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Wakayama with friends

Last year we hosted a Japanese high school student, Miyu, for two weeks and one of her teachers, Machiko, for the second week. They were both the most delightful of guests and we really enjoyed both getting to know them and sharing a bit of Australia. A return visit provided the excuse for this trip to Japan. Today we had the opportunity to spend time with Machiko, the English School's principal Mayumi and Miyu and her family.


Machiko met us at the hotel and we took the Hankai Tramway down to the Ayanocho stop in Sakai. That's another Japanese tramway for me and it's quite a long one, running down main streets and narrow roads, behind buildings and across a river. Fun, as always.


Mayumi was waiting outside her new English school building, attached to her family's knife shop. The Jikko family has been making knives since 1901 (see this article in the Japan Times, photos of the shop) and we watched her brother putting the handles on some of these fine blades.


The ELS21 English language school teaches around 150 students ranging from 2 years old and up into high school. One of the two year olds was Mayumi's niece Non who chased Alex all around one of the classrooms while the rest of us sipped tea and ate traditional Japanese children's day sweets.


Talk was of Japanese education and the strictures placed upon students. According the Mayumi all Japanese students need to pass an exam in order to get into high school. No pass, no high school. But high school is compulsory. Thee are also thousands of dollars of costs associated with attending high school, not to mention paying for cram schools to enable the kids to get into good schools.


But Mayumi says that Japanese students are very self motivated and don't need the constant pressures from parents to get them to study, as seems to take place in the west. She doesn't have kids herself, so I'm not sure how true this is.

Are the outcomes better from this than the alternatives? I'm not so sure. I'm a big fan of learning for curiosity's sake and of creativity, but also of self-motivation.

Afterwards we drove to Sakai Station to catch the Nankai Main Line down to Wakayama. The first part was familiar, having passed this way many times en route from Kansai International Airport. Then the line splits at Izumisano and we continued further down the coast.


There were some water views, but the most interesting spot was just before Misakikoen (Misaki Park) with rollercoasters, water slides and a big Ferris wheel visible from the windows of the train.


Wakayama is where Machiko resides and shares its name and location with of one of the last three prefectures I have yet to visit or transit through in Japan (the other two being Miyazaki and Okinawa). So that's now 45 out of 47 prefectures in my list, something that caused much amusement all day.


From the station we walked the quiet streets to Wakayama Castle. It must be quite a sight when the cherry blossoms are in full bloom, but they were starting to wane now. A group of musicians played kotos in the park, the famous "Sakura" tune audible as we entered.


There were 79 steps up to the castle, or so the sign said. At the base of the walls was a rest area where we ate our lunch of bakery products purchased at Sakai. Then up into the castle proper. It is a ferroconcrete recreation, which in this instance was rather good as it meant that we climbed up steps to the top of the donjon rather than steep ladders.


No photographs were allowed of the suits of armour and weapons on display inside the castle, but there were no such restrictions on the view out from the top. The castle is worth it for the view alone.




Back down at the base is the Ohashi Roka, an enclosed wooden bridge that slopes at an 11 degree angle and has slats inside to (hopefully) prevent slipping. There was also a very pretty garden nearby.




We returned to Wakayama Station and by train back towards Osaka. The hazy grey sky outside looked so familiar from other trips to Kansai Airport, the region has its own light. After changing to a local service at Izumisano we changed again further up to a different line and got out at Mikunigaoka.



There were met by Akiko, Miyu's mother. What followed was a reasonably long drive through fairly industrial looking main streets before we reached the tightly packed and very narrow winding streets of Habikigaoka. I have no idea how Akiko navigated! It was fascinating to see this suburban area up close from the perspective of a car.

Miyu was still at volleyball when we arrived and didn't return until late. She's the captain of her team. Her father Toshiyuke, a designer of industrial machinery and brothers Naoto and Haru were home to greet us. They seem an absolutely lovely family. Their English skills were better than they believed too. Certainly better than my disappointing level of Japanese.

We had a meal of takoyaki (octopus balls, though some had sausage instead) straight out of the takoyaki cooker that every Osakan is reputed to own, oden (fish cake and konnyaku stew), sushi and karaage. It was pleasant to eat home cooked food after a week of eating out.


Afterwards the seven year old Haru played Wii and toys with six year old Alex. Despite the language barrier they communicated in their own fashion. After Miyu finally returned she joined them - after cleaning up and showing Alex her room.


