Under the Osakan Sun

by Hamish Beaton

  I fumed silently. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said coolly, ‘it wasn’t my idea to invite you.’

  I paused, and considered telling her that I could think of nothing worse for the poor children of Kanan Town than having to suffer a surly visit from a grumpy young woman from England. But I held my tongue.

  The visit flashed by quickly. The children from the previous year’s two kindergartens had been merged into one giant-sized class in order to reduce nervous tension and panicked reactions. The mothers of the fifty-four tiny children had also been invited, in the hope that, as well as providing a comforting presence, they would control the hyperactive demons who wanted to jump on Santa’s feet and pull his trousers down.

  Rachel and I pranced out on to the kindergarten stage and danced awkwardly to Japanese pop music. Actually, only I danced awkwardly to Japanese pop music. Rachel stood still as a statue and pouted, while the children pointed, laughed, squealed and cheered. After a rendition of ‘Jingle Bells’ by the tone-deaf kindergarten orchestra, a rapid-fire question-and-answer session ensued, with the children demanding to know where we were from, how we had come to Japan, and where we were staying. Rachel stared out grumpily. I was tempted to tell everyone in Japanese that she had flown in on a broomstick, but charitably rolled out the ‘super jet over Europe, helicopter over China, and sled from Hiroshima’ story I had invented the previous year.

  Then it was play time, and I was dragged off to a play room by the five-year-olds. I chased the kids around a bit and they punched me, pulled off my hat and beard, and one girl pulled my pants down. Remarkably, by the end they all still seemed to believe that I was Santa. As we were leaving, I was presented with a sack full of scribbled lists of toys that the children wanted.

  Rachel snorted. ‘I can’t believe they think you’re Santa. You look ridiculous.’

  I continued to smile. Rachel’s prickly personality was not going to burst my bubble. ‘What are you doing for Christmas?’ I asked.

  ‘Humph. I dunno. Think I’ll be stuck here. What about you?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ I lied. ‘I’ll probably spend the winter holidays studying in the town library.’

  Rachel rolled her eyes. ‘Man, that sounds boring.’

  In reality I intended to follow the advice of my Japanese mothers and escape snow-bound Osaka for a three-week holiday in hot places. I had secretly planned this two months earlier, at the same time telling anyone who was interested that I would be spending Christmas at the library and then celebrating New Year with the Tanakas in Tokyo. Officially sanctioned international travel would require me to use up precious annual leave and have my itinerary meticulously scrutinised by the education superintendent. Study at the local library, on the other hand, was considered beneficial for both me and Kanan Junior High School. I was therefore allowed uninterrupted time away from school, the Board of Education and Rachel Brown.

  I departed Japan on December 19 and spent Christmas and New Year with friends, travelling through Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.

  January had arrived, and with it the Year of the Horse. Since I had been born in the Year of the Horse, my Japanese horoscope informed me that I was destined for much good fortune during the year, and would prosper to new levels of happiness.

  Things certainly got off to a prosperous start. I had sent Mr Kitahashi, the mayor, a New Year’s greetings card prior to my departure for Malaysia. Mr Kitahashi had reportedly been blown away by my small gesture, and had reciprocated by giving me an antique sake jug and matching mugs.

  From then on, my level of prosperity increased ten-fold. I arrived back in Japan from my tropical holiday on January 8 and started work the next day, only to find that my classes had been cancelled for an entire fortnight because of exams. I was therefore able to eat chocolate, drink coffee, finish reading the fourth volume of Harry Potter, and grow fat at my desk while still being paid. Luckily there was a three-day weekend thrown in along the way. I toiled away, struggling to get through first a three-day and then a four-day working week of no classes.

  My third week back at work rolled around, and after Monday and Tuesday’s lessons had been cancelled due to a timetable reshuffle, I left for three days of gruelling skiing and snowball fights on the school ski trip.

