Archive for the 'Funnies' Category

The Head Hancho

Published by Bob Sanchez on November 17, 2008 in Baseball, Funnies and Lessons. 3 Comments

Yo, did you know that “hancho” is a Japanese word? I didn’t until I got on the horn a few weeks ago with a man from one of the Nippon Pro Baseball teams.

He’s an older Japanese gentleman who spent some time working and studying on the East Coast, losing his job after a company named Federal Express bought out the smaller shipping company for which he worked.

Mr. Shipping returned to Japan and began working for a famous Japanese shipping and transportation company that happened to own a baseball team. Now he does more work for them on the baseball side of operations. His is an interesting but not uncommon route to becoming a Japanese baseball team’s manager of international affairs.

Unlike some other “international” guys, Mr. Shipping speaks English very well and is an extremely learned man to boot. I imagine that he would be an excellent JEOPARDY! contestant, as he never fails to sprinkle a few of the latest headlines and add a dash of old-fashioned wit to each of our conversations.

Once, I was asking him about a player in whom my club was interested, and found that his Port City . . . Longshoremen . . . held an option on his contract for 2009. The option gave the Longshoremen rights to the player within Japan, but he was free to sign with an American club in the event that there was interest.

I pressed on with more questions and found that the player’s wife had a lot of weight in the final decision, and my one-yen cell phone was burning up with all of the great information I was getting.

However, I asked one question too many, and Mr. Shipping responded in a delicate, smooth tone:

“Well, Mr. Mac, I do believe that what you’re asking me could be considered what you call ‘tampering,’ if I’m not mistaken.”

Though delivered in nearly accent-free English, he couched the comment in the typical Japanese layers of politeness and indirectness. The above phrase is very close to what spoken Japanese sounds like, especially when you’re accusing somebody of something.

I was as surprised to hear the word come out of his mouth as I was that I had crossed the line. So many times on this baseball journey, I have learned that I don’t know as much as I think I do about business and the way things work in the game.

We get words like “tampering” and “option clauses” on the television sports reports, but I would surmise that most people don’t know what they really mean. I know that I have thrown words around the concepts of which I was sure that I knew.

I was standing on a land mine in front of Mr. Shipping because I didn’t stop to think about what I was doing; I never thought that I would come close to committing an unethical business practice.

His tone was calm and he gently coaxed me out of the mess into which I had greedily stumbled. Our relative ages and experience left no doubt as to who held a higher position, but he assumed the upper hand so gracefully that he was easy to listen to and learn from.

I apologized tensely and took the lesson to heart, and he followed up with what could be described as a verbal muscle relaxer:

“So, I got it right, didn’t I? ‘Tampering?’”

Instant relief shot through my body and I almost dropped the phone. I chuckled and confirmed that he had indeed knocked that one right out of the park.

On another occasion, I called him to ask about an impending rule change for foreign scouts in Japan. An industrial league player named Junichi Tazawa is making huge waves right now by attempting to become the first scandal- and hardship-free Japanese player to play in the Major Leagues without first playing professionally in Japan.

There are plenty of young Japanese players ahead of him in the minor leagues who may get there more quickly, but Tazawa is a highly sought-after pitcher and officially asked not to be drafted in Japan for the second straight year. He is the banner case, the poster child, the final unwelcome wake-up call to those who want to protect Japanese baseball from evil, foreign predators.

NPB and the amateur leagues freaked out and slapped a multi-year penalty on any player, including Tazawa, who refuses to play in Japan first and goes abroad instead. Should they try to return, they will have to sit out two or three seasons, depending on the circumstances upon their departure.

Among other suggested measures was a registration system for MLB scouts, and I assumed that other, more stringent regulations would accompany such a system. In short, I was worried about my status in the country and with my club in the event of a rule change.

The day of the draft passed, Tazawa went untouched, and the penalty will be enforced for the first time. But there was no news on the MLB scouting registration. I wanted to know what was up, so I gave Mr. Shipping a ring.

He let me know the particulars from the NPB meetings and it sounded like there was nothing to worry about. My club does things on the up and up and we already have all of the pieces of proof and approval that we would need should the rule go through.

Mr. Shipping continued with the minutes of the meetings:

“You know, there were some problems a few years ago with some people posing as scouts or agents in order to get contact with our amateur players,” he explained.

“One man made false business cards and distributed them to high school coaches in order to gain access to the players and their families. Another disguised his voice on the telephone and tricked team officials into giving him free tickets.”

The whole while, I was giggling inside because Mr. Shipping is very meticulous with his pronunciation and his diction is a little stiff, but never incorrect as far as I’ve heard.

He uses so many official-sounding words, yet with his warm tone makes you feel like you’re sitting on the opposite side of a campfire from him, with a marshmallow on a stick in one hand and a mug of hot chocolate in the other.

“You know, I think that NPB simply wants to make sure that scouts are actually doing work at these games. So many of our [Japanese] scouts have been caught at the games with their friends, their families, their concubines - ”

I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I didn’t wake up that morning in Kochi, Japan expecting to hear the word “concubines.” Come to think of it, “mistress” is probably the only word (of the many we have for that . . . position . . .) he could have used there that wouldn’t have made me laugh.

All in all, I like calling Mr. Shipping because I get good baseball information from him, but he usually manages to enrich my day with some polite conversation or an eclectic bit of knowledge.

