Boundaries

Last night a few English teachers got together for dinner and drinks. The main purpose of the party was to say "ostukaresamadeshita" to a student teacher who had put in three weeks of study at our school. She actually graduated from Nishi four years ago and came back, as often times students do, to hone her real-life teaching experience at the same place she was educated.

Ms. Yamanaka and I accompanied two male English teachers to a nijikai (second party) and stumbled into some very interesting conversation. This conversation, and her being there drinking with teachers who once were her authority figures, got me thinking about different boundaries. In my opinion, in Japan, the line between teacher and student is clearly cut the day the student graduates. I'm not sure how it can been so black and white, but it is.

Mr. Takagi spilled the beans last night about his frequent trips to Tokyo. He told us all he has a fiance there and goes there to spend time with her. Fine. When I asked him how they met, he was honest and told us that she was his former student. Boundaries.

What's even more strange is that earlier yesterday, Mr. Takagi asked me to check a test that he'd written. One of the paragraphs was about a student and her homeroom teacher being on "inappropriate terms"--his words. I had made some kind of joke after looking at it that he should be careful not to put any ideas in the heads of his students. Little did I know he was writing from personal experience. He seemed to be very tickled about my comment last night while we were boozing. Twisted.

The other thing that got me thinking about boundaries lately was my request to bathe with students at one of the English camps last week.

Now, I'm not a prude when it comes to public bathing. I've gotten used to it and enjoy the large, hot tubs of water. I've gotten used to women looking at me with my tattoos and my strangely shaped body. I've even gotten used to people scrubbing my back without warning. (OK. That just happened once and I am not used to it. My friend's mom was sitting next to me and just went about her Japanese motherly duties as a back scrubber.) However, when it comes to bathing with students I have to take note of a big, fat, red, screaming boundary.

At the camp, the girls went way over the allotted time to bathe and we had to wait for them to finish. It was 11:30 and they were still washing up. We were told before the last crew of kids filed in that they didn't mind and we could bathe with them. We said we'd wait. Time dragged on and we went int to hurry them along. Again, they said, "Come on in! We don't mind." It was hard for us to say, "But, we do!" Coming from a country where a teacher would be immediately jailed for being naked and bathing with students, it's hard to cross that boundary in a country where it's perfectly fine.

I did actually have to wash up with kids from the hiking club after we got back from the trip to Yakushima. I had been camping for three nights and hiking in sweaty, sweaty conditions. I was able to overcome my cultural hang up that time, but it was still weird and not an experience I want to participate in again.