Our fresh-faced first year students have shown up the past week in navy blazers creased under the shoulders from a life spent in plastic wrap, their blue KHS bags starchy and half full, their hair tied back neatly in ponytails. We’re assuming they’re keepers. After the pomp and circumstance of last week–three ceremonies on three consecutive days, cheering in the gym, everyone misty-eyed while the new music teacher conducted the very small band in a rousing version of the school song–this week we seem to have put the train back on the regular track, quieted all the horns and stuffed the people who were hanging out the windows screaming back inside. In short, all’s quiet on the eastern front.
There have been a few things that have gone on under my nose: an assembly on what marijuana looks like and how it will KILL YOU, new books were bought from the old ladies in the hallway, cleaning time crews were taught how to drag tires across the arena to smooth the sand. I’ve been distracted by the parade of presents that keep appearing on my desk after the teachers find out it was my birthday last week. A bunch of bananas with good will messages scrawled across them, a Japanese hand towel, a patterned mirror, and perhaps the most elaborate of all–a lunch box from T-Rex Sensei. This man really knows how to toss confusion into the fine mist of smog that hangs over the city. First he admits his love for girls who wear calico aprons, and then he sweetly presents me with a beautiful red laquered lunch box. “Wouldn’t it just be better if he was nice all the time?” Hana asks when I tell her he really means well, that his heart is in the right place. “I mean,” she says, “anyone can buy a present.” Which is totally true, except for the fact that he’s not just buying me a present, he’s doing what he knows how to do to make me feel appreciated. Sometimes it takes a pair of chopsticks with mice painted on them to undo the compliment “now you are becoming qualified to teach.”
As we suspected, the T-Rex presented Praju with a similar present this morning. He swung an Iwataya bag at me in the hallway yesterday morning and as I slid off the shiny red paper he casually asked Praju when her birthday might be. “Last Friday,” she admitted and his shoulders slumped. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he wailed, and for a moment I thought he was going to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. “Please, Sensei,” she said, “you don’t have to get me anything.” But he just held up a hand like the old men traffic guards at the intersection and walked on down the hallway. “Hers is a different shape,” he informed us this morning as we oohed and ahhed. Also, he adds while I’m sipping my tea, “Please tell Praju I would be pleased if she could keep the English room door open before third period.” And a sentence that used to grate on my nerves I’m now able to scrawl down almost nonchalantly because the person he’s talking about is not ME.
This afternoon we’re taking the new students out for a test drive. Nurse Funny Skirt raced through the announcements this morning about going to the nurse’s room in shifts, although she should have added that the handy man has stretched a thick black extension cord across one of the hallways out the window into the garden between buildings to whack weeds, and that this might cause some problems. As I hopped neatly over it this morning the Principal, coming from the another direction yelled, “DANGEROUS!” and I almost lost my balance and jerked the cord out of the socket which would surely have caused the handyman to lose control of the weed whacker, and then our beautiful maple tree would have scars in its trunk from the jaws-like teeth of the machine.
The students will have their eyes examined for redness, their noses checked for hayfever, their hearts monitored so we know who will be pre-disposed to fainting during Sports Day practices. Mount Fuji Sensei can sit under the teacher’s tent with the binoculars he uses to read the whiteboard in the teacher’s room, scanning the bleachers for students who look a trifle too pale, who didn’t pack enough salt to sustain themselves. I know it’s all for their health and whatnot, but it feels not so much like a Great Good Deed we’re doing for them as like we’ve gotten a fresh shipment of used cars and we’re going to kick the tires and check under the hood to make sure we don’t have a batch of lemons. We want to make sure the 4-hours of sleep a night we advocate for the third year students isn’t going to ignite someone’s OCD tendencies.
It’s really similar to T-Rex Sensei’s presents in that way. Most of the time we’re going to assign them long passages of Yates to translate or maps of the world they have to dissect and name, we’re going to berate them for rolling their skirts up to high, for forgetting to tie their navy string ties. We’re going to make them scrub the floors, run marathons, sing the school song with a jump in their step and a quiver in their voice. But then every once in a while we’re going to make sure they’re still running in top condition, give them a tune-up. And all is somewhat forgiven because as a doctor is shining a white light into your eyes and listening to the whump-whump of your heart you’re thinking to yourself, “see, I’m still healthy. They really do know what’s best for me.”
And THAT, Internet, is the great achievement of the Japanese education system.