A few Japanese teams have shut down toward MLB guys thanks to the “Tazawa Problem,” and it’s refreshing to still have at least one official on your side. I’ve been hung up on, snarled at, ignored, and banished to the left field corner for scouting in the last two months. All of it makes me sad that my team isn’t interested in Tazawa, that might make some of the shoddy treatment worth it.

But Mr. Shipping and the other representatives of the Port City Longshoremen have been gentlemen since Day One.

Back to “hancho.” I think he made the comment in reference to that player’s wife, something along the lines of “she’s the head hancho in their home.”

He paused after he said it, and asked, “Do you know ‘hancho?’ It is an old Japanese word.”

He asked me to guess the origin and the characters used to write it, and I was searching through the Rolodex for matches to “honcho” because I had always seen it spelled that way in English. “Honcho” would have the long “o” sound in Japanese, and I came up with a pair of characters.

“Wrong,” he said gleefully. He then explained that a “han” is a squad or a patrol, and “cho” means “long” but is often used to refer to the head of a group or department (the words for “manager,” “department head,” and “principal” all contain the same “cho”). The word came from way back in ancient wartime Japan.

I instantly recognized “han” from the CSI episodes that make it over here. They’re called the “Chemistry Investigation Squad” in a literal translation, or “Kagaku So-sa Han” for those of you keeping score at home.

So there you have it. The origin of “hancho.” And the story of Mr. Shipping, the best ambassador of Japanese baseball and the head hancho of international relations in my book.

Game On, Clothes Off

Published by Bob Sanchez on October 28, 2008 in Funnies and Observations. 2 Comments

“Hello, my name is Mac. I teach across the street at that technical high school and I love baseball. I help out the baseball team on Thursdays and Fridays by hitting fungoes and-”

“Wait a minute, I know you,” said the sharply-dressed man sitting to my right. “Do you remember me? We met at Poka Poka Hot Springs!”

It was hard to place him at the spa, because he hadn’t been wearing that smart, pinstriped suit and tie, nor had his wrist been adorned by a silver watch as it was now. If I had indeed met him at Poka Poka, then we had probably been stark naked.

“You said the exact same thing to an old man there,” the young man continued. “Then I jumped into the conversation. I remember it perfectly.”

I still envision memories organized like a Rolodex in my mind, and I doubt that I will ever digitize no matter how much technology improves. I spun the wheel, sent the white cards and blue tabs flying through the defined circle, and searched for his face and voice and for that experience.

Aha!

“It was raining, wasn’t it? We were on the outside patio and that old man was laughing at how much I was enjoying the rain,” I offered to the young man, who nodded excitedly.

“Well, I’m sorry my self-introduction isn’t more varied or thrilling. Nice to meet you with clothes on!”

Laughter bubbled up from around the room where about fifteen young people had gathered to get briefed about our upcoming day with Mountain Man. We were in the midst of going around the circle and introducing ourselves when Banker, the young, alpha male-type in the suit, interrupted me, sure that he had seen my face (and so much more) before.

Interestingly, that night at the hot springs was significant not only for the rain and conversation, but because I had seen a former student of mine and had been unable to identify him for lack of clothing. Apparently, it works both ways.

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Japanese people most definitely have less shame about their naked bodies than do Americans. The same elements exist between the sexes, but the familiar rules dissipate when it’s all dudes or all gals (so I’ve heard . . . ).

One can observe the most obvious examples of this behavior in public baths and hot springs, where one enters, strips, enjoys the facilities, rinses, repeats, dresses, and returns to the rigid, clothed world.

Many a foreigner has entered the bath house for the first time and been squeamish and hesitant to remove each and every article of clothing. It would be interesting to take a poll and see which is more embarrassing to them - being seen naked by strangers or being seen naked by friends.

I had no such choice upon my first experience. I went with two women, one of whom I would eventually have a relationship with for two years. When we arrived at the mountainside resort and strode up to the spa area, they peeled off to the right, and I went to the left alone.

A note: mixed, public bathing is a possibility, although I have never been to a hot spring that allows it. I’m not sure that would be such a great thing, anyway.

Once in the men’s area, I realized that I knew very little about how to bathe in public the Japanese way and had no familiar faces to ask. To the Rolodex I went, going back to second-year Japanese in college where I’m sure we brushed upon the subject or watched a video about hot springs. Wait, that was a short scene from Mr. Baseball with Tom Selleck.

Get nude, shower, then bathe. Since you have cleaned yourself with a shower, there is nothing creepy or dirty about sitting in the same water as a bunch of other guys. Make sure the hand towel you carry with you doesn’t touch the hot water, and you’re golden.

Most men hold the small towel strategically so that it’s covering their bits and pieces when they are not submerged. I didn’t know this that first time, and I slung the towel over my shoulder and strutted around like a peacock. It didn’t matter much as I wasn’t that interesting to the few other old men enjoying the hot spring.

In general, the bathers are so relaxed that they hardly acknowledge each other’s presence. I have never encountered awkwardness or staring, and I now love these hot springs so much that I’m probably oblivious to any sideways glances or shielded whispers.

During the winter, I go at least once a week, usually on Friday nights to give myself a pat on the back for making it through another week of cold. On one such occasion, I ran into the members of a Korean professional baseball team on their way out of the hot spring. They trained in Kochi in February and I had gone to watch them practice and take notes. I cursed my luck for missing the chance to talk with them and get some information.

As luck would have it, a coach had lagged behind to take in the sauna one more time, and he came into the dressing room from the bath area as I was prepared to do the opposite. I asked him, in English, if he was affiliated with the ball club, and he introduced himself as the pitching coach.

