Working In a Japanese Resturant

My study abroad program usually has a couple school visits a week, but it is summer break so now we suddenly have a lot more free days than we used to. I'm not the most social human so I was spending a lot of time laying on the floor in the downstairs sitting room either sleeping or watching YouTube. I think someone got worried about me or something and told the director of the program because suddenly I had a part time job. Kind of.

So last weekend was a major holiday weekend in Japan so this restaurant needed help because of either increased customers or decreased staff. Anyway, they needed help and have had exchange students work in the shop before. The owner speaks some English and I was assured that students with less knowledge of Japanese had worked there before. Some shenanigans happened the first day that made getting there a little challenging, but I did still get there on time and was ready to work.

This was not my first time working a restaurant type job. I worked at Chipotle to pay for my flights to Japan. Spent five months in that job, the first of which during the holiday season so it was incredibly busy, so I think I have at least some idea how restaurants work. I was just a cashier most of the time, but I also had to clean all the tables and change garbage cans and other lovely stuff. Got yelled at when I didn't do things right even if nobody had explained them to me in the first place. Oh fun times working in a minimum wage job.

Anyway, I arrive and am given a uniform thing to wear. It's just an apron with the name of the restaurant on it and a towel thing to wear on my head (it looked like a watermelon 😁). First thing I do is put stickers on some mini ice cream or pudding things (I can read the katakana but I still don't know what it is). After that, I was set on dish duty. This restaurant has many small dishes on trays so there are many tiny dishes you have to wash. Doing dishes is kind of relaxing in a way and gave me an opportunity to just listen to the other staff in the kitchen. The restaurant was busy that day, but it wasn't the insane atmosphere I remember from busy days at Chipotle. While I can't understand a lot of Japanese, I could still tell that the owner spoke very politely to her staff.

The dishes themselves were very delicate and each dish was meant for a different, well, dish. All very organized. Normally I think of dish washing as being a gross job because of all the leftover food bits, but in Japan people pretty much always finish all their food. I had a garbage can to throw the wet towels they have for people to wash their hands with away and other various garbage worthy things, but the garbage can never really got full. I remember having to change disgusting garbage cans at my old job because Americans tend to not finish their food. There was one dish that was something eggy baked in the dish so that was a little difficult to scrub out, but otherwise dishes was an easy and not gross job.

The staff there didn't really speak English, but they would still try to explain things to me by acting stuff out. I feel like Japanese people are actually pretty goofy so their acting things out was always quite entertaining even if I didn't get what they were trying to explain. Sometimes they would also talk to me like asking where I'm from, how old I am, or asking me to help them with something or laughing when I stood in front of the fan. Something I would also do even if I couldn't understand what people were saying is help carry out trays of food. People seemed to enjoy the clueless foreigner helping carry trays, so that was pretty cool.

Overall, it was a very nice experience. Got to eat ice cream at the end of my short shifts too 😁.

でも、所有者さんはもっと日本語を話してくださいと言っていました　😅

Culture Shock! Crazy Boys

Despite my lack of language skills, I have interacted with female and male Japanese humans of all ages. Everything from four year olds staring at my braces to my older neighbors asking if I live in the village. There are some differences in behavior from American humans of course, one difference being in the behavior of young boys.

In America, young boys can be crazy but by the time they are in middle or high school they tend to be more quiet. There is usually that one crazy guy in each class, but that's only one guy. In Japan, at least 50% of them are that crazy guy. The majority of my male friends are quiet and like computers so pretty much any craziness is surprising. However, I don't think I have ever seen American boys be this crazy. I asked my Japanese instructor about it and she said it is because in Japan boys are seen as entertainers.

To show you what I mean, I will tell some stories about my interactions with crazy boys.

