A few months ago–in the dead of February when nothing was blooming and the pyres of smoke from burning garbage piles made our eyes sting–Hana and I decided that come spring, come rain or shine, come typhoon or non, we were going to take our English Clubs on an Azalea March around town. This is quite a popular thing to do despite what Jamie and I assumed last year when we showed up expecting a few young families with some crumpled maps and instead found ourselves coralled into the 10k line where we watched hundreds of old people with climbing poles and full body track suits head out for the 20 and 40k up the nearby mountain.
The band played “It’s Saturday night! Saturday night!” while we all lunged forward in unison, following the leader’s stretching directions. Gregory Peck Sensei, our English club supervisor, was wearing a black track suit with tapered legs and a wide-brimmed hat, and he not-so-enthusiastically did the requisite jumping jacks and arm stretches while I was pushed into a corner next to the waxy rescusitation dummy by the band’s flamboyant tuba section. My third year girls flanked me on all sides, listening in rapt attention as the (young) dummy spokesman told them how to give mouth-to-mouth. My first year students, wearing their bright red P.E. uniforms, stood in a confused knot under the huge pink inflatable arch that read START in both English and Japanese. Suddenly a flock of volunteers in hot pink windbreakers pushed through the crowd and parted us down the middle to make room for the band. Blasting dance music, the horn section marched under the pink arch, onto the sidewalk, and then the 10k floodgates were loosed and suddenly we were in a mass of people. Young families pushing strollers, old people with yellow cloth flyers attached to their bags that read “We can do it!”, and dozens of designated garbage collectors carrying burnable trash sacks and long-handled clippers surged past us.
That’s when the old guides showed up. I’m still not sure who requested their assistance–if Gregory Peck Sensei was worried about Tender Flower, the girl who faints, or if they latched onto us because we were an unwieldy and easily recognizable group (see: bright red track suits)–but three men easily in their 60’s or 70’s identified themselves as our guides, positioned themselves at the front, middle and back end of K-Towns English club, and led us down the sidewalk where we did not see any azaleas. For the first half of the march I didn’t notice much out of the ordinary. Sure, we were rushed past K-town’s university which had an astounding mishmash of flora and fauna–pine trees and palm trees and bushes planted next to each other like natural friends–and at the river where a boat bearing people tossing scraps of paper into the water was taking off we were not allowed to pause and ponder what was happening. At the shrine where we paused for lunch we arranged ourselves on the stone steps for a picture and one of the old men took four of us the long way, completely cutting out the stone gate, and in all of them I’m laughing and have my hands up in the air trying to motion to him to turn the camera the tall way. After about three pictures of us all shouting in between to twist the camera he paused and all together we yelled in Japanese, “up! turn it up!” and for a minute we thought he was just going to take another picture of our brows furrowed, our mouths puckered in a yell, but then he did as we wanted and we got a nice (if somewhat off-center) picture.
I really should have taken all those things as clues. The snappy pace we were keeping, a pace so fast that when Hana’s long-legged group stopped to examine castle ruins we were told to keep marching. Lunch was just around the corner! Weren’t we hungry? The semi-senile behavior with the camera. At this point they were still cute old men volunteers who would periodically call in updates to the Wizard of the Azaleas saying things like, “yes, they’re speaking English!” and “these students are so talented!” Flattery really does cover many sins.
We were given a 20 minute break for lunch and when it was over and we hadn’t finished our rice (or me my sardines in oil) we asked for ten more minutes. Gregory Peck Sensei grimaced. “I suppose we can,” he said, “but they’re waiting for us.” So we licked our fingers and lips, brushed the dirt off our bums and did a quick bow at the shrine before circling up in the dusty center next to the covered well for hand washing. “Hana’s group isn’t finished yet,” I said, “should we start without them?” The old men looked at their watches. They looked at the sun. “We should go,” Gregory Peck Sensei said. And so as the group marched under the huge stone gate back onto the road I glanced over my shoulder at a confused Hana and shrugged, palms in the air. She hesitated a minute, and then joined her group which was free to buy white strips of paper with their fortunes or enjoy another sip of green tea provided by a group of Grandmothers in wide-brimmed hats.
