In which we learn there's no such thing as a free lunch

Before we came to Japan, we expected to have quite a big initial investment getting things for the kids school. All the things that most parents bought at the beginning of the school year – or had available from previous years – we would have to buy all at once. But we were happily surprised when things weren’t as expensive as we’d imagined. As I’ve already reported, we had to buy them gym clothes, lunch-serving clothes, shoes for various purposes, and general school supplies, but it seemed like we got off easy. The kids were heading off to school every day and coming back without any problems. Textbooks are free, supplied by the ministry of education, and we didn’t even have to send them with lunch. This place rocks!

And every day the kids bring home their renrakuchô, or “communication notebook” with the day’s homework assignments written in them. At the end of the day, the teachers write on the board what needs to be done and all the kids copy the instructions into their renrakuchô. And I was really impressed that our kids seemed to be doing it just fine. Despite not knowing much hiragana yet, they were able to copy what they saw well enough for me to read it and figure out what their homework was supposed to be. As it turns out, the hard part wasn’t figuring out what they had written, but figuring out the code the teachers were using to communicate with us. Each item the kids had to copy down was headed with a hiragana in a circle, and it took us a while to figure out what they meant. The “shi” was fairly clear from the beginning: shukudai, homework the kids had to do for the next day. The “mo” was less obvious, but turned out to be motte kuru, things the kids had to be sure to bring to school the next day. But the “re” was hard to figure out until I actually went and asked the teachers. That wasn’t directed at the kids at all, but at us. “Re” was for renraku, and it was the teachers way of getting the kids to tell their parents what they should do. Of course, our kids didn’t understand what their teachers were saying so they couldn’t tell us the details that would enable us to make sense of the abbreviations they were using, so we were generally clueless about most of what we were supposed to be doing.

I’m not sure how much this is done (if at all) with other parents, but the kids’ teachers also use the renrakuchô to communicate with me, aking me to explain certain things to the kids that they might not have understood, alerting me to important upcoming important events, letting me know about additional items the kids needed, etc. And little by little, the number of things the kids needed started to add up. Every child needs to have the exact same set of things, or else the whole system starts to fall apart, and our kids had none of it. At first it was just small things: a pencil case for Mikki filled with both regular and red pencils (who knew?), rulers (not for measuring things, but for making sure the lines under a math problem are completely straight), a few extra bags for shoes (which it turned out Eli had been carrying back and forth to school in his backpack for a week but never bothered to pull out)… general stuff. Then we got a list of things that they would need to buy for us: sets of crayons, watercolors, and acrylic paints for Mikki, a calligraphy set and craft knife for Eli, musical instruments (harmonica for Mikki and recorder for Eli) inscribed with their names… lots of little stuff, but it added up to around $200. But we realized it was probably as important for the kids to have what everyone else did in order to feel like a part of the class as it was for the teachers to maintain consistency. I'm sure it's all worth it. Then we got the bills for lunch and other expenses…

In retrospect, we really shouldn’t have imagined that we were actually getting away with receiving free lunch and general school supplies. And all in all it really wasn’t that expensive, given what we were getting. But the fact that we exist in a sort of information limbo, clueless about what to expect until it actually happens, means that every bill is an unanticipated one… and it was starting to feel like we’d never be able to know when one was going to show up. The lack of ability to anticipate bills made every bill feel unfair, as though we had no control over what this trip was actually going to cost us. And this is all happening despite the fact that I speak a very high level of Japanese. The problem isn't the language barrier so much as the "information barrier." Japan has been referred to as an extremely “high-context” society. It’s true of the language, which every statement relies for meaning on the context in which it is made far more than does English, in which every nuance is spelled out in the words themselves. And it’s true of society, in which there are lots of rules clearly spelled out, but it can be hard to know which ones you really need to follow. As an example, when I went in to register at the city office, I had to submit forms showing that I was neither responsible to pay nor eligible to receive the national pension. No problem. But I was told at the desk that I would still receive bills requesting payment in the mail, and I should just ignore them. Okay, I guess I’m okay with that. I sure wish I knew what other bills I’m allowed to ignore. There’s actually a sign near the front door of our building telling us never to open the door for the NHK guys who come around to collect money... despite the fact that every Japan resident is required to pay for public television. Okay, I guess that’s also one of those bills people just know they’re “allowed” to ignore. It happened again when I received a packet of information from the local PTA. I was able to get most of the meaning of the documents without a problem, but I still had no clue what I was supposed to do. Do all Japanese parents with their kids in school join the PTA? Were we supposed to be going to PTA meetings and taking our turn walking the kids to school? Was the RSVP form for the next PTA meeting really as urgent as the attached letter made it sound? I had no clue. I later talked to Mikki’s teacher and found out that most parents don’t attend meetings and some parents (gasp) don’t even send in the form letting them know that they won’t be attending. Okay. Got it. One more thing I don’t really need to attend to.