We chatted a bit about Kochi and free agents, and then I asked him if he had a business card. I followed him to his locker and he presented me with a shiny SK Wyverns card while I passed mine over to him. I doubt that that will be the last time I exchange business cards with someone in the buff.

So, this convention exists in Japan and is a favorite topic for Japanese in “How do you like Japan?” conversations. It’s not so hard to understand - they believe that communal nakedness breaks down boundaries and fosters open communication. They also believe that about alcohol. It’s a pity that you have to get naked, drunk, or both to make connections with some people.

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The lax attitude toward showing skin appears at school quite often, and I am still taken aback when it occurs in more and more unexpected situations.

Last year’s seniors had a few extra classes after the final exam, and the few that showed up were hopelessly infected with senioritis. I couldn’t fathom why we would hold classes for them, but it was my job to come up with something for them to do. I had them write down three good memories and three bad memories from their three years in high school.

Of course, there were some very interesting responses (”One time I had to leave a midterm to go use the bathroom, and I used up all of my strength in there so I couldn’t stay awake for the last half of the test”).

More than a few IT students recounted the snowball fight they had had on their school trip to distant Matsuyama the previous winter. They went all out, building forts, stocking up ammunition, and planning attack formations. And they did all of that without the aid of winter wear; they attacked each other on a snowbank just outside of a hot spring. They had a snowball fight sans clothing.

Our school does not have locker rooms, but every student is required to change into PE gear when the time comes for their class to take to the gym or the communal ground. Boys simply change in class while girls head out to a shed that houses equipment for the volleyball and swimming clubs.

It’s slightly humorous when a class has PE right after English, because the chimes ring, the students do their Japanese class-ending ritual, and then whip their clothes off and start shouting about whatever sport it is they are playing next.

The few English classes that come right after PE are downright hilarious. The Japanese teacher (female) and I walk in as the chimes are ringing, and half of the students are in their underwear, applying deodorant and body spray, still dispensing the last bits of trash talk from the gym.

As they slowly put their clothes on and take out their English materials, the Japanese teacher takes roll and I stand there shaking my head. One or two boys will always sit there and complain about how hot and sweaty they are and basically refuse to get back into the school uniform.

Japanese teacher: Nakamura, put your pants on!

Nakamura: I don’t wanna. It’s so hot!

Japanese teacher: Everyone else has their pants on. You must put yours on, too. Let’s go, get ‘em on!

Nakamura: (nondescript grumbling)

Mac: (holding both hands over his mouth to stifle laughter)

Come on, when have you ever heard a middle-aged female teacher tell an 18-year-old man-child to put his pants on? I can’t even imagine what turn of events would lead to that verbal exchange in an American classroom.

Lots of boys roll their pants up like British knickers, and several loosen their belts while they sit down. It leads to some interesting situations if I call on a student to come to the front of the class and do something in English. While pants falling down and revealing Roger Rabbit underwear constitutes a nightmare for an American kid, it’s all a joke to these Japanese boys.

Speaking of underwear, Japanese people really seem to like situations where a man ends up in his skivvies or starts the scene or skit in revealing, skimpy clothing. A few comedians have that as part of their shtick, and of course life imitates art.

One of the events for Sports Day featured a few specially chosen teachers getting dressed down and then dressed up by students from each of the disciplines.

A couple groups had elaborate costumes and didn’t want the audience, which numbered in the hundreds of parents and friends, to see the process, so they brought curtains with them and shielded the teachers while they made them over.

Other groups, notably the civil engineers, delighted in stripping the teachers and leaving them out there half-naked while they slowly collected materials and re-dressed them. I honestly can’t recall whether I saw any of my favorite American teachers in a Speedo, but I’d think it would have taken some extraordinary circumstances to get to that point.

I’ve lost count of how many times that has happened in just over a year at this technical school.

The final example that pushed me into writing this piece happened last Friday, Home Day. Each homeroom planned a fieldtrip of some sort and executed it, and they do this twice a year. This is what I’m talking about when I say that this school takes any excuse not to hold regular classes.

I chose to hang out with the wildest of the wild, the not-so-civil engineers, in order to sit back and watch a teacher besides Ms. Inept run the show. They had planned a basketball tournament at the city gym across the street from the school followed by a barbecue down on the banks of Mirror River.

Students ride their bikes to any site within the Kochi City area for sports club practice or events like Home Day. After the basketball, the teachers gathered the unruly students and reminded them to wear their school uniforms and obey the laws of traffic on the way to the barbecue. Then, they turned the boys loose into the streets of Kochi.

Absolutely out of the question at mid-day on a Friday in California, isn’t it? Not here.

We met by the riverside and set up seven small barbecue grills underneath a bridge. The weather was perfect, about 80 degrees, and a cool breeze blew downstream and helped us light our coals.

Following the feast, a few boys brought out hard rubber baseballs and baseball gloves and played catch. I refrained, finally wiser for the experience.

Beneath the bridge and about 50 feet out into the river stood a large cement column supporting the bridge. A couple of boys thought it would be fun to see if they could throw the ball hard enough to make it bounce off the column and return to shore. They failed miserably and two of their balls started making their way toward the Pacific.

They pointed fingers and shoved each other toward the water until one kid finally had had enough. He shed his clothes and stood with his toes hanging over the cement bank, perhaps pondering the safety of what he was about to do.

The other 38 students crowded around, clad in their uniforms, snickering at the boy in his Mickey Mouse briefs about to jump into Mirror River. Old folks and mothers with toddlers passed by as they had been doing all afternoon, smiling and laughing at this harmless expression of youth.

