Overheard in the teachers' room

(I hesitated to write this, because it sounds so much like everything else I write and everything the embittered foreigners who stay in Japan write. In the end, I decided to go forward with it, if only to remind myself why I'm leaving. It's like writing a note to yourself when you're really hung over because you know you shouldn't drink like that again, but without a reminder you'll just go out and do it again the next weekend. Not that I've ever done that, but let's just say I had a friend... Anyway, in case I start missing Japan once I leave, this will stand as a reminder that I should not come back.)

At the end of the work day today, I sat staring into space since I had been staring at a computer screen all day making a presentation for next week. An unfamiliar voice beckoned from behind.

"Matchamonkey-san tte..." Matchamonkey...

I waited for the unfamiliar teacher to ask his question. Though he had never so much as said hello to me before, he seemed intent on the question he was about to ask. He hesitated, and for a brief moment, I foolishly became exited about the conversation we were about to have. Was he going to ask me about my presentation, having seen my beautiful power point on the screen all day? Or maybe he was going to ask me about my thoughts on US-Japan relations? Or the World Cup...? His hesitation only drew me in further.

"Demo kani ha dame desu ne." But you can't eat crab. He seemed to have answered his own question.

At this point, I took a moment to take stock of what was going on. This was the conclusion I reached:
1. A conversation is occurring.
2. I appear to be part of this conversation.
3. Based on my limited knowledge of Japanese, this conversation is about crabs.
4. There are no crabs in the immediate vicinity and there is no logical reason why this conversation should be about crabs.
5. Therefore, I have no idea what is going on.
Having reached this conclusion, I looked confusedly back at the teacher.

"You know, kani." He held two fingers up on each hand and moved them like pincers. Unfortunately, this made things more ambiguous, as he was striking the exact pose that most Japanese people make when having their picture taken. I started to think that he was saying that this pose was dame (not allowed) for Americans.

"You know, kani and shrimp, you can't eat them, can you?"

"I wouldn't say I can't eat them, but they're not my favorite..." I absolutely hate it when people assume they know what I can and cannot eat based on the color of my skin. I mean, I may not be into shrimp, but pretty much all of my white friends are. It's not a race thing.

"Then why do you have that on your computer?" At last, the source of this conversation was revealed. I had a drawing of sushi as my wallpaper (from the lovely www.pixelgirlpresents.com). The drawing did not feature any crab, by the way. "Why do you look at that picture if you do not like crab or shrimp?"

"Well I like sushi. I really like that one, for example," I said pointing to the salmon. "And besides, it's a pretty picture."

"You had sushi for the first time after coming to Japan...?"

"No actually, I also ate it in America." I've had this exact conversation so many times that the consumption of sushi is about the only topic I am conversant in in Japanese.

"Ah, over there too," he said, nodding.

He stared at me for another minute and I smiled awkwardly. Finally, he excused himself for bothering me and went back to his work.

How I came to be self-conscious about my smell...

It seems I can't do the slightest thing without the persistent fear that someone is watching and judging me. I never used to have this problem. I went about my life with the knowledge that no one was paying the slightest attention to me. No one cared what or how I ate, how I smelled, where I went, with whom I saw seen, what I wore... But those were the good ol' days, before coming to Japan. Now my every move is the object of gossip and scrutiny, or at least that's how it seems to me. This is surely a sign that I should get out before I lose my mind completely.

I hesitate to categorize people based on ethnicity, having been on the losing end of such judgments so many times, but let it be said that Japanese people are known for having a sensitive sense of smell. They will often comment on smells I am unable to detect.

Before moving to my current school, I sat next to an English teacher named Ms. Umeda. Ms. Umeda's English was less than perfect, but that did not stop her from talking to me and asking me all manner of questions about my country, dreams, hopes, and fears. It also did not stop her from making what I would consider to be racist remarks, such as "You're white. I bet you're not a good driver." Still, she was the sort of person about whom one said such things as "God bless her, she means well," and "Her heart's in the right place."

This did not prepare me for how she greeted me one morning.

"Umm, Matchamonkey, are you ok?" she asked, looking sincerely concerned.

"What do you mean? Yeah, I'm fine."

