The Isle of Faff

The things I will miss following my year abroad without a doubt entirely outweigh the things to which I will be glad to bid a long overdue sayonara.

But it is these soon-to be-a-distant traumatic memories which, more often than not, make for the best writing material.

The years of postcards from loved-ones abroad plays constant reminder that no-one is interested in the stately homes, castles, beach parties, shrines, temples and glorious mountains of Japan or anywhere else in the world for that matter.

Sat on your sofa at home the fact that I saw a big Buddah with nostrils the size of Harvey Price is about as interesting as being locked in a dungeon with James Blunt and a guitar.

“Yubara Einstein" who spends his life cutting insects from fliers to present to the village idiot - namely me - while pulling faces like a remedial trout at the end of the bar in my local. Paper thin too hot in summer and too fucking cold in winter houses, outdoor washing machines with pipes that freeze with the first snowflake of winter.

Holes in the floor covered with the faeces of the thousands that have gone before next to futuristic toilets sent from the Gods. Noisy bugs, noisy frogs, chanting woman, 5am sirens, Internet modem and drive-by announcements at unearthly hours of the morning.

As irritating as all these things are (asides for Fish-face Einstein) they all add to the oddity that is Japan.

My latest and long overdue rant comes from a recurring theme which has long tested my patience.

Faffing.

From a family made up of half doers and half faffers, I did not think anyone could score higher than my mother, brother and one cousin in-particular in the "what the fuck have you been doing for the past hour?" stakes.

But someone, or rather something does.

Japan.

Lunchtime today, the dinner lady trundles in with her trolley carrying too many trays and dishes for the staffroom. They talk, as always for a good 10 minutes, with concerned expressions. I can only gather from my limited Japanese that they are counting up how many diners there will be this lunchtime, as our vats of slop grow colder and colder.

The usual slow dishing up rigmarole ensues. Ravenous, we all "Itadakimasu" and tuck in. Lo and behold a latecomer arrives, with who comes a sense of impending doom as every single person, sombre-faced, looks around in stunned disbelief.

Despite the fact that this happens EVERY FUCKING DAY.

Being a major faux pas to eat from the plate of another, chopsticks clatter, the multitude stands, staring hopelessly as nothing proactive is done to salvage some untouched fodder for the teacher, unlucky enough to have drawn the short straw of hunger on this particular occasion.

A gaijin experiencing this daily happening for the first time could be forgiven for thinking someone had just announced the Land of the Rising Sun's latest Emperor’s had just been discovered, beheaded and ass raped in a gutter.

But if they are anything like me, not one of them actually gives a shit. They all know that eventually the person who has fucked up will salvage a meal from somewhere.

Yet they continue to stand, gormlessly, wishing someone would set the ball in motion and sit down before our appetising dinner trays comprising a bowl of sticky rice, cabbage salad as bland as the James Blunt dungeon scenario, and a scrap of miscellaneous fish, are colder than their dead Emperor.

The epic conversation to come up with a solution to this frequent problem brings me onto another point.

The language.

You don't need to speak Japanese to get by in Japan.

Once you realise that nothing is actually being said, except an amalgamation of meaningless expressions, it becomes clear that Japanese proficiency is far from a necessity.

Japanese people talk a lot. But time has told me everything they say is merely a running commentary of their surroundings.

Supermarket shopping was once a daunting experience, the checkout lady's lips a blur as she muttered away faster than the speed of sound. Once it was brought to my attention that she is doing nothing more than naming every single package, its content and price, I was able to relax and offer the occasional supportive nod.

A typical and mandatory conversation, when arriving home late for a meal goes a little something like this:

"I'm back"

"You're back"

"I started eating before you"

"I am starting eating now, after you"

"I've finished eating."

"I've finished eating."

A prime example of the most pointless of foreign languages arose at a recent snowboarding excursion.

Opting to spend the afternoon in a two-hour "snowboard school," the instructor spoke for more than half an hour to explain two key points relating to the popular winter sport.

1. How to attach your feet to the board.

2. How to attach the pull rope to your trousers.

Japanese people refer to this as thorough. English would opt for something more along the lines of "time-wasting" and demand their cash back from the "fucking money grabbing whores."

Impatient and desperate to hit the slopes, after 90 minutes we finally mounted the ski lift, making our ascent to the summit of the bunny run. Here we were abandoned by our instructor, who had taught us nothing, yet claimed that "time was up" as she glided away until she was nothing but a spot in the distance.

Once can only hope she ploughed head first into a very big tree.

