I went to bed early the following evening, and was just drifting off to sleep when the phone rang. This time it was Mr Oki. ‘Don’t forget about Sunday,’ he stated.
‘No, I’ll be ready. Six o’clock, isn’t it?’ I replied.
‘Yes, that’s right. You sound sleepy. Were you asleep?’
‘Yes. I was trying to get a good night’s –’
Mr Oki laughed and hung up the phone.
On Saturday night I went to bed nice and early. I had prepared my clothes for the next day and set my alarm clock for 5.45. This would give me enough time to have a shower, get dressed and wait for the Okis to arrive.
The Okis, however, had been using their telepathic powers to thwart my good intentions. The phone woke me up at 5.30. Mrs Oki asked why I was still sleeping. She assured me that ‘someone’ was on their way and that I had best get ready. I got dressed and was toasting some bread when Mr Oki arrived at 5.45.
I welcomed him in and made a big fuss of showing him how my computer had to sit on the floor, and how I desperately needed a computer desk. Sadly, he didn’t seem to have his hearing aid turned on and didn’t hear a word I said. He ordered me not to waste time packing a jacket or sweater as I wouldn’t need them.
Okay, I thought. After all we’re just taking a leisurely ride up a mountain in a cable-car.
Wrong! Mr Oki and I spent two and a half hours briskly hiking up Mount Kanan, all 1020 metres of it. The ascent was done under the cover of darkness, and it was raining and cold. Mrs Oki was nowhere to be found: she was apparently at home making lunch. When we eventually made it to the summit, we couldn’t see a thing because of mist and cloud. We stopped for five minutes to drink beer, which we bought from a quintessential Japanese mountain-top vending machine, and then hiked back down.
I was speedily driven back to my apartment for a change of clothes and we then sped off to the Okis’ house for lunch. It was still not quite midday.
Upon arrival, I was immediately told to have a shower. I had only just started to wash my hair when Mrs Oki burst in to check if the water was okay. I managed to hide behind the soap rack and told her the water was fine and that I was quite capable of operating a shower.
Lunch was waiting when I emerged, and I was finally allowed a chance to sit still and relax. I soon came to the conclusion that Mrs Oki had taken far too many drugs at some previous time in her life. Between mouthfuls of fried chicken wings and miso soup, she mumbled and hummed to herself and seemed to repeat the same thing over and over again. She continued to thank me for letting Mr Oki and her stay at my home in New Zealand, and ranted on about how beautiful my mother was.
Mrs Oki seemed to consider my Japanese to be fluent, and made absolutely no effort to differentiate between the way she spoke to me and to Mr Oki. As she never referred to either of us by name, it soon became impossible to figure out whom she was talking to, or about. To complement this, Mr Oki took his hearing aids out during the meal in order to clean his ears, and subsequently couldn’t hear a thing.
After lunch we all went for a drive in Mr Oki’s car. He was very keen to point out his office.
I asked him if he drove to work every day.
Mr Oki: ‘Eh?’
Hamish: ‘Do you drive to work every day?’
Mr Oki: ‘Who?’
Mrs Oki: ‘Do YOU drive to work?’
Mr Oki: ‘What?’
Mrs Oki: ‘Do you drive to work?’
Mr Oki: ‘Who’s asking?’
Mrs Oki: ‘Him!’
Mr Oki: ‘Who’s he asking about?’
Mrs Oki: ‘You!’
Mr Oki: ‘Oh yes, I drive to work.’
Needless to say, after several hours of this I was fairly tired. During the drive, the Okis suddenly announced that we were going out to dinner. The restaurant in question was apparently quite far away, and the drive would take some time. I took the opportunity to try and fall asleep in the back seat, but Mrs Oki wouldn’t have a bar of this, and kept bombarding me with the same questions that she’d asked during lunch. ‘Heymishi! What do you wear to school? What grade classes do you teach?’
Despite my exhaustion, dinner turned out to be a hilarious affair. The entire Oki clan had turned up to a Korean barbecue restaurant, and it seemed that I was the guest of honour. The Okis’ two middle-aged sons, their wives and respective children were waiting patiently, and bowed politely as I sat down.
