Mid-Year Conference 2007

I had to bail early on pumpkin carving with my students last Wednesday because I had to make my flight to Nagasaki. Each year, all the JETs in each prefecture are brought together for a mid-year conference. There were about 166 of us for Nagasaki Prefecture. I met most of the other first-year JETs at the prefectural orientation back in August, but that already feels like years ago. It's pretty neat to observe all the cliques that have formed, and how people juggled time between ALT friends from their cities and other first-years they met back in August.

Evelyn's awesome, and booked most of our hotel rooms together. I am apparently the only one of the eight of us Tsushima JETs who had to work Wednesday, so the rest of them had spent most of the afternoon enjoying Nagasaki. There was typical craziness at a bar on the Dejima wharf, involving twenty Japanese college students who were celebrating four birthdays. Nothing too crazy, though.

The first day of the conference was kicked off with a keynote speech. The speaker was some guy who apparently heads up a camp around here for learning English. The content of his speech was probably pretty mediocre; however, having gone so long without such prolonged exposure to English, I basked in it. He talked about the history of Japan hiring foreigners to teach in the country, dating back to the Meiji Restoration, and went into a little philosophy, so the geek in me loved it.

All JETs, regardless of length of tenure, have to attend the conference and all its breakout sessions. This obviously leads to a lot of re-tread. I can understand the program's reasoning: something along the lines of rejuvenating the troops, trying to remind them of why they're here. I also can understand second- and third-years' being frustrated with being told the same thing time and again. So much of
what they tell us--even at the prefectural meetings--is woefully irrelevant to Tsushima. JET's mantra is "every situation is different," and with good reason. Gathering 166 people from different situations to try and teach them all the same discrete procedures seems kind of counterintuitive to many people, including me. However, we don't complain too loudly, for two reasons: a) the whole trip is paid for by our schools, and 2) we get to party with fellow anglophones.

With that in mind, I endured the first day's breakout sessions. I did in fact pick up a couple of useful game ideas. That I learned them from a pretty JET who loved to hear herself talk almost kept it from being worth the effort, though.

Oh, and JETs aren't the only ones who come to this conference. Also invited are our supervisors, the Japanese Teachers of English (JTEs). This becomes important later.

Anyway. The important stuff happened afterwards. There was a big party at a local bar back at the August orientation, with proceeds benefiting an English school in Laos. A sequel was planned for this conference, with a costume party tacked on. I hadn't brought my costume for two very good reasons: I didn't think anyone else would bring theirs, and I never really had a costume to begin with. Turns out, everyone else brought a costume. I wound up going as Guy in Pajamas, which worked well enough, in that I was the only guy wearing flannel pajamas and a hotel bathrobe. Other costumes in our little group included a pirate and Waldo. The girls in our group had planned costumes around some French cartoon or comic book or something. I dunno either.

The party was fun, but absolutely packed with people. Six or seven of us broke off from the main party and decided to find a quieter venue for some relaxing. After about an hour of "seriously, guys, it's just a little farther this way" from three different guides, we found the Panic Paradise. Our group had grown to about ten by then, and we were the only people in this cozy little bar. The bartender let us take over DJing, and most of the music played wound up being 80s rock. Everyone was singing along with Sweet Child O' Mine at one point. It was great.

The second day began with a third-year ALT leading a seminar on ideas for games. She'd had about six cups of coffee (by her own admission), and did not need the aid of the microphone she nevertheless kept pressed to her mouth the whole time. While Aaron and I were exchanging notes about how much we were suffering, I noticed that Evelyn didn't seem too bothered. In fact, she had a bemused little smile on her face. On closer inspection, it was revealed that she'd brought earplugs. I tried to talk her out of them, to no avail.

One of the breakout sessions that day was led by an anthropology student from UC Irvine. This marked the first time in the program that I've listened to an official who cites a background in anthro, so I was all ears. She was rather boring, but I didn't let it bother me too much (thanks especially to the frenetic lecture by coffee girl that morning). Her main point was the differences between Japanese and non-Japanese cultures. One of the highlights was the difference in attitudes regarding training and asking questions. Job training for most westerners entails a basic step-by-step outline to whatever the task is. We expect this, so we don't feel insulted by being led by the hand through something entirely new to us. According to her, in Japan, it's considered offensive to talk to someone as if they don't know what they're doing, even if they clearly don't know what they're doing. More on this later. Basic cultural relativism, specific examples
involving Japan, and personal anecdotes--all of which make for a perfectly fine half-hour lecture. The problem was that she'd been given an hour and some change.

My favorite breakout session of the conference was headed by the Prefectural Advisors (basically the two head JETs in the prefecture), Pene and Laura. This one included both JETs and JTEs. They wanted to facilitate discussion between us and our supervisors regarding each side's expectations of the other coming into the program, how those have changed, and what suggestions we could offer for the other.

I found several things very interesting. First of all, practically every other first-year JET mentioned how overwhelmed they felt when they first arrived, and how difficult it was to find their way. (This was before the session by the UC Irvine anthro girl, so I didn't yet know about the don't-talk-to-me-like-I'm-an-idiot resistance in Japan.) In response, the JTEs politely pointed out that we went through an orientation in our home country, three days of orientation in Tokyo when we arrived, and two more days of orientation in Nagasaki after that. In their minds, we had been given plenty of time to have our duties explained to us.

I found this fascinating. When it came time for us to suggest solutions to these problems, many people came up with similar ideas. The most common involved better communication. My way of phrasing it is this: let the JTEs know that we do not in fact have the slightest idea what we're doing, and have actually been cautioned by every official along the way to be prepared to learn from scratch, regardless of teaching experience. The JTEs should at the very least be proactive in communicating with us about our responsibilities. On the other hand, JETs should be prepared both to ask questions, no matter how stupid they may sound, and also accept that we know nothing about our job, and so should let our supervisors talk to us as a first-day trainee.

All in all, the official part of the conference was so-so. A lot of people were staying for the weekend in Nagasaki. I had been planning on doing so, but it didn't quite work out like that. More on that next post...