Khaos at Kanokita

The morning assembly ended, and lessons began. Would students live up to their infamy? (See previous post). On the third floor landing, I caught my first glimpse into a classroom through its sliding plastic doors. An airborne English textbook crash-landed on the back of a student’s head. This wasn’t going to be easy. Send in the heavy artillery. Send in the 6’2” American English teacher.

Self-introduction was planned for each class. On the blackboard I scrawled my name, birthday, nationality, and caricatures of my family. Students then asked 24 questions scripted on a printout. Based on my answers, they must have wondered if a bona fide American was in their presence. “Do you like watching tv?” No. “Do you drink coffee?” No. “Do you call to your family?” No. “Do you have any pets?” No. “Not even in America?” No.

And given rumors of their reckless behavior, I wondered if these were truly Japanese students, or just American teens in disguise. Hints of ingrained disobedience included untucked school uniforms, crumpled collars, rolled up sleeves, low-hanging slacks, desktop graffiti, misaligned desk rows, and not bowing to teachers.

A madhouse describes what I walked into for my first 8th grade class. A boy sporting typical Japanese-style bed-head and a pointy chin dotted with a distinguishing birthmark unleashed havoc with pink and red highlighters. First, he desecrated another student’s desk before jabbing the boy’s white uniform. Hoping to avoid my Brooks Brothers suit from becoming a casualty, I tensed up behind the teacher’s desk out of range, wondering how to transition to “My name is Jeffrey….” The other student returned fire, and both ended upon rolling on the floor. “Son of a bitch!” the bully cried as his victim exacted revenge. Ms. Hattori passively looked on: “The students are very badly disciplined. Don’t mind that.”

The melee ended, but the bully then perched himself on another boy’s desk before returning to his seat to cut up the handout with scripted questions, the snippets of which he dumped onto the classmate in front of him. Forty minutes later, the floor looked as if it had flurried in Tokyo in July. Meanwhile, in the rear, a group of girls pushed their desks together to while away the time writing letters in a rainbow of colors, reducing my introduction to background noise.

Seventh graders greeted me with more students on the floor. Half a dozen boys were sprawled on top of one another as if practicing a rugby maneuver. The face at the bottom was turning blue; eyes bulged from their sockets. The mass of flesh untangled itself, and the boys played JanKenPo (rocks, paper, scissors) to determine the order of the next pile-on.

For lunch, I was permitted to dine with the most mannered and inquisitive age group (photo, right). Seventh graders nibbled silently while staring at my mastery of chopsticks, perhaps waiting for me to do something foreign like ingest the salty soup of the day through my ear canal.

Mischief resumed in the afternoon. An intimidating ninth grader approached me in the hallway. “Me too, me too,” he said out of the blue. “Nice to meet you. Yoroshiku,” I replied, to which he responded by dropping his pants and saying something in Japanese about his tighty-whities. Another student approached with a fruit carefully drawn on a folded piece of paper. “Strawberry,” I said with an encouraging smile, waiting for him repeat the new word. Instead, the fold opened, and the strawberry became a hairy penis. Welcome back to junior high.

I cringed walking into my last class of the day. Me too pants-dropper kid was at the board, which now read “I LIKE SEX.” He took a seat next to his friend in the front row, where together they recited an explicit line from a movie or rap lyrics. I had never heard any student curse until the earful I got today.

Hoping to change the topic, I showed them my picture album. “Bust size?” one asked, pointing to a female in a cocktail dress. “Big rack!” Me too concurred. I made it through my introduction, and had students introduce their names and favorite hobby. One agitated girl refused to answer, and soon after stormed out of the classroom, only to return a few minutes later to retrieve her bag and leave for good. The ultimate insolence.

At the end of day one, I had exhausted my repertoire of Teacher’s Emergency Japanese Phrases, including yamete stop!; shinai de kudasai please don’t do that!; urasai shut up! [lit.: loud]; and nani yatten da yo? what the hell are you doing? It’s a start, but next rotation I’m going armed with stronger language to enforce order. Anyone know the translation for, “Do that one more time, and I’ll shove my foot so far up your ass, I’ll kick your teeth to Yokohama?”