Tune In Tokyo:The Gaijin Diaries (16 page)

“Don’t be scared,” I say by way of encouragement. “I’m just going to ask you a few questions, and you answer them the best way you can. It’s just like chatting.”

She smiles and seems to relax a little. “Chattingu, hai,” she says.

“So, why did you decide to take English lessons again?”

She launches into the story of how her longtime Australian boyfriend just broke up with her and now she has no friends because all her friends were his friends and now they won’t speak to her and he keeps saying bad things about her, and she’s so lonely, and now she has no one to speak English with and she thought she was going to get married and so on and so forth. So she decided to come back to English class, presumably to get another boyfriend and meet some new people to hang out with.

I feel bad for her because she seems really desperate and lonely—two emotions I have a long history with. I do my best to put forth an image of brotherly concern and sympathy, reacting to her narrative with lots of concerned furrowing of the brow and “gee, gosh, I’m so sorry.”

In an attempt to steer the conversation away from her personal troubles and towards something more neutral, like what she does for a living, I ask, “What do you do?”

She sighs, and her bottom lip starts wobbling.

“Shit,” I think, wondering if maybe she worked as her ex-boyfriend’s personal assistant and now was out of a job, too.

Then comes a torrent of big, fat, bell-bottomed tears bursting forth from her increasingly blood-red and puffy eyes.

“God, are you OK?” I ask, offering her a tissue from the pack in my pocket lest her nose decide to spring into action.

Through a barrage of mucus and hiccups, I learn that she was just laid off from her job as an office lady at a company that publishes elementary school textbooks. Basically, nothing is going right in this girl’s life, nothing at all. And then she met me. And nothing is continuing to go right.

We finish the level check, and even though her English is a little erratic and unpredictable and she said things like “I am such loneliness,” and “friends don’t happy for me,” I place her in the same intermediate level she was in before since I can’t bring myself to saddle her with any more bad news.

I wave at her as she walks away and wonder if perhaps I’ve found someone—a poor, friendless, frantic female—who is in desperate need of a gay man in her life. Though I’m far from a thoroughbred homo—I don’t have nice clothes, I cut my own hair, I would rather go to the record store than the gay bar, and often I don’t even wear cologne—she could certainly do much worse, and I have lots of pictures of my cat, which Japanese girls just love. Plus, I’m smooth and hairless like a porn star.

I could be the Will to her Grace, the flame to her unlit cigarette, the, um, Bette to her Midler. We could traipse about the city, doing all the things that Japanese girls and their sexy, gay best friends always do: chat about boys over green tea lattes, talk trash about Harajuku girls over pachinko and pizza, and crash one of the many arcades in Shibuya, where we’d saunter up to the Dance Dance Revolution game, I’d slam the machine with my strong gay hip, and she’d follow the lights on the floor, which beckon her to just say “fuck it” and dance the Charleston. As she launched into the cancan as an encore to the oohs and ahhs of onlookers, I’d fold my arms, lean against the change machine, and say to myself, “My work here is done.”

Sadly, Yasuko has very different plans for us, and they don’t involve pachinko, the Charleston, or even Harajuku girls. A few days later, she starts showing up to all of my classes. In very suggestive clothing. At the first class she attends, she wears a tight, navel-baring pink sweater and an ass-grabbing skirt. Trying to avoid looking at her small but admittedly perky and friendly-looking breasts, I say hello and ask her how she’s doing.

“Much better,” she beams.

The next time I see her in class I start to get a little worried. Not just because it was only a few hours later in my afternoon class, but also because she’s changed into an outfit that shows more skin than I am prepared to handle in my capacity as her gay English teacher. I struggle to avoid her amorous gaze, feeling like I’m lost in the wrong fantasy. Is one of the straight male teachers down the hall fending off the advances of a wayward and totally fit male college student and amateur aikido competitor named Takeshi who loves coming to class with his shirt unbuttoned to the navel and staying for extra help after class? In his boxers?

