Please use the highlighter

In Japan the school year starts in April. While my childhood memories of the first day of school were filled with the dying heat of summer combined with the still too warm to wear fall wardrobe and the reds and browns of deciduous trees sloughing off all their hard work, Japan’s school year is all about yellow hats, glossy leather backpacks, and tiny, expensive suits, all set against a backdrop of fluffy pink cherry blossoms. Of course, this is a Honshu centric idea. Down south (or west if you’re Japanese) the blossoms bloom and die off smack dab in between the school years ruining every single chance of getting that stereotypical start of the school year photo opportunity.

 So a new school year at a new school is underway. There are a whole host of new textbooks, notebooks, totes, bags, bags for bags, and a very important “renraku fukuro”, or message envelope. In this envelope are the message book and whatever very important photocopies are making their way around. There is also a highlighter pen, which I bought in the naive hope that the new teacher would continue the very helpful method the old teachers had of highlighting the pertinent information on the slew of info sheets that come home every day. It wouldn't be so bad if the only things in the message envelope were important info sheets about upcoming events or assignments. But in addition to the super-important-do-this-right-now-or-the-world-will-end sheets there are also the remember-to-eat-breakfast sheets and don’t-forget-to-not-get-hit-by-cars sheets. To make matters worse, in Japan the typical format for written communication is to start each letter with a paragraph or two talking about the season and thanking the reader for being tired. For someone that is raised in this system (and literate) it is simple enough to do a quick 5 second scan and toss the filler. For me this often means spending 10 minutes of quality time with a kanji dictionary and double checking my translation against google.translate to make sure I didn’t misinterpret something rather vague. Repeat this five more times for each info sheet in the envelope, three to four times a week. (And that’s just for separating those that require further translations from those that can be tossed.)

 A highlighted message communicates quickly that the message is something not to be tossed. (I am the Japanese partially-literate member of the house, but I’m not the one that does the bulk of the cleaning.) It also focuses in on the stuff I really need to translate. If there were unlimited hours in the day I would be happy to throw myself into translation. But as it stands I have two jobs, food to grow, household chores, homeschooling and homework efforts. I really don’t have the two hours to spare every night.

 It could be that the teacher is assuming that Olive’s language aide will be doing this communication for her. This is something I’ve seen over and over throughout my life in Japan. It’s not just a rural thing, or an education thing, or an older person thing. Many people here do not like to talk directly to people who look like me, regardless of whether or not the words coming out of that white person’s mouth are in Japanese. Heck, I’ve had people opt to speak to an Asian-looking friend with no knowledge of the language, watch the friend turn to me and ask me for a translation, hear me reply to the Japanese person in Japanese, and then turn to the friend again to ask a follow up question.

 The brain. It hurts. It hurts so much.

 In an ironic twist, while my daughter’s school seems loath to communicate directly with me or adjust the communication methods slightly to accommodate a non-native speaker, a few of the schools I work for use *me* as their go to foreigner go-between, sitting on important paperwork for weeks waiting for my arrival. (And even if the language of the parents is an issue, there are other full time teachers on hand who speak English just fine.)

 It’s not much. It’s right there in the bag. Just pop off the lid before you slip the papers into the bag. Please. Just use the damn highlighter.