Tune In Tokyo:The Gaijin Diaries (17 page)

I walk in, say hello, write my name and the class number on the board as always, clap my hands, and say, “OK, let’s get started. Someone give me a good topic.”

Silence. A tumbleweed rustles past the open door.

“Anything’s OK, you guys. Someone just give me an interesting topic.”

I look around the room at each student. The students look around the room at each other and then me. I feel a lip wobble coming on.

Just when I’m about to collapse on the floor at Kayoko’s feet and offer her money just to recite her ABCs, Naomi the new student chimes in. She is very slim and stylishly dressed and has the severe facial angles of a hard-nosed businesswoman or perhaps a television executive. The world seems to hang off her cheekbones. She also has a blank, completely unreadable expression on her face. She could have just killed someone, or she could have just baked a chocolate cake. Who knows? She is a femme fatale, a Japanese Marlene Dietrich, and a stunning contrast to the rest of the class, which is stubbornly cute. Naomi, in her charcoal-gray pinstriped pantsuit, occupies a world of her own, one of film noire ambiance, long white cigarettes, and women in dark glasses with secrets for sale. Yeah, like that.

“You said anything is OK, right?” she asks in a husky voice.

Now, that is a dangerous question in this job, one that can lead down paths you’d rather not tread. But there’s no saying no to a dame with this much moxie. I want to hear what she has to say. Plus, she’s the only one offering to speak. So I nod and say, “Sure.”

“Well,” she intones enigmatically in nearly flawless English, “I was reading the newspaper this morning, and it was interesting, an article I read. It was about a group of women who were drinking in a bar, and they saw a guy and, how do I say, surround him and make him to take his clothes off and they assault him.”

I look around uncomfortably at the pensioners in the class, poor Shizue and normally unflappable Takehiro, but it is impossible to read their expressions. Tomo, the catcher in the rye, looks at Naomi and rolls his eyes like he’s never seen such a total phony in his life. I look back at Naomi and brace myself for the rest of her story.

“At their court, they were punished, but it was much less than if the same thing was done by men to a woman. I thought that was interesting.” She smiles in the manner of Cruella De Ville.

I ask her, “Do you think their punishment should have been more severe?”

“I’m sorry,
severe
, what means
severe
?”

“
Harsh
,
serious
,” I explain. “Occasionally
merciless
,
inhuman
, or
brutal
.”

She pauses and looks around the class that she holds transfixed.

“No,” she says with a giggle and another quick look around the classroom, gauging the reaction.

Wow. Now here is a woman who clearly likes to bait people. Japanese folks are generally quite loath to speak about contentious topics like, say, public sexual assault. Naomi-san is obviously not. What she wants, it is becoming increasingly apparent, is to get a reaction from her fellow countrymen.

She is a troublemaker. A breath of fresh air. I love her. I am afraid of her.

“OK, anyone have a comment?” I ask. No one has a comment. I am uncomfortable because, even after teaching over two million lessons, I still never know exactly how to read a class of Japanese students. They like to preserve the appearance that nothing is wrong, while underneath that polished surface likely lurks irritation, fear, loathing, dread, and/or arousal.

I don’t feel comfortable giving the class this topic to discuss for three minutes and report back on. Naomi wouldn’t mind, but I will not fall into her trap, no, no, no. As much as I appreciate her left-field suggestion, we will talk about civilized things in this class, like good ways to stay cool in the hot Tokyo summer or favorite amusement park rides. Not reverse-gender gang rape. Definitely not reverse-gender gang rape.

“OK, great, thank you, Naomi. Anyone else have an interesting topic?” Shizue quickly comes through with the lifesaving—if boring—suggestion of favorite restaurants in Tokyo. The next three minutes go by without a hitch.

After this warm-up activity, I broach the topic of the first hour of the lesson, which, in our appalling textbook, is “Expressing Thanks.” Now, the good thing about these high-level classes is that, once the class gets warmed up, the students should be doing most of the talking, making the teacher’s role that of advisor and confidante. Just give them some things to discuss and let ’em go. But don’t be fooled. It’s harder than it sounds. After all, these students have taken a lot of lessons by the time they reach this level. So the threat of repeating an activity that a student has done recently with another teacher is very real. There’s nothing worse than being informed by a student, “We talked about our most embarrassing moment in my last class.”