I start trying to behave in a demonstrably gay manner in class so as to fend off her intensifying affections. Lots of limp-wristed gesticulations and discussions of musicals. I also sink so low as to say that my favorite movie ever is
A Chorus Line
, which surprises even me. All for naught, though. If anything, it’s made her want me more.

She is crazy for me. I am a manimal. A manimal.

Yasuko even goes so far as to talk to Rachel about me, I’m surprised to find out. Rachel assures me that she told her in no uncertain terms that I am as gay as the day is long and that there is nothing short of permanent hypnotism that will make me venture into a relationship with a woman. But there is one key thing that has kept Yasuko from accepting Rachel’s explanation, one thing that allows her to cling to the dream that I am her knight in shining hair gel.

“She said you look at her tits,” Rachel tells me, looking at me like a mother would her teenage son. “A
lot
.”

I do love tits. It’s a peculiar strain of gay that I have: I’m a queer who would like nothing more than to have the opportunity to squeeze a pair of pert breasts every now and again. Have I been that obvious? I guess so. But the girl wears a Wonderbra, for God’s sake. And even though I’ve never had the desire to rip her shirt off and place my face betwixt her supple mancushions, even though I would rather she just come to class wearing a scuba diving suit, even though I have been having a recurring nightmare where I’m being chased down a dimly lit hallway by one of her nipples, I can’t help but look at them when they are displayed so wondrously. It would be like trying not to notice the lightning during an electrical storm. Impossible, unless you’d had your eyes sewn shut.

I ask Rachel to please come up with a nice way to tell Yasuko that, OK, yes, I did look at her tits a few times, but I also often look at lit candles and sparkling electrical sockets—that doesn’t mean I want to touch them with my tongue. Also that I can’t give her what she requires. And that she really needs to quit showing up at every single one of my classes.

Rachel promises to come up with something, and I’m able to relax and get back to my daydreams about Takeshi.

A few days later, I am walking to my class and I see Yasuko standing outside my classroom, wearing that familiar tight pink sweater. I shudder, fearing the worst: that Rachel was unable to convince her of my disinterest and that I will be forever stuck on this tight pink treadmill until I manage to convince some male student to come into my classroom and stick his tongue down my throat in front of all of my students. (Note to self: something to think about.)

The time for action is now. I’ve got to come clean with her face to face. Sure, in a way I’m kind of loving the attention. Yes, I’m quite keen on the idea of someone planning out their wardrobe in the morning based on what they think I’ll like. Indeed, if someone wants to have endless dreams of rolling around on a sandy beach with me, kissing me all over and telling me how beautiful I am and how they could never imagine living without me, that’s totally fine. And of course, if a young lady wants to take me to expensive restaurants and keep me supplied with a steady stream of French novels, bonbons, and hot Euro porn and yet expects nothing in return, I’m her man. But all of that is too complicated to explain to a student of English, and I don’t know how to say it in Japanese. Despair begins to set in.

I pick up my roster of students before class and sigh deeply as I read through it; sure enough, Yasuko’s name is first on the list of seven students. I look at the topic of my lesson: expressing disappointment. This might not go well.

I enter the classroom and put my name and lesson number on the board as the students file in. I say hello to folks and try to remain calm as I await Yasuko’s entrance. We all chat for a few minutes after the bell rings, and there is still no sign of my tormentor. After a few more minutes, I feel sure I’m in the clear and start writing some opening questions on the board for students to discuss with their partners:

I would not have wanted Yasuko to answer these questions, so I’m relieved that she hasn’t shown up. The students have paired up and are discussing the questions among themselves. I can relax now and go with the flow of the lesson without having to worry about—

“I’m sorry for late!” Yasuko says as she hurries into the classroom and slides into the first available chair.

Struggling to mask my utter disappointment, I say, “Hi, Yasuko, the questions are on the board; please discuss with your partner.”

