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.
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