Everyone sat quietly with clasped hands and serious faces during the formal round of introductions. The Oki gene, however, did not allow such tranquillity to exist for long. As soon as dinner had been ordered, the gathering abruptly degenerated into chaos. The children began to cry, one fell off his chair, the three-year-old girl screamed, and the baby boy did poos in the corner and then vomited on the floor. In the midst of all this, the two Oki sons had an argument and then apologised to me for making a scene. Mrs Oki mumbled to herself happily and Mr Oki appeared not to hear a thing. I was served raw meat and felt sick.
I was finally driven home at nine o’clock, and after disconnecting my telephone from the wall I fell fast asleep.
I had been in Kanan Town about two months when Mr Kazama, the school principal, invited me into his office and asked if I would do him a favour.
‘Mr Hamish,’ he began as I sank into his plush leather sofa, ‘one of the third-grade students, Hiroshi Yamaguchi, will graduate soon. He very much wants to go to high school in a foreign country. Hiroshi likes you very much, so he wants to go and live in New Zealand.’
He paused and I blushed. ‘His mother is very worried about this. She is worried that his English is not very good and he will not be able to do well in New Zealand. She wants you to give extra English classes to her son. What do you think?’
I was delighted with the proposal. ‘Sure,’ I agreed enthusiastically, ‘I’d be happy to help out.’ Being invited into a Japanese home was not an opportunity to pass up, and Hiroshi was one of the more cheerful and capable English students I’d come across. He was always keen to greet me in the hallways, and eagerly asked about life in New Zealand and the differences with Japan.
Mr Kazama was equally pleased. ‘Excellent. You can start on Wednesday. Mrs Yamaguchi will pick you up after school.’ Thus began my weekly English tuition of Hiroshi Yamaguchi.
Mrs Yamaguchi was waiting patiently outside the school gates when the bell chimed on Wednesday afternoon. A well-dressed, pleasant woman, she greeted me politely and thanked me profusely for agreeing to her request.
During the short drive to the Yamaguchi home, she inquired as to my preferences for snacks and junk food. She had seemingly purchased a healthy assortment of chocolate, cookies, potato chips, popcorn, pretzels, soft drink, instant noodles and mixed nuts in anticipation of having to satisfy the barbaric appetite of her foreign guest. I opted immediately for chocolate and cookies, while Hiroshi maintained that he would require potato chips, popcorn, pretzels, soft drink, instant noodles and mixed nuts.
Mrs Yamaguchi went straight to work preparing our banquet, while Hiroshi and I were allowed full use of the Yamaguchi’s living room. The proposed English tuition soon degenerated into a junk-food overdose and fierce PlayStation battle. Forty minutes later, after being soundly defeated at several games, I announced the English lesson would begin. I was looking forward to getting revenge on Hiroshi by making him pronounce as many long ‘r’ and ‘l’ words as I could come up with.
It was then that the door opened, and in walked a vision in tight jeans and a lemon-yellow T-shirt. Hiroshi’s older sister, Aki, had just finished university for the day, and from where I was sitting she looked remarkably radiant. I frantically tried to brush the potato-chip crumbs from my shirt front and sweep away the chocolate wrappers that seemed to have mysteriously gathered on the tabletop in front of me.
I stammered out the most charming introduction I could muster, and offered Aki one of the few remaining pretzels. She giggled and blushed shyly. Hiroshi, however, was not keen for his sister to sh
are in his hoard of junk food; he swatted away her hand and shooed her from the room. Less than impressed, I mentally added the words ‘railway’, ‘radiation’, and ‘larium’ to Hiroshi’s vocabulary practice.
I spent the remaining hour of the lesson paying only scant attention to Hiroshi and hoping feebly that Aki would return. My hopes crumbled when at six o’clock Mrs Yamaguchi entered the room and announced it was time for me to go home. She bowed deeply and thanked me again for teaching her son English. I nodded sheepishly, suddenly realising that I had done little but eat junk food and laugh inwardly as Hiroshi lisped his way through my fiendish labyrinth of tongue-twisters.
Mrs Yamaguchi bowed again, and produced a large bag of groceries from the kitchen. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Mr Kazama said I was not allowed to pay you in cash, so I decided to give you a week’s worth of groceries at the end of every lesson.’