Because she’s the odd one out, Yasuko joins another pair of students for a few minutes before I call them all back to report what they learned about their partners during their discussions.

We go around the room and each student tells the class about their partner’s answers to the questions. When we get to Yasuko’s group, one of her partners, a travel agent named Yuki, says in a loud theatrical voice, complete with hand gestures, “Yasuko was disappointed recently because her boyfriend broke up with her and also because she lost her job. To cheer herself up she decide to come to English school, but she think it’s not working. Also, a boy she likes is not liking her.”

“Thank you, Yuki,” I say with an uncomfortable smile.

Some of the young girls in the class whisper to Yasuko in Japanese, asking her who she likes. She demurs and instead directs her gaze at me.

“Tim-sensei, when did
you
last feel disappointed?”

Crap. I can’t say that it was last week when my Internet connection froze right before it started downloading Brad Pitt’s naked holiday photos. What can I say?

“Oh, it was something very similar,” I fib. “I was disappointed that someone I liked didn’t like me the same way.”

“Really?!” Yasuko says, using the opportunity to dig deeper. “What girls you like? Blonde? Or Asian? Or tall?” Each student leans in to hear my answer.

“Oh, you know, I like the classic beauties: Grace Jones, Cher, and, of course, tennis great Billie Jean King.” If she knows any of these ladies, maybe she’ll give me a freaking break?

Yasuko’s face slowly falls as she probably remembers seeing
A View to a Kill
as a child.

Yuki chimes in with the follow-up, “Tim-sensei, what did you do to cheer yourself up?”

After thinking for a few seconds, I shrug my shoulders and say, “You know, nothing chases the blues away like a few hours of baton twirling!”

Yasuko’s eyelids dim.

The next day, I wait outside my classroom as the students walk in. I see Yasuko in the lobby chatting with some friends, and I assume she’s here once again to get in her daily Tim sighting. She says goodbye to her friends and then spots Brody walking out of the teachers’ room with his roster and some teaching materials. She taps him on the shoulder and waves a cutesie hello.

“Hi, Yasuko-san,” he says, winking. “That’s a very nice sweater.” Yes.
Freaking
nice. As she follows him into his classroom, Yasuko looks over at me. I want to tell her all the things I really think she needs to consider: that this guy most certainly has an Oedipal relationship with his mother; that his haircut is featured on at least thirty satirical websites; that in high school he was voted Most Likely to Marry a Xena Warrior Princess Avatar at ComicCon. But what am I thinking? This is my chance to make a clean getaway. Whatever Brody has done to charm her into his classroom, it has clearly worked. And though I’m less than happy to learn that I can be so easily traded in for a guy who wears Tasmanian Devil ties, I have to admit it: I owe him one.

Thank you, GaijinMan. You’ve saved the gay.

I teach twelve to fifteen two-hour classes a week, ranging from the basic-level world of irregular past tense verbs to the mid-level challenges of phrasal verbs and past-perfect tense to the sophisticated and colorful realm of telling jokes and debating. Ever since I started at Lane Language School many months ago, I’ve tried to be a dynamic and inspiring instructor, empowering my students with a more solid grasp of the English language and the confidence to stand tall and release their barbaric yawps to the world, even daring to say controversial things they would never dare to say in their mother tongue, things like “I don’t really like sushi” or “Meg Ryan is totally overrated.” I recently had a long overdue meltdown in the classroom. It was nothing I didn’t see coming.

If I do say so myself, I’ve excelled at this job, at times. When I came to this city, I was a recovering wallflower paralyzed by the idea of standing in front of a group of people, however small, and somehow summoning the confidence to say something interesting and persuade them to repeat it after me.

My lessons have developed from stilted, forced affairs with conversations beginning and ending with unanswered questions like, “Did anyone do anything interesting this weekend?” into frenzied free-for-alls with instructions like, “OK, Miho, you are a reservation clerk, and Aki, you want to book a flight to Brazil, but Miho, you don’t have any tickets to Brazil. None! Sold out! So you have to suggest alternatives and come to an agreement. You have one minute! And…action!”

