My First Day at Work

So you want to make a good impression on your first day of work, huh? I did. Wanted to, I mean. Sure I've been coming to this school for about two weeks, cheerfully popping in @ around 7:55 ( a full 15 minutes before work starts (which is expected)), sitting down at my desk for a couple hours and working diligently on, eh, well I guess I've been studying, but considering my title is "English teacher" I feel like Japanese student doesn't necessarily fit the job description. But with nothing else to occupy my time, that's what I've been up to since I've been here; lounging around an empty teachers' lounge, reading books, occasionally drinking the other teachers' things from the community fridge, and generally using up oxygen and freon (it's like 100 degrees in this city and the teacher's lounge has AC).

Yeah, I've been making a good impression. Every once in a while if somebody is here we'll exchange a word or two, they'll praise my Japanese, I'll smile demurely into the carpet and that'll pretty much be that. However, today was supposed to be the dawning of a new era, and I was supposed to be able to make my first impression for real.

Yep, today was the opening ceremony for a new term, a requisite part of the Japanese School year. You guys remember fighting back tears as Jean Carwile Mastellar showered us with some over-quoted Emily Dickinson some four odd years ago @ convocation? Yeah, well, here that happens three or four times every year. And it starts in middle school. But, hey, different country, different customs. And if it means I get to make a speech (which it did), then I'm all for it.

For such a momentous occasion I figured I had to put on my Sunday best, so I woke up early, brushed my teeth, pulled my Dad's old suit from the wardrobe, fastened my tie nice and tight, and stepped into the late August sunlight with the words of my upcoming speech fluttering meldiously against the walls of my skull like little puffs of silver wind through church bells. Hmm, I just realized I'm using a lot of Christian iconography here, which is totally inadvertant. But anyways.

However, true to form, this is where everything stopped going according to plan. Immediately upon stepping out of my apartment. And I had even eaten breakfast, too. The late August sun is pretty hot, it turns out, but being the mach man that I am I decided to ride my bike to work. Which was my biggest (and in fact my only) mistake. But it was enough. Have you ever tried biking twenty five minutes to work in a full suit in 95 + degree temperatures. Aesthetic perversions aside, it's a great way to turn yourself into a human stream of sweat. So here I am, lost (did I mention I didn't really know how to get there?), pitting out in ways even BK could never imagine, and starting to freak out. At this point, the fact that my blue suit was so dark it was sucking in matter and crushing it to nothingness within the cavernous maw of the sweat-stain opening up in my lower back was probably the least of my worries. I had to find where the shit I was. Ok, landmarks, that's what I need. Street signs, anything. I just gotta find that one, building, with the, kanji.... on it... o fuck i'm fucked.

My heart sinking to the squishy soles of my shoes, I took a left and started mentally preparing myself for the impeding loss of my pink (seppuku isn't quite an appropriate punishment for a first time offense), when, Holy Amida on a sunbeam I recognized something! Yes! A landmark! I knew where I was, and now I just had to concentrate on getting my butt to school as rapidly as possible.

I surged past the trundling groups of my soon-to-be-students like a speedboat past clutches of ducks, splashing them with twin streams of sweat that must have spread out behind me like a wake, and with about a minute to spare I made it to the teachers' lounge, my shirt transparent, my smile triumphant. Sure I had to introduce myself to all the teachers looking like I'd just gotten out of a swimming pool, and sure I gave my speech with my nipples clearly visible through my clinging white shirt, but, I rocked it all. And maybe now they will never forget Frisk-Sensei, the speedy, sweaty foreign wonder.