Bob Sanchez’ BS

Naka. It’s one of those Japanese words that doesn’t have a good, single English translation.

“Relationship” would be closest for me, but it seems to be that with an element of exclusivity. It’s as though naka acts as a dividing line between those who are privy to the relationship and those who are not.

If you got naka, you’re in; if you don’t got naka, you’re out.

I’ve seen a few examples of naka at work lately and think that there is seriously something to it for Japanese people.

A pair of national holidays, school visits by prospective students, the opening ceremony and testing for the fall quarter, and the school’s Sports Day were all set to wreak havoc on our teaching schedule for September.

I suggested that we review the spring’s lessons and give the students the whole month to come up with skits to present to the class in lieu of a paper test for the midterm. With such an inconsistent schedule coming up, there wasn’t anything else to do short of showing them episodes of SpongeBob Squarepants every day.

The English teachers liked the idea and we went with it, but there were some problems.

Most of the classes have a good naka. That is, they work well together, treat the classroom as a safe space, accept and embrace their shortcomings in English and enjoy learning during our lessons.

A couple classes have a terrible naka, and I must say that it’s only the classes that have both boys and girls in them (most of my classes at this vocational school have no girls in them, a few others have one or two). The Interior Decorating class in particular is about half and half, and they shut things down for English.

In regular classes when it’s time to do a pair activity or make groups, the Interior students do not move from their seats. If they are not physically right next to someone with whom they have a good naka, they will lower their eyes and stare at their books.

It’s incredibly immature and lame behavior for high school seniors, but that’s what we’re faced with in some classes, so we elected to pair students up “at random” for the skit project. I truly left it up to chance for the classes with good naka, but for the awkward ones, I paired the loudest and best speakers of English with the scary-quiet ones, and fate took over for the students in the middle.

The classes with good naka howled with delight at some of the pairs that came out of the hat and got right to work creating their skits. Their effort and enthusiasm fell off as the events of September came and went, but they wrote their skits and performed them dutifully.

The Interior Decorators sighed and slumped into their chairs for the most part, but a few complained vociferously. One girl came right up to the teacher’s desk at the front of the classroom and nastily said, “Mr. Mac, we need to work with people with good naka.”

The poor girl with whom I had paired her (“randomly” as far as she knew, recall) was sitting right there in front, eyes glued to the textbook but ears wide open. The dividing lines of naka were so obviously drawn that, to the students, there was nothing inappropriate about airing them out with words.

I refused and told the students that they would have to grow up and work with their classmates. Had I left them to their own devices, there would have been four or five pairs and thirty students sitting and staring at their books. This project needed to get done and arranging pairs was the only way to make sure that it happened.

They eventually settled down and got to work, and the Interiors presented the best skits of all by leaps and bounds. So much for naka. I wonder what it will look like for the rest of the quarter.

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The Civil Engineering class has a great naka, almost too good, because they are too excitable to do any kind of group learning. The teacher is hopelessly inept at keeping the class under control, and I am not allowed to do anything about it because I’m not a full-time teacher. Anyhow, the boys are very energetic and will emerge from our English class with a mouthful of handy phrases if not the ability to put a conversation together.

Something happened over the summer and one boy was cast out of the group. He routinely sat at his desk with his head down, and when I went by and asked what was wrong, he said he was merely tired. As he was the former captain of the basketball team (seniors “retire” from their sports clubs over the summer of their senior year), I thought he had just hit the floor a little too hard.

Ms. Inept informed me that his naka was not good with the rest of the boys, that they had banished him for some reason. She referred to the naka as something she could not and would not control or look into.

As American high school graduates, I’m sure that we all had classes where things weren’t so great between classmates. There always seemed to be one on the schedule, one where I was ripped away from the people with whom I felt most comfortable, one where I had to switch into survival mode in sixteen-year-old terms.

On the contrary, Japanese students are with the same group every single day and every single period for three years. They sit in the same classroom and the teachers rotate around, teaching a lesson at a time. There is no escape from the group, so being outside the naka is a much bigger deal to them than it would be to an American student.

This is where the famous collective thought is born and raised. The Japanese education system teaches students to do whatever it takes to be happy and harmonious in the group. Progress, actual education, and growth are all group projects, not the individual things that they are in the States.

Now, get a couple Japanese guys out for beers and they are just like anybody else on the planet. I’ve never been inside of a Japanese company in Japan, so I don’t know what happens in adulthood. I am not implying that Japanese people are incapable of thinking for themselves, just that the group dynamic is an extremely strong force for them.

Back to Civil Engineering – one student is going through hell for whatever it is he did over the summer, and the English teacher won’t step in and do anything about it. That bothered me, so I asked around and the boys’ homeroom teacher gave me the name of one student who didn’t mind talking to the basketball captain. They would be “random” partners for the English skit project.

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And so it seems that this naka is at best comfortable and at worst a vicious concept out to divide insiders and outsiders.

I had the opportunity to go on a group date, which is a very Japanese activity that falls between a blind date and speed dating. One guy and one girl conspire to arrange the group date, each one inviting the same number of friends, none of whom have met the others.

In the end, you have a number of guys who are all connected, and the same number of girls across the table who all know each other. There is only one link between the two groups, and the two who have already met are not out to date each other.

I’ve heard a lot about these group dates (called gokon) and have long wanted to participate in one. I met a college student who loves talking about girls and trying to date them and I have been trying to get him to invite me to a gokon.

He was concerned that I didn’t know any of his friends (there’s that naka again), and there wasn’t much I could do to speed things up and get invited. Finally, last weekend, he arranged a four-on-four gokon and invited me when one girl and two guys failed to show.

I rushed over to a Korean barbecue joint and walked in right after the introductions. Three attractive young women sat on the opposite side of the table from my buddy and one of his baseball teammates. I introduced myself and got right down to business, chatting it up and making the night lively.

We didn’t play any of the ice-breaking games that I’d heard about, and it’s unfortunate because most of them end up with the guy’s face in the girl’s chest or with variations on that theme. It was simply me starting up conversations and watching them fade as I took a sip of beer or a bite of meat.

My friend informed me that at a usual gokon, the participants eat quietly and look across the table from time to time. If they make eye contact with a cutie, they quickly look away and continue to eat. Make eye contact a couple times, and there’s a chance.

This sounded far too ridiculous to be true and I looked at him to make sure he wasn’t pulling my leg. It seemed like telepathy was necessary to make anything happen.

He was dead serious when he said, “We do the talking once the naka gets good.”

I asked when that happens, and he couldn’t give a concrete answer. It was some process that I was disrupting with my very presence.

However, when I talked to the girls, and even when I talked to the guys, for that matter, nobody was uncomfortable and they actually engaged in conversation. I learned that the fun and games usually happen when the group goes out to drink more or sing karaoke after eating at the restaurant.

We didn’t get to do that as we started eating at 11 p.m. and two of the girls had work the next day. Once they left, the guys marveled at how direct I was with them. They said it was like I swaggered in and said, “Hey, toots! Like me, right now!”

I don’t spit ill game (or whatever the kids call it), I just like to talk and meet women. I get the feeling that I experienced a gokon on the lukewarm side, and I was surprised to see naka make an appearance in what I thought was a casual situation.

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I will continue to observe the concept of naka. I’m sure that Americans have the same feelings about relationships with people, but I’ve never heard anyone verbalize it quite the way that Japanese people do.