There have been good times. I’ve had my pet students who have made teaching both rewarding and hilarious. They usually tend toward the aged and slightly senile. I just relate to them the best. There’s 150-year-old widow Reiko, for example, with her cropped and slightly off-center wig, heavily powdered face, and crimson lipstick that gives new meaning to the term “coloring outside the lines.” She takes English classes because she wants to keep her mind sharp. Her favorite thing to say in English is “I’m very old,” which is always followed by a squinty giggle and appreciative laughter from anyone else in her basic-level class who had understood what she’d said. Once a week, she says, she goes to Ginza with her dog and has tea and cakes at an outdoor café. She has never invited me along, though I have longed for a washi paper invitation to arrive in my mailbox complete with calligraphied Japanese characters and a small watercolor of her and her Chihuahua. I could bring the doggie biscuits.

Then there is Fumiko, who is about sixty and roughly half my height, with fat little fingers and huge tombstone teeth, which she flashes constantly in a giant smile that takes up nearly half her face. She paints all of her clothes herself with swirling floral designs or wispy animal figures with huge eyes, and she goes to visit her dog’s grave every Wednesday. Though she’s been coming to Lane for years, her English remains horrific. She’s at an intermediate level, which she arrived at solely because the teachers felt bad that she’d taken all the lessons in the beginner level about five times each.

I knew I loved this woman the first day I taught her. I was teaching a lesson about expressing obligation—e.g., “I have to go to the store” or “I somehow have to come up with five grand for my dealer before midnight or he’s gonna kill my cat”—and we were doing a listen-and-repeat exercise in which I make a statement that the students then turn into a “why” question, in order to practice those treacherous interrogative forms.

Turning to Fumiko, I prompted her with “He had to go visit his mother.” She replied, “Why did he have to go…bank?” So I repeated the sentence again, and she said, a bit thrown off and confused, “Why…bank?” I smiled benevolently, sage-like, and said, “Visit his mother,” while rolling my head to coax the correct answer out of her.

“Why did he have to go to…” she began, looking around at the other students nervously. (Come on, you’re almost there, oh my God, Fumiko—just say it, say it and save us all!) “Bank?” (Argh!)

Now there comes a time in a lesson when the teacher realizes that no amount of correction is going to help. Too much will make her nervous, distracted, and may embarrass her in front of her peers.

“You really want him to go to the bank, don’t you?” I smile, walking over to her and lovingly tapping her shoulder with my hand. “OK, let’s just send him there. He can visit his mother later.”

Right on cue, she said, “Why did he have to visit mother?” I want this woman to move in with me and paint all my clothes.

Over the past year of teaching, I’ve had to contend with the extreme shyness of Japanese students in an English conversation class. Forever concerned with maintaining equilibrium, they have an almost pathological aversion to speaking out of turn, disagreeing outright, or giving the wrong answer. It can make for a precarious environment for teaching English conversation since in order for my job to be performed with any degree of success, I need to get the students speaking without scaring them away.

To teach English as a foreigner in Japan, one must do daily battle with the complex and often frustrating elements of the national psyche that don’t exist in the American mind. For one thing, in the school system here, the classroom atmosphere is one of absolute deference to the teacher. Their word
sensei
has connotations that our English word
teacher
does not.
Sensei
communicates respect and acknowledges the teacher’s role as imparter of wisdom and knowledge. (By contrast, our
teacher
, to many American students, is just a fancy word for
target
.) Students are discouraged from speaking out without first being addressed, and if they do speak out, they’d better have the right answer or they will be reprimanded. It’s all about one-way instruction, teacher to students. The student is not so much taught as indoctrinated.