  Mr Kazama, the owl-like principal, realising how demanding this hectic lifestyle would be on my frail health, gave me the following Monday and Tuesday off work ‘in case you have sore muscles’. Deciding to make the most of his kindness, I used my recuperation time to jet off for a four-day holiday in a spa town on the southern island of Kyushu.

  On my return, I dragged myself back to the office for a three-day working week, in which all my classes had (unsurprisingly) been cancelled due to examination debriefs. Still worried about my sore muscles, I booked myself and some friends in for a relaxing retreat at a mountaintop temple for the following weekend.

  Blake, Matt and I caught a train to Koya-San, the small alpine town where I had admired autumn colours with the Okis over a year earlier. The maple trees and the town were now blanketed with thick powdery snow. Our hosts, a shy group of Buddhist monks, ushered us to our spartan rooms, served us healthy vegetarian meals and invited us to take part in Buddhist chanting outside in the snow.

  Following this introduction to monastic worship, we were ushered back to our rooms and left alone to meditate and contemplate the meaning of life. Being sadly devoid of spiritual intention, however, we spent the weekend in epic snowball battles up and down the town’s main street and through its enchanted snow-covered forest, during which I managed to dislodge Blake’s glasses from over 100 metres away.

  Back at Kanan Junior High School, life was not all chocolate bars and Harry Potter. My abundance of free time had made me even easier prey for the mentally deranged woodwork teacher.

  At our first conversation of the year, Mr Doi was looking tired and stressed. He stood at my desk with slumped shoulders and crossed arms, ready to share his emotional burden and assorted woes. He leant forward slowly and whispered that the other teachers did not like him, but he was very happy because I was his friend and he could confide in me since I was a foreigner and therefore a more open person than his Japanese colleagues.

  He went on to explain that the resentment towards him was unfair. The teachers did not understand him. ‘I am an energetic man,’ he said, ‘and do not have much time to spare for this job.’

  He lowered his voice and gave me a secretive, knowing nod. ‘Yes, I have many other jobs. I am a bodyguard, but that is very secret. I am an ombudsman. I work at a secret chemical laboratory, and I used to be a race-car driver.

  ‘The other teachers do not understand me,’ Mr Doi repeated. ‘They have small dreams.’ He wandered off mid-sentence to teach thirteen-year-olds how to build stools.

  The next day’s interruption was even more bizarre, and I was completely baffled by Mr Doi’s opening question. ‘Do you have any relations with the US military in Korea?’ His flounder face was locked in an expression of absolute seriousness. This was not a joking matter.

  I scratched my head. I had no idea what this was about and how I should answer.

  It transpired that Mr Doi was intending to drive to South Korea, and hoped to obtain the help of the US military in his mission. Doing my best not to laugh, I flicked through my handy English Teacher Fact File and produced a map of Korea and some useful statistics, such as the population of Seoul. As Mr Doi shambled off to use the photocopier, I made my escape.

  14

  My friend Mr Higo

  Mr Higo was my best friend in the Kanan Junior High School staffroom. On my first day at school he had introduced himself by asking whether I wanted to be part of the group of young single male teachers who regularly ordered the staffroom lunch-boxes.

  He was twenty-four years old, and until my arrival at the school had been the youngest member of staff. He had been working as a fully qualified English teacher for only two years, and had never travelled abroad. He spoke halting Eng
lish and seemed embarrassed by his accent and lack of foreign travel.

  It was after many months of working at the school that I learned that Mr Higo’s first job after graduating from teacher’s college had been working alongside a stubborn, opinionated teacher from England named Melanie. Descriptions painted a picture of a rude, spoiled young woman, not dissimilar to Rachel Brown. I was appalled to learn that Melanie had publicly criticised Mr Higo’s English ability and accent in front of his students. Understandably, he had developed a fear of working with foreigners, and was initially shy to approach me.

  Mr Higo and I soon discovered, however, that we shared a lot of common interests and a sardonic sense of humour. He was the coach of the school baseball team and a proud supporter of Osaka’s Hanshin Tigers. I was a less-than-average cricket player who delighted in watching the New Zealand team lose to third-world opponents.