I pair them up and then write a few questions on the board to give them something to talk about: “What is something that someone did for you recently that you really appreciated? How did you show your thanks?”

Innocent enough questions. I envision answers involving taxi drivers who are nice enough to help their passengers get their heavy bags to their apartment on the second floor or young boys helping old women pick up the change they dropped at the station ticket machine. They all begin talking, and I sit my chair in the middle of the small classroom and begin listening in on what they’re saying.

Shizue is telling Kumiko about her husband cleaning his own rice bowl the night before, while Takehiro sings the praises of a shop assistant who was so instrumental in helping him choose the right suit (and, consequently, relieving him of about a hundred thousand yen).

Naomi is partnered with the aforementioned Minnie Mouse look-a-like, Kayoko, who in every class is sweetness and light, always has a smile for everyone, and always wears extremely fashionable shoes. Naomi eyes her with suspicion and annoyance; might she feel the need to shake up her world and rearrange it a little bit?

“So,” Kayoko begins, gesturing to the question that I wrote on the board, “what is something that someone did for you recently that you really appreciated?”

The whole class is alive with broken English conversations, but I have my ear pricked in the direction of Cruella and Minnie, dying to hear what they’ll come out with.

“Well,” Naomi begins. Ideally, at this point, the lights would dim, the spotlight would cast its dramatic glow, the strings would begin to flutter, the rest of the room would fall silent, the saxophone would sing, and Naomi would take center stage, a Benson and Hedges Deluxe Ultra Light 100 poised between her fingers, ready to tell the cold, cruel world her story. Thankfully, none of this happens, because her chosen subject is even less appropriate than I could have ever possibly hoped.

“Ever since my husband and I were married, we’ve agreed never to fart. In front of each other.”

My God. She said
fart
. This is soooo not an answer to the question.

Kayoko’s face tilts questioningly. “
Fart
?” she says, with the same blissfully innocent tone a young girl might use to say the words “flower petals?” or “Reese’s Pieces?” “What’s
fart
’s meaning?”

I’m paralyzed. I know I should perhaps intervene and suggest to Naomi that her answer is kind of inappropriate. But I don’t wish to anger her. Plus, I’m desperate to see where this is all going. I bow my head and hope for the best. As the other students’ conversations continue to fill the classroom, I listen as Naomi tries to explain to Kayoko in English what a fart is.

“It’s a noise we make. When we eat some foods, especially Mexican food.”

In American middle schools this would’ve done the trick, but Kayoko still isn’t clear.

“Shout?” she guesses.

“No.”

“Clap?”

“No.”

“Laugh?”

“No.”

This goes on for far too long, until finally Naomi has mercy and whispers the word in Japanese into Kayoko’s ear. Kayoko promptly turns an impressive shade of red and looks as if she wishes she were dead.

So let’s recap. Naomi is grateful that her husband has never farted in her presence, and this is the inspirational story she has chosen to tell her partner, the poor, quivering Kayoko.

Naomi is an enigma. Everything that comes out of her mouth is meant to rile people, to stir them up and make them wriggle in their seats. So far she has used every opportunity she has been given to force us to see the world as she sees it. It’s a dirty, blood-red piece of fleshy, sexually violated pulp. I want to see more.

In the second hour of the lesson, I ask for someone to give me an example of a restrictive relative clause (because I have no idea what one is), and she quickly chimes in with, “My mother-in-law, who is very particular about housekeeping, drives me crazy and makes me want to vomit.”

At the end of class I ask if anyone has any questions. She raises her hand and utters the words I’ve now begun to simultaneously dread and hope for: “Anything OK?”

“Sure, why not?” I say.

“Well, is it true that when men go into the toilet for the purpose of performing a bowel movement, they first spit into the bowl?”

Tomo looks at her wide-eyed, like maybe, just maybe, Naomi’s not a phony at all. She might just be the real thing.

