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.