It’s the exact opposite of the American school system, where children are encouraged to speak too much, the result being that we Americans never know when to shut up. Just look at our talk shows, our love of using cell phones while driving, our chatty reality shows, and our obsession with bumper stickers expounding our beliefs in God, political candidates, the genius of our honor students, the righteousness of guns, and living simply so that others may simply live. We Americans excel at giving too much information. The Japanese excel at not giving nearly enough. So the idea of a classroom where students are not only encouraged to speak out but required to do so leaves many of them confused and scared. And not just due to their fear of a foreign teacher. They are also dealing with their fellow Japanese, who will most certainly judge them. If they speak too enthusiastically or answer too many questions, they will be seen as arrogant and a show-off, a protruding nail in need of a good whack-down.

At first it didn’t bother me that it took a good fifteen to twenty minutes of my asking questions to a deadly silent classroom before they would relax and start talking. But when you deal with this lack of responsiveness day in day out, it starts to make you a little touchy. It’s not that they don’t want to talk. It’s that they don’t want to talk to
you
. Slowly, my insecurity has crept toward mild and now pronounced paranoia, and silence has become my albatross. If I have to sit through another miserable eerie quiet brought on by a question I’ve asked at the start of class (“How are you?”/“What did you do last weekend?”/“What’s your problem?”), there’s no telling what I might do. Then, one day in a basic-level class, the meltdown.

Things began promisingly. When I first looked at the attendance sheet before class started, I was surprised and thrilled to see the name Maria Gonzales listed among all the Yoko Omimuras and Naoki Moritas. After asking around, I’d learned that she comes from Mexico and is married to a Japanese man.

“Wow…Maria Gonzales,” I said to myself with a sigh, my brain racing with exotic and stereotypical images of forbidden dances, all-night fiestas, and tequila shots passed around the classroom. It had been so long since I’d considered a name like “Maria.” It sounded so zesty, vibrant, full of life. My classes could certainly use some color, some spice, some Marrrrrrrrrria.

The only time I’d had a Mexican in my class was a few months earlier. Boy was he a stud. His name was Diego Martinez, and he couldn’t speak much English, but it didn’t really matter because none of us were listening. He had the sex appeal of several South Pacific Islands. I think the word is “smoldering.” He’d made my classroom hot to the touch. For two hours we swooned, hanging on his every mispronounced and misused word. We didn’t get much done in that class, but we all definitely learned to love Mexico.

Now, what of this Maria? Would she enter the class wearing a tight red dress, her bronze skin glimmering like gold in the artificial light, her voluptuous curves and hoop earrings swaying from side to side as she sauntered to her desk and pulled out her bright red pen, spiral notebook, and maracas? Would she bring the other students out of their shells and show them that there’s nothing to be afraid of, nothing at all, “so just to speak the English and dance!” Would she?

No, she wouldn’t.

I walk into the class as usual, write my name on the board, and give a bubbly, if forced, hello. There’s no answer. I turn around, face the class, and give a somewhat more aggressive, even scary hello. The students look at each other nervously.

“Hello,” a few of them mumble.

I take attendance quietly, a chance to scope out our Mrs. Gonzales. She is a pretty conservative and serious-looking woman of about fifty. But I still cling to the hope that bubbling under her stern veneer is a Mexican madwoman who is ready to party.

“How’s everyone doing?” I ask.

No answer. From anyone. Not even Maria. I realize then that the next two hours are going to be absolutely excruciating. I’m going to have to pull every answer out of them like a dentist. An evil dentist with a big pair of bloody pliers.

I decide to target people for my answers.

“How are you, Akira?”

No answer. Only fear.

“Maria?” I venture.

“Ehhhh,” she stammers. “No…me…to speak…to…on top…take…the class.”

OK, so it turns out Maria speaks the absolute worst English I’ve ever heard in my life. There will be no one to save me, after all. I’ll drown in a sea of introversion.

