Girls
Now Playing: Lost Prophets
I wouldn’t say I’m an emotionally stable person—ask my mom. Raising me involved a lot of tantrums and headaches on both sides of the parental equation. But I have to say, they did a pretty sweet job. I mean, I don’t know where my good looks came from, but after taking my genetics course I figured that what I call the “handsome” gene must be recessive. That’s not true, no, my mother is the best-looking woman in the world. And my dad…he’s got…he’s smart.

So I have some intense emotions, but I’ve found a way to either express them without hurting anyone. I remember when I was little I used to just do pushups over and over at night until I couldn’t feel my arms. It was sort of a way of avoiding crying. I still do that, among other things.

My friend Mr. Mi, Miss C and I headed into downtown Osaka to buy me an electric guitar (one of the most important things in a man’s life, replaceable only by a motorcycle or an even sweeter electric guitar…or maybe a horse, I guess, if you’re a country boy, but I’m most definitely not). Miss C is this Japanese girl we met at a bar that speaks near-perfect English because of her Canadian boyfriend. Make that former boyfriend, as Mr. Mi informed me the night before at a bar. He was a verbally abusive drunk and also paranoid about her having other boyfriends that didn’t exist. Ironically, he ended the relationship.

As Mr. Mi announced the news at the bar last night, Mr. Ma and Mr. Mi, who are both trying the long distance relationship thing, turned to me. “So what are you going to do about this?” Mr. Mi asked me.

“Yes, let’s discuss this,” Mr. Ma said. Again, he’s the black dude from LA. Mr. Mi is a Japanese/Chinese mutt with an overdeveloped sense of skepticism.

I shrug.

“Oh come on,” Mr. Mi said. “She’s like the coolest girl we’ve met here.”

Mr. Ma nods and briefly looks up from his cell, which he’s using to send a text message. He gets an email at least every five minutes or even more often.

I can’t believe I have to sit through lady advice from these two. Mr. Mi is on the phone with his woman every time I go over to his place and he told me that she cries every time he’s called her. Mr. Ma, on the other hand, has a girl that gets overly paranoid about his activity here. Whenever I go over to his place he spends about ten minutes convincing her that the sound in the background are not from a girl. They both seem to enjoy trying to deal with those head-cases, so I guess they’re puzzle-piece fits.

“I just—I don’t know. They’re just really good friends of ours and we’re lucky to have Japanese people that help us out so much,” I said.

“Oh, don’t give me that, that’s such a lame excuse,” Mr. Mi said. I think he’s just been out of the dating game so long, he wants to live through me. I’ve seen his dance moves and he’d be really good at picking up the club women, I’m sure.

“Yeah, I don’t think it would last long and that would make things weird with our ah, our friend circle thing we have going, you know?”

“Whatever, man. She could teach you Japanese so fast.”

“Yeah,” Mr. Ma confirms without looking up from his cell.

I never really thought about using women for language acquisition, and it doesn’t seem to be either ethical or an attractive idea.

“I’m just not into her like that.”

“Come on, it’d be good for you. Your pad’s got to be getting lonely by now. She could be the perfect addition to the place,” Mr. Mi said.

“Let me repeat myself: No, there’s no use in that. Let me rephrase myself: I don’t have any feelings for her.”

They still didn’t seem to understand, but I’ll spare the agonizing trail of the hours that ensued.

Mr. Mi and I met Miss C on the train and headed into Osaka. I threw a lot of Japanese out and she’s very complementary towards me. She said I spoke without an accent, but I don’t believe that. If you can spit out one syllable of Japanese here, you get showered with praise because the Japanese study for years but are too shy to speak any English. She’s an awful teacher—I have to drag things out of her, and once I say it successfully once, she moves on to something else. I have the memory of a dog that lives with a hippie, so I never remember anything I ‘learned.’

My apartment’s getting pretty lonely with just me, and it’s been a while since I’ve had a meaningful relationship with a girl. I’ve noticed that most people date in order to test whether they’re in love with someone or not, and then after a messy breakup they kind of go, “wow, I really wasn’t falling in love with them. I was just using them to relieve all the stress from my demanding job. Oh well, at least I have you, Ben and Jerry.”

I have the opposite approach. I fall in love with almost every girl I see, if only for a few seconds. If it lasts for more than a week I know I’ve got a problem, but it usually doesn’t. I remember there was one girl I had a crush on in a class and never even talked to her. There was just something that was amazing that I couldn’t get over—I still remember her today, even though I never even met her.

It’s the most awful feeling in the world when I’m dating I don’t feel anything for. Don't get me wrong, I get lonely just like the next guy, but even when I give in to an opportunity I always want out, and I get out of it immediately. That’s why most women don’t last more than one or two nights out with me. That and I’m a hard person to enjoy spending time with. Sort of how most people don’t like stabbing themselves repeatedly, most people don’t like the raw form of my seemingly random and intense personality. And that’s why I can’t understand why Mr. Mi thinks it’s a good idea to date someone in order to learn a language.

School Festival 2 (Bunkasai...kishikokosai)
Now Playing: Sum 41
During the school festival, K-sensei came to crash at my place. I was a bit self-conscious since my place was an absolute mess with stuff everywhere and even garbage bags piled in one corner—I’m still trying to figure out what goes out on what day. You have to like be able to do abstract algebra to dispose of a bottle.

After she left, some of my clever JET friends had the insight to ask me, “So did you hook up with K-?” or I think one said, “Did you guys turn this into a love couch?” That’s the most ridiculous euphemistic phrasing I’ve heard this year. And no, I was a good Christian, better than most “Christians” I know, even though I don’t affiliate myself with Christianity or any other religion out there, although I’m thinking of starting an iconoclastic religion centered around the comedy of Family Guy.

Just as an interesting aside, the word for “love” in Japanese is “ow,” our word for something that hurts.

We went to the festival early to get in line for the “geki” (plays), and ran into a class I knew pretty well. I tried learning some other names, with moderate success. They were painting their nails green, the color of the sports team they would be on the following Monday, their “sports day” celebration, which is pretty much just a track and field day. After some pleading, I let a girl student paint my nails with “bly” and two hearts drawn on them in green and orange. I got lots and lots of complements on the nails in the week following that.

We got good seats and I struck up talking with some of the students around me. One of my better moves was figuring out how to say “lonely,” and “sensitive,” in Japanese, and then turning around to introduce one of the girls behind us to the boy sitting next to me. I introduced him as a “lonely and sensitive man.” Students are still talking about that one.