Mickey Mouse Briefs left the ground and plopped into the river. He retrieved both balls and climbed out. Some students had stolen his clothes, but the prank had a fun feeling and I didn’t detect any malice at all.

The class leader thought that it was a fantastic time to take the class photo, so Mickey Mouse Briefs posed in front of the group, holding a ball and wearing nothing but a pair of Mickey Mouse briefs and a huge smile.

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I like wearing my birthday suit and dig the Japanese way of thinking about nudity.

I didn’t see that coming at all. I joined the marching band in my freshman year of high school because I thought I would have to take showers in front of everyone else if I took PE. I had a trumpet that I had gotten as a Christmas present and had taken two, maybe three lessons, but I would skirt the PE requirement if I marched in the band, so I took that way. True story.

I made it three days before realizing that I would have been just as naked goose-stepping around with a shiny trumpet in front of hundreds of spectators as I would have been in the showers changing out of sweaty, stinky gym clothes. I quit, and incidentally didn’t ever have to strip completely during those four years.

An episode involving wine, Munchies, an obnoxious drinking game, and a collapsing table changed my mind during college, but it took that first hot spring experience in Japan to fully realize the joy of removing social constraints and definitions along with my clothes and just chilling out.

I find the Japanese way in this area to be relaxing, refreshing, fun, and natural. Who’s on the next plane over here?

Skits and Giggles

Published by Bob Sanchez on October 22, 2008 in Funnies. 3 Comments

My school does just about anything to get out of holding academic classes. I don’t know how intentional it is, but our class schedule gets pounded and tossed around like pizza dough.

A look at the schedule for the first half of the fall quarter revealed a twisted mess with little consistency or balance. In a regular, Monday-to-Friday, nine-to-five type of week, we teach English to the eight major classes twice each.

We use a textbook selected by the Kochi Board of Education and are required to teach every unit within its cover. Each unit usually takes two days of class, so we’d move through a chapter a week in a perfect world.

Students returned on Monday, September 1, but there was no class. Every time we begin a new quarter or send an old one out, we have to have a ceremony.

Teachers make sure they’re wearing ties and jackets and students wash the dye out of their hair, hem their pants, lengthen their skirts, and generally try to fall within the dress code. Then we all sit in the gym on the floor and listen to the principal, the vice principal, the head of student affairs, the head of student discipline, and a few more heads of various departments give canned speeches about trying hard for the upcoming quarter.

It’s very boring and nobody likes it, and it’s the kind of message that my principals could take care of with a two-minute speech over the PA during fourth period. However, it’s Japanese tradition, and it just wouldn’t do to skip out on the standing, bowing, sitting, sweating, fretting, bowing, staring, snoozing, and bowing that goes on at these ceremonies.

Students exit the gym after the two-hour affair and immediately begin testing in various academic subjects. My understanding is that they are placement tests and progress checks, but I don’t understand the timing. The last thing they did in the previous quarter would be . . . that’s right, the final exam.

Anyhow, this testing takes a whole day’s worth of class time, but since that’s cut up by the opening ceremony on Day 1, we can’t hold class on Day 2, either.

So we finally began lessons on September 3 and actually had eight days of regularly-scheduled sessions.

Then we were met with a three-day weekend (Respect for the Aged Day). Followed by three days of shortened classes so that the major groups could practice their cheering and prepare their murals for Sports Day. Followed by a half-day Friday for career testing, though many individual students were missing throughout the week for the tests.

The Monday after was for practicing the Sports Day agenda, and it didn’t take all day but we didn’t have classes anyway. Tuesday, September 23rd was another national holiday to mark the beginning of fall. We opened up the school to visiting junior highers on Wednesday and Thursday, so the students went to their disciplines and the three Rs (and one E) went out the window. Friday was shortened classes again, but with Monday’s schedule.

The students and staff set up the entire school for Sports Day on Saturday the 28th, and the actual event took place the next day, Sunday. We spent the first half of Monday cleaning up and had very half-hearted fifth and sixth period classes.

Any time the teachers are required to show up on a weekend, they get substitute days off. Most teachers go to school on Saturday anyway for club action or extra study sessions with students, but that’s all off the clock. Events like Sports Day count as days of work, though, so we got a Tuesday and Wednesday off.

October 3 and 4 featured regular classes for the first time in weeks. We got a full week of 50-minute, normal classes before BAM another national holiday (Health-Sports Day) and midterms, which put the school on testing schedule for four days.

In my heart of hearts, I don’t believe that the administration honestly expected us to be able to teach the students anything in time to give them a serious midterm with all of that other stuff going on. I went two weeks between classes with some of the majors, and there was little I could do to preserve continuity between lessons.

The English Department teachers and I saw this coming, so we decided to teach the telephone lesson during the first week of calm and give the students the rest of the month to review the spring quarter and write skits that would be graded as their midterms.

The idea was to have students make a call on the telephone and get into a conversation about various things we had studied previously, such as making plans, giving directions, and talking about school and clubs.

I expected wildly creative, well-written masterpieces of theater, especially given the way that some of my students act out in class. I expected them to think about the skits outside of class time, maybe even take a break from practicing for Sports Day to write a line or two.

In reality, it was difficult to get them to work on the skits even during class time. Half the students were absent for testing or just “resting” (I will translate that as “ditching” if I ever write a book), and their partners used that as an excuse to do nothing in class.

