Japanese Students Have No Innocence... But You've Got To Love Them Anyway ("Strictly In A Platonic Way", Your Honour)

Japanese students, like a shipment of Guatemalan melons spread attractively across the produce stand in 'Try n’ Save', range from first-rate quality to dangerously rotten. Fortunately, there are no rotten melons in either of my two schools. The quality of school lunches, at times, may be questionable, but my students are of premium stock.

Now, this isn’t to say that all of my students are angels – because they aren’t. Nor are they young Pasteurian scholars, well on their way to solving the mysteries of the world’s incurable diseases. They are simply a bunch of relatively well-behaved and polite country kids. Some of the melons may be a tad over-ripe and perchance too flavourful, while others were perhaps not quite ready to be plucked from the stem. The odd piece of fruit may have a bruise or soft-spot where it has rubbed on the tree, but none have troubles that, with a touch of caution, can’t be worked around.

In my schools, there are no reprobates, loud-mouths, crazies, or criminals. Moreover, there aren’t any delinquents, deviants or troublesome tormenters. There are, however, many Japanese boys slowly being shaped to fit the classic mould of perverted Japanese male - and these can be just as dangerous as the aforementioned scourge of society.

Sexual perversion, like a spring daffodil, blooms early in Japanese boys. The kids point and grab at my crotch, making immature sexual gestures while practicing their limited English skills. “Wat dis?” they say with impish smiles spread across their youthful faces. “Leally big?! Do you play sex?” These endeavors of cross-cultural curiosity are performed in the presence of the Japanese teachers, who laugh, smile, or turn a blind eye while I am sexually assaulted by flocks of prepubescent boys. At times, I literally have to cover my ass. And the occasional hand, I am ashamed to admit, has slipped past the defense.

Not only are Japanese school-boys overly curious about what lies beneath my frock, they also show an unusual interest in each other. The unwritten rule of ‘no public displays of affection,’ that I mentioned in a previous letter, doesn’t seem to apply to Ibaraki junior high school boys. Within the guarded walls of the school’s compound, anything goes. They sit on each other’s laps, hang off of each other’s shoulders, tap each other’s bums with their notebooks while ambling down the halls- I’ve even witnessed the occasional back rub and hair caressing. If junior high school boys behaved this way in Canada, I’m afraid to say that they would be beaten mercilessly.

While the boys show an unusual fondness for each other, the relationship between the boys and girls is, by this point in their lives, well on its way to being in a state of frosty, mutual disregard. The junior high school kids in my schools, on the most part, have begun to grow out of their rambunctious, pre-socialized ways of childhood, and have become shy and introverted little workaholics- hostages to the homework, servants to the study, drudges to their duties. It would seem that there is little time for, or interest in, the opposite sex. This habit of ‘all work and no play’ is perhaps the case for girls even more so than for boys.

Japanese junior high school-girls are a perplexing lot. By this stage in their life, they are roughly one-third of their way through their troublesome and debilitating addiction to all things Disney. They’ve progressed through the early phases – introduction, childhood fascination, and creative fantasies- and have moved on to the second major stage – fervent consumerism!

Japanese junior high school girls buy the exact same school supplies as kindergarten school-girls do in Canada- and they buy it ‘en masse’. Pencil cases adorned with the familiar faces of ageless cartoon characters (both Japanese and American), writing pads sprinkled with sparkling hearts, and notebooks made by my favourite TV program of 1986 – ‘Sesame Street’; all can be found on the wobbly, wooden school-desks occupied by the girls. Nowhere else in the world does ‘Big Bird’ have such a strong, cult-like following amongst 12 to 15 year old girls as in Anytown, Ibaraki, Japan (even some of the boys have Sesame Street school supplies!). Once again, I’m afraid to say that Canadian junior high school girls with Mickey Mouse backpacks and Sailor Moon shoes would be beaten mercilessly. And could we really blame the perpetrators? I mean, really - Big Bird at age 15?

Strangely enough, the second most popular type of school supply manufacturer, following the various cartoon conglomerates, is a different empire altogether, and one that I falsely thought would have been more popular amongst the boys than the girls. I’m speaking of Playboy. Often, the same girl that has a Minnie Mouse pencil case sitting on her desk will be writing with a pencil made by the company responsible for bringing porn to the masses- a contrast in degrees of innocence that is completely lost on the doe-eyed students. This is similar to the nun that I met that was wearing a Metallica t-shirt under her black and white habit. But those nun get-ups can be deceiving disguises- never judge a book by its cover. That nun was bad news…

The students come to school every morning, dressed smartly in their dark, heavy uniforms. The girls are required to wear long skirts for the entire year- even in the dead of winter when the temperature in the halls of the school hovers around 7 degrees Celsius- no warmer than the daytime temperature outside. I dress in long underwear and several undershirts and I still find myself shivering when outside of the heated teacher’s room. Poor girls- I couldn’t imagine having to wear a skirt during the February freeze. I stopped wearing mine back in October.

The girls may be tough when it comes to withstanding frigid temperatures in the classroom, but everything seems to fly out of the window when they are on the losing team at either the sport or culture festival. The students take these annual festivals extremely seriously. The winning team is lavished with patronizing praise by the teachers. They are presented with a golden, spit- polished trophy of historical importance and several long-winded speeches- likely toasting their noble efforts and comparing them to great winners of the past. The losing team, on the other hand, and the girls in particular, break down into fits of uncontrollable sobbing; ashamed and embarrassed to have lost such a ‘meaningful test of their dedication to the school’. I run and hide the kitchen knives, fearing an unpleasant incidence of mass hara-kiri. Shame is a dangerous emotion in Japan.

No, it cannot be argued that the Japanese aren’t a dedicated people. Kids back home, taking part in a Canadian school’s sport or culture festival, would be far too intoxicated to care whether they won or lost. It would seem that Canadian students are just dedicated to different things. Everyone has to have a passion in life.

After spending everyday in a school where the boys have tickle fights with each other and the girls buy Playboy, nothing surprises me anymore. And, as Justin Timberlake said most eloquently, “I’m loving it!” For those who haven’t heard, I’ve signed on for another year of Japanese cultural immersion. If nothing else, at least this gives me enough time to visit Disneyland a few dozen times.