palabre a su madre

He who breaks up fights during class with Japanese schoolchildren might take care, lest he thereby become one. And if you gaze for long into the abyss of the instigating bully's eyes, the wanton abyss gazes also into you.

hyperbole pissing contest

Two and a half years in Japan should be enough for any man to assume some level of confidence with regard to the Japanese society as a whole--the rules, politics, expectations, and mandatory absurdity that underhandedly govern it at every corner.

I've been here long enough. Which is to say, I get it. And it gets me. Or rather, to me.

But before I begin my story, I should clarify one small bit for those of you not familiar with the Disappointed Idealist. I do not work from atop a skyscraper with the New York Times, or inside the Pentagon with the US Department of Defense.
I work in a middle school so far out of the big leagues, our bloated, schizophrenic curriculum exists only to create an equally ridiculous, academic league of our own--one we can rule with impunity.

I made the mistake of once requesting time off from work--something no true Japanese person would attempt under even the most crushing periods of psychological duress. To say that requesting vacation time required the cutting through of some proverbial red tape would be fairly close--should one be 'drilling' rather than 'cutting,' and 'through a wall of brick,' rather than 'through tape.' Perhaps our metaphorical bricks could be painted red, just to keep things grounded.

The procedure for getting time off is deceptively simple: collect a number of signatures from various authoritative figures around the institution, then submit the paperwork to be "rewarded" with what I am already legally entitled to. It's like getting your car grounded by your parents, then having to perform menial backyard chores to get the keys back. But whatever, I'm not bitter. I'll show them. I'll get their goddamn signatures.

The traditional Japanese signature is pressed from a hanko, which is actually just an overpriced rubber stamp (like those found in a box of Cracker Jack or Frosted Mini-Wheats) bearing the holder's name. The Head Principal. His Vice Principal. The Academic Office Manager. The Director of Student Affairs. The titles begin to get longer, more redundant. The Assistant Minister of Groundskeeping and Shrubbery Upkeep. Stern reproach, but an approving paw print from his dog, and I am on my merry way. Traipsing about Handa Mountain in search of these elusive holders, and their permissory red ink harkens back to tales of my previous generation's Boy Scout merit badge-questing days. Only their trivial grinding, and fetch-quests resulted in a power-leveling of sorts; a succession of ranks on the national Boy Scouts of America ladder (whose unfortunate tumble from significance can be traced to scandal and the Xbox Live leaderboards). However, once my task is completed, I gain only what I should have been entitled to for free in the first place. No self-satisfaction; only a pounding headache from waiting outside the stupid Administrator of Strategic Cranial Rectal Inversion's office for three hours, and a severe rash from being sent to the Vice Director of Theoretical Academic Upward Mobility's office, only to find he's been dead for 10 years--his skeletal remains still chained to his desk in a dilapidated mess of concrete overrun by poison ivy and utter irrelevancy.
His miserable hanko, the last on my contemptuous list.

And now, in the culmination of my quest to reclaim my R&R off this island; all that remains is to convene with the school's unforgiving goldfish high council for final approval. This should go about as well as a boot in the ass.

"what's that? vacation time? whoa, not so fuckin' fast mister"

a minor technicality

If ever there were some grievous lack of circumstantial evidence as to why I should not be left in charge of drafting my own ESL curriculum, here would be yet another shining example:

"D-" Billy, see me after class

I really need to stop playing "hypothetical hilarity" on the keyboard before I send my exams to the printer.

gol' dang bodagget

Japanese is a very unique language because actual swearing--or equivalents to what George Carlin would have typically referred to as the Seven Deadly Words, for all intents and purposes do not exist. So the translation of cuss words into Japanese can be a tricky multi-step process first requiring a "dumbing down" of the base language, careful contextual approximation, then an educated guess, or re-application depending on the desired severity of the target language. By the time the process is complete, outside the speaker's tone and inflection, there is usually precious little remaining of the statement's original intent.

Granted, while even the average Japanese layperson is already familiar with a certain four letter word rhyming with 'duck' (somewhat taboo in Japan, based mostly on hearsay), the English language is home to a whole library of other salty vernacular delights that can deftly escape even the most thorough of J/E translators. Which, as you could imagine, allow me unabashedly free passage with a great deal of coarse language that shouldn't otherwise go tolerated anywhere outside Japan.

To illustrate,

I say: "What!? The copier dicked up my framing again!! Is there anything this heap of shit can't do completely wrong!?"

The other English teachers hear: "Indeed, the copier is sometimes a very disagreeable piece of office equipment!"

I say: "How does this little assclown think handing in a horse-shit burrito will ever pass for homework?"

