The typical American

Thursday was the day we went for dinner to discuss the forthcoming speech contest. It started in a very civilized way; the man who organized the contest was a surgeon and was very friendly and polite, as, it seemed, was his friend, an old teacher who would be on the judging panel.

We finished our small meeting in the restaurant’s tatami room and then went to dinner. And what a good meal it was. As I still had a rum stomach from Monday’s undercooked yaki-nikku I was very glad that the food was solid and western looking (spaghetti- mmm). Only three of the 6 ALTs invited showed up, and that also turned out to be a good thing as it meant less people could be offended. Johanna and Christine, both American, were there with me.

Things were going well until George Bush’s name somehow came up. The old teacher (who may have been somewhat drunk- at least I hope he was) blurted out that George Bush was a typical American. With speedy rebuttals from Christine and Johanna this was modified into, “the typical American is arrogant”. Johanna answered, “hell, that’s fair enough. I’m arrogant, we’re all arrogant. But the French are worse.” But things here got much worse. Mr Old Teacher began expressing his political views starting with George Bush was the only person who could keep America safe and becoming increasingly wrong to the point where he announced that “sometimes, when the world gets a little delinquent, a figure like Hitler is necessary to bring order.” Immediately the surgeon looked embarrassed and tried to argue against the teacher, but this spurred him on- “only Muslims are terrorists” was his next claim. We were able to disprove this through our knowledge of terrorist groups throughout the world and I felt rather rude (as I’m sure it’s not talked about), but I felt it necessary to bring up Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese cult who attacked the Tokyo subway system in 1995 with sarin nerve gas. This seemed to get the point home. Eventually, when the whole inappropriate mess was over, we moved to different subjects. Christine announced she was going to run the Hiruzen (local mountain town) half marathon. The two men laughed. Again, this was rather rude. And then Mr Old Teacher started giving her advice on how to train as if she’d never done it before. He may have been trying to help, but his advice was a bit rum to say the least... The evening became so cringeworthy that eventually the surgeon decided we had finished and we went home. Even though he knew we had to wait a half hour for our next train. We didn't protest though. Mr Old Teacher was the first person I’ve met here who was not polite and kind, although I’m sure if he hadn’t mentioned any political views we may not have been any the wiser.

The long weekend came and on Friday Abby drove me and Johanna to RayVon’s place in Shin Kurashiki. A long journey in the dark lthrough God-knows-where led to us getting lost when we were only about 10 minutes from our destination. As is always the way. A nice gentleman in a combini helped us find it.

When we arrived I bailed pretty quickly and went to meet Chad for an evening of South Park, chatting and drinking. Then on Saturday we all met at Aeon Kurashiki (the area’s out of town shopping centre). We shopped till we dropped (or at least we shopped till 2:30- the typhoon was supposed to hit at 3). We headed home in anticipation of bits dropping off RayVon’s house, and nothing happened. Oh well. We ate loads of western food (I cooked a big big curry which did us for three meals) and we watched loads of western telly and films. It was a good break from having to figure everything out and get brainstrain on a daily basis.

The rest of the week was fairly quiet. On Wednesday I tried to be more Japanese then my teachers by pulling an over eleven hour day at work. I had to make an activity to teach the kids, and me being me, it couldn’t be simple. I made the board game “Guess Who”. I drew 18 faces (and duplicated some) and made 13 sets of 27 faces, all colour and laminated. I actually took work home and didn’t finish till 10. I’m over being Japanese now. I’ll go babk to being British and doing the bare minimum. The kids enjoyed the game though…