Memories of Japan, part 3: Hirado-shima, 1997-1998
Jun 12 '09 (Updated Aug 25 '09)
The Bottom Line Part 3 focuses on Hirado Island, my apartment, and my role as an ALT.
In part 2 (http://www.epinions.com/content_5322154116), I wrote about the orientations that immediately followed my first arrival in Japan, but preceded my journey and stay on Hirado, an island located off the northwest coast of Kyushu. This article focuses on my year on Hirado Island.
From Nagasaki to Hirado
Kanemoto-sensei picked me up in Nagasaki and transported me to Hirado Island in his mid-90s white sedan (I think it was a Honda Civic, though I might be confusing it with my friend Daniel's future car). The car ride from Nagasaki to Hirado City was about four hours, if I recall correctly. One thing I learned quickly about Japan was that distances there seemed twice as far as distances in Southern California, mostly because the availability of freeways in California. In Nagasaki-ken, there was one expressway that connected Nagasaki, Isahaya, and Sasebo to all points in Kyushu, but it was expensive to take -- to the tune of 700 yen-plus, with incremental increases as one drove farther. Also, the expressway was largely inconvenient for most locations, particular Hirado, which was connected to Kyushu by a bridge and was about one-and-a-half hours from Sasebo, the nearest expressway on-ramp point. So, people were often consigned to road driving, which was restricted to 50 kilometers per hour (30 mph for you American readers). Thus, though Nagasaki was a little over 100 kilometers from Hirado, it took close to four hours. In California, 60 miles is traversed in less than an hour!
Despite the time taken, I don't remember the drive with Kanemoto-sensei feeling long. The one thing that stands out in my mind is my first sight of Hirado Ohashi (Big Bridge), which looks remarkable like San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, but much smaller in length. I took a picture while passing under the bridge's eastern support, which was at the outskirts of Tabira-cho. The toll for crossing the bridge was only 100 yen, which was reasonable considering that the bridge connecting Hirado and neighboring Ikitsuki Island had a toll that was (I think) seven times that (in 2009, the toll is now 100 yen)! And, that bridge led to a far-less populous island with a population of fishermen and farmers!
The Geography and History of Hirado Island
Hirado island is a long, narrow island that is 30 miles or so from northeast to southwest, and six miles wide at its narrowest point. Today, Hirado City prevails over the whole island, as well as over neighboring Ikitsuki and Aoshima islands and Tabiro-cho on mainland Kyushu; but, in 1997, Hirado City only encompassed the island itself. Within Hirado City, there are numerous villages, like Nakano-cho and Himosashi-cho in the middle of the island and Miyanoura-cho on the southern tip of the island. The island is mountainous with a vast majority of the island covered with forest and terraced rice fields. As with many of Japanese smaller islands, agriculture and fishing are the major industries.
Tourism is also relevant on Hirado; with Hirado castle, the Matsuura-gun museum, and Himosashi Catholic church, Hirado had a rich history of Dutch and Portuguese contact during the closed period of Japanese history (sakoku, 1600-1868) and crypto-Christianity, which was the prevalence of underground Christianity during a time of severe persecution that began with shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi and continued throughout the Tokugawa/Edo period. In fact, Nagasaki-ken was a hotbed for Christian growth and, later, a focus of Christian persecution, highlighted by the Shimabara Rebellion in the early 1600s and then lowlighted by the torture and slaying of numerous Japanese Christians by way of upside crucifixion and/or being dipped into the boiling waters of Unzen hot springs until they either renounced their faiths or died.
Though Hirado is an island, the Hirado Bridge connects it to mainland Kyushu. From Hirado City to Sasebo, where a U.S. military base is located, it takes one-hour to drive. I lived in the center of the island in Himosashi-cho, which was a 25-kilometer drive to Hirado City. In 1997, Hirado Island had a population of 25,000 people, who mostly dwelled in the town proper; conversely, Himosashi was sparsely populated with a small village center, a supermarket, the Catholic Church, and then rice fields and mountains all around.
Hirado Island, and more specifically Himosashi-cho, was as far from what Tokyo was as one could get. No American who had never been to Japan could imagine the beautiful countryside that I beheld daily in Himosashi. For me, being a Los Angeles guy, Himosashi was completely different from the densely-populated environs of Southern California.
