*blinks in slight horror at the junior teachers* Uhh...

I wonder just how drunk the junior teachers were last night...? I mean, you'd have to be pretty drunk to sing a Marilyn Manson song (profanity, sexual reference, screaming and all) karaoke in front of your co-workers. In front of your friends, yes, but your co-workers? Judging from the amusement of the support staff sitting across the table from me, I turned some fairly interesting colours, but they didn't seem too frazzled themselves.

They did try to pry a repeat performance of the Sports Day Enkai Fiasco out of me (I had five different kinds of alcohol, only two of which I'd actually asked for, arrayed out in front of me), but it did not happen. Yay me! However, I did not manage to avoid being subsequently dragged to karaoke and forced to sing Can't Take my Eyes Off of You and I Will Always Love You by still-drunk teachers (there was also Holding Out for a Hero, but I did that one to myself). And I must say that I upheld the honour and dignity of Canada with all the grace and skill of an elephant attempting to ride a skateboard.

My first school - Yawara - was and still is the smallest school in Kasukabe. I got pathetically lost the first time I tried to find it, but in subsequent days it seemed much easier to find. It was in the middle of a huge tract of rice paddies that seperates the southwards Takesato section of the city from the downtown core. Yawara, Takesato and Nakano are all in the middle of this swath of farmland, and Ohmashi is just on the edge of it. The farmers burn off the excess vegetation generated in the rice fields, and the smoke sometimes smells like a campfire. Other times, when the stubble isn't fully dry yet, it smells like marijuana.

My first fall in Japan, riding through the rice paddies into Yawara every morning, the morning air always smelled like campfires and weed smoke; kind of a comforting smell for me, since I associate smoke with camping and the wood stove in my home in Ottawa on winter nights. It drifted through the school windows - open for air circulation on stuffy days - so even while I was teaching, I could still smell smoke.

I've since learned that every school keeps gardens that the staff tend to in their spare time, but it was a surprise for me the first time the vice-principal of Yawara went outside, grabbed what I thought was an ornamental plant by the stalk base, and heaved it up to reveal a huge, ripe daikon radish. Plants love Japan with a fierceness that surprises me, considering how much viable land they pave. Seeds that moulded in the ground for me in Canada jumped green and straight from their pots within a week, as if they couldn't wait to get started. It was a shock to me when the first gloria lily opened on my balcony - bright red and yellow and spiky as a tropical bird. I couldn't believe I'd actually managed to grow such a thing, when before even beans died on me.

The third-year graduation at Yawara was the first time I'd ever felt like a real teacher, and when I realised that having this job had already changed me a little. When the student rep. came up to say the official goodbye to me, he mentioned that at first, I had seemed like a hard person to get to know. But soon, they realised that I was 'a very friendly person' - words that I personally would never have ascribed to myself before (I would have picked 'sarcastic'). After the ceremony, one of the girls came up and said she had a secret to show me, and pulled her hair back from her ears to reveal some very new piercings, grinning like a maniac. Students are not allowed to pierce their ears in junior high, or even in some high schools. In a society as conscious of differences as Japan, this was a secret indeed.

There had been a lot of curiousity about me in Yawara, I now realise. The students were astounded to learn that the blonde was natural but the blue eyes weren't (coloured contacts are very much a novelty here), that I'd gotten my ears pierced at age 12, and that I had (horrors!) a tattoo. I suppose all these were a strange contrast to my personality, which was quiet, yielding and bookish even when I was being friendly.

But the fact remained that I was a teacher - albeit a very minor breed - and that the girl was trusting that I was enough of a rebel (or enough of a foreigner, sort of the same thing over here) to appreciate it and enough of a friend not to rat her out. The following conversation then took place:

Me - *smirking* So, did it hurt?

Student - *big grin* Nope! Just a pinch and that was it!"

I've no doubt some teacher somewhere has found out by now, but they never heard it from me.

-Torachan