Up until this point I’ve pretty much gotten off scot-free, but now I’m the target. Obviously Naomi wants her teacher to share in the atmosphere of unease that she’s created in the room. What does she want me to say, I wonder. I really don’t think she cares about the answer. She just wanted to ask the question, to just toss the sludge against the wall and see what would happen. Should I just laugh and say, “Oh, Naomi, you’re so funny. OK, see you all next week!” and then run away? Something tells me this won’t let me off the hook.

“Yes, it is true,” I say. “Sometimes twice. You know, depending.”

I begin to look forward to my Wednesday afternoons with Naomi. Without fail, I am shocked, embarrassed, and mortified at the things she comes out with. But I am never bored. And that, in the end, is the bottom line. After teaching for so long, I am nothing if not bored stupid. And just when my fire was about to expire, Naomi came into my life. She is giving me what I am in desperate need of: fear.

The next week Takehiro and Shizue are both absent from class. The rest of the students file in, Tomo sitting next to Naomi, Kayoko choosing a seat over in the corner, Kumiko between them.

“So, hello everyone. Let’s get started. Someone give me a topic.”

Ever since Naomi reared her tawdry head in my class, I’ve noticed the other students are much more eager to suggest a topic at the beginning of class. This is probably so they can avoid discussing anal warts or assisted suicide at the suggestion of Naomi, but it’s progress nonetheless.

“How about difference of Japanese and American culture?” Kayoko says.

“OK, that’s a great suggestion. Thank you, Kayoko. Everyone, please get together with your partner and let’s talk about it!” Good Lord, I’m turning into Oprah.

As usual, I allow the students to do their talking while I go write the grammar points we’ll be covering on the board. When I’m finished, I pull my chair up to Kumiko and Kayoko to have a listen. They are both giggling and covering their mouths with their hands.

“I so surprised! I no understand why they say!” Kumiko manages to say through tears and quiet chuckling.

“I know!” says Kayoko. “I go to post office in New York and lady was talking so fast I,, can’t understand, so I say, ‘Please speak slowly,’ and she scream at me and I still not understanding, so she calls next person and not talk to me again!”

Confident they are enjoying their conversation, I stand and carry my chair over to Naomi and Tomo. Naomi, of course, is speaking, while a wide-eyed Tomo, who has never looked so engaged, hangs on her every probably disgusting word.

“I just think it is very stupid, don’t you, Tomo-kun?”

Tomo doesn’t answer. He smiles uncomfortably and then looks at me, desperate for me to help him say the right thing.

“What are you guys talking about?” I ask, desperate to know the reasons behind Tomo’s horror/arousal.

“I was talking about the difference between Japanese and America pornography,” Naomi begins. “I explain to him about how in the America they show everything, but in Japan, they cover the private parts with those little blocks, you know Timsensei?”

“Yes, pixels,” I say a little too quickly.

“Pixels,” she says, writing the new word down in her notebook. “They cover with pixels, and you can’t see very well unless you look careful. It stupid. Japan treat us like children. Don’t you think that, Tim-sensei?”

I do think that. I’ve said this before. I’ll say it again. The pixelation of Japanese pornography goes against the very thing that makes pornography great. But should I say it now? In class? In front of impressionable Tomo, who is looking more and more like he wants Naomi to walk him home on a leash?

“Yes, it’s strange, but…”

“So you have seen Japanese porn movie?” she asks, her lips curling into a smile on one side.

I look over at Kayoko and Kumiko, still laughing about being completely shat on by cranky New Yorkers, and look back at Tomo, who is composing his marriage proposal to Naomi in his head, and I think, “Oh, screw it.”

“Yes, of course. Hasn’t
everybody
?”

Naomi nods her head and smiles. Tomo makes a mental note to educate himself about the world of American porn. Kayoko and Kumiko laugh and snort.

And as mysteriously as she appeared in my life, Naomi was gone. Was she just a vision? A figment of my desperate imagination? A guardian angel sent from heaven’s red-light district to do the community service she was sentenced to for flashing Jesus and the Buddha at last year’s Christmas party? Nah, she was promoted to the next level, which I don’t teach. The next week, when I look down at my class roster and her name is not there, I die a little inside.