Himosashi and Teacher Housing
When I arrived on Hirado Island, Kanemoto-sensei immediately took me to dinner, where I met a couple of the teachers of Hirado High School, where I was assigned. I don't recall who I met, but I remember that I was tired and just wanted to go to my apartment. After that delay, Kanemoto-sensei drove me to Himosashi-cho and my apartment.
My apartment was one of two two-story units, which was one of two buildings of teacher housing in Himosashi-cho. Both buildings were located next to an old lumber mill, though I never found the sawing at that mill loud or intrusive in any way. On the other side of the two buildings was a grassy hill; I never had the desire to hike into those hills, though I often imagined being attacked by mountain monkeys (which did exist on the island) or giant hand-sized spiders (one of which made it into my apartment one night). I had a healthy fear of the forests of Hirado, so I often stayed clear of hiking alone.
Back to my apartment, the two structures that comprised the Himosashi teacher housing were sterile and beige-gray, with aluminum balconies and window slider-frames. The front parking area was laid with gravel and it sloped to the paved road leading to a minor artery connecting the saw mill and teacher housing to Highway 383. In the distance, from my front slider, which faced the parking area, I could see the Marusei market, as well as the rice fields that intervene. Beyond that, all I saw were mountains of verdant splendor.
Inside my apartment, I had a kitchen/dining area on the first floor, along with a six-tatami-mat room that had an obtrusive and wholly-unnecessary dining table, along with a nice widescreen CRT TV and satellite TV -- all of two channels (note: in Japan, rooms are measured in terms of tatami mats, which are about 3 feet by 6 feet). Interestingly, my shower and bath were directly adjacent to the kitchen and laundry area; in winter, my shower water was heated by a localized gas heater, which took time to heat up the water just enough to make it warm, which was not nearly warm enough to compensate for the uninsulated shower area. Upstairs, there were two six-tatami-mat rooms; one would be my "bedroom," though I slept on a futon with a comforter; the other room would be my "laundry-drying-and-storage" room. The laundry-drying room accessed the upper-balcony through a sliding wood-and-plastic screen. The area between the outer slider and the laundry-drying room was a small wooded causeway that was the actual drying place for clothes, but I often found that I needed more space.
For a single guy, the apartment was more than spacious enough, though I was introduced to a limitation that I always encountered in Japan when it came to dwellings: lack of insulation and central heating. Japanese homes and apartments (except for ultra-modern homes) were often designed with concrete walls and, with older homes, mud as insulation, but rarely featured, say, weatherstripping or even fiberglass insulation. Most homes also did not have ventilation or central heating, but relied on open windows and, in my opinion, the leaky nature of non-weatherstripped windows and doors to ventilate the apartment or house.
This led me to recognize an interesting tendency in Japan: the contrivance of ingenious solutions for pre-created inconveniences. In this example of housing, Japanese builders seemed to staunchly refuse to use insulation; to counter this, Japanese engineers were extremely adept at designing snazzy kerosene space heaters with remote controls, electrically-heated tables (called kotatsu) with overhanging comforters, nifty heating pads (which are also present in the U.S., but were much more prevalent in Japan), and wonderfully advanced room air conditioning units, also with remote controls, digital controls, and all the bells and whistles one could imagine. Another example of this tendency was drying clothes: instead of designing better, more efficient clothes dryers, Japanese designers did well to construct some of the most elaborate clothes-hanging appartuses one could ever imagine. But, I digress...
For my year in Hirado, that apartment would be home. It was enough, but it got cold in the winter and hot in the summer. Therefore, during the summer and winter, I spent much of my time in the downstairs tatami-mat room -- the one with the snazzy room air conditioner that did barely enough or warm or cool the room. I even moved my futon down there during those months. For all intents and purposes, I really lived on the bottom floor most of the time.
