One thing that I never expected to be surprised by before coming here was the amount of injuries Japanese school students have. They spend so much time at club activities so they get a lot of injuries. For example I know the seniors in the tennis club spend five hours a day after school five times a week and more on weekends playing tennis, in the freezing cold, when it’s raining. I’m assuming the baseball club would be even more hardcore than that. So after noticing everyone’s giant bruises and cuts and slings I started thinking whether I’d eventually get hurt and have a big bruise to sport. Well it happened, it happened at my flower arranging club. Yes, I joined the flower arranging club. I was about to cut the stem of one flower and I missed the stem in one moment of complete uncoordination and cut my finger in a really bad way. Now my finger is bruised and cut but it means that I’m one step closer to being a Japanese schoolboy so I’m happy about it.
You’re probably all wondering why I joined the flower arranging club and so am I! Nodding and smiliing only helps so much until you agree to something you really don’t want to do. The next day someone I had never met before came and escorted me to the flower arranging room and there it began, but I won’t quit because at least it gives me a chance to make more friends.
I am slowly reconstructing everybody’s impression of foreigners and I think they’re getting used to me. The fact that I’m not American, blonde, sporty, or Avril Lavigne has pretty much shocked my entire school, let alone me the only male joining the flower arranging club. I never realized how different Australia is to most countries in that I grew up around so many different cultures. Japan is a completely homogenous society so something foreign causes a lot of interest and a lot of hassle. Everybody is so compatible in Japan, nobody breaks the rules or ruins the order of things, everybody does what they’re supposed to do without complaining or fighting. That’s the positive effect of having a society very closed to the outside world even though that’s changing fast. It’s nice to be in a country where everything works out perfectly as planned, but if anything other than the over-politeness could get on my nerves it’ll be the fact that everything is too clockwork.
Anyway I’ll talk a bit about some things I still can’t get over at school.
The girls dominate. A Japanese classroom would be a feminist’s haven. I’ve seen guys crying because their girlfriend’s beat them up. The girls here are so violent, and their boyfriend’s try to fight back but the combined power of the girl’s shrieking and unrestrained punches and kicking could K.O anyone. Even the seemingly most timid girl has released a brutal punch when she sees appropriate. Apart from that the girl’s also have a strange perception of vanity. They put on their fake eyelashes and make-up in the middle of class where everyone can see and it’s obvious they don’t beautify themselves to impress the guys, I think they do it just for fun and just because they can. The girls are the ones who talk to the boys at lunch not the other way around, and it’s the girls who talk back to the teachers and get a smile in return, not the boys. The girls are more free than the guys at school, they can join soccer, baseball or any sport they want as well as all the cultural clubs while there are no guys in the tea ceremony or flower arranging clubs (except me). Between now and twenty years in the future these girls will lose everything interesting about them. Judging from the majority of middle aged women in Japan, girls grow up to be polite, well-behaved and positively feminine, lacking an opinion on anything and only caring about their children going to school and what their husband’s eat. Sure they’re very kind and motherly but that’s all there is to them. Apparently they lose any hope of a fashion sense. Perhaps it’s just a major change in generations but whatever it is it creeps me out. The elderly women seem to be a lot like elderly people in Australia actually and I see them as more familiar than most other people.
The guys in my class are a bit boring but they probably think I’m very boring too. They only talk about sport (from what I can understand), and they only play cards at school or sleep, waiting for baseball to start. Most guys are too scared to even make eye contact with me and most of the guys who I’m friends with only first starting talking to me because they were dared by their friends. That’s not entirely true actually, there are some from the third year who realize that I’m just human and there’s some other guys who don’t know what to think of me after seeing me not performing well in our PE activities. It’s only men in Japan who have work twitches and it seems to be almost every man. I don’t know what in the world could make them want to overwork to the point that they their eyes are constantly twitching.
