A Conclusion Of Sorts

And so my time in Japan has come to an end.
I've enjoyed it. I've met some wonderful people, and my job allowed me to teach an assorted mix of characters. I've enjoyed the stories they have told me, whether they are hilariously funny or grimly morbid.
I have learnt much about Japanese culture. I now know that you can eat your rice whilst holding your bowl in the air. I know that you can make loud slurping sounds when you eat noodles. I know that you need to wipe your hands on a wet towel before every meal and to bow at every given moment. I know that Love Hotels can be a curious oddity and that everything is slightly different in Japan, even with the most mundane things like sleeping. Capsule Hotel anyone?
And I have finally come to the conclusion that whatever I do in Japan, I'm doing it wrong. But I know that I have received an unlimited amount of hospitality during my stay here. The big farewell bear hug from Isamu, and wet kiss from Shigeho is testament to this. But there is one thing I still don't understand: How to use bloody chop-sticks.

Final Lesson

I had suspicions that Seneiji Elementary school were going to do something special for my final lesson because when I was about to leave the school after finishing my lesson last week, one of the Japanese teachers, Masayoshi, asked what my favourite Beatles song was.
I ruminated for a bit whilst trying to pick a cheerful tune because I assumed my students were going to sing a tune by the Fab Four.
I picked Day Tripper, then immediately rejected this because it was an overt drug song. I then picked Help! on account of its upbeat tune. But I aborted this choice due to its downbeat lyrics. I eventually picked Hello Goodbye - possibly the simplest song ever written.
Masayoshi wrote this down and said, "You will get a surprise next week."
It didn't take a bloody genius what he was arranging.
When my final lesson arrived, I walked into the classroom to be met by all the staff and students of the school. This was a surprise and I privately berated myself for believing Masayoshi was naive in my abilities of perception. To see all of Seneiji huddled into a room was a humbling experience and made me wished I had wiped off the toothpaste stain smeared on my t-shirt that morning.
I walked to the front of the room whilst the kids stood in rows in front of me. They all bowed and wished me a good morning. Masayoshi then made his way through the crowd whilst holding an acoustic guitar and a roll of paper. He patted my shoulder and said the students had something they wanted to sing to me. He then unfurled the paper and stuck it to the black-board. It was a lyric sheet to the song Let It Be.



This puzzled me for a moment because I picked Hello Goodbye specifically for its upbeat tune and simple lyrics. Let It Be is a nice song but it's a party-killer. I wanted something that you could tap your foot along to and get people rocking. This song, however, was about loss and tragedy.
The morose opening bars were played on the piano by Masayoshi and he signalled for the students to begin singing.
"When I find myself in times of trouble mother Mary comes to me...."
Put a gun to my head, I thought.
By the time the song was over, the kids looked depressed, the teachers looked depressed, and I looked depressed.
The song finished to a scattered applause from the teachers and me. It took a moment for Masayoshi to recover his spirit after his depressing playing on the piano, but he eventually staggered towards me and announced that the students had more surprises for me.
"Karma Police by Radiohead?" I quipped, quietly.
Masayoshi snapped his finger like a conjurer, and a line of kids formed in front of me.
One of the girls then stood one pace in front and began to thank me in English for my lessons over the past year. I thanked her and bowed. She then took out a medal made from wood which said "Goodbye Sam". I lowered myself so she could loop it over my head. Once this was completed, I inspected my medal and said, "I win gold medal for teaching at the Olympics!" I judged that the silence that accompanied this statement was because no one understood English, and not because it was a crap joke.

.

Farewell Cards

As it is my last week at Terakoya, I thought it would be fitting to get my younger students to make farewell cards. I was expecting lovely, heartfelt messages combined with artful and thoughtful pictures. But kids are unpredictable creatures and the cards I received were more on the offensive side.
I wanted the kids to write "Goodbye Sam" complete with a caricature of myself on the front. Inside, I wanted them to write a message in Japanese and on the opposite page they could draw whatever they wanted.
I wandered around the room looking at their drawings of me. The results were shocking. I either looked like the Joker, my grandma, or a drag queen. All these drawings left me self-conscious about having a hair cut and my lips reduced in size at the nearest opportunity.
I wanted to rip up their work in bitter anger. There was one kid who drew me sitting on the toilet taking a crap but obviously missing my target because I had a pile of shit on my head. I asked this little-Picasso why he drew me like this. He merely replied I had a poo-head. That was a valid enough reason so I left him to continue his work.
In a different class which consisted of two girls, I had a different problem to face. The problem was that they became caustic art-critics. I drew a Japanese flag on the back of my own farewell card to myself and they both poured scorn on it. I asked what was wrong and they said the circle in the centre was the wrong shade of red. I let this unwarranted attack on my work pass, but they continued to harass me about my drawings that failed to live up to their high expectations. My drawing of a piece of sushi was too flat; my smiley sun was too round; and my drawing of a laughing mouse looked liked a grumpy elephant. I had no platform to mount a counter-attack because their drawings were brilliant. They even made me resemble someone of my own sex.

Needless Gifts

Ayano and Nana are two little girls who have a passion for giving me presents. The problem is these presents are of no value to me whatsoever. As with most presents, it's the thought that counts. But I doubt whether any thought went into their minds when they give me their gifts. Their idea of a present seems to consist of grabbing the nearest object closest to them, then shoving it into my hands.
When they enter the Terakoya staff room just before their afternoon lesson, they will wave energetically at me and dart to various corners of the room, scouting for potential gifts. More often then not, they will run over to me with their hands loaded with detritus and other useless objects, unload it onto my desk, then scuttle off to another room. Past presents have included, a blunt pencil, a teddy bear with its head missing, and shredded paper they plucked from the bin. Every lesson they leave a mound of crap on my desk which I am left to clear. At first, I thought this was a quaint little character trait and would pretend that their gifts were of use to me. With the blunt pencil I curled up my top lip and balanced it on top pretending I had a dapper moustache. With the teddy bear, I pretended it was food and pretended to bite the head off with a satisfying mmmmm sound. And the shredded paper...well, I just threw it back in the bin. But after six months, I realised this could go on no longer. I think this thought occurred when they left my banana peels I had thrown away, on my desk.
"Ayano and Nana, no more presents!" I pleaded with them.
They looked sad.
"I'm sorry, but these are not presents," I said.
They told me they would give me a different kind of present next week. I had a bad feeling they were going to scrape off the bird shit from the window and give it to me.
The following week came and, true to their word, Ayano and Nana walked into the staff room and handed me an envelope.
"What's this, money? Now that's what I call a present," I mused out loud.
I opened it and discovered a few pieces of paper inside with scribbles and shapes.
"What a .....lovely...thought. What is it?" I stuttered, still trying to figure out the cryptic doodles.
"It's a game," they said in unison.
"Yeah? Looks more like someone's vomited on the paper," I said, knowing they couldn’t understand.
"Find Nana and Ayano!" they said.
On closer inspection, I realised that amongst the jungle of scribbles were little smiley faces resembling themselves. But any sense of fun with this game was forbidden because Ayano and Nana took it upon themselves to circle the faces in red, making the game defunct. But I humoured them and stroked my chin as I pretended to search intently for the smiley faces. After my faux-pain staking hunt, I thanked them for a more original present.
Buoyed by my new found positivity for their gifts, they yelled, "Next week more presents!" and left the room with a skip in their step.
I couldn't help noticing that Ayano and Nana were studying the bird shit on the window as they said this.

Birthday Surprise

My students gave me a nice birthday welcome when I walked into my evening class. I had told them a week before the date of my birthday when we were doing a "When is your birthday?" introductory exercise. The students must have remembered.
As I entered, my five students stood up and shouted happy birthday at me. I was humbled by their gesture and thanked them.
Minneko, the part-time magician, shuffled to the corner of the room and started to slice pieces of cake for everyone. I was about to tuck into my tasty looking cake but Minneko ordered me to wait.


