Wash Your Mouth Out With Soap!

I had dinner with the English department of the high school the other night. We invited our new principal because before he became this high-ranking school official, he was an English teacher, just like the rest of us.

The evening started out a little awkward. My fellow English teachers and I never get together in a small group like that. And on Monday, we had the added pressure of sitting in a tatami room with our new boss, the big cheese.

I think there was also some strangeness because I was there, and everyone felt they had to speak English. After all, we all speak English fluently but, only four of us speaks Japanese fluently. So, people passed a few phrases back and forth in both languages, but I'd say that half of the conversation was in good, solid, understandable, English. I felt included.

And it just so happens, it was too much of a good thing.

The problems started when our new principal was licking his lips after finishing his third beer of the night. He started telling me, in English -- which let me remind you again, everyone in the room understood -- that he's worked with countless ALTs and has dealt with many of their problems. He was for a few years, a key player at the Education Center in Nagasaki prefecture. This happens to be the office which places ALTs in their current positions and fields many questions and complaints from JTEs and ALTs alike. He told me he could call the current man in charge and get him to ignore my application for a transfer. He holds that much power, he said.

I thanked him kindly for his offer and the compliment of wanting me to stay on Ojika for another year, and tried to broach a new subject. There was no moving him, however. The only new flavor he added to our conversation was of a sexual tone.

Among some of the gems of the night, he told me he had been to an onsen with a male ALT and really wanted to see his (and I quote!) "special place," but couldn't because the Englishman wore a towel the entire time. He told me about countless games of yakyuken (a game like strip poker) he'd played with a female ALT at his former school. (All the while he kept pulling his shirt out at the chest and raising his eyebrows. All the moment was missing was a cat call and a hubba-hubba.)

But, the most shocking moment of the night came when he taught me a "Japanese proverb," as he called it. He grabbed my notebook where I keep copious notes of new language I hear in day to day life and in social situations and wrote something about the ocean and a toothpick. I assumed, as almost anyone would, that he was referring to the English proverb, "needle in a haystack." It fits, right? Well, by this point, the three other Japanese English speakers in the room were horrified. They just flat out said, "Never say that. Never." I couldn't figure out what was so bad about an ocean and a toothpick. One is very useful and the other is very beautiful. Together they couldn't be of much harm, could they? Not enough, surely, to be emphatically told by my co-workers to never mutter something so vulgar.

I didn't get the gist of my boss' meaning until he started making a sexual gesture with his arms. He started pumping his left clenched fist into a hole he made under his right arm. Over and over again. By this time, I started cataloguing my brain for every possible way to move away from this conversation and fast. I still remember the clenched jaws of the other teachers in the room and grimaces. We were all watching a train wreck. The train was kocho-sensei and I was who he was running head long into.

After managing a four-hour dinner with the man, I can't say all was bad. Who knows why his tongue was so loose that night, but I heard from on of my JTEs that our principal asked if he'd said anything too embarrassing that night. My co-worker didn't have the heart to tell him all that he said, so he reminded him of the strip-poker story and left it at that.

Along with the highly sexual conversation, my new principal also told me about some rather serious situations ALTs had either been confronted with or gotten themselves into, and how he helped out. It's obvious that he cares very deeply about making foreign teachers feel comfortable in Nagasaki prefecture. He also talked about he and his wife have no children and how he's made it his side work to find people love. He said he likes to find mates for his un-married co-workers and he's tried about twenty times now. His first and only success will get married this July. That, I couldn't help but like. However I didn't like it when he told me about the second marriage he'll attend in July. His friend, a hostess at a snack bar, is getting hitched to a customer. And he felt he had to preface this with, "It's not me! It's not me!"