Living in the Dormitory

Since I was hired as a dorm teacher at this school, I am expected to live in the dorm with the students, as I've talked about before. I'm glad, for the most part, to be able to live here for free, because I save a lot of money in housing and utilities and I get two meals a day. There are a lot of downsides, though. Like the food--I don't really like Japanese food, and although the kitchen staff often make Western food, it's still dorm food. Furthermore, they seem to think that sodium is the life source of all humans--they'll combine both soy sauce and salt in dishes, for example, when soy sauce is plenty salty to begin with. They often combine soy sauce, salt, AND miso, and about 90% of what they feed us has ludicrous, LUDICROUS amounts of sodium in it. Because of that, and the general worthlessness of the Japanese (and Korean, and Chinese) food that they serve, I often have to go right up to the little teachers' kitchen and have some more (healthy) food.

Another downside is that no guests of any sort are allowed in the dorm without permission from the Sister who is the head of the dorm--and she would never give it. The only times non-residents are allowed in are when families are helping the girls move in on the first day (ONLY!!!) of orientation, when teachers or special guest speakers are invited to lunch or dinner (and they are restricted to the lobby and dining room), or when alumnae of the school come to visit. Other than these situations, NO VISITORS FOR ANYONE. This makes it very difficult for us teachers to have a social life. Although we could always meet friends out, it's nice to sometimes be able to just hang out and watch a movie or something. But no. I had to sneak Ed in on Christmas when he came to visit and had brought me some Western food that I wanted to transfer from our hotel back to my room. That's so lame.

The last downside is just generally dealing. This is the worst. Not only do I, anti-religious, have to deal with living under the rule of a bunch of nuns, I have to watch poor 18-20 year olds endure restrictions that would cause riots at American colleges. It's not that we're dealing with the stereotypical ruler-wielding nuns; quite the contrary. The Sister who runs the dorm and the Sister who is the president of the college are both very kind and friendly women (as seem to be most of the other nuns), but they both suffer from the delusion that their students are supposed to act like nuns and they also have a serious, serious displacement of priorities. But that's all a whole different issue.

Anyway, I took some photos of the dorm a few months ago, but hadn't gotten the chance to share them yet. Here's a picture of one of the unoccupied student rooms. It's quite small and the students sometimes complain about that, but for me, I'd much rather have a tiny room to myself than have to share a big room like I did for two years in college.

Like my room, they also have plenty of storage. Unlike me, though, they tend to fill up their spaces.

Each floor has a big fridge and sink for students to share.

There are two laundry rooms per floor, with two washers. Most people in Japan don't have a dryer--the room in back is to hang clothes. It's better this way. Korea is the same.

Here is the washroom, or bathroom. In Japan, "bathroom" still means "bath room," because the toilet is separate. I often confuse students when I talk about going to the bathroom.

Anyway, in the front there are three sink stations on each side, and in the back are two bath rooms.

The shower and bath are separate because Japanese culture dictates that you must be clean before getting in the bath. The bath is for relaxation only, not for cleaning. That's a terrible waste of water that almost every Japanese person contributes to. However, I do think they share bath water. The students only get twenty minutes for their shower and bath, quite short by Japanese standards. But Sister keeps a tight control over how long the boiler is on, so they can't take their time, and sometimes end up with cold bath water at the end that they can't warm up. I swear to god this woman is going to give herself an aneurism from how much she worries about bath time and that fucking water heater.

 Here is a bathroom--I mean, toilet. There are two per floor. For some strange reason, one sink is hidden behind that little wall...

"Refuge course figure"

Each floor has a couple computer rooms, with what seem like ancient computers.

The dorm was renovated right before I got here last year, but since there are now fewer students enrolling, they didn't bother to renovate all the rooms. So here's what the old rooms looked like. Pretty 70s, I think.

Here is the lounge, which they are barely allowed to use. They only have free time from 7 to 7:30 and 9:30 to 10 (which is then STRICTLY ENFORCED bedtime) from Sunday through Thursday, but they're not allowed to watch TV after 9:00. On weekends, they have most of the day free, but they tend to escape their jail and go shopping usually. We do use the lounge for tutoring four nights a week, though.

This is their one study room (they have desks in their rooms, so this would be more often used if they had to work with others on something). The crazy thing about this is that they actually have to ask permission to use this thing during STRICTLY ENFORCED study time. WTF???? ASK to use the study room during study time? Inconceivable.

This is the dining room on the first floor. Ignore all the pillows. They were just being aired out during the vacation when I took the photos.

This little alcove is off to the side of the above photos. Back when there were 80-90 students in the dorm at a time, this was a normal part of the dining room, but now the main room is plenty big enough to hold everyone, so it's closed off with a curtain.

Those colorful tags have the names of everyone in the dorm on them. Students and teachers can cancel meals on weekends, so they put all the tags of the people eating on a tray and we have to put it back when we pick up our meal. They also use them to identify special order meals, like for those who have allergies or are sick. As you can tell from the size of the board, the dorm is operating at half capacity currently. The low enrollment numbers have been a problem for a few years now--this is a problem common to all post-secondary schools, because of the low birth rate, but here it seems to be exacerbated by the intolerable restrictions forced onto the students--conditions that the nuns absolutely refuse to change. It took ten years of badgering by teachers about the 7-day-a-week 6:00 curfew for them to finally "compromise" and change the weekend curfew during summertime to 7:00. Wow. Wow.