Minneko snapped her fingers and the class started to sing the Happy Birthday tune, whilst I was still dangling a piece of cake on my fork in front of my semi-opened mouth.
They finished the song and I clapped with brio. I then opened my mouth to eat the cake. I stopped when I heard Minneko shout, “Hip Hip Horay!”
These birthday protocols were all very nice but, to be honest, I just wanted to eat my bloody cake without interruptions.
".....and one for luck hip-hip hooray!" they concluded.
"Great. Lovely. Marvellous," I said, and moved the fork towards my mouth.
"Sam!" Kiomi said
"What now?!" I said irritably, the fork just millimetres from my mouth.
"What is your birthday wish?" she said with a smile
"To eat this cake," I replied, and shoved the cake into my mouth.
When we all finished our tea and cake, Minneko wanted to perform some magic and wandered over to a suitcase with brightly coloured spots on it. She cracked the case open and took out a bundle of cash and unfurled a sheet of paper with numbers 1-6 written on it. She handed me the cash.
"If your magic trick is giving me money, then it's the best thing I've ever seen," I said.
She said I might be allowed to keep the money if fate allowed it.
I didn't like the sound of that. It conjured up images of me schlepping through a perilous obstacle course involving swimming through shark infested waters, walking on hot coals and being chased by a Mayan tribe through a jungle - whilst Minneko waited at the finish line, holding the money in a fan-shape and cackling with glee.
It was more prosaic than that. She asked me to place the money on particular numbers written on a sheet. The money in my possession amounted to about £80. I put the bills on random numbers hoping it was the correct combination, according to fate.
Minneko then took out a small piece of paper with a chart written on it. She asked me, according to the chart, to replace certain bills with others, and give back particular bills to her. Eventually I was left with nothing but a 10,000 yen bill (£40). She said it was mine to keep.
I was rich! I let out a wicked laugh and pocketed the money. Before I could day-dream about what to spend it on, Minneko said, "Wait!"
I looked at her with suspicion. "What?" I said
"Fate says the money should be returned to the magician," she said, reading off her chart.
"Screw fate, this is mine!" I wanted to say. All I could do, however, was meekly laugh, and curse my bad luck and hand her back the money.
Minneko repeated this trick with the others in the class, and each trick ended in the same way as mine. No-one won anything. I questioned Minneko's judgement for magic. It's meant to spark the imagination with visual astonishments. It's not meant to leave a birthday boy bitter and blue.

Leaving Party

When you leave a teaching job in Japan, your students will organize a leaving party for you. There are a mandatory rules to follow at these events, the important ones being eat like a pig and drink like a fish. I was happy to comply with these demands. My most raucous leaving party was hosted by my all-male business class who worked on the 'weapons making' facility. One member of this class, Masahi, offered to pick me up outside my apartment and drive me to a local restaurant where the party was taking place on Saturday night.
On that evening, I was in Masahi's giant Land Rover as we drove to the restaurant. He told me that some of the other members of the party had arrived early at the restaurant and were in the process of aggressively depleting the proprietor of his alcohol stock.
"They are, how you say, wibbly wobbly," Masashi said.
"Yeah, that's what we say alright," I said, to humour him.
To divert the conversation away from the reprehensible gang that was sure to meet us, I drew Masashi's attention to the ungodly amount of lanterns adorning all the houses we passed. I asked why people hung these lights outside their houses.
Masashi informed me that it was to celebrate an annual festival called Obon.
I couldn't quite hear him when he said this because we hit a bump in the road making the car bump up and down loudly.
"Obama?" I asked
"What?!" he shouted over honking horns directed at him as he continued to riskily drive over man-holes adorning the road.
"Did you say it's called Obama?"
"Yes, I said Obon. It's Obon day," he continued, above the squawking chicken coup he nearly ploughed into on an adjacent farm.
"Obama day?” I said, still failing to hear him. “I didn't know Barak Obama had a festival named after him in Japan."
"No, not Obama Day! Obon!"
"Oh."
He then told me this festival celebrated the life of a family member who had died in the last year and to commemorate the deceased a family relation will hang up a lantern outside their house.
As we sped through the rural landscape of Iida whilst the sun was setting, I counted an innumerable amount of lanterns swinging outside the houses of the town.
I playfully nudged Masashi with my elbow. "Looks as though the life expectancy in Iida is pretty bad, eh?" I said and gave a small chuckle.
He stared ahead with an expressionless face.
To break the awkward silence I asked what he did at the weekend.
"I went to my grandmother's funeral," he said.
Shit.
We eventually arrived at a small Yakiniku restaurant. I didn't need to ask Masashi if this was the restaurant we were going to because I could already hear rowdy noises from inside. Masashi and I entered the private room reserved for our party and were met with joyous cries of, "Yaaaaaaaaaaa!!!"


I was immediately offered a seat by the now ridiculously pissed members of the party.
As soon as I sat down, a huge beer jug was placed in front of me. Everyone raised their jugs and clinked each others with exaggerated swooshing motions and booming “Kampais!”
I was slugging on my jug in order to catch up with my students, but before I could make any headway, a gigantic plate of raw meat was placed in front of me.
"Eat! Drink! Eat!" a red-faced Yukinori pleaded with me.
"Make up your mind, buddy," I said.
I pointed out I wasn't in the habit of chewing on raw meat on account of wanting to live.
Yukinori looked with an askance face and picked up my plate of raw meat and threw it on a small cauldron embedded in the centre of the table. As soon as the meat hit the base of this indented groove in the table, flames shot up as if our table was directly above hell.
"What the...?!" I shouted, as I leapt back from the flames.
"Yakiniku restaurant! We cook the meat ourselves. Yummy Yummy," Yukinori said.
My students served me generous helpings of all the meat that was on offer throughout the evening. My jaw never stopped chewing or drinking making the night a feat of endurance.
After chugging down five jumbo jugs of beer and chowing on an unethical amount of meat, my stomach was beginning to make squelching sounds. I loosened my belt and made a clamorous burp.
The eldest member of the group, Tomio, leaned towards me. "Sam!! What do you think of Japanese girls?" he shouted into my ear.
"Very beautiful," I said, trying to face away from his stinking breath.
Everyone was happy with this statement and they all went "Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
Tomio leaned forward again. "Sam! What do you think of English girls?"
"Very beautiful."
"Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
The internal functions of my stomach began to disintegrate and I needed to abort immediately.
"Er, excuse me everyone. I have to go to the toilet."
"Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
I emerged from the toilet to find the group in a horny mood. They were comparing girls from different countries. I sat down and heard the toothless Kazahito suddenly explain the advantages and disadvantages of Thai girls to me.
"You see," he frothed, "many girls in Thailand are beautiful. But many have diseases. So I have to choose beauty or disease. It's a tough choice."
I assumed he had already made the choice judging by his foul face.
When everyone had finished their drinks we departed. My student's paid for my meal so I thanked everyone during an impromptu burping attack. They were all blitzed out of their brains so they couldn't hear me anyway.


The group loitered outside the restaurant as we waited for Hiroshi to finish his business in the toilet. He emerged with his shirt poking through his zipper. "Let's go to Karaoke!" he slured.
"Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" was the unanimous verdict to this suggestion.
The karaoke room we went to stuffy and musty but that didn't stop the high-spirits.
I was touched by the decision that every member of the group should sing in English with the aim of making me feel more at home. I thanked them for their generosity, but I was so drunk at this point that my English singing probably sounded Japanese.
It was unfortunate that the Yuua decided to kick things off with a Radiohead song.
Looking around the room whilst Yuua sang the verse: "I'm a creep/ I’m a weirdo/ What the hell am I doing here.." was like staring at a number of colourful balloons being deflated. Everyone was slumped in their chairs and staring at the floor.
Masashi snatched the microphone from the naval-gazing Yuua and decided to inject some life into the evening with the song Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.
The guy was a pro. He knew every beat and warble that accompanies the song. All the other guys began to sing along with the chorus as if this was the best song they had ever heard.
At the end of this song, Masahi handed me the microphone and it was my turn to rock the joint. I needed an easy tune that could involve everyone. Ideally, a call-and-response song which had a killer beat.
I made my choice and punched the information into the karaoke remote control.
The instantly recognizable opening bars crashed through the speakers and had everyone clapping along and singing: "Who you gonna call, GHOSTBUSTERS!!"

Tongue Twisters

Tongue Twisters hold a duel purpose. It helps with student's English pronunciation and it provides amusement for me watching students flounder. I use tongue twisters in my lessons mainly for the latter purpose but pretend otherwise.
I first understood the value of using tongue twisters with my Tuesday evening class which consists of two bright High School girls called Yoko and Yunna.
Whenever I teach them, the exercises I set are always finished with relative ease and it gives me the impression they are coasting through my lessons. With this in mind, I needed an exercise that would challenge them. Tongue twisters are great because even if you can't do them, it’s funny for others to watch you fail.
I began with the familiar: She sells sea shells by the sea shore.
Translated by Yoko as: "Sells she sea sea shore she sells.....what?!"
I urged her to relax after the 20th time of her trying to crack this sentence without success. Yunna didn't help matters by laughing hysterically at Yoko's attempts. I turned the tables on Yunna.
"Yunna, please say this sentence," I said, as I wrote the new tongue twister.
Freshly fried fresh fish.
Yunna studied the sentence with care as if it were an important code-breaker.
"Frebbly fwied fred fish," she said.
"Nice try," I consoled.
Yoko was howling with joy.
"Yoko! Say this," I said.
A big black bug bit a big black Bear, made the big black bear bleed blood.
She breathed in a huge amount of oxygen and exhaled with fear, as if I had just asked her to bungee jump from the top of Mount Fuji.
"Big bear bug blood bit blood bear bug bled blood," she said.
"Nope! Yuna, try this."
Friendly frank flips fine flapjacks
"Fwendly fwank fwips fwine fwapjacks."
"Ha ha ha ha. No, no, no. You're all wrong," I laughed with unnecessary gloating malice.
"OK. You do it then," Yoko challenged.
"Me?" I said.
"Yeah!" Yoko and Yunna both said, threateningly.
"Sure," I said, whilst my face twitched with nerves.
They looked at my Tongue Twisters sheet and picked out a horrendously difficult one.
Fred fed Ted bread, and Ted fed Fred bread.
I cleared my throat, assumed a dramatic pose as if I was about to begin a 100 meter sprint, and begun.
"Fred fed bread Ted and Ted Fred bread fed ....class dismissed!"

