Part VI: The bureaucracy, geographical wrangling, and more!

Well so here we are just where we started off: about two and a half months behind schedule. Apologies for the lack of recent updates: as the Japanese say, I have no excuse (申し訳ない, moushiwakenai—thank you Beth). And now I am sure you are all eager to plunge headfirst into the icy waters of December, but unfortunately before we do that you will have to endure a little bit of complaining about the bureaucracy.

Halfway through November, i.e. a month after arriving here, my work visa was finally stamped into my passport. My time as an illegal laborer had come to an end. At last, the boundless pleasures of legality—a phone, an internet connection, a bank account, who knows!—would be available to me. Task number one was to go to the city hall and get officially registered, so that I may receive my foreigner's registration card, the key to functioning normally in Japanese society. So the very day my stamped passport was handed back to me, I ran to the city hall straight after work. Unfortunately, that proved to be too late: the city hall's foreigner-registering bureau closes at 5, just about the time I got there. It is also closed on weekends and on public holidays.

Which brings me to my central problem. The Japanese are workaholics. This is not simply a stereotype. I'm always a bit dismayed when negative stereotypes about countries turn out to be 100% true, when these countries' inhabitants blithely continue to conform to behavior that is either ridiculed or pitied everywhere else, but the fact is that the central institution of Japanese life is the workplace—making, I think, the concept of a work-life balance here a little bit foreign. This starts from an early age (when the workplace is the school, obviously). A few illustrative examples: the kids at my school go to school six days a week, from first grade onwards. As I don't know whether I've mentioned, my working hours end at 4:30, and by 4:35 on most days all three of us full-time English native speaker teachers have left the building. The Japanese teachers, on the other hand, I am told, generally stay until 7 or 8 in the evening, and all-nighters are not unheard of (with teachers sleeping on beds in the nurse's office). This, keep in mind, is a freakin elementary school! I am frequently asked how many "holidays" I have a week. When the head teacher at the elementary school let me know that I would be getting two holidays a week, I was bewildered and dared not to hope that he meant what it sounded like he meant, that I would only be working three days a week. But no: the "holidays" are the weekend, magnanimously granted by the workplace, and frankly getting two a week is a pretty sweet deal.

Another example: at the end of their third (penultimate) year of university, Japanese students go through a "job-hunting" period, during which they apply to and take entrance exams for up to fifty different companies. Before the actual application, exam-taking and job interview period, there is an earlier period of preparation, which involves attending these companies' "seminars"—which I guess must be where the companies sell themselves as rad places to work—and also studying for the entrance exams. The total amount of time this takes is about four months. During these four months, as one of my friends who is in the middle of them right now tells me, these poor job-hunters get absolutely no "holidays", for even on Sundays they are expected to take the train over to some 8am seminar/interview/test on the other side of Tokyo. Working hours, of course, are exacerbated by lengthy commutes: I met one university student whose daily commute is two hours on the train each way, frequently (I imagine) without a seat.

(You'll have to excuse me while I follow this tangent much further than is entirely necessary. Another well-known aspect of the Japanese workplace is lifetime employment and loyalty to one's company, which is earned through a system of seniority-based pay, and which one is expected to display, for instance, by not taking all of one's vacation days (e.g. apparently, on average, Japanese people get fifteen days' paid vacation a year, but only take seven—a week and a half of paid vacation a year, people!!!), or by (Wikipedia tells me) singing the company song. I had never heard of these company songs before five minutes ago, but they would explain the gusto with which my school's song is sung at just about any school-sponsored gathering. Incidentally, Wikipedia offers a link for "company song", but this redirects to the page for "jingle": so are Japanese employees expected to sing their company's commercial jingle? E.g., are employees of male grooming products giant Gatsby expected to sing "I——— can give you Gatsubi!" as in this terrifying commercial? Do in-house consultants for Bic Camera stores have to sing this song (as recorded by someone who, from their commentary on their own video, is clearly insane)?)

Anyway, some people are always harping on about how this creates a supportive working environment, gives employees a sense of belonging, cuts down on Taylorist alienation and all that. What it does instead is produce a culture with a special word for death from overwork (karoushi, 過労死) and with the second-highest suicide rate in the OECD (the highest belongs to South Korea, where, I am told, people work even more than in Japan). Japan is desperately in need of a bit of the focus on "lifestyle" which has of course gotten a bit out of hand in the USA but which was a pretty necessary development in the 1960s. In fact, if you want a quick-n-easy caricature of the mainstream Japanese lifestyle, you can think 1950s-America, which may explain why a bewildering number of female students at even prestigious universities want to become flight attendants here.

Well that's it for my rant on the Japanese workplace, which SOME OF YOU will no doubt blame on some sort of alleged terminal laziness on my part. Returning, then, to the question at hand, which is really not very momentous: with these kinds of work hours, how do Japanese people ever go to the city hall to get their administrative whatnots sorted out? (And a related, probably more important question: how come city hall workers are exempt from the work-till-you-drop schedules that afflict their compatriots, and how come all the rest of the Japanese don't either horribly resent them or say to themselves, "Hmm, these city hall workers sure do have it good, why doesn't society as a whole emulate this sort of work schedule?"?) You'd think they could ask their boss for permission to leave early one day, but if their workplace is like my school, then even this is deducted from their vacation time. For instance, if I leave work at 4 instead of 4:30, I get one hour (the 3:30 to 4:30 hour) deducted from my paid vacation time. And if these poor city-hall-service-seekers live two hours away from home, they'd have to leave work at 3, if not before, to get to the city hall by 5. And if their official working hours go until 6, for instance, then that's three hours—almost half a day, since each day is officially an eight-hour one—of paid vacation out the window, just for some boring old administrative formality.

So, to return to moi, the next available day I took my hour of paid vacation and went to the city hall to get registered. This happened without any major snags, although there was a bit of a to-do concerning my lack of a telephone number. In the end, I gave them the telephone number of the school, which seemed to satisfy them. Once this was done, the next step was to open a bank account. Japanese banks, it appears, are not very good at dealing with foreign depositors, and I was told to direct my yen to either Citibank (which I avoided because it was collapsing at that moment) or to home-grown Shinsei bank. Shinsei, unfortunately, only has branches in central Tokyo. Fortunately, it is open until 7 and on Saturdays, unlike most banks, meaning that I would not have to take an extra hour of paid vacation every time I needed to go to the bank.

The next available evening, then, still in my working suit, I made my way to the Ikebukuro branch of Shinsei bank, where, I had been told, the staff spoke English. I was ushered in and seated in a little armchair, one of three or four around a coffee table, while the staff prepared the application form. Once it was ready, a lady (who didn't really speak any English) came over and squatted/knelt by my seat to present the application form and go through it with me. (This coming over and squatting is a little bit disquieting, but it's the standard seated-customer service procedure here: even in restaurants, waiters come and squat by your table to take your order.) It was all easy until we reached the blank for my telephone number. I told the lady I had no telephone number, and could I perhaps give them the school's telephone number, since this had worked so well at the city hall? Alas, no: work phones were not acceptable. So I explained my problem: a Japanese bank account (one of my colleagues had assured me) was necessary for me to get a phone. So if they could just open my bank account, I could run out and buy a phone, then come right back and give them the new phone number. Surely this little gymnastic flip would cause no trouble. All of this in my semi-coherent Japanese (fortunately I had recently learned the word for "necessary"). But to no avail: the machine would not budge.

By this time (we had moved back to the front desk) I was a bit annoyed that I had deployed my nascent Japanese skills in vain, and I started grumbling in English and throwing around the expression "catch-22" in the hope that it might have crossed the Pacific. I explained my quandry in Japanese again. As this went on, the lady became more and more distraught, her bows became deeper and deeper, and her apologies became more and more complex and incomprehensible. By the end she was spending more time bent at the waist than upright, and (jokes aside) she sounded like she was going to rush off to comit suicide as soon as I left the building. I tried to change tactics and gave her the telephone number of one of my friends.

"Can you be contacted at this telephone number?" she asked.

"Sometimes," I replied.

"We need a number where you can be contacted all the time," she explained, the mortification in her voice equal to that of a reckless, drunk driver admitting to a woman that he has just permanently maimed her son, a promising cross-country runner. This hyperbolic shame just served to make me more angry: if she was really that sorry, she would take my friend's goddam number. After all, if I had a home phone and had given her that number, it's not like she would have been able to reach me at it during most of the day (when I was at work). The now practically groveling lady and I parted on these hostile terms.

