Uniforms and School Lunches

Janina in her Jr. High uniform

A Foreign Mother in Japan

Article 3

Ever since I’ve been in Japan I’ve found myself rebelling against the uniform system 98% of the country has adopted. Kids all wearing the same clothing, they all look the same already, you can’t hardly tell them apart, much less putting them in the same uniform! How can a mother find her child in the crowd, how do you know if that’s little Yuko or Sayaka on the stage reciting something?

We were lucky though, our local kindergarten and elementary school don’t require uniforms, only matching PE clothes. The kids are free to come to school in shorts, t-shirts, pants, jeans, dresses, whatever they feel like, only their shoes are restricted to tennis shoes, no sandals or boots, but that’s ok, I can ‘give’ on that point.

But---once they hit Jr. High, goodbye freedom, hello conformity! At first Janina was excited to be getting her uniform, FINALLY! A uniform! I hated it, I let her know from the start, I complained about it, it’s too hot in summer, not warm enough in winter (and they aren’t allowed to wear a coat or sweater on top of it, even if it snows!), blah blah! After 1-1/2 years wearing the same clothing day after day, Janina has finally realized that uniforms SUCK!!

This is one of the few points my husband and I disagree on about the Japanese school system—uniforms! He grew up with it, so he’s used to them, he accepts it as a better way of doing things—and to be honest, it does make life simple! No clothing choices every day, they are pretty sturdy so they don’t wear out too quickly (they should be sturdy since it usually costs about $800 to get your kid’s uniforms for the year!), and at school there’s no comparing or bad feelings about who’s dressed to style, who’s not, who’s ‘in’, who’s not (don’t worry though, those problems are still there, they just come out in different ways—who has the cool pencil case….) But for me, I love the variety of clothing, I love choosing something new to wear every day, I love color, and I think color in the classroom gives it a bit more life! Uniforms go against my love of freedom and not being bound by unnecessary rules. There’s enough rules to follow, ones that make sense, why do we need to enforce conformity?

OK, now I’ve ragged on the uniforms, I want to talk about something Japanese schools do very well—lunches!

Every school district does it a bit differently, but generally schools have a school-lunch system, meals are delivered on a daily basis, usually served with milk, once in awhile with coffee-milk or chocolate-milk. In our area, school-lunch, or kyushoku, is served to the elementary grades. It costs about $35/month, and I really like it. Every month we get the menu complete with nutrition information, we know exactly what they’re eating that day. And there really is hardly any junk, meals are very balanced with veggies, protein and starch. Kids are NOT allowed to bring soda to school, or even fruit juice unless they have a good reason, but they can bring water, or mugi-cha (barley tea), or when they’re sick I’ve often sent warm herb-tea or lemon-tea. Basically, they can’t bring anything sweet.

Something that varies from the American school system is there is no morning snack recess. I seem to remember always having a snack break around 10 or so. Here they kids stick it out till lunch time, and I guess the body adjust to it. Even now I always find myself hungry at about—yes—10 or 11, but my kids can survive all the way to 12:30 with just breakfast. And in many families, the kids don’t even eat breakfast. No wonder everyone’s so skinny over here!

As I said before, I have a true love-hate relationship with Japan—and since I was the one up and making breakfast and Janina’s lunch today, I loved the elementary kyushoku service, and wished the Jr. High had the same!

OT--Doing the Boogey!

This post is OT--off topic--and not part of the regular issue of A Foreign Mother in Japan.

--courtesy of Boogey Woogey
I've been doing my daily hour-long walk now. I love listening to Doobie Brothers while walking past the Bay. I do some walk-dancing and boogying while walking. I want to post it on your blog... foreigners in Japan can "BE DIFFERENT" and be happy about it! Thank goodness we don't have to be confined to their crazy mannerisms!

Jumping Ahead

Today I take a huge jump across the years to the present. Something I have had to learn to cope with culturally is my children’s schooling. All 3 of my children attend the local public schools. They started in kindergarten, and the eldest is now in 8^th grade.

Japan’s schooling system basically goes like this:

• K4 (kindy for 4 years)
• K5 (kindy for 5 years)
• 1-6^th grade (elementary school)
• 7-9^th grade (Jr. High)
• 10-12^th grade (Highschool)

The only years that are mandatory are the elementary and Jr. High years. Kindergarten and High School are not mandatory. Actually, you are considered an adult at age 16, though you can’t drive until 18 and you can’t drink or smoke until 20 (hmmm—that rule is not strictly kept—up to a few years ago I could’ve sent my daughter to the local store to pick up a pack of beer for me or a bottle of wine, no questions asked, but they have clamped down on it. Nevertheless, it’s pretty common to see young kids in the Jr. High bracket smoking, my daughter tells me the Jr. High 3^rd grade naughty-boys all congregate in the stair-well to smoke during school time).