At any rate, the bill for lunches and other expenses was a bill that I DID actually have to pay. The school handbook mentions that parents play a flat fee for school supplies at the beginning of the year, but it turns out that it is far more common for them to divide that up into payments and pay it in three month blocks at the beginning of each of the three three-month semesters instead. We weren’t here at the beginning of the semester, so our bill was for three months of textbooks and school supplies (not the ones we bought for our kids or paid for above but additional ones) at ¥1200 per month, three months of PTA dues at ¥300 per month (no problem, as long as we don’t have to go to any meetings), and three months of meals at ¥3700 per month. Individually, these things are all quite reasonable, but not knowing they were coming and suddenly receiving a bill for $300 worth of supplies barely a week past paying $200 for supplies felt unfair. Oh well, at least now I know the kind of expenses that the “child rearing” subsidy we’ll be receiving is supposed to cover.

All that said, I do feel like we are getting some value for our money. The kids have received a TON of textbooks, only a few that they are actually able to make use of effectively due to the language barrier, but a ton nonetheless. And I can’t think of a better souvenir from their time here than the hats embroidered with the school logo and musical instruments with their own names in Japanese. And, as Jocelyn has blogged about before, the lunches are very impressive… as is the amount of information they give us about the lunches. The picture on the right is the handout giving the lunch menu for the first two and a half weeks of February, and the one below is a close up of the 17th and 18th. 

 Like the lunch menu back home it shows each day’s lunch, as well as what the kids will be using to eat it. So on the 17th they will be having raisin bread, milk, a cream based vegetable stew, and a broccoli and corn salad, and they will be using a spoon to eat it. And on the 18th they will be eating rice, milk, noodles flavored with miso, and sautéed pork and daikon, which they will be eating with chopsticks. But it also gives extremely complete nutritional information. The remaining columns on the 17th show that the meal will contain 10 grams of chicken, 10 grams of scallops, 50 grams of potato, 30 grams of onion, 15 grams of carrots, 0.7 grams of parsley, etc. Each ingredient is also identified according to the red-yellow-green scale as to whether it is a protein (chicken and scallop), starch (potato), or vegetable (onions, carrots, parsley, etc.). Along the bottom of each day you can see the total calories (627), protein (22.8 g), fat (20 g), sodium, calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, various vitamins, and fiber. I hate the idea of the kids trying to choke down foods they don’t like, or being peer-shamed into eating their whole meal, but you can see why the teachers put so much emphasis on every child eating their entire meal. This whole system loses meaning if you don’t know how much of the meal the kids are eating. I also like the way this pushes both kids and parents to be aware of the meal as a whole without individualizing it for every child. I have no doubt that the teachers are aware of kids who have severe food allergies, but there isn’t the expectation that every child will avoid a specific item because of the one child who has an allergy, as it is in the US. Every child will eat the same thing that day, and if one kid can’t eat scallops or doesn’t like onions, that’s for them to deal with.

By the way, along with the lunch menu for February, we also received three newsletters about what’s going on at the school in February, one for Eli’s class, one for Mikki’s, and one for the entire school. Once again, there’s a wealth of information there but a lack of context makes it really hard for us to get anything useful out of it. Even reading the schedule dutifully, Eli will occasionally come home an hour earlier than expected, or we’ll alert the kids to something on the schedule that will be happening, and then nothing does. The whole school will be having a “gratitude meeting” at 1:30pm on the 4th? Okay, whatever that is that’s cool I guess. Each class is working on a big craft project this month? Awesome! The times start from 8:45am to 5pm on the 24th? Okay kids, be sure to bring in the aluminum foil and empty boxes the renrakuchô said you’d need. In fact, bring three different empty boxes since the only information we have is “empty box.” The 24th comes and goes without any word about craft projects from either kid. Oh. Uh… maybe it was optional? Both kids had “class observations” for which we need to come in to watch their class this month, and it was nice to see them in the classroom context. But they are followed by an “advising session” which I had no idea how to interpret. I didn’t stay for that part and, based on the “minutes” we received afterwards, it seems to have been a brainstorming session about how the year went and how to prepare for the transition to the new school year next month. Actual line item from Mikki’s class: “They’re already going to be in second grade! But don’t forget that they’re still only going to be second grade.” I think I made the right choice skipping it; maybe I’m finally learning.