When I complained about this incoherent policy to my friend, I was given the resigned (and not ironic) answer that this was "Japanese culture". If there is one firm prejudice I have acquired during my university education, it is to be suspicious of culture-based explanations for anything. Some people claim that oppression of women is part of "Muslim culture" (and hence that Muslims can never be integrated into our totally gender-equal Western countries), as though women had the right to vote across Europe and America one hundred years ago. I think one reason for what appears to be Japanese people's relative disinterest in politics (and possibly for their acceptance of inhuman working conditions) is that they get taught that various things are part of an eternal "Japanese culture" that doesn't change and cannot/should not be changed. Canett's obsession with Japan's having four seasons is part of this bundle of allegedly unique Japanese stuff. Also the claim, which I have heard more times than I can recall here, that "Japanese is shy", i.e. that Japanese people are all shy, despite the fact that many of them clearly aren't. There's a whole field of study here devoted to this, which you can read all about here.

The end of my phone/bank account saga, by the way, is anticlimactic. Turns out I could get a phone without getting a bank account here, by showing the phone company my French bank card. All's well that ends well.

So by the end of November, I was in possession of a phone, my yen lay snugly in a bank account, and I was on my (also long and tortuous) way to getting a home internet connection. It was at about this time that Canett unveiled his master plan for me. One day I was summoned once again to Canett's class at the University—exactly the same class as the one I had visited a little over a month before. As we have seen, though, Canett is an aficionado of the art of restatement, and I was once again introduced to them as a graduate from the oldest university in the world with a master in philosophy and a major in politics. This time, there was a photographer, who took pictures of me pretending to make conversation with a few students convoked to the front of the class.

After the class was over, we made our way back to Canett's office (we being Canett and I, accompanied by a university staff member who speaks very good English), where three copies of Canett's beloved leaflet-prospectus, so enthusiastically recommended to me by Canett on the very day of my arrival, were laid out on the table. Canett explained that he wanted me to go through the prospectus and make corrections to the English, so that he may have an immaculate promotional document—the purpose of which, of course, remained completely incomprehensible to me. But rather than simply let me go through the prospectus in my own time, Canett then proceded to open it up and began to read, word by word, as he had done on my first day here, although this time there appeared to be little chance of stopping before the end.

I decided to tackle this tedious task without any ill will, even though I didn't understand why Canett had elected me to perform it, since there were already native English speakers at the elementary and secondary schools. (No doubt he wanted to be sure that the final product was written in the Queen's English.) The first actual passage made up of sentences and paragraphs, after lists of names and slogans, concerned the location of the school: "XXXX Educational Institution's main campus is located in Saitama prefecture. Bordering the nation's capital, Tokyo, on the south, Saitama prefecture has undergone rapid urbanization with population of about 7 millions, which is the fifth largest of Japan's 47 prefectures." (Everything sic, of couse.)

Well I stopped Canett right then and there: since Saitama is in fact located north of Tokyo, I suggested that the word "south" in the preceding passage be changed to "north". Unfortunately, this suggestion seemed to pain Canett greatly. Giving me a kind of limp smile, he quaveringly pointed at the map that accompanied the text on the prospectus, and told me that Tokyo was south of Saitama, and thus that my correction was probably wrong. I told him that I knew exactly where both prefectures were located, but that the structure of the sentence as it stood implied that Saitama was the southernmost prefecture. We continued to argue about this, Canett convinced that I was obtusely refusing to understand the map, for about five minutes, until Canett gave up and pretended to accept my correction, so that we could move on.

After this, of course, I confined my corrections to the most blatant mutilations of the English language only: we had another ten or so pages to go, and if it was going to take me five minutes to make each correction, it was clear that I had better focus in on the most crucial errors. My plans to temper the flights of lyricism about singing birds and blooming flowers came to naught. At the end of this long, painstaking process (the speed of which, you must remember, was dictated by Canett's out-loud reading of the text), Canett explained to me that he would go over all my corrections and give me a definitive version of the text later, which he then wanted me to record, so that he may have his prospectus in audio form too. Again, I presume I was chosen for my Queen's English abilities.

On December 3rd (a Wednesday) was held Veep and Canett's beloved "Hospitality Event", the culmination of their one-and-a-half-month ruminations on how to make best use of me. It was an all-day event, which took place in Ikebukuro, and I was expected to attend the whole damn thing. My job, though, was simple: after the lunchtime intermission, I was going to be introduced up on the stage, once again, then I would have to make a short speech of the usual type, along the lines of "Hello I am Rémi, what a fantastic event this is congratulations everyone! Smiles dreams hospitality!" Finally, in the spectacular apotheosis of my appearance, I was to teach the audience how to say, in English, French, German and Italian, "hello", "good morning" (in those languages that have a special term for it), "good evening", and "good night". Yes, this meant I would have to start by enunciating "Hello", and getting the audience to repeat it back at me.

Incidentally, none of these tasks were being asked of me by Veep directly anymore. Cat, at the elementary school, had become fiercely protective of my job there, and had demanded that any requests for extra appearances be made through the requisite channels, i.e. by contacting Mr. Mumbles, one of the elementary school's administrators. Whenever I was going to have to attend an event like this, Cat would come up to my desk, looking terribly pained, and explain to me whatever mind-numblingly stupid plan Veep had cooked up for me. He was, understandably, especially pained about this multi-lingual taster session I would be offering.

So I did what I had too, dying inside with every new expression I fed to the audience (which was made up of adults!!), sarcastically asking the audience to give itself rounds of applause after each successive language had been covered and pointing out that all of this information was readily available on the internet. But the Japanese don't really do irony.

The point of the whole damn Hospitality Event, in fact, was completely lost on me. Most of the attendees were students at the vocational schools and the university, and the morning was taken up by a speech by some dude who I think worked for a Japanese TV station, and then by presentations by students of each of the vocational schools describing what sort of stuff they worked on. (The school that has a department of prosthetics had a presentation that included a picture of a little dog with no hind legs, whose hindquarters were sat on a little miniature skateboard. I dutifully mentioned, in my afternoon speech, that I had particularly liked the bit about the dog on wheels. Other than that, there were also some pretty gross pictures of tapeworms and stuff like that.) The afternoon was devoted to a mishmash of random sideshows (of which I was the first). For instance, the school's handbell ensemble performed a Disney medley, which featured no fewer than two renditions of "A Whole New World" from Aladdin. The handbell ensemble gets trotted out at just about every event here: the poor kids who were no doubt tricked into joining must be ruing the day they chose such a crappy musical instrument which, on top of that, would take up so much of their free time in the service of Veep's incoherent designs.

There was also, bizarrely, a speech by a woman who was not Veep but who was decked out in even more bears than Veep usually is, who trotted out onto the stage to the sound of some inane children's-TV-program music and who introduced herself as Veep to the audience. This, I can only assume, was designed to elicit laughs from the audience, and was approved by the real Veep, because she had personally OKed the fake Veep's bear accessories in the wings before she went on. This made me even more angry with Veep's whole shtick: not only was she completely self-aware about it, but on top of that it seemed to be a calculated, cynical, self-aggrandizing strategy to win the love of the students and employees of the Educational Institution by posing as this wacky lady who loves bears.

As far as I can tell, though, people over here don't resent this sort of cynical manipulation. This is a country, after all, where people will ask you with a straight face whether you like Mickey Mouse or Winnie the Pooh (not the cartoons that they're in, the characters themselves), as though they were real people and not corporate logos designed to make you buy useless crap (at which they are unbelievably successful in this country).

At one point during the afternoon, as I prowled the backstage area with nothing to do, Canett approached me and once again brought up the subject of Saitama's and Tokyo's relative geographical locations. I stood my ground forcefully, refusing even to consider his suggestion that I might be wrong about how to formulate the sentence.

That evening, Veep and Taz (whom you might remember from my first post) accompanied me to the Chichibu night festival. Chichibu is located in the western mountains of Saitama prefecture, and it has a big shrine, which hosts a once-yearly nighttime festival which attracts tourists from all around the surrounding area. I kind of thought this might be to make amends for my participation in her retarded event that day, but no: the main purpose of this was once again to take photos of me and Veep smiling together against a different backdrop.