I also broke up a fan fight…yeah I don’t know how else to describe that. Everyone brings fans everywhere. And towels. Everyone has a feaking towel for sweat. Even I do now.

I was blown away by the plays. One word to sum them all up: intense. There was an intense samurai play that was for the most part serious, but had some odd slapstick humor to break things up in addition to the sweet fight scenes with super dramatic music. The kids broke like two swords by accident in the plays. And it wasn’t just guys hacking it out in the fights, there were some pretty scary girls kicking ass. It makes me feel as though my public education experience was missing something, specifically, sword fights. In other plays, they had a lot of old school video game music, from Mario Bros. to Zelda.

Cross-dressing was definitely popular among the guys, and there must have been at least one drag queen per play. In my favorite play, by my favorite class, the ones that painted my nails, they put on a version of the Japanese story “Peach Boy.” There were a lot of jokes even I could get where they start dancing weird to hokey music and things. Or someone was like dying and then they’ll spring up singing a Brittany Spears song or something.

One of the highlights was when an entire sang, “Dancing Queen,” as part of “Mama Mia.” God I wish I had that on video. Another memorable part was at the end of Peter Pan, when everyone was finished, this girl comes on and says, “arigato, Peter Pan,” and all the characters come on stage dancing to some video game music—pirates and lost boys alike. Such brilliant screenwriting.

When I went to look at the calligraphy, I got to see some pretty amazing things. One of the students interpreted a girl’s work as “porno. It’s a porno.” And he kept repeating himself until he was sure I got what he was saying. The girl was very embarrassed, and it was really something like, “wind from the moon through a window.” Boys will be boys, and sometimes girls like they were in the plays.

The other students had shops set up with food and crafts. I bought candy and gave it out to all the students I saw. They also had all kinds of strange games that involve fishing out balloons or rubber balls with tissue paper-plastic instruments. It’s hard to explain, but trust me, they do it.

I also got to see several of the school’s rock bands. They like punk rock. I like punk rock. They treat guitars like chainsaws; it’s awesome.

At night I was up late because K-sensei was trying to pack to leave the country, so I didn’t sleep much for a while.

Day two of the festival was a lot like the first, but there were people there before us even at 8:30 for a 9:00am start. By 11:00 the place was packed beyond the fire code—people were sitting in the isles and standing in the back of the auditorium to see the dance team. Japanese dances are difficult to describe. They put on the most extremely emotionally indulgent music possible at double time and with a thicker beat. The happy dance was very happy—I think it might even get Saddam Hussein to smile. Hey, whatever happened to that guy? Is he still alive? I gotta give him a call. One of the dances I was definitely not comfortable watching, but not as uncomfortable as the 80-yearolds in the front row waiting for their grandsons or granddaughters to star in Peter Pan or whatever. The best way I can describe it is that it’s as though the dance girls took all of their sexual and flirtation energy and compressed it into about a half-hour show. They smiled way to hard during the show, and then at the end they were all crying, “because they were sad it was over,” according to a student. I don’t get it.

The most awkward part was how some of the girls asked me if I liked their dances, and some, if I thought it was, “sexy.” There’s no right answer to that one, Christ. I wanted to say, “I’m not sure it was legal for me to watch,” but that’s hard to translate so I said, “I thought it was good.”

After the festival was over, we began getting things ready for the sports festival, which consisted of the entire school all pitching together as a functional team to transform the baseball field into a 200 meter track, one of the marvels of Japanese teamwork I’ve yet witnessed. Growing up with my dad, who couldn’t do manual labor without screaming and hurting himself multiple times, it was a rather strange experience to watch people move heavy things together without damaging any personal relationships. Truly, this must be witchcraft.

Then I practiced running with two of the other English teachers. There were five of the English teachers along with the other staff that were running two relays on sports day on Monday. I also had mentioned that we might make t-shirts for “Eigo no chiimu,” (English team), and two of the female teachers went to town before I could even begin to help and made hilarious t-shirts. They had a felt cut-out heart with the teacher’s name on the front and a crazy slogan on the back. Mine was “appears out of the blue,” which was funny to everyone that read it.

That night I talked a long time with K-sensei, who was taking off the next day. I had a hard time sleeping again. It’s hard sleeping by myself in the same room as an attractive female—one of those things you think you could get over as you mature, but I don’t think I’ll ever change.

Danjiri Festival
Now Playing: Martin Sexton...so sexy
We had Danjiri festival last week, which is probably the most famous festival in Osaka, located mere blocks from my current residence. It consists of large packs of Japanese people pulling these huge, ornately carved wooden caravans. The festival has it’s origins in harvest, so I assume the carts originally carried food, but now they carry drunk Japanese men playing drums, flute and dancers on the roof, going break-neck speed around corners. It’s common for someone to die each year, although no one did this year. I thought that was a joke when I first heard it—why would they continue something that killed…it’s Japan. It’s hard to explain why it’s so cool, but it is.

I actually got to pull one of the floats for a while—there’s like 50 or more people pulling on ropes that extend for like 50 meters. The corners are the only time they go really fast—they stop, line up the pullers around the corner, and then scream, “soorya!” to the drum beat, which is just a 4-4 time beat with three quarter note beats and a rest, like a horse galloping.

Anyway, this story has a soap opera part to it. Here goes.

So there’s this girl, (that I don’t have a crush on, come on guys) and she had a boyfriend when she came to Japan—I’m still trying to figure out these people that do this. I saw it happen in college and now. You know, if you want to give the long distance relationship an honest shot, I respect that, but some people don’t even try, and that’s just cruel. Why don’t you just play volleyball with the dude’s heart…SPIKE!

Okay, so like I said, there’s this girl, Miss A, and she decided after the incredible resilience of living without male companionship for three weeks to ditch her man of a year for this clueless asshole, Mr. E. For all of my women readers out there, which I’m guessing are just my mom and grandma, I have a question: why do girls like guys that are ass holes? Is it really that attractive? Because I can definitely be an ass hole, but I’ve always though it was harder to, you know, think of others, try to make people feel good about themselves, help people, and, I don’t know, not convince a girl to leave her year-long relationship so that I can have sex with her for a couple weeks and move on, which is what the gentleman Mr. E did.

Of course, they’re both at the Danjiri festival together because they’re mature adults. We see the festival, hold some crazy small chicks that they sell for some reason, ate some omlet-soba noodle thing (the food here is really creative), and throw back a few beers. One of my friends here kept successfully bumming beer off the Danjiri beer carts—dude’s haul their own beer and other alcoholic drinks. The guys with a beer in one hand, a cigarette and a hand on the rope pulling the float are my favorite.

