February 2006 Archives

Mr. Kancho tried to kancho me today. This was kind of surprising, as I hadn't had any attempts in awhile. Where have I heard this before?

With final exams and graduation looming on the horizon, most kids are too busy trying not to kill themselves to worry about such things like kancho*. Even long-time offenders such as Mousey and Watson (both of whom will be graduating soon) have been fairly low-key. But Mr. Kancho, still a fresh ichinensei, hasn't had his spirit properly broken by the system yet and can still poke some people in the ass before his nail gets hammered down. Mr. Kancho is also a runt of a kid, and it was then that I realized that he was on the fast track to becoming Mousey - The Next Generation. To boldly go where no man has gone before. And damn well shouldn't. And won't if I have anything to say about it.

*Although, I am starting to wonder if there's a Kancho Season. Y'know, like how there's baseball season, or duck hunting season. Mr. Kancho might just be in Spring Training or something.

Anyway, I'd felt a slight poke, and I turned to see Mr. Kancho backing away, holding his finger. "It's hard! Holy crap it's hard!" He exclaims. I realized that he'd missed crack (Praise the Lord) and had somehow poked my wallet instead. I almost told him this. Almost. But then I came up with a plan so genius, so magnificent, I feel I should at least get a Nobel nomination. It's even better than the threat of a counter-kancho that would cause General Tojo 60 years ago to recall his planes before they reached Pearl Harbor.

I turned to Mr. Kancho. "Oh, you didn't know? We Gaijins have Ass-Cheeks of Steel."

"Is that true?" Mr. Kancho's friends ask him. "Well, it WAS pretty hard" Mr. Kancho says.

"Yeah," I continue, "we start training our Ass-Cheeks Of Steel in elementary school. For various reasons. To fight against terrorism and what not. So the next time you put a finger up there, you might not get it back.

I met up with a friend, another Kyoto JET, during the week just to blow off some work steam.

Here's my story:

I found myself, yet again, stuck in the porn section of a Japanese video store.

I know, I know, for a guy who hates the stuff so much he sure does find himself immersed in it quite often. Don't think I'm hiding any secret perverse joy for the stuff - make no mistake, Japanese porn is pure and utter crap. I was there on a mission - not long after my review of Street Fucker, I was alerted to the existence of a sequel - Street Fucker Dash. Or, I guess Street Fucker Turbo if it'd ever been brought to America. While the actresses were different, it seemed to have the same Ryu, Guile, and Fucker Honda. The appeal of unintentional comedy was too strong, and I once again found myself in The Wastelands.

I did not find Street Fucker Dash, and I'm certainly not going to ask about it. What I did find though, was an entire shelf devoted to Monburan. If you'll remember correctly, Monburan was my student's porn actress of choice when given 5 minutes to create an English skit. Not wanting to leave empty handed, so to speak, I grabbed the most normal-looking title I could find, and took off. I decided to watch this with the girlfriend, it seemed less weird that way.

It started off innocently enough. In the porn, Monburan was reading a dirty manga, and imagining herself into the scenes. The first scene was your standard horny high school girl/somewhat reluctant male teacher stuff. "This is bad" he says, "we really shouldn't be doing this." Right buddy. You're not exactly doing a great job of shoving her off. I have to say, my student has terrible taste in porn actresses. This Monburan isn't even that cute, and she's got a horrible set of fake tits to boot.

Anyway, onto scene 2. In this scene, she's wearing some kind of custodian uniform and cleaning up a couch. Some old Japanese guy comes in and starts ordering her around, making sure to flip up her skirt and take liberal feels here and there. And so on and so on, you all know the drill. BUT! The scene stops midway as Monburan expresses her distaste for this particular setup. "Shit! How disgusting! Like I'd ever grovel for such a dirty old man! It should be the other way around." The scene changes. Now, Monburan is leading the same old guy around by a leash tied to his neck. She forces him to do stuff to her, all the while calling him dirty names even *I* wouldn't reproduce here. This was already a turn for the highly disturbing.

But if there's anything I've learned about Japan while living here its that when you think you've hit absolute rock bottom, grab your shovels and start digging, gentlemen.

The Ghetto School has many problems. It would be hard to isolate just one. But I'm going to focus on the one that's currently bothering me at this very minute.

There are three ninensei girls who I have dubbed "The Three Stooges." To put it bluntly, they suck. They stopped going to class, so now they just roam the hallways, and hang out in the teachers' room and be loud and generally annoying. I can't call them the worst students, but since they're so hard to get away from they are the most annoying.

And now, a quick rundown of the Stooges:

Moe - This girl is the ring-leader, by far. I think it was her influence that made the other two as bad as they are now. As an ichinensei, she never did her work - just sat in the back of the room, glared at the teacher for 50 minutes, and in general copped a bad attitude. Now we'd be lucky to get her into a classroom at all. While she doesn't necessarily have the real Moe's violent disposition, she is a Wheelchair Girl-caliber Nasty Bitch. Seriously, all she needs is a wheelchair and a taser to complete that transformation.