Two hours later and 3,500 yen lighter, I seemed to have taken a backward step back
from my debut outing on the slopes. Rather like the toilet situation, snowboarding experiences range from one extreme to the other.

My previous instructor, having explained nothing, dragged me, snowboard attached to one foot, to the ski-lift. I fell off at the top, twisted my knee and got twatted around the head by the next approaching chair. Every time.

But at least I could board by the end of the day.

Another example of a language reflecting this nation of procrastinating faffers, comes following a visit to the immigration office to obtain a nursery teacher certificate.

Taking good friend and translator Trevor along for moral support, he spoke with the man behind the counter for what felt like hours.

The general gist of the conversation?

Office worker: "Japanese instrumental - 15 minutes,"

Trevor (to me): - "so stick this in your passport yeah?"

Me: "okay, cheers."

Office worker: (translation) - "Wow you said that so quickly in English (which also took considerably longer to spit out in Japanese."

To cut a long story short, I have discovered that by saying "hai (yes)" during the odd pause when a speaker pauses for breath, the end result will be what was originally intended.

Except with food.

With food it can bring some nasty surprises.

Children of Japan, Part Three - Let Them Eat Cake

As my year abroad draws to an end I feel it only right to contribute one more document to the main reason I am even in Japan at all – the children.

To teach in Japan the key rule you must remember is that having fun of any sort can be, and more often than not is, very dangerous.

The most recent example of good times turned ugly came on Tuesday during a fun game of build and destroy, with a points system whereby a team must build a house made up of 12 chalk lines. A saw is worth three lines, a hammer two and a bomb destroys three from an opposing team.

Things went nasty when a board-rubber brandishing girl on team rabbit erased three lines from team frog. One member of the competition got angry, took off his name tag, throwing it at the demolition worker's head while simultaneously bursting into tears.

Next the injured party turned on the taps, instigating a Mexican cry until I was confronted with a classroom full of tantrum throwing tots, helplessly drowning in a sea of snot-infested tears.

One girl remained dry eyed and stared at me with a knowing smirk, far beyond her seven-year-old self.

Teenagers are more resilient, my few lessons providing comic relief in the otherwise desk-bound world that is the days spent in Junior High School.

When instructed to "say like Ellie Sensei says," the classroom is filled with a mix of high pitched wails and Dick Van Dyke’s circa Mary Poppins.

Prone to the giggles I have been forced to stand at the back of the classroom as every lesson, without fail, first graders deliberately attempt to get themselves into trouble with the Home Room Teacher so that she will shout. At which point they will deliberately ignore her in favour of pulling all manner of faces in attempt to make me laugh. As Akaiwa sensei grows angrier I laugh more, undermining the authority's authority entirely.

I have walked into classrooms before to find a child locked in the broom cupboard, boys being stripped to their underclothes by male peers, which they worryingly seem to be enjoying. Once during class, a recently stripped boy asked for his socks back, the thief threw them across the room where they bounced off the owner's head and out of the window into the thick snow lying one storey beneath.

According to the homeroom teacher, none of this is in the least bit funny.

Teachers snack and graze, warding off the hunger pangs throughout the day. In one school I even have my very own treat drawer and every time the teachers share chocolates, fruit or cake, they hide one in my special place. Not always good when mouldy oranges are only discovered weeks after the Christmas holidays.

Yet it is forbidden for children to bring anything edible into school whatsoever. Discovery of sweet wrappers causes scandal levels similar to Ian Brady’s killing spree on the Moors.

Considering this to be an urban legend, or rural legend as the case may be, a friend relayed the sequence of recent events in one of her schools to me over a bowl of ramen.

One solitary sweet wrapper had been found concealed behind the sink in the girl's toilets. Meetings were held, assemblies called, the culprit urged to turn themselves in.

The general gist of why this is such a major faux pas?

"School is a place for learning, not eating."

By fourth period, the one before lunch, I cannot concentrate in class, my students are keeling over and dying of starvation and concentration and patience levels are dangerously low all round.

Nothing is learnt and the clock is watched ticking by slowly by all concerned.

Maybe the Japanese educational system needs to review its concentration camp-esque policy, make like Mary Antoinette and LET THEM EAT CAKE, chocolate, sweets, anything to make them more prone to listening.

And then there's those that hold a grudge.

The sole example being three children, likened to the Midwich Cuckoos, recounted in Children of Japan Part Two.

After forming an alliance against me when I inadvertently caused one of them to cry over a game of rock scissors paper in the morbid heat of summer more than six months ago, they are STILL not talking to me.