When I first met Mr. E, I immediately disliked him. I immediately dislike a lot of people, but I usually come around after a while. But he had such a foul aura of such oppressive arrogance, with this wooden smile over his face, the kind of person you usually see selling used cars or drugs or running an illegal pornography business. It was like when Harry Potter met Luscious Malfoy—I wanted to hit him from the first time I saw him.

So we do the scene, and then Miss A wants to go home and doesn’t know where the train station is, so being the nice guy that I am, I offer to show it to her. So I take her back to the station, and, for someone who went to Harvard, somehow managed to talk about the most superficial aspects of our experience here. At least she’s a very attractive girl, or it would have been a wasted twenty minutes.

So I get back and Mr. E says, “Oh, you’re back.” His wooden smile has been replaced by something more genuine—an expression of anger.

“Did you think I was going home, or something?”

“No, you just didn’t want me to walk her back is all.”

“Hey, where’s this attitude coming from? I was just trying to be nice,” I said, our other friends were starting to notice now. There were maybe eight other people. We were standing at the side of the street while a Danjiri passed by, the drums thumping their gallop-beat. They have lanterns on the front of them at night, so they were really a spectacular sight.

“And I can’t be nice?” Mr. E said back, a sneer growing out of his own insecurity over his sensitivity.

“I’m sure you could be very nice. Why don’t you start by buying me a beer?”

“Fuck you, man,” he creatively responded.

“Okay, I’ll buy you a beer. You can get the next one,” I get surprisingly calm when I get into arguments over nothing. Quite the opposite of when I feel I’ve been offended.

“You got something to say to me? Just say it. Don’t be a pussy.”

“I already said it: I’ll buy you a beer. What else could a man want, other than a free beer?” I was starting to falter here, and my wit failed me.

“Fucking pussy,” he repeated himself. He likes to talk about female anatomy. He walked away from me at this point. I’m sure he could have hurt me in a fight, even though I’m a good head taller than him, but I didn’t let it escalate to that.

Mr. M and I met up with two Japanese girls we’d met earlier—and yes, they’re just friends. Mr. M has a lady in America and the girls both have significant others as well. We took a lot of “for fun” pictures, as is the Japanese tradition, and ended up at a bar. I was really tired, and no one seemed to be interested in talking to me, as I wasn’t interested in talking, so I slipped off without saying anything and no one seemed to care. Usually I get a text message, as everyone has each other’s cell # here, but nothing. It takes a very strange person to enjoy talking with me, and so far, I haven’t met any in Japan.

I Was a Loser in High School, It's True
Now Playing: Perpetual Distortion (I made that band name up, is it real?)
This Japan story begins when I was in high school…

Whenever I get close to someone, I explain how I’m “not normally like this around most people.” I’m really a shy person, but if you manage to gain my trust—it’s not hard, then I jump out of my shell. Some people I trust in mere seconds--like the blogwriters I've linked too--Buckwalter, Aphelion Swing (did I spell that right?) and that Flock Report chick something. Some of my relatives have tried for years but for some reason, I just can’t do it-I don't feel a connection. I feel bad about that, but I can only be me (myself).

I tell people I was very unpopular, shy and disliked in high school, but no one ever believes that, knowing me now. The truth is, it took me a very long time to get used to expressing myself verbally, and I’m still working on that. I’ve always been confused about people, mainly why people are mean. I still don’t get it, but I’ve at least learned to fight back now, even though I don’t like doing it. Trust me, you don’t want to get me angry—thanks to learning from my lawyer sister and bull-headed father, I can get pretty intense. It’s a side of me I hide until I turn on the offense like a switch—and only when I know I can win. I’m kind of a fascist in that sense, but I know my boundaries, which are very forgiving and reasonable, but some things I don’t jive with, “you know,” to quote my sister. She says “you know,” after every sentence. And sometimes introduces sentences with “but don’t you think that.” I change it up and say, “You probably don’t think that…but I do.”

So, given that I was a shy, pushover in high school, I take on the complete opposite roll when I stroll into school now. I wouldn’t call it acting—I’m just being what I always wished I could be, but never had the confidence to pull it off. I had all these intense feelings when I was younger—I wanted to express myself humorously or righteously, but never knew how. My older sister taught me how to be funny, and my younger sister taught me how to be sensible. My parents, well, they bought me food.

I always wanted to be in a band in high school, but I knew I wasn't cool enough, and no in my small circle of my friends liked my music. I liked a lot of pop punk and rock--Weezer, Smashing Pumpkins, Gold Finer. They liked Paul Simon, U2 and Pink Floyd--and they're good too, but my youth was better captured by the former.

By fluke, as I was just leaving school to get my running shorts so that I could run with the track team, I stopped to talk with a student. In the course of our short conversation, I found out she was in the school’s pop music club. I’d been trying to find out whom the hell I talk to about this, so I asked her to come and get me in the English department after school. She smiled and said she would.

So I came to the music club and I was surprised to see that it was mostly student run, and despite some of the non-conformist attitude that the students have, they cooperated very well together. The way it works, I guess, is that they’re about four different bands, and they all split up rehearsal time, but they also hang out together some days, and just play.

I was very nervous about how I would be received into the goup, but I was touched that all the students welcomed me smiling. I expected everyone to ignore me and try to shy away. Not so, my friend, not so. One group did mostly Japanese pop covers, another did their own songs, and I fell in with a group that covered punk bands. They wrote down rehearsal times for me and tired to translate what they decided in their meeting. So I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to do, but I said I would learn the songs they’re going to practice—two Good Charlotte songs, two Lost Prophets songs, and two Avril Lavigne songs (sung by their one female singer). The kids are so great—in America, people who get into bands do it in garages, not at school, and try to exclude whomever they can. Here, it’s more like a party. I then taught some of the guys how to say, "rock out!" in a high falsetto.

I can’t express in words how excited I am to do this. I was floored when they said they liked some of my favorite American bands, and I’m glad it’s something I can share with them. Every now and then I find ways I can cross the language barrier, but in this way, with music, I can skip it altogether.

School Festival Preparation
Now Playing: Good Charlotte
Nothing says Japanese like plays packed with intense music, intense fight scenes, slapstick comedy, and intense, soap-opera-type scenes. That was my favorite part of bunkasai—or Kishikokosai, the school festival.

I had no idea what to expect for the festival. I knew there would be some kind of performances and things, but no one really gave me much description other than, “that weekend is the school festival, so make sure you come to school like a normal work day.”

