On Sleep

Shortly after I started teaching English in Japan (maybe a few months in or so), I conducted an informal poll among a few of my friends. Here's what I asked them:

What's the most popular pastime among your students?

The answer that came back from almost everyone was this:

Sleeping.
I was dumbfounded. I was, for as long as I could remember, of the belief that weekends and days off were for pursuing some hobby/interest or the other. People actively did something in their free time, not sleep, I thought. At that point in time, "My hobby is sleeping," was the saddest thing I had ever heard.

Of course, at that point in time, it was still the honeymoon phase of my life here. I had just started living what I considered to be my real adult life (college doesn't count). I had an okay, not too demanding job, a nice apartment and a social life that brought me the very well deserved envy of many of my friends  back home (and some of my friends here too, for that matter).

Then Nova went bankrupt.

That's right. The sort of okay, not too demanding job I had when I first came here was working as a Nova instructor. Sitting in a booth teaching forty-minute lessons was not too physically taxing. Plus, I only had three children's classes per week, so I always had the energy to go out after work and the night before a workday with plenty of energy to spare for my lessons that did not require much preparation. 

But October 26, 2008 came. I was asked by one of my then co-workers what time I was supposed to start working that day. When I replied saying that it was my day off, the relieved response was, "Great. Good thing you weren't up and heading to work since all the schools are closed indefinitely." She had learned this when she got to work and saw the shutters on our school's door closed with a note in Japanese taped to it.

Time to look for another job, and another job I did find about a month later. Now, my days are filled with screaming  kids in the early afternoons and sleepy, demotivated junior high and high school students at night. I started this job working longer hours and commuting farther than before (and for less money).  As if that weren't tiring enough, as of this week my hours are even longer with the extension of the junior high and high school classes.  On Wednesday, I commuted for one hour to work, taught six classes over the course of eight hours and twenty minutes with only half an hour to prepare, commuted for an hour and a half to my train station and finally got to my apartment at about 11:20p.m. That's just a taste of what my work week is like.

Now I understand what it means to look forward to sleeping on the weekends. As I write this post, I'm thinking about how much I'm going to sleep tomorrow, on my day off. I'm imagining the feel of my futon...wait...that's not accurate because nowadays I keep entering a near-comatose state when I sleep. Sometimes I'm in such a deep sleep that not even the sound of my boyfriend's alarm clock, the most obnoxious alarm clock in Tokyo, can wake me up.

Right now, I'm looking forward to not hearing four and five-year-olds screaming, to not looking on in envy while exhausted high school students fall asleep in class and to not feigning interest in gardening for the millionth time. Tomorrow, I will sleep. I will actively enjoy my slumber. And it will be divine.