  This shared interest in sport got our working relationship off to a flying start. We both detested the formal rote learning methods of the Japanese education system, and decided that competitive games and a humorous environment would be more stimulating for our third-grade students. Each week we would arrive at class armed with simple games that we had prepared only moments earlier, and that usually involved groups of students racing around the classroom, making sentences, and then sprinting to the blackboard to be the first group to scribble out their answer. These games produced an excited reaction from the students, and resulted in several head-on collisions and messy spills. However, the accidents were never serious and Mr Higo and I would cheer on the teams and perform theatrical umpiring gestures to rev up the audience.

  As well as these physical games, our lesson plans usually included some sort of impromptu comedy routine, in which we would act out a skit or scene relevant to the day’s grammar lesson. Often our skits involved making fun of each other or impersonating one of the other teachers, and our daring increased as the months went by. Eventually I felt confident enough to impersonate the super-cool Mr Terada; I stormed into the classroom with Mr Terada’s trademark tough-guy glare and yelled at Mr Higo in mafia-esque Japanese.

  The students roared with laughter, but Mr Higo went uncharacteristically pale. Sure enough, word of our skit reached Mr Terada, but he merely gave me a mock telling-off in gibberish English, inserting the words ‘dark horse’ into every second sentence.

  As well as poking fun at our colleagues and each other, Mr Higo and I excelled at taking the mickey out of our students. Cheeky or rebellious students were given nicknames, and these would later appear in work-sheets or English homework.

  The class clown of 3-D was a boy called Yuji Tomiyama. Yuji repeatedly tried to make me blush during class by fluttering his eyelashes and blowing me kisses. Mr Higo began referring to Yuji as ‘Tombi’, the nickname of Yuji’s eleven-year-old sister, and Yuji stopped giving me the glad eye.

  Several weeks later Mr Higo presented the class with its term exam. The written section involved the students writing a short story about ‘Tombi’ Tomiyama, who was waiting at the bus stop. Students had to write about where ‘Tombi’ was going, and what he was going to do once he got there.

  Several of Yuji’s good friends decided that Yuji was going to a ‘clothes shope’ to buy a ‘lady wig’. I chuckled as I marked the exam, and Mr Higo and I fell about laughing when we read Yuji’s bold scribbling proclaiming that he was going to ‘Mr Hamish’s house’ to see his ‘number one boyfriend’.

  While I eagerly looked forward to the two days a week I spent teaching classes with Mr Higo, the day I spent teaching alongside Mr Hioki was a different matter entirely. In the year we had been working together, nothing had changed. My only contribution was to act as a human tape recorder. My brain was unplugged from my body and every week I repeated the same pointless, soul-destroying routine:

  Trudge to class.

  Greet the students.

  Perform the prescribed greeting. Do not stray from the prescribed greeting.

  ‘How are you? I’m fine.’

  Go and stand in the corner by the overhead projector.

  Stare out the third-floor window.

  Recite today’s grammatically faulty script five times.

  ‘What kind of movie do Yuki like the most?’

  ‘What kind of movie do Yuki like the most?’

  ‘What kind of movie do Yuki like the most?’

  ‘What kind of movie do Yuki like the most?’

  ‘What kind of movie do Yuki like the most?’

  Speak slowly.

  Do not correct the grammar. Do not change the script. Free thought is banned!

  Speak more slowly. Mind-numbingly slowly.

  ‘Does Jim think that studying hard is the most important thing of all?’

  Slower.

  ‘Does Jim think that studying hard is the most important thing of all?’

  Slower.

  ‘Does Jim think that studying hard is the most important thing of all?’

  Slower.

  ‘Does Jim think that studying hard is the most important thing of all?’

  One more time. Slower.

  ‘Does Jim think that studying hard is the most important thing of all?’

  Do not correct the grammar. Do not change the script. Free thought is banned!

  Go and stand in the corner by the OHP.

  Stare out the third-floor window.

  Wait for the students to repeat the script and fill out a worksheet for thirty minutes.

