This week we got the “performance reports” back from the students, which was rather humorous. When I was in High School and I filled out those class evaluations, I always wondered if they did anything. Now that I’m on the other side, I can safely say no they do not.

The numbers for the classes in which I co-teach were rather high. This should come as no surprise to anybody because I’m awesome. They ran the gambit from 68.3 percent approval rating to an unheard-of-for-a-class-that-isn’t-P.E. approval rating of 89.8 percent (that one, not surprisingly, came from my smartest class. I affectionately refer to them as my “Little Einsteins”).

I was disconcerted to see that the lowest approval rating in my grouping came from the class I co-teach with Obata, which I really enjoy. I wondered how that could possibly be, until I took a look at the number of students that reported in. Then I realized that the whole thing was ridiculous.

My 89.8 percent approval rating had the highest number of returned surveys, and it was 50%.

In the class I teach with Obata 14% of the students replied. That works out to three kids.

The class I least enjoy teaching because of the mouthy bastards that sit off to side of the room and cock-off all period had a fairly high approval rating, which also disturbed me, until I saw that 5% of the students returned the survey. Or should I say student. 5% works out to one dude. Whoever he or she was, their opinion will now go down as that of the entire class. 75% aint bad, so I appreciate that, fella. It got copied into the books and was distributed to the entire teaching staff.

Of my other two classes, in one of them 5 kids reported in, and in the other 4 kids reported in.

Ridiculous.


While we’re on the subject of ridiculous, I have a few other things to report of late, sort of like my rendition of Bill O’Reilly’s “Most Ridiculous Item of the Day.”


The first is this. I came across this when I was checking notebooks a few days ago. Just so you know, the Phrase of the Day was “It’s a long shot.” So close. So very close.

Ridiculous? Hilariously so.



Two weekends back we had a potluck party in Takaoka city, Toyama city’s baby sister. The party, held on the roof of an apartment building, was a lot of fun, and quite relaxing. A great idea on behalf of the two paying JET tenants that live there. They got the idea back in the summer when they saw that random construction workers would use the apartment's easy roof access for a few beers and a smoke after working.

No dice for us whiteys, though. We got kicked off.

“But we saw construction workers doing this all summer! And they don’t even live here!” One of the JETs told the landlady.

“They’re Japanese. This is their country. This is not your country,” she said in retort.

Nice. Real classy.

Ridiculous? Clearly. Uncommon? Not Exactly.


And last but not least, we have this:




Mountain Dew in bottles. Unbelievable? Surely. Ridiculous? Only if you don’t Do the Dew.

And I Do the Dew.

When I was drunk at a work party a month ago, one of the teachers sprang the following question on me:

“Brad-Sensei, do you like children?”

Sensing another rant about the students, of the type that frequently come up when the work-staff is under the influence, I heartily jumped in. I smiled at her and filled her glass up with beer, which she then was forced to drink, along with me.

“Not really, Sensei,” I began, “If I ever have any, I plan on boarding them at a school far away until they are 18! Then they can come back,” I laughed loudly, I took another swig, “…for one month. They can come back for one month. Right before they go to college. I’ll introduce myself and I’ll have a whistle. Have you ever seen The Sound of Music?”

She looked at me, confused.

“Well, I was wondering if you might be willing to teach my children English. Once a week. I would pay you," she said.

I stopped laughing. I swallowed.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“They are very young kids, six and eight years old. They love English. Could you help them?”

I looked around at the other people sitting at the table. The English teachers were listening intently. What was I supposed to say? That I find little children only marginally less annoying and gross than many of the High School kids I’ve come to know? That when they whine and scream for attention I sometimes just want to haul off and beat their asses? That I look forward to the day when my kid throws a fit in a supermarket so I can just leave them there, get into the car, and drive halfway out of the parking-lot before little Brad Jr. comes crying out of the supermarket Daddy Daddy don’t leave me I love you I’m so sorry!!! And I say You broke daddy’s heart in there, it’ll be a while before he can love you again and all the while I'm holding back laughter? No. No I cannot say any of this.

“Uhm. Yeah. Sure! Sure I can!” I said, looking about the table. “Little kids, they are… Well…they are just great. Aren’t they?”

“Yes. We’ll talk more about it on Monday, ok?”

“Ok!” I said, and then proceeded to drink a lot of beer. I promptly made myself forget about the entire conversation until the next morning, at which point I immediately questioned how smart a move it was to agree to this special class. I know a lot of JETs that have these “secret” English conversation classes on the side, and only a few that actually enjoy teaching them, despite getting paid fairly well by the hour. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I say “secret” because for some reason JETs aren’t technically allowed to do these things. I have no idea why not. It is still doing what the government hired us to do, after all. Regardless, everyone does it anyway.