The second half of the walk wasn’t nearly as scenic. We walked by city hall, a kimono shop, and any number of other stores that were closed because it was Sunday. It was getting pretty hot at this point, and while in the morning we meandered under canopies of trees and beside a river with a cool breeze, in the afternoon we marched on cement, down main street, and the hot sun had nowhere to disperse glancing off all those windows. At around the 8km mark there was a soup stop and we all fell gratefully onto the grassy hills. Gregory Peck Sensei jogged to the bathroom, I stretched my calves, and in a split second he was back and the guides had taken off down the sidewalk. “C’mon,” the rear guide prodded us, “let’s go.” And so we, confused, sun-struck and thirsty, followed them out of the soup station even though we hadn’t gotten any soup. Just as we started walking again Hana’s crew showed up and I yelled across to her, “they won’t let us stop!” and she shrugged helplessly before taking a sip of something that looked quite refreshing.
The last 2 km were a blur of concrete and roads. The path was not at all confusing–in fact there were no turns–and yet the guides kept ushering us back and forth across the street. They would march into traffic, hold up their hands to stop the cars, and we would cross. Then, in a few blocks, we crossed back. At one checkpoint we stopped to fill up our water bottles and the old guide just kept walking, backwards, urging us to continue. We snatched hard candies from a bowl the grandmothers extended to us and hustled back into formation. If we came to a crosswalk where the green crossing man was blinking the guide would call back, “run!” and we’d all half-jog half-hop on our sore calves through the intersection, trying between gasps for air to have a casual conversation in English.
As we neared the park one of the old men gave us instructions on stretching. “Should we do it together?” he asked hopefully and I emphatically told him no, we’d do it by ourselves. So he turned backwards and gave the students instructions on removing rings from swollen fingers. Then, all at once, we were walking through the inflatable pink arch which now read GOAL, volunteers were stamping our maps and we were given tickets for free ice cream which we could enjoy while watching dance groups in blue kimono do taekwondo-style lunges to hip hop music.
We thought, at this point, that the old men had disappeared into the mass of other old people collapsed next to their hiking sticks. But then one of them appeared at my shoulder, holding a picture taken of us on the walk. The two guides stand on the side, smiling, and between them are two third year students and me with my arms draped over the girls necks. Behind us is a blur of red and peace signs and a few black-haired heads smiling at the camera. “Where is the Sensei?” the old man asked peering around for Gregory Peck. “Here, I’ll take it,” I said in Japanese and reached out for it. The Old Guide snatched it out of my fingers and extended it to Johnathan. “Sensei? Sensei?” he asked. Johnathan pointed at me and again I tried to take the picture. The Old Guide pulled it away. “There’s only one picture left,” he said, “where is the Sensei?” And finally I got ahold of a corner of the picture and forcibly pulled it from his hands. “It’s me,” I said. The Old Guide looked at Johnathan quizzically and then walked away.
And so ends the Azalea March where we saw hardly any azaleas. What I learned is that if you sign up with another school’s english club The Old Guides will take this as an unspoken competition and will urge you to scurry past interesting graffiti and down alleyways while Hana’s long-legged group strolls along cooly and shows up at the park mere seconds behind your team. As I’m writing this I’ve noticed one of my ears has become itchy and aflame and it’s not because of the mild sunburn I got trying to find those Azaleas. One of my earrings was dropped in soy sauce due to a series of unfortunate events, and now the sterling silver has a fishy smell. But this discomfort is nothing, NOTHING compared to marching 10km in the hot sun, trying to make conversation about what we all ate for breakfast while behind us an old man is practically lashing our ankles with a stick, urging us to pick up the pace. “What’s that you had, cereal?” I ask breaking into a jog. And my students, panting, gasp, “Rice…and fish…and…” and then there’s just the sound of us wheezing and the rhythmic clomp, clomp of our tennis shoes on the pavement.
And that was the English Club’s first outing.