But no matter: I had a good time, and I really like the atmosphere of these Japanese nighttime events—fires, teams of drummers in (what look to me like) traditional costumes, stands selling hot soup and warm sake (remember, this was in December in the mountains). Here are some pictures:

This below is the portable shrine: Chichibu is a "portable shrine" festival, where the inner sanctum section of the shrine is taken out and carried around the town to the joyful cries of "Wasshoi!" (which my dictionary translates as "heave-ho!").

I also have a video of the portable shrine being carried down the street, but oh well.

The next event was the following Saturday, December 6th (the eve of my birthday, and, coincidentally, of Pearl Harbor Day). This was a "food festival", and was being held in Kawagoe, which is two train stops away from the school. Beyond this being a "food festival", I had no idea what to expect here.

I arrived about five minutes late, because I had a bit of trouble finding the hotel where the event was being held. As I entered the antechamber of the room where the main event was to occur, I saw Veep, her anuran's lips wobbling about in pouty stress, desperately trying to arrange a pile of cards esthetically on a table which was already covered in Oxford memorabilia (including, of course, an Oxford teddy bear), Alice in Wonderland memorabilia, Peter Rabbit memorabilia, and more cards. (There was also another table covered in Australian stuff, and a couple of other tables for various other things I don't remember.) When Veep spotted me, she shoved her pile of cards into my hands and moaned at me, "You are late!" I looked down at the cards: they were all birthday cards to me, which Veep had clearly strong-armed students from the Educational Institution's many campuses into writing. This was really embarrassing. On top of that, she wanted me to go ahead and display these cards on the table like so many trophies—a task, I might add, which was physically impossible given the size of the table and the number of cards involved. There were more cards for me in a bag that also contained so much Winnie the Pooh crap (as well as some Sesame Street crap!) even a two-year-old would have felt condescended to.

Once Veep had left to go flail elsewhere, I dropped all the cards and made my way into the main room. This room was lined with long tables, thus:

On these tables were displayed, at regular intervals, table settings—i.e. sets of crockery and cutlery arranged just so and decorated with thematic accessories. So this was not a food festival at all, I realized with disappointment: it was a table-setting festival. Each of the settings had been arranged by a different student from somewhere or other in the bowels of the Educational Institution—some from the culinary school, others just normal junior high and high schoolers. Some of them were fairly tastefully done, but others were just ridiculously extravagant or just plain ridiculous.

I was told that I had to pick one of the settings, which would be awarded one of the many prizes that were going to go out today. I asked for the criteria on which to base my decision, but it quickly became clear that it made absolutely no difference which setting I chose (making the point of my attending this event, once again, unclear). So I chose this one:

The journalist Mrs NWDFT, who was attending, asked me with a straight face whether I liked pink. Either the Japanese are simply incapable of irony, or their sense of irony is too subtle for me to detect. In any case, I told her that pink was far and away my favorite color, and that I was especially fond of pink poneys. Here is a sample of some of the other entries. First of all we have this, in much the same vein as my pick:

This contestant saw their dreams of winning first-place collapse like a… oh never mind.

The obligatory Hello Kitty-themed entry:

What the hell is going on here?

After we had all milled about a while, the festival itself started, with a speech by King Bear and a serious of exhortations followed by "Ga-teng!"s, just as in Tokyo. We then retired to a private room for lunch, where Canett once again broached the subject of Saitama's and Tokyo's boreal and meridional locations. He had a copy of the leaflet with him. I cavalierly got up from my seat, borrowed a pen from someone, sat down next to Canett and proceded to prove to him that I was right. The sentence, as you will recall, read: "Bordering the nation's capital, Tokyo, on the south, Saitama prefecture has undergone…". I then re-wrote this, not too controversially, as "Saitama prefecture is bordering the nation's capital, Tokyo, on the south", to indicate that Saitama prefecture was the implied subject of the appositive phrase. I then crossed out the middle of what I had just written, leaving Canett with "Saitama prefecture is on the south"—clearly a falsehood! QED. But Canett appeared skeptical. I sensed this was not the last I would hear of this thorny problem.

The afternoon was devoted to the delivering of prizes—I'm pretty sure just about every entry got a prize of some sort. I'm also pretty sure the prize I was asked to award personally was not the one I had been asked to choose the recipient of. Oh well. After yet another photo-op with the students (none of whom, you must remember, I had actually met or spoken to for any length of time, much less taught), I was out of there.

And since the whole beginning of this post was hijacked by my pop sociology of the Japanese, this is where this post is going to have to end as well. Next time, Christmas and New Year's.

The promised special post for King Bear's special event

Monday, November 17th: it was the night of King Bear's fancy reception in a fancy Tokyo place that Veep and Stanley had described to me in the vaguest possible terms two days previously. I meet Stanley at the station near the school. He is once again wearing his Ephesians tie. He seems happy about my expressed interest in his past as an assistant director at a movie studio [I forgot to mention this in the previous post, but he revealed this to me at the school festival. Pretty interesting for a boring old English teacher!], and he quizzes me at length about my taste in motion pictures. He tells me that Akira Kurosawa wasn't "really Japanese", which I gather is a commonplace over here. He reveals that the Cat majored in English poetry, and from there we move on to a short quiz on my literary tastes. Stanley is a self-professed "creative type".

Eventually the subject of conversation shifts, as it inevitably must, to our overlords in the Bear family. King Bear, he explains, is a "kind of crazy guy". I never cease to be amazed at how, despite their obsequious face-to-face behavior, the Japanese seem ready to lay into their professional superiors whenever they have the chance, although in this case it doesn't seem too unreasonable. But King Bear has a redeeming feature: he is intuitive, intuitive to a degree that defies rational explanation. For instance, Stanley explains, the mascot of our school is a polar bear, a polar bear looking at the North Star—(I have never noticed the North Star on any of the school's literature but I do not press the point.)—the very same animal and celestial body worshipped by the Native Americans! And the Japanese and the Native Americans are in fact closely related peoples through a certain tribe whose name I didn't catch (if anyone else has heard about this oddball theory and can clarify please let me know). King Bear, of course, knows nothing of the history of the Japanese people, but he can sense this connection, and this is invaluable for the school.

Stanley is now starting to worry me a bit. Until that point I had looked to him as an interesting and potentially friendly—albeit a bit unctuous—ally in my dealings with Veep and Canett, but I'm not sure I can handle this kind of talk. After we get to Ikebukuro and eventually find the appropriate Toyko Metro line to take, conversation moves on to the subject of religion. Stanley dramatically reveals to me that he is "something of a rarity in Japan" because he is a Christian. I briefly wonder whether it is appropriate to tell him that his tie gives him away. He tells me that his wife is, of all things, a Pentacostal minister, but that since she has taken over at the church, he and his friends have all stopped going. This is a wacky story I didn't quite manage to get to the bottom of. He explains that Japanese politics is intimately tied to Shintoism, although I don't quite understand how. Then he says, "You know that humanity goes through three stages of knowledge: mythology, religion, and science. But eventually we realize that science cannot explain everything. Hinduism is the religion with the most scientific approach to understanding the world." This is because, he claims, modern science has hypothesized regularly recurring Big Bangs and Big Crunches for the universe (although I'm pretty sure recent discoveries about the rate of expansion of the universe have led this theory to be discarded), and Hinduism posits something similar.

By now I have become significantly more quiet, which is a good thing because we have finally arrived at our destination, in Tokyo's business district, next to the huge moat-encircled Imperial Palace complex. King Bear's blowout is being held in the Emerald Room, on the eleventh floor, which also hosts the Gold Room, the Silver Room, and a couple of other similarly-themed chambers. On the twelfth floor there is a wedding chapel.

Stanley and I are ushered into a side-room, where bento dinners await us (they're pretty good). While we're there, Stanley tells me that I am going to be introduced, in blatant disregard to any semblance of truth, as a visiting researcher on the subject of hospitality, and that I am again going to be shoved in front of a microphone and be asked to make a short speech, during which (this time) I will have to profess my eagerness to study Japanese hospitality. After a month here I have given up trying to conceal my displeasure when I am asked to do things like this. Stanley seems sympathetic, but has nothing to offer other than the usual enjoinder to just go through with it without dwelling on it. The main aim of the evening, he reminds me, is to take photos. He is brutally honest and tells me (while asking me not to take this in a bad way) that Veep is hoping for me to be the "mascot" of the school for the year.

