Chapter 23: CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

"Well David, how did your first classes with us go?"

"Mostly enjoyably But my morning class was quite frustrating at times . . . ah, Madam President."

She waved her hand. "Just call me Fumie when we are speaking English and there are no students nearby. I went to a college in the U.S. and learned to enjoy American informality. Quite a pleasant relief from Japanese formality. Now what frustrations did you have? With the students?"

"No, they were enjoyable . . . um, Fumie? " Except for the few boys. But not even they disturbed the class. It was that damned . . . oops, sorry."

She just laughed. "Don't worry. I often use the same words when I'm angry, too. So what was so damned frustrating?"

"That damned classroom behind mine! Their teacher kept leading them in choral responses so loudly that I had to stop my lesson until they finished. Only to have them start up with a new one a minute later forcing me to stop again. I like to teach one student at a time. But I could only get through less than half of my planned lesson thanks to all that noise!"

She frowned. "I think that's Brad again! I warned him to be quieter on his first day. Now I'll warn him again for you."

"I'd really appreciate that. But he ended his class a good thirty minutes early. So the rest of the time I could teach my class my way, one on one."

Her frown deepened. " Oh? So he's even cheating us on his hours taught, is he?"

"Yes. I was just going to tell you. He very definitely is. And those quotes he's making them repeat. I mean 'May I help you' is OK. But starting it with 'Oh you look lost' misleads the listener into believing he or she is talking with someone who is quite fluent in English -- which your first year students, I hate to say it, definitely are not."

"I agree. They definitely aren't. Anything else?" She was taking notes now.

"Yes. The 'Oh thank you' I have no problems with. But learning to say it with that 'You Japanese are so kind and helpful' seems like unnecessary overkill that will confuse the students."

"I'll warn him about that, too."

"And one more thing. In between those loud choruses that made me completely stop my class for, I could still hear Brad explaining to his class what each chorus meant. But he was explaining to them in Japanese -- very bad Japanese, I might add. Don't you want us native speakers to always speak in English?"

"Very definitely yes!" she said, writing a very long note about it.

"Well you don't have to worry about me on that score. I've learned to never speak Japanese with my students or even let them know I can speak it. Unless it's an absolute emergency, which has never happened so far."

Fumie nodded. "I'm glad to hear that. Now do you have any questions about our school?"

"Yes. Very many. But the biggest one is why are there so many girls and so few boys?"

She leaned back in her chair and sighed. "The Japanese 'distinction' -- never 'prejudice', mind you -- between a male's roll in society and a female's. A man's place is outside the house, while a woman's is inside. Even the honorific word for wife, 'okusan' means 'the person within'. When I was a teenager, my parents told me that after I graduated from high school I couldn't go on to college because I was a girl. Or even junior college because that still would be very 'unladylike.' Many of my friends had to quit after middle school because they were girls."

"And yet you went to college."

"Yes. But in the U.S. Not in Japan. I had a really big fight with my parents about that. They told me they had already hired -- and nonrefundably paid for -- a professional nakado matchmaker to find me an 'appropriate' husband who would teach me my role in life as a woman and as a wife. And therefore, instead of going to college, I must be give them lots of grandchildren as was my duty as their eldest daughter. Absolutely terrified, I just up and left them. And then did everything completely on my own. But that's a long story we can talk about later."

"And yet almost all of the students here are girls. And they are going to a junior college."

"Times are slowly changing here in Japan. And my goal in life is to make them change even faster. That's why I bought this school and aimed it at girls. The owner before me tried to aim it at boys and went bankrupt. So I could buy it very cheaply from him."

"But you'd think the boys would be even more motivated to get ahead. Mine today sure weren't. And there were so few of them."

Fumie shook her head. "They are here because they couldn't pass the entrance exam to any four year college and very reluctantly came to us."

"But why were there only half the number of boys listed in my attendance book for the second year class than my first year class? Did they drop out?"

