I guess my experiences are more with local onsen that are community meeting places rather than tourism resorts, which may make a difference. But more than that~ I'm not a breast cancer survivor, and I don't know how that would feel.The group's aim is to create an environment more friendly to breast cancer survivors at hot springs facilities and inform them of such facilities.Noriyuki Ikeyama, 54, who led work to establish the group, said, "I don't want women with breast cancer to give up enjoying the pleasures of travel."...
According to the National Cancer Center, more than 50,000 women in Japan are diagnosed with breast cancer annually. But only 10 percent of those who undergo mastectomies have mammary prostheses or reconstructive surgery because of the cost, which can be as high as ¥3 million, according to Ikeyama.Survivors tend to give up going to hot springs because they are reluctant to be seen without clothes, Ikeyama said, adding many feel guilty as their families are forced to stop going as well.
Monday 29 October 2012
Hot Springs for Breast Cancer Survivors
I wrote a while ago about hot springs as very safe places for women of all ages and with all sorts of bodies, including women with mastectomy and other scaring. I was a little surprised to get quite a few referrals to this blog after posting that from people who were googling the terms "mastectomy" plus "onsen" or "hot springs". I didn't really know what to make of that until I read this article on Japan Times the other day in August: Hot springs resorts band together in support of breast cancer survivors. I hope no one read my post trying to find information and was misinformed. The JT article reads in part:
A Few of My Favourite (Early) Autumn Things
A crow enjoying the sunshine |
Autumn is and always has been my favourite season, and living in a country that has deciduous
forests makes it even better. We've had an odd season so far though.
Summer went on hotter and wetter than usual later than usual, then the
temperature dropped ten degrees in two days. We went from sleeping naked
with no bed covers and the air conditioner pumping (sorry environment,
but I was born and raised in a cold dry climate and there's no other way
for me to survive here) to the following night breaking out our down
quilts and flannelette PJs. October is ending and the leaves here in my
neighbourhood remain stubbornly green (so much so that last week the
neighbourhood association tied plastic autumn foliage to all the trees~
for real). Nevertheless, we have been able to enjoy the most rich golden
sunlight I think I have ever seen and days on end of blue sky and
fluffy clouds. So here in no particular order are a few of my favourite
things from these early days of fall 2012.
This is my evening walk |
As it gets dark earlier, I have more chances to enjoy the castle at dusk when the "lanterns" are "lit" |
Everyone wants to soak up the last of the sun and the parks are full of bubble-blowing kids and joy |
Kuri enjoys picnic |
Hayate thinks that he is a good boy who should get some fish too |
September's full moon is supposed to be the most beautiful of the year, but I think this one (today's) is pretty damn lovely |
At harvest time all sorts of interesting festivals happen |
This is the "eat beef and shout festival", where people.. eat beef and enter a shouting competition |
Harvesting rice with my kids |
Saving little frogs from the rice paddy |
Not as impressive as a rice harvest, but my peas are growing well |
A spider lily suddenly popped up in the garden one day |
This little cutie is helping protect my tomatoes |
HOW INSANELY CHEAP IS THIS GINGER?! |
HOW HUGE ARE THESE SHIITAKE?! |
From left to right: Mixed mushroom, matsutake mushroom and chestnut rice kits |
Carrots roast with garlic and coriander seeds, glazed in star anise, red wine and orange juice and tossed with mint and feta |
Pumpkin, paprika and walnut salad |
Technically not an autumn only thing, but I love the way he pokes the tip of his tongue out when he is happy |
Kuri may be part lizard~ she is always sunning herself on this rock |
Sunday 28 October 2012
Squats, Squirts and Penguins
Yup, this is a post entirely about toilets. There is a some crass and tasteless picture, so don't proceed if squeamish.
Japan’s high-tech toilets are world famous. Madonna has one. Steven Colbert has one. The pristine “washlet” senses when you enter the room and raises its lid invitingly. Its seat is warmed and a deodoriser engages. The sound of running water emerges, or, in some upscale department stores, piano concertos play. When you have finished you are washed with warm water (pressure, temperature and angle adjustable) and dried with warm air. A sensor tells the toilet to flush when you stand up. The whole process is hands-free, hygienic and soothing. Toilets are incorporated into cutting edge designs.
Instructions in an Australian hotel room on how to use a western toilet, presumably aimed at Asian tourists |
These instructions were in truck stop toilets on a stretch of highway between Nagoya and Tokyo |
Japan’s high-tech toilets are world famous. Madonna has one. Steven Colbert has one. The pristine “washlet” senses when you enter the room and raises its lid invitingly. Its seat is warmed and a deodoriser engages. The sound of running water emerges, or, in some upscale department stores, piano concertos play. When you have finished you are washed with warm water (pressure, temperature and angle adjustable) and dried with warm air. A sensor tells the toilet to flush when you stand up. The whole process is hands-free, hygienic and soothing. Toilets are incorporated into cutting edge designs.
That’s the dream, the self-squirting toilet.
Then there are the squats. These vastly outnumber the
squirts and are not internationally renowned. I can’t imagine a celebrity
owning one. Squats are the most common public toilet. Train stations and parks
are equipped with them. Perhaps because these are places where drunks
congregate, or perhaps because daintier people avoid using public toilets in
the first place, they tend to be filthy. Like this.