Little Ninjas

War is bad. It is especially bad when conducted by kids. When kids spar against each other with wicked intent, the results can be nasty. I have the dubious honour of presiding over a kid’s class that consists of two students who are hell-bent on the others destruction.
Their names are Yuuki and Amane. I haven't the luxury of a back-story that led to their respective loathing but all I know is that if I wasn't there to supervise them, they would fight to the death.
This afternoon class requires more effort from me than normal lessons. Mainly because I have to plot and pace my lessons in order to avoid a bloodbath.
One tactic I use is a seating plan where I make Yuuki and Amane sit as far away from each other as possible. This has the potential to work, but on continuous occasions Yuuki or Amane will stare with ferocious intensity at each other then leap up on the table to start wrestling. After sweeping from the table the clumps of hair Yuuki and Amane tore from each others head, I will get the kids to spread out in the room and make sure the two little psychos are a healthy distance from each other.
Believing that everything is settled, I might get the kids to play a quick game of Simon Says.
It's quick, easy and fun. But with Yuuki and Amane's participation the game becomes violent, stressful and destructive.
The three other members of the class are great, and will laugh and clap with joy as we play the game. Amane and Yuuki have other plans as to the direction this game will take.
"Simon Says......" I boomed, whilst I thought about the body movement. As I did so a loud cry erupted from both corners of the room. I look down from my thinking pose, and saw Yuuki and Amane charging at each other with flying kicks. I tried to break up their fight but they kicked my hand away and resumed beating the shit out of each other. I took matters into my own hands and stood as an obstruction between them. They didn't notice and continued to kick and punch me.
The other nice kids were looking on with mouths agape in horror.
I pushed Yuuki and Amane apart with my two hands, and held them in this position until they calmed down.
I asked why they disliked each other with a passion.
Yuuki said Amane was an Unko.
"What's that?" I said.
He pointed to his bottom and made farting sounds.
"Right. I see. And Amane, why don't you like Yuuki?"
He held is winkle and starting mock urinating onto Yuuki.
"Stop that!" I said and reprimanded them for being vulgar. I warned them not to fight again otherwise I would tell their parents about their poor behaviour. That seemed to mute them.
It was going well until I ended the lesson with a game of Pictionary. The kids could draw anything they liked and the others had to guess what the English word was.
When it was Yuuki's turn, he strode up to the whiteboard and drew a lumpy object with flies buzzing around it.
"OK kids, what's that," I said, still not sure what Yuuki had just drawn.
"Poo-poo!" the kids yelled.
"No," Yuuki said with a grin, "It's Amane!"
And in a flash, Amane leapt from his chair onto the table, lunged towards Yuuki and started thumping him.

Selling My Stuff

With only weeks to go until my contract expires, I have decided to sell many of my items.
I have been brutal with what needs to go because I want a light suitcase to carry when I leave Japan. I snapped open a black plastic bag and went about depleting my room of things I hoped to get money from. Among these items were CDs, clothes, and my sofa.
I went to a nearby second hand music and film, whilst carrying a bag containing over 100 CDs. I said hello to the staff and dumped all my items on the counter and said, "I sell, you buy?"
In order to make eye contact with me, they had to stand on tip-toes above the piles of CDs before telling me they would need to check the quality of the CDs before deciding which ones to buy.
I said OK, and wandered around the store whilst they gave my items a severe investigation.
Two hours later, they said they wanted to buy all of it. The store assistant gave me an invoice as to how much they would pay for my stuff: 20,000 yen. This wasn't much but I signed the invoice regardless and pocketed my cash.
The next item I wanted to sell were some of my clothes. Most of the clothes were clunky winter wear which would be heavy inside my travel bag.
I went to a second hand clothes store and dumped my clothes on the counter. The staff told me to wait an hour whilst they checked the quality of the clothes.
One hour later I walked back inside the store with a doughnut that cost me 120 yen. The shop worker called me over to give their assessment. It wasn't as glowing as the music store. It was, instead, a denouncement. The woman behind the counter shook her head and said that most of the clothes were unsuitable for selling. At first I thought she was damning my fashion taste but it turned out that the shop didn’t buy winter clothes in the height of summer. Which makes sense, but I tried to find a loophole round this by offering to cut my jeans in half to create shorts, and chop-up my jumpers to make a woolly vest. The shop worker wasn't having any of it and shook her head. She offered some consolation because she pointed to a big pile of my clothes they wanted to buy.
I asked her how much they would offer. She punched some buttons on her calculator and then flipped it round so I could see the ridiculous price: 100 yen.
"You’re telling me this bloody doughnut is more expensive than a pile of my clothes?!" I asked animatedly.
She didn't understand, and shrugged her shoulders. I had no other choice but to accept this unethical offer and walk out the store 100 yen richer. To cover the fact that I had just wasted one hour of my life, I tried to repeat the soothing mantra of: Every little helps. Unfortunately a pragmatic devil mantra finished off the sentence with but 100 yen gets you fucking nowhere.
The next thing to sell was my two seater sofa. I bought it for 5,000 yen and thought I could recoup half of that price. I had the arduous task of picking up this heavy load and walking from the 4th floor of my apartment to the car park below. Carrying it down the stairs was an absolute nightmare, and I was panting and salivating like an uncouth fiend. Half way through this excruciating ordeal, I lost my grip on the sofa, and it rattled down the winding steps like a bob-sleigh on a slalom. I was relieved no had been walking up in the opposite direction because they would have been flattened.
As I reached the bottom I saw the yellow sofa upturned in a muddy puddle. I spent at least half an hour cleaning the mud-caked sofa until it was suitable for selling. Once this was achieved, I needed to cram the sofa into my little car. It was like fitting an elephant inside a pencil case.
In the end I managed to squeeze it in by putting down the back seats and sliding the sofa in from the opened boot, whilst pushing the front seats up to the windscreen. As I buckled up, I noticed my nose was touching the windscreen and my legs were bent in some strange shape. It looked like I was a 20-foot giant trying to ride a toy tricycle. In this ridiculous position, I drove to the local second hand furniture store.
Thankfully the friendly staff carried this yellow leviathan into the store whilst I tried to reorganize my body to its proper shape. Behind the counter three staff members were quietly conferring about the value of the sofa. Five minutes later they came back with an invoice that read 500 yen.
I stared at them with murderous intent.
500 yen is under £5. I couldn't put a value on my morning tribulations but I would guess, for sheer effort, I should get at least half the price I paid for the sofa.
But the shop workers weren't budging on their offer.
I snatched the 500 yen coin out of one of the workers hand and walked out the store whilst declaring war on all the sofas in the world, before blowing the money on a bag of doughnuts.

