Great Teacher A-Chan

I’m going to assume you all know the basic premise of moe. Well, moe has some pretty wide uses in Japan- not just by otaku, but also by people describing otaku or anything that an otaku might be interested in. Furthermore, the word ‘otaku’ gets used pretty broadly too – it doesn’t necessarily have to relate to anime or manga, just anything that seems to be a little bit off.

Now, the people that know me, know I dress weirdly. No one has a problem with it, but it does tend to attract the title of ‘otaku’. ‘Is this otaku fashion?’ is the question I usually get from innocent-looking students or old ladies on the street. My students, particularly the sannensei, are convinced that I’m pure moe after I came to school in my kitty hoodie. It wasn’t even like they warmed up to the idea, they just saw me walk in and started screaming ‘Moe! Moe!’ like a pack of rabid fanboys at a convention. Well, I shook it off and after our regular conversation, thought that the notion would pass. Not so. The next time I saw these girls (two days later… and wearing just a regular hoodie), they greeted me with the usual ‘Oh, Amy!’ then as I approached, burst into a totally unsolicited yet synchronized chorus of ‘moe’, in perfect four-part harmony. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or applaud them for their melodic performance.

… when was the last time you got moe’d by a barbershop quartet of Japanese schoolgirls?

I get bored at school. A lot. When you sign on to be an ALT, they prepare you as much as possible – you do countless workshops to give you practice at lesson planning, running classes, team-teaching, making materials, interacting with the students outside of class, talking to your co-workers, dealing with your Board of Education – all the important stuff. The only thing they don’t prepare you for is the boredom. Sitting around all day with absolutely nothing to do, because team-teaching makes up such a small slice of the junior high curriculum pie. I tell you what, if I ever run a workshop at an ALT seminar, I’m going to make them sit at a desk for 6 hours with only a pencil and a bobble-head Snoopy in front of them and grade them on how busy they can pretend to be. I think that’d go a lot further in preparing them for life as an ALT.

After my elementary school teaching stint, I churned out beautiful new lesson plans for all my classes, left the printouts on the English teachers’ desks, and sat back down contentedly twiddling my thumbs, awaiting their approval so that I could begin teaching again. One by one, however, my hopes were shattered. The first-year teacher confessed that the students had tests at the end of the month, and thus really needed all their classes for revision. Likewise, the third-year teacher regretfully informed me that as the sannensei were preparing to take their entrance exams, their upcoming tests were of vital importance and demanded additional study time. Ok, I can understand that. This means the only class that I can teach is the ninensei (who, for the record, were pretty much all spawned from the Dark Lord himself). But that’s cool, I can work with that. I sit back at my desk and wait for the second-year teacher’s approval to teach. I just wait.

And wait.

For a week.

Should I say something? I can’t stand having no work, but I know how busy all the other teachers are, so I don’t want to bother him. The strange thing is, he seems to be actually avoiding me. I wonder if I’ve somehow offended him, seeing as we usually chat on a daily basis, but now he doesn’t even seem to have the time to say Good Morning.

Well, the answers all came, finally. The second-year teacher, looking oddly disheveled and two days overdue for a shave, came to talk to me. He apologised for not getting back to me about the lesson. Actually, he confessed, he hadn’t even read the lesson. I don’t say anything because I’m sure he’s about to enlighten me. The reason he hasn’t had time to read it, he continues, is because of the extortion. Aaahhhh, right, now it all makes sense.

Wait, the what now?

The extortion. As it turns out, on top of the regular bullying atrocities in Kumiyama Chugakko, there’s been a recent problem with the ninensei and sannensei students threatening their peers and carrying through with acts of violence if their demands aren’t met. I have to admit I was curious about the recent increase in ‘sick’ students, sneaking into the staffroom on the verge of tears and begging to be sent home.

The police are involved in the matter, and most of the staff have been staying back for meetings after school, often past midnight, to try to solve this problem. Mr second-year predicts at least a month until things are under control again (well, whatever semblance of control there was in the first place, anyway), so until then, class is on hold.
That’s right, I can’t teach because my classes are on hold while the Police investigate my students for violent extortion. Kumichu never fails to deliver.

Posted by a-chan at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post   

Being located next to the staffroom door, I get the pleasure of being the first to hear what’s going on in the hallway. Usually it’s a screaming matching between some of the psycho girls. The other day, however, I heard boys. The way these kids were screaming, you’d guess someone had just poured petrol down their pants and was chasing them with a match. I peeked out the door to see what the commotion was about, and there’s a group of a dozen sannensei boys going out of control down the hallway. Even by Kumichu standards, they appear to have gone completely insane; jumping up the walls, standing in the sinks, leaping on top of each other in a mad panic.

I turn back to the staffroom expectantly, hoping for some explanation, but the other teachers are so used to this by now that the students could be performing Riverdance in S&M bondage uniforms while reciting the Ghettysburg address, and the staff still wouldn’t look up. Alone in my quest for the truth, I trot down the hallway just in time to watch the boys scramble through the classroom door. I poke my head in and enquire as to what the noise was about, but the boys just stare at me, wild-eyed, evidently too traumatised to speak.

To my relief, O-sensei, the third-grade teacher, pokes her head in beside me. When I repeat the question to her, and she looks at me blankly (as is her custom) and answers in her impressive American English:

‘Oh. They are scared of a cockroach’.

I look from O-sensei, to the terrified sannensei boys, then back again.