The "professors" gathered in King Bear's emerald lair tonight, it turns out, are essentially pretty important people who have given one-time addresses to the students at the university (I am guessing something like a commencement speech). And it is time to go meet them. I stand in the corner of the decidedly not green Emerald Room as Veep gives her usual yelping introductory speech, and then I am in front of the microphone. I speak for ten seconds, pretty quietly, raising my voice in as sarcastic a manner as possible to say that I am looking forward to experiencing Japanese hospitality first-hand. The audience is appreciative and chuckles. I leave to thunderous applause. Veep follows me out, making her usual sycophantic remarks to whoever is standing nearby ("上手なスピーチですね！" — "wasn't that a great speech?"). Two of the VIPs come running after me , eager to present me with their business cards. One is a jovial fellow who is president of a publishing company. The other is a tall, sallow fellow who is, according to his card, "chairman of the bord" [sic] of what I assume is a large securities firm. He seems horribly distraught when I tell him I don't have my business card on me.

Stanley and I return to the side room where we get to eat a second meal: since there were a few no-shows at King Bear's party, we get the full multi-course treatment (although in total I only manage to nab myself three glasses of wine). Between the salad and the dessert, we all return to the Emerald Room for the photo op. I smile with various more Japanese people, meet a Russian lady who is looking for a school abroad to send her daughter to (I give her a glowing review of the Lycée International), and speak to a mild-mannered middle-aged lady with excellent French, who is a producer at a TV company and has made "special programs" on a bewildering array of subjects. She also warns me against government censorship: "only 30% of what you read in the newspapers is true — but c'est la vie!"

Then it is time for the closing ceremony. Veep makes a short speech, during which she gets unusually animated even for her. After she steps down, Stanley remarks that she sounds like she's making a political campaign speech. Then comes King Bear: clearly a good speaker, in the children's-TV-program-presenter vein, kind of like Mr. Mumbles at the elementary school. While he is speaking, Stanley tells me we are going to have to do a little "kind of dance". Before I have time to process this information, though, King Bear raises his voice, holds his two fists in front of them and then thrusts his elbows behind him three times in a row, shouting, "Ga-teng! Ga-teng! Ga-teng!" As I stare in disbelief, he asks the audience to join him, and after another short exhortation, the whole room shouts, "Ga-teng! Ga-teng! Ga-teng!" and thrusts their elbows in the requisite fashion.

Then King Bear introduces a new dance, which involves thrusting your hands into the air three times while shouting something like, "Toyuyu! Toyuyu! Toyuyu!" He explains the deep meaning of this dance; from the gestures I gather that something is trickling down from the heavens between his fingers. Then the audience joins him in a Toyuyu. After this individual members of the audience come up to the microphone and offer their own exhortation followed by a Ga-teng or a Toyuyu as they deem fit. A few more collective dances and the ceremony is over.

I am being driven home in the same car as King Bear and Veep (our driver is a big guy who is pretty important at the high school—Stanley wryly remarks to me that here this guy is, probably going to get a medal from the Emperor in a few years' time, and he has to be King Bear's chauffeur). Before this, though, we are given a five-minute tour of what I assume is a culinary school in the basement of the building across the street. On the ride home, I listen to Radiohead on my iPod—unsurprisingly they're the band I turn to when I'm in a bad mood: I listened to them a lot when I was writing my MPhil thesis. Veep asks to have a listen, so I hand her the earphones, but I'm not sure she really knows what to make of it.

When we finally arrive back at Kotesashi, I snare Veep on the sidewalk and tell her, emboldened by the wine, that we need to have a little talk about what exactly I'm going to be doing here. As I try, diplomatically and in simple English, to explain to her that I don't like being introduced as something that I clearly am not and that I don't see the point of putting my name on prizes for junior high students [this is something Veep and Canett explained they were planning to do—clearly the result of hours and hours of plotting in Japanese in my company], she gets her deer-in-the-headlights look and then launches into a speech about how the elementary, junior high and high schools all want me to teach for them, and how she can't manage everybody and so on. She is totally freaking out. I try to reassure her, tell her I understand her troubles. We agree on the need for an interpreter and part on those terms.

******

Post scriptum: Several days later, at the elementary school, I was talking to the Cat about Stanley's past in the film industry. "Ah yes!" says the Cat. "Yes, Stanley used to make movies of a certain…" and then here, when I am expecting some sort of euphemism "… pornographic nature, do you say?"

Part V, or, I Am the Literary Angel of Death

Before I continue relating my adventures over here, I feel compelled to tell you all of my inextricable involvement in literary deaths. Last summer, in the US and in Oxford, I bought a bucketload of English-language books to tide me over during what I (it turns out correctly) anticipated might be many empty hours in Japan. One of those books was David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, aggressively advertised to me by two generations of American visiting students. Then on September 12 of that very same summer, Wallace de-mapped himself (as he would no doubt have put it).

Well I of course thought nothing of it and continued to live life much as I had before. But four days ago the New York Times front page greeted me with the news that John Updike had died of lung cancer. This would not have caused any particular emotion for me, had I not also bought a copy of Updike's seminal Rabbit, Run last summer. The message, finally, was clear: the authors whose books I had bought last summer (those who were still alive, anyway) were dropping like flies. My buying spree was slowing turning into a protracted killing spree. If Cormac McCarthy (aged 75), Don DeLillo (72), Thomas Pynchon (71), Salman Rushdie (61) or Michael Chabon (45) are reading this now, I can only urge them to finalize their wills, because they won't be able to stave off the inevitable.

On that note let's look at what I did with myself when I wasn't toiling away at the elementary school. Despite my new implacable working hours (8 to 4:30, and sometimes later because on Wednesdays there is a general meeting of all the teachers which I must attend despite the fact that it is entirely in Japanese and—from what I can tell—no use whatsoever; I will have more complaints about Japanese work and management styles), it goes without saying that my little escapades with Veep and Canett continued. Two days after my introduction at the elementary school (October 30th), I was summoned to the junior high school to make another completely pointless speech at the students' morning assembly there. They sang the school song with noticeably less gusto than the elementary school kids.

After that I was shown around the school, and then we all went back to the vice-principal's headquarters to chillax with some piping hot green tea, "all" being Veep and Canett and assorted people from the junior high and high school. One of these, whom we shall call Stanley, was an English teacher at the high school and had I think the best English I've encountered among employees of the King Bear empire. He also wore a tie covered in the names of various books of the Bible, which would have tended to indicate that he was one of Japan's one or two million Christians, although in this country it could just as well have been worn purely for the roman characters on it.

Over tea I'm pretty sure we were treated to a rendition of Canett's Trip to America, a sort of chanson de geste whose performance admits no variation and which is always greeted with great joy and anticipation by all people present. It begins with Canett telling us that he was about thirty when he first went to the United States, on a Fulbright Scholarship—"very difficult" to get, Canett is proud to remind us. In those days, it took fourteen days to get from Yokohama to San Francisco, by boat! He studied biochemistry at the University of Oregon—despite his mastery of the English language, which he teaches, he is in fact trained as a biochemist. Oh, Oregon! (And here occasionally I find myself obliged to admit that I have never been to Oregon.) But during his stay in America, Canett was fortunate enough to visit no fewer than eighteen states! Yes, the US is a very large country. Japan, of course, is much smaller, but it has much beautiful natural scenery. Japan—and this is inevitably the punchline, the climax of the story—has four seasons. There is a certain group of Japanese people who are unable to realize that, far from being an exclusively Japanese phenomenon, four seasons are noticeable throughout much of the globe's temperate latitudes. I would love to have gotten to see young, fresh-faced, Fulbright-Scholar Canett, just off the steamer, running around 1950s Eugene, OR, earnestly explaining to everyone that Japan has four seasons (!!!!!!!!).

Anyway, that was followed by the usual protracted devious plotting by Veep and Canett in Japanese, and finally I was returned to the elementary school.