Fact Or Fiction

Only rarely will I plan a lesson whilst my students are walking into the room. I will do this when the original lesson I planned had the potential to be a disaster.
For instance, I had planned to do a class debate on ageism with my Tuesday lunchtime class. This would be fine if my class were elderly, but the class was a mixture of young adults and middle aged people. They might have been insulted at my proposed lesson talking about retirement and discrimination in the workplace. I realised I needed to abort my ageism lesson when I asked Tomoko, who is in her late twenties, what she did at the weekend.
"I went to Okinawa for holiday. I went diving, then I went for a jog along the sea-front and then I went clubbing in the evening," she said.
After a full weekend of energetic adventure, she might loose the will to live if she learnt about the ailments that effect people in old age. What a horrible 'welcome back' that would be for her. When I asked the others what they did for the weekend I wasn't listening to their answers. Not because I didn't find their stories interesting, but I was frantically trying to figure out how to fill this one and a half hour lesson after deciding to scrap my planned lesson. I asked the final person, Syuuti, what he did at the weekend, all the while hopelessly searching for inspiration. As I pondered, I managed to catch the tail-end of his weekend adventure which was, "-and then I found a monkey in my car."
My brain was alerted to this strange comment.
"How on earth did a monkey end up in your car?" I spluttered.
"Well, as I was saying, I had been driving through the mountains of Nagano with my wife and we stopped at a mountain edge to see the view. When we turned around we saw a monkey in the front seat driving the steering wheel."
"I don't believe it," I said
"It's true. Don't worry, the engine was switched off so the monkey couldn't drive the car off the mountain."
"If that's a true story, it's very funny," said Mitzuko.
Tomoko and Eiko asked if he took any photos of the driving monkey.
"No, I was too busy trying to kick it out the car," he said.
"I'm not sure I believe you,” said Mitzuko.
I had an idea.
"Today class, we are going to play a game called Fact or Fiction," I said.
My students all leaned forward with facial expressions that read: "Do tell"
I explained the rules: Each person has to write two or three short paragraphs based on a factual or fictional story about themselves or someone they know. The class then has to guess if it was fact or fiction, and hilarity ensues.
The class warmed to this idea and immediately began writing their stories.
The results were interesting.
Eiko had written three mundane stories that people do everyday:
I drank water yesterday
I walked yesterday
I will drink water tomorrow
Her grasp of English is limited but I encouraged her to include a fictional story in her list.
"But these are fictional," she revealed.
"Oh, well see if you can include a factual story which is interesting."
"OK," she said with a grin.
As I walked away I saw her writing: "I drank water today."
Next to Eiko sat Mitzuko and I was surprised to see her story written with such intricate plotting. From what I could fathom, her story was based on her friend Juna, who was a wonderful singer in her youth who was signed to a record label when she was 18 years old. She was the talk of the town until a new boss took over the record company. He exploited the work force by forcing them to work ridiculously long hours in the studio. Juna, although tired by the label's demands, carried on singing to fulfil her dream of one day being a success in America. But the demands of the boss were too severe. He wanted Juna to produce one album a month. Juna could no longer work at this rate and eventually lost her voice. Not to be defeated she carried a law suit against the record label boss and won the case and received a huge sum of money from the courts. With the money she took over the record label and recruited the next generation of wonderful singers, who were all a success in America. And everyone lived happily ever after.
I looked at Mitzuko with a knowing smile and said, "This is fictional, right?"
"No," she said.
"NO?! This bullshit actually happened,” I said, getting carried away.
She sternly stared at me until a mischievous smile swept across her face and she gave me a playful wink, she also asked me what bullshit meant, which I ignored.
"It doesn't matter if it's true or not, I'm buying the film rights," I said as I walked over to Tomoko.
Tomoko's story was a re-telling of her weekend trip to Okinawa, making it obvious it was a factual story. I told her the class would easily guess it's a factual story so I suggested that she write about a mermaid she saw whilst snorkelling. I reassured her this would be a funnier story, despite her confused expression. After persuading her to do as I recommended, I walked towards Syuuiti's desk. His unwholesome story was: Sam has many girlfriends and has gotten them all pregnant. He is not married to them but he is being pressured into it by his cousin, who is a vet. You can get STD if you have unprotected sex.
"Syuuiti, what is this? This isn't a story. This is just crazy uncorrelated thoughts," I said.
"It's English, is it not?" he challenged.
"Yeah, but it's offensive English. I don't want you to read this to the rest of the class,"
"Why not? It's fictional and funny, apart from the STD bit"
"I'm not going to explain to the class what STD means!"
"OK, OK, I will change my funny stories," he said with anguish.
"Good," I said, and walked away.
When everyone had finished their stories, I asked Syuuiti to kick off proceedings.
Syuuiti rose from his seat, dramatically cleared his throat, and read, "Sam has many girlfriends......"

Japanese Cooking

I usually savour the delights of Japanese food in restaurants but at home I am criminally unadventurous with what I cook. My diet usually consists of rice, fish and, if I am feeling impulsive, a carrot. I tend to make this meal because when I come home after teaching I'm usually tired and I just want something quick and easy to make. And if it wasn't for the fact that my microwave looks like it’s barely survived a nuclear-holocaust, I would probably live off microwave meals.
After 11 months of this mundane home cooking I could almost hear my taste buds yelling, "Oi, chump! We're bloody bored of fish. Give us something else to chew on, or we'll attack you."
Not wishing to find out what would happen if my taste buds attacked me, I decided on hunting down a Japanese cookbook. There is a book shop near my apartment and I scoured the cooking section of the store. The selection was not a great. There was a sushi cookbook with a mad looking chef on the front cover vilontly wielding a blade above a piece of sushi. Far from appearing like a cookbook, it resembled a cookbook for mass murderers.
Another book showed a jolly rotund woman laughing as she held up two plates of appetizing dishes. This was promising until I noticed a bit of food inside her open mouth. Holding back a retch, I skimmed through the final book which just had the title and pictures of particular dishes, and nothing else. There were no instructions as to how to make it.
Defeated, I left the store and went to the supermarket to buy more fish. As I was eating later that night, I noticed my tongue had a coarse feel to it as if it was turning into sandpaper. This unprecedented feeling led me to believe my taste buds were indeed attacking me. They were true to their word!
This had to stop and something needed to be done. I needed to change the food content in my flat. And help, as so often, came from one of my students.
I was asking Mihoko, my Thursday morning student, about what she did at the weekend. She told me that her daughter was visiting from Tokyo so she had decided to cook a big meal. I asked what this meal was and she told me it was Suki-yaki. I didn't know what Suki-yaki was and asked her to enlighten me. She struggled with the vocabulary of preparing food, so what followed was a lesson based on cooking food. I taught her the vocabulary of things such as cut, slice, chop, boil and simmer, and she would tell me how to cook various Japanese dishes, whilst I took notes. I was fearful that this lesson was being used for my benefit, but Mihoko seemed to be enjoying it because she clearly loved cooking and she gave me the recipes for such exotic sounding meals I later tried to make myself. Dishes like Oyako Donburi - a Japanese 'fast-food' dish with meat eggs and Negi (Japanese onion) mixed with sugar, sake and soy sauce and placed on top of rice. Results in the kitchen when I attempted to make it: scolded pan, minor explosion and my ceiling covered in egg residue.
She told me how to make Cha-han - a Chinese dish where you fry thin slices of ham and onion in a pan, then scramble some eggs separately and put this in with the ham and onions. Then you put in some rice to stir in with the mix. Results in the kitchen: Onion tears falling into the pan, heavy spatula landing with a 'clunk' on my foot, and a ferocious spitting of the frying pan when heated causing me to duck for cover behind my sofa.
Finally, she gave the recipe for Okonamiyake - chop half a cabbage, beat two eggs and put them all into a pan. Then put some flour into the pan (three quarters of a mug) and stir this all together without the heat on. Then in a separate frying pan you fry pork, octopus and shrimp until it is cooked. Then put the flour, egg and cabbage mix into the frying pan to cook on either side, drenching it with soy-sauce. Results in the kitchen: Wondering if I imagined seeing an octopus tentacle move when I was about to chop it into small pieces, the shrimp jumping like pogo enthusiasts when heated, and using too much pork causing my flat to smell like and abattoir.
Maybe I could repay Mihoko the favour by telling her the ingredients of some staple British foods like Steak and Kidney Pie, Black Pudding and greasy full English Breakfasts.
OK, maybe not.

Airplanes, Beetles and Jungle Jim

If ever a week is clouded with monotony, I can always rely on Seneiji Elementary school to blow those clouds away. And last Wednesday was no exception.
I arrived at the school at the normal time in the morning. I then usually enter the staff room, greet the other teachers and enjoy drinking green tea until my lesson starts five minutes later.
This week my routine was altered when I realised the staff room door was locked. I walked through the empty school and called out "Kernichiwa."
No one responded.
The school was deserted.
I sat on a small bench near the opened entrance, staring at the surrounding mountains, ruminating why there was no-one in the building. It could have been a school holiday, but why were the doors opened?
It could have been a fire-drill, but I couldn’t hear an alarm.
Maybe alien abductions?
“Ah to hell with it,” I said aloud, and headed to the car to go home.
"Hello Sam," called a quiet voice behind me.
I spun around and saw one of the Japanese teachers waving at me. I waved back and asked where everyone was.
"We are all outside. Will you come and join us?"
I agreed and assumed everyone was outside due to the stifling temperature inside the school.
I strolled out into the playground and saw all my students crouched down in a line and picking at all the weeds sprouting through the cracks on the floor. The bandanna wearing teachers were standing in what looked like designated positions surveying the work of the kids. It looked like a happy version of a chain-gang.
I waved to the kids who bellowed my name upon seeing me. I asked why they were weeding when we were about to do an English lesson in a few minutes.
"Aaahahahah," came a warbling laugh to my side. I turned to see the Headmaster of the school, who was wearing a Donald Duck baseball cap.
“We are here because a plane is going to fly over us,” he said, and pointed to the sky. I followed the direction of his point. “The children are making the playground look presentable,” he said pointing at the children. He then pointed at me. “You will help.” And he jabbed his pointy finger at my chest.
I absorbed all this information, but one vital piece of information was missing. Why?
“Ah! An inquisitive mind,” he said, and poked his finger to the top of my head. “The plane is taking a photo to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the school.”
When said this, he felt it fitting to point to my ear, which in no way held any connection to what he had just said.
He told me that we all had to stand in a particular position in the playground so that we would all form a human Kanji symbol which would become clear from a photo taken by the plane. He told me the Kanji word would be: Seneiji Elementary School.
“So no political messages sticking it to the man like, ‘Reduce Oil Prices!’ or ‘We Don't Need No Education’” I joked.
The Headmaster pulled an expression that looked like someone was giving him colonic irrigation. “No,” he said and pointed to my nose before wandering off.
Another teacher nearby gave me a red bandanna to wear and showed me to my designated spot for the Kanji symbol. Once in my position, I did as the kids did and started to clear the weeds from little my area until the Headmaster screeched that the plane was expected imminently. The kids snapped to attention and stood in a solemn stance with their hands akimbo and legs spread apart. It was like they were preparing for an imminent battle. No-one in the playground uttered a word. You could hear the wind whistling around the surrounding mountains. It was faintly eerie. Eventually, we would hear the low rumble of an engine sound far off. The plane slowly soared towards us, getting bigger and bigger by the second.
"Get ready!" screamed the Headmaster, and he would continue saying this more volubly every five seconds as the plane grew more visible and louder.