Even the most diligent students allowed their minds and mouths to drift to Sports Day or the career tests, and many of them wrote their skits in Japanese and gave them to me to translate. I translated the scarce amount of extracurricular phrases and kindly wrote down reference page numbers for whole blocks of conversation that we had covered in class.

Sports Day blew over and brought a typhoon along with it. Typhoon #13 threatened to cancel the first day of classes that contained skit presentations, and when it didn’t, we got dozens of uninspired performances by an especially pouty cast.

There were some diamonds in the rough, some chocolate chips in the cookie batter, some crooked numbers amongst the goose eggs . . . ?

A few skits were quite good. One pair of future IT guys stood in as Yasuo Fukuda, the ex-Prime Minister of Japan who stepped down last month, and Taro Aso, his successor and the third Prime Minister in the last three years:

Fukuda: Hello, this is Yasuo Fukuda speaking, may I speak to Taro Aso?

Aso: Aso speaking, hi Fukuda. How are you?

Fukuda: I’m very tired. By the way, I want you to be the next Prime Minister

Aso: Sure, I was just thinking, ‘maybe I should become the Prime Minister.’

Fukuda: Really? Thank you.

Aso: No problem.

Fukuda: Well, I have a lot of things to talk with you about, so can I see you next Sunday?

Aso: What time?

Fukuda: How about two o’clock at Yoshinoya Beef Bowl?

If only it was that easy!

One pair featured a slovenly fat (non-sumo) kid asking his partner to go with him to a nude beach. Unfortunately, that part was lost on the class, but I certainly appreciated a student of his . . . stature . . . delivering a line like that. I nearly dropped my camcorder when he put on a wicked grin and reminded his partner to bring plenty of sunscreen and a camera.

A couple of guy-on-guy pairs opted to do date situations and took particular joy in practicing the art of rejection. Few students had the vocabulary or control over intonation to do it diplomatically, so they were all curt and unpleasant but made the class bust up laughing for that very reason.

I didn’t realize how funny a nasty “I don’t like you! Do you understand?” could be in the proper situation.

Two civil engineering boys wanted to talk about inviting a girl to a sleazy motel, which Japanese call rabu hoteru (love hotel). I tried to persuade them to talk about something else, but something told me that they would quit the skit and nap for the rest of September if I didn’t help them.

CE Boy 1: Mac! How do you say rabu hoteru in English?

Me: We say “motel.”

CE Boy 1: That’s it? Motel?

CE Boy 2: That doesn’t sound right. Too plain.

Me: Well, that’s it. Your granddaddies are the ones who attached the “love” to it.

CE Boy 1: Come on, there’s got to be something better.

Me: Cheap motel . . . ?

Aside: Granddaddies. Great word. What other word has four Ds in a span of five letters?

The skit that took the cake was an enactment of a phone scam that is on its way out in Japan due in part to increased media exposure.

Ore Ore Sagi (The “It’s Me!” Scam) occurs when a young man calls up some old folks pretending to be their long-lost son or a distant relative and demands money from them. The con-artists pose various scenarios (terrible car crash, loan default, gambling debt with threatening mobsters) and plead with the elderly people for money but usually don’t give a name, simply saying ore ore (it’s me, it’s me).

Then, via the phone, they direct the old people to an ATM and tell them the bank account number into which to deposit egregious amounts of money.

It is a serious problem, and a rash of these calls broke out earlier in the decade. More money was lost in 2004 than any other year ($250 million!) and it is estimated that Japanese people still give about $90,000 per day to these Ore Ore guys.

Why does this work? I’ve asked around and have gotten conflicting answers. Among them:

-Old people aren’t familiar with technology and are comforted by someone leading them through the process of wiring money through an ATM (doesn’t explain how they get to the machine with the hankering to give money to a voice on the phone)

-The old folks don’t want to shame their “sons” by asking for confirmation of identity

I thought that second one was about the most stupid thing I’d ever heard. It’s becoming fewer and farther between, but I don’t have much patience for people who say, “Hey, Mac? It’s me” on the phone. I know that this is the fantastic day and age of caller ID, but it’s just proper to identify yourself on the phone.

I couldn’t understand how someone starting out saying, “It’s me! It’s me!” without so much as a name could entice someone to walk over to an ATM and give them money.

Then I read a couple of editorials written by victims of the scam. One said that someone called as a policeman, saying that her son had been in a terrible accident and needed money to pay off the other party as the accident was his fault.

I don’t have kids, so I can’t very well say that I would have been in the state of mind to put the whole scene together and smell a rat. Someone called this woman and gave grisly details about an accident involving her son. I suppose it’s not a stretch to believe that she didn’t stop and consider why he would need cash right away if he was in traction in the hospital.

Think about it. I know that our legal system works differently and that there is not as much need for CASH NOW when bad stuff happens, but think of what someone could do if they get your mind in a panic about someone you love.

I won’t have nightmares or obsess about it, but I’ll definitely think twice about the way I ask or am asked for money in a pinch.

Let’s get back to my clever students and their “It’s Me!” Scam.

on the phone

Grandmother: Hello?

“Yohei”: Hello, Grandma, this is ore ore speaking.

Grandmother: (confused) Who is this?

“Yohei”: It’s me! It’s me!

Grandmother: Oh, that Yohei who likes cigarettes and gambling?

“Yohei”: Yes, it’s me! I’m Yohei! I got into an accident, therefore I need some money.

Grandmother: Oh no, how do I pay it to you?

“Yohei”: Pay $1700 by ATM at Lawson’s Convenience Store.

