In Case of Strangers

So over the last week our students have been taking mid-term exams. That means they only have tests during the first half of the day, and there are no classes after lunch. On our first half-day, the teachers informed me in broken English that we would be having a teacher event in the afternoon. They described it as training "in case of strangers".

In case of strangers? "Oh, like self defense?" "Yes, self defense. Middle aged gym sensei will attack us." (I don't want to name names. There are 3 gym teachers, young man afraid of bugs gym sensei, middle aged man gym sensei, and woman gym sensei.)

The description of self defense made me assume we would be learning to physically defend ourselves if attacked. We had something similar in high school. We learned how to punch an attacker, get out of a headlock and other useful tricks. I figured we would be taught, and then we would teach the kids, and middle aged gym sensei was our test dummy. It all made sense.....or it would have if I had guessed correctly.

Around 1:30, three men from the government arrived at the teacher's room. We all stood and bowed in greeting, and they began to give an introduction of the afternoon's activities. All I could catch of their honorific Japanese speech was that we would be role-playing. Some teachers would be students, some teachers, and middle aged gym sensei would be "the criminal".

I was given an orange gym pinny to signify my student status. The "students" migrated upstairs to the first year classrooms, and we broke down into pretend classes. My group did not include any of the English teachers, so my instructions on what to do were really handicapped.

Music sensei told me were were having pretend music class, as froggy looking art sensei sat in the back of the class. We saw "the criminal" walk by and he (I guess) entered another "class" and "attacked" a teacher. At the time, I had no idea what was happening. Music sensei and art sensei got up to leave the room. I went to follow them but music sensei said to wait. They left, and I sat down.

The dead silence that followed struck me as odd, so I left the room only to realize that EVERYONE had left the floor. "What on earth am I supposed to be doing", I thought. I started walking towards the stairs when I heard music sensei yell something.

"Itai, itai" .......Itai means it hurts,or ouch. I thought that this was all part of the act so I decided to not go downstairs. I figured the villain was just waiting for a poor defenseless Japanese middle schooler like myself to cross his path.

The only problem was that music sensei was saying "I-kai", which means first floor. She was yelling to me to come to the first floor, but confused I remained upstairs, when suddenly cute English sensei popped up. She led me downstairs where the other "students were hanging out near the teacher's room, "telling" the vice principal that there was some sort of attacker on campus. Then they yelled at us to run. So we all ran outside to "safety" where we met Japanese sensei, who was supposed to watch out for us. Then the demonstration was over.

I was so confused. I was really unclear as to what had happened. I wasn't even sure that the demonstration HAD happened. I thought they were running through the motions once for practice, because we never saw our attacker after the official start of the demonstration.
I had also expected really specific instructions on what to do, but it had all seemed like an experiment just to see what "might" happen if you were totally unprepared. No one, including the teachers seemed to know what was going on, or what to do. It wasn't like a fire drill where you are told what to do, and then you practice it. It didn't seem to make any sense, but I wrote it off as a problem with the language barrier.

Afterward, we were led upstairs to the library where we all sat around a circle of desks, and each teacher told the nice government men their experience. Only catching every other word, it seemed middle aged gym sensei had a "knife" and had attacked cute English sensei's class first. I still don't know what happened after that.

Poor music sensei had to fess up that she screwed up her duties in protecting her students because she had no idea how to explain to me what to do. Everyone had a good laugh at our expense and they continued to moved around the circle of teachers, each telling their role, and what they thought.

The government officials then (I think) critiqued their performance and gave advice so they would know what to do if some random stranger walked into the school with a knife. Then they told us they were going to show us how to fend off an attacker.

One of the three men got up and fetched this ridiculous looking stick. It was probably about 6 feet long, black, and the end had a crescent attached to it, so it looked like you could pin someone up against a wall with it. They made poor m.a. gym sensei get up to be the target of the demonstration. They explained that this special stick was used to fend of attackers, and it was good because it put a lot of space between you and the villain.

They then gave a demonstration on how to go for the attackers head or feet. They showed that if you went for his body that he could easily grab the crescent and turn this ingenious invention against you. (Which just proved a regular stick would have been better in the first place.) Everyone oohed and aahed enthusiastically like these men had just invented a time machine or turned aluminum into gold.

Puzzled, I turned to one of the English teachers to ask a question quietly, and this drew the attention of the government officials. They thought it would be a really good idea to make me come up front and practice attacking poor m.a. gym sensei.

I knew they were going to get a kick out of making the foreign girl have a go at "defending herself" and were probably asking me to come to the front purely for entertainment purposes. So I made a couple of pretend jabs at our mock villain and everyone had a good laugh. Then they made the English teacher I was talking to go up. She experimented with the stick, holding it different ways, all while making comments like "wow, this is amazing".

After the government men went on their way, we returned to the teacher's room and I took my seat at my desk. Young afraid of bugs gym sensei was making ridiculous comments in English to me all during the walk back. "Wow. Eliza is such strong woman. She can fight with sticks, and she can touch creepy bugs. She is much stronger than me. Amazing desu ne. sugoi sugoi (wow, wow).

