The fire alarm goes off at lunchtime and the students don’t react. The Sensei stand in the hallway, ears cocked toward the first floor, hands on hips. The Big Kahuness walks past with a folder. She hangs out near the Principal’s door. Everyone shrugs. A mechanical voice periodically announces: THERE IS A FIRE ON THE FIRST FLOOR. FIRST FLOOR. Finally, the grass cutter from the front office runs down the hallway in a blue jumpsuit. “Malfunction!” he shouts, and then sprints up the stairs.
Praju and I head to the third-year student Superhero class for lunchtime, and we ask if they heard it. “It was so loud,” they said. “Annoying.” Arisa is passing around a Minnie Mouse tin her private English teacher gave her. “It was expensive,” she says, “600 yen.” She counts out the candies inside, looking at Praju and I out of the corner of her eye. “None for us,” I say, biting a piece of raw carrot. Arisa looks relieved.
Sayaka makes a face. “Raw carrot?” she asks. “Raw?”
I try to offer her a piece, but she shakes her head. “It’s good for your eyes,” I say.
“Never,” she says, “I never eat that.”
The third year students have not pushed their desks together. There is no lunch sharing going on. Kohei and Shiori are listening to music with old headphones. Three of the girls sit and chat. Everyone else sits primly at their desks, books opened, a finger tracing the grammar point. With their left hands they catch pieces of meat with their chopsticks and lift it to their mouths without once glancing at the food. We’re sitting at the desks of two girls who are absent for the day, and I lean back in my chair and observe.
Across the courtyard, I can see the two floors of first and second year students. Down on the ground floor the Sensei are crouched near the study desks, helping students prepare for the exams Friday. Because of the way the light hits the buildings, we can’t usually see into the third year students classrooms. They’re up on the second floor, and often they have the blinds drawn. But from this side of the building, I can see everything. The first year students on the way to the bathroom, the second year students changing into their P.E. uniforms. The school already feels distant, which I suppose is part of the purpose of moving the third years away. This is their transitory year where they stop going to clubs, start studying seriously. “It’s this time of year,” Gonzo Sensei says when I tell her how quiet they were at lunchtime, “it’s that part of the building at this time of year.”
I feel a bit like I’m watching a student ant farm, like I’m a voyeur hanging out in the branches of the maple tree that taps at the hallway windows. I’m obscured by leaves and the blinds that Sayaka keeps lowering, trying to keep the sun out of people’s eyes. It’s a little dizzying, seeing one’s educational process physically laddered up like this. The move up the flight of stairs from first to second year, and then the move across the courtyard, into the clouds, the third year. Everyday, looking out the windows of the 3-1 classroom, they see exactly where they came from.
Their English mistakes are becoming more sophisticated, less the sloppy translations we see in the first and second year students. They’re occasionally confused about prepositions and transitions, but they have a solid grasp of grammar. Gonzo Sensei throws around Japanese explanations when they cock their heads to the side, confused, and I listen to her explain subject, verb, object, when the combination is jumbled. “I love English grammar,” I whisper to her as the students turn their desk to face the back chalkboard. “We should make them memorize that and repeat it,” she says. “Everyday, ‘I love English grammar!'”
In the afternoon, Praju corrects 2-1 test papers. “Have you heard of this ‘metabolic syndrome’?” she asks me and we call over Gregory Peck Sensei to explain.
“It means,” he says, “when we see someone becoming fat. If we see a woman with a waist more than 36 inches, or a man with a waist more than 34 inches, we say they have metabolic syndrome. Fat stomach.”
“Wait,” we ask, “a man’s waist should be smaller than a woman’s?”
“It sounds weird, isn’t it?” Gregory Peck Sensei says. “I’m very, very against it.”
Even though they’re supposed to be writing about America’s dependency on cars, the 2-1 students can’t get food off their minds:
In America, there are many non healthy foods. For example, humbergers, potato chips, fried chickens and burned beafs. They give damage our health.
I know this much: anyone who eats a burned beafs is definitely going to do damage to their health.
During lunchtime we see Akihiko leaning back in his chair, chatting with our old debate student Mio. Her laugh is loud and full of happy, crooked teeth. Ryosuke studies quietly behind them. Yuki, the red team’s dance captain, puts in her contacts using a small pink case that has a built-in mirror. Akari folds a microscopic, bright blue paper crane. She sets it on the teacher’s podium and walks away. The girls all appear to be letting their hair grow, and most of them have it swinging long and black over their studying shoulders. Come fifth period, it will be tied back with ribbons and clips. After chatting with us about raw carrots, the conversation turns to T-Rex Sensei’s class. He translates everything for Praju, and the students are insulted. For her because they know she understands Japanese. And for themselves because they understand the English. “I say, ‘why’?” Arisa says, shrugging.
“What do I tell him?” Praju and I whisper later. “How can I tell him to stop everything?”
“We think the class is useful,” Arisa says, after some prompting, “but if I have time I want to really memorize sentences. I don’t have such time.” With that, she sweeps her empty lunchbox, two Micky Mouse cases and her chopsticks into a paper bag from a lingerie store, hooks them onto her desk, and arranges herself for fifth period. The bell rings and I walk to the front of the classroom, pick up a piece of yellow chalk, and get ready to be a Sensei again.
Kendra!
I just read a NY Times article about the metabo syndrome! Japan is taking extreme measures to trim down!!!!