivation very well. Anyways, I’d say that becoming a cram school student is a very wise path to walk down, although it is often an arduous and uphill one. Whatever your reasons for going, rest assured they are probably good ones.

The Importance To Be Liked By Students

Granted, there may be some drama among the cram school staff, like Yukari mentioned, but there are many teachers beloved by their students and it is one of the main reasons why students continue to go back to cram school, as Rina and Paeja did.  I think it’s fair to say that most teachers would agree, to some extent, that being liked by students creates a better learning environment and eases the job of being an effective teacher.  However, there is a secondary truth to that, as well, which is that if teachers are not well liked or accepted among the students, they face the possibility of losing their jobs.

According to a research study conducted by Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry about cram schools, of 2,071 parents who have one or more children attending a cram school, over 90% of them agreed that teaching methods are incredibly important, but they also believed the eagerness of the teachers and how intently they take care for their children is critical.

Additionally, another research study, conducted by the Japan Juku Association, administered a questionnaire to over 5,000 separate cram schools with the intent of discovering what criterion they hold as the most important in the evaluation of teachers. The results showed that 46.6% of employers consider teacher reputation among students as the main benchmark and it was the single most important criterion. Surprisingly, academic improvement was secondary to reputation with a score of (45.8%) and the third most important consideration when evaluating teacher performance was teacher reputation among the students’ parents (41.3%).

So it seems that the primary requirement for a teacher’s longevity in a cram school is that they are liked by the students.  This study may not be something that those teachers should read as it might add a whole new level of stress as they attempt to cross off yet another strenuous goal on their list of career accomplishments – acceptance.

I can just imagine all the elderly teachers wearing parachute pants walking into a classroom with a boom box blaring AC/DC or Run-D.M.C. planted firmly on their shoulder and saying “Ah yeah, this is my jam!” while passing out sticks of peppermint bubble gum and yoyos to a room of bewildered students. 

‘Hayashi Osamu’ Boom

47-year-old Osamu Hayashi is probably the most famous and successful teacher currently working in Japan. He teaches contemporary Japanese literature at a nationwide cram school called Toshin High School that mainly focuses on preparing students for university entrance exams. 

Toshin High School is known for its unique TV commercial series, which focuses on some of their most popular teachers and shows a few quick clips of their actual classes. Each teacher has their own distinct character and uses strong words to encourage their students. Hayashi is one of the teachers that appears on Toshin‘s commercial series, and his  signature phrase during class and on the commercial is: “Itsu yaru ka? Ima desho!“, meaning “When will you act? It should be right now!”

The message was originally intended for students planning on taking college entrance exams and, in fact, he was already famous among students even before making his way into the TV world. Yet, some business people recognized the phrase’s great potential and thought of how to use it. He started  appearing in a number of TV commercials and campaigns, and the phrase became a nationwide catchphrase, especially among the younger generation.

The phrase is now used in many places such as drinking parties or even business situations. For example, some people ask their colleagues, “If you don’t drink now, then when will you?” in order to make them answer, “Imadesho“.   Salesmen try to encourage their clients who are hesitating on signing a contract, “We have a great campaign rate at the moment and if you don’t sign up now, when will you sign up? It should be done right now!”

So what does the fad of Hayashi tell us about Japanese cram school education? After all, is cram school a business whose “product” quality is solely based on their number of admissions? If the reputation of a school is decided upon by children and their parents, and if advertising helps to develop a positive reputation for your school, then all the more power to you. Thanks to its commercials, Toshin High School is now famous for having “unique” teachers, though its mission is simply to help their students to pass the entrance exams for some of the top universities in Japan, including the University of Tokyo from which Hayashi himself graduated.

From my experience, I felt that my teachers were in it for more than just money. You could probably pick that up from Paeja’s comments, as well. Some teachers even visited a family for one student because they worried about her brother’s future. It may have been a part of their business’ protocol, but to me, it’s more than that. If things like this were done solely for business purposes, I don’t think that they would have bothered to take so much care of a runaway girl, either.

Now, what do you think of the Japanese cram school? Do you think that it’s too much work load for children? Or, have you had harder experiences in your country? As for the teachers, do you think that they are doing favors for themselves? Or, do you think that they are truly worried about children?

Bonus Wallpapers!

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