Once back in the teacher's room and at my desk, I asked young gym sensei if we had one of those sticks at school. He said we didn't. Were we going to get a stick like that at school? Was it something they were going to issue to us later on? No, no we don't have one now and we won't be getting one in the future.

..............huh?

This was a real stumper.

If this was a GOVERNMENT demonstration given to all the schools, why wouldn't they GIVE us the very stick they propose we use? Why isn't the school required to have one? Furthermore, what if that ridiculous pole isn't nearby and some random man walks into school with a knife, what do I do then? Plus, what are the chances that some random guy is going to take a kitchen knife and walk into a building filled with over 400 people to try and commit a massacre. I mean, does someone even think that's going to be a success? You can only really stab one person at a time, and chances are a whole bunch of people are going to try to tackle you while you have a go at it. Its not like America where you can get the job done right with some sawed off semi-automatic something or other you bought at Walmart. Stabbing lots of people is really hard work, especially when a whole school's worth of people are trying to stop you and half the kids take a martial art. You're pretty much doomed.

When I pointed out the problem with the whole not actually having a self defense stick thing I could see the Japanese brain circuitry cross in gym sensei and music sensei's heads. The Japanese have a strong reverence for authority, which often defies reason and logic. This was one of those cases, and I could see pointing it out had struck a nerve. Music sensei curtly explained that some of the other schools had that stick.

Realizing I had crossed some ridiculous cultural line, I agreed that the demonstration made perfect sense then, if some of the schools had the stick (which of course did not make ANY sense whatsoever.) and dropped to subject. I got a drink of water, returned to my desk and asked music sensei about how her marching band's practices were coming along. It was all smoothed over in a flash.

The Living Turd

So most of our kids have been sent home because a third of the school has swine flu. This has left us teachers with lots of time on our hands to return to our summer ritual of looking busy. But that doesn't mean that we won't take every opportunity to openly do nothing as long as we can do it together.

This led Kyoto-Sensei (this means vice-principal) to take a stroll around the school grounds. She returned with a dust pan and on that dust pan was an object which looked distinctly like a turd. "What the heck is this?" She said to us in Japanese. The gym sensei, English sensei, Kyoto sensei and I all stared at it a moment when suddenly it moved its little turd head to look at us.

"WHAAAAAA! CREEPY" screamed our 6ft, 26 year old, in shape gym sensei as he launched himself to the other side of the island of desks. His reaction was ridiculous. "Scary! What the heck is that thing? It's so gross and creepy!!" he rambled on in Japanese. After examining it for a while and poking it safely with the butt of a pen, Kyoto sensei trotted off with the living turd to show the principal. He also didn't know what it was so she came back to us.

"It's a caterpillar"I said, but no one could understand what that was, so they continued to poke it until they discovered the turd's head was actually its butt. Frustrated that no one could understand me, I took to the internet to find a picture. Luckily, gym-sensei was way ahead of me and screaming about creepy bugs like a school girl all the while.

"Yuck! What is this thing?! Ugh, it's so creepy. SCARY SCARY SCARY!!!!" (Show some samurai dignity for crying out loud.)

Science sensei came back to the teachers' room and we showed him the moving turd. He poked and prodded the now thoroughly harassed moving feces. We finally determined that the poop was indeed some sort of caterpillar, but its ongoing torment caused the turd to become far more animated, and it was rapidly moving around the piece of paper we had it on, in constant danger of taking a plummeting fall onto the floor.

Gym sensei had since left, since he was tired of the other teachers harassing him with the bug, since we all thought it was funny to see him freak out. We had took over his desk as the turd's stomping ground and the other teachers commented on how funny it would to plant little Turdy in gym sensei's gym bag.

It was getting more and more difficult to control the poop, and that's when it happened. Little Turdy made a run for the edge and I reached over, picked him up, and moved him inland to safety.

Everyone screamed, and then gasped as I put Turdy down on the desk. "Wow, Eliza is such a strong woman." "Ew, I can't believe she picked it up! She's stronger than me." "Wow, maybe it's because she's a foreigner." When gym sensei came back they all told him of my feat and he wailed again at how gross that thing is and how on earth could I bring myself to pick it up. I must be really strong. (It's ONLY a caterpillar for crying out loud.)

Turdy is now living in a bottle in the teachers room. We feed him leaves and give him water, and whenever someone feels like it, they pick up the bottle and torture gym sensei some more. But as a result of my picking up the caterpillar they have started to bring my other creatures to see if I will pick them up and handle them too. Today, I received a small black lizard. It was actually pretty cute. The same wailing of disbelief ensued as I let the little guy run around my hands.

I don't understand how people in a country that used to think ritual suicide was a really great way to defend your honor could be afraid of a little lizard and a turd like caterpillar. It's just kind of silly.