So the next morning I see the teacher again:

“Brad-Sensei! About the conversation class…”

“Yeah, about that…you see—

“I was thinking about paying you 3000 yen for 45 minutes,” she said.

“…what? Are you serious?”

“Not enough? How about 4000?”

“4000 yen!?! You don’t have to pay that—”

“Also, I’ll be there the whole time. I’ll make all the lessons. I’ll bring all the materials. I’ll also drive you.”

“Really? That’s…that’s awesome!”

“All you have to do is talk and play games. It’s a conversation class. We call it an eikaiwa in Japanese,” she said.

“forty bucks for 45 minutes of playing games? We call that highway robbery in English.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Sign me up!”

“Are you sure it’s enough money?” She asked.

“Whatever you think!”

“I think it’s very fair.”

“Then so do I, Sensei. So do I.”

So we’ve had four lessons thus far, and let me tell you, they are awesome. The youngest one joins in sometimes, other times she runs around the house eating things. Fine by me. The elder one, at eight years old, is already twice as smart as 95% of the Koho students I've taught. She loves to read things, and she tells me how her day was and what she did. She is a wicked Old Maid player too. Very talented. When I first met her I said "how are you?” to which she gave the standard and generic "I am fine, how are you?" answer that they teach every Japanese student from the womb. Nobody actually cares to hear how you are, it’s just how they have been taught to answer. Nobody except this girl, that is. After asking her how she was, I went about setting up the game and turned to see her still looking at me, waiting to hear how my day was. At first I didn’t know what to do. Then I answered her.

“Well, my day was good. I read a lot.”

To which she nodded.

I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to teach a student that wants to learn of her own accord. Even if she is just eight years old. By God I can almost, almost see how someone might actually get into this teaching gig for keeps. Almost.

And as far as the whole “all little kids are annoying and gross” thing? Well, here is a picture of us playing a concentration game with various animal picures:

Yes, that is her sitting primly and politely smiling. And yes, that is me: I haven’t showered in almost 24 hours, I’m sprawled out on the floor, and I’m acting like an assclown.

So we can pretty much throw that theory out of the window right there.

When the weather is nice, the absolute last thing you want to do is teach kids. And yet, the kids continue to show up.

I've completely checked out. Nothing seems to get to me anymore. I can't even drum up a healthy dose of indignation towards the Japanese school system in which I am entrenched. My righteous anger has deserted me. The fuel for the fire is gone.

And I don't believe I'm alone in my apathy. For instance, just yesterday there was this festival uptown in which each neighborhood of a certain city built a huge wooden float, and then they rammed them into each other all night to booming bass drum accompaniment. Sounds wild right? Like a pretty wild time? It sure does. It probably was, too, but not for me. I went home at 9pm. Why? I don't really know, exactly. Seemed like the thing to do at the time. There were cataclysmic crashes of holy, paper lantern covered, fifteen foot tall floats happening one after the other right in front of me, and this is the conversation I remember having with Geoff:

"What are they hitting each other with, those floats?"
"I think they have battering rams attached to them. They hit each others battering rams."
"Oh. Cool."
"Yep."
...
"Can you imagine if one of your nuts was taped to that battering ram?"
"Ooh, yikes. That would probably hurt."
"No kidding, right?"
"Yeah. Geez."
"That's funny. It's a-...what a funny thought that is."
"No kidding. Sure is."
...
"So how have you been?"
"Good. Pretty good. I think I elbowed a guy in the eye coming over here. Little guy. Japanese guy."
"Oh no. When did that happen?"
"Coming over here."
"Right. What did he do?"
"Nothing. Just kept on walking."
"Huh.”
...
"I think I'm going to go get a coke. Do you want a coke? I'm gonna go get a coke”
"I'm ok. Thanks though."

Crazy festival madness, booths selling everything from squid to airgun ak47s, and this is the level of discourse. I swear, it’s like everyone’s been doped.

This phenomenon intrigued me, so I decided to ask around and see how everyone was doing, you know, put my finger on the pulse of JET life. Because if you really want to know how people feel, you have to get out there and in the thick of it. They spoke to me on condition of anonymity. I obliged.

So without further ado...let's take it to the streets:

What are we doing? What are any of us doing? Does any of it matter? And if it matters - does it matter that it matters?"
- "Geoff"

"They cancelled all of my classes until I cut my hair." - “Max”

“I have no internet at school today, so I might as well just end it all now.” – “Emily”

"I'm doing great. I don't know what the hell you're all talking about" - "Dave"

"I really thought the students were gonna get it this year. I really thought that this might be their year. ’05 to ’06, you know?" – “Bryan”

"Here's what I think: Japan is a place where the food tastes like the ocean vomited in your mouth." - "Robin"

"I am paid...comfortably salaried even...to dick around on internet message boards for hours a day and call it "research" for the English classes I am unqualified to teach. That's how I'm doing." - "Bunny"

And there you have it. Paints a pretty picture, doesn't it?
What is that picture? Don't ask me. All I ever want to do anymore is bowl.

