How Now, Brown Bureaucrat…

I’m going to start a post that is mostly perplexed ‘what is wrong with this country?’ rants by saying the rainy season has its awesome points, like the light mist over the mountains, the angry sea, the solid sheet of rain, the crabs on the street or the fact that I don’t have to water my herbs.
Now onto the real point of this post- Japanese bureaucracy.
Today was phase two of operation make-a-Japanese-driver’s-license. Phase one was translate-my-Australian-license. This is pretty easy, especially coming from an English speaking country with relatively few states. Americans, on the other hand, have difficulties. The translation part isn’t too hard, but the test is the difficult, no, improbably impossible part. Now, here having an American colleague going through a far worse ordeal than me made me feel better. I just sit an interview where they ask when I got my license, and what kind of test I had to do, and then in a couple of weeks I make the three hour each way drive again to have my eyes tested (because they couldn’t possibly test my eyes while they have me there to do the interview, no, that’d just be too easy…), so they can mail me a license a week later. But no, Americans have the joy of sitting a Japanese Practical driving test. And here I use practical in the most loose sense possible- it is as far removed from any situation one would ever encounter, anytime while driving. Here’s a run down of the test:
- It’s on a closed course, with no other cars
- there’s one traffic light, but that doesn’t matter. It’s always red and just there for practice
- you’re expected to take the course fast, without thinking
- you’re not told what to do, you’re not told what you’re doing right and, if you fail, you’re not told what you’ve done wrong.
- there are three possible courses you can remember. You turn up an hour before your test and you’re told which course you’ll be doing, and you have that hour to commit the course to memory
- there is a section where, coming out of a turn, you have a space of about 30m to speed up to 45km/h, which in a manual involves over-revving the engine.
- the test is undertaken in huge black taxi-like Toyota Crown saloons, even though the emblem of Kochi is the tiny Kei-car, which everyone drives. They’re the tiny cars that Japan is famous for, which are really starting to make sense with petrol pushing ¥200/l
Yes, you’re expected to get behind the wheel of a car, no, practically a tank, that you’ve never driven (unless, like many people, you’ve failed the test many times) navigate an absurd course entirely by memory, and then somehow divine what it was you did wrong if you have to attempt it again.

And here is essentially what is wrong with Japanese education. An intricate system of silly hurdles to jump through, insane and inane tests based entirely on memorisation, with absolutely no practical application whatsoever. This is why Japanese drivers are so bad, they’re never actually taught how to drive. On a road. They learn how to follow a course.

And this is why I’m here, because it used to be the same with English education- kids could pass university entrance exams in English and not be able to communicate with an English speaker.

But anyway, I don’t have to sit the practical test. Thankfully.

 

Coffee

I’m used to being overfed whenever I’m at a school, but the school I was at today (in fact both the schools in that town) really went above and beyond. A female staff member opened up a box of sweets for me, bought out a plate of mandarins, poured me two cups of coffee (she even came back to check whether my cup was full) and then just left me to study Japanese alone in the meeting room.

Now I don’t really mind this, what I do mind is having a busy female staff member drop everything to make me coffee, while the male staff members stand around outside smoking. I don’t like that three o’clock is tea time in the BOE, unless both of the women who work here are out, because none of the seven Japanese men even consider making tea. Sam does it sometimes, I used to do it until I discovered I make horrible tea (and I still do it sometimes if I need a tea)

At every school I go to, one of the teachers will drop everything to make me coffee, and I love coffee, so I never say no. The thing is, out of seventeen schools and the Board of Education, there’s only one Japanese man who makes coffee; the English teacher at the Junior High School on the cape- our one male JTE. And even he won’t put a pot on, he makes instant coffee if there isn’t a pot ready.

And that’s not even the worst. In any workplace in the west, if you finish a pot of coffee you make a new one- I poured myself a third cup of coffee (like I said, I like my coffee) at the school this morning, the last in the pot, and I went to make a new one. A female teacher ran over from the other side of the staff room to stop me, saying it was alright, and then went back to tell everyone in the office about the crazy ALT who tried to make coffee. She kept saying I’m a guest, which is true, I guess, so I just sat down with my coffee and my Japanese textbook.

And as I sat there, a male staff member walked over, mumbled ‘is there coffee?’, pulled the pot out, looked in it, said だめ, and then put the pot back, returning to his desk.

He did not consider, even for a second, putting a fresh pot on, instead decided on waiting for someone else to do it. That someone, I’m sure, was female. I would’ve drunk that coffee. I would’ve put a pot on, if only I’d been allowed to.