‘Seriously?’
‘Oh yes. All boys are scared of bugs.’

Since when? I know back in Australia, if a 14-year-old ran screaming from a cockroach he’d have his masculinity and sexuality called into question, before being dunked head-first into the nearest toilet. Maybe Japanese kids are just skiddish. But hang on, didn’t I see every elementary schooler in the neighbourhood carrying around a plastic box of insect trophies all Summer? Something doesn’t add up, but O-sensei has a class to teach, so I retreat to the staffroom to quiz one of the other teachers about this whole boy-bug relationship. When I open the staffroom door, however, I am faced with pandemonium.

All the teachers are on their feet. Some are screaming. Some are running in seemingly random directions. Some are shouting at each other. No one’s paying attention when I ask what on earth is going on. Has every living being in the school been infused with the spirit of insanity today?

I catch one of the female teaches by the arm as she stumbles past, forcing her to stop and fill me in. It’s one of the youngest teachers, and she actually looks like she’s about to cry. But at least she manages to spit out that there’s a cockroach in the staffroom. I must be wearing the world’s greatest ‘What the…?’ expression, but no one notices. They’re all focused on Potato-sensei, who’s decided to be the man and catch the thing (with chopsticks, no less), which has somehow found its way into KissMe’s desk. When he finally squashes it and the staff breathe a collective sigh of relief, I just burst out laughing. I can’t believe how much power the cockroaches have over this school, and it strikes me as downright hilarious. The first-grade teacher looks on with the most solemn expression I’ve ever seen her wear, and says heavily ‘Why are they here. Why have they come to our planet’.

I try to hold it in, I really do, but considering this adorable little Japanese woman has just delivered a line that sounds like it was stolen from Independence Day, over a cockroach no less… I end up on the floor.

Posted by a-chan at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post   

For the past fortnight I visited three local elementary schools with three other AETs. We have this little 4-way-team-teaching gig, just for variety I guess. As with any situation, there are positives and negatives.

The great thing about teaching at a shogakko is that the kids are enthusiastic. They actually want to participate. You can do games and chants and ridiculous songs and they'll love it. They're frightfully easy to entertain, because they already think that gaijin are funny-looking. When you ask a question in class, they're falling over each other to answer. This is a far cry from my Junior High students, who look like they're afraid to open their mouths in case a tarantula crawls in there or something.

Another upside is the physicality. I have no idea how to write this without sounding like a paedophile. But we're allowed to touch the students here. By that I mean, hug them, pick them up, hold their hand, play with them. Teachers in Australia don't have that privelege. And tragically, I'm so starved for affection here that being swamped by affectionate children felt wonderful. I also discovered I can carry five 10-year-olds at once and still walk. They just sort of all throw themselves as you as you walk past, grabbing anything they can to try to stick on. I felt like a giant child-gathering katamari.

The downside, of course, is the physicality. I mean, the real physicality. I know you've all been waiting and praying for the day when I'd come limping home and tell you I'd been rectally violated by japanese children. Well, my friends, it happened. I got kancho'D. In my first school, I received no less than 32 kancho. Thankfully, most of them were from little girls. Boys are violent - they run past, make a jab that would puncture a lung, then run for the hills. Girls just do a gentle little prod... you can almost hear that classic female japanese 'fuuuuuuuuu' as they do it. Still, I feel like I got off easy - one of the other AETs, a huge African guy, had to put up with a gaggle of students following him around just feeling his buttocks.

My second school awarded me only a dozen kancho, but terrible conversation. The students are well-behaved in class, but somewhat horrendous outside the classroom. They managed to corner the aforementioned African AET, and began asking him questions that made me blush. When they asked him if he was married, and if he had children, and how exactly he'd made those children, he made a great show of not understanding Japanese. This only made them more resourceful, prompting the boys to use extravagant hand gestures to communicate their meaning. When that didn't work, they drew diagrams. Still the AET is pretending he has no idea what they're talking about. 'What's that? Oh I know, it's a squid right? No? Oh sorry, it's a worm right?'. Meanwhile I'm standing back with my mouth agape at what these kids have deemed an appropriate topic of conversation, and even moreso, that the AET is so used to this sort of thing that it's not even remotely shocking to him.

In my third school, I only received two kancho. Finally, I thought, a school in which the students respect the sanctity of the pants. Not so. The game at this shogakko seemed to be trying to actually climb into my clothes. Any time they got near me the kids were all up in there, putting their hands and arms and trying their darnedest to put their heads in too, in my pant-legs or sleeves or up my shirt or down my top. What's going on there?

The grandest surprise though, was a sweet little 7-year-old. Out on the playground, where the lone AET is the most vulnerable, he came bounding over to me, looked up with that grin that radiates the sweet innocence of childhood, and greeted me with his best 'hello'.

'Hello', I responded, returning his smile. He looked at me adoringly for a second, and then some evil glint must've entered that kid's eye but I didn't see it. I just felt it. Felt it as he reached up with both hands, grabbed my boobs, then threw his arms in the air and ran away yahoo-ing like a cartoon character.

... what on EARTH was that? I just stood there, dumbstruck, watching his tiny little feet tearing a cloud of dust across the playground. Was it my imagination or had a 7-year-old really just tonked my knockers? WTG JAPAN, I WANT MY SECURITY DEPOSIT BACK.

Posted by a-chan at 2:11 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post