Part of my program is visiting local schools and the first school we visited was a local middle school. My friend and I picked a second year class (so 13 and 14 year old kids) and played a game of some sort with them in their English class. Everyone seemed fairly calm aside from the one kid trying to get answers from his friends in the back of class and the kid who found a rubber band and was putting it on his head. However, come break time, the kids were running around the room. Realizing my friend speaks Japanese, a group of boys came up to us and were talking to him. They all had their arms over each other's shoulders and the one with the best English said "we're bros." One of them suddenly pointed at us and said "couple?" (my friend is a guy, you see). After realizing what he said, we both denied it. Another boy proceeded to ask the same question. A third boy proceeded to point at us individually and ask. Were they convinced? Nope. They walk past the main house on the way home from school and whenever they see me they start saying "couple" or the name of my friend. They don't even know my name. The just call me Lion boy's girlfriend. They know it annoys me so they just give me this mischievous smile and keep walking.

We have visited many schools and also visited a kindergarten one day. The kids were very excited to see us and talked nonstop. At one point a group of girls were crowded around me and saying something about my sunflower hair clip and then were staring at my braces. I had been squatting down to be more their height but I decided to stand up so my braids hung down in front of me. The girls just stared at them and found it interesting but a couple boys came along and started punching them. Not sure what the logic to that is. This has actually happened a couple more times since then. If my braids hang in front of me (like I'm leaning over or something) little boys will come punch my braids.

One weekend one of the staff from the program took some of us to the beach. I was in a car with her, my housemate, and one of her friends. Her friend didn't really speak much English so he just spoke Japanese at me. He was saying something that sounded funny so I was laughing but the lady told me not to laugh because he was saying something along the lines of "she has a hot body." When we got closer to the beach he started chanting "うみ！うみ！うみ！” which is "ocean" in Japanese. When we were at the beach him and my friend ran around with the kids there and otherwise were crazy. Him and my friend also decided to dig a hole and bury my friend in sand. He drew funny stuff over where my friend was buried in sand.

After the speech contest, somehow the director ended up having a janken (rock paper scissors) match with one of the young boys over who paid for dinner after the event. The boy lost and dramatically flung himself on the floor yelling and so did his friends. They repeated the process and he again lost so the dramatic act continued. Mid way through the dinner, we had everyone switch seats and the director of the program switched seats with me so I was sitting across from the boy who was in the janken match earlier. He called himself "crazy boy" so that's what I will be calling him here. So Crazy Boy introduced himself like you normally do, then continued to say all sorts of crazy stuff in his less than perfect English. He was saying stuff like "I like girls," "I work in car metal factory," "funny funny funny personality," and pointed at a picture of a kpop idol on his phone and said she was his girlfriend. He told the French girl he could speak French so she asked him to prove it and he said "un deux trois." He said some kinda questionable stuff and his friends laughed a lot and corrected him. After the dinner, some of us decided to go to karaoke. He called one of his friends the King of Karaoke and that kid decided to go with us but Crazy Boy was going to drive the rest of his friends home. King of Karaoke hadn't spoken much up to this point, but as his friends were leaving he yelled "fuck you bitch!" Crazy boy responded with "oh, so I'm a bitch?" Hearing kids with broken English swear at each other is hilarious, in my opinion. Later at karaoke, King of Karaoke sang passionately or headbanged to various songs. One of the staff guys was with us and he danced to a silly Japanese song so that was also pretty funny.

We went to a small festival a couple weeks ago and a drunk middle aged man walked up to us and started talking to us. He pointed at one of the boys and the girl standing next to him and asked if they were a couple. They said no and as the conversation progressed various girls interacted with the boy in question and the guy would ask if that girl and the boy were a couple. He went through all of us girls and then went back to the original girl. Him and his wife also wanted us to drink with them, but we politely declined. I'm pretty sure he knew most of us were underage, too.

So those are some of my experiences with crazy Japanese boys! It's definitely interesting how the culture is different and how that changes people's behavior. Hope you found my stories entertaining 😁.

Speech Contest

So my study abroad program is in partnership with an English school so we often teach English lessons and interact with the students or go to events with them. There was a speech contest held for the English school and my study abroad program where all the Japanese students gave speeches in English and all the study abroad students gave speeches in Japanese. Everyone was assigned a number randomly so the speeches switched between Japanese and English. Since it was a contest, once all the speeches were given the audience voted on who gave the best Japanese speech and the study abroad students voted on the best English speech. Winners received a 5kg bag of Niigata rice (best in the world) and everyone received a certificate. Many of our students either gave speeches or came to watch us give our speeches. After the contest kids went around taking pictures with all of us study abroad students and then a big group picture was taken. I can't post it here because I don't have permission from the people in the photo, but anyway it's really cute. Afterwords we went out to eat and some of us went to karaoke, but that's a story for another day 😁.