When the plane was moments away from hovering above us the Headmaster screeched "Prepare children!" with such belligerent force that when he finally said "GO!" I expected the kids to whip out bazookas and fire on the small plane. But they just waved with big smiles on their faces. The plane circled a number of times, flashing with a bight light as it took numerous pictures, before it flew off towards the glaring sun.
The kids were delirious with excitement after the plane had flown away and started to mimic a plane and glided about the playground. I couldn't help thinking that if my lesson didn't have an airplane theme to it then they wouldn’t give a toss what I taught.
Back in the classroom I had to forcibly shout for the kids to be quiet amongst the din of countless kids going "brrrrrrrrooommmm" around the room with their arms stretched out like wings.
I asked them to do a Pictionary game based on animals and transport. At the mention of the word "animals" a dozen students scampered over to various glass containers at the side of the room and dug their hands in them. They then slowly lifted their hand up with the other hand clasped tightly on top. It didn't take a genius to surmise they had some sort of critter in their grasp. The kids lined up in front of me and each student opened their hands to reveal their animal of choice. The first child had a very nice butterfly in her hand, as did the second and third kid. Then the animals started to get more ugly and malevolent as I went down the line. One little girl had an obese toad weighing heavily on her hands. It croaked a loud wheeze and wobbled a bit. The last few kids had a proclivity for big, bloody beetles, which was more evil looking than a grumpy toad. Once revealed in all their horrific glory, these ugly beetles had antlers to size of fingers. I hate beetles and the terror in my eyes spurred the students holding the behemoths to move closer to me whilst ghoulishly dangling the beetles in my face. I went a bit bonkers with fear at this point because I just legged it out of the room, which was a big mistake because the beetle holders ran after me. Before I realised what was going on, I found myself darting through the vast school whilst being chased by a bunch of giggling kids holding giant beetles. We were stopped in our tracks by the Headmaster, still wearing his ridiculous Donald Duck cap, who blocked off our route and asked what was going on.
"They're chasing me with beetles, sir," I said pathetically, trying to catch my breath.
The headmaster gave the kids a stern look, and pointed to the beetle, then at the children then back to the beetle.








“No more beetle chasing!” he said with scorn, and swung his cap back to front and grabbed two of the students by the ear and dragged them back to the classroom.
The shenanigans earlier with the plane photo-shoot chewed up much of my lesson, so thankfully this anarchic lesson was a short one. This enabled me to end the lesson earlier than usual. As I was preparing to say goodbye to the students, a Japanese teacher walked into the room and asked me to play a game with the children before lunch
“What game?” I asked.
"Jungle Jim," the teacher said.
"What's that?" I queried.
"Ahh, you will find out,” he said and sprinted away.
The kids then huddled around me, clasped onto my hands, and led me away to the playground outside.
Once assembled by a climbing frame, one kid acted as the Jungle Jim spokesman and tried to tell me the rules of the game. Through an intricate array of mimes and facial expressions I was able to deduce that the rules involved one person being Jungle Jim and they were required to chase the others who hanged on the climbing frames. As soon as Jungle Jim tagged one person, that person would be the new Jim and they would have to go hunting for the others.
"OK, got it. Who's going to be Jim?" I asked.
"YOU!" the kids yelled back.
Once mounted on top of the climbing frame I kicked started the game by thumping my chest repeatedly and hollering like a lunatic Tarzan. I don't think the kids ever saw or knew about Tarzan because they looked at me with expressions that read: "What the hell is he doing?"
I then began my perilous hunt. It was quite easy because a portly kid next to me couldn't scramble away fast enough. I thought I might give him the benefit of the doubt and let him off the hook. But then I thought Jungle Jim is meant to be a callous warrior of the jungle and moments of compassion would be wasted on him. It was survival of the fittest in the jungle, surely. So I just stuck out my arm and tapped him on top of the head. He wailed in disappointed and violently thrashed his arms at me, trying to tag me back. I was nearly knocked off the goddam climbing frame by his wild movement.
He lunged for me in what looked like an act of revenge for me tagging him in the first place. I ducked out the way and made my escape down the climbing frame. The rest of the kids were hovering near the bottom, out of reach of the new Jungle Jim at the top, but not for long because he was slowly descending. I joined the kids who gave me a dignified nod of the head. We all looked up and saw the new Jungle Jim coming down towards us but what was unnerving was that he focused his feral glare on me.
The kids were clever because they saw that this Jungle Jim only wanted to attack me, so they all moved far away from me. I felt like I had the sodding plague. Inevitably, the chubby kid pinned me in the corner and tagged me. Yet he was so bloody slow trying to get away again that I tagged him back. He frothed with anger and repeated his lunging movements as I scrambled away. And this tiresome set-piece was repeated throughout the game.

Magic

My student, Minneko, works as a postal worker, but she has a special hobby on the side, which is magic. This passion of hers became apparent during a recent lesson of mine. As always, Minneko came bustling into my Monday evening beginners’ class with a huge grin on her face. Her eyes, which are normally magnified by her bi-focal glasses, flashed with even more excitement than usual. I humoured her with a chuckle and a, "Now, what are you so excited about," remark, which on hindsight may have seemed condescending seeing as though she is about thirty years older than me. She struggled through a sentence which consisted of, "I magic, show you, exciting, exciting," and popped a DVD into my hands.
For a brief moment I thought she was going to turn the DVD into a rabbit with a wave of her hands. But she made some gestures that indicated she wanted me to watch the DVD.
"OK, Minneko," I continued with my condescending tone, "but only for a few minutes because other students will arrive shortly."
We went next door to the staff room and I popped the DVD into the computer.
A black screen opened with a legend that flew onto the screen announcing: "Magic Show in Nagano!!!!!!!!!!!" And in case you were wondering, the legend did have that many exclamation marks giving one the impression that they were being screeched at by an unseen announcer. The legend flew off screen with a needless twirly-whirly effect and the opening shot of the show began. It was of an empty smoky stage with an audience of elderly people perched in front. An almighty trumpet began to tootle off-screen giving a jarring effect which made me disorientated. I was at least watching this on screen. I would hate to imagine the effect this violent sound had on the frail brittle people in the front row. Their slumped postures may have indicated the fatal effect.
A few moments later the audience gave a scattered applause to an ancient chap who staggered on stage. He was completely unsure of himself. He clearly didn't know if this was his cue to come on stage or wait in the wings. He would look back to an unseen person at the side of the stage and give a cartoon shrug. For his sake I hoped this was part of the act because he was clearly a mess otherwise.
"Who is this stupid old man?" I said incredulously.
"My father," Minneko said, frowning at me.
I raised my eyebrows so high in surprise that they nearly flew off my head. “Ah, oh, er,” I responded strangely.
Meanwhile Minneko's father was giving a bad odour to Minneko's family name as he arranged his props with shaky hands, dropping a chair, his wand and even a top-hat which allowed a hidden rabbit to scoot free.
If he was partial to a bit of Tommy Cooper, this introduction would have been brilliant.
Minneko assured me he was being serious which made the performance even worse.
Minneko's father was now hobbling around the stage trying to catch the excitable rabbit whilst clutching his stooped back in pain.
The audience, meanwhile, were not sure whether to laugh or clamber up on stage and pump him with oxygen.
After a wasteful five minutes he assembled the props which had run-away and began the show.
Minneko's father attached a cape, (two-sizes too small) to himself and put on a top-hat (two-sizes too big), allowing only his nose to poke out under the rim. He then fluttered his hands in the air for some sort of effect that didn't in anyway contribute to anything, which pretty much summed up his whole act. He would make odd movements with his body to some cheesy synthesizer music whilst smoked billowed around the stage. That's all well and good, I thought, but I wanted to see some actual magic not some prat pontificating on stage. Minneko's father was lucky the front row snuffed it from the trumpet sounds, otherwise they would have stormed the stage asking for their money back.
Eventually he performed a below-par card trick which was so forgettable that I wished he would continue with his body contortions which were memorable because it was so bad.
"When are we going to see some actual magic?" I asked Minneko, whilst struggling to hide my irritation.
"Look at me!" she shrieked.
I followed her orders and stared at her like an idiot.
"No, not at me. Look at me on the screen!"
I looked at the screen and there was Minneko walking onto the stage with a garish, skimpy leotard, which nearly caused me to shriek with revolt.
Minneko was clapping in ecstasy beside me. Not wishing her to feel alone in her moment of joy, I also clapped.
On screen, Minneko's father instructed her to retrieve a box from the side of the stage with more unnecessary body theatrics. Minneko came back with the box and lay down inside it. Her father then went behind the curtain and came back wielding two samurai swords in his hands.
I was glad Minneko was standing next to me otherwise I would have been certain her father's limited and clumsy magical abilities would have resulted in impaling her with horrific results. Minneko was inside the box with only her smiling face popping out of the top.
Her father started to juggle the swords, dropping one in the process, which was careless considering he was only holding two of them. The sword he dropped clattered to the floor and spun towards the front row, causing many to leap backwards into the second row.
I wasn't surprised by this gaffe because his eyes were still concealed under his extra-large top hat.
After stooping down to collect his sword he started to thrust it into different holes on the box. On screen, Minneko looked shocked and in a great deal of pain with each thrust her father did, leading me to believe he had actual inflicted a mortal wound on her. After six more thrusts, Minneko looked white.
"Were you ok?" I asked Minneko.
"He was out of practice," she replied ambiguously.
Her father finished the act by unfolding each side of the box with some difficulty revealing that Minneko was alive but still wounded because she hobbled off stage whilst clutching the side of her hip.
Her father victoriously took off his top hat and bowed to the crowd. It sounded like only two people were clapping in the audience. The curtain then suddenly dropped onto the head of Minneko's father causing him to collapse to the floor, leaving only his feet jutting out from under the curtain. His feet were then pulled back behind the curtain by some unseen hand and he vanished from sight, which was one trick I approved off.

