Archive for the 'Observations' Category

Ninety Skirts, No Parties

Published by Bob Sanchez on December 13, 2008 in Lessons and Observations. 0 Comments

The fair name of our beloved vocational school got dragged through the mud this week in several newspapers and on television.

A 39-year-old science teacher in our ranks was arrested last week for taking voyeuristic pictures and video of high school girls at a local mall. The ensuing investigation revealed that he had collected ninety such upskirt shots and had begun to sell them on the Internet.

Perhaps the most embarrassing part of it all was that he was caught during working hours; it was after school at around 4:30, but the teachers’ contracts stipulate that they are to be at school until 5:15.

It was kept out of the press until he was arraigned yesterday, one week after being caught, and then it appeared on the evening news and the following day’s newspapers. He had already been fired from his post at school.

The effects of this “scandal,” as it is being called, are far-reaching. Starting with the offender, he may have jail time ahead of him, but at the very least his career as an educator or any kind of public employee is finished. He will be required by law to detail his termination on his resume and will likely get passed over everywhere he attempts to find work.

His family will suffer for years both economically and emotionally. The neighbors will whisper, point, and tsk-tsk. His young children will grow up and face bullying and taunting as offspring of the guy who peeped at high school girls. The teachers will not do much about it because naka is all up to the students.

I can see all of this, minus the naka part, happening in the United States. Teaching involves trust. Betray that trust, and endure castigation and ostracization. Lose your job. Hurt your family.

Here is where it started to get Japanese.

The timing of the press release interested me. The incident occurred on a Thursday and we teachers knew about it on Friday. The principal called an emergency staff meeting, which was easy because students had finished final exams and returned home at midday. We got who, where, when, and a little what, but not much else.

We were instructed to sit on this information and await the press release. I wondered when that would be; a teacher caught doing something naughty with a sexual flavor to it certainly makes the evening news that very night in the States. You might even expect to see some handcuffs, grim expressions, and flashbulbs.

In Japan, however, people seem much more worried about what others think about them and the entities to which they belong, and they take exhaustive measures to protect and project positive images. Our school’s reputation was going to take a dive, and I think that the media threw us a bone by waiting for the arraignment.

The story ran in the local paper and cracked the back pages of a couple of West Japan regional papers. No headlines or subheads contained the name of our school, and the articles seemed carefully crafted to minimize the damage to the school, mentioning the name in the second paragraph well after the meat of the story was uncovered in a long lead.

A generic pronoun for “that school” followed rather than an abbreviation of the school name, however that is a fairly common practice in Japanese newspaper writing.

The principal called an emergency assembly first thing in the morning of publication, and all 800 students gathered in the second-floor gym. I took my usual place at the very back of the gym and immediately noticed some differences from the normal procedure.

As always, a low, ornately-carved table sat on the distant stage, a microphone protruding from its center. This day, however, there were no lights on the table or anywhere else on the stage.

The principal, vice principals, department heads, and various others who give long-winded speeches at frequent assemblies do so from behind that table on the stage. It appeared from the outset that that would not happen on this day.

The principal appeared and shuffled wearily to the front of the gym, shoulders stooped and head bowed. The warm air hung above our heads and seemed to choke us with our own expectations, and indeed the air had an unseasonably moist, heavy feel to it.

He paused at the stairs leading up to the stage, and very conspicuously chose to continue walking along the floor, on the same level as the seated students. The students stood rigidly and bowed in unison to the principal, as is custom at every assembly.

Out came the grisly details, and an excited buzz zipped across the crowd at the first mention of the word “skirt.” The student body, about 80% boys, was obviously not as solemn as the principal and teachers.

Then, the principal apologized to the students and faculty, bowing deeply at the waist and holding his head down for a full second before rising up slowly. I could see an American principal apologizing to students for the grief and stress of such a situation, but our principal’s apology carried with it a sense of his personal responsibility.

In the break room after the assembly, the art teacher and I sifted through the day’s newspapers. I was about to ask her about the principal’s choice to deliver the message from the floor when he himself walked into the room. I decided to ask him directly.

