Mr. Nishono

Familiar shuffling approached my desk in Omiyada School’s teachers' room. I didn’t look up from my book. I knew what I’d see. Mussed salt-and-pepper hair crowning a man with a wrinkled work shirt two sizes too big for his wiry frame. Stringy hair failing to conceal the bald spot creeping forward. Bifocals sliding off the end of a freckled nose. If after lunch, forgotten crumbs clinging to the corners of his mouth. It was time for class with Mr. Nishono.

A fellow English teacher didn’t even know his given name when introducing me on my first day. The students don’t either; they call him hage (bald) behind his back. The hair that remains reminds me of a frayed steel wool pad.

I’m handed a “teaching plan.” It reads, “This class is full of underachievers.” However, Mr. Nishono adds that they are not all “in bad condition” like the class he once abruptly cancelled my services because of their misbehavior the day before. He always does his best to shield me: “First, you wait here while I prepare the lesson.” I read for 10 more minutes while he attempts to subdue the eighth graders.

No such luck. Once permitted to enter the room, I’m instructed to make “daily conversation to each student.” I ask them basic questions like the date, weather or favorite color. These warm-up exercises prove too complex for some.

First up is a boy with a grating voice whom I try to avoid. When we pass in the corridor, he yelps monkey noises loud enough to disturb teachers down the hall. In response to “Hello, how are you?” he recited a list of fruit juices. His writing is no better. I pointed out that his a’s look like u’s. “Yes very much fine thank you!” he boomed.

The rest of Mr. Nishono’s lesson plan leaves less margin for student creativity:
“You Read (P 32) when I ask you to (students listen).
You Read new words when I ask you to (students repeat).
You Read (P. 32) when I ask you to (students listen).
You Read (P32) – students repeat (Phrase by Phrase).
I teach.
(Ending reading)
You read (P 32)”.
I leave class knowing P 32 by heart.

Another week’s teaching plan is also prefaced with a warning: “They are very mischievous class.” I couldn’t wait. The textbook pictured an overweight, unmistakably American lacrosse high school player. Not being a lacrosse sportsman myself, Mr. Nishono decided that I should “please relax” on the sidelines.

I observed the girls paying some attention, but the boys didn’t even have their books open, except for one – a Japanese novel. Behind him a kid fiddled with rounded magnets to form a snake that slithered across his desk with polar attraction.

Others were fashioning fighting sticks out of rolled paper featuring a girl with an anti-drug message. They passed around tape and scissors, with one crafting a ball out of tape. I sat at an empty desk in the back jotting everything down.

Then suddenly sensei stepped out for a few minutes. I assumed control, and plucked a sword off a student’s desk. I turned from the protesting boy to face the student patching together the tape ball. “Batter up!” I cried, managing several swings before Mr. Nishono returned with dittos he had forgotten.

Recently, absent-minded Nishono embraced the holiday cheer with a class sing-a-long to “Wish You A Merry Christmas.” Heavily accented British children caroled on CD. The words completely stumped the Japanese children, whose vocabularies didn’t include “good tidings to you and your kin.” Figgy pudding stumped me. Mr. Nishono blindly hummed along, and pushed repeat to extend everyone’s confusion.

By the fourth go-around, a girl cranked up the volume and positioned her ears next to the stereo. I gasped as one boy jabbed a blunt box cutter blade into another’s uniform. On autopilot, Mr. Nishono just kept humming, his bifocals glued to a page of lyrics he couldn’t articulate. I moved away from the blasting Christmas music to spy on a boy drawing. It was a cartoon caricature of me.