Besides me, my neighbors were teachers. In the unit next to mine, Yoshida-sensei, who was a math teacher and the baseball coach, lived with his wife and baby. In the building across from mine, Tagawa-sensei and Koga-sensei (both math teachers) lived in the two other units. Koga-sensei was a kind older gentleman who, because of the inane transfer system Japanese teachers had to endure, lived separate from his wife, who lived in Isahaya. Every three to six years, high school and junior high school teachers had to transfer from one school in a prefecture to another in the same prefecture; for most prefectures, this meant driving somewhere else, but in Nagasaki-ken, which had outlying islands that were a three- to four-hour ferry ride from Kyushu, transfers meant that one wasn't consign to a far-flung region for any more than a few years. Koga-sensei lived in that apartment for nine months of my time there until he was transferred, but he was kind enough to invite me over for yakiniku (grilling meat and vegetables on a hotplate in a communal fashion) and Koshien baseball (Koshien is a high school baseball tournament that happens in spring and summer -- they are two separate tournaments). Conversely, Tagawa-sensei was not so kind and seemed to harbor a deep-seated resentment of the relative lack of classes I had to teach compared to him. I think that, over time, he just didn't like me at all. He even skipped out on my goodbye dinner. It was just as well...
Hirado High School and My Role as ALT
In the JET Programme, there are two kinds of Assistant Language Teachers (ALT) (and you JETs out there can correct me on this point): prefectural ALTs and city ALTs. I was a prefectural ALT, which meant that I was assigned to one high school at which I was based. As a prefectural ALT, my primary duty was to teach classes at my base school, though I could be loaned out to other schools; in my case, I worked at Nokko Junior High School once a week, which was located near Miyanoura. On the other hand, city ALTs, like my friend Daniel, were assigned to two or more junior high schools.
The most crucial difference between the two ALT types was during school vacations: for example, during the two months of summer break, prefectural ALTs did not have to go to school because school was essentially closed, but city ALTs had to go to the city office everyday. Also, the number of official vacation days varied from 12 to 20 days among JETs, but city JETs could use study leave, which was time that could be spent studying Japanese culture, such as taking Japanese classes, or sightseeing at historic locations, such as road trips to Sasebo. (Thanks, Daniel, for reminding me of this!)
As a prefectural ALT, I spent most of my time at Hirado High School. Hirado High School was a three-grade school of about 400 students that were bused in from throughout the island. It was the less academic of the two high schools on the island, the other one being Yukokan High School, so many of the students were not necessarily interested in English. I taught five classes a week at Hirado: I taught one class with Kanemoto-sensei, one class with Seto-sensei, and three classes with Ichinose-sensei, who was the head of the English Department.
As time passed during year in Hirado, I came to like Ichinose-sensei the most of all the teachers: his English was very good because he studied one year at the University of Hawaii; he was laid-back and easygoing; and, he was young enough for me to be understood. Initially, I tried to get along with Kanemoto-sensei, but something that occurred during my first week on Hirado island indicated to me that he and I were not going to get along well. He had taken me to a hardware store to buy some sundries and cleaning equipment for the apartment. I had finished some treat and had a piece of trash I wanted to discard. So, I asked the shopkeeper if he could throw it in his trash for me. Instead of calmly explaining to me that Japanese people take their trash home with them to discard, he acted shocked at my request. His eyes widened and he stepped back, not overtly but enough to make it clear that he was embarassed. Though I acknowledge my faux pas (even the shopkeeper didn't seem to mind -- after all, "gaijin" are expected to make mistakes), I was saddened and hurt by his reaction and failure to explain things to me. I realized then that he was not very understanding of Westerners, despite his background in English, and was probably not the guy to ask for help with such things as going to shops and buying necessities.
Suffice it to say, Ichinose-sensei (whose given name was Kenji) and I, though not fast friends, seemed to work on more equal footing as far as teaching was concerned. Moreover, to be fair, Kanemoto-sensei actually had creative ideas on how to teach, though we did argue on a couple of occasions; to encounter such friction from a Japanese person was odd to me. But, Seto-san (on whom Tagawa-sensei had a crush) used me as a tape recorder: she would ask me to say something, and I would annunciate it. On the spectrum of ALT teaching, from me-being-a-tape-recorder to me-being-in-charge, I'd say that Seto was on the me-being-a-tape-recorder side, Kanemoto was on the me-being-in-charge side, and Kenji was somewhere in the middle.
Next Article...
Well, I've covered much background information about Hirado. In my next article, I will cover a typical school day at Hirado High School.
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
kedsand1
|
|
Location: Circle City, USA
Reviews written: 123
Trusted by: 34 members
About Me:
Even if you're homeless, you can still write Epinions at the local library.
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.