Instead they attempt to make my life as difficult as possible for the 45 minutes per month that they are graced with my presence.

While I struggle to remember that fateful, the summer of 2011 will play heavy on my 11-year-old victim’s mind until the day he dies.

I have been told by a good friend that I must tell the main perpetrator of recent trouble, and victim’s girlfriend, in broad Lancastrian, to "shove a cabbage up her cunt."

With one day remaining at the school comes my final chance to action this challenge. I may even try to slip "evil bitch troll from hell" into the mix.

Moving on to coughs and sniffles.

After a weekend of uncontrollable debauchery, I was one of the lucky few to be given a "working day" and instructed to stay at home when more than 50 per cent, and some 75 students were taken down with the flu. School was cancelled and I, the healthy Westerner, spent the day watching films and catching up on sleep.

It is mandatory for sick Japanese people, young and old to wear masks to protect others from their death bugs. In extreme epidemics such as this recent spate of so-called "influenza", pretty much everyone voluntarily opts to sport the Darth Vader look, inhaling their own spit and carbon monoxide all day long.

Every Japanese person I have spoken to has had the flu this time round while their non-mask wearing colleagues from abroad have magically survived unscathed by the 24-hour superbug which, like everything else, has been blown out of all proportion.

Yet another unfathomable oriental survival tactic.

No wonder they lost the war.

Satanic possession and a web of "sweet" deceit

For the best part of the last year a demon has lurked beneath.
A chanting, curtain-twitching monster monitoring my every move.
With an early morning habitual chanting ritual, reaching decibels illegal on English soil and audible from the moon, accompanied by continuous window sliding, I have been rudely awoken from blissful slumber on uncountable occasions.
For a long time this anonymous beast was presumed male, ignorant to my desperate banging to mute his anti-social behaviour.
Several Facebook status rants later, it is brought to my attention by my predecessor that the lovingly named "Chanting Man" is actually a woman, and a formidable one, who continues to murmur in foreign tongues until this day.
The one occasion that anything of significance happens in my village, the annual piss up, cunningly disguised as a Hanzaki Matsuri (Giant Salamander Festival), and the entire village is inebriated.
As the clock strikes midnight no one knows their own name, how they got home, or if they are even in the right home.
Everyone except chanting woman, who lurks indoors, surreptitiously watching people carry futons up stairs and into my apartment.
The morning after the night before, I receive a call from my company informing me that, and I quote; the “sweet little old lady” downstairs was "traumatised" by such vast quantities of bedding.
And a scary prospect it is.
Over the following weeks she continues to slide, bang and chant her “holy” ritual at unholy hours.
With the New Year comes my second encounter with the bitch troll from hell, resulting from a faulty faucet and a flooded floor.
Paper thin, Japanese apartments are designed for short-term practicality. However one toilet flush seeping through the ceiling and into the apartment below still comes as some surprise.
My 10,000 Yen water damage deposit has literally been washed down the toilet.
Yet the greater surprise is the way I am alerted to this expensive mishap.
As the clock approaches midnight, there is an irate hammering and bell ringing at my front door, along with several failed attempts to open it.
Terrified of what beast is lurking on the other side so late at night, my life flashes before my eyes, imagination running wild, earthquakes, fires, rapists, murderers……
Who could it be?
Plucking up courage I unlock the door to be presented with a very angry, very fat, very ugly midget hobbit.
Yellowing crooked teeth glisten in the moonlight as its mouth moves in a blur of angry gibberish. All I can decipher is "toilet" and "I live on the first floor".
I have come face to face with the beast who has tormenting me, confronted by my own worst nightmare.
Opening the bathroom door there is a flood of water, which I mop up, apologising profusely and shouting "Nihongo wakarimasen" (I don't understand Japanese).
She sees this as her cue to shout faster and louder as if this will make me understand.
Some ten minutes later, during which my door remains open, Siberian wind and snow blowing in, all my hard earned heat running out, she too finally runs out of heat, about turns and shuffles back through the ice back into the cesspit below.
I pray to his Lord Jesus Christ to send the Grim Reaper to give this abhorrent juggernaut a sharp push on her descent, straight into eternal damnation and the fiery pits of hell.
Prayers unanswered, it lives on.
My too close encounter with this "sweet little old traumatised old lady" puts the dogs under my childhood bed on a par with Elmo. I dread the day I come into contact with bona fide angry Japanese person.
In the meantime I will combat her satanic ranting with heavy metal devil music until the day I return to England while she slowly rots in her own, shrivelled pink shell.