Grandmother: I’ll go right away!

hangs up

“Yohei”: Yes! I got the money for a new PC!

A few students took this assignment and ran with it, and they made it worth watching the other 130-odd skits that were lifted from the textbook. I recorded all of them, and I won’t post them here but will show some of the gems next time you are near my computer and me.

Get it OFF Me!!!

Published by Bob Sanchez on September 27, 2008 in Baseball and Funnies. 0 Comments

A veteran Major League pitcher got up in front of my team’s minor leaguers this spring and gave a very inspired speech about the path to the big leagues.

One point that stayed with me was that it didn’t matter what the path was; spending six years in rookie ball and getting called up is just as good as climbing up step by step and making it. The goal is to get to the top, and there are many ways to do it.

This fellow went on to have the best season of his career to date, and I’m glad that I got to see him give this talk in March. His media interviews mean a lot more to me because I saw how focused he was out of the gate, before he won more games and worked more efficiently than ever.

This is the kind of stuff he does with his free time.

Out of Left Field

Published by Bob Sanchez on September 11, 2008 in Baseball and Funnies. 0 Comments

On Thursdays and Fridays, I suit up in a baseball uni and run out to the communal ground to hit fungoes to the players in the baseball club. The students like to see me dressed up and don’t hesitate to ask for my hat or my pants. Not sure what they have in mind with the latter request.

I enjoy helping out, and I don’t do much actual coaching as I am not the manager or even an official coach. I offer encouragement, and I see the players doing things I don’t like or agree with, but I only speak up if something is truly awful or wrong.

They have to run anywhere from one to five miles before practice, and the coaches typically run with them. I say that I’m grading papers or helping students to duck out of that, but I go home and change clothes and then jog to school (almost a mile) so that I show up sweaty like everyone else.

They do some very strange drills, like fielding ground balls with a rubber tire strapped to each infielder’s back, pushing said tires back and forth across the ground after fielding, playing leap frog, and carrying each other on piggyback across the ground. The point is to get exhausted, and they succeed at that every day.

The players are out there until 7:30 or 8:00 every night, and I have never stayed that late, but I have passed by on my bike and observed them in the fourth hour of practice. About half of all that time is spent doing nothing, screwing around, or “preparing” for the next activity. “Preparing” consists of pushing dirt around with a wooden stick and playing grab-ass until the coach yells at them to get back to work.

The other half of the time, they are swinging bats and fielding balls, but it’s done without much energy or enthusiasm. I can’t blame them, I wouldn’t want to move if I had to run three miles and do a hundred sit-ups before practice, either.

Certainly not how I would use practice time, but I don’t think many high school kids would like my idea of good use of practice time. I just show up, hit fungoes, and run back home in time to catch the pro games on TV.

Today, we couldn’t use the deeper reaches of the outfield because some seniors were practicing their cheers for Sports Day coming up in a few weeks. Batting practice offered a familiar scene - ten outfielders clumped together in three groups, standing back on their heels and arguing over whose turn it was to chase the ball that just went by.

I decided to walk out there and teach them what I think position players should be doing during BP. It’s not a difficult concept and very easy to employ if you decide you want to become a better player.

If you stand at your position every day and watch a couple hundred balls coming off the bat, you begin to build a library of batted balls in your mind. If you’re a smart bear, you’re paying attention and acting like it’s a game situation on every swing, expecting the ball to come to you and moving to the ball when it is hit.

Do this ten thousand times over the course of a season, and you are bound to have sharper instincts. You begin to recognize which swings produce which kinds of batted balls to the point that you know where it’s going to be hit before it’s hit. We’re talking millionths of a second before the ball is struck, but that’s all the time you need to turn a double into an out in the outfield.

It’s conceivable that this instinct could come about after enough time observing passively in the field, but putting yourself in game situations over and over again builds good habits and you’ll get that instinct more quickly.

I suggest that kids focus for five consecutive pitches and take two pitches off, just like a work week. I still think it’s possible to concentrate more, but 5-2 is better than pounding on your cup, staring at the sky, picking dandelions, or talking about who you’re taking to the Prom.

I told all of this to each group and felt that two players understood it. When those seniors stopped their cheering practice, the outfield opened up and I got those same two players for fungoes. Reading a fly ball off a fungo bat is much different than studying BP, but excuses aside, I hit them a whole bucket of balls and they couldn’t have caught a cold.

I walked out there to help them collect the balls when some seniors rode by on their mamacharis. The outfielders snapped to attention, doffed their caps, and bowed to the boys. I recognized them as former baseball club members who, according to custom, “retired” from the club after the summer to focus on getting a job or getting into college.

How long do you have to call them ’superior’ and take off your hat for them?” I asked the outfielders.

“They will always be our superiors,” they said, almost in unison.

“So you’re at a party in 50 years, and you’re still going to call him ’superior’?”

“That’s right, ’superior.’ Say, Mac, do you like boobs?”

I should interject here and explain that the end of the word “superior” and the end of one of the words for “breasts” is the same. So this wasn’t as weird a segway as it seems.

The manager (a sophomore girl) is standing right here, you shouldn’t say stuff like that in front of girls,” I said.

“Oh, sorry. Well, do you like boobs?” the boy persisted.

“I’m not going to answer that.”

“OK. Mac, why isn’t there polygamy in Japan?”

Now things were getting weird. First of all, I didn’t understand what the kid was saying the first time he said it. When I asked him to break down the word for me, I got it: one-husband-many-wife-system. Technically polygyny, but I wasn’t prepared to split hairs with this guy.