But though my classroom is silent, I can hear the teacher in the next room loud and clear. It’s McD, the ex-marine tough guy with a head shaped like a cardboard box. He sounds like he’s speaking into a bullhorn.

“IN AMERICAN FAST-FOOD PLACES, YOU CAN MAKE ANY ORDER BIGGER FOR AN EXTRA, LIKE, THIRTY-FIVE CENTS! THAT MEANS YOU GET MORE FRENCH FRIES AND A BIGGER DRINK! YOU CAN’T DO THAT HERE! BUT YOU CAN DO IT IN AMERICA!!”

I want to bite off my hand and throw it at someone. I feel like I’m losing my mind. My class refuses to talk to me, and the only sound bouncing around the room is McD’s ode to American fast food.

“How are you, Akira?! Eiko?! Akiko?! How are you?!”

“AND IN AMERICA, YOU CAN FILL YOUR OWN DRINK! THEY HAVE FOUNTAIN DRINK STATIONS THAT THE CUSTOMERS CAN USE TO FILL AND REFILL THEIR DRINKS! IT’S REALLY CONVENIENT! BUT YOU CAN’T DO THAT HERE!!”

Then I lose control.

“Talk to me! Say anything!! Anything! I don’t care! Just speak! Please,
speak
!!” I slam the dry-erase marker onto the tray, making an embarrassingly loud noise that I immediately apologize for.

They remain silent. Maria takes notes. I excuse myself and walk out of the class to take a short breather in the teachers’ room. I sit down and inhale deeply before going back in a little calmer. This time I skip the small talk and get straight to the topic of the lesson—giving directions. Resisting the temptation to give them all directions to my ass so they can kiss it, I make it through the class, but I start having real doubts about my ability to continue this job.

Something is wrong with me. I am not the same champion teacher I was before, one who can handle the weird neuroses of his classes with grace and humor. Someone has swiped my mojo, and I need it back.

Other teachers have started to notice my slip in enthusiasm for the job.

“What’s wrong? You look nauseous,” says Grant, whose limitless gusto in the classroom I’ve always admired.

“I’m out of ideas,” I weep, looking down at my roster of students, fearing the worst. “I can’t bear the thought of facing another classroom full of blank stares. My self-esteem can’t take it.”

I have an advanced discussion class coming up, and I have no idea how I am going to jump-start it. So Grant tells me something he’s been doing in his classes lately.

“You should just walk in, say hello to everyone, then clap your hands together and say something like, ‘OK, someone give me a good topic to start things off with.’ Usually someone will pipe right in with something from the news or about a movie they just saw or something.”

I look at him, dubious.

“That actually works?”

“It does for me, I swear to God. But you have to make sure that your tone is the perfect mix of friendliness and authority. You can do it, I’m sure. You’re really tall.”

I’m not so sure it will work. In a perfect world, one that I’d created, someone would suggest something like “bad TV shows” or “hideous fashion trends” or maybe even “most unique forms of suicide.” But this is far from a perfect world.

Grant senses my apprehension.

“Listen, in a discussion class like that, there’s always at least one person who wants to talk himself silly. If all else fails, just sidle up to that student and ask him for a suggestion. Once they’re forced to speak, they’ll give you something good you can use. Then you should clap your hands again and say, ‘OK, everyone please get together with the person next to you and talk on this subject for three minutes, then we’ll all come back together and share stories.’”

I look down at my list of students. All the usual suspects. Shizue and Takehiro, an old married couple, both in their seventies, who lived in England a long time ago and still take English class together once a week. There’s Kumiko, a college student who checks herself in her pocket mirror at least six times every class. There’s sweet Kayoko, a young travel agent who looks exactly like Minnie Mouse. And Tomo, a surly, aloof, soon-to-graduate high school senior who is intensely obsessed with J. D. Salinger. But there’s one name on the roster I’ve never seen before. Naomi. Hmm. She could be just the wild card I need. I decide to take Grant’s advice.