Living here in a foreign culture can be a royal pain in the arse. I know many people have problems communicating – being understood and understanding everything that is going on around them. It’s not only the grammar, syntax and kanji that cause me grief, but the culture and the way people communicate here is just so different, too. I’m not completely illiterate either, but reading letters and emails from hoikuen really pisses me off. I have to be in the mood to sift through the inane comments about the weather and the flu and such like before deciding to read the email or read it later. Reading it later is often fatal because I always forget and then get a reminder email about the previous email. Next Sunday we have a class party with Alexa’s classmates and parents (mums will only be in attendance though). I got the mail and replied that we would be comng to the party. I saw the class yakiun (class honcho person) outside the classroom a few days later and asked if it was OK to bring James along, too. She said it was OK and then asked if my husband would be coming. I told her no it’ll just be the three of us. So I have confirmed in an email and again face to face with the yakuin. Perhaps two weeks later I get another email titled “party” or some other such bollocks and I ignored it because I have already confirmed that the three of us would be coming. I then get an email in English from another random mum explaining that the yakuin asked her to email me to ask in English if I was coming to the party. (Insert expletive here…………!!!!) I explained again that three of us would be coming and also explained that I had given this info twice already.
Since this English email, I have been sent double the usual emails because the yakuin herself has decided to email me in English which is very nice of her and all. So I thought. She basically wants to practice her English which she tells me she hasn’t used for ten years but she would like to practice again! Oh, and I thought it was because you wanted to be nice to me. Silly me! However, these English emails haven’t helped one bit because whilst I can understand what she is saying, the information in the English emails is DIFFERENT from the original Japanese email (I get the JP one too). I had written in my diary ages ago that there was a class meeting on the 21st Feb at 5pm – this I had gleaned from the original Japanese email once I’d skipped over the bits about how cold February has been so far and that it won’t be long before cherry blosom season is upon us and I hope you have managed to avoid getting the flu. I can read numbers quite easily and jotted down the time and date. This English email now tells me that the meeting is on the 22nd Feb. So I then had to email her back and check which date was correct because the mail didn’t imply that the date had changed. The meeting, which I suspected, was on the 21st.
Just before the meeting we get the bog standard email about who is going to be the class yakuin (3 mums needed for this job), the bazaar yakuin (4 mums for this job) from April. Having never been a yakuin of any kind and knowing that with two kids in the hoikuen, my time is going to come, I wanted to volunteer for one of the bazaar yakuin because I imagine this is much easier than being class yakuin. Gimme a box of second hand clothes to sort and stick price tags on or some other kind of donkey-work as I’m sure I can do this. I do not want to do any kind of clerical work in a foreign language thank you very much. Obviously other mums had the same idea and were quicker than me to reply. I get another email letting me know that the 4 bazaar members have been decided/volunteered. (Insert expletive here………!) Anyway, there is good news. At the meeting we got to persuade another mum to be class yakuin so I can do my bit as a skivvy for the annual bazaar inventing silly games out of eggboxes, milk cartons, toilet roll tubes, rolled up newspaper and masking tape. I am exempt from James’ class because I am doing stuff already for Alexa’s class. Hopefully, next year I can get away with bazaar donkey work, too.
It just makes complete sense to me for a native speaker to do the yakuin stuff. Much the same with form-filling, I think my husband would do a much speedier and more legible application than myself. However, I often find myself doing application forms with my dreadful childish kanji. Luckily, my hub knows not to then go on and complain about how shit the application looks. My hub just doesn’t think that it is his responsibilty to do anything for hoikuen. For example, he stayed in bed for Sports Day whilst I had to split myself in half when I was called upon to get involved in the activities where kids and parents teamed up. Not to mention, I was in the loo with Alexa when they were explaining to the parents of James’ class about how to play the game they were up to do next. I was summoned from the loo and told to get in the hall (rainy sports day) and join in the game. If you have been to a Sports Day in Japan, you’ll know the activities are not like back home. It wasn’t an egg and spoon race, but some complicated game involving shouting out the names of animals and then teaming up with another kid/parent (or 3 or 4) depending on the number of hiragana in the animal’s name! I had no idea what the class teacher was on about as she ushered me out of the loo and told me she’d pull Alexa’s pants up for her. Mummy wasn’t happy. She needs more time to ponder the complexities of stupid games in a foreign language before being told to join in – in front of the entire hoikuen population – mums, dads, grandparents not to mention all the kids, whom already suspect I am different or plain weird because I have different coloured eyes, and hair and I talk to my kids using words that are not nihongo!
Anyway, I have gone off on a completely different tangent. How sad am I to be remeniscing about a Japanese Sports Day?!