Today’s Oral Communication class started out just like every other; I was teaching numbers to the kids and they were taking it well enough, of course there are always a few of them that look about as enthusiastic as old dogs in the euthanasia ward of the pound, and of course there is always that infuriating couple that continues to play grabass in the back corner no matter how many times I tell them that they are failing, but most of the kids are pretty in to it. Numbers is an easy lesson. The kids can dig it.

We began by doing the “listen and repeat” section of the worksheet I’d given out, which pretty much entails me saying the numbers from 1-30 and then jumping around like an assclown while they repeat them. Number one rule of JET teaching: When all else fails to grab their attention, just act like an idiot.

Aside from the fact that nobody seemed to be able to get the number 12 right, ever, the exercise was going well, so we moved to the next section, in which the kids have about 20 questions, each of which has three numbers. I call out one of the three numbers and the kids are supposed to circle the number I call out.

So I start calling out numbers and immediately have to split up Romeo and Juliet in the corner:

“Hey, hey! HEY YOU! Did you get that?” I ask.

“I don’t understand,” the boy says.

“How about you listen?”

“Say it again,” he asks/demands

“27.”

“Again.”

“27.”

“I don’t understand.”

I shake my head. The girl, thankfully, has at least circled the correct number.

“See? She’s got it,” I say.

“Caesar Salad?” She asks.

“Nono, She’s Got It. I said She’s got it.”

“What Caesar Salad?”

I sigh and go back to calling out numbers. I note that my JTE has been watching the same girl in the other corner for five minutes now. No big deal though, right? She's probably just helping her one-on-one. The girl doesn’t have that great of a command of the language, so I think nothing of it.

I almost get to the end of the number sheet and see that my JTE is still crouched down next to this girl. I walk over to her.

“What’s up, does she understand?”

“She got them all.”

“What do you mean? I’m not even done calling them.”

“Don’t look at her sheet and finish up the numbers.”


A bit weird, right? But I shrug and go back to the front of the class and call out every number but the last one. My JTE is still next to this girl. I walk back.


“She’s gotten every one before you said it,” my JTE says.

“What?”

“Every one.”

“No way.”

“Yes.”

“She has this last one? Already?” I ask.

“Yes. And she has already marked her choice as correct.”

“She can’t know what I’m thinking.”

“She does. Say it.”

So I look at my options, think hard about what I would normally choose, and then change it at the last second. I call out the number. I look at my JTE. She nods.

“She got it.”

“Get the fuck out of here.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, that’s not possible.”

This girl had gotten the worksheet, filled out all of her choices, and then marked them all as correct with her red pen before I had even said them, and she was right. Every single time.

“What the hell is going on here?” I asked.

“Could she have gotten ahold of your answer key beforehand?” My JTE asks.

“No, I make these things up on the fly. I have no answer key. It changes every time.”

My JTE converses with her for a moment. She is a painfully shy girl in class, always very quiet, and she doesn’t even say much in Japanese.

“She says that she can see the numbers before you say them.”

“See the numbers?”

“She says she’s not so good at English, but she is good at guessing numbers. So she guessed the numbers. It’s easier for her.”

“That is unbelievable. There is no way that just happened here, in my classroom.”

The girl herself is looking quietly down at her desk. This is no big deal for her. Meanwhile, the rest of the class has taken absolutely no notice. Not even a full blown psychic phenomenon can capture the attention of Mr. and Mrs. Gropesalot.

After class, when we are back at our desks in the staff room, my JTE turns to me:

“What do you call that in English? That power?” She asks.

“Psychic,” I say.

“Do you believe in it? She started marking her answers as correct before you finished asking the questions. She was sure.”

“I don’t know. I mean, she could have just been lucky, right? Really lucky?”

My JTE looks at me for a moment, contemplating.

“Nobody is that lucky,” she says.


I wonder if the higher-ups would allow a "class trip" to the nearest casino.

You know, to, uhm, to study numbers.