"You smell sweet. Are you ok?"

I was suddenly overcome with the fear that I smelled like almonds, a well-known symptom of gangrene. I quickly sniffed myself to make sure death was not imminent.

"Um, no I don't. I smell like soap."

"Some of the other teachers were talking, and they think you smell sweet. They asked me to tell you not to smell sweet at school."

At this point, I had been at school for approximately five minutes. In that time, other teachers had caught a whiff of my scent, been offended by it, had a mini-meeting about it, and elected someone to ask Ms. Umeda to tell me not to commit the offence of smelling sweet at school again.

"...But I'm not wearing perfume. This is just soap. I use it everyday." Tears began to well up in my eyes.

"Maybe you shouldn't smell sweet at school," she added one more time, to be sure I got it.

She sensed that I was on the verge of a breakdown, and tried to soften the blow. "You shouldn't be upset. The students aren't allowed to smell sweet, so the teachers shouldn't either. That's all." She got up and went to her first class.

But I really wasn't wearing any perfume. Nothing was different that day. I had in fact showered with soap, but I don't want to live in a world where that's a bad thing. At that point, the mug on my desk caught my eye. My mom had sent me some raspberry hot chocolate which I made for the first time that morning. So that was the culprit, the hot chocolate on my desk. This, however, left me with more questions than answers. Who can't tell the difference between hot chocolate and perfume? Who is offended by the smell of hot chocolate? Why can't people just tell me when they have a problem with me, why is there always a middle man?

And so it came to pass that got paranoid about how I smell.

Announcement and realizations

This week, the people in France put down their cigarettes down long enough to send me a letter informing me of my future (for the next year, at least). So it's official: from October, Matchamonkey will become Misadventures in France. It doesn't have quite the same ring, but the misadventures are sure to abound.

With my time in Japan coming to an end and now having received a job placement for next year, I've come to a few realizations over the past weeks...

(1) For all my whining, this may be the best I ever have it. I will never again be paid this well to work so little. I make more money than I can spend, I have state-sponsored health care, and I pay very little taxes in any country. I earn all of this by sitting at my desk reading novels, and occasionally studying Japanese. I get to work later than my colleagues and leave work before them. Most everything is taken care of for me; if I don't understand something, it is taken off my hands and dealt with by someone else. So although I criticize a lot, the day will most certainly come when I yearn for the good ol' days in Japan.

(2) I am old enough to teach college students, i.e. I am old. My job next year will involve my teaching college students who want to be English teachers. At first I was like "Cool, I'll be around people my age," but then I realized that in fact I would be teaching people who were younger than me.

(3) I am not qualified to teach people who want to be English teachers (see also previous post about "gooder"). In Japan, we sometimes forget how well the rest of the world can speak English. Here, the most difficult question I might be asked in a day is how one says, "My dream is to be flight attendant" in English. My French students, on the other hand, will quite possibly have a better command of the English language than I do. They will most certainly be better spellers than I am. I am reminded of a German TA I had in college who knew the rule for when "the" was pronounced "thee" and when it was pronounced "tha." I think he was better at English than most of his students. While he was a special case, my future students will certainly have in-depth grammatical questions that I won't be able to answer.

Kids say the darndest things

Yesterday in a junior high school class, the students were practicing a conversation that went like this:

Student A: Hey Student B, you always look happy at school. Do you like school?

Student B: Yes, I do. I come to school to enjoy our classes.

The point of the activity was to practice the "I do ~~~ to ~~~" construction. The students all made pairs and were supposed to perform their own version of the dialogue, although most pairs just stuck to the model (you have to admit, it is a riveting conversation). The last group to go, however, decided to get creative:

Student A: Hey Student B, you always look happy on Easter Island. Do you like Easter Island?

Student B: Yes, I do. I come to Easter Island to seem wise.

Apparently the last chapter in their book had featured Easter Island as a topic. To anyone who says we don't teach useful things, I offer this conversation as proof to the contrary.

I really shouldn't be allowed to teach English

The other day, I said "gooder" in casual conversation. I didn't do it to be funny either; it just slipped out.