As is tradition in Japanese schools, there are no cleaning staff. Everyone who eats must wash her own dishes, then the students take turns by hall staying late and doing all the other cleaning in the kitchen that needs doing (although I think the kitchen staff wash anything they've finished with before serving starts).

Strangely, the girls are required to bring their own cups to school, and they keep them in this storage rack. As if the school couldn't spring for some cups. Further, students have to pay for any dish they break. That seems a little extreme, especially given how many extra dishes they now have due to low student numbers.

Here's the big kitchen that we teachers would never be allowed to use.

Here's the reception area, where Sister or her assistant (not a nun, thankfully) sits. If a student wants to go anywhere (except to class or to events that everyone attends), she has to sign out at reception. They are extremely concerned about liability and such at this school, so they always have to know where the girls are, specifically whether or not they're in the dorm. I don't know how having a book where they write their date and time of exit and then something like "go to shopping" helps them keep track of the students any better than just calling them on their cell phones in an emergency. It's very fascist.

In the cupboards, the girls have to put their indoor slippers when they leave. Each year the color of the slippers changes, so the blue ones belong to a second-year student. This is just one of several special pairs of shoes they have to buy to attend this school. These slippers are for wearing around the dorm (although the teachers just wear our regular shoes, negating the reason for indoor slippers), and they have a pair of white sandals that are their outdoor shoes for wearing to school. They also have to buy (expensive) black leather pumps for special events, job interviews, etc. and indoor sneakers for the annual sports festival, and presumably PE class. In Japan they treat their floors with such reverence and delicacy that they probably last at least two hundred years. All the shoes are of course in addition to all the uniforms they have to buy--summer uniform, winter uniform, job interview uniform. The uniform thing is a whole nother can of worms, too.

Finally, here's the front entrance of the dorm.

I enlarged this photo a little bit, because if you look closely, you can see the spikes. There are some giant spikes on the drainpipe below the lowest balcony, and another couple sets of giant spikes on either side of the gate. This is to deter boys, mainly, or lecherous men. On the back side of the building, one of the balconies that is low enough to be jumping or climbing distance from the ground is also bordered all around with giant spikes. Actually, I was told those particular ones were put in after one of the dorm teachers got caught trying to sneak her boyfriend in. HA.

And even from the bottom floor, we still get a pretty decent view of the volcano, Mt. Sakurajima, from the dorm, so that's pretty cool.

Purikura

Purikura is something that seems to be only available in Japan. It's very popular with young people, especially girls. I imagine boys only do it with their girlfriends. "Purikura" is what the Japanese make of "print club." They have a tendency to shorten, blend, and mispronounce foreign words.  It's supposed to sound like "pri-clu," but the way the language works they end up having to add a few letters in there that English-speakers wouldn't expect.

Purikura is a really advanced photo booth. They have them in big groups in arcades and other places where young people go. The booth is much larger than our photo booths, so you can easily fit six people in there, and squeeze maybe eight people in there. It's as well lit as a professional photographer's studio inside (and consequently pretty hot). The machine shows you a mirror image of the people inside, so you can pose and such, then it takes a picture. Repeat five times.

When all the photos have been taken, you go outside to a computer station, where you can use a program to change the color/pattern of the backgrounds, write and draw on the photos, add shapes, and execute effects. You have literally thousands of choices for what to do: the entire color palette for backgrounds a writing, dozens of background patterns and auto-shapes, dozens of pen effects, and quite a few effects, some of which are particular to certain machine. For each photo, you are allowed only like thirty seconds or something to finish altering it, then it automatically goes to the next photo. I assume this is so kids don't spend hours hogging the machines making artisan purikura.

Then a machine prints up to six rows of six tiny photo stickers on one big square, which you then take to a nearby counter with a bunch of scissors tied to it and cut off individual strips. It's kind of amazing that they can do things like that--in other countries either the scissors would get stolen or they'd be used for violence and/or vandalism. But Japan is a peaceful and trustworthy place. Anyway, in addition to getting the photo stickers, if you either enter in an email address or hold your smartphone up to a panel, the purikura will email you digital copies. The whole thing costs ¥400.

A few times last year, I took a purikura set with some of my students.

Here we see the background effects, Mickey Mouse shape, and some writing.

Shapes, and couple pen effects and colors:

As you can see, their English wasn't the best.

The lipstick effect is one that you have to go to a special machine for.

This picture is kind of amusing because we had just met some creepy guy in a convenience store ("konbini") and they thought he looked like a member of the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia. Chances were pretty slim, though.

In all these photos, there are two effects that the students always choose, which are "big eye" and "white skin." I think most booths have these effects turned on automatically, or you choose them when you put your money in in the beginning, because the photos always come out like this without altering them in the personalization program. Anyway, it's especially visible in this set. In most of the photos above, the perfect white skin is of course noticeable, but you don't necessarily notice that everyone's eyes are freakishly large. In some shots, though, it's really scarily obvious. Japanese girls have wicked complexes about their skin color and the size of their eyes.

Here is a split screen option option you can choose in the booth:

Another option you have when doing all the photo nonsense is getting a close up.

I sometimes have trouble with the timing of the photos. I think the giant flashes of light go off well ahead of when the photo is actually taken, so in this case I accidentally walked out of the shot just before the right moment. So I fixed it in post.

Here you can see a little glitch in the program, where there are some third eyes going on.

I think this series was the one I sent to my sister a while back, and she was like, jeez, do Japanese girls ever get pimples? But again, this is the result of giant lights and white skin effects, so they don't look this perfect in real life.

So these are the only purikura I have so far--three trips. I don't know yet if I'll do any with this year's crop of students, but maybe.