  Stare out the third-floor window. Consider jumping.

  Bell rings.

  Wait for Mr Hioki to send lazy or unmotivated students to detention.

  Farewell remaining students.

  Perform the prescribed farewell. Do not stray from the prescribed farewell.

  ‘Goodbye, everybody.’

  Do not expect a response. At best, the boy with cross-eyes will mutter ‘Goodbye, Mr Hame.’

  It seemed I was not alone in despising my classes with Mr Hioki. After only a few months Mr Hioki had managed to kill all motivation and enthusiasm in his twelve-year-old students. The very intelligent ones were stifled and bored, discouraged from advancing themselves in case this proved them to have superior English skills to Mr Hioki. The less intelligent ones were scolded severely for not understanding the pointless English sentences that were bludgeoned into them, and quickly gave up all interest in the English language.

  The result of Mr Hioki’s monotonous lessons was eventually revealed to him in mortifying fashion when he foolishly conjured up the idea of giving all one hundred and fifty-three students the exercise of conducting an English survey. Each student was required to interview every member of their homeroom class and determine who were the most popular teachers at school, as well as the least popular.

  I scratched my head in bewilderment as I could immediately see where these survey results would lead. As well as this, I was astonished at Mr Hioki’s belief that the students would even attempt to conduct the survey in English. Sure enough, they rose from their seats and huddled in small groups, interviewing each other in Japanese and copying each others’ answers. The findings were collated by the student leader in each class, and then written on the blackboard.

  The results across the five homerooms were virtually unanimous. The three most popular teachers in Kanan Junior High School were Mr Terada and Mr Hamish, tied on 100 percent, and Mr Nakata, a physical education teacher, on 95 percent.

  Only two teachers featured in the unpopularity ratings. Mr Doi came second to bottom with a 3 percent popularity rating, and Mr Hioki bottom with 0 percent to 12 percent. I did the maths in my head and soon figured out that Mr Hioki’s 12 percent support base consisted of a few of the timid, slightly handicapped students who were verging on demotion to the young minnows’ stream.

  Mr Hioki was outraged when the first set of results was written up on the blackboard, and erased them immediately. The remaining results were read out once, and anyone caught laughing or repeating them was
given detention.

  While I basked in the glory of my flattering popularity, the survey gave Mr Hioki an opportunity to dent my spirits and put me offside with the students. ‘Since Mr Hamish is soooooo popular,’ he announced, ‘the children should be forced to write English fan letters to him.’

  And so the following week Mr Hioki hatched his most boring class of all time. ‘Your homework is to write a letter in English,’ he declared sternly.

  The children groaned, and one severely aggrieved boy was given detention.

  ‘Yes, you must write a letter in English,’ Mr Hioki repeated. ‘Your letter must be at least one page long.’

  More groans. The severely aggrieved boy received a second detention.

  ‘You must write a letter in English,’ Mr Hioki chanted for the third time. He paused for dramatic effect. ‘And you must send it to Mr Hamish. You must write a letter to Mr Hamish. You must introduce yourself and tell him a story.’

  The students groaned. More detentions.

  I seethed quietly. In the students’ minds I was now the reason for their having to write a stupid, boring letter in a stupid, boring language. Mr Hamish’s popularity rapidly began to wane.

  My friend Mr Higo watched me with a smile as I slowly waded through the stack of scribbled, incoherent letters on my desk.

  ‘Ha ha ha,’ he laughed, peering over my shoulder, ‘that letter is very wrong. Very bad. Very lazy. Ha ha ha.’

  His laughter was contagious. I laughed and gave the student 3/10 for effort.

  Mr Higo laughed harder. ‘Ha ha ha, 3/10. That is a very bad mark. Mr Hioki’s students are not so good. How many students received 3/10?’

  ‘Lots,’ I grumbled. I handed Mr Higo a letter that had received 0/10. The boy responsible had simply signed his name at the bottom of a blank piece of paper. He had already been sent to detention by Mr Hioki.