Uniforms

You'd kind of have to be living in a hole to not know that full-on uniforms are standard in Japanese middle and high schools. Anime and exported Japanese pop culture do pretty decent jobs of making sure that's one of the few images of Japan that foreigners hold. Still, though, you wonder... pleated skirts? Gakuran (those button-up, pajama-looking, old-military-style outfits the boys wear)? Sailor uniforms??? For reals?

Yeah, for reals. Sailor uniforms for the girls and gakuran for the boys are just as common as the more modern blazer-and-tie that my school sports. The American standard for school uniforms of "certain-colored polo shirt and certain-colored pants" is not a thing at all, and only certain special schools don't require uniforms.

I'd often wonder why such impractical uniforms were so standard. I mean, why sailors? Do they just want their girls to look all cute and stuff?

Uniforms are such an integrated tradition and part of the culture here that they're not given much thought. They're not strange or a nuisance because they're a part of life. When I was being fitted for my uniform, my host mother and sister were getting slightly exasperated with me and were confused when I wasn't sure how everything should fit and what was standard. When I saw the exasperation on their faces creeping into frustration, I explained to them that it was my first uniform and I didn't really know what was normal. They, and the lady working at the store, were amazed to hear that.

With as much American pop culture as Sakura consumes, I was surprised she didn't know that American schools don't have uniforms. But the uniform is so integrated into her idea of school that it didn't occur to her that it wasn't for me.

Being well-dressed and well-groomed is also the expectation in Japanese society. It's standard for everyone here to dress well, and the school uniform just fits into that mindset perfectly. Rather than just having a plain polo-and-pants approach to the school uniform that serves the same purpose practically, uniforms are carefully designed, each school having different patterns for skirts and pants, distinguishing adornments on jackets or blazers, distinctive bows or ties or scarves... They try to make the uniforms not only professional, but also fashionable and appealing. Schools want their students to be dressed well.

(With that, though, you'd think that they'd invest a little more in getting the uniforms to fit correctly. I mean, if you're going to wear the same thing every day all year for three years, you should want it to fit nearly perfectly. With only basic sizing and the only adjustments being to hem pants/skirts, there are a lot of students left with obviously ill-fitting clothes...)

Because I'm a lot taller than most of the girls here, everything that fit me halfway decently girth-wise was way too short. (Though my host sister is also really small, so her uniform fits rather big on her, and I feel like she and my host mother were trying to get my uniform to fit on me like hers fits on her...) So I'm left with a blazer with overly wide shoulders and all around-oversized shirts because of the attempt to get my sleeves to be long enough (the shirt sleeves are still too short). My skirt had to be let down to be made longer, too, and my socks aren't quite tall enough...

...So, while feeling awkward because I'm that lone white girl in a sea of Japanese kids, I also feel awkward because my clothes don't fit. But I'm not alone in that aspect.

without the blazer, and I've since gotten the more-popular knit vest

An important part of the uniform are the indoor shoes worn at school. My school doesn't use uwabaki, which are more slipper-like than shoes, but basic white sneakers that are still obviously designed for that purpose. Students enter our school through a side entrance, where there's the genkan (entryway) with shoe lockers for each student. We take off our outdoor shoes, put them in the locker, and slip on our school shoes there.

The color of accents on the shoe distinguish what grade the student is. Right now at my school first-years have black Mizunos, second-years have blue no-brands, and third years have green Mizunos. The school gave me, however, a pair of those no-brands... but with yellow on them. I'm the only student in the school with them, so I stand out even more and nobody knows what grade I'm in (and thus how to address me).

Getting to wear the school uniform and be a for-real Japanese student is one of the things most exchange students to Japan get really excited about. I was excited, too, and it's definitely one of the things about which I still have to tell myself, "You know, this is pretty cool." While I'm not glad that I had to buy mine rather than borrow from the school because the price of it was absurd, I am glad because I'll be able to take it with me and keep it.

At the same time, though, it gets to a point where you really just want to wear pants.

To begin with an apology

It's been terrible of me to not keep this updated. I have to fight urges to just curl up and do nothing to get anything done lately, and this is one of the many responsibilities of mine that have been suffering.

I do want to keep this updated, though. Things are happening that I want to share, and I want to express what I'm thinking and feeling. It's a matter of getting myself to type it. (as a note, this was actually written in a spare notebook during my Biology class at school, with the intention of typing and editing later)

So to catch up:

The first two weeks here were during spring break, so there wasn't any school. I posted some about that previously. Sakura had club activities and my host parents had work, so after the first couple of days I spent much of those two weeks alone at the house. It was kind of disappointing to arrive in Japan and still not really go out and see any of it. I was doing pretty much exactly what I would be doing in the US-- hanging around at the house and taking naps-- with minimal changes to accommodate a new family and house. Still, though, I treasured that time alone. I always wanted my host family to get out of the house quickly and to return late so that I could have that time to breathe.

Throughout those two weeks, I looked forward to going to school with the hope that I would be able to see other people and make my own friends, and where I'd be forced to speak Japanese. I was getting pretty downtrodden about how little I was speaking and interacting, and hoped the new environment would shake me into a new groove.

Things I had previously thought would excite me came and passed with relatively little reaction. Being dragged along to karaoke and purikura (standard Japanese teen entertainment, and a supposed must-do in Japan) with Sakura and her friends was pretty much just that: me being dragged. I tagged along willingly and openly, but it was very "meh", just glorified and overpriced selfies and singing, to my unastonished mind.

I really thought that getting my school uniform would be the excitement to cheer me up until the start of school. But it kind of passed like any other of the mundane errands we'd been doing, and only after when I sat down in my room with my uniform hanging in my wardrobe did I think, "Hey. I own a real-life Japanese school uniform. That's pretty cool, right?"

But, wow, this seems incredibly depressing. I am doing relatively well and I'm really glad to be here. Right now, though, I'm having to work through a lot of problems that exist within myself. I feel extremely restricted, for some reason, around my host family and talking is still a problem. When I'm away from them and from Sakura at school, though, I relax a little.

I still don't do a ton of talking, though, with me not knowing how to interact normally with teenagers and with them being shy and not knowing how to talk to a strange American person. There's a lot I feel like I should be doing, questions I should be asking, mistakes I should be making... I recognize the problem, though, and I know I need to work to find a solution, but for now I get by one little interaction at a time...