That weekend I had a nice little stroll through the "skyscraper district" of Shinjuku, one of the few guidebook-approved areas of Tokyo I hadn't already visited on my previous visit. It's not a particularly exciting part of Tokyo, with its wide, almost empty avenues, but there are a few buildings there where you can get a good view of the city for absolutely free. One of these is the terrifying Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, which my guidebook describes as "a computer-chip version of the great cathedrals of Europe." You may judge for yourself:


This is also the area of Tokyo where the Park Hyatt Hotel, made famous by the movie Lost in Translation, is located. I had a walk down there but it didn't look familiar to me at all. This may have been because the hotel itself only occupies the top floors of the skyscraper in which it's located, and I didn't have the courage to take the elevator up. (The hotel bar where Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson bond beautifully really exists and has fantastic views and is open to the public, but I am still waiting for someone willing to fork over tons of money for one drink to come with me, although maybe one day I'll go by myself and hope someone as ruvry as Scarlett Johansson is striken by my drunken deadpan charm.) On the ground floor, though, there was an electric Yamaha piano being grandly showcased, but no-one was paying any attention to it. Seeing this poor little piano playing sadly to itself was heart-rending, especially since it was playing some hilariously crappy power ballad that unfortunately I can't remember now. By the time I got my camera out, the piano had already started on the outro. Here is my completely uninteresting video of this piano:

Actually my computer won't upload my Sad Piano video, which is probably for the better, and which means that you won't be getting any videos until I can figure out how to do this. Do any of you technologically savvy people know a program that allows me to convert videos into different formats?

The next weekend, my iPhoto tells me I went to Omotesando, the avenue often called Tokyo's Champs Élysées—mostly because it is lined with high-end brand boutiques, and not because it runs from a victory arch to an ancient Egyptian obelisk, though. There, I had Japanese desserty-type things that looked like this:


They're actually much better than they look.

Then my friends and I walked to the end of the avenue, which leads to Yoyogi Park. There we saw youngish Japanese men in leather jackets and greased-back hair and Japanese women in floral skirts dancing to rockabilly music. I have a video of this too, but in its current absence here is a picture:


I am clearly a terrible photographer. Anyway, I have no idea why these people were doing this, but they are a fairly regular sight on weekends there. To indulge in an absolute cliché, Japan is a land of contrasts: on the one hand, their favorite proverb is "the nail that sticks out will be hammered down", and on the other they do things like this in public, apparently fairly indifferent to attracting an audience or not.

Later that evening I was invited to dinner by the family of one of my RA-ee friends, at a great seafood restaurant where I was able to eat freshly chopped-up octopus—so freshly chopped, in fact, that the tentacles were still writhing when I picked them up with my chopsticks. This is the sort of thing that makes traveling worthwhile, although I am still waiting to find a place where I can do this. My friend's father is also fairly typical of Japanese salarymen in that he likes to pound the drinks when he's off work (this is transparently indicative of existential despair), so I am treated to a couple of beers, then some sake, then another type of sake, then a couple of types of shochu, which is Japan's distilled alcohol (usually about 25% alcohol). That night he then took us to a wine bar and we proceeded to put away a couple of bottles of wine on top of that.

This brings us to the following Wednesday, November 12th (you can do your own calculations if you don't believe me), the day of the elementary school concert, an all-day cutefest that us teachers were asked to attend. Each class performed a song in Japanese followed by a song in English, and I have on my computer a video of class 1-3 doing Old MacDonald, complete with animal gestures, but due to technical difficulties blah blah blah. In lieu, here is a picture of one class regaling the audience with a recorder instrumental interlude:


Awwwwwww!

The concert, by the way, started with a standing rendition of the school song by all people present, and then spectacularly closed with a collective interpretation of a song written, in English, by Veep herself, entitled "See You Tomorrow". Since this song is beyond parody, I shall simply copy the words for you here:

Thank you Friends
Thank you for your Lovely Smiles
Thank you Teachers
Thank you for your help
Thank you for our school.

Thank you my Family
Thank you for your Loving eyes
Thank you for
the blessing of this world
Thank you for everything

Thanks every one
Thanks for being with me
See you Tomorrow (bis)
Thanks for Everything in this world

In case you were wondering, the melody sounds like the bored improvisation, the musical doodle of a five-year-old with like two months' worth of piano lessons.

Apparently this was not the first time Veep composed for a school event: apparently last year she wrote a "lunch song" which made quite an impression on my English-speaking colleagues.

After the concert was over, Veep (who of course attended; I don't know what she does all day besides hang around her father's various campuses and attend events) asked me whether I could come to such-and-such station that very evening. I said okay, but I was planning to meet someone at 9 that evening (this was true), so I would have to be back before then, and what exactly was I going to be doing at this station? Now Veep clearly understood my question, but panic started to gleam in her amphibious eyes, and after about a minute of verbal flailing she told me I didn't have to come to the station after all.　おかしい (okashii, weird), as the Japanese might say. But in any case, this demonstrated that it would be possible for me to get out of Veep activities if they were suggested to me without much notice.

Before returning to the school after the end of the concert (this was a Wednesday, after all, so there would be a Japanese-language meeting), King Bear, who was there at least for the end of the concert, grabbed hold of several of us native English teachers, as well as of the Cat, and dragged us to the coffee shop of the place where the concert had been held, and all but forced us to get some tea and cake to eat (he paid for it all). Then, he subjected us all to a free-flowing meditation on various subjects, including education, hospitality, and religion, all translated for us by the Cat, who also added a sarcastic running commentary (with remarks like "This makes no sense, but I think what he's trying to say is…"). Right under poor King Bear's non-Anglophone nose! Talk about a dysfunctional professional relationship. This lasted about an hour.

That weekend, I went to Akihabara, the area of Tokyo famous for its electronics stores, and also for being the favorite district of Tokyo's manga-obsessed nerds who walk around dressed as their favorite cartoon character. This was a bit of a disappointment, though, because I didn't get to see any of these costumed weirdos. Maybe I came at the wrong time, I don't know. What I did see were another instutition to cater to these colorful eccentrics: maid cafés. Maid cafés are just like regular cafés, except more expensive and staffed by young women all dressed in French maid outfits. The idea is that the poor, lovelorn nerd can come to these cafés and talk to real-life females, dressed as maids for added… servility? While I was in Akihabara, many maids handed out fliers extolling the virtues of their maid café (one of the most striking things about walking around a Japanese city is that people are constantly trying to shove fliers into your hands, screaming at the top of their voices), and I fully intend to visit one as soon as someone sympathetically-minded comes to visit me. I am told there are also butler cafés in Tokyo—the equivalent for women, so I assume these are not the dignified, gray-haired butlers of European lore. Also, the Japanese word for butler (執事, shitsuji) sounds a lot like the word for sheep (羊, hitsuji), which I think is pretty funny.

Also in Akihabara, I spotted a couple of examples of Franponais, which is Engrish but where French is the language that is being mangled beyond recognition. Those that find Engrish a little bit too mainstream—passé, if you will—will find Franponais fresh and full of life. This is because it is not as widespread as Engrish, and because the Japanese speak French even less well than they speak English and so make almost no effort to get the language right. Here are a couple of examples:


I think this PIA place is just a video game arcade, so I have no idea why they decided to jazz themselves up with a little bit of Franponais, which is usually reserved for perceived high-class stuff, like cakes. For instance, I also saw someone carrying a bag with the following slogan: "Nous offrons avec corps et âme, un cadeau de satisfaction." I don't remember where the bag was coming from, but I think that's just beautiful.

That Saturday I also attended yet another school festival, although this time briefly, just for lunch (which, surprisingly enough, consisted of fried noodles and takoyaki, little fried doughballs with a little octopus inside them—they're pretty good!). Veep was there, as were Canett and Stanley, who was once again wearing his hello-I-am-a-Christian tie. Veep, I should have mentioned, not only invariably wears a Winnie-the-Pooh pendant around her neck (quite often paired with a smaller, silver bear pendant), but also frequently has one or two full-sized teddy bears pinned to her lapels. It looks just as ridiculous as you might imagine. I'm surprised she doesn't keel over forwards with all of that bear weight attached to her.

The purpose of my attending the festival was so I could be photographed, of course, but also so Veep could tell me (through the translation offices of Stanley) that that very Monday (November 17th), after school, I would have to take the train into Tokyo with Stanley and attend a special high-class event organized by King Bear, where various professors of the school were going to be honored. That's as much information as I was able to gather at the time. The description of this event gets a separate post because I wrote it for therapeutic reasons as soon as I got back home after it.