I phrased the question to him as respectfully as I could, yet casual speech still tumbled from my mouth. I quickly fixed the mistake but saw that there was some damage done.

The principal took a long look at me, sighed deeply, and explained that it wouldn’t be right to report such news from under the lights and behind the grand table. This was a disgraceful event in the history of our school and he could not bring himself to talk about it in the same place from which he handed out awards and diplomas.

The art teacher shot a sideways glance at me and mentioned right then and there that I should not have asked the principal such a brazen question. I began to play the foreigner card, saying that I merely wanted to confirm what I had guessed about the symbolism, but I gave up halfway through the lame explanation.

The principal’s body language told me that he agreed with the art teacher. She was right. It was an easy question, and I believe in asking the easy questions, but I had not considered that answering that question would dig up the humiliating feelings for the principal.

However tactless my inquiry, I got an answer and learned more about just how much I have to consider what others think and feel in Japan. It’s never a bad thing to empathize or think about the person across from you, but the rules are stricter in this country.

What stands out to me is that Japanese people are so mindful of what others think about their actions and appearance. There are many ways to describe the “others” whose opinions and perceptions shame a person into behaving a certain way. Ideally for them, if a person is thinking about doing X, then it is all about what X looks like to those around that person.

The case continues with our annual end of the year party. Japanese companies, schools, and clubs hold parties in December, and a direct translation of the name of these parties is “forget-the-year gathering.”

We were all ready for a rootin’ tootin’ good time, a real shindig, a big blowout. On the Monday following the upskirt incident, we found envelopes in our desks containing the money we had put down on the party.

I hung around teachers all week trying to hear opinions about the cancellation, and gathered that we, as teachers of this disgraced school, cannot be seen whooping it up in large numbers so close to the scandal. Heavens no, those mysterious “others” would not have it.

“What are those teachers thinking about?” the “others” would scold. “They should show more remorse.”

Japan is a society that apologizes for everything. You apologize for knocking someone off their feet, for surprising them, for bothering them even though it is their job to serve you, for receiving something from them no matter how piffling, for things that you don’t think are your fault, and for things that are most definitely not your fault.

Things like a co-worker spying on young girls at the mall.

What that has to do with the rest of us having a good time and celebrating our work in 2008, I do not know. It certainly sends a strong message that one person’s actions drastically affect those around him. It is foreign to me because we operate more on personal guilt in the United States while shame is at work in Japan.

Either way, one man’s actions have destroyed a career; ruined life for a family of four; deprived a school of a science teacher, field hockey coach, and school newspaper advisor; caused harm to that school’s good name in the community; caused undue grief to fellow staff members at that school; compromised the privacy of at least ninety high school girls; and caused a loss of thousands of dollars to a local banquet hall.

Other opportunities have sprouted from the ashes of this calamity. A part-time long-term substitute teacher is getting work and getting paid, and a local Italian restaurant is getting some much needed business from the remnants of a nameless school’s forget-the-year party courtesy of string-pulling by a nameless English teacher.

Perhaps there are more developments in the making. I am certainly taking advantage of this bizarre situation to learn as much as I can about the society in which I live and work.

Keys

Published by Bob Sanchez on November 6, 2008 in Observations. 4 Comments

I went to a Halloween party last Friday night dressed as a baseball player. I had authentic gear from the team I work for, so the other guests were impressed and thought it was cute that I was such a rabid fan.

However, I couldn’t help but think that one disadvantage to moving abroad is that you don’t have ready access to an attic or a place to store everything that you grew up with.

I mean, if I was living on the West Coast, I’m sure that I would have some wigs, a false beard, an Austin Powers mask, and that rubber cast that I wore on my arm one day and got everyone to sign and worry over in high school.

Yes, I’m sure that some of those things would be tucked away somewhere convenient.

Anyhow, I went to the party as a ballplayer and hosted two friends for the night at home. I woke up the next day, saw them off, and suited up for a bike ride, but I couldn’t find my keys anywhere. Since I hadn’t locked up my bike, I was still able to go for a ride, so I left the apartment unlocked and took off, thinking that I would find them later.