She is the only occupant with her own room. The other four share the other bedroom. It's so different from the generally large Australian homes, but I have to admit to a fantasy of living in a tiny apartment furnished with all the wonderful things from Japanese stores. It would certainly make the vacuuming easier on weekends.

Akiko and Miyu farewelled us from Fujidera station. When Miyu left Alex had tears in his eyes. I think he considers her like a big sister, despite the brief stay with us. That's how much impact she had on our family. I hope she will return next year. It would be lovely to reciprocate with her whole family in Australia, but leave is limited and rare in Japan, six days a year and public holidays when everyone else travels and prices are highest.


The visit reinforced that, despite our frequent trips here, we are rather fortunate in Australia.

It was wonderful to catch up with Mayumi, Machiko and Miyu and her family. In the process I also managed to tick a couple of other items of my list - a ride on the Hankai tramway and a visit to Wakayama prefecture. And if my love of Japanese trains seems strange then consider a program I caught on television later of a man wandering a disused railway line, the tunnels used to store sake and a lonely diesel rail car rusting away in the middle of nowhere. So sad.


Comments

Cecilia said…
My experience of students is a bit different.
AFAIK, high school isn't compulsory: JHS is but not SHS. It was only about 4 years or so ago that fees became free in state high schools. My impression of students is that at the top end they are self motivated, but the motivation is external - getting into a good university. Once they get to university the motivation has gone and they need to find new goals. It's something I always tell first years at good unis. They have to find a new reason to study because last year's reason - to get into a good uni - has been achieved.
Also, unis are really conscious of falling student numbers and try to gather students by offering early acceptance. These students don't need to do any exam to get in. I assume all the private universities do this.
The other day in class I asked students a series of questions about their school life

For questions about three quarters of students answered no.

1. my English teachers usually spoke in English (100% no - the ministry of educations requires that it is taught in English)
2. we were expected to ask questions.
3. we were expected to give our opinions
4. we often discussed topics in pairs / groups?
5. we studied different opinions about the same topic
6. we wrote essays that gave our opinions (about 1/3/ said yes, only one student had done it in Japanese.)
7. we talked about current events
8. we researched to find new information


AFAICS motivation is often more obedience than motivation; students do tasks that they are told to do.
But the learning experience in high school seems very passive to me.

allrite said…
Hi Cecilia, I will defer to your greater experience in this matter as I have had limited interactions with the Japanese education system. One case does not make for generalisations, though I got the sense that Miyu is a quiet and very determined individual and they are not so common in any culture I have encountered.

Are Japanese English teachers not skilled enough in the language or do they share the lack of confidence that is apparent in many students? I've been impressed with the improvement in English in Japan over the last decade, at least from the perspective of a tourist.

I find the whole treatment of school education as just a means to get a high score so you get into a prestigious course and university so you go into a field like business/law/medicine just to earns lots of money and parental boasting points to be highly depressing. Much prefer an environment of curiosity and constructive argument.
Cecilia said…
It'd be really unfair of me to say no students have internal motivation, just that the external motivation is oppressive. But I guess the HSC can be a bit like that. The Aus. system has plenty of room for mature aged students and alternative entry into uni compared with Japan though.
Japanese teachers... the competence varies a lot. I've worked with excellent Japanese teachers who are creative, deviate from the textbook, and make English real. But they aren't the majority, from my limited experience. In my view, schools are just about the most conservative places in Japan and extremely hierarchical. At the schools I have worked in (again a limited sample) teachers were mostly compliant people as students and don't understand why students don't simply obey. I've had long discussion with teachers about students behaving "badly" and I don't see much sense in most cases of really putting themselves in the students' shoes to see the students perspective. There's little sense of getting the students to understand why the rules exist, and little sense of removing rules that don't serve a reasonable purpose. I often joke that the rule is far more important than the reason for the rule. So there's a lack of flexibility in the minds of teachers.
Also, there is woefully inadequate opportunities for going overseas to brush up on English, or for that matter professional development within Japan. It's not really reasonable to expect teachers to be able to maintain their English if they aren't given time to use it.
And underpinning the problem is that the university entrance exams don't test speaking. And the washback effect of this is that it is not prioritized in the classroom. Classes are often 30-40 which makes obedient students much easier to manage than curious students.
I'm toying with writing a blog entry on the new place, but I think in the effort to not be the first tenured teacher in the school's history to be sacked, I'll pass for the moment. And there in lies another of the problems... teachers who know there are problems that don't speak out because either their colleagues are not going to support the suggestions, or because they are apprehensive of the consequences, or a combination of both...

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