Still that weekend—which was clearly my busiest weekend ever—I went to a rickety little old amusement park right near Senso-ji, Tokyo's biggest Buddhist temple and a big tourist attraction here. This was fun and distinctly brought to mind the St Giles Fair, for all you Oxonians out there. There were some good rides, including one where you are suddenly dropped from a great height, which I must have ridden about five times (since the weather was pretty bad, the place was not very crowded). Here are a couple of pictures, varying in quality, taken from rides, obviously:


Isn't that nice? There was also a ride called Bikkuri House (which means "Surprise House"—there's also a chain of restaurants here called Bikkuri Donkey), the principle of which was that you sat down on a bench and then the walls, floor and ceiling of the "house" started to turn, so that you had the impression that it was actually you being turned upside down. For some reason this ride made me horribly nauseated, even though it was clearly the kiddie ride of the amusement park. On the plus side, I was briefly able to convince a little Japanese boy who was riding with us that I was in fact a Japanese person—basically by saying "I am a Japanese person" to him. The gullibility of youth!

The following weekend I went to the Edo-Tokyo museum with one of my friends who's a bit of a history fanatic. There was a very nice exhibition of Japanese woodblocks, including some by Hokusai, and also the permanent exhibition which is devoted to the history of the city of Tokyo. Here I am lording it over the riffraff in my rickshaw, eyes aglow with the fires of Hell, apparently:


And I think I'll stop there for now. Next time, the month of December.

Part IV: So What Kind of a Place Is this Elementary School?

To understand the guiding philosophy of King Bear and of his educational empire, one must realize that the man himself is an ardent anglophile. This is immediately apparent upon perusal of that prospectus repeatedly shoved into my hands by the tremulous arms of Canett the day I arrived in Japan. I have found a copy of the prospectus, so now is as good a time as any to regale you with some tidbits.

From p.5, describing the "elite education system" which comprises the grade schools of the educational institution (everything sic): "For the establishment of elementary, Junior and high schools, founder, president [King Bear] has been learning from the top-flight British public school as Eton (founded in 1440), Rugby (founded in 1567) and Harrow (founded in 1571), and he has adopted an educational philosophy of British public school, stressing cultivation not only of intelligence but also of a rich sense of humanity, character and morality and the spirit of freedom and self discipline and sportsmanship indispensable to a genuine elite. In addition, president [King Bear] has placed great emphasis on the education of good manners, greeting, cleanliness and sophisticated personal appearances which are important characters of ladies and gentlemen." (I'll admit that the stuff about "personal appearances" kind of scared me at first, considering that I am a bit of a slob and frequently fail to do a very good job of ironing my shirts.)

From p.6, in describing the elementary school specifically (once again, everything sic): "On the basis of the School Motto of our Institution, sincerity, reliance, and service, and learning from such top-flight British public schools as Eton, Rugby, and Harrow, we have adopted an educational philosophy stressing cultivation not only of intelligence but also of a rich sense of humanity, character and morality and the spirit of freedom and self-discipline indispensable to a genuine elite, and ladies and gentlemen." As you can see, the prospectus boldly eschews standard stylistic prescriptions concerning repetition.

From further down on p.6: "Our elementary school built of elegant brick is located in the natural beauty of Musashino plain where small birds sing and flowers bloom all the year round. In this blessed educational environment, we educate students in order to develop their well-rounded character and intelligence."

From p.8, now describing the junior high and high schools: "Based on the School Motto of our Institution, sincerity, reliance, and service, and learning from such top-flight British public schools as Eton, Rugby and Harrow, we have adopted an educational philosophy stressing cultivation not only of intelligence but also of a rich sense of humanity, character and morality and the spirit of freedom and self-discipline indispensable to a genuine elite, and ladies and gentlemen."

Okay, that's definitely the best bits of the prospectus, which is ten pages long and also provides detailed descriptions of the vocational schools' departments of speech therapy, of culinary arts, of clinical technology, of nutrition, and of prosthetics and orthotics. I hope the aforequoted passages give a sense of King Bear's anglophilia. Also worth mentioning is p.2, which is labeled "Founder's Educational Philosophy". Under the sub-heading "Spirit of Foundation of the school", we have:

"*cultivation of scholarship and skills
*spirit of gratitude
*indomitable spirit"

I'm not sure King Bear has ever been to England. Canett certainly hasn't despite his many trips to America. In effect, then, the obsession with England is an obsession with a fantasy-world England where the brand-name public schools educate stiff-upper-lipped young men whose sense of noblesse oblige sends them out into the world to bring civilization and dry wit to the barbarians (I am obviously extrapolating). King Bear's anglophilia is all the more delusional in that he speaks absolutely no English. This has some very unfortunate results, such as the school's "Educational Policy", as stated by the orientation pack I was given upon being shown my desk and told of my teaching responsibilities at the elementary school:

"Thou shalt do everything wi' heart;
Thou shalt be a man o' iron will.
Thou! Dost stick to th' ultimate end!"

King Bear also likes bears, surprisingly enough. A little sign outside the elementary school explains that this is because bears have an "indomitable spirit" and survive rigorous winters, but I suspect that this is a post-hoc rationalization. I'm not sure where the obsession with bears comes from. The man himself is a little bit bear-like, but in the way of a teddy bear, and not of a real bear: he's a bit shorter than me, with a round face and large round glasses (in front of tiny eyes), and the rest of his body is pretty much round as well. In short, he's small and fat. The front courtyard of the school as no fewer than three statues of bears, one of which is standing on its hind legs eating a fish. The front room of the school, which is also the staff room, has a few giant teddy bears in it, as well as a row of shelves containing the Harrods teddy bear for each year going back about twenty years. Apparently Harrods issues an annual teddy bear, slightly differently-dressed each year. I later discovered a disused storage room on the third floor which contains a terrifying amount of bear-related stuff, including what looks an awful lot like a real stuffed bear (although I'm pretty sure that's illegal).

In one of the staircases, there is a set of posters made by one of my native-English colleagues that makes a valiant attempt to find at least one "famous bear" for each letter of the alphabet. The bear for K is of course "King Bear of XXXX Elementary School". (Incidentally, never before coming here did I realize how much of an elementary school teacher's job consists of decorating walls, either with the students' own artwork or with educational posters such as the bear-themed ones.)

The school also features a lot of odd English slogans scattered across the walls. They give a new meaning to the word "empty". The main slogan is "Reveal your ambition to the heavens", which is featured prominently in the front courtyard of the school (as well as at the junior and high schools). Also, for instance, the library has a poster on one of its windows that says, "Read many books, immerse yourself in the feelings", which I find hilarious although I'm not sure why. There's also, on the wall next to the door used by the students to leave the school, "We are looking forward to your future."

I'm also going to include this picture, taken by me surreptitiously on my last day of work before Christmas, of a sign just outside the school, for some sophomoric laughs:


(You can click on it to make it bigger).

My working hours are from an inhuman 8am to 4:30pm. As I said to one of my bewildered Japanese friends, this was already more than the legal maximum working hours in France. This is strictly controlled by time-card, so there's no chance for pushing the limits. Of course I could always turn up late, but considering that I'm being paid ridiculously well I would feel bad doing that. Another inducement to arrive on time is that at 8am sharp everyone in the staff room springs to attention and goes over to their designated spot around the outside of the teachers' area, forming a large circle. Everyone then recites this litany, punctuating each line with a little Japanese bow:

おはようございます！ (ohayou gozaimasu, "good morning")
ありがとうございます！ (arigatou gozaimasu, "thank you")
失礼します！ (shitsurei shimasu, "I'm sorry")
すみません！ (sumimasen, another form of apology)
報告！ (houkoku, "report")
連絡！ (renraku, "contact" or "communication")
相談！ (soudan, "consultation")
And then: オヤシスにホウレンソウ育てよう！ This is the first syllable of each of the first four lines, followed by the indirect-object particle ni, then the first syllable of each of the last three lines, and then the volitional form ("let's ____") of the verb for "to foster, to cultivate". I don't completely understand the structure of this sentence, if it can be called that. But anyway, this little ceremony, I would later find out, opens just about every official gathering of employees of the whole educational instution. (Although once, when none of the various heads of the elementary school were there, the teachers dispensed with it—what does that say about the work culture here?) Then the meeting, which is usually just a couple of minutes long, proceeds with any teachers having any announcement to make making them, and the list of all absent kids being read out.

