A Complaint

“Hey Jeff, do you have a sec?” It was Todd, the grey-haired jovial Australian head of my teaching placement agency. We were walking from our monthly teachers’ meeting to the company Christmas party at a nearby izakaya.

Meetings are a chance to compare notes, which for me means verifying that my students are indeed the worst in the ward. “Wow, none of my schools are like that,” Jon said upon hearing selected stories. “The craziest questions I get are marriage proposals.”

“Great, let’s walk ahead,” Todd suggested. Singled out, I tensed up. This wasn’t about a Christmas bonus or teacher of the month honors (both nonexistent at the agency). Thoughts raced as to what I had done wrong at school.

Masturbation sprung to mind. As the kids test out their adolescent vocabularies, I’ve worried that Japanese teachers have detected the dirty words and blatant hand gestures students greet me with, much to my embarrassment yet subtle encouragement.

For example, while checking on progress of blackboard copying, I moseyed over to one bad boy in the back of the room. “How big?” he said, pointing to my groin. Two erasers sat on his desk. I pointed to the jumbo one and said “American.” Then I pointed to the mini eraser and said “Japanese” before turning my back on the laughter and pacing down the aisle.

A class at Nubata the week after created more of a stir. It featured school pervert Ryoki, who has previously caught me off guard. Once morning bows were exchanged, the Japanese teacher, only two years my elder, asked me to recap Thanksgiving activities in New York.

I also had taught at this school the week of my departure. Once I passed pervert & co. in the stairwell.

“When are you going to New York?” Ryoki asked.
“Friday.”
“I want a gift.”
“Okay, what?”
Pause. “Strawberry condom.”
His friends then clamored for lemon, grape, orange and Christmas (?) flavors.

Two sentences into my Thanksgiving shpiel, we made eye contact. Ryoki – sitting in the second row – flashed me the hand gesture for you know what. A snot ball flew out of my nose. Basting the turkey is one thing, but masturbation? I wheeled around to hide my laughter and use my sleeve as a tissue.

I regained direction and continued with less than perfect pronunciation while biting my tongue. “What did you eat on Thanksglivling Day?” the teacher asked in his normally mangled English.

“Pussy, pussy,” Ryoki whispered in Japanese. The teacher must have heard it, but didn’t react. Meanwhile, I was struggling to keep a straight face while listing the four kinds of pies I ate. “Oppai,” Ryoki moaned, deliberately confusing dessert with the Japanese word for breast.

The teacher quizzed comprehension about the pies’ names, and then asked if there were any questions. Ryoki’s hand shot up. He wanted to know what I had done in my house at night. In case I couldn’t take the hint, he made the gesture. I paused, falsely smiled, and said that I watched TV, which played right into his trap. “Oh, what kind of TV do you watch?” he snickered. The news. And no, not the Naked News. After class this brash boy approached me with one last question: where was his souvenir?

I digress.

“Jeff,” Todd began, “We’ve gotten an e-mail from a school saying that you’ve fallen asleep during class. Twice.” I shot him an are-you-kidding-me? look. “I know,” he continued, “I’ve been there in those over-heated rooms standing by waiting to be played as the human tape recorder.” Kenichi, the company co-head, caught up with us and flashed a nervous grin of stained black teeth.

“Honestly, Todd, I don’t know what they’re talking about.” Sleeping in class conjured up images of student heads buried face down in their arms on the desk. “I mean, I might have zoned out for 30 seconds, but I never fell asleep in class,” I added, leaving out the part about propping myself up against the back wall while fighting the weight of my eyelids. Damn gravity.

Todd’s tone was friendly; he was just checking up. Not that I’m worried if it happened. I’m confident I’ve been a good sensei and friend to the students in spite of the part-time salary and rent-an-English-teacher treatment I get from my Japanese counterparts.

On the other hand, who bothered reporting such a thing? Students get away with it all the time here. I narrowed suspicion down to two schools, and chose Ms. Shomatsu at Omiyada as the tattletale. Beneath superficial kindness lurks a history of her sweating the small stuff.

At the beginning of one such class, students nervously got her attention. This was unusual because they rarely break the mold and initiate dialogue with the teacher. But today they had something to show her. Something urgent. She walked over to where they were pointing at the floor and scowled in Japanese. My first thought was a mouse.

No, she returned to the front of the room holding a mini straw at the end of which was a hardened piece of chewing gum covered in dust. Back in the teachers’ room, she showed off the catch of the day as if it were a drug syringe. Somewhere, a report was written. Perhaps another e-mail.

I’m not here to make pals with the teachers. So long as the students are on my side, I’m happy. And if I did nod off, it goes to show just how boring teachers’ lessons really are.