Funny how missing keys would be a huge, drop-everything-and-fix-it-now problem in the States but not at all here. I wasn’t worried at all. I have stuff that I would not like stolen, but I never worry about it. I don’t lock my door half the time, which is why I can’t be 100% certain that I even had my keys with me Friday night.

The more eyes are around, the more people will act like they are “supposed” to in countryside Japan. That means leaving things as you found them, properly disposing of trash, and not stealing people’s stuff, among other things.

There are a lot of discarded household electronics, vehicles, and other trash in the mountains, but there aren’t any eyes there. In other words, I’d feel more anxious about leaving my bike, say, in the mountains with a flat tire or broken wheel, than I would leaving it in front of my apartment building in the city.

I started to worry when I couldn’t locate the keys after tearing up the apartment. I looked everywhere, including the trash, the toilet bowl, the laundry machine - no keys. I went back to the restaurants from Friday night with the same results.

I was all ready to try out lock-changing Japanese style, but then my keys fell out of a stack of baseball programs that I had lifted up and moved around at least three times in the search. It was very strange. I hadn’t touched the stack of programs or brushed them with my arm, gravity had just taken about 72 hours to do its work.

The situation reminded me of a story from not so long ago. What do you know? Another tale from Fukushima . . .

I was riding home from work a few Fridays ago when my keys fell out of the cell phone pocket on my backpack and onto the road. I was on a big hill, so I had to trudge back up to get them. Before I could reach them, however, a car ran them over and bent ‘em all up.

It figured that they wouldn’t work in the lock on my apartment door, but I had to try. My last class on Fridays is located across town, but it’s only one class in that location, so I usually leave whatever I don’t need at home. After trying to jam my keys into the lock to no avail, it slowly came to me that I was totally screwed.

My cell phone, wallet, and money were all inside the apartment.

Amazingly, I didn’t feel the need to hurl the useless keys to the ground as would be my expected reaction to such misfortune. I thought about calling the boss, but they don’t like me very much because they know I’m quitting, and I don’t want to owe them anything more than I have to, so I put that option next to sleeping in the park all weekend.

I thought about calling a friend, but all of my phone numbers are in my phone and I don’t have any of them memorized, so that wasn’t an option. Amazing, huh? I used to be super phone-number guy, but then I joined the human race and got a cell phone.

It was Friday night and almost 9 p.m., and they roll up the sidewalks very early here, so I had to get moving if I didn’t want to sleep at the foot of a Japanese shrine all weekend. I went to Yama-chan, and I hadn’t been there since July because of how expensive it is. The Mama-san told me that there was a key-fixing place a few towns away and that they were open until 11.

I wasn’t sure if it was going to work, but it was worth a shot. First of all, I had no money and no way to get any (bank card was in my wallet). I had no identification, so if they had any doubts as to how I got my hands on those keys, I wouldn’t get them copied. And, I couldn’t call anyone to vouch for me if the above situation happened.

I was literally nobody from nowhere. And that’s a scary thing when you add to it a foreign language and culture.

Thankfully, the lady at the key place took my mangled key and ground it up, and did it for no charge! I asked how much it cost, and she said “It’s a service” in Japanese. That was a relief, because I was prepared to leave everything I had, including my clothes, as collateral if I was required to pay.

This was a great experience because I got something done quickly and exactly the way I wanted it done. The way it happened even exceeded my expectations. And it was simple, when I needed it most. For all the harping I do about how difficult it is to get things done here, I’m glad that this one time it was easy.

I swelled up with pride after triumphing in the key fiasco, because they don’t teach you how to say “A car ran over my keys” in Japanese class, yet I managed to communicate that calmly and efficiently to everyone who needed to know.

I immediately started downplaying the significance of it, because what would you infer from someone waving a gnarled key in front of you and speaking in broken English? I probably could’ve done it all without saying a word.

Finally, I decided that it was indeed a great accomplishment and that I handled it well. Communication happened, there were no breakdowns, and there was a relative minimum of hand-waving.

I made the key lady and the Yama-chans American-style French Toast to thank them for their help, and presented it to them the Japanese way - apologizing profusely for inconveniencing them and saying that my paltry little gift was in no way equal to their wonderful deeds of kindness. Something like that.