Why I don't use public toilets in Japan |
The idea is that they are more hygienic, because no part of
your body comes into contact with them. They aren’t. They
require a degree of skill and aim. They are very challenging if you are wearing
skinny jeans or multiple long layers. Or a coat. New houses are built with
western-style toilets, and have been for many years. Only the oldest farmhouses
still have squatters. However, public schools and kindergartens stubbornly
cling to Japanese-style toilets. This has exacerbated the stress children
experience when first attending school, as many of them have never used a
squatter and have to tackle it for the first time solo. According to Maria, the ancient Japanese used sticks to clean themselves. I am very glad that practice fell by the wayside at least.
Unless you have a fairly fancy or recently renovated home, your toilet will probably look like this:
Toilet in our current house |
Taking Care of Students
I’ve said before that I love Japanese schools. It’s easier to identify the bad things and write about them, because the good things are often to do with atmosphere and the little jokes between teachers and students that are hard to explain. Consequently I think I’ve made more negative posts than good, despite liking more than I dislike of what I experience at school. I’m going to try to redress that.
Teachers spend a lot of their time doing non-academic
support for students, including helping them with emotional and social skills. Where
ever possible teachers try to have students help other students. I was reminded
of this today when I overheard the teachers discussing a boy who has recently
stopped coming to school. They were browsing the student records, trying to
figure out who they should send over to the boy’s house to try and persuade him
to come tomorrow. They know that a teacher calling and trying to get him to
come wouldn’t help, especially as he is feeling left out by his classmates and
this is a factor in his school refusal. A much better technique is to find a
kind, friendly student who could make a persona entreaty: “We miss you, please
come back!”… All the better is the student happened to be a cute girl, of
course. Whoever they entrust this job to will take it seriously, understanding
that she has been trusted by the teachers to help them help him. She will be
proud to have been asked, and she won’t just say empty platitudes: she will
talk to her classmates about being more welcoming of the boy, and include him
in her social circle until he is comfortable enough to make his own friends.
Even after several years it still amazes me how well the students take care of
one another when entrusted with the role (especially when asked to assist
students with disabilities).
A more extreme example happened at the start of the school
year last year. One first grade boy had a lot of trouble adjusting to junior
high. His home room teacher called the elementary school the boy had graduation
from to talk to the teacher who had been his HRT the previous year. He asked
who the student’s best friend had been in elementary school. It turned out that
the boy’s friend had gone to a different JHS. Our school called the friend’s
school and explained the situation to the friend’s HRT. Both schools organised
a schedule for the boys to meet regularly, so that our student’ friend could
help him through the transition period. Our student cheered up enormously after
being reunited with his friend, and he soon came out of his shell and began
participating more fully in his new school life.
Another teacher, who had a boy from a troubled background in
his home room, regularly takes the student out for dinner both to make sure he is
fed and to give him the chance to talk through his problems.
This level of intimate, almost pastoral care, is one of the
reasons teaches work so much overtime.
Outsized Clothes
When I first moved to Kyushu I could fit into most Japanese clothes labelled “large”. I had subsequently gained a large amount of weight, and it is now very difficult to find clothes that fit me. While I thought that this was something of a “gaijin” problem, I’ve actually talked to a lot of Japanese women who also find it difficult to find clothes they like. There are “big size” speciality stores, which sell clothing that in Australia would be a “medium”, but they tend to carry floral monstrosities with unflattering frills and cheap lace. And diamantes. On everything. Fashionable clothing in larger sizes just doesn’t exist (at least not in my rural backwater). I’m not talking about seriously big sizes either; you need to go to a speciality store for an Australian 12 (US 8). Many regular stores don’t even stock a Japanese “L”, only XS, S and M. It isn’t just about size, either. Everything seems to be made for slender limbs and no curves. A teacher I work with told me a really sad story about taking her high school aged daughter shopping as a birthday treat. Her daughter is by no means overweight, but she has the proportions of her farming heritage: a stocky frame and sturdy, muscular limbs. She wanted a pair of jeans, but after trying half a dozen shops she couldn’t find a single pair that would fit over her thighs. The birthday treat turned sour and the deflated teenager told her mother that she didn’t want anything after all, and could they just go home please.
I’m pretty sure there is a fortune to be made in flattering,
fashionable clothing in larger sizes in Japan. Someone should get on it.
Tuesday 23 October 2012
They Are Just Like Us, Except When They Aren’t
At the start of September my city holds an English speech
and recitation contest. For the speech section third grade junior high students
(grade nines) deliver an original speech in English on any topic they like. Usually
the speech is composed in Japanese then translated into English by a teacher,
but we all act like the kids have actually written them themselves. They
usually follow tried-and-true Japanese speech formula:
“I was bad at sport/subject/musical instrument. I wanted to
quit. My team mates/teachers/band members encouraged me. They never gave up. I
got better at the activity because of them. We had a big
competition/tournament/exam. We won/ lost/ succeeded/ failed. I did my best and
learned an important lesson. I’ll do my best in the future.”
