The Spitting Story

This past week I had dinner with another expat in the town I work in. She is the middle school teacher who replaced my friend Adrienne. We had a nice dinner at the little okonomiyaki place by the station, but she told me a story that completely shocks me. Have to share....

So Adrienne was pretty good at Japanese and had lived in Japan before. She is a pretty tall girl (especially here) with white-blonde hair. She’s not exactly the quiet type, either, which was probably a positive trait for the schools she had to work at and helped her deal with some of the students. I have heard a lot of stories from those schools and it can be a rough environment (the downside of zoning). Moreover, a lot of the kids don’t go onto high school (not compulsory in Japan) and because they know they are not going to use English later, they don’t care much about it, or English class at all for that matter. Given those factors, it might make sense that when Adrienne was replaced by Ann, a tiny, Chinese-American girl from New York who doesn’t speak much Japanese (but can read a lot of the kanji meanings from her Chinese abilities) there were some adjustments, if not just for the fact that they each carry such a different presence. Apparently not all of the adjustments were all that smooth, either... based on this story Ann just told me at dinner.

So we met outside the restaurant and cute, little Ann was looking a little haggard when I saw her. I asked her how she was and she said it was a bad week. Um, ok... expand?

It seems that earlier in that same day, she was just walking down the hall when a student passing her spit in her face. There was nobody else around, but this kid actually (and purposefully) SPIT in her face! She was intitally just shocked, but understandably furious (in all her New York City-upbringing glory), but the kicker is that the kid didn’t even get in trouble!?! He was forced to bow once or twice in a forced, apologetic manner, but Ann said the little brat's homeroom teacher bowed lower and more times than the kid did. The boy is still at school, too.

The kid that spit in Ann's face is a third grader, so he's at the end of his tenure (year ends in March), and the rest of the teachers know he’s not going to go to high school, so they basically just let him get away with it. I find that ridiculous. I am sure that kid would have been suspended in America and it really teaches him nothing to let him treat other people in that way. Furthermore, Ann is a staff member and it is beyond me that they would not deem this an important issues of authority and respect, especially in Japan. I am pretty certain that the behaviour stemmed from the fact that Ann is Chinese, too, so let's not even get into the racial issues here (there's a lot of prejiduce between China and Japan which is a long way from complete resolution).

Ann is switching to another school soon (she does half-year rotations), so I think the thing that sent her over the edge for the day was that her school also informed her (on the same day, mind you) that she would need to start writing her "thank you speech" to the student body to be given at an assembly before switching schools next month. Ann is coming back to the same school next year, so she has to do it and pretend to mean it... but can you imagine? What a day for them to ask for her gratitude.

I often talk about cultural differences and the pros and cons (or surprises) of not being able to blend-in in this country, but I guess it really is a diferent experience for the foreigners of Asian descent who come to work here. Growing up in the midwest, we didn't have much Asian influence and I don't think people always realize how many different and very distinct cultures there are in Asia. There is a long history of conflict between some of those cultures, including China and Japan, that still leaves a nasty residue on present-day foreign relations. I was abolutely horrified by the school's response (or lack-thereof) to the spitting incident and a little shocked by the story itself... but it's a good example of how racial conflicts (or misunderstandings of cultures and where the history comes from among the common population) can have a very negative affect that taints views for generations.