Fumie nodded. "Most of them drop out to get a paying job. But a few, a very few, because they finally passed the entrance exam to a four year college, which becomes more difficult each time you try. The Ministry of education subtracts a certain number of points for each time the candidate has already taken and failed the exam before."

"That seems backwards. I mean, shouldn't they get more points for spending an extra year studying for the exam?"

Fumie shrugged. "Try telling that to the people in the Ministry of Education. They live in their own totally closed-off world. Most of them are men and the ones at the top are all men. But now I have a question for you. You say you like to teach one on one. What do you mean by that?"

"Well up until now I have been teaching at a direct method school where I'm literally teaching one on one. But I think I'm beginning to learn how to adapt it to classes of thirty or forty. If I'm not disturbed by those damned choral responses again."

"Hmm. The direct method? I've heard of it but don't really know what it is. Maybe we could talk about that at our next meeting. Is meeting every Tuesday after classes all right with you?"

"Fine with me. I'd really enjoy learning more about college age students here in Japan. Up until now I've taught mostly middle age business men. They -- or more likely their companies -- are about the only ones that are able to pay for true one on one teaching."

The next day was my day off from the junior college, and John needed me to teach some classes. After classes we went out drinking as usual.

"John, I can't believe the differences between the students here and the students at the junior college I'm teaching at now. They're so young and most of them are girls. Some of them are quite good at English, too. And many of them are really cute to look at during the lesson."

"What about the boys?"

"Absolutely hopeless. All they know is how to say is 'I not know.'"

"That's strange. In my classes at the college that I was a part-timer for, it was usually the boys that were the best students. And there were a lot more of them than there were girls."

"That's because you were teaching at a four year college, with a grad school to boot. As Fumie, um, that's the president, told me they're the boys who couldn't get into a four year college and they've sort of given up on life. Tell you the truth, I don't like teaching them very much."

"How is the president? Fumie, I think you called her?"

I nodded. "She's really nice. And very informal when the students aren't around. And she speaks English like a native speaker. We're going to have private meetings with each other every Tuesday after class. Me to learn more about Japanese college students and her to learn about direct method teaching."

"Sounds like you've got it pretty good, Dave."

"Yeah. But why does Brad -- that damned teacher in the classroom behind mine -- just have his students keep repeating the same useless sentences? Doesn't he know his students aren't really learning to speak English?"

"Got a theory about that. Want to hear it?"

"Yeah. It could help."

"Well first, it's easy. You don't have to think at all. Monotonous as hell maybe, but you can get paid a lot more for doing it."

"How so?"

"They can teach thirty or forty students at the same time. With all that tuition money the school gets from the students, they can afford to pay their teachers anywhere from two thousand to . . . well I've heard of as much as four thousand yen an hour."

"My God! And I'm getting paid less than a thousand yen an hour here to teach one on one!"

The day after, it was back to my first year students in the morning. But this time Brad didn't start his class on time. His students began chattering among themselves but not loudly enough to disturb my class.

About nine-thirty Brad must have come in because all of a sudden, his class once again exploded with,

MAY I HELP YOU?

But this time nowhere near as loud, allowing me to continue with my class without stopping. Then came the,

HERE IS YOUR TRAIN!

And then the inevitable,

OH THANK YOU!

But again nowhere near as loudly, so I could still continue teaching my class. Even with more with more explosions, this time I could get through the part of having my students ask me questions, the part I enjoyed most. I also noticed Brad had eliminated the parts that I had told Fumie I though were misleading. She must have given him a real tongue-lashing before he could start his class today. That's probably why he started so late.

This time Brad continued his class to the end of the period like I did. So when I walked into the corridor, I ran straight into him. If a look of pure loathing could kill, I'd be dead right now!

Well, Fuck you too, Brad!

Submitted: August 02, 2023

Romance romance japan gaijin travel-in-japan japan-1970s

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Comments

B Douglas Slack

Brad sounds like he needs an attitude adjustment. I didn't know about the pay differences and their dependency on how many students were being taught at the same time. Sounds a little out of kilter to me. Hope David get a break.

Bill

Sat, September 2nd, 2023 10:06pm