First, my newest apartment guest!
...It took some researching, but this little fellow is a common Japanese crab spider. Not to be confused with the common Japanese spider crab, which is an enormous beast that lives in the dark, cold ocean waters around Hokkaido and looks like it should have its own horror movie series. I thought it was a small crab at first because of its large forelimbs and wondered how on earth a crab could get into my apartment--I do live by a stream that has smallish crabs, but I've never seen ones that small before. Just a spider, though, and quite welcome to scurry around my ceiling as long as it likes.
Onto recent adventures. I finally found the awabi (abaolone) breeding facility up in Waniura. I originally thought that it was a public-funded government facility that bred the awabi in order to repopulate the native population, but it's actually a private company. Apparently people breed awabi in private enclosures in the ocean, much like fish pens, and buy baby awabi from this facility. Sometimes they're also paid to release baby awabi directly into the ocean, from what I imagine is a league of shellfish collectors. Since awabi have to be a certain size to be legally caught, the released babies will get a chance to grow up and breed themselves before they are of catch-able size, thus increasing the local awabi population.
Anyway, it was an enormous facility with rows upon rows of stacked tubs full of awabi. The babies were so cute! ..they feed on flat green seaweed and can grow very slowly. I saw some 2-year-old awabi that were only a couple of inches long; they'll be released sometime in the next year. Some of the 7-year-old awabi, which are kept as parents, were 5-6 inches long.
I've also done a lot of gallivanting about the woods behind my apartment lately, as well as another visit to the site of the old Omega Tower. That area, close to my apartment, used to have one component of a global positioning system developed in the late 60's and implemented in 1971. Only 9 towers were built all over the world, tall and powerful enough that no matter where in the world you were, you could pick up the signal of 3 towers and triangulate your position. The Omega nagivation system was made obsolete by GPS' satellite system. Now the area of the former Omega tower in Tsushima is a park with a great view.
Omega tower park:
And, last, a rant about some experiences in my Japanese schools---
If you've never worked in a Japanese school system, then you don't know how intrusive teachers can be into the lives of their students. Well, for cultural reasons Japanese teachers are held responsible for their students' actions more than the students' parents are--if a student is caught shop-lifting, for example, or smoking, the school is blamed much more than the parents. The parents expect the teachers to be responsible for their students' moral education (there is actually a class called "moral education,") so what I see as intrusiveness may just be part of a teacher's job description.
But I still can't always wrap my head around it. As I type this, for example, the 2nd-grade middle school homeroom teachers around me are discussing a joint lesson they're going to do on nutrition. Their kids are roughly the equivalent of American 8th-graders, and the teachers are worried about how nutritious their kids' breakfasts are.
Of course I want my students to have nutritious breakfasts, but this subject really gets to me for two reasons. First, rice (the whiter and more processed the better) is praised greatly over bread, which from my perspective is a cultural slam. For heaven's sakes, they're both grains. I think part of this reasoning is that rice is more time-consuming to prepare and shows that the mother really loves her child if she gets up early to get the rice going, although no one has ever directly said that. This leads to the second reason I always cringe when the subject of nutritious breakfasts comes up (and it does come up, more than you would imagine)-- mothers are expected to get up early and make their kids a spread of food, with as many nutrients as possible. Bread is a cop-out, taking only a few minutes to toast; if you're a mother, you have to give more! You don't love your children if you spend less than 45 minutes preparing their breakfast! Instant miso soup? ...are you sure you made the right decision in having a child, you irresponsible woman?
I actually got "Tut, tut"-ed when I said that I'd had multi-grain cereal for breakfast. Well, I don't have a child to be responsible for, so I guess they'll just have to get me get away with being unhealthy. But these teachers really expect all of their students' mothers to make rice, miso soup (loaded with freshly-cut vegetables and tofu or some other sort of protein or it doesn't count), preferably a little fruit, milk, and some other protein dish, such as a slab of cooked fish. (Definetely nothing like sushi; not only is that a cultural 'celebration' food and not something Japanese people would eat everyday, but according to these teachers, breakfast must be hot. Yet another black mark against my cereal). The students' fathers aren't even called into the discussion; they aren't expected to help out with cooking, just as they aren't expected to help with cleaning, laundry, or other household tasks deemed 'womanly,' even if both parents have jobs. I know that's the slowly-changing American cultural norm, too, but I can't imagine American teachers sitting around and blaming the mothers' non-nutritional breakfasts of cornflakes on their childrens' inability to concentrate during class. It just wouldn't happen.