They hear: "Students with Asberger Syndrome can often be very troublesome to work with."

I say: "I would rather receive a root beer enema from Dr. Pepper than have to come in and teach your goddamn kids on my one, non-refundable day off!"

They hear: "I'm terribly sorry, but I can't come in today. I'm afraid I have other obligations."

I say: "Where the f*** did I put my f***ing electronic dictionary? Not again! F***!"

They hear: "Where the f*** did I put my f***ing electronic dictionary? Not again! F***!"

Whoops.
Ok, so almost free passage. 

making "batshit insane" look like a Sunday drive

For the past four weeks, she'd been like a machine. A hellish contraption on some diabolical singing mission. Ms. Catch-22, our head music teacher. Her modus operandi is simple: "teach" music as though the students' unwary, simpleton lives depended on it. The pressure-cooker classroom environment this method inevitably creates should be volatile, but in reality, is actually quite predictable. If she comes to class in a good mood, the student hellions take advantage of the fact, and effectively convert the classroom into a junior high circus complete with bearded ladies, trapeze artists, clowns, and one-legged boxing hobos. She administers vicious scoldings and platters of asses in turn, and class continues under a rain cloud. Invariably, they leave angry, and she leaves angry.

However, in the slightly more frequent event whence she arrives with anger preinstalled, the kids pick up on it, also get angry in return, then sullen, then grumpy and finally outright unruly before the period bell grants temporary reprieve. In keeping par for music class, she'll again leave angry.

It had been going on with amusing regularity over the four painful weeks in preparation for each grade's class song to be performed in the annual school spectacle that finally went down on Saturday. I'd heard those damn songs prehearsed, hearsed, and rehearsed so many times, I swear I'd even begun hearing them in my sleep. And yes, I realize I just added two new words to my English dictionary. Anyway, in those fitful sleeping hours, I think I dreamed terrible things, wherein I had assumed her role, and yelled at the children. Terrible things. I think sometimes I slapped them. I told them that properly singing their hearts out during their class chorus would be the one and only chance that they, as Japanese, would ever have to carve out their own identity. I yelled at them some more, and told them to sing louder, sing from their little hearts, and not to forget to f***ing smile.

I mean, music class is already a hard enough academic sell, why compound the difficulty by forcing the kids to care? Japan's got it all backwards. There's no greater good for this--no national pride that we're singing for. It's not like we're competing with Iceland for the gold in the Goddamn Junior Goodwill Games. Quite the contrary, it's a two-and-a-half-minute piano diddy about the power of dreams, for a stupid fucking chorus line.

But with all the song and dance over, classes, and thankfully, life as well, have slowly begun the return trickle towards normal. At least, until the next school-wide production.

sing, goddamnit!

More pics here if you simply must know.

no child left, to leave behind

The pre-summer vacation buzz is marred by the open school season in Japan. "Open school," meaning employing copious amounts of redundant adjectives to shamelessly peddle pretentious academic tedium in blazing 95 degree heat. Our school has never had the cards playing in our favor though. For one, we are on the top of a mountain that no potential student with a functioning mind wants to climb every day (which would probably explain why our classroom averages hover between a tepid C-, and a gaping hole in the floor), and we are a fairly young private institution without any famous graduates to accentuate a proper history.

But the biggest problem our school faces is neither geographical nor historical--it's societal. Enrollment competition for students between schools in Japan is an interesting nationwide conundrum--characterized mostly by its animalistic ferocity. It seems to be only growing worse, as the national birthrate continues to enjoy its catastrophically amusing downward spiral. Sorry 2007 Census Bureau, but last time I checked, "1.34 children" is just a fancy way of saying "one child." I may not be good with numbers, but the last math course I miraculously passed taught me that "0.34 children" contribute jack shit to society, because they can't be rounded up to "1 child." What a surprise. You'd think that an island nation of 127 million people, would get around to annually having more than 1.34 babies worth of sex, but that's a whole separate issue for me to misquote, and blow entirely out of context, so for now, I'll digress.

In short, open school is not used as a means to trick the students into enrolling, but rather to simply find them--as Japan obviously has children in increasingly short supply. Using the classic "blood from a stone" metaphor to illustrate the growing difficulty of finding little J-butts to put in an equally growing number of empty seats, would hardly begin to suffice. Perhaps "drawing blood from a stone using only a box of generic q-tips and a secondhand penis pump," would be closer to explaining the thinning hair and furrowed brow on Vice Principal Suzuki. This year, he employed live television cameras, and bribed potential applicants with the promise of free tote bags and ice cream, to attract students to our most recent "open school" circus. Unfortunately, the exposure of late night cable television ads and the allure of Haagen Dazs were obviously incapable of expediting the penis/vagina manufacturing process in time to give our school the boost in enrollment figures needed to stay afloat.