"Music, We Have A Problem."

I assumed incorporating music for two of my lessons would make them more entertaining. I was wrong. Oh so wrong
My two Friday evening lessons are one-to-one affairs. The first is with a sullen 12 year old girl called Yuko. The other is with a happy-go-lucky 17 year old Maths wizard called Manabu.
I wanted to play them a song, whilst they read the printed lyrics sheet in front of them. But I had deliberately left out certain words and would ask them to fill-in-the-gaps as they heard the particular word sung.
I scanned my CD collection and figured the gnarly, aggressive sounds of Tom Waits was inappropriate, as was the thrashing volatile punk of The Damned. And unless they wanted to learn African instead of English, then the tribal shouts of Fela Kuti would be lost on them.
For Yuko, I needed simple, happy songs and nothing to scare the living crap out of her. So I put aside songs by the Sex Pistols, Wu-tang Clan and NWA. I decided to use The Beatles' Hello Goodbye to help practice opposites, and Sam Cookes' Wonderful World to practice the names of school subjects.
Recently I have been teaching her from a boring textbook, so her eyes widened when I came into the room with my laptop which stored all my music. I told her we were going to have a special lesson and got her to close the dusty, rotting textbook.
I set up the laptop and then theatrically clapped my hands together excitedly. "Do you like MUSIC?!" I said like a circus master addressing an expectant crowd.
"No," was her terse reply.
This wasn't in the script. I expected her to nod energetically and clap her hands whilst yipping, "Yay!"
This was not forthcoming and she remained looking miserable throughout Wonderful World.
She filled out the words without any trouble, but she was clearly not enjoying the lesson. She would constantly sigh and blow through her cheeks. The awkwardness of this moment was accentuated during the middle eight of Hello Goodbye when she wasn't required to do anything whilst the orchestra blared and the guitars twanged for what seemed like a lifetime. I tried to introduce some humour into the proceedings by pretending to conduct the orchestra in the song by waving my hands back and forth in the air. I thought this would be funny. Yuko thought otherwise and let out an audible yawn.
I had hoped Manabu would react differently to my proposed lesson because I always saw him wandering around the school with a huge bass guitar slung over his shoulder. I figured a musician would like music. He did, just not my music.
When I told him about teaching him English with music, he seemed pleased and asked what music I would be playing. I told him I had chosen the songs Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon because he was interested in London; Johnny B Goode by Chuck Berry because he liked fast guitar sounds and You Can't Always Get What You Want by The Rolling Stones because I like it.
I began Werewolves and he wrote down the correct answers but stopped me mid way. "What's a werewolf?" he asked.
I assumed he knew what one was, and even if he didn't, Warren Zevon shed some light on the matter by consistently howling AaaaaaWoooooo throughout the song.
I told him it was a fictional wolf beast and did an impression of one. He looked at me as if I were sick in the head so I drew a picture of one on the board. He seemed to understand, but insisted on taking the song at face value.
"Why would there be a werewolf in London if they are not real?" he asked.
"I dunno, it's just a song," I said.
He also couldn’t understand the lyric: I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand walking through the streets of Soho in the rain.
"How can a werewolf look at a menu while walking. They walk on four legs, right?." He asked, scratching his head.
Manabu had just crushed the life out of this song by failing to use his imagination.
I resumed the song but Manabu didn't have a thirst for this lesson anymore. His analytical brain was disappointed with the fantastical content of the song.
As with Yuko I garnered the worst reactions during the uncomfortable middle eight section.
As the guitar solos squealed, I pretended to air-guitar much to Manabu's non-amusement. I gave up and stared intently at the screen as if I was figuring out a complex mathematical equation.
Johnny B Goode didn't fare to well either because Chuck Berry just sang too damn fast. This was my fault. I should have put myself in a non-native English speaker's shoes and realized Chuck Berry's staccato rap during his bouncy chord work would have been impossible to decipher. This proved to be the case when Manabu handed me back his lyric sheet with question marks filled in where the missing words should have been.
The Stones had never failed me in the past, and I pinned my hope on their song ending the lesson on a marginally more positive note, rather than the wreck of a lesson it was turning out to be. But the truth is Mick Jagger has one of the most distinct vocals in rock music. In other words, you can never understand what the bloody hell he is saying.
The lesson was officially labelled woeful when Manabu filled in his sheet at the end of the song and asked, "What does this sentence mean when he sings, with a glass of wine in her hyyyyyy-aaaaaand? What does hyyyyyy-aaaand mean?"

How Old Is Eiko?

If I had to guess, I would say Eiko was 90 years old. I was, however, proved woefully inaccurate.
Eiko is one of my students in my weekday lunchtime class. She makes up for her lack of English with a face cracking smile. Every afternoon she will shyly shuffle into the room and will painstakingly gather her limited vocabulary to comment on the weather, and will remain mostly silent for the remainder of the lesson. As much as I try to get her to join in, her self-conscious lack of understanding of the language keeps her mute.
I make it my business to let every student participate in my lessons, so as an introductory warm-up I ask each student to comment on their weekend activities. The other more able students in the class can do this with relative ease. Eiko, however, stares at me as if I have asked her to describe Einstein's theory of relativity. I understand why she might be reticent, so I carefully craft my questions which only requires a 'yes' or 'no' answer.
But one day, she astounded me by constructing a detailed answer to my question.
"I met my mother-in-law and we went shopping and played tennis," she chirpily said.
The initial rapture I felt that she was beginning to speak English gave way to troubled curiosity at the viability of her statement.
"Your mother-in-law?" I asked Eiko, whilst covertly counting the numerous wrinkles on her weather beaten face.
"Yes," confirmed Eiko.
Without seeming rude, I aborted scrutinizing her features and composed myself for more investigating. I had a gut-instinct that I was about to discover the oldest living mother-in-law in existence and I wanted to make sure Eiko had got her facts right before I notified the relevant science magazines.
"Are you sure you mean your mother-in-law? Don't you mean your daughter, or cousin?"
"No, no, my mother-in-law. We buy gift for my daughter's birthday. Next week is daughter's birthday."
I searched my brain for the Polite Questions Department and happened across this belter.
"And how old is your daughter?" I asked.
"She is 70."
I looked at Eiko in disbelief, then at the class, who were busy trying to not to laugh.
My brain passed me another question from the Polite Question Department.
"So how old is your mother-in-law?"
"50"
I mentally drew Eiko's baffling family tree and came to the conclusion that her daughter was older than her. I broke out in a sweat as I tried to figure out this complex puzzle until I realized my palpitations and ruminating silence cast an unsettling atmosphere in the room. But there was another aspect of her story which puzzled me.
"Tennis as well? Can you play?" I asked, thinking that she would surely snap in two if she tried to pile-drive an ace-serve.
"Yes. I'm good player. But I lost," she said, and made a sad face.
I was about to say I wasn't surprised seeing as your more nimbler mother-in-law is 20 years younger than you, but I refrained.
There was one piece of the puzzle missing that would have explained everything, but the Polite Question Department must have deemed the question, "So, how old are you Eiko?" beyond the pale.
This little mystery will surely remain unsolved.

