Cleaning Lady Ambush

This is kind of in the same vain as Samantha's Culture Shock post. To understand the cleaning lady ambush you have to have some background on our work environment. When schools are on break we come to the Board of Education. That's what it says in the contract at least.

What that really means is that we come to a room that is two buildings away from the Board of Education. The room is basically a closet of a closet. You have to walk through a closet to get to our room. The only other things in this building are a pre-school and a tax office. Our room is also fairly cluttered. We have 6 lockers meant for clothes, a fan, a kerosene heater, two tables, 5 chairs (2 of them broken), a metal desk, a sink, and our teaching materials. Now, notice what you don't have listed is a file cabinet or any other decent means of storing books and papers. All our materials are paper and books. The lockers have books in them, the desk is full of paper and lots of stuff is stacked on the tables. Oh and our sink doesn't work. I once found the cut off to turn in on and found out why it was off: because if drips a lot. Notice also that trash can was not on the list of things in the room. That's right they didn't provide us with a trash can. We bring in our own bags to keep in the room but with no can they just sit out on the floor. Before we started bringing the bags we would carry home the trash every day. Now I will admit our room was junky and disorganized, but its mostly because we don't have adequate storage for what we have.

So with that back ground the cleaning ladies come in here to clean once a week. Now when I say clean what I mean is sweep the floor... poorly. They don't take out the trash, clean the windows, mop, scrub the sink, or anything else, they just sweep. There is one cleaning lady who we are all afraid of called "the mean one" (that's our highly original nickname for her). When she comes to clean she always clucks at us disapprovingly in Japanese, picking up the least little piece of trash and shaking it at us. So if I had a gum wrapper next to my computer she would pick it up and say "This is trash." and shake it at me. Or if there was anything on the floor bigger than dust she would pick it up and ask if we wanted it and shake it. That's right, if ,for example, a used staple fell on the floor and we didn't see it she would not sweep it she would shake it at us. So we called her the mean one.

There are two other ladies who are nice and just sweep. Well this week all 3 of them came into our room. They went and stood by the sink and the mean one said, "Your sink is dirty." "There are tea bags in the sink and they smell bad." She repeats this about 3 times to me. Now, I get up and go over to her and say that the sink does not work and try unsuccessfully to explain the tea bags are drying. She then tells me that from now on we should put the bags in the trash bag not the sink. So I take them out and throw them away. Then she tries to turn on the sink at the wrong place. Explaining that the sink was turned off, I tell her that she is turning it on at the wrong place and it drips. Then without acknowledging my comment she stands up and goes over to the door. By the door is an electric heater belonging to Clarie that we used in our play. She points at it a says " heater, heater, heater".
I say "Yes, heater". She just keeps pointing at it and saying "heater". There are no verbs, adjectives, or sentences; just the word heater. Then she picks up a tea bag envelope next to Claire and begins her shaking routine. She then informs me "You don't speak Japanese" despite the fact that I had been speaking to her in Japanese. (Even thought she was talking at me, not to me.) She continues to inform me that I don't speak Japanese. Then she tells the other cleaning ladies that we are like children and that she will talk to the Board of Education. Then they leave.

Now, this is fairly rude behavior in America.

Their behavior is even ruder than it appears here for a couple of reasons. For example, in Japan only your boss can berate you. If someone from another office has a problem with you, they talk to your boss first, last, and only. Also, Japanese people frequently dry tea in the sink so we were doing something that they themselves do. Lastly, and I think most rudely, she acted like we couldn't understand her even though we clearly did. She mutters under her breath about how dirty everything is and how childlike we are. She would not talk to another Japanese person like this it would be social unacceptable and very taboo. Only because we were foreign did she think that she could get away with this behavior.

Culture shock Part 1

Culture shock has a way of sneaking up on you from the side. For those of you who are fuzzy on what culture shock is: culture shock is what happens the moment you realize that the place you are currently occupying is nothing like any of the places you are familiar with. Left without the comfort of familiarity in a new, difficult, or uncomfortable circumstance a person can have a somewhat...negative reaction.

It hits each person differently and isn't always the same way twice.

It might be realizing that living in Japan means no turkey ever. It might be the inability to read street signs. It might be a longing for a handshake (even if it has to be from one of those cheaters who clamps down on your fingers in order to win the strongest grip contest). It might be frustration in explaining a concept in a language that literally does not have the necessary vocabulary to describe it.

The first really noticeable bout with culture shock I had didn't occur until last November. It didn't start in November though, the seed was planted when I arrived.

