Happy Shiny People Holding Hands

Man, that title makes me think of listening to that song in the car with my parents and sisters. I loved R.E.M. so much when I was little, and I thought that "Shiny Happy People" was the happiest song in the world. R.E.M., the Grateful Dead, Talking Heads, that is some good music right there. I encourage everyone to listen to that song to get in the mood for this entry, because this entry is all about the good! And then listen to Fire On The Mountain , because that's a great song, too.

Something that orangepeeleater and I talk about a lot is how easy it is to get into a downward spiral of complaining about living in Japan or being an ALT. It's so easy to point to all of the obnoxious things about living in a culture foreign to your own and working with people who tend to treat you like an overgrown child most of the time. It's easy for foreigners in Japan, not just ALTs but any foreigners, to get into venting loops. It's cathartic because it really can be difficult living here and it can be almost therapeutic to let out the stress of being laughed at because you're wearing a short sleeved shirt instead of a long sleeved shirt or whatever. It's not as easy to point out the good things, or be forgiving, or think of solutions. Orangepeeleater and I both feel very lucky for living in a place where people tend to focus more on the positive. This is a group of people who listen to the negative, sympathize, and then move on to talking through solutions instead of just falling back on more complaining. It's a very good place to be, and it's important to acknowledge that.

There are pros and cons to everything, of course, but the pros definitely outweigh the cons! As I've mentioned before, I live on an island in the middle of the sea. This means that I'm separated from the mainland ALTs and the mainland ALT events. That's a bummer. What isn't a bummer is the incredibly close community that the island fosters. My coworkers can't drive home every weekend to hang out with their old friends; they pretty much have to make friends with people on the island. This means that I've got a very close relationship with almost all of my coworkers. It also means that I see my students outside of class pretty much all the time, and that means that my relationship with them is a lot stronger than just faces I see in school.

The kids are also generally very well-behaved here. If they act out everyone and their grandmother immediately knows about it. There also isn't as much peer pressure to act out and rebel. The kids still do, of course, but it's much more low-key than some of the stuff I've heard happens on the mainland. The con to this is that the kids aren't as motivated to study or work hard in school. This is a phenomenon that happens a lot on islands and in rural areas. Life has a different, slower rhythm here, and the kids don't have the same fire under them as the kids in a bigger city. But hey, at least they aren't pulling knives on each other.

All in all, it's a good life. I wouldn't be staying for a third year if everything was terrible, and I don't want to give that impression with entries like one on sexual harassment. There are problems, yes, but the problems don't overshadow everything else. I wrote the sexual harassment piece because the reasoning someone was giving on another forum for not believing people's stories of harassment was that he hadn't hear any accounts personally, so if someone does say something it's a lie. I didn't write it because every day here is like walking through a sea of harassment.

Today is a great day. I got a hug from my favorite JHS student, a girl I may have mentioned before who has been bullied for years. She loves English and listens to English music in her free time. She, and the other kids like her, are the reason this job is amazing. They are the reason I'm staying a third year, and they are why I feel like Shiny Happy People almost all the time.