The speeches were about a variety of subjects. One was about why the kid likes masks, another why a girl wants to learn English, another girl talking about why she wants to go to France, a couple about why people started learning Japanese, a couple did a comedy piece, and many other topics. I decided to write mine about little dolls my sister made of us and how I take pictures of them everywhere I go in Japan. Most of my language ability is in introducing myself or talking about school, but I wanted to challenge myself to talk about something from the heart, just in another language. I wrote the speech myself, but my Japanese instructor helped me edit it.

初めまして！私のなまえはジュノです。アメリカからきました。１８さいです。私のうちはのうかです。たくさんどぶつがいます。私の好きなどぶつはヤギです。

今日は私とおねえさんについて話します。

私はあねがいます。あねのなまえはマーリアンです。１９さいです。おねえさんと私はなかがいいです。昨年、おねえさんは大学に行きました。私も５しゅうかｎキャンプに行きました。はじめていっしょにすんでいませんでした。私とおねえさんはかなしかったです。おねえさんは大学に行くまえ、私とおねえさんのにんぎょうをあみました。それいらい、私はにんぎょうをもちあるいています。日本で、にんぎょうとしゃしんをとります。しんかんせんで、川で、うちで、まつりで、海で、たくさんのところでとりました。たくさんしゃしんがあります。これと、いつもいっしょです。おわります。

Translation is something like this:
Nice to meet you! My name is Juno. I am from America. I am 18 years old. My home is a farm. We have many animals. My favorite animal is goats.

Today, I will talk about me and my sister.

I have a sister. My sister's name is Maryann. She is 19 years old. My sister and I are close. Last year, my sister was going to college. I was also leaving to camp for five weeks. It was the first time my sister and I had not lived together. My sister and I were sad. Before my sister left for college, she made dolls of me and her. Since then, I have carried the dolls with me. In Japan, I take pictures of the dolls. On the bullet train, at the river, at the house, at festivals, at the beach, many places I take pictures. I have many pictures. With this, we are always together. Finish.

Woah! A Foreigner!

So there aren't really a lot of foreigners in Ojiya. More than most small cities because of the program, but still not many. People know there are often foreign kids in the city, but people are still surprised and excited to see us.

When we went to the Nagaoka Edamame Festival, the judges were very excited to have the foreign teams, the camera men were on us a fair amount, and a lady asked to take a picture with us. Similar experience when visiting schools. Kids would open up windows or come into hallways or classrooms so they could see us, say hi, and take pictures. At the super market or on the street, people will come up to us and ask where we are from. We have been in the newspaper a couple times as well.

Because the guesthouse I live at is in a village, people are a little more surprised to see a foreigner walking down the street. People are also more likely to look at you from a car because it isn't as obvious they are looking at you. Quite often I will see people looking at me as they drive by or slowing down a little then speeding up again once they are past me. One time I was walking and an older guy tried to talk to me but my Japanese isn't very good so I didn't know what he was saying. Just this morning a guy went and told his family there was a foreigner walking or something because suddenly there were five Japanese people coming over to look at me. I was asked if I lived in the guesthouse and how many people lived there. Three of us live there, but I walk outside the most. Well, I don't just walk. I also stand outside the house and dance. People seem to enjoy that a lot and some that have met me will wave at me if I'm outside.

One of my housemates and I went to a festival last Friday and they let us try the taiko drums and the people that ran the food stand gave us free food and wanted to talk to us. Many people did, actually. My housemate speaks much better Japanese than I do, so they mostly talked to him, but I did a little talking too. There was traditional dancing at the end of the festival that I participated in. That was pretty cool. 

At this point I also have the "Woah! A foreigner!" mindset. In general the only foreigners I see are the people in my program so when I see one while walking around or at a school or at a tourist spot I look at them a lot too 😆.