Sword Play

A week passed since I waved goodbye to Shoko, and I was still feeling sore. Each morning I woke up feeling depressed and in no mood to teach.
I had received a call from Shoko telling me she arrived safely and had started her stewardess training. I wished her well and tried to sound upbeat, but as soon as I hung up the phone after our conversation, I felt remorseful that I wasn't there with her. I needed something to vent my feelings of frustration. Luckily, Seneiji School invited Martin and myself to play Chanbara. I asked the headmaster in the staffroom what this was and he said it was a sword fight.
"Ahhhhh Yeeeeeeeeeah!!" I said expressing my delight in the vein of a character in a Blaxploitation film.


If any activity could be used to help me express my pent up anger then this activity was surely it. The sword was going to express my true feelings. It was unfortunate that the students were going to be on the end of my tumultuous feelings.
When Martin and I were in the gym, the students handed us our swords. They were constructed from paper that was wrapped around a cardboard cylinder. Martin and I grumbled to each other that we would have preferred heavy, metal swords to fight our enemies, even if they were a bunch of smiling benevolent students. But we made do, and swung our swords in mock-ninja style. The kids stood back and laughed at our uncoordinated movements. The sports teacher drew a halt to our ninja show when he showed us how the art of Chanbara was done, and he plucked a short chap from the group of students. He then swung the sword at this little fella with all his strength. Luckily the student was tiny because he could crouch to the level of the teacher’s kneecaps and avoid the swinging sword that nearly decapitated him.
"You might want to go a little easy on the boy," I said to the teacher who was in the middle of a jump and slice manoeuvre which resulted in the sword crashing down on the poor guy's head. The teacher stopped his butchering of the boy, and confidently strutted towards Martin and I with his chest puffed out."You understand game now?" he asked.
"Yeah, kill each other," I said.
I don't think he understood because he said "Yes, yes, yes," and walked off chuckling. Maybe he did understand, and the game really did require us to kill our opponent. But with paper swords, that seemed unlikely. Although, I looked at the small chap that was besieged by the violently possessed teacher, and he didn’t look too good. He was still clutching the top of his head which the teacher so humbly thwacked with force and was clearly in a great deal of pain. I was sure if he was subjected to any more sword bashing to the top of his head, his brain would have exploded.
The teams were assigned - three against three. I was in the team with Bad Brain Boy who was still groaning in pain. I took issue with the teacher for putting me in a team with an inoperative fighter who was now lying on his back with his hands submerged over his whole head. The teacher reproached me for my wicked competitive streak and asked for more compassion on my part. The cheek! He was the one who eradicated the poor chap. The first battle was between Martin, who was on the other team, and a lanky acne riddled boy on my team. Martin was wildly doing swiping motions with his sword which didn't find his opponent, who was busy dancing around him with light footed speed, clearly enjoying the fact he was fighting an amateur. Too be honest, acne boy was a bit of a poser. He was darting in and out of Martin's artless jabbing with his hands on his hips and a smirk on his face. Who did this kid think he was, Zorro?
He eventually put Martin out of his fighting misery when he did some intricate jousting with Martin's heavy handed style, and managed to find an opening and struck at Martin's heart. I felt this was a rather sinister manoeuvre, but it was legal because if you hit a part of the body, you win the game. Acne boy came sashaying back to me and Brain Boy (whose face was now turning a bright purple colour) and did an unnecessary bow.
"Gloating git," I thought, even though he was on my team.
It was my turn now, and I was fighting a girl. She was a smiley, excitable person, which gave me the false impression she would be an inferior fighter to me. Surely good fighters should be surly, aggressive looking brutes. This was far from the truth because she was the best of the bunch. I realised this when it was too late. When we stood opposite each other and bowed, I was mentally picturing how to celebrate my inevitable victory. I was still thinking this when we took our fighting positions, when suddenly, she flew at me with incomprehensible speed.


"What the fu-" I managed to say, before her sword clattered against my jittering sword that protected my face from being exposed to her unexpected attack. I jumped back to create space between me and Xenia: Warrior Princess, but she came at me again, even faster than before. A samurai might not have done what I was about to do, but then again, they probably never fought such a quick fighter as I was doing now. What I did was drop my sword and ran away. It might not have been a dignified sight, but it was the only safe option open to me because I was sure she would have inflicted some damage if I fought her. I didn't care if our swords were made of paper, she would have found a way to hurt me. I was running around the outskirts of the gym as she chased me. I must have broken numerous rules because the teacher said a few words and another kid entered the arena to assist Xenia.
"At least give me Brain Boy!" I called out to the teacher, in despair. I looked over to the kid. He was now a bright green colour and was lying on the floor with one eye wide open and the other one closed. "Forget about it," I said, and continued my escape. It was no use, the duo pinned me in a corner and swiped at my legs, signalling the end of the game.
"OK, great. Game over, now stop hitting me," I said.



At the end of the tournament, my team lost. The two teams then lined up opposite each other to bow and end the game. Zorro was pouting and sulking because we lost, Brain Boy (who was now turning orange and blue) needed to be propped up against Zorro in order to stand, and I was sneezing on account of the dusty gym.
I may not have vented my frustration at having lost Shoko, but I did learn the value of life.

Matsumoto Birdman

Matsumoto is a small city near Iida. There's not much to it except a castle and a goat. But if you look carefully you can discover a plethora of delights. I recently travelled there to see its sole attraction which was called Crow Castle.
I figured it had this name because of its black and white colour, but on further inspection it was because of the frightful amount of squawking crows swooping about the structure. The castle is an impressive sight. It is surrounded by a small mote filled with giant multi-coloured fish. It also boasts a beautiful garden nearby. But it was the assorted oddities around the grounds that attracted me.


Walking towards the entrance of the castle I spotted a cackling pork-pie hatted old man waving his hands in the air whilst young couples ran away from him, screaming. Naturally, I wondered why they were terrified of this lunatic. As I came closer I saw that rested on top of his hat and arms were crows flapping their wings with gusto. And the old man was talking to them in what I believed to be Japanese, but it could have been bird-speak for all I knew. He was feeding his winged pals bird-food whilst stroking their beaks. I hovered near him, curious to observe at close-inspection how he dealt with the tourists that walked past him. Needless to say he was in a wickedly impish mood because the next young couple that sauntered past him were subjected to him lunging at them whilst his feathered friends aggressively squawked and croaked. I couldn't fathom why he was doing this. Surely not for monetary purposes because who in their right mind would pay to be scared shitless by some bastard in a hat.

After his fresh bird attack, he adopted a new terror tactic. He pretended to be a statue and stood still. And, as expected, a small group of tourists approached. As soon as they stopped to inspect whether he was a real human or a model, he lunged towards them yelling, "BAAAAA!"
The group he terrorized were of an elderly disposition, and the oldest of the group gasped as he clutched his heart.
When I decided to walk past him, I knew what to expect, so when I observed him mounting an attack on me, I took the initiative and suddenly lunged towards him going, "BAAAA!”
He looked startled and clutched his heart, which made the birds fly away, obviously disturbed by this break in protocol.
Pleased with my victory over this unseemly character I explored the castle grounds with relish.


It was a pleasant affair with benign groups of tourists posing for pictures in front of the grand castle and the delicately crafted trees populating the gardens. I was enjoying this scene on a bench whilst I ate a chocolate ice-cream when, from the corner of my eye, I spotted an aberration to this picture-postcard area. This oddity was some bloke in a mushroom costume. He was hopping to and fro amongst the shrubberies and being a general pest. He was similar to the birdman outside in so much that I couldn't see what he was contributing to society. He would bounce over to a kid, ruffle their hair, chortle a jolly "ho ho ho," and would bound off again. I applauded the crew-cutted brute of a kid that took it upon himself to violently stamp on Mushroom-man's foot, which made him omit a thunderous yowl that disturbed the peace of the grounds.