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?

Naka

Published by Bob Sanchez on October 15, 2008 in Observations. 5 Comments

Naka. It’s one of those Japanese words that doesn’t have a good, single English translation.

“Relationship” would be closest for me, but it seems to be that with an element of exclusivity. It’s as though naka acts as a dividing line between those who are privy to the relationship and those who are not.

If you got naka, you’re in; if you don’t got naka, you’re out.

I’ve seen a few examples of naka at work lately and think that there is seriously something to it for Japanese people.

A pair of national holidays, school visits by prospective students, the opening ceremony and testing for the fall quarter, and the school’s Sports Day were all set to wreak havoc on our teaching schedule for September.

I suggested that we review the spring’s lessons and give the students the whole month to come up with skits to present to the class in lieu of a paper test for the midterm. With such an inconsistent schedule coming up, there wasn’t anything else to do short of showing them episodes of SpongeBob Squarepants every day.

The English teachers liked the idea and we went with it, but there were some problems.

Most of the classes have a good naka. That is, they work well together, treat the classroom as a safe space, accept and embrace their shortcomings in English and enjoy learning during our lessons.

A couple classes have a terrible naka, and I must say that it’s only the classes that have both boys and girls in them (most of my classes at this vocational school have no girls in them, a few others have one or two). The Interior Decorating class in particular is about half and half, and they shut things down for English.

In regular classes when it’s time to do a pair activity or make groups, the Interior students do not move from their seats. If they are not physically right next to someone with whom they have a good naka, they will lower their eyes and stare at their books.

It’s incredibly immature and lame behavior for high school seniors, but that’s what we’re faced with in some classes, so we elected to pair students up “at random” for the skit project. I truly left it up to chance for the classes with good naka, but for the awkward ones, I paired the loudest and best speakers of English with the scary-quiet ones, and fate took over for the students in the middle.

The classes with good naka howled with delight at some of the pairs that came out of the hat and got right to work creating their skits. Their effort and enthusiasm fell off as the events of September came and went, but they wrote their skits and performed them dutifully.

The Interior Decorators sighed and slumped into their chairs for the most part, but a few complained vociferously. One girl came right up to the teacher’s desk at the front of the classroom and nastily said, “Mr. Mac, we need to work with people with good naka.”

The poor girl with whom I had paired her (”randomly” as far as she knew, recall) was sitting right there in front, eyes glued to the textbook but ears wide open. The dividing lines of naka were so obviously drawn that, to the students, there was nothing inappropriate about airing them out with words.

I refused and told the students that they would have to grow up and work with their classmates. Had I left them to their own devices, there would have been four or five pairs and thirty students sitting and staring at their books. This project needed to get done and arranging pairs was the only way to make sure that it happened.

They eventually settled down and got to work, and the Interiors presented the best skits of all by leaps and bounds. So much for naka. I wonder what it will look like for the rest of the quarter.

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The Civil Engineering class has a great naka, almost too good, because they are too excitable to do any kind of group learning. The teacher is hopelessly inept at keeping the class under control, and I am not allowed to do anything about it because I’m not a full-time teacher. Anyhow, the boys are very energetic and will emerge from our English class with a mouthful of handy phrases if not the ability to put a conversation together.

Something happened over the summer and one boy was cast out of the group. He routinely sat at his desk with his head down, and when I went by and asked what was wrong, he said he was merely tired. As he was the former captain of the basketball team (seniors “retire” from their sports clubs over the summer of their senior year), I thought he had just hit the floor a little too hard.

Ms. Inept informed me that his naka was not good with the rest of the boys, that they had banished him for some reason. She referred to the naka as something she could not and would not control or look into.

As American high school graduates, I’m sure that we all had classes where things weren’t so great between classmates. There always seemed to be one on the schedule, one where I was ripped away from the people with whom I felt most comfortable, one where I had to switch into survival mode in sixteen-year-old terms.

On the contrary, Japanese students are with the same group every single day and every single period for three years. They sit in the same classroom and the teachers rotate around, teaching a lesson at a time. There is no escape from the group, so being outside the naka is a much bigger deal