I had not been expecting this at all, and cautiously examined the bag, fearing that Mrs Yamaguchi had assigned me a diet of Brussels sprouts and lentils. However, it seemed she had been listening carefully when I outlined my junk-food preferences. My shopping bag contained a token helping of lettuce and bread, and was then filled to the brim with candy, chocolate and cookies.
I was escorted to the door, and was preparing to step out into the muggy summer air when Aki breezed back into the living room to say her farewells. I stammered out a flustered goodbye, and she told me that she was looking forward to seeing me again. I decided to continue my Wednesday lessons with Hiroshi, no matter how many Brussels sprouts I received in payment.
I was still in a love-struck mood as the Friday first period rolled around, and I strode confidently to the young minnows’ room well before the bell had chimed. I had devised an ‘English passports’ project for the team, and we spent most of the time gluing pictures into little cardboard booklets and colouring them in.
As well as a huge sticker book full of animals and birds, I had taken along a TV Hits magazine that included glossy sheets of celebrity stickers. The boys instantly fell in love with the stickers, and had a lot of fun choosing pictures of pretty girls. Hiro chose three stickers of scantily clad female singers and seemed about to throw a tantrum when Mrs Hotta teased him about having so many girlfriends. When he calmed down, he contritely chose a handsome male actor for Mrs Hotta. He selected a pretty blonde girlfriend for me as well.
Jun, meanwhile, was in heaven. He clapped himself on the head, and kept saying ‘Great!’ in Japanese. He preferred the animal stickers and adorned his passport with pink birds and grey hippos.
Work on the ambitious ‘English passports’ project continued enthusiastically the next Friday, and I spent the first half of the lesson teaching basic family nouns such as ‘father’, ‘mother’, ‘brother’, ‘sister’ and ‘pet’. However, it soon became apparent that a considerable ability gap existed in the class. Jun was in the third grade, had been studying English for three years, and could already pronounce these words, although he could not spell or write any of them without assistance. Hiro, meanwhile, was in the first grade and had come into contact with the English language only two months earlier. He was still unable to count to ten and struggled to pronounce even Japanese words properly.
Nevertheless, the class flowed along merrily as the boys diligently tried to fill out the second page of their passports, writing down their fathers’ names and jobs, and drawing pictures of their respective families. Hiro quickly hit a snag as he couldn’t remember his mother’s name (I began to worry about whether he had a mother or not), and didn’t have a clue what his father did for a job. Then he drew his entire family, two sisters included, with round faces and short military crew cuts. I had glimpsed his family at the school gate, and all three females had shoulder-length hair. When I pointed this out, he started jabbering and hitting himself.
Hiro’s bout of anger had alerted me to that fact that classes full of writing practice were going to put the boys to sleep – or even worse, in a pot-banging mood. I needed inspiration to keep things lively and jovial. The shiny magazines and glossy pictures would buy me a few more weeks of attention but I would soon need a new angle, some new games, something novel…
The following Monday was Hiro’s birthday and I spent the week planning and preparing a surprise party for him, to take place during Friday’s class. Mrs Hotta was consulted and I was given permission to buy small fairy cakes, which apparently contained very little sugar. Candles were banned but small prizes for party games were acquired and lovingly wrapped in newspaper. I borrowed a CD player from the music teacher and scoured my CD collection for a suitable soundtrack.
I went to bed on Thursday evening in an excited mood. I was still bubbling with anticipation the next morning, and deliberately delayed my arrival to class in order to build suspense.
I had no sooner opened the door than the boys spotted the CD player, the Pin the Tail on the Donkey game and the four fairy cakes. Within seconds Hiro was on his feet dancing. Jun was giggling, patting himself on the head and hiding his eyes.
Mrs Hotta barked at them to calm down, and they nervously stood to attention and bowed. I bowed back and broke into a rendition of ‘Happy birthday’. Mrs Hotta and Jun recognised the tune and sang along in Japanese. Although he’d earlier shown an aversion to singing, Hiro grinned and sang himself ‘Happy birthday’ in a quiet voice. At the end he blushed profusely and looked at his shoes.