While I’m happy my kids go to school and are getting an education, I find myself in a constant battle with the rules and requirements, esp. as they get older. Here is a recent conversation I had with Janina (13):

M: Hey kiddo, I think you’re hair looks really nice up in a high ponytail. Shall I help you do it this morning?
J: Umm, no Mom, cause I can’t wear my hair higher than the tips of my ears.
M:WHAT!! What do you mean!!
J: It’s the rules Mom.
M: What are they gonna do to you if you put it up?
J: Well, probably I’ll get lynched (and this is the actual word they use in Japanese) by the seniors.
M: Jr. High SUCKS!!!

And the list really does go on. Everything is dictated, my daughter is even afraid to put her hair up after school or on weekends going out in case a senior sees her and she gets beat up at school.

There’s an odd variety of other ‘rules’: First years must wear white socks, but 2^nd and 3^rd years can wear black, only 3^rd years can wear a sweater or scarf to school in winter, no bangles, baubles, accessories of any kind, those are the ones I know about, I’m sure there are many others.

Another conversation with my daughter:

J: We’re having a musical competition at school, I finally learned the song!
M: That’s great!!
J: But the seniors threatened to kill us!
M: What??!!
J: They want to win the competition so they said if any of us do anything other than sing, they’ll kill us! We can’t clap, or move, or dance…
M: Seniors SUCK!! How can they get away with that!

That’s the usual ending of those conversations—it SUCKS!!

It seems that the seniors have a lot of power here, and they keep the juniors in a state of fear and control. It’s quite ridiculous, and in looking at society, it’s where the whole “respect your elder—pay obeisance to your elder—your elder is always better than you” mentality begins. While I believe in respect, I believe respect goes towards anyone, older, younger, it doesn’t matter. This school form of “We’re going to beat you up if you wear green socks!” respect is not respect, it’s bullying, which Japan has a major problem with. And where are the teachers when these things happen? I’m sure the teachers are aware of it, but rather than tackling the problem or trying to change the students’ mentality, they let it go and say, “That’s the way it is…”

Some things are changing though. Because of the high rate of suicide, esp. the recent rash of Jr. High suicides, people are taking a closer look at the education system and what goes on in students’ lives, as well as listening closer to the silent cries of the students. For the meantime, I try to keep close communications with my children, educate them on what I consider good values of respect, and let them know when I think something happening at their school is just plain stupid.

Some would say I should tell my daughter to buck the tide, but I decided to leave that choice up to her. There’s a time to fight, and a time not to, since she will be the one to bear the consequences, she is the one who has to make the choice to stand up against it. I would hate to see her come home with a black eye over something as dumb as her hair, I just hope she stands up to fight for things that are really important—defense of the weak, right and wrong and good morals.

Beginning of the Journey

Welcome to the first article in my “Foreign Mother in Japan” series! Living abroad in a foreign country is not always easy, nor does it always feel rewarding, nevertheless, it is what we make it, combined with what the country makes of us. Raising children in a culture so very different from my own, I’ve found I’ve had to cope with adjusting to policies and ways of thinking that go completely against my own, and I’ve had to learn when to speak up and insist that something be done differently.

Though the birth of my eldest daughter, Janina, 13 years ago could mark the beginning of this path, I believe the true beginning was when she entered kindergarten at 6 years old. This was when I was faced with the true differences in my culture vs. the culture I was living in, and it is something I face every day I wake up and send my kids to school, every time I interact with the local mothers, every time I talk with my English students.

I find I have developed a love-hate relationship with this country, and it’s hard to say which is stronger. I am often asked “Are you used to Japan?” I never quite know how to answer that question. At what point did I stop getting used to the country and the country became a part of me? The better question would be when I visit California—“Are you used to America?” to which I could quickly reply, “Not really.” But am I used to Japan? Yes, no, sometimes, never and always.

I’m used to the weather, the seasons, the sound of the language, the habits of the Japanese, the groceries in the stores, the cars on the roads, the little neighborhoods, the rice-patties, downtown, crowded trains and being stared at everywhere I go. But more than being used to it, it is part of me and I am part of it, no matter how much I stand out.

Fortunately I’m short and my hair is dark, so if I wear sunglasses, long sleeves and pants, and speak Japanese I can occasionally get away with being Japanese, but remove the layers and I suddenly find myself a magnet for attention. Through the years I have learned to deal with it graciously, but there have been moments of pure hatred, when I locked myself up in the house and refused to go shopping, dreading the moment I stuck my foot out the door, when I have glared in anger at anyone who tried to approach me to speak English, and other times when I have played it up and loved the false glamour being white gave me. And now, now I mostly ignore it, I put my chin up in the air and pretend I’m as normal as the guy next to me.

How did I come to this country? It’s a long story in detail, as is any, but the short version is I was the child of a missionary and came in my late teens. I spent the next 10 years working with foreigners, teaching their children, caring for my own siblings, before I married Toru and we began our own.

And so the journey began.