Sheesh, kid, I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

“Well, I wanted to know. I heard that polygamy is OK in Africa and wondered why it isn’t anywhere else.”

“…”

That’s me scratchin’ my melon.

Where did you hear that?”

“Junior high world history, I think.”

“Well, what makes you think I would know the answer to that?”

“I don’t know. I just think about this kind of stuff when I’m out here in the outfield.”

So much for my message getting through. I told him that I thought the courage to ask questions was a great trait as a person, but that letting the mind wander in the outfield was not a characteristic becoming a good outfielder.

This is why I keep going to school.

There’s No Substitute

Published by Bob Sanchez on May 10, 2008 in Funnies. 0 Comments

Substitute teaching…oh man, raise your hand if you’ve tried that.

It’s a good precursor to a career in teaching, and equally good for making a little extra money during the day, catching up on reading and crossword puzzles, and trolling the district for young, single teachers.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the junior high and high schools in my home town. The job was never short on surprises or little life lessons. I’d recommend it to anyone who is not in a hurry to join (or re-join) the rat race.

Watching the original Lord of the Flies about fifteen times, conducting a junior high brass band and a high school choir, and tackling gigantic autistic kids are among the highlights of my brief substitute teaching career.

As far as I know, Japan doesn’t have substitute teachers. Quite a few educators are part-time or teach at multiple schools, but I’ve never seen anyone who bounces from school to school, teaching math one day and social studies the next.

This presents a problem when a teacher wants or needs to take a day off. That in and of itself is interesting, because teachers have vacation and sick days, but they are discouraged from using them because of the inconvenience their absence would cause the rest of the staff.

Nobody teaches from periods one through six, and conference periods are many. Teachers aren’t supposed to teach more than four classes a day and usually have about 16 per week. This gives them time to wear the other hats bestowed upon them by the school.

Played tennis in junior high school? OK, you’re the badminton coach. Made the call to a suicide hotline when you walked in on your friend holding a knife to her wrists? Guidance counselor. Constructed a miniature model of Tokyo Tower with nothing but matchsticks, a rotten apple, and a tube of Moroccan toothpaste? Master scheduler.

Then there are the committees. I don’t think they do much, but of course committees have to have meetings and meetings are a very Japanese thing to do.

So when someone wants to take the day off, not only is a math teacher gone, but so is the Athletic Director and the vice chair of the School Rules Committee.

Only one English teacher has ever asked for time off, and it’s usually to take her son to the doctor because he keeps getting ear infections.

The teacher’s classes are covered by other teachers in the department. Even though I don’t have a Japanese teaching credential and therefore can’t legally teach a class alone, I took a few of her classes on those days and handled them just fine.

Some departments only have one teacher. At our industrial school, music and fine arts are just there to keep the PTA quiet about requirements, so there’s one art teacher and one part-time music teacher who is pregnant and misses a lot of days.

Her classes get shuffled around the staff, and I always hope that they’ll ask me to do it because I think I’m up to the task. I drop hints about it and I’m on the piano every day at lunch, but so far no dice. All I’m good for is English.

The responsibility landed on Coach Napoleon last week and he tried hard to pawn it off, but nobody would take it. The usually gruff softball coach showed a weaker side, whining about how he couldn’t read music and didn’t know what to call all of the “toys in the box” (percussion instruments used for teaching rhythm).

I took a peek at one of Coach Napoleon’s music classes, and it was comically awful. He stood before the students with a defeated look on his face and pointed at the blackboard while the students clanked castanets, shook maracas, and lamely tried to produce the rhythms written on the board. I imagined that he could be further out of his element only in an English class.

It’s an interesting system. We have uncertified people teaching classes for the day on both sides of the Pacific in completely different ways.

From the students’ perspective, the Japanese teacher is someone they know and trust, but the students also know that this person isn’t cooking in his own kitchen. The American kids never know for sure just what the sub knows, but also have no idea who the person is. Anyone with a college degree can stand up there and do it - prospective teachers, wafflers like me, or complete weirdos.

This one is too close for me to call. Both ways work, and either way it would be better if the real teacher were there. I don’t like the pressure to avoid taking days off here, and I don’t think that the teachers do, either, but I’m just a temporary guy and they are here for life, so they accept it.

Coach Napoleon

Published by Bob Sanchez on February 28, 2008 in Funnies. 0 Comments

Allow me to introduce my favorite member of the staff at our wonderful school. He is the boys fast-pitch softball coach, the vice chairman of the student advisement committee, and a geography teacher. In that order. Which is one of the reasons why I like him so much.

As his name suggests, he’s a small guy with a bit of a complex. He’s about 5-foot-5 with a barrel chest, dark suntanned skin, and a shaved head of black hair. His mouth is quite large for his physique, and from it comes a symphony of snide remarks, abrupt commands, and genuinely good advice.

His desk is in my row in the teachers’ office, but faces the opposite direction. Nonetheless, I can hear him drressing down students in his dirty Kochi dialect and see him openly surfing the Internet during work hours, searching for the latest and greatest softball gear or for interesting baseball news.

As a coach, he has built the most reputable softball program on the island. Good players want to play for him, and all players respect him. He makes the best use of practice time that I have seen in Japan, and that goes for all sports and all levels. He drills and teaches the players adequately and in a way not too different than the American style, yet manages to have his players run and do ridiculous amounts of sit-ups so as to keep it distinctly Japanese.

