What a difference a day makes

As a white dude living and working in a Japanese school, you can never really be sure when something you do is going to cause a stir. Maybe one day word will get out that you've successfully managed to use the Japanese style toilet in the teacher's bathroom and you'll hear nothing for the rest of the afternoon except praise for your squatting abilities. Maybe another day you'll go to the gym during recess, make a lucky shot from the free throw line, and then be held up as the second-coming of Michael Jordan. I think one time I put my hood on during lunch with a class of Elementary schoolers (Japanese schools are butt-fuck cold in the winter and dress codes are lax, so I wear a hoodie a lot of the time), and the entirety of the class collapsed into hysterics and walked around hooded and cloaked, or, if they had neither, just with their shirts pulled up over their heads, for the rest of the meal. Sometimes, it's fully absurd the sort of things that impress Japanese kids, to leave the teachers out of the mix entirely. That being said, I was pretty sure that the hair cut I got yesterday was going to cause a real fuss today. Typed out, that sounds like potentially the most egotistical thing ever spoken, but consider the situation for a moment: 1) Japanese people pull absolutely zero punches when it comes to talking about physical appearances (cases in point: I've repeatedly been told by kids and adults alike that they want my eyelashes, the other day at the gym one of the trainers said I wasn't as fat as I used to be (asinine statement for multiple reasons), when my brother came to my school countless kids (boys and girls alike) came up to him and told him how attractive they thought he was, etc etc etc) 2) I stand out like a sore thumb 3) They make a fuss over me when I do nothing, and yesterday I did something that changed my look in dramatic fashion. When you put those things together, it means that you're in for some strange moments at school.

I got 'em. To be fair, though, I did look a lot different. For the last seven months or so these kids have been gotten used to looking at this sloppy, ugly-ass mug:



But then, out of the blue, I showed up to school looking like this entirely different and mildly threatening human being:



They didn't know how to respond. I mean, things are always awkward the day after you get a big haircut. It really stands out, you know, and people have to comment on it. "Wow, nice haircut." "You look really different." "It looks good." The English language is rife with such stock phrases to deal with just this situation. In Japan, apparently, the same rules don't apply. I guess in Japan you just scream, or stare at someone like they've just recently been shipped over from a different zoo, or maybe you run up to the recently shorn, vigorously shake their hand, and express your desire to be better friends in the future. All of those things happened to me today. A couple people tripped and fell in the hallway; one girl stood slackjawed staring at me in the teacher's room until she was ushered out; another girl asked why Chad's brother was back in Japan; a boy who has never shown me anything but mild hostility and disdain came over to tell me I looked great; another group of boys asked me where I got my hair cut and how much it cost; yet another boy stood in front of me and pretended to masturbate. To be fair, I'm pretty sure that boy has some serious mental disabilities and should probably be at a different school. But still, it was a pretty eventful day at Maruzuka Junior High. And even though I don't really want to admit it, I guess I have to say that I kinda liked it. Even though I said earlier that they make a fuss over a lot of little things I do, I guess I should say they used to. Recently I've been little more than a blip on anybody's radar, so it's nice to come roaring out of obscurity again, even if it means suffering a lot of awkward compliments. I'm pretty sure everything will be back to normal on Monday. Unless, of course, I decide to shave my head on Sunday.

That was Also Awkward

I'm really on fire these past few days, let me tell you. I went like six months without anything too outrageous happening to me (if you're willing to turn a blind eye to the occasional noisy boy-fire escape copulations I have to sit through), but in the past three days or so I've been awash in awkwardness. To be fair this one has been bubbling up for at least a few months, but what is usually a timid, momentarily flash of banshee-like uncomfortableness today grew confidant and smacked me right in the face with fully unanswerable questions and, potentially, a lawsuit. If we were in America, that is. If we were in America, however, this probably never would've happened. Nevertheless.