In the event that a Japanese public school cannot enroll enough students, they will usually merge their resources and pupils with other nearby public schools, and soldier on. However, private schools like ours will simply be forced to close, and accept the reality that Japan is merrily commanding the population helm of its own sinking ship.

So where does this leave Japan's future generations? Its future workforce? Its economy? Will there be anyone of age to lead them? All I know is that it's good news for me. Maybe when the birth rate finally sinks to a paltry 0.27 children, I won't have to come to school on a vacation day to sweat my balls off in front of a damn camera anymore.

 I don't recall seeing this part anywhere in my contract

111 words of a poorly translated parent/teacher conference

"Yuya"

"Mrs. Tatukawa, it's your son. He has a problem."

"Oh dear!"

"Afraid so. Advanced far beyond current-gen treatments." 

"Proof?"

"Scores of it. Test scores and comprehensive behavioral studies all agree." 

"Agree on?"  

"They clearly indicate your son is a moron."

"Dear Lord... Medication?"

"Beyond a rolled-up newspaper or a plastic spray bottle? I'm afraid not."

"High school options? The entrance exams..."

"Options? Ma'am, did you not hear me? He won't be going."

"No... higher... education...?" 

"Ma'am, I'm sorry. Past cases have been prescribed limited social contact and a Nintendo Wii. Or euthanasia."

"And the legalities?" 

"Leave them to us. I'll just need the inkan. Yours, and your husband's." 

"Here and here." 

drunk with power

It could be said that I've learned a lot about myself, and about the profession of teaching in an entire year. So in hopes of one day using this newfound maturity and acquired knowledge to spite the efforts of the teacher man who put, and seeks to keep me here in Okayama, I've been very selective in what I actually chose to learn. The following points will be examined in greater depth on my pre-departure dissertation:

1. I am not a teacher.

2. Not being a teacher by experience gives me a fresher approach to expected daily classroom protocol (eg: introducing TP Tuesdays, wedgie Wednesdays, swirly Saturdays, etc.).

3. #2 is overly optimistic bullshit.

4. Kid won't eat his peas? Cover 'em with Cheese Whiz. Kid won't go to sleep? Grind sleeping pills into his peas. Like the craftiness of a caring mother, or the less-than-pure intentions of an old man and his ice cream van, "teaching (better known as "systematic coercion")," is an inherent skill. Or rather, the careful practice in which the "teacher" dupes the unwitting students into joyfully doing something they would otherwise hate.
It boils down to all of our tireless classroom preparations being spent towards making kids forget that they hate anything and everything that is not a crappy boy band or an overrated video game. Such is the life of these "teachers;" veritable Jedi masters in trickery and mind games.
Anyone who works in a school and disagrees with this probably teaches math.

5. Being a homeroom teacher finally puts me in uncomfortably regular contact with my students' parents. So what has this new interaction taught me further about my students?
That the dumb kids all have the hottest moms. No lie. I assume this is most likely some kind of social karmic compensation at work.
Just to name a few, the oblivious Matsuno, who regularly chews his eyeglasses when he doesn't know the answer (which is every answer, unsurprisingly), the vertically challenged Reo, who wears hot-dog shaped ear plugs, and the portly Kenmotsu whose hobby is 'steak,' all have runway-scorching mothers. Like, "J-train top model" caliber hot.

If "knowing is half the battle," could it be argued that "admitting it" is the other half?

I feel so dirty.

Further proof

News In Briefs
WYWS Edition
Couldn't let the month slip by without a sakura photo
* April is an insanely busy time of year in Japan. It's the traditional end and/or beginning to all the boring economic and societal structures that fit inside a 12 month period (the fiscal year, the academic year, job tenures, passing of gallstones, etc.). I hoped to escape the insanity by feigning insanity; hiding under my desk, blowing bubbles with my spit and wearing old granny panties on my head. Alas, the ploy failed. I was soon dragged out by my bare ankles, and appointed as a homeroom teacher--swift punishment for my crazy insubordination.

Me.
A homeroom teacher. After months upon months of suspicion, with all the subtlety of a baptist minister sex scandal, it is clear that our school's higher ups have lost their goddamn marbles. I haven't been entirely thrilled with having been a teacher for the past year, so you can only imagine the four-letter vernacular ballet I've been perfecting the past week or so. From a hastily composed email sent the day I found out:

Kinda like...uhm...dating a girl for a while who you're kinda on the fence over, and then the night you're walking to her house to break up with her, she sends you an ecstatic text message announcing that she's pregnant. And moving in. And bringing her cats.