As I later found out, mostly through my predecessor JET ALT and mentor, K-sensei, the students get really excited for this time of year. It’s the playtime before the storm of studying for midterms and college entrance exams. Since they wanted students to focus on their studying over summer vacation, for the first time, the school prohibited practice until two weeks before, when they let students off of afternoon classes every day so that they could get ready for the big show. Since I had less to do, I wandered the school, trying to disturb as many students as possible.

I was brave enough to leave the English department under the newfound power I have—that I am not a direct employee of the school, but of the board of education. In orientation they always preached about how you design “your own JET experience,” but I didn’t really know what it meant. It’s clearer to me now—I’m not an ordinary classroom teacher.
My job, really, is to get students to speak the language of my country, which they have a college level vocabulary in, but a primary school level in speaking. I can’t emphasize this irony enough. I’ll ask someone, “What time is school over?” and they’ll look at their friend inquisitively while I wait for an answer that won’t come. On the other hand, while I was watching students perform one of their plays, I asked what one of the characters was, and they answered, “A Japanese traditional monster.” To extend this thread, when a teacher asked a student to explain the word, “suppose,” the student answered, “Infer.” I don’t even think I could infer the right meaning of, “infer.”

So, while some of the academically focused teachers, one in particular, try to trap me in projects that involve me writing complex things to teach to students that will only put them to sleep, I’ve decided I’m taking over the school. As I understand it, the only way I can get fired, is if I stop going to class or seriously violate the teacher code of conduct, so I’m redefining my work. I’m going to start going to calligraphy club and pop music club, where I will learn traditional Japanese and Japanese pop music respectively.

It’s funny how I found out there was a rock/pop club at the school—I stopped some kid who had a guitar in the hall and asked him where he played.
“Popu curabu.”
“Pop club?
“Unn.”
Why was I not told immediately upon my arrival that there was a rock club? I knew there was a classical guitar club and a jazz band club, but I didn’t expect a rock club at the most academic school in the area.


Anyway, with my new job description, dictated by myself, I started hanging out in school. One of the English teachers encouraged it—I like this English teacher. “It makes the students so happy!” she said. “And they can practice their English.” Finally, someone who realizes I’m worth more than playing the role of a tape recorder, reading scripts in class.
I can’t say how touched I was at the willingness of students to talk to me and get to know me even though they were crazy busy trying to get ready for their festival. After teaching in America, where students try to avoid making eye contact with me in the halls, I’m overwhelmed at how easy it is to make a connection here—I just say, “hello,” to someone and they come over smiling, ready to tell me their life story or whatever else I’ll stand for. I really enjoyed this new, “hanging out” job, and I started staying at school past my required 4:30 clock-out, until students left the school.

I started my hangout one day by going into the cafeteria. I sat down with random groups of students and tried learning their names. This is the most painful part of my job—the names are impossible to remember, and when I forget them or call a student the wrong name, which I almost always do, they are either angry or visibly let down. I try so hard to remember, but having been born from hippie parents, I understandably have a fraction of the short-term memory cells as a hormal bruman nain.

In the cafeteria, I mostly just ask simple questions like “What are you eating?” “Is that your boyfriend?” “How are you?” When students are asked the latter, they always answer “I’m fine, thank-you.” I’ve made a kind of running joke out of it where in class I yell the question and they yell back the same answer. So in the cafeteria, I told a group of boys to each answer differently and gave them their answers, “Awesome,” “Great,” “good,” “okay,” “all right,” “not so good,” “tired,” “I’m dying,” and “I hate you!” I ran through the list, and at the last answer I pretended to be startled and walked away. Thus go my typical interactions, although that’s probably one of my better improvisations.

I fell in love with one class in particular, that was practicing their play in the courtyard one day. I made a very important decision, that goes against the teachings I had from Mr. C, my mentor teacher from Minnesota. The boy students are constantly testing my authority since the last ALT was very friendly with the students. As a teacher in America, you have to be a disciplinarian as well, but here I noticed a very distinct difference between the student-teacher relationship. They are much, much closer here. Teachers are not people you try to avoid eye-contact with in the halls. After classes are over, it’s common to see students and teachers hanging out outside. They’re not talking about the day’s lesson or when the next test is, they’re just chewing the fat like people do. The students are tremendously respectful of the teachers, but that doesn’t keep them from being able to talk like good friends.

And so I relaxed my iron discipline fist back to allow for some immaturity, which may have been the wrong move, I don’t know.

The class I watched was doing a twist on a traditional Japanese story, “Peach Boy.” The longer I stayed, the more students tried to talk to me and explain the complexity behind the plot and characters, a lot of the jokes and subtleties lost in translation, of course, but that only made it that much more mysterious and admirable to me.

The real miracle behind all this, is that the students took almost complete ownership of the festival—they organized and rehearsed on their own time and of their own motivation, and they didn’t slack off. They worked hard and had a good time. They respectfully watched and helped when they weren’t in scenes and cracked jokes with each other on the sidelines. There may have been some social abuse, but it wasn’t apparent to me—all students were included. They worked together in their homeroom classes without purposely excluding less popular students as would be the case in America. This kind of festival would never go on with such success in America, not a chance.

My Predecessor
Now Playing: Damion Rice
I rang the doorbell of an apartment door that’s in the same complex as mine and K-sensei answered the door, smiling and saying, “Hey,” drawing out the vowel. She’s my predecessor, having been the ALT at my school for three years prior to my arrival over a month ago. It’s a complete coincidence that we’re in the same complex.

She’s a good-looking woman of part Japanese and part Chinese ethnicity. Over the next hour she goes through her things asking me if I want them. She has a Winnie the Pooh bathroom set, a desk that’s too small, a broken futon, and a host of other random things that I nod my head to.

We head out on bikes to get some food—she shows me a really good omelet place in the mall. These are Japanese omelets though, so that means there’s like fifty or sixty different kinds. I get one with some kind of vegetables in the middle and a white sauce, on Koko-sensei’s recommendation.

We have a good talk about her experience teaching and she was very open about her opinions and everything, under some prodding from me of course, but I find people genuinely like to talk about themselves so they usually don’t need much encouragement. She had a lot of trouble working with a certain H-sensei, who blew up at her one day, a year-and-half into her 3-year stint here. “No more Karate! You have lessons to prepare!” He then cancelled all his lessons with her and refused to speak with her. There was nothing in particular that set him off other than her going to karate practice that day, which she had done for the last year-and-a-half, but we surmised it was an accumulation of things. One, she was a stronger kind of woman—you know, the kind that can convince you the world is flat if they have at you long enough, and H-sensei wasn’t used to that. Two, she challenged his translations and things in class, and he being quite arrogant about his English knowledge, is not a good idea. Lastly, she had taken such a rough class load, larger than any other teacher in the department, that she was beginning to garnish a lot of respect very quickly, which, combined with her Japanese ability, began to threaten H-sensei’s ability.