Let me give you some background here on this whole thang: amongst the generally rowdy, silly group of first-year boys I occasionally pall around with during passing periods, there is one King, or rather, one Court Jester with at least mild behavioral disorders, who is constantly doing really stupid, but hilarious, things. I don't really care about protecting his identity, but I ought to, so I'll compromise and call him Atsy. Almost his name. So, in his natural habitat, Atsy can often be seen walking around the little lounge area on the top floor of Maruzuka Middle School with his blue athletic shorts around his ankles, his brilliant yellow Tweety Bird boxers on full display, smiling like Dopey on a heavy dose of morphine and screeching like some demented osprey at people who happen to come close to him. He likes to alternately lie down or jump around on the benches in the lounge area with his shoes on, which, let me tell you, drives Japanese teachers fucking bananas. They hate that shit so much, and every day, pretty much without fail, you can find Atsy flopped face-down on the benches, his face reposing in a pool of sunlight, beaming like a spastic cherub as three or four teachers try their best to get him to sit in seiza and contemplate koan, or whatever it is Japanese kids are supposed to do during break time.

This kid pretty much hates studying in all forms, but he does like one almost-English sentence: "Do you like manko?" He asks me this on a very regular basis. He prances over to me all googly-eyed, his boxers flashing in the sun, and, "Do you like manko?" Then his brain explodes and he dissolves into paroxysms of insane laughter that, blessedly, mean I don't have to respond. He usually satisfies himself with the question and the utterance of the sacred word, manko. Turns out "manko" means "pussy." Not girls, not vagina, pussy. Real down and dirty. For a long time I didn't know that, and so I figured he was asking me if I liked manga. To which I would always reply, no, thank you, I'm not a nerd. He was understandably never satisfied with that answer. At least he wouldn't have been if he would have stopped laughing at his word choice and listened to my response.

That's how it usually goes, however. He pops over, asks me if I like manko, and then disappears into a tattered shroud of Wicked Witch of the West-esque giggles. It's fine. Today, however, things got very real. I guess he's gotten really comfortable with me or something, because today was crazy. I sat on the bench, per usual, and he bopped over, all evil-eyed and barely sane, and cawed at me, "do you like manko?!" As he giggle, I said, no, actually I prefer papayas (always trying to dodge the real question.) It didn't stop there. Then he said, "do you play sex?" This has happened before, and my usual defence is just to correct his horrid grammar. Have. Not play. He's not interested in learning. After I try to play the consummate English teacher for a second, he skips over to another teacher (who takes his antics with much more aplomb than most) and says, "sensei, do you play sex?" I can't believe this is acceptable, but the teacher in question just sort of shrugs and raises his hands in the air as if he doesn't understand. Not bad. Then Atsy asks in Japanese, "have you ever had sex?" The teacher's response doesn't change. The kid next to me says, "no way that guy's ever had sex." insightful little 12 year old.

This would be enough to register as strange, but it gets worse. Atsy comes back over, sits next to me, and points at his junk while asking me something in Japanese. I've never heard the phrase before, but I know what he's saying. I just really don't want to believe he just said it. It sounds like he's asking me if I play tennis, so I say, yeah, I love tennis. He's not saying tennis. He's not going to let it go either. So he puts on his lecturing cap and starts to teach me some things about the human body. "Down here, (pointing to his crotch), you have a cock, right? (He actually says, "Kokku" Japanglish for cock). Right? A cock, a chinkou, a penis!" I can do nothing but grudgingly admit that he's telling the truth. He continues, "Well, has it ever gotten BIG (pantomiming getting a massive erection)? Has your chinko ever stood up (terrible literal translation)" He's asking me if I've ever had a boner. What, exactly, is the proper way to respond to this? I can't say no. No, I've defied all physiological probabilities and made it to the age of 22 without ever achieving an erection. No, I'm a eunuch! I could resort to the story I used on 13 year olds on World of Warcraft message-boards once, tell him I'm the Death Emperor, asexual, standing outside of this world genital-less in the void and stealing the souls of sinners in the night, but my Japanese isn't quite that good. Also that's not the image sensei are supposed to convey. So, after a few moments hesitation, I go with the seemingly reasonable, well, it's natural that all boys get boners. To which the insightful boy next to me responds, quite natural, yes.