This is an inducement to be on time not because it's a thrilling experience, but because if you're not there it makes it abundantly clear to everyone that you are late.

At about 8:20, the famous bit from Spring from Vivaldi's Four Seasons is pumped over the PA system, and one of the kids gets to make an announcement, where they say "good morning" and say what the weather is and the day's special activities. After this, a subset of the students lines up in the front courtyard for their morning assembly. They have this at least once a week, because on Wednesdays the whole student body attends. These assemblies are usually opened with a collective rendition of the school song, complete with recorded orchestral accompaniment. Whenever I have to attend this, for the amusement of the kids I make a big show of not really knowing the words, but then belting out the name of the school when it comes up in the climax of the chorus, a bit like in this Mr Bean clip (the relevant bit starts at about 7:15). Then five kids come to the front and say, in English, the various things that all the kids are supposed to promise to do (I don't really remember what it is, stuff like be nice and well-behave and all that). The rest of the kids stand with their hands on their hearts, and after each promised item they yell, "Yes I do! Yes I do! Yes I do!", while brandishing their arm three times. In any other country this gesture would immediately set off Nazi-alarms, but not over here.

Then the kids get a speech from Mr. Mumbles (mentioned in the previous post) about God knows what, stuff about being good and working hard I suspect, which he delivers in bravura style, raising and lowering his voice like a kids' TV presenter on amphetamines. Occasionally some other teacher has to say a few words, and when King Bear is there (only on special occasions like the last day of term) I am silently motioned to the front to say a few random words. On one occasion King Bear beckoned me to the front, and then held my arm fast while he lengthily described my language skills to the student, skills which apparently include fluency in Spanish and Latin, of all languages (I was also able to pick up that he told them that the Oxford entrance exam (whatever that is) included a Latin section). He then asked me to say hello to them in Latin, which I refused to do, although I now realize I should have just said veni, vidi, vici and dura lex sed lex and been done with it.

At the end of the assembly, the PA system plays the Radetzky March, and the students all stomp their feet to the rhythm as they slowly peel themselves out of their formation, column by column, to go back inside. (Wikipedia tells me the Radetzky March is played on every El Al flight prior to departure!) These assemblies take place no matter what the temperature, and are only moved to the gym in cases of torrential rain. Since the younger boys have to wear shorts as part of their uniform this strikes me as lawsuit-worthy in the US.

Normal classes start at 8:45. On Wednesdays and Thursdays I have a gym class in this first period, class which is frequently held outside in the absolutely freezing cold. The poor kids' gym uniform consists of just a short and a T-shirt, and they shiver miserably. Some of them get to wear long sweatpants and a zip-up jacket; my guess is that it's because their parents said they should get to, but I'm not sure and I will ask one of the teachers and report back to you on this question.

Gym classes start with the kids forming four columns and standing facing the teachers (i.e. myself and the Japanese teacher in charge of the class). This is accomplished almost instantly because, clearly, these kids are taught from a very early age to function as part of a well-oiled machine. They all know which group they belong to when the class is split into four, or into six (all the classes are supposed to have 30 students). There are two "PE monitors" whose responsibility it is to ensure that these opening procedures go smoothly. Once they have lined up, they proceed to "the greeting" (挨拶, aisatsu). The monitors say "Good morning teachers!", which is then repeated by the whole class. Then they all bow and us teachers bow back to them. Then it is my responsibility to say, "Good morning everyone, how are you today?" They say, "I'm fine thank you how are you?" And I say, "I'm fine/great/something else along those lines."

After this comes the warm-up, which is the main thing native-English PE teachers have to do, because it is in English. We go through a ritualized five/ten minute warm-up which drills expressions like "stretch your legs" and "swing your arms". Then it's on to the main activity of the day, and my job is essentially just to yell encouragement at the kids in English and to help monitor them. When I first arrived, the activity for all of my classes was 鉄棒—tetsubou, which literally translates as "iron bar". This was a set of horizontal bars out in the playground, sort of like high bars in gymnastics, only obviously not so high. The kids had a set of exercises they had to accomplish on these bars, which were laid out on an A-4 sized card complete with little diagrams and a box next to each exercise for the teacher to tick once the kids had successfully completed it. These exercises are apparently determined by the national curriculum. My job during the 鉄棒, then, was just to make sure no-one fell on their head, and to help the fat kids with the more difficult exercises.

PE is one of the three classes (along with arts and crafts and music) besides English itself which form part of the school's English immersion program, which is tastelessly referred to as an "English shower" in the school's literature (I would put this down to more of King Bear's whimsy, but a Google search reveals that this term is in very widespread use in Japan). The elementary school is only in its fifth year, so the program is still quite young, and it's clear to me that PE is the class where the English immersion is the least successful. The idea is that us native teachers are supposed to introduce some vocab related to the sports activity at hand (and we have monthly meetings to discuss this stuff), but for some activities no vocab is decided upon. This was the case for 鉄棒, which, as you can see, doesn't really have a satisfactory name in English. One of the more difficult activities for the kids (especially the fat ones) was the thingy where you hold onto the bar, then run under it and jump up and flip around it so that you are now up on the bar. I have no idea how this is referred to in English, and neither did any of my colleagues, so I ended up calling this "doing the saka agari", which (坂上がり) is what it's called in Japanese and literally means "going up the slope". Even if there were an English term for this, it would be of little day-to-day utility for these little Japanese kids.

On every day but Wednesday I have lunch with the kids in one of the classrooms. My favorite lunch day is Tuesday, when I eat with the first graders. They are always eager to make English conversation, even if it is rather limited. (One of the highlights was when one of them asked me "Do you like friends?", clearly practicing the "Do you like X?" sentence structure.) The class of fourth graders I have on Fridays is also pretty talkative.

During lunch more musical accompaniment plays over the PA system. In the (long) run-up to Christmas, this was a medley of Christmas songs. Now they play drastically shortened versions of "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions", as sung by the same children's choir that sang the Christmas medley. I have no idea who makes these musical selections.

After lunch there is a short recess, followed by cleaning. The school doesn't seem to have much of a cleaning staff—in fact, on days preceding important events like parent-teacher day and open day, the teachers go on a cleaning spree to ensure optimal impression-making. Some of the kids have indoor cleaning duties, and they accomplish their chores to the tune of Kachaturian's Saber Dance, the overture to Carmen and Wagner's Flight of the Walkyries, which, to me, immediately evokes Apocalypse Now. (As if this crazy musical accompaniment weren't enough, the school also has unicycles which some of the girls ride around the playground during recess.) I am in charge of supervising the second-graders with outside cleaning duties, however. This, for the moment, has mostly just involved the kids picking up dead leaves in the playground with their bare hands. I think the point of the activity is mosly to instill a sense of responsibility in the kids, rather than to accomplish much in the way of physical results.

On Monday and Wednesday afternoons I have arts and crafts with the fifth graders. My responsibilities here are to drill art-related vocab at the beginning of the lesson, and then to help out the kids (in English), but mostly to discipline them (in English), since they are notoriously rowdy. But I'm a really laid-back teacher, so the real art teacher (a lovely Japanese lady only two years my senior, but already married with a baby) is usually required to keep them in line. The fifth graders have been on a school trip to England, where they learnt the expression "Shut up!", and one of their favorite things to do is to say "Shut up!" to each other in a really whiny voice of which I don't know from whom they picked it up.

I never thought of myself as a kids guy, but I have to say that working with these Japanese kids is really not so bad. For one thing, besides the fifth graders they're very well-behaved, and they're amazingly considerate to each other, apologizing to each other with an air of great, pained sincerity whenever one of them hurts the other by mistake, for instance, on the 鉄棒. (This is not to say that they don't make fun of each other: among all grades, the kids love to call each other fat; even the slightly chubby, baby-fat-covered ones are branded as fat. This is, you must remember, a nation of scarily skinny people. So I've made it my duty to be extra-nice to the fat kids, and have realized that most of them don't really seem to have any self-esteem issues anyway.) For another, it's very touching to have them run up to you and smile at you with their snaggle-toothed smiles and say "Harro Rémi-sensei!" out of their little Japanese faces. The Japanese insist that "Western" (i.e. white, let's call a spade a spade, no racist pun intended) kids are the cutest, with their big blue (invariably) eyes and blond hair. I suppose this is part of the same esthetic that covers the DVD cover of any movie that could possibly be tied to the romantic-comedy genre with a torrent of pink hearts. But I say, for the more discerning eye the Asian child is of superior cuteness.