It’s hard to believe that someone so young could be so good a teacher, but even more unbelievable is how someone as experienced as H-sensei could go on without realizing how lucky we are to work with young people, or as K-sensei put it better than I’ve ever heard or read in any textbook, to “learn from the students.”

Self Help Books Are Killing Philosophy
Now Playing: No. Typing.
SELF-HELP

Every famous poet’s work
I’ve ever read contains
A poem about poetry.
I’ve always thought it was
Arrogant to glorify your own craft,
But as in many things I’ve said,
I find I’ve become a hypocrite.
In fact, I think it’s an important
Part of manhood to admit that
You contradict yourself. Maybe not.

I read a poem that a friend
Showed me, taken from a
Self-help book. By the way,
Self help books are one of the
Most brilliant marketing decisions
Of our time. Some press realized that
People in a philosophical crisis will
Buy anything. Fortune tellers have
Known this for years. The poem

Gave good advice on nearly
Every level of human life,
“Don’t compare yourself with others…
…Nurture relationships…Love, teach, share…”
As if the author were trying to conquer
Every corner of wisdom in one,
Fell pen stroke—or, rather, several
Keystrokes on the word processor.

It was good advice, but then, I’ve
Never been able to take purely
Good advice—not honestly, anyway.
I don’t think poets and philosophers
Would have begun writing if
Cliff Notes could teach you
All about life and death, although

My ‘A’ in high school English
Would tell you differently. To pass
On wisdom, you have to
Experience it—read Blake, Shakespeare,
Or make a stupid mistake and try
To figure out why it was a
Stupid mistake. The good advice
That would have you avoid that
Mistake won’t teach you why
It was such a stupid mistake,
So you make the mistake at the
Risk of becoming an idiot, but

Not an ignorant idiot at least.
This may not sound like good
Advice, but that’s why you can
Take it. And also why children
Eat sweets when their
Mothers warn them about
Cavities; why boys still break
Girls’ hearts; why I keep
Getting my manuscripts back
In the mail with words of
Discouragement. And why
I made the stupid mistake of
Moving across the sea as far
As possible from the one
Person who made me want
To follow all the good
Advice I’ve ever gotten.

No one is going to Abiko station
I haven’t had that much teaching experience, little bits here in there, most of my working conception of what it means to teach coming from working with the best science teacher I’ve ever come across, Mr. C back in Minnesota. I still have a lot to learn about teaching—no one can ever be a perfect teacher, I don’t think there is such a thing. All my textbooks and professors in school talked about things like “professional development,” “student motivation,” and “classroom management,” but they all seemed like (and I say this knowing my professors may very well be reading this) artificial names that don’t really capture the elusive art of teaching.

I don’t mean to discredit the creditable institution I attended or teaching texts, not at all. I think teaching people to be teachers is not always possible, and I can’t really see improving the program that exists. A teacher’s education begins with their own attitude and approach to life. I don’t think there’s a certain “personality type” that will make the best teacher, although some may have an advantage.

The most important thing about being a teacher, is caring for students, not trying to impress them, not trying to force feed them material, not being their friend, and definitely not being their enemy. Everyone has their definition of a good teacher—someone who inspires students to learn, someone who helps them get better grades, someone who helps them decide what they want to do with their life. I’ve read all kinds of fluffy, flowery stuff like this that make you feel like you just watched a Julia Roberts chick flick. My classmates at teacher school came up with all kinds of tear-jerking responses, hoping to be granted recommendation for licensure. These are good definitions, and if teachers can actually do these things then I agree: they are good. But it’s much simpler than this.

A good teacher makes a student less afraid to grow up. Everyone’s afraid of growing up. Even the kids that act like they’re 30 or 40 hide behind a mask of maturity so that they can pretend they’re not growing up. Others, myself included, pretend they’ll never grow up.

That said, there aren’t a lot of good teachers. Most of mine made me more afraid to grow up, but looking back, I remember there were maybe three that made me think I could make a pretty decent adult, and two of them were actually licensed professionals in the public school.

On the JET program, there aren’t a lot of these people, but I found one yesterday, and it wasn’t someone who I thought it would be. Previously, at a language institute that we went to, a place that they send diplomats and such for Japanese language training, we had what I called, “language camp.” It was pretty much a hotel with classrooms. Very nice place. Some idiots with JET got drunk and trashed the karaoke room there. I was angry.

As a JET, we’re representatives of our respective countries, and it’s easy to make a negative impression. And given the current international perception of America, that’s not good timing.

We’re also representatives of the program we’re on. JETs are paid by the people’s taxes, so when we’re off at language camp, I would have expected people to do what I was doing—studying in my room until I fell asleep.

The next week I worked hard at school, trying to figure out what I would be doing this year, teaching some more lessons—the third year students start early, and the rest of the students a week later—and trying to figure out Japanese.

That Saterday, I got up early, made some coffee, studied Japanese, went for a run, and completely forgot that I had a meeting that day, where I would be assisting with interviewing new teachers. When I got back from my run, I had five missed calls from the same number, and that kind of jogged my memory—pun intended.

I called the number, spoke with my board of education supervisor, and he was upset, but not that upset. It was 9:30 at the time, and I was to have met him at 9:00 with the other 10 JETs. The Japanese value punctuality almost more than the actual work you do after you’ve been punctual, so it was not a good idea. I could have made up an excuse—I’m actually much more comfortable doing that, but I told the truth. It’s a strange habit I’ve acquired—whenever it can benefit me to tell the truth, say, about something I’m good at or something, I usually make something up. On the other hand, if it can benefit me to lie, like in this situation, which I’m perfectly capable of, I always tell the truth. I don’t know how I got that habit—it’s the exact opposite of what a successful person would do.

Luckily, this incident was with the board of education, not my specific school, and with no one I work with there, so my coworkers wouldn’t think any less of me. However, it’s good to keep the board of education on my side, since they directly employ me. Of course, I’d really have to get them angry to get fired, since it takes a year to recruit a new JET.


At the next meeting I had, the following Monday, I made a point to dress nice and come really early, as to make my apologies in person. I left on a 7:30 train, and this was my first experience in the real rush hour of Osaka. The train was already full when it arrived at my stop, which is still a half hour from downtown—not a good sign.