Then a teacher appears, I quiver in fear, he yells out "one minute to class!" the kids disperse, telling their teacher what Atsy was asking me, and I dash down the corridor to my next class trying to look innocent. Am I? Yes? I hope Atsy is satisfied. I hope I don't go to jail.

That was Awkward

Boy did I ever just have an awkward experience. The most awkward experience of my life? No, I can think of at least three thousand things I did in middle school/ high school that were more awkward than this, but nevertheless, yikes. As most of my stories of late seem to center around my various misadventures in commuting, let us return once again to the bus. This time I didn't bring anything incriminating onboard with me. Well, nothing except for my self. Which, for various reasons, is sort of a constant recipient of unwanted attention and otherwise undeserved embarrassment. To the point: I hopped on the bus today, expecting nothing more than the usual fifteen minute chug from the Maruzuka Chugakko stop to the Sougouchosha one, though I may say that I was wishing to make that trip in Seiengakuen-less comfort. Seiengakuen is the private all girls school that sits in the direct middle of my commute like some sort of madhouse of giggles, Hello Kitty key chains, boy gossip, and more than anything, a sheer flood of girlmanity. Girlmanity? That sounds kinda fundamentally incorrect, but nevertheless, every day the first half of my ride home is made in the leisurely, silent company of maybe three or four old ladies headed to the nearby hospital, or maybe just to the station and home from a day of whatever it is old ladies dressed in kimonos do on weekdays in Japan, but as the bus rounds a bend and the Seiengakuen stop comes into view, the line of white cardigan, blue-pleated skirt wearing girls snaking at least thirty segments deep down the block, I sigh, stuff my backpack between my legs to vacate the seat next to me that I swear to god I will fucking vomit on my principal in the middle of an assembly if anybody ever sits in, and settle in. This morning, by some strange stroke of luck, the bus I took to school was luxuriously vacant of all Seien students, so I was able to enjoy a full bus-ride of repose as opposed to half of one, and I had the naivety to hope that I might enjoy another comfy ride on the way home.

Fat chance. I made up for that relaxing ride this morning with the most awkward one ever this afternoon. So I'm sitting there, crossing my fingers as we cross that fated corner, but sure enough, waiting at the Seien stop there's a big indecipherable blur of blue cotton and cream cashmere (private school, quality duds), and I'm a little bit stunned, because it's actually a bigger blur than I've ever seen before. The bus stops and sooo many girls get on the bus. I couldn't see because there were too many fourteen year-olds in my face, but I'm pretty sure the bus driver closed the door and pulled away before all the kids could get on. But, there's currently a shit-load of fucking kids on this bus, but strangely, not only has the seat next to me remained vacant (当たり前でしょ？）, today the two seats in front of me are empty too! Weird, these girls must be extra shy today or something.

Or were they? One of the girls keeps shooting me furtive little glances, which I sort of ignore, sort of return in the manner that is distinctly peculiar to the blond-haired foreigner on a bus full of little Japanese girls, but eventually more fools try to board this bus that is rapidly becoming a death-trap, and Shiori-Mc-Peekers and her bespectacled companion find themselves forced into the open seat in front of me. I figure that's the end of that. Nope. Shiori continues to look back at me occasionally, though she at least has the decorum to mask these looks behind the facade of talking to two of her friends that are standing in the aisle next to me and the seat apparently occupied by my imaginary friend. I guess it's not a facade though, because the four of them, Spectacles, Shiori, and the two other tag-alongs enter into a fairly intense conversation about how you would correctly ask the question, "where do you live?" In English. Fuck, they want to talk to me. I don't really have any idea what I want, so I just sort of sit there and give up trying to keep a shit-eating grin off my face as these four little girls alternately sneak peaks at me and try their hardest to formulate a very simple English sentence to ask me. The English teacher in me is fairly appalled at the attempts they bat around ("Where, なんだっけ？, live?, なになになに、You where? あっそうか。 Where living do you."), the human being in me really confused about how they can be blatantly having a conversation about me that I am physically in the middle of and somehow manage to not acknowledge my presence, and whatever part of me it is that wants to engage these kids unsure about whether I should try to play the role of English speaker or just tell them in Japanese that I know they're talking about me, and that I'm from America.