The day was getting more entertaining by the minute. With this in mind, I entered the castle with high hopes that I would see something even more outrageous like a pair of gorillas wearing samurai garb and duelling with each other.
This never materialized, but a more realistic human comedy emerged.
The castle had five floors, and on each one it displayed an array of historical artefacts from Japan's illustrious medieval history. There were majestic Samurai armoury, ghoulish weaponry and simple tools and utensils for history buffs to salivate over. This was all fine, but what interested me was the death inducing steps that led visitors to each floor. They were all murderously steep and I was curious to see how people from all walks of life mounted these steps. The younger people managed to do so without much difficulty, but still complained about the danger apparent in walking up to the different levels. However, the elderly were a lost cause. They had to be towed up by at least 13 members of their respective families. What made this route more perilous was that people were either walking up to the different levels, or walking back down to the exits. It was like the worst human traffic jam you could imagine. And when the more portly members of society either ascended or descended the steps, the slow flow of humans ground to an abrupt halt as they hanged off the edge of the railings allowing for these big-boned waddlers a chance to pass on through.
I tried my luck at climbing to the different levels of the castle and constantly clattered into the people coming the other way.
The Samurais of old may have been accomplished warriors but they were fucking terrible architects when it came to stairs.

Onsen

A Japanese onsen has never appealed to me mainly because you have to be naked in a small pool with other men. It's a traditional Japanese past-time, but as far as I'm concerned they can keep it to themselves. I was, however, goaded into going to one by my students in my lunchtime class. Their English is very good so they could get to the route of my apparent problem with onsens.
"Are you afraid of the water being dirty?" said Mitsuko with concern.
"No, it's just something I don't normally do," I replied.
"Don't you like cleansing yourself?" said Noriko.
"Of course I do!" I said.
"Are you ashamed of your body?" asked Syuuiti.
"Hang on! Is this an English or Psychology lesson?" I said.
The truth was that I was a little uncomfortable with the whole idea of getting butt-naked in front of other blokes. Another aspect of an onsen is you just sit in the warm pool and do nothing. You're meant to relax, but I can't relax in a pool of dirty water with other pruning men. I'd rather read a book on the couch.
Syuuiti was the most aghast person in the room with regards to my lack of onsen experience. He was troubled by the fact that I had been in Japan for more than 10 months and hadn't had a traditional onsen.
"You've seen a lot of Japan, and done so many Japanese things, but not an onsen. Why, Sam, why?!"
My difficulty in coming up with a good excuse spurred me to say, "OK. I'll bloody do it!"
So I did the following weekend.
I walked to a nearby onsen and bought my locker key. I went to the changing room and saw a line of Japanese men aged between 100-200 years old stripping off and walking towards the adjacent onsen whilst their ball-sacks dragged across the floor.
I tentatively took my clothes off, making sure no-one was near me and went next door to the onsen.
The pool was filled with the ancient fossils I saw getting naked moments earlier. They were nattering to each other in Japanese. It was just my luck that I picked a day when the pool was filled with old friends and I was the social miscreant to break up the party.
I smiled and nodded to them when they all shot a glance at me. I instinctively cupped my naughty bits as I nodded. They nodded back and resumed their jolly anecdotes.
I spotted an isolated corner in the onsen and ran towards that before it was occupied. The only other space was between two obese men coughing like loons.
My sudden dash to the corner attracted concerned attention from the decrepit gang. I stopped in my tracks to give them another nod with the hope of confirming I was a cordial fellow without a mental problem. They nodded back and resumed chatting.
I quickly jumped into the pool hoping to conceal my flapping dick. Unfortunately, I caused an almighty splash which made the warm water slam into the face of the coughing bloaters nearby. I made amends by nodding to the others. They didn't nod back this time. Instead, they looked at me as if I was a rabid monkey let loose in this den of calm and relaxation. My face went bright red and I stared straight ahead at the wall. I didn't dare move another muscle in case I happened destroy the calm of the onsen.
I only lasted five minutes in the place before I got bored, so I made contented sigh and leapt out of the pool, causing a degree of relief amongst the elderly bathers who had been clearly nervous by my erratic presence.
When I met my class the following week, Syuuiti said, "Did you enjoy your onsen?"
"Hated it," I said.
At least I was honest.

The Rejection Of Ohmi

I always like to have a united class. I find it an uncomfortable experience when different factions form, causing a split in the group dynamic. It is even more uncomfortable when the whole group shy away from one person. But when that sole person is Ohmi, it is understandable. He is a big character in my seniors class, and he often overshadows the other students. This is mainly because his English is perfect compared to the others. When one of the seniors struggles with their English, Ohmi will get restless and irritable. He will fidget and shift in his seat, desperate to speak at length about his opinions on world affairs. Normally, his in-depth discussions about the American stock-exchange and the benefits of proportional representation is lost on the other students. I try to allow each student to have their say on anything they choose to talk about, but with Ohmi's belligerent presence, this is a problem. It is only now that the other students are beginning to revolt against Ohmi. This became apparent during one of Ohmi's rants about the state of Japanese youth today. His dissection of the surly Japanese teenager was peppered with negative words and criticisms. He talked at length about chairing a meeting the following weekend. The meeting was organized to discuss how to solve the crisis with Japanese teenagers, and how they should respect their elders more. I asked who else was going to attend the meeting.
"Two people, including me," he said proudly.
I couldn't help thinking that their meeting would be in vein. The chances of teenagers in Japan changing their behaviour on account of a meeting consisting of an octogenarian and his friend would be very slim, but he seemed confident that the meeting would reap results.
I asked if anyone in the class would be attending the meeting.
Kimiyo said she was “busy”, Akiko said she "had to do something", Masaho said, "I'm not doing anything on that day, so I'm not going to Ohmi's meeting," and Tersuo simply said, "No."
I asked why he wasn't going. His answer may relate to his tiny grasp of English because he randomly said, "Hair."
"You're getting a haircut?" I said, questioning his statement because he's bald.
"No, just hair," he said.
I know when someone is getting the cold-shoulder, so I left it at that.

Small Room Of Pain

I've always disliked teachers who exact physical retribution on their students. I think it's cruel, unprofessional and down right detestable. Unfortunately, one of my students was subjected to physical pain in one of my lessons. This student is a pale 10 year old called Yushin. I teach him, along with his twin sister Mao, every afternoon. Their English is non-existent, so I have adopted a basic approach to teaching. The lessons are normally a sedentary affair where I use various visual aids to assist their learning. For the benefit of Yushin, Mao and myself (for I was becoming bored of constantly sitting in one place for an hour) I decided to change the structure of the lesson by introducing a game which promised running about in a reckless manner. I named the game Find it!
This involved me placing various animal picture cards around the room then bellowing to Yushin and Mao to find a particular animal card. They would then joyously search for the picture card. The first person to find it would get a point. Unfortunately, I had misjudged the room size for this game. You see, the room I teach these kids in is no bigger than a hamster cage. Finding interesting places to put the cards became a chore because there were no places to hide them. There was the desk, the white-board and the door. That was it. To obviate this problem, I asked Yushin and Mao to close their eyes and count to 50. This had the duel purposes of practising numbers and allowing me much needed time to plot where the hell to put the cards. The tiny interior of the room, however, restricted any cunning card concealment. The only option open to me was placing the cards in dangerously precarious positions. I placed cards next to a mouldy bin, inside a pair of vacant slippers, under the low-lying table and on top of a cactus plant. I felt bad, but I had a masochistic curiosity to see how this game would unfurl. I asked Yushin and Mao to open their eyes.
Mao had been uncomfortable about this whole arrangement from the start judging by her unsettled face. She had been quick to realize that a game of Find-it! inside this tiny room was a suicide mission. Yushin, on the other hand, was beside himself with delirious anticipation. He was like a wild beast on a leash waiting to be set free. I duly obliged. "Find the.....elephant!" I said, and he was off like a rocket! Mao, in contrast, half-heartedly roamed around the small confines of the room, not wishing to commit herself to bodily harm. Meanwhile, Yushin was oblivious to his surroundings. The only thing that concerned his curious mind was to find the elephant, and to hell with anything that stood in his way, even if that thing was the prickly cactus plant.
"AAAAAHHHHHhhahahahahahah!" he screamed, as he impaled his hand on the plant when he lunged at the elephant card. I couldn't decide whether he was in pain or having fun. Perhaps he thought pain was fun.
Much to Mao's rightful chagrin, I continued this game.
"Find the...rabbit!"
Whooosh! Off went Yushin on his expedition of pain. He clattered into the door, the white-board, ducked under the table and banged his head on the under-side as he got up, all for the purpose of finding a ripped card with a smiling rabbit on it. Mao spotted the rabbit in a slipper and slowly shuffled towards it as Yushin was climbing the walls like Spiderman.
Mao picked up the card, lazily waved it at me, and sighed as she sat back down.
Yushin was slamming into the bookcase at this point, with his head inside his bag.
"Yushin, Mao has found the card," I said.
He was still searching for the rabbit card inside his bag, whilst standing up.
"Yushin! Mao has found the card. It's not in your bag," I reiterated.
He yanked the bag off his head and looked to Mao who was slumped in her seat and showed the rabbit card to him. He looked crestfallen. He had all those wounds and had nothing to show for it, even if the prize was a ripped picture of a rabbit.