It’s getting warmer and it’s getting lighter earlier. About goddamn time. I feel like I’ve done a stint in an Alaskan winter where everyone goes crazy because it’s night for four straight months. I don’t understand how more people aren’t dead here after that. It was a war; a daily battle for your sanity. I half expected May to come and there to be parades and GIs kissing their sweethearts on the streets. What we just went through should be referenced in textbooks where they should speak of it with a muted sadness and refer to it as a terrible chapter in the annals of world history. It was something memorials need to be built for with the words “The Great Winter of ‘Aught Six” laser etched into the marble base of brass statues depicting the gaunt, sallow, pale faced Toyama citizens. There needs to be a JET thrown in there for good measure too. I’m thinking something like the Korean War Memorial, except where that one depicts a unit of twelve life-sized soldiers trudging through the wilderness, ours can picture a group of Japanese wearily walking to work in suits and rain boots, chain smoking cigarettes with one hand and holding umbrellas with the other. My statue can be somewhere in the back; I’ll be shielding my head with a newspaper, drinking my fifth cup of coffee, and shaking my head continuously via animatronics. Over all of us should be a cascading, torrential, fountain-fueled downpour.

But it’s all over now.

It’s a shame when the first hint you have of the days getting brighter is when you hit up that 6am train and it’s no longer dark. I was coming back from some 24 hour Yoshinoya’s and I actually stopped in the street. It was so bright out that I thought I somehow slept through my first train in the restaurant and it was 9:00 in the morning. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it was only 5:30.

Other signs of the great thaw followed: They took away the space heaters at school, the Japanese have untied all of their trees and let them hang freely, the JR train workers have switched to their stylish summer uniforms, everything smells like decomposing crap…

And Koho is in the process of choosing a new ALT to take over for me.

Yesterday Obata plunked a list of 15 names down on my desk.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“One of them is going to be the next ALT.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, the problem is all we get is a name, their hometown, an age, and a relationship status.”

I looked at the paltry list in front of me.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“And what do you want me to do with this?”

“Narrow it down to three, then we send it back to the government, and they choose the one. We’re Private. Private schools get to choose.”

“Not much to go off of here,” I said.

“I know. Sorry.”

I looked at the names again, trying to visualize what kind of person might accompany each.

“Is this how you chose me?”

“Yep.”

I shake my head.

“Unbelievable,” I said.

“What’s unbelievable?”

“It was a 10 month application process. I drove all the way to Chicago for the weekend just for the interview. And in the end all it came down to was my name. You just liked my name.”

“It’s not our fault. They don’t give us anything.”

“I know. It’s just, it’s funny. Kind of. It’s ironic.”

So I set about the task of choosing the next Koho ALT. As I did this, I remembered these two poor girls I met at the Chicago Consulate, near tears after “bombing the interview.” I thought of the couples torn apart by JET when one gets in and another doesn’t. I thought of the message boards full of people trying to get in to the program and failing for their third straight year. I thought of the weeping masses who received the rejection letters. And then I thought how it can be that somehow, in this weird, twisted, wacky world, after all of the application nonsense, after all of the recommendation letters and physicals, all of the personal statements and copies of personal statements, all of the return receipt mailings and interview techniques and memorized potential questions and months and months and months of agonizing waiting, how it can possibly be that for fifteen lucky individuals, it all came down to Bradley Griffith.

I couldn’t help but laugh.

The first rule was no girls. Almost 75% of our students are male, and I think it was pretty hard for the female ALT’s in the past here. I was told, therefore, it was best if the ALT be a guy. So I cut every girl on the list. Just like that. Hopes dashed. By Brad.

Next, being an American, I cut every non-American. Tough. Had I known more about the non-Americans on the list, or really anything at all, I might not have cut them, but I didn’t, and I show loyalty. There was only one non-American anyway, and I’ll be damned if he was going to get a spot based solely on his citizenship. You all would have done the same, so stop your whining. What are you, a communist?

After that I cut everyone who was married or put “couple” as their relationship status. You remember when they told you that it didn’t really matter what your status was? Yeah, they lied. That was also an explicit order. Couples are hard to work with. They ask for too much and expect special treatment. No dice. More hopes dashed.

After that I tried to cut every blue-stater. The last thing this program needs is more liberals. Don’t get me wrong, I love liberals, but we’re about full up over here thank you very much. I did leave a guy from Washington, which is blue, because I felt that he would already be accustomed to the weather here. I also advanced a guy from Pennsylvania. I’m not sure why. Perhaps his birthday was near mine. All the rest of them? Gone.

Then I took a good long look at their names. I tested them out, repeatedly. If I thought their name had a good ring, that person was cleared. It had to have pizzazz, staying power, and an easy Katakana spelling. Sure enough, when all was said and done, only three remained. Those three I highlighted, passed back to Obata, and he shipped them off to the Prefectural Government Offices so they could choose the final one.

So to all you poor souls struggling through the absolutely ridiculous application process to get in to this program: should you fail, buck up. Like so many job applications in life, in the end it all comes down to idiots with highlighters anyway.