When I recovered from jet-lag and finally began to stretch out my hands to accept some of the responsibility of housekeeping, I had a system for keeping up with bills. The system was to keep them all in a pile and pay every bill in the pile every week or so. When a bill was paid it got moved to the paid bill pile.
( Interesting thing about bill paying in Japan. You don't write out a check and mail it to the people who want your money. You don't stuff cash in an envelope and send it to the people who want your money. To pay bills in Japan you must ride your bike to the nearest conbini, or convenience store, and pay it there. Imagine going to 7-11 every time the phone bill was due and you'll get the picture)
My system was not a very good system. I had little to no idea when or what bills were arriving. I just looked for what money was due when and stuffed it into the pile. My system was not good, but it was functional. This was the seed, the sprout was when I got an unexpected red envelope.

Someone rang the doorbell of my house. When someone rings the doorbell of my house, they are nearly always Japanese. My western neighbors either knock or walk right in if the door happens to be unlocked. When I opened the door I was greeted with the sight of a man holding a clipboard and a red envelope.

Could any good come from this?

When people have a clipboard, it's because you have to sign for your delivery. When your delivery is a red envelope, you're pretty sure it's not cookies from your mother.

Using the international gesture for "sign this" (wiggling the pen over an open space on the form attached to the clipboard) the man collects my signature, thanks me, and leaves me alone with my red envelope.

When I open it, my eyes glaze in the face of hundreds of little symbols I didn't know. I looked to the numbers for salvation and was able to fish out little pieces of information. The paper showed several dates and prices. The big price at the bottom was written in red.

Uh-oh.

You don't need to be fluent to understand that red numbers mean you owe somebody money and they want it now.
According to the numbers I had missed payment on something for more than a month!
How was this possible?
I searched the paper and the envelope, looking for some clue as to what the bill was for.
There was a blue symbol at the top. Was it for water? Wait no... maybe that was the mascot for electricity. Augh!
I went to the paid bill pile, desperately searching for another bill that matched. Proof, surely I had proof that I hadn't bungled it up this badly.
I took a closer look at the dates and my stomach squeezed. What was up with these dates?
Where the "09" for the year should have been there was a 23.
How could I have missed that? How long had I missed that? I looked over a handful of the payed bills. Some of them read 09, the rest had 23.
If my brain were a computer, it would have crashed. Have you ever seen the windows blue screen of death? That was my facial expression.

It was time to call Caleb.

Somewhere between explaining that we had a bill that was more than a month overdue, that it was my fault but I didn't know how, that I couldn't even count on the date anymore, somewhere in the midst of all that I had wound myself into an emotional ball that was nearing hysterics.
Perhaps hearing the proximity to tears in my voice, Caleb (who had pointed out the need for a better bill system more than once) didn't even say "I told you so". He told me to bring in the bill so he could show it to his boss .

On the way there I realized how strange it was for me to get this upset over a misunderstanding. I hadn't neglected a bill in the unpaid pile. I hadn't willfully ignored a responsibility. The short walk to Caleb's office in the brisk November air let me think. This wasn't just about the bill. The overwhelming feeling wasn't even guilt, or worry it was helplessness.
I didn't understand what the writing on the bill said. I couldn't call the help line to ask for more information. I had no clue why the year was written as 23. I felt helpless and useless and impotent, and I just wanted to be able to pay my bills like a functioning adult.

And that, my friends, is culture shock.

The epilogue to this story reads as such:

Caleb made me feel better with a hug and assurances it would be OK. He took the bill to his boss and got the full story.

The full story reads as such:
When we first arrived to Japan (back to that little seed) we had been told that certain expenses would be taken out of our account automatically every month. One of those expenses was, in reality, not taken out of the account. Neither did a bill arrive at our doorstep until the overdue balance came riding in a red envelope. It wasn't my fault after all. I still fixed up a new bill paying system. Now all the paid bills have a nice little accordion folder they go into that separates them by type and time of delivery. Organizing is one of those things grown-ups do.

Oh, and as for that strange 23. That was Heisei.
Think of Heisei as the "year of our lord" only instead of Jesus, you're talking about the Emperor. Each emperor has his own period, (the last Emperor's time was called the Showa period) and it changes the date.

At the time of my writing, it is now the first of April, year 24 of the Heisei period.

Here's the wiki article if you want a better explanation:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisei_period

It's kind of cool now... in hindsight... when bursting into tears over heisei seems silly.