The conversation went something like this: a friend and I were laying out a pattern on a piece of fabric (we sew). It was a tight fit, so we were trying to figure out the best layout. We were comparing two layouts, and I said "If we did it like that, I think it would be gooder." Then I realized that I had to get out of this country before I completely lost the ability to speak my native tongue.

When I talk to my friends back home, they note the change in my speech. It's become simple and very clear. I never say "yeah" anymore. An affirmative response is sometimes a crisp "yes" and more often the complete "Yes, I do," "Yes, it is," and the like. I don't usually make slip-ups like "gooder," but that may be because most of my conversations are kept on a level so basic that using comparisons would be out of the question.

In college, I spent one summer as an intern at the State Department. Every week, we would have speakers talk to us about the Foreign Service during lunch. There was this one guy in his 60s who spoke incredibly slowly and clearly, painfully so for the listeners. He had been in the Foreign Service for something like 30 years and spoke like this "My......NAME.....is......John....Smith. I.....was.....amBASSAdor......to......Zimbabwe," and all the while we would be on the edges of our seats waiting for him to get the next word out. Most of us thought he was just senile, but one of my friends theorized that his speech pattern was the result of spending years speaking through interpreters. Now I know it only takes about 2 years in a foreign country to make you talk to everyone like they're a child.

Vignettes from an enkai

Last week, I went to my first sober enkai. A sober enkai, by the way, is almost as bad as sober karaoke. I don't recommend it. For my American readership, an enkai is a Japanese drinking party done with one's co-workers. It's meant to bring you closer and build communication, because the only time Japanese people communicate is when they're so drunk they can't stand up. There's even a Japanese word for communication through drinking.

While it may be an overstatement to say that Japanese people don't communicate with each other unless they're drunk, it's certainly true that most of them aren't willing to communicate with me until they're three sheets to the wind. This means that over the past three years, a lot of my interactions with Japanese people have been with inebriated middle-aged teachers. This may explain why I have some of the views of them that I do.

The following is a description of two interactions I had at my recent enkai. Keep in mind that it was my first time talking with both of the teachers involved.

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Eyeing my Chinese purse, a drunk woman in her 50s or 60s came over to me.

"Wow, your bag is suteki. Neat. Look at my bag. It's make of kimono material. Do you know what a kimono is?" she asked.

I replied that yes, I had heard of kimonos. Then she started taking stuff out of her bag. She told me that she wanted me to have her bag. I tried to protest by suggesting that she needed her bag to hold her stuff. In response, she produced a plastic bag into which she started placing the former contents of her purse.

"This kind of material is used for kimonos. Have you heard of a kimono?" she asked again, though not for the last time.

"Um yes, I have," I replied, growing uneasy.

The Japanese English teacher sitting next to me must have picked up on my discomfort and said, "It's ok. Sometimes when Japanese people are drunk they want to give people things." I guess that's what years of giving omiyage will do to a person. The woman then went on to explain that her purse was made of kimono fabric and asked if I knew what a kimono was. I replied in the affirmative.

"I want you to have this as a memory of today," she said, handing me her purse.

I took the purse hesitantly and promised to keep it as a memory of that day.

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I was sitting alone when a drunk man in his 50s or 60s came over and sat next to me.

This was his opening line: "So does your boyfriend sometimes come visit you from Australia?"

At this point, this man should have exactly one piece of information about me: I am from America. I had just stood up and announced it to the room in Japanese not an hour before. He does not know the following things: (1) if I have a boyfriend; (2) if I have a boyfriend, where he lives; or (3) the nationality of my hypothetical boyfriend. Thus, I didn't know where to begin when answering his question. As it turned out, he wasn't particularly interested in what I had to say. Anything I said was followed by a question based on what he assumed to be true.

"Um, I'm American," I said.

"OK then, is your boyfriend in town from America?" he continued.

"I didn't actually mention whether or not I had a boyfriend..."

"Do you have a date with him after this?"

"...but...umm..."

"Where are you going on your date?"

Luckily, the conversation turned to our hobbies. I said that mine were soccer, traveling, reading, and studying Japanese. He said that he had only two: climbing mountains and "watching beautiful women." Just at that moment, a younger female teacher came over and rescued me. I am eternally grateful to her.