Watashi wa Abi desu. Nihongo gakkou no gakusei desu.

I'm Abi. I'm a student at a Japanese language school.

So, I hear you all ask, just how have I been spending my WAG days since I’ve been here? I haven’t been getting my hair and nails done all day every day for the last seven weeks have I? You’re right, I have not (although believe me, there are more than enough hair, nail, massage, makeup and general beauty salons in Tokyo to keep anyone busy for months, should he or she so desire). A few weeks ago I enrolled at a Japanese language school and thereto have I been going every weekday from 9.30am ‘til 1.30pm. I’ve signed up for a term’s lessons so until 21 December, public holidays aside, if you want to find me on a weekday morning, I am on the 5^th floor of the Academy of Language Arts, just up the road from Iidabashi Station.

I study at Iidabashi.

I’m in a class of 12 and we’re a mixed bunch indeed. We hail from the following countries: England, 1 person; Republic of Ireland, 1 person; Norway, 1 person; Pakistan, 1 person; America, 2 people; China, 3 people; the Philippines, 3 people. Question: How on earth do you go about teaching a group of people that does not share the same native language, or even the same writing system, another, entirely different, highly grammatically elaborate, syllabic plus ideographic writing system-based language? Answer: Start speaking it at them. And yes, for the first couple of hours we were definitely being spoken at; there was very little sense of being able to reply as we all floundered, panic-stricken, in a sea of unfamiliar sounds and symbols.

A couple of weeks in and it’s all becoming a little more familiar. We grapple with grammar and vie with vocabulary on a daily basis but our teachers are patient and remain optimistic about our achievements. We are taught by Sakuma-sensei, Fujii-sensei, Hatakeyama-sensei and Nikimashi-sensei. They’ve all got a good sense of humour, which strikes me as a fundamental requirement for teaching such a motley crew.  Lessons mainly take place in Japanese but the odd English word is thrown in for clarity. I feel incredibly privileged that when this explanation happens it does so in my native language, and have utmost respect for those of my classmates for whom English is not the first language. I can’t imagine being taught Japanese from a basis of French, for example.

Japanese language study is very difficult but interesting and fun.
I like it!

A huge advantage of taking group lessons is that we all pick up things at different speeds; what is easy for one person will be hard for another, and vice versa the next day. We constantly help each other out with explanations and clarifications. The level of trust in the room has rocketed and we’re at a stage now where nobody feels intimidated, or afraid to make a mistake, or ashamed to say they don’t understand. It’s an incredibly supportive learning environment and I am learning valuable lessons that I will be able to use when I get back to the UK and (hopefully) continue working in arts education.

The day before yesterday I went with my friends, by metro,
to a festival for foreign students. It was fun.

Rainbow colours!

We had a particularly cool bonding session on Tuesday when, instead of going to normal lessons, we all headed to Ikebukuro Sunshine City to attend a festival for foreign students of Japanese. A week or so ago at school a few of us had volunteered to take part in various activities and when the lots were drawn, my classmate Chris found himself signed up for arm wrestling while I was given the opportunity to take part in a kimono fashion show. Sadly I missed Chris’s valiant efforts at the arm wrestling table (he won his first match and lost his second, gaining third place overall), as I was being prodded, pulled, stuffed, tutted and shoved into my kimono. If the tiny ladies who were dressing the students were surprised to be presented with a large-boned, big-busted westerner as one of the ‘models’ they hid it well although I think my dressers would have preferred one of the petite Chinese students who were also modelling. All was well though, and the two ladies dressing me got to work with the various layers of undergarments, followed by the main kimono under-dress, the outer garment, and finally all the different layers that were needed to support the obi (belt) and then to decorate it. The whole process took about an hour and a half and involved about nine layers in all. The kimono was wrapped quite tightly around my legs, and the obi bound me from my hips to my bust, so I was forced to walk with tiny ladylike steps…quite different to striding around in a pair of jeans! I never figured out how one uses the loo while wearing a kimono. I think perhaps the answer is that one doesn’t. I was certainly told that I wouldn’t be able to go from when I started being dressed to when the kimono came off a couple of hours later. Some of the other girls were having their hair done by the women who had dressed them. The Chinese and Korean girls definitely had the best hair for this. One of the women dressing me looked at my above-shoulder-length, flyaway hair with pity and slight dismay but again, she made the best of her lot and pulled and scraped what she could into a ponytail, which she decorated with some silk flowers.

The two ladies at each end were dressing us. The lady in the dark blue
kimono was very experienced and was teaching the others
how to tie our obi.

Beautiful obi

Once we were all dressed, we were called together for a rehearsal. This involved many instructions being said very quickly in Japanese, a lot of nodding and bowing and people asking whether we’d understood. We of course all nodded, bowed and said ‘yes, certainly’. In the end it all went OK – we got onto the stage and showed off our beautiful kimono. We had to show the front, the beautifully tied obi at the back, and hold our sleeves up so the audience could see the full length of the material and the distinctive T-shape of the garment. Then we were each passed the microphone in turn and, in true Miss World style, had to say our name, our school and our country all in Japanese. I wanted to say something about world peace and dolphins but sadly my Japanese doesn’t stretch that far. I see this experience as merely the first rung on the ladder that is my gaijin-kimono-modelling career though, so perhaps a few more fashion shows down the line I’ll have mastered the language sufficiently to wax lyrical about cute animals and major political events. I’ll keep you posted.

Team fashion show!

Once we’d all said our bit and been enthusiastically cheered by the audience of our classmates and teachers, we all filed off the stage to have our kimono removed. This took another 20 minutes. I can’t imagine what it must be like to wear one every day, or what time the beautifully presented dressing ladies in their perfect kimono with perfect hair must have got up to be ready at the festival for 9.30am.

Having changed back into my skirt, t-shirt and cardigan, all of which contain lycra, I felt strangely wobbly without the security afforded by having the tight obi round my middle. I also felt very sweaty! I went to find the rest of my classmates and we wandered around the rest of the festival stands, making jewellery and badges and being given information about where else we could study in Japan. Chris and I were given a free lunch for being joiner-inners so we said goodbye to the rest of our class and headed off to the canteen area for tandoori chicken naan, broccoli, a cherry tomato and two chips. All eaten with chopsticks and washed down with apple juice.

Stephen and Chris having a whole lot of fun at the jewellery-bashing table.

I love my Japanese classes. Yes, I know education is a basic human right, but at this point in time I’m enjoying it so much that it feels like a complete luxury. I am a self-confessed swot and am having the time of my life being back in the classroom! Ask me again next week once we’ve started with the kanji but I’m pretty sure my answer will be the same, unless of course my brain has dribbled out of my ear…

またね!