It’s really the most comfortable crowd I could ever imagine being in, but it’s difficult to describe what it’s like to ride Japanese trains. As I’ve said before, everything in Japan is faster and smaller and has internet access, and the trains are no exception. I’ve got to watch my head going in, and the arm holds dangling form the ceiling are at about nose height.

I think one of the reasons trains have flourished in Japan is that they fit right in with traditional culture. I do still have a very simplistic conception of Japanese culture, but I’ve noticed a common thread through it all. The martial arts—a Karate kick is brutally efficient, terribly dangerous, perfectly in control, and requires intense concentration and talent. Swinging a Samurai sword—the same thing. The food is organized in an artful as well as utilitarian manner, as are the houses, and the flower arranging also has a similar artful organization. A place for everything and everything in it’s place, fits Japan, as well as the right tool for the job. People’s uniforms are tailored specifically for what they want to do—whether it’s go for a run, go to work, practice karate or go to a concert. There’s a kind of intense deliberation, organization and efficiency to everything, and all of this can be summed up in a train ride—it gets as many people as possible, as fast as possible to the same places at predictable times. The 7:30 train comes at 7:30 and it goes where it says it will. And it’s crowded as hell.

I usually give up my seat to an old woman, so I stand when I ride the train anyway, but it’s usually not this crowded. People fall asleep sitting down and standing up, mostly the businessmen. They will sometimes fall into the person next to them, but they don’t do anything. If they did that in New York, they’d get thrown out the window. I suspect they don’t wake the person who’s drooling on their suit here not out of fear of them getting angry, but out of kindness or sympathy.

People play with their cell phones—people of all ages. Grown men listen to pop music with their iPods, young girls text message their boyfriends on their cells, some read newspapers or novels, or do one of these in vain and fall asleep. About half of everyone stares at the floor or out the window.

No one speaks. Maybe there’s one pair of old women that chat quietly, but that will be it. The announcer’s monotone of the next stop, the ka-chunk rhythm of the car and the high pitch of the breaks are the only sounds.

It’s hard to keep balance and I try all kinds of postures to keep my footing since I don’t want to hold the handhold dangling from the ceiling—that would defeat the challenge. About half the standing people do like me, at the expense of occasionally making a footing adjustment here and there. My back continually hits the person behind me, but I don’t bother to check to see who it is.

More people cram in at each stop, and despite the air conditioning in the car, body heat from all around makes me sweat. I had my pocket dictionary out to try and learn some new phrases or quiz my memory, which is pretty awful, especially with Japanese. Everything still sounds the same “Takatakataka…” If you’re in someone’s way when they’re trying to get on or off, they won’t say anything, and will just try to slip past you unnoticed, but I try to keep my lumbering frame out of the way.

I’ve heard stories about women being harassed on the trains regularly. One of my better acquaintances here said that the same man harassed his Japanese girlfriend’s close friend every day on the way back from work for a year. From another friend, I heard that he was riding the last train back from the city and this drunk dude was slouching over on the girl next to him. This happens all the time on a crowded train—at any time on the train, probably half the people are sleeping or dozing, so people lean into each other’s shoulders, chests and laps. The drunk guy would get off at each stop, look around, and then come back in and sit down right next to the same girl. She tried moving, but he would just sit down almost on her without saying a word. That would never happen where I come from. The girl would either, a. Smack the guy b. mace him—every woman carries a can of mace now, or at least hair spray c. lecture him on woman’s rights d. explain how painful childbirth is, or e. ask him if he wants to just be friends. Of course women resort to these defense lines on the slightest display of interest, as has been my experience. I’ve experienced items a-e on regular occasions, the only provocation being a look in their direction or asking them if they’ve gained weight. If I wanted to experience items a-e, I’d pull out one of my “A”-lines on asking women out, like, “Hey, why are you walking that way, my car is over here,” or, “Are you tired? Because you’ve been running through my mind all day.” I actually don’t use lines, if I’m seriously interested in a girl. In that case I usually avoid eye contact and leave the area as soon as possible. So far, it hasn’t been very effective.

I got off at Tenguchi station and made my way to the subway. I stared at the map for awhile, which looks like a colored spider web layed on top of a pile of snakes. I figure out where I want to go and buy a ticket. As I go through the gate, there’s the strangest sensation that something’s strange—I get this feeling here and there in Japan, like when I discover still moving squid in the package at the grocery store. Fresh means something else here.

The sound of moving feet and tickets clicking through the machines filled the station—a kind of emptiness with a clicking beat. It finally hit me—no one was talking. Half the people ran for a stairway, while others just walked fast. I had no idea where to go—I’m illiterate here and I haven’t been this way. It reminded me of when I was little and got lost in the grocery store, looking for mom. Instead of mom, I found a map on the wall and stared at it a good ten minutes. At last a Japanese angel stopped and asked in perfect English, “Do you need help?”

I had just figured out my route, which was a little less complex than the plumbing in New York, but any man who is of my sexual orientation does not refuse help of any kind from beautiful women.

“Take this subway. Down these stairs on the left,” she said.

“Ah, thank you,” I said as she turned and literally ran down the steps with everyone else that knew what they were doing. It’s still a strange feeling to have so many people dressed in business suits running past me. I looked back to find the woman who’d helped me, but she had disappeared in the crowd, just like the 1920’s novels say. I barely took my eyes from her and she was gone. I got on the first subway car I found, standing while everyone faces forward, staring at anything but another person. The loneliest place might be a crowd, especially when everyone is going somewhere you’re not.

Herding Foreigners
The train station is always busy, but during rush hours it’s really busy. I headed into Osaka with three of my fellow English teachers from Kishiwada, my best acquaintances so far. The trains are air-conditioned and if you don’t mind making an old woman stand, you can get a comfortable seat. Of course, I do mind making an old woman stand, unlike most of the Japanese youth here, who fall asleep on the train or don’t seem to notice that there’s a woman who’s about five minutes from dying several inches from his knees.

So we stand. We found our way to orientation very easily and sat through some of the same old. The Japanese formalities aren’t that fun, but the arrogant and usually unhelpful speeches by the experienced foreign English teachers were not much better.

One of the presenters tried making some lame jokes, about how his girlfriend was controlling. One of my friends just said, “psh!” audibly.

Of course, there were a lot of successful jokes by the presenters, but I don’t really appreciate those anymore. More and more I notice the polite type of humor in speeches, and I don’t find it funny or amusing or creative or insightful, just a waste of time. More and more, I appreciate people who are brief, concise and sincere. I even get annoyed with myself when I try to make amusing speeches, which in hindsight often seem haughty or even cruel. Humor is overdone. Everyone claims to like it, but no one really understands it.