He is often on the phone setting up practice games and his team does a lot of traveling. They placed eighth in the national tournament last summer and could have advanced but for three fly balls that the center fielder (and team captain) dropped in the quarterfinal game. Coach Napoleon comes off as a hardass, no doubt, but he was fittingly empathetic toward that poor kid who will probably remember nothing else more than those awful errors.

As a ranking member of the student advisement committee, he is an unforgiving rule-monger and unleashes his wrath on any slovenly student that dares to show his face in the teachers’ office. Unfortunately, students in Japan have a right to come to school and can’t be sent home or punished very harshly, so there isn’t much that Coach Napoleon can actually do to enforce his beloved rules and the kids know it. However, for what it appears to be on its face, students bow their heads and agree with everything he says. They never talk back to him, which is more than can be said for their level of respect for the other teachers.

———————–

A typical breakdown:

———————–

Student: Excuse me, Coach Napoleon?

Coach Napoleon: What are you doing here? Can’t you see that I’m busy?

Student: Oh yeah, excuse me for interrupting at this busy time.

Coach Napoleon: That’s right, and don’t you ever forget the proper greeting again. Whaddya want?

Student: Um, I need you to sign this, uh, sheet that says I was absent with the, um, uh, the flu last week.

Coach Napoleon: Well, were you sick or weren’tcha? Talk like a man, dammit! None of this mumbling “uhhh, the flu” garbage.

Student: Um, sorry.

Coach Napoleon: Hopeless. When’s this thing due – after school today? As in right now? What’s the matter with you, bringing this thing to me right before it’s due?

Student: Yeah, uh, I guess it is a little late.

Coach Napoleon: Damn straight. No respect for people’s time, I tell ya. Well, I’ll sign it, but I won’t like it. You and your flu…(more muttering)…Now get out of here and stop bothering me.

Student: Thanks.

Coach Napoleon: Whoa, boy! Where’s the proper salutation?

Student: Oh, yeah. Excuse me for interrupting.

Coach Napoleon: What a mess…

———————–

These are my favorite:

———————–

Student: Excuse me, Coach Napoleon?

(insert same opening dialogue regarding the proper way to approach someone of higher authority)

Student: Um, I’m applying to get into XYZ College, and I was thinkin’, uh, could you, maybe, write a letter of recommendation for me?

Coach Napoleon: And what would I be raving to the college about, your lousy performance in geography class? Or the way you sleep and play cards during English?

Student: Ahhh…..well, you see, it’s due on Friday and–

Coach Napoleon: What the hell do you think I do all day, sit here and wait for requests to write letters of recommendation? Geez, that only gives me two days to try and think up lies to tell XYZ College!

Student: Well, that isn’t much time, is it?

Coach Napoleon: You’re damn tootin’ it’s not much time. And look at you! Are you going to your interview with that ratty bedhead and those pink shoelaces? Buckle your belt, son!

Student (during the vitriol): Yes…yes…yes sir…yes…

Coach Napoleon: Oh, you’re on your way. The good people at XYZ College are going to love those shoelaces. Buncha lousy, no good…(unintelligible muttering as he snatches the paper away from the ragamuffin student)

———————–

Many students really are hopelessly sloppy and lack proper teachers’ office etiquette. Granted, the amount of respectful speech due a teacher is over and above anything Americans would expect, but these aren’t magic rules that Coach Napoleon decided to create yesterday; these kids are supposed to have been learning them for the past six years.

One sophomore girl avoids him at all costs, and she’s smart to do so. I would call her The Alien because she doesn’t resemble an earthly being, Japanese or otherwise, but I settled on Cakeface instead. She wears so much foundation that an earthquake would knock down the school before it ruined her face. She probably pays as much per month for her eyelashes as I do for ice cream. Her color lenses are this shocking, ugly brown color that wouldn’t even look good on a cat.

Coach Napoleon has a particular disdain for female students who continually break the rules about makeup, earrings, hair and eye color, and skirt length. He organizes special assemblies for the girls to harp at them and tell them that they look like clowns, and I can’t disagree with him.

Cakeface was taking an English test the upcoming weekend and her English teacher shuffled her off to me for practice for the interview portion of the test. These sessions are particularly painful for me because I am against the Japanese/Asian approach to standardized testing, which is all about results and not about knowledge. Students can robotically recite correct answers to questions in the book, but completely freeze up if I ask them what they’re doing this weekend.

Anyway, Cakeface approached my desk for the first time and shrunk back in horror as she got within a few feet. She pointed behind me to Coach Napoleon’s desk and said, “You’re right next to Coach Napoleon. Can we do the practice somewhere else?”

This was a perfect opportunity for me to whip out my Coach Napoleon impression which, to be honest, I had practiced a bit when nobody was looking.

I smirked at Cakeface and said, “What, are you afraid he’ll see you and say, ‘You, with that clown face and short skirt. You goin’ into your interview with those eyelashes and your hair piled up on your dome like that?’”

Every teacher in earshot fell over laughing hysterically, so I guess I nailed it. She grimaced and sat down to begin practice. A few minutes later, Coach Napoleon blustered into the room and stopped in his tracks when he saw Cakeface.

Unfortunately, a diatribe in the native Kochi tongue was not to be, as his mere presence was enough to get his message across to her for likely the thousandth time. He slumped into his chair and hunched over his desk, poring over some papers while Cakeface squirmed in her seat. So it went every day for the rest of the week.

I don’t feel sorry for these wayward students one bit. Coach Napoleon definitely cuts deep with his words, but what is a sixteen-year-old girl with a hiked-up skirt and painted face asking for? What will become o