That covers 90% of the speeches. The remaining 10% tackle
actually interesting topics including human trafficking, growing up with
parents who are deaf, or war. At this year’s contest a number of students spoke
about experiences with international exchanges. Some had hosted home stay
students for a short visit from our sister city in China. These speeches also
followed a predictable formula:
“I was worried about how to communicate with the Chinese and
if we could be friends. It turned out they were just like us. I learned a lot.
I want to study English more and communicate with foreigners again.”
Despite the formula, there are some interesting things to
deduce from these speeches.
First, the cultural
indoctrination that it’s hard for Japanese to communicate with foreigners
doesn’t stand up against personal experience. Sadly, I don’t have confidence
that this memory lasts. In three years I think it is likely that these kids
will be back to thinking “it’s difficult for me to communicate with
foreigners.” One girl said “Can a shy
Japanese like me get along with an outgoing Chinese?” I am sure she knows that
there are many Japanese people who are not shy, and many Chinese people who are
shy. But the stereotyping messages are so pervasive that it will take more than
a short home-stay visit to change them for good.
Second, the belief that foreigners are profoundly alien is
so strong that something as simple as a Chinese girl enjoying (the ancient and
inscrutable Japanese art of) playing basket ball was surprising. Her hither-to
unquestioned belief was shaken by direct personal experience. A huge part of
what ALTs do in Japan is just… being normal. We blow people’s minds by eating
rice. The totalising stereotypes are strong, but they can be broken down.
For me the more interesting anecdotes were the ones that
revealed genuine differences. The trope of “she seemed so totally different
from me, but then we discovered that we both loved ice-cream, so I guess really
we’re the same!” is incredibly frustrating in its trivialisation of difference.
An American kid eating a sandwich while a Japanese kid eats an onigiri isn’t
emblematic of cultural difference, it’s window dressing. The differences that
cause conflicts, misunderstandings and international tensions are differences
in world view, different priorities and different ways of assigning
responsibility. Bread versus rice is not why the world is more suspicious of
post-war Japan than it is of post-war Germany. When I was a university student
in Nagoya I was participating in some
intercultural-communication-something-or-other event and the Japanese girls I
was paired with explained that Japanese children use red crayons to draw the
sun, while European children use yellow crayons. They were convinced that this
was a significant and profound example of cultural difference. Being in a
somewhat cantankerous mood by that point (I know, ME? Cantankerous? Who would
have though! XD) I mentioned that actually when I had spent time in the UK I
had noticed that the sun seemed much paler and weaker… possibly more yellow… than it did in Japan.
Anyway, back to the interesting anecdotes. One girl had done
a short home stay in New Zealand. She related her surprise when her host mother
told her to turn the lights out and go to sleep at eleven pm. Thinking that
this was a peculiarity of her host family, she checked around the town and
discovered that in fact, going to sleep by eleven was normal for
thirteen-year-olds. She pointed out in her speech that it would be impossible
to complete the daily schedule normal in Japan without staying up until one or
two am at least. If one were to unpack this, some really deep-seated and
interesting differences in educational systems, the role children play in
society and beliefs about health, wellbeing and parenting would emerge. Much
more interesting than whether the sun is yellow or red, surely?!
Another girl had visited a cousin in America and spent some
time with his friends. Whenever they asked her opinion or what she wanted to
do/eat she answered “I’m fine with whatever”. Eventually they got frustrated
with her and told her that not having an opinion about anything was like saying
that she didn’t care or didn’t have any thoughts of her own. She was shocked by
the confrontation and their accusations, and spoke regretfully about not having
been able to explain to them that, in her words, ‘agreeing with everyone-else to
avoid being disliked is Japanese culture’. I think that has a lot to do with
being a teen-aged girl rather than being an exclusively Japanese characteristic,
but that is what she said.
Where am I going with all this? I suppose I am being
contrary but I would really love to have the chance to do a class on
international communication that could say: “Get over the surface things. It
doesn’t matter if you use chopsticks or a fork. But don’t pretend that the deep
differences don’t matter. Unless we recognise the chasms our differences sink
between us, we can’t work constructively to bridge them.”
I want to teach this class in Australia, too. We have a
multi-cultural society of which I am very proud. But tensions have been
simmering for a decade now, and it isn’t helpful or constructive to respond
with trite lines like “no matter where we come from, all parents love their
kids”.
Having children move between boarders and communities is so
vital for this task of understanding. It’s also why hate groups like the American Family Association are
telling parents to keep their kids home from school on "Mix it Up at Lunch" days with considerable success; imagine the harm to good Christian children if they ate lunch with a classmate who was gay
or Jewish or Hispanic? Not only do I think that international exchanges are
important but also co-education of Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Muslims,
rich and poor children, is something I wish we saw more of. It is why I am
committed to exclusively public and secular education. There's a short but good description of the importance of secular education in Bosnia at Friendly Atheist (again?! what can I say, I am a fan girl). You can only begin to
explore the meaningful differences when you cease to be distracted by the
surface ones. When you realise that “they’re just like us” you can put yourself
in the position to try and understand why and how someone just like you has
come to be not very like you at all.