Afterwards, we went to a bar for dinner and social time. The longer this “program” goes on, the more it feels like freshman year of college, and a lot of people certainly act like that. It seems that there aren’t many expectations for us to act professional, and people pick up on that.

At the first bar, we mostly talked about how little we know about ordering food in Japan. I had my phrase book, and tried my best to help people, but one of the guys there kept trying to use English and body language, even cutting me off mid-sentence, which really bothered me. He’s one of the guys that I rode into town with, Mr. C, and he seems to enjoy being in control more than anything else. I think he’s just getting impatient with being in a foreign country, and I think he’s going to have a hard time adjusting to the culture. Control freaks can adapt to new cultures, I think, but lazy control freaks just get frustrated, like Mr. C.

Another person, Ms. A, seems to be doing all right adjusting. She likes the outdoors, and is one of the more sane people here. But she had me try to order soba noodles with no mayonnaise or eggs, which I did, somehow, but she needs to relax the eating pickiness before she can really enjoy Japan. I’ve been down the vegetarian road myself, but I think social priorities should come before diet preferences. Some of the most annoying people I’ve met in my life are of the vegan or animal rights crowd, who seem to put animal rights above those of humans. I’ve got no problem with that, but they seem to be doing it in order to shame everyone else, instead of out of their own ethical sensibility.

The next bar we went to was the Blow Bar. I don’t know about the name, but the place is nothing special. Our advisor, one of the English teachers, who is kind of counselor/advisor for the English teachers in the area organizes social events like this. I’m pretty sure he gets some money from the bar for dragging a bunch of foreigners there—there’s lots of foreigners that get all or part of their cash flow from being bar/club promoters I’m finding out. I think he took the job as the advisor in order to make cash this way.

The bar is full of loud, lonesome foreigners. It’s funny what alcohol and being starved for social contact in your native language will do to people. The way people approach you is completely different—like you have been working with them for years, but never really got to go out together, when you really don’t have much to talk about.

I got up to get drinks for people, which is still a challenge in Japanese, but I did. Everyone I got drinks for paid up except for this larger girl I was sitting with, who I’d met for the first time that night. Everyone else I knew.

When I told her it was 500 yen, she said, “I’ll get you on the next one.”

She could have actually asked if that was okay to do that, or actually not assumed that I was going to drink anymore, or that I was leaving soon, but she didn’t.

“All right,” I said, reluctantly. I was sick that night, so I didn’t want to drink much.

I was taking a while to finish my beer, and she quickly finished hers.

“I’m already done, and you’ve barely finished yours. What’s the matter?”

“I’m kind of sick, so I’m trying to pace myself.”

“You’re a lightweight!” she said.

“No, I just don’t want to drink a lot tonight.”

She brings someone else into it. “I just finished this beer in the time it took him to drink a quarter of his. Can you believe that?”

“Why is this a contest?” I asked.

“You pacing yourself,” Ms. A asks.

“No, I’m a little sick, so I don’t want to come down hard, you know?”

“You better finish that before I finish this next beer. You drink less than my girlfriend,” she said.

“Thank you. I feel much better now,” I said. At this point, I stopped talking to her, and listened to other people talk about how they wanted to climb Mt. Fuji. I could tell that girl—I forgot her name—was insecure about something, and I thought it was her weight at first. But since she brought up that she was gay, that puts the whole competition with me in a new perspective. I’ve had a few gay friends, but gay or not, I can’t stand people that hostile just because of prejudice. It makes me sick inside.

People drank a lot there. I left my heavy drinking days in college, for the most part. I don’t enjoy getting heavily drunk or recovering from it the next day.

One of the better-looking girls in the crowd, probably the cutest here was dancing with a guy in a more than suggestive manor.

“That guy’s a doosh-bag,” Mr. Mi said. I don’t know the guy, but I can tell just from looking at him, that he’s an airhead. A wooden smile and too much attention given to his own body-building, a typical Arizona college student.

“Well, they’re not wasting any time,” I said.

“I can’t believe she’s doing that. You know Ms. Al has a boyfriend, right?” He said.

“Really? Well, that’s not going to last long.”

“I don’t know, I think she’s just flirting, but maybe she’ll break it off soon.”

“Lot of that going around,” I said. The long distance relationship seems to be popular here. I think it’s because people have a poor conception of the seriousness or meaningfulness in their relationships. Especially people like Ms. Al who can obviously date very good looking people, that kind of clouds over the emotional connection in the relationship. I’ve already seen a lot of relationships caving in here. I don’t know if it’s because people are week, they’re realizing there’s other fish in the sea, or if they really didn’t like whomever they were with.

Mr. Mi says that a girl he was talking with said I should be kicked in the head because she thought I was ignoring her. I was staring at the floor when a girl came over to meet me and the two guys I was with because I was sick and really warn out. It always intrigues me when someone says they don’t like me, so I go over and talk to her. I have a pretty pointless conversation that involves her spitting out ideology on appreciating other cultures. People love talking about how progressive they think, but never about the progressive things they’ve done. She seemed to think she was a saint for touring China and seeing the Great Wall. “

How about working with AIDS patients in Africa or leper colony in Indonesia?” I asked her.
“Yeah, I think that helps too, but I’m not the kind of person to do that,” she said.

Well, I’d had enough of that, so we snuck out before most of the people. I forgot my stuff in the bar and went back to get it, while my fellow Kishiwada friends went ahead. Some friends.
I got on the wrong train on the way back—it was a limited express, which consts extra, so I switched trains at the first stop, somehow avoiding the extra charge. Then I got on the local train, which makes about 30 stops on the way home, instead of five or six, but I made it. The train car was almost completely empty. At each stop one or two or no one would get off. The two men on the train were sitting on the other side of the train. When the train conductor announced the city name, one of the men roused an older man who had fallen asleep. He repeated the name of the city to him, which I couldn’t hear, and helped him up and off the train car. The old man staggered out and onto the platform, looking confused. I wondered how the hell he got on the train by himself in the first place. The other man got off before me too at another stop, leaving me and the empty train car. Japan is a very crowded place, but if you wait long enough, you’ll get your moment of peace, but it won’t last long, so be ready for it because it will sneak up on you. The train car went shalack, shalack, shalack, and the roofs of houses blurred in the window, and I stared for a long time.

Summer lessons
Students are always in class on time, usually before the teacher is there, and it’s summer vacation. The third year students come to school for supplementary English classes, which is a large portion of the university entrance exams. Kishiwada high school is the most difficult school to get into in the area, so students that go here usually try to get into Tokyo or Kyoto Universities, the Harvard and Oxford of Japan. It gets intense, which is why there’s a high suicide rate.