I chose to just sit there. As the bus pulls into the station, one of the tag-alongs says to Peaks-A-Lot san, "you better hurry up and ask!" but she only replies with something that I didn't really catch, something about being stupid and not understanding English, and then one of them says "Well, how about just bye-bye?" To which there is no response except for the familiar flurry of giggles. This is where the story flops, because the bus pulled into the station, they said nothing, I said nothing, and then everybody got off the bus.

That's not quite the end of the story, however, because after I wait for the bus to clear out and then approach the front, I notice that my flock of would-be-interrogators are waiting not far from the door of the bus, scrunched tightly together, giggling, pointing towards the bus and apparently getting up the necessary courage to say something to me. I shake my head, smiling, pay me fare, hop off the bus, and give them the old wave and "bye-bye!" as I walk past them. They explode into giggles and a chorus of bye-bye's, and I walk out of their lives but perhaps not their memories. Two of them didn't get enough the first time so they followed me said bye-bye one more time, which I graciously indulged. I guess they don't have an ALT at their school to say hello to and then run away from every day. Maybe this is the beginning of some new friendships? Who can tell? God regular not middle school aged Japanese people must think I'm a perv though.

The Pitfalls of Good Citizenry

Has a good deed ever blown up in your face? Well, I guess one didn't blow up in mine today, but nonetheless I did have one kind of go off like a stink bomb in my hand. In my backpack, to be more precise. Every day I stare at this sign posted to the two bus stops I sit at waiting to be ferried from home to school and back again, and it says, essentially, "please help keep our bus stops clean! cleanliness comes from individual effort!" or, that last part in japanese, "mana ha hitori hitori no kimochi kara." Alright, yeah, that sounds good, I'm down with being a part of a cooperative community, let's do it. So this afternoon, I rushed out to my bus stop a few minutes later than usual, looking down the street to see if I can see the bus yet. Not quite, so I'm about to sit down on the bench and relax for a minute when I spot a smashed beer can shoved up against the little cement wall behind the bench. Yes, "mana ha hitori hitori no kimachi kara," now it's my opportunity to participate in this great community beatification project I read about every day. So, wondering which one of my passed out students' hands this semi-crushed up can fell out of this weekend, I bent over to pick it up and pop it in my backpack for momentary safekeeping. Oh fuck, this either belonged to Mi-chan or wounded soldiers aren't really a big problem amongst Japanese middle schoolers (or, more likely, bums) because there was a fair amount of beer in the can and as soon as I picked it up it fucking spilled all over me. Oh crap. Now what. Stealing a glance down the road, I see that the bus is almost upon me and there's little to do except try to pour the excess beer out of the can, shove it hastily in my backpack, and get on the bus, hoping desperately that I haven't been wetted to the point that I smell like the resident wino as opposed to the resident speaker of English. So I did, and nonchalantly pulling the ticket that keeps track of your fair from the dispenser, began my effort to look like I was innocent of any contact with alcohol. I mean, of course I was innocent in the sense that I was just trying to keep the bus stop clean, but I certainly had alcohol on my hands, and I could think of no easy way to briefly and satisfactorily explain that to affronted Japanese folks aboard a bus. I sat down, and everything seemed fine. Then the lady in front of me looked back with disdain on her face, and about five minutes later vacated her spacious window seat for an aisle seat next to another woman a row up. And it's not like they were just friends because they didn't talk. I smelled my hands. Yes, alcohol. My bag. Not too bad really. Then we passed the private all girls school, and like 50 12 year old-girls got on. Like usual. I huddled closer in my seat, hoping that by becoming as small as possible I could hide my hoppy scent, and in so doing keep my job. Sadly this is where the story ends because I quickly got off without further incident, but I'll actually be pretty surprised if I don't have to answer some awkward questions tomorrow at work. Old ladies are fucking nosy in this country, especially when it comes to dastardly, foreign alcoholics who are supposedly teaching their kids English. "Mana wa hitorihitori no kimochikara." Ne!