sports day prep

Preparations for the school sports festival continue - undeterred by such things as classroom learning - and my circus quality cocaine-like pigment is finally starting to change due to this, so one good thing will come of it.

Actually there probably is an underlying lesson to be learned for the kids. Its laying on the ground, bleeding, gasping for air beneath the forced cheering competitions for which there is no apparent reason to be cheering, the group dance numbers that border on erotic and of course the 6 tiered human pyramids for which the organizers must have missed the warning label that said, "DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, OR ANYWHERE, YOU FUCKING IDIOT." One does feel for the poor bastards on the bottom, whose little bodies shake precariously under the immense weight of their teachers' expectations as well as the fat kid whose knee has just turned your kidney into a diamond.

They say that Japan only has a Self Defense Army, incapable of reproducing the horrors of Tojo's destiny-drunk vision, but I reckon this is untrue. If I am able to post exclusive video of our sports day, you will see that underneath the innocuous school uniform lies a soldier, an emotionally dead inside shadow of a child programmed to march on command and perform group acrobatics with neither fear nor grace.

Confusing things further, I've been commissioned to use a Las Vegas announcer's voice to announce the start of the festival. File all of this under O, for Only In Japan.

first day

after an exhausting first day of english lessons, class shadowing, and a new-ono-jets sit down chat with the mayor, i'm ready to hit the hay - and its only 8pm! let me tell you how it went.

after arriving at 8:35am, i was shadowing a first grade class within 15 minutes. they call what i do in these classes "guidance," as its not english class, so i'm to walk around and be Foreign. its great, actually, because i'm not really responsible for the kids, nor do i do much work in that mode, and i basically get to play with them. i'm a huge curiosity to them so at times throughout the class, a child will turn in their seat just to look at me. most of their reactions have been positive and middle fingers were at a minimum.

they call me either nikku-sensei or robaato-sensei and in my speech to the entire school last friday on opening day ceremonies, i told them to say hello if they saw me in the hallways. very much to my surprise and delight, they're actually doing that, including even many of the children from grades which i haven't visited (3-6). the first graders are predictably "adorable" and while their attention spans are much shorter than they are, they follow a standard practice when called upon to answer a question: stand up, push chair in, recite answer with arms at side and with formal sentence ending word, "dessu," returning quietly to seat. its kind of amazing to me as one who grew up in the american system of cash bribes and such.

after class ended, it was time for lunch. the kids ran like rabid animals into the lunchroom, right? wrong! the lunchroom IS your classroom and the formaldehyde-marinated lunchladies are in the form of your classmates in little white costumes like this. even that picture doesn't do justice to the first graders wearing their lunch garb, carrying the food, serving it, and even delivering it to each other's desks. they're like big marshmallows with brown pretzels sticking out the bottom. anyway, after lunch was "cleaning time" -- another japanese practice of having the kids clean the school owing to zero custodial staff. all over i witnessed kids cleaning the floors, wiping desks clean, vacuuming.

being the z-list celebrity i am (they've said i'm A) like brad pitt, B) like tom cruise, and C) like a moviestar), after class the teacher had the students escort me downstairs to the staffroom. i knew where it was but maybe they were on their way out to recess or something, anyway, about 15 of them hung off my arms and pushed me along by my waist and belt. "nikku sensei!! this way!" i was kind of embarrassed when i arrived at the staffroom and met the eyes of teachers who had smirks across their faces. haha.

after school, the new ono jets (6 of us) met with the town mayor to give introductions and talk a little bit about our first impressions and what we'd like to accomplish. it sounds a lot more formal than it ended up being. having been prompted before he arrived to be formal in our self-introductions, i naturally sought to deviate from the plan and add some humor, saying i SWAM all the way from america (in japanese). this received only a guffaw from the PR guy standing silently behind the mayor but i'm unsure if anyone, including PR guy, understood that my usage of swim was intentional and, more importantly, meant to be funny. argh!!

that's all for now. i might have to play trumpet for the kids during my first day at my other school tomorrow, and normally i would be terrified of this kind of thing but since i can do no wrong, we'll just see what happens and report on the damage here later.

nr7k OUT