Super Power - This girl is simply the loudest creature to have ever existed in the history of the universe. Every time she laughs, my ears bleed. I think I'm only hearing half of her actual laugh though, the latter half is probably only audible to dogs. She even puts Noisy Fucker to shame. Yes, it's that bad. The next time I want to talk to my parents back in the states, I think I'm just gonna have her stand on a coast and shout my message across the Pacific.

Larry - She's probably the least annoying of the three. As a ichinensei, she was rambunctious, but never that bad. At least, not before she became friends with Moe. I get the feeling she would have been okay if it hadn't been for the company she runs with. Sad.

Super Power - Has the ability to get out of anything/everything by simply saying "darui!" (tired/sluggish). The teachers sometimes get her into a class, and she lasts approximately 2.47 seconds before saying "darui!" and escaping to the nurse's station in the teachers' room. She doesn't take any tests either.

Of the three, I feel her abilities are the most useful. Man, I wish I could have gotten out of class/tests so easily when I was in school. It's a power that would even be of great use now.

Sometime around 2nd period, Ms. Americanized asked me if I was good at handcrafts. I told her I wasn't in particular, but I could get by depending on what it was. She told me she wanted to make a phone. We were going to have ichinensei's class 5th period, and they were doing the phone call lesson. She wanted to have a phone as a prop. I told her I had some old cell phones at home we could use, but she dismissed the idea. "I want it to be really, really fake looking. That's funnier. Everything has to be funny."

This was the end of my creativity. She however, found a cardboard box, and over the course of an hour, made two phones - a big, bulky throwback to the "portable phone" boxes of the 80's, complete with a sliding antenna fashioned out of two chopsticks taped together, and a sleek, flip-top cell phone. They came out pretty decently, and were a big hit with the students as she'd hoped. The impromptu project also succeeded in keeping the two of us entertained for a whole class period as she made them (Japanese productivity at work Ladies and Gentlemen). Who'da thought two grown adults could have been so easily entertained by a cardboard box? I mean, it's not like - hey look, something shiny! Wheee!

Ahem. Anyway. Before the ichinensei's class, we had a sannensei class. Much like we'd done before, we took a model conversation from the textbook, and allowed the students to create a skit out of it using their own ideas. This time, the model conversation was talking about famous people. Unfortunately, this year's sannensei aren't as creative as last years, so we didn't get any "open your buttcrack" calibur skits. We did get this one though.

Boy 1: Do you know Cameron Diaz?
Boy 2: Cameron Diaz? Who is she?
Boy 3: She is the girl in Charlie's Angels.
Boy 2: Let's see, you mean the blonde one?
Boy 1: Right! That's her!
Boy 3: I think she is very pretty.
Boy 2: I think so too.
Boy 1: But, do you know (Ms. Americanized) at (the Ghetto School)? I think she is the most beautiful woman in the whole universe.
Boy 3: Yes, I agree.
Boy 2: Yuck! I can't believe that.
Boy 1: She is great. But, I want to eat her.

Now, "I want to eat her" holds two different meanings. Me being the dirty bastard that I am, by default I first thought of the dirty, sexual meaning. It floored me, until I realized, of course, that this boy was merely talking about eating Ms. Americanized like a food, not, well, you know. I am a horrible person. Worse than my students who want to ingest their own teacher.

Boy 2: No, you can't. She is mine.
Boy 3: How could you eat her?
Boy 1: Well, I could make sashimi.
Ms. Americanized: No.
Boy 1: Or, we could boil her.
Ms. Americanized: NO.
Boy 1: Or, to fry her could be nice.
Ms. Americanized: NO!
Boy 2: Yes, it sounds delicious!
Boy 3: Ok, let's all eat (Ms. Americanized)!
Ms. Americanized: ABSOLUTELY NOT!

I was leaving school one Friday afternoon when I ran into a pair of sannensei girls. I hadn't seen them in a while, so they came over to talk to me. One girl was obviously quite stressed out though. As sannensei, most of their year is devoted to studying for high school entrance exams. They quit their school clubs halfway through the year so they can double up on cram schools. And as the tests loom closer, their stress levels get exponentially high. For these two girls, they had entrance exams the following Monday, so they were particularly freaked.

As usual, I tried to reassure them by telling them they were good, smart kids, and I was sure they'd do fine on their tests. The one girl though was wigging out beyond all belief. "No, I'm going to fail. I'm sure of it. Maybe. Well, I might have a chance. But come to think of it, maybe not. Or -- argh! It's too stressful. I just want to kill myself."

Jesus Christ, that's not funny.

I told her she shouldn't even joke about that kind of thing. "Well, it's true," she says. "Maybe I'd be dead, but I'd be stress-free and happy." Note to Japan: you all need a vacation. Right now. Just drop whatever it is you're doing, and board the first plane to the Bahamas. Do not come back until you are three shades darker, and don't even know what the meaning of the word "overtime" is.

Actually, I think Japan is way past this point. They should just dump the purest, strongest weed in the water supply. Grind it up and sprinkle it in the rice fields. Drastic measures are needed.