From there we launched straight into the party games. Pin the Tail on the Donkey was an overwhelming success. Both Hiro and Jun failed to get anywhere near the donkey – or even the blackboard – but Hiro loved putting on the blindfold and Jun loved the picture of the horse.
I’d rigged things so that whoever lost Pin the Tail would get the prize in Pass the Parcel. I awarded Hiro the Pin the Tail prize as he had managed to get closest to the blackboard.
We played Pass the Parcel to the James Bond theme, and once Hiro had stopped dancing the parcel-passing assumed a frantic pace. I managed to keep up with the pause button on the CD player, and eventually Jun was the delighted winner.
I’d gone to great lengths to make the prizes identical – two green pencils with sheep and kiwis drawn on them, and two kiwi-shaped erasers. However, the erasers were in two different colours and this caused a slight problem. Hiro preferred Jun’s green eraser to his red one, but Jun was in no mood to trade as green was his favourite colour. There were a few heated words, and a tense stand-off ensued.
In desperation, I brought out the TV Hits and flipped it open to the glossy pictures of the scantily clad girls. Hiro and Jun quickly calmed down. They oohed and aahed over the pictures, and when I produced the fairy cakes and my CD collection Jun nearly went crazy. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He loved the pictures on the CD jackets, and pointed and clapped in ecstasy. The cream cakes were devoured in seconds and Jun managed to get cream on his nose and eyebrows.
Meanwhile, Hiro sat quietly with a giant grin on his face. Class ended and he shook my hand as I left the room.
For the following weeks and months these two boys would be my staunchest supporters. It was not long before word of the first-period Friday class spread. Other special students asked to attend, and before I knew it student numbers had risen to five.
The first new arrival was Fumio. Fumio was a dyslexic third-grade student, and had been in ‘normal’ English class for three years. He could read quite well and was able to write long sentences and remember simple vocabulary. Incredibly well-mannered and cheerful, he attended our class only once a fortnight and, although well ahead of Jun and Hiro in ability, was more than happy to join in games of bingo. These three player games provided hours of laughter and entertainment. Fumio would usually win, but I noticed that he’d often pretend not to have a winning line so the others wouldn’t feel sad.
The second newcomer was female, which I feared would disrupt the boys’ attention or inhibit their enthusiasm. Yurika Nakamura was the small girl with thick glasses who had escorted me to my
first-grade class. She spoke with a slow drawl, but notwithstanding her eyesight – her spectacles looked like two magnifying glasses welded together on top of her nose – she was of above-average intelligence.
A first-grade student, Yurika had been achieving good scores in English tests and exams. However, she had developed a small crush on me and wanted an extra hour a week of my tutelage. As the Japanese education system failed to differentiate between physical and mental handicap, she was eligible for demotion to the young minnows’ stream.
Yurika’s presence presented a dilemma. In two months Jun and Fumio would graduate, and I was slightly concerned about how the class dynamics would change once they had departed, as Yurika was able to converse normally in English while Hiro was still unable to count to ten without help.
The final addition to the class was Teru-Chan. Teru-Chan came to school only when she felt like it. She was a large, humourless girl who was perfectly round. Despite her comical appearance, though, she scared the hell out of me. She never spoke to me, and rarely uttered any words at all. Instead, she would sit sullenly, staring up at the roof or out the window. Other teachers had warned me to beware of her temper and never force her to do anything.
This newly acquired range of tempers and abilities presented a logistical nightmare. Trying to please everyone was fast becoming impossible, and although the class went moderately smoothly it now lacked the enthusiasm and hilarity of the early days.
I decided to teach the students how to talk about the weather, and started by teaching them to play the ‘hot/cold’ game. True to form, the boys loved hiding objects around the room but weren’t brilliant at giving the ‘hot/warm/cold’ clues so the others could find them. Jun wandered around checking everywhere. Teru-Chan stood stone-still and alone. Yurika struggled to see the tiny objects that were hidden inside drawers and on top of cabinets.
Slowly, things started to go downhill, and as the weeks went by tempers frayed. Nobody managed to pick up any weather words so I turned my attention to ‘shopping’, creating a supermarket backdrop and printing large volumes of fake money emblazoned with sketches of the students’ faces.
Under the Osakan Sun Page 7