Glass Half Empty or Half Full?

          I’m not very good at sarcasm, so perhaps the title of this blog can be seen as eternal optimism.  This past week, I was supposed to be at School J (my “rowdy” school), but I got a call from one of my JTEs on Monday while at the BOE.  The school was closed for the entire week due to a flu outbreak.  Because so many students were absent, they closed the school for everyone so that the students out sick wouldn’t fall behind.  Definitely not something I was used to from the States. 

          But, with all of my classes canceled and the school closed up, what was I to do this week?  Why, go to the BOE, of course!  Every day.  With absolutely nothing to do.  From 8:30 AM to 4:15 PM.  Nice.

          Monday was a pretty routine BOE day, just sitting around until my planning meeting with School J.  And then I got the call.  Most of the days following were nearly identical, except for Wednesday.  In the morning, I had to go to a mandatory Health Check for all city employees.  Wait in a long line, turn in your paperwork, wait in a long line, check your blood pressure, wait in a long line, get blood drawn, wait in an even longer line, get an electrocardiogram, wait in a long line, and finally get a chest X-ray.  All in all, it took over two hours to get everything done, and we had to fast for the blood work so we were all really hungry by the time it was over – but we still had to wait until lunchtime to eat.  Japan, sometimes you just don’t make sense to me.  Or my stomach.

          However, in the afternoon, the thing I’ve been waiting for for four months finally happened.  I got a microwave.  I’ve been without a microwave and rice cooker since the appliances bit the dust in September, but it took a while for things to get rolling with my supervisor.  The word had been out at the BOE that I needed those appliances, but nobody had any spare ones for me to buy on the cheap.  So, after much persistence and asking, we finally went to the store and I bought one.  The original plan was that the BOE would pay for it – or at least pay for half of it – but it wasn’t until we got to the store that I learned that I would be footing the entire bill.  I didn’t have a problem paying for it – I ended up buying a microwave/toaster/convection oven combo autobot contraption – but if I had known the BOE wasn’t going to support me financially, I would have bought something long ago.  I nearly had an aneurism when I paid for it – even on sale and with some haggling I still paid san-man (¥30,000),  but I’m hoping it will be a good investment.

          I’m still without a rice cooker (which is kind of vital in Japan), but I’m pretty happy with what I did buy and am looking forward to experimenting with it and figuring out the things I could cook in it – any recipes for microwave or convection oven cooking would be greatly appreciated!  ;)  I’ve already gotten requests to bake cookies for the BOE – hopefully that will be my weekend project.



This is pretty much what my new microwave looks like. Concept art by Ben Procter.



          But back at the BOE, it’s kind of awkward to be there with absolutely nothing to do, especially when everyone around you is working so hard.  However, I  got in trouble with one of the ladies at the BOE when she found out that I washed the dishes in the sink. In the mornings and afternoons, one of the administrative ladies goes around with cups of coffee or tea for everyone, and for some reason, the guys here at the BOE never wash their dishes.  I don’t know why it is, but all they do is take their cups to the sink and walk away.  They pile up until one of the ladies goes in the kitchenette and washes them.  And the other day, since I had nothing to do and saw the dirty dishes, I washed them.  One of the lower-ranked guys in the office even walked in, saw what I was doing, and then put his cup in the sink and muttered “mas”¹ as he walked away.  Now normally, I would have taken offense: generally speaking, only the higher-up guys can get away with that, the young guys who don’t have wives or who live at home should still be in the habit of doing their own dishes.  And besides, I am a Mills Woman after all.  But, since it was the most productive things I’d done all day, I let it go.  But later, when my BOE lady found out what I did, I got a mini-lecture about how it’s not my job to wash the dishes.

          This is one of the things I find to be most affronting about living in Japan: the social and gender expectations.  In my mind, I saw a job that needed to be done and, since I had the most free time out of anyone in the office, I washed dishes.  However, in my way of trying to help out, I may have potentially offended someone.  I like to think I’m a team player, and my mentality is that, if there’s a job that needs to be done, let’s just get it done so we can move on to the next task.  I have a hard time reminding myself that I have to “follow the rules of the land,” even though I quite obviously live in a foreign country; it’s just ingrained in me.

          So, while I didn’t teach this week and looked up Wikipedia articles and Facebook statuses more times that I can count or care to admit, I did get a super-microwave which will hopefully give me more control and independence in terms of what I’ve been eating.  As much as I like pasta, I was getting pretty sick of broccoli fettuccini alfredo and spaghetti and meatballs, and I can only handle so many bentos.

¹Shortened, general acknowledgement phrase used only by dudes.