That's it for today. Tune in next time for whatever I feel like writing about.

Part III: In Which I Am Given a "Real" Job

You might ask yourself what I did with my plentiful spare time during those two first weeks in Japan, between being exhibited in Canett's English classes. The answer is I don't really remember. I went out in Tokyo a couple of times with my various RA-ee friends and once with the jovial (American) Aoyama Gakuin University professor who came to Oxford last summer while I was an RA. He took me to a British pub in Shibuya called the Hobgoblin, which serves the same Wychwood Hobgobin beer as do various pubs in Oxford (e.g. the St Aldate's Tavern). How a little Oxfordshire brewery ended up with an East Asian empire I'm not entirely sure.

I also suffered from one of the most crippling bouts of jet lag I've ever experienced, and it took me about a week before I stopped waking up at three in the morning unable to go back to sleep. Unlike Bill Murray in Lost in Translation, however, I had a computer packed to the gills with Media, and so I spent many wee hours watching the first season of Mad Men, several seasons of Family Guy which have been sitting on my computer for years, as well as the complete Monty Python's Flying Circus. Incidentally, the first episode of this that I decided to click on contained a sketch called "Erizabeth L", which features Terry Jones as Yakomoto, a "Nip" (as one of the characters puts it) impersonating the famous Italian director Luchino Visconti. The same episode later includes (as well as the famous Argument Clinic sketch) both Terry Jones and Michael Palin in blackface. Ah, the late sixties in England! (The full script of the episode can be found here.)

You have to remember that during this time I was still visa-less, and thus unable to buy a telephone or set up an internet connection in my apartment. I was also without a bank account (banks require you to be legally resident). The DVD rental place also requires a telephone number to join. My only channel to the outside world was my local internet cafe, two train stations away (or a bike ride away once I had bought Carol Pastel). (The Starbucks near my apartment, on that same road with the McDonald's, is—alas!—not WiFi equipped. For a Nation of Technology, Japan has very few WiFi hotspots, even in Tokyo, but this may be because Japanese cell phones are all web-capable, althought it's really not quite the same.)

Internet cafes in Japan, by the way, are quite different from those in Europe, for those of you who have ever been to one (my experience of European internet cafes is entirely limited to the great country of Bulgaria). Most of the computers are set up in private booths with sliding doors. The booths are also equipped with huge reclinable leather swivel armchairs and frequently with video game consoles like PlayBoxes and X-Cubes and all of these new-fangled Nintendo whatnots. In some cafes you have the choice between armchair booths and Japanese-style booths where you take off your shoes at the entrance and sit on the floor (what fun). The cafes also double as manga cafes, which means they also offer a wide selection of Japanese comic books for the customer's perusal—although why people go to these cafes and pay to read these mangas when they could just go to a bookshop and read them for free is quite simply beyond me. And they are open 24/7, so that if you are a "salaryman" (which—サラリマン, sarariman—is how the Japanese designate men who have faceless, dreary, overtaxing office jobs in huge "trading companies", which seems to be about 95% of all Japanese men) stranded in Tokyo after the last train back to your God-forsaken suburb, you can set up camp for the night in an internet cafe booth in the comforting company of your favorite manga or the interactive glow of the internet. Even my local internet cafe (located as you will recall about half and hour from Tokyo) offers a special price for the hours of darkness (figuratively speaking), as well as the rental of slippers, dressing gowns and bath towels if you would like to take a shower (for which the facilities are available, although this is something I still haven't done). If you are planning to visit Tokyo, I heartily recommend spending one night at the internet cafe—a real Japanese experience which will also save you most of the price of a hotel room.

At my internet cafe, apart from the nearly 100 booths on offer, there are also four non-enclosed desk stations, protected from the prying, inquisitive gazes of fellow internet users only by substantial partitions and curtains. These are a bit cheaper than the booths, so this is where I did most of my surfing, considering I still had no idea when my first paycheck was going to arrive. (The first time I asked for an "open" station, the dismayed desk clerk warned me that I would have no privacy, but I replied that I had nothing to hide.) This was during those halcyon days before John McCain had his ass handed to him and before Barack Obama magically fixed the economy, so I needed to get my almost daily fix of John Stewart, of Stephen Colbert, of Sarah Palin impersonations and of various websites that aggregated polls to prove beyond statistical error that Obama would win the election. I occasionally corresponded with my parents, also.

And so the two weeks passed. I explored my neighborhood eateries, bought necessities, and occasionally even took advantage of the aggressively warm and sunny weather to go running (a habit that lasted a very short time). All this until Tuesday, October 28th, the day when I was scheduled to visit the elementary school. I arrive there around 8, accompanied by Veep: a handsome, fairly new-looking red brick building (unusual in Japan) with an unmistakably church-like steeple. At the front gate stands an avuncular man, whom we shall call Mr. Mumbles, facing the incoming stream of uniformed students. (The younger boys wear soft cornered caps with tassles, the younger girls little bowler hats; the uniform is designed for extra cuteness.) Each student in turn bows to Mr. Mumbles and belts out an overenthusiastic "おはようございます！" (oyaho gozaimasu, or good morning), to which Mr. Mumbles replies, avuncularily. As usual, upon entering we are sat down and served instant Japanese tea.

Before I get introduced to any of the elementary school's staff, we must complete Mrs. NWDFT's interview. She is here, asking questions, and the head English teacher at the elementary school, whom we shall call the Cat, a Japanese guy in his early-to-mid-thirties by my estimation, is translating. There are no more questions about elite education in the United Kingdom. I don't remember exactly what we talked about, but after the interview was over, the Cat, baffled, told me he had no idea what the hell point of this interview had been. Instantly my growing worries over the two last weeks were washed away: finally some confirmation that this being trotted around and asked to say bland and random things in English was indeed not normal, even for Japan.

But immediately afterwards I am ushered into the school gym, which is labeled "King Bear Hall". In front of me, the entire student body of the elementary school (five grades, about 400 students) is standing in front of me, impeccably lined up, with teachers evenly spaced at the back of them. They are a uniformed parallelepiped of little Japanese faces staring out in either curious anticipation or boredom, I can't really tell. There is a microphone. I stand off to the side with a few other teachers while Veep takes the stage and gives a hysterically hortatory speech. Then someone from the elementary school makes a speech. It is clear that I'm going to have to say something. I ask Veep who is standing next to me what I should say. Whenever I am asked to make a speech and I ask her that, she seems terribly pained and starts to panic. This time she tells me to introduce myself, and also to keep in mind that the kids know the words "smile", and "happy", and that if I use these words in my speech this will be pleasing to them. She then tells me to smile, overstepping (in my opinion) the line which states that, barring specific circumstances, employers have no control over their employees physical expressions.

So I go up there and do a standard "I am Rémi, I am French and American, I am looking forward to working here" bit, without any real idea about how much of this the kids understood, considering I haven't yet spoken to any of them. Then, the kids get to ask me questions. A few of them line up and take the microphone in turn. Almost all of their questions are along the lines of "Do you like X?" They are absolutely adorable. One of them asks me, "Do you like [pea/a homophone of 'pea']?" I'm at a loss for what to say, until the Cat explains to me that they are talking about P.E. As people who know me from high school and before will attest, P.E. has never been my strong suit, so I give a kind of half-hearted, "Yeah, I like it all right" sort of answer.

At the end of the assembly, I am physically mobbed by the kids. At one point I am in physical contact with at least thirty of them at one time. This indicates, I suppose, that I made a good first impression on them, and I am gratified. In the hallway outside the gym, there is a wall covered with the names of the recipients of the "Golden Bear Prize". Since these are all Japanese I assume that this is nothing to do with the Berlin Film Festival.

We make our way back to the staff room, and the Cat shows me to my desk, next to that of the two other full-time native English teachers. More on that later. We then turn to my responsibilities. It turns out I will be an assistant teacher in the arts and crafts classes for fifth graders, as well as the P.E. classes for second and third graders. So much for my less-than-passionate endorsement of P.E. in the assembly.

Well this post is already really long, so more about the organization of the elementary school will have to wait for next time.