I could understand, a little, if the teachers were using non-nutritious breakfasts as a way out of taking responsibility for their students' actions. "Really, Tommy shop-lifted yesterday? And you're blaming me? Well, Mrs. Fisher, I'm so sorry, this is an incredible blemish against the reputation of Hirsch Middle School. I metaphorically prostrate myself in front of you in forgiveness. Clearly we did not do our job in making him an upstanding citizen. But, you know, it doesn't seem like he's able to concentrate very well in Moral Education... are you sure that you're making him a healthy breakfast every morning? If he doesn't start the day off right, we can't do our jobs, you know!"
... but that's not what's happening and, given the Japanese social tendency away from direct confrontation, the above conversation is practically impossible. The teachers are actually serious that making a good breakfast (of their perfect ideal, rice with miso soup and protein-packed side dishes) is a mother's responsibility. Not all teachers, of course, but the ones who do believe this are very vocal.
It just makes the oatmeal-loving feminist in me cringe.
If you've never worked in a Japanese school system, then you don't know how intrusive teachers can be into the lives of their students. Well, for cultural reasons Japanese teachers are held responsible for their students' actions more than the students' parents are--if a student is caught shop-lifting, for example, or smoking, the school is blamed much more than the parents. The parents expect the teachers to be responsible for their students' moral education (there is actually a class called "moral education,") so what I see as intrusiveness may just be part of a teacher's job description.
But I still can't always wrap my head around it. As I type this, for example, the 2nd-grade middle school homeroom teachers around me are discussing a joint lesson they're going to do on nutrition. Their kids are roughly the equivalent of American 8th-graders, and the teachers are worried about how nutritious their kids' breakfasts are.
Of course I want my students to have nutritious breakfasts, but this subject really gets to me for two reasons. First, rice (the whiter and more processed the better) is praised greatly over bread, which from my perspective is a cultural slam. For heaven's sakes, they're both grains. I think part of this reasoning is that rice is more time-consuming to prepare and shows that the mother really loves her child if she gets up early to get the rice going, although no one has ever directly said that. This leads to the second reason I always cringe when the subject of nutritious breakfasts comes up (and it does come up, more than you would imagine)-- mothers are expected to get up early and make their kids a spread of food, with as many nutrients as possible. Bread is a cop-out, taking only a few minutes to toast; if you're a mother, you have to give more! You don't love your children if you spend less than 45 minutes preparing their breakfast! Instant miso soup? ...are you sure you made the right decision in having a child, you irresponsible woman?
I actually got "Tut, tut"-ed when I said that I'd had multi-grain cereal for breakfast. Well, I don't have a child to be responsible for, so I guess they'll just have to get me get away with being unhealthy. But these teachers really expect all of their students' mothers to make rice, miso soup (loaded with freshly-cut vegetables and tofu or some other sort of protein or it doesn't count), preferably a little fruit, milk, and some other protein dish, such as a slab of cooked fish. (Definetely nothing like sushi; not only is that a cultural 'celebration' food and not something Japanese people would eat everyday, but according to these teachers, breakfast must be hot. Yet another black mark against my cereal). The students' fathers aren't even called into the discussion; they aren't expected to help out with cooking, just as they aren't expected to help with cleaning, laundry, or other household tasks deemed 'womanly,' even if both parents have jobs. I know that's the slowly-changing American cultural norm, too, but I can't imagine American teachers sitting around and blaming the mothers' non-nutritional breakfasts of cornflakes on their childrens' inability to concentrate during class. It just wouldn't happen.
I could understand, a little, if the teachers were using non-nutritious breakfasts as a way out of taking responsibility for their students' actions. "Really, Tommy shop-lifted yesterday? And you're blaming me? Well, Mrs. Fisher, I'm so sorry, this is an incredible blemish against the reputation of Hirsch Middle School. I metaphorically prostrate myself in front of you in forgiveness. Clearly we did not do our job in making him an upstanding citizen. But, you know, it doesn't seem like he's able to concentrate very well in Moral Education... are you sure that you're making him a healthy breakfast every morning? If he doesn't start the day off right, we can't do our jobs, you know!"
... but that's not what's happening and, given the Japanese social tendency away from direct confrontation, the above conversation is practically impossible. The teachers are actually serious that making a good breakfast (of their perfect ideal, rice with miso soup and protein-packed side dishes) is a mother's responsibility. Not all teachers, of course, but the ones who do believe this are very vocal.
It just makes the oatmeal-loving feminist in me cringe.
3 comments:
Foodshima Escapades continue! I'm beginning to think that Japanese culture is all about what and how you eat. :-)
I enjoy the ongoing effort to give us a sense of the world around you. Keep them coming.
Wait, was that spider there last weekend? O_O
Yes, Rose -_- ... and it may be horrible of me, but I waited to post until you were gone. My apartment is a no-kill area, and the ceiling's too high up for me to effectively get the spider down. Also, I think it's way cute.
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