It's not the commitment that bothers me, it's the responsibility. Among other things. And yes, I'm aware that the two are one and the same. Shut up.

Thrilled to start the job hunt
* April also marks the "falling man season." Similar to the bothersome rainy season that soaks June and July, graduation ceremonies are often emphatically punctuated by Japanese youth, so overjoyed to surrender their personal freedoms to the working Man, that they heave themselves from gymnasium roofs, and lecture hall balconies, in a massive, preemptive salaryman coup de tat. "Come for the celebration, stay for the police statement" they always say.
Ah, Spring in Japan...

* Old Mrs. Kobayashi is pissed. And extremely frail, apparently.

Learned helplessness

Working at a school is a frustrating experience. In the most juvenile sense, it's like spending hours and hours stacking and interlocking intricate towers of Legos. Crenellated battlements, soaring peaks, and strategically placed portcullises. The medieval masterpiece had a distinct start, and now has a clearing finish--a goal. While it may be not soon completed, it slowly takes shape with unprecedented care, spilling into the adjacent hallw--ey what the shit!?

And just like that, your tireless work is gone. Knocked over without a second thought.


I've always been too painfully shortsighted to see the current product being cultivated--all I see is the time sacrificed toward the final outcome where the pile of blocks have been scattered across the floor.

My mother used to love Legos. Used to always say that the great thing about Legos was how they could inflict mortal wounds in unsuspecting feet whenever we left them lying out--professionally transforming any dimly lit living area into a Vietcong-approved barefoot deathtrap with just a few well-placed blocks.
Actually no. She never said that. Plastic axles and sports car windshields embedded in her heels got her mad-raging pissed. What she did say though, was that Lego creations were great because if something broke, you could always just build it again.
It's true, but the worst thing about building something all over again, is that you have to toil through the same steps, and surrender the same amount of time to risk producing a potentially inferior second version of the same original outcome.

If this shitty metaphor serves to illustrate anything, it's that we begin a new school year on Monday, and I have to start all over again. Nothing but these Legos in my heels to prove I did anything redeeming with last year.

Teaching sucks.

The best kind of rash

Remember how I hinted that our students weren't exactly the glimmering intellectual beacons of compulsory education?
Well to reiterate, we're currently in the preparatory phases of homestay pairings for our big 3rd grader (15-year-olds) Australia trip in June. The following are some painfully adorable excerpts from the "Tell us about yourself" obstacle course at the top of the participant application:

"...I have one dug. I like to readabook. Say hello to."

"I dream. Tennis prayer."

"I have a dog, her name is Koro. She is 13 years ago."

"Iam happy."

"...But lets we be friends. And I'm looking wored to meat you."

"My skin is atopic dermatitties."

Don't look at me, smartass. I'm supposed to be the music teacher.

Getting your dab on

News In Briefs:
WYWS Edition
* Apparently schools in Cincinnati closed their doors for the first time in 10 years on account of the recent heat wave. But here in Okayama, when it gets that hot (usually by 9 or 10 am every day), we just bring gym class inside. God forbid the mercury rise any higher, as we'd be forced to allow the pupils to start wearing shorts.
So, our big "Open School" starts Monday. I'm told it'll be different from the last two, but I'm still using the same lessons ("pin the tadger on the barmcake"). Sure, "Open School" sounds tame enough, but when we get to the bottom of all the advert pimping and whoring that goes on behind the scenes, just to get a few little J-butts in our little seats, I'm having trouble seeing the point. Leave it to the shit-for-brains English teacher to start raising eyebrows when the buck-toothed television cameras start vigorously humping the greasy leg of the propaganda machine. Seriousry, it's rike some kinda X-lated movie set out here or something. Sans "Lake" Peter.

* Yellowcard has finally gotten their nadgers together and released the appropriate vindication for the absolute shit-matsuri that was "Lights and Sounds." Ryan Key not acting like a complete twat anymore is probably a pretty reasonable explanation.

* I know it's horribly late beyond all relevancy, but the Mt. Fuji climb video that Brian and I shot last month is still in the works. I'm in the process of trimming it to fit in the YouTube allotted ten minutes for my peasant account. I'm not gonna lie, it's actually not very awesome--what, with most of the footage containing "rocks," "dark," and "more rocks." But, since it's already taking up precious space on my hard drive, I'm going to force you to watch it anyway. Sit tight.

* "Twernt": Noun. Anatomically, the area between the genitals and the anus. Derived from the expression "if it twern't there, your guts would fall out."

I often find myself desperately wishing I had been born in England as a oft rat-arsed cackhander, growing up with a dial like a bag of spanners, telling all the salad dodging twats and faffers to stuff it up the marmite motorway while rubbernecking the apples packing dead heat in a Zeppelin race.

Sigh...Silly Brits have all the good vocabulary.

Office pilates

I am always pleased to find other people in my office who somehow manage to do even less work than I. Take this guy for example. A classic suit & tie samurai, weary from the daily rigors of sitting immobile at a desk reading the newspaper and scratching his ass. Sure, he may be sleeping now, but he's got the leathered skin and battle damage eyepatch to prove he deserves every hard-fought second of that catnap.

Probably poked it out dozing off over his pencil tin.





Running in 90 degree heat after dark is the shit. By which, I mean it royally sucks.

Bring me your firstborn sons and daughters, so that I may flog them with English

Whether you choose to believe it or not, education is a lucrative business. And in Japan, a cutthroat one, at that. This week, while the students dutifully took their midterm exams, the other senior faculty members paraded me around to the city's elementary schools like a cheap whore, to pimp our flash-in-the-pan "immersion program (of which, I am at fault when it fails)," to potential winter applicants. After each round of predictable formalities, I sit quietly on the edge of each principal's couch gingerly sipping a scalding hot cup of green tea, as they carefully poke and prod my professional self worth.

"Our school has many interesting programs--art, science, music...but fuck those, English is the only one your students need! And so this is Zach-sensei!" they beam, as the pitch begins.
"He has started our English immersion program. And he is not from Canada," they add hopefully. Yes, I am not from Canada, but they are still lying about everything else. I stand up and curtsy anyway.
"And look! Such nice teeth and long hair!" I bat my eyelashes, and try my best to look demure.
"So...we'll see you next year?"

And then we'd be off again to the next sweltering den of educational iniquity. Never thought being a whore could be so tiring.



Training continues as the temperatures begin their annual summertime climb. This does not make me happy.

"Compensating"

Sometimes I forget I am in Japan. I am lulled to sleep every night by the Weakerthans, and the occasional bullet train passing overhead that could easily be mistaken for a distant semi on I-75. Then I wake up and join the morning throngs commuting back into the Japanese reality that my school is on top of a fricking mountain. Not actually a mountain though--more of a hill if you ask any of the locals. Aggravating as it may be, I think they use the word 'hill' fairly loosely though, but for a number of reasons. One, because by comparison, the only legitimate mountain in Japan is Mt. Fuji. And two...actually, that's the only reason, and I'm not going back to amend "a number of reasons" because I've already typed like three lines since then.
Get bent.

Anyway, when I first got here, I thought it mildly impressive that my school was going to be on top of a mountain. I mean: (1) You can see lots of stuff from the tops of mountains. (2) Given the location, and the aforementioned view, mountain real estate must be pretty valuable; thus, our school must be loaded. (3) Mountain tops are also purported "power zones" where one can supposedly derive "soul energy" from aligned forces in unsubstantiated hippy bullshit.
* dir:run/rebuttal.exe *

I have commuted to the top of this "mountain" five or six times a week for three months now, and I now have a legitimate number of reasons as to why I was an idiot for thinking mountains were anything but a giant pain in my now shapely ass.

1. You can see lots of rusty rooftops and drab concrete from Japanese mountain tops. Mountains = phail.

2. Mountain top real estate is actually the cheapest of all Japanese real estate claims, behind even "Kaiten Zushi Back Alley," "Bullet Train Septic Dump," and "The Entire Prefecture of Ibaraki." Why? Because Asian hippies are not a credible source, and nobody wants to climb up a goddamn mountain just for the 'privilege' of going to work. Mountains again for teh phail.

3. I think #2 was such a good reason, you should just read it again.

* dir:end/rebuttal *
Anyway, what started as a simple photograph has turned into a disjointed rant about commuting and mountaineering. So, to get this derailed disaster back on the right track, let's return to the photo shall we?

Here is the side of my building at the top of the aforementioned mountain. Notice the banners hanging from the side. The banner on the right tells about all the wonderful programs (karate, skiing, bowling, swimming, etc.) our school offers, while the banner on the left lists all the famous Japanese universities (University of Hokkaido, U of Kobe, U of Osaka, U of Hiroshima, etc.) that our graduates have gotten into. Without inadvertently launching into another boorish rant on how the Japanese school system judges success on sending applicants to famous universities, and not on quality of its actual ability to educate, I'll just say that the banner on the left is supposed to motivate the incoming students, and shout from the mountaintop soapbox to the entire prefecture of Okayama that we are a good school.


Or that our principal has a small penis.