Just this morning, when I was stamping my hanko in the attendance book, a teacher remarked that a former graduate had died, as was written on the whiteboard in front of me, which I of course could not read. “But how…” she murmured in English. Another English teacher stared hesitantly at the whiteboard behind her. I didn’t know what to do, so I just kept quiet. I was told by a friend that if someone dies, and they don’t say how, you never ask because it could have been a suicide.

Students come to class in uniform—boys wear white button down shirts and navy blue pants (navy blue is big here), and girls where a very light, light blue shirt with blue plaid skirts. Everyone leaves their shoes at the entrance and puts on sandals. The sandals don’t fit me, but I try.

I went around class checking to see if students had done their homework, which I can’t help with very much because the majority of the problems involve translation from Japanese, so I can only say if it makes sense or not.

I went up to a student that hadn’t done his homework and make a confused gesture. “Where’s your homework? You didn’t do it?” It’s not actually required, since these are supplementary lessons. I point to the student next to him who has the assignment completed.

“Here we go,” I said, “He is a good student.” I speak slowly and clearly. It sounds funny to me still, but I force myself. If I were to speak like that to a native speaker, they’d probably think I was being sarcastic.

When class finally starts, H-sensei has them do some exercises to wake up, and today they are particularly strange. First he asks me if I know any that they could do, and I shake my head. He has hold their hands with all their fingertips touching the fingertips of their other hands, and then twiddle each finger around another. To my surprise, all the students do this, although I can’t see that this will help get their blood pressure up.

The material they’re studying is very difficult. The text consists of different essays, about 500 words each, with advanced grammar and idiomatic phrases. The topics range from communication among bees to culture shock. Today, we’re reading an essay on how history repeats itself.

First, I read a paragraph, all the students following closely in their books. I sound like a news castor in slow motion.

As soon as I finish, H-sensei says, very quickly, “Ok, thankyouverymuch!” similar to how the Japanese quickly say, “Arigato gozaimasu!”

Now, H-sensei dissects the text, reading and translating every part as the students follow. Each student has a thoroughly prepared case of pencils, erasers, rulers, pens, and whatever else one needs to write, in addition to an electronic translator that looks like a small laptop. They look like architects. They underline phrases in different colors and make notes on the side. They use a ruler to underline—no sloppy lines or highlighter.

H-sensei periodically asks me for a synonym of a word, or what the difference between two words are. For example, he asked me what the difference between “adjust” and “adapt” were. Well, there’s a difference, but I don’t think the students really need to know, or will remember. But I explain it, which is met by a, “Ah, yes, yes!” and he writes the words on the board. Two students are sleeping on their desks. When I read the next passage, I pace around the classroom and wander near the sleeping students.

H-sensei always likes to surprise me by asking me to explain something that we didn’t discuss beforehand. I’m pretty good at improvising, but it’s helpful to script things out beforehand in simple English, so I don’t really appreciate these surprises. He asks me to explain why “the past is not dead,” as it explains in the text. I think for a second, then grab a student’s dictionary.

“This is your favorite book,” I tell H-sensei. He nods. “You like it very much. I want this book, but you won’t let me have it.” Then I point behind H-sensei and say, “Look! There!” and then grab the book from him. He makes a sound of defeat and the students laugh. “So, then, next week, you get another book that I want. And I see you again,” I say, walking up to him. “Look! Over there!” I say again, but H-sensei has of course wised up to the trick. I make a futile grab for the book, and the students laugh again. “So, what happened?” I ask H-sensei.

“I learned a lesson,” he answers.

“You remembered the past.”

“Yes.”

“So would you say that the past is important?”

“Yes. Ok, thankyouverymuch!”

Late, he asks me to explain how history repeats itself. I write “past” on the board and next to it I write, “1988-1992.” Then I write, “the present.” I go up to one of the students I know and ask him who was president of The U.S. during 1998. He says, barely audible, “Bush.” I asked him to repeat it, holding my hand to my ear. Japanese students hate repeating themselves, but he does it. “Bush,” I said, repeating it louder for the rest of the class. “What about now? In the present?” I ask another student. “Bush,” she says, barely audibly. “Ah, so, would you say that history repeats itself?” No answer. I ask the question more slowly. “Yes.” H-sensei translates into Japanese and there are a few chuckles. For the most part, students only laugh at the more obvious and physically based humor though.
Japanese students don’t speak English, for the most part. There are a few talkative types, but they are very rare. The entrance exams focus almost exclusively on reading and writing, with a small portion of listening. So students don’t usually speak anything besides, “Good morning,” and “How are you?” If you ask them how they are, it’s always, “fine, thank you.”

After class, there’s a girl who has me check essays that she has written on the previous day’s topic. She tries to use very advanced grammar and words, and it takes me a while to figure out what she’s saying. I try to make as little corrections as I can, since I know the students get discouraged easily. “The dog could not eat food when owner adapt,” is one sentence. There’s so many possible ways to change this, but I don’t want to modify her word choice, since that would me discouraging. I don’t remember how I resolved it.

It’s lunch break, and there’s a lingering group of boys. I go up to them and say that I think they should stay in the classroom in study instead of going outside. They smile and say, “No, no.”
Outside, I go up to another group of boys, and ask them if they’d like me to read out of the book some more, so they can practice listening comprehension. I pace through their circle, they laugh and try to repeat words I say. I stop after a couple sentences. I chat with some of them a bit in my poor Japanese, which isn’t much worse than the level they can speak at. They ask some of the typical questions, “Do you eat sushi,” and “How tall are you?” I eat whole fishes, and I am 5 meters tall, are the usual answers.
“Ok, now I teach you some Japanese,” one of the boys says. He points to his groin and says, “chaka.” I’d been expecting this one, but hadn’t really thought how I’d answer. I’ve heard stories about students going to their foreign English Teachers and asking them if they have a “bigu diku?” or about their sexual habits, but it doesn’t really phase me. The best thing you can do is to command enough respect so that this doesn’t happen.

The boy repeats himself, trying to get popularity points with his other friends. I put my hand to my ear and say, “What? Louder. I can’t hear.”

He looks around to see if the group of girls nearby is within earshot. They are.

“Chiisai desu? Chiisai to iimasu?” I asked.

He shakes his head, “no, no!”

I had said, “It’s small? You said, ‘small?’” Thinking back, this may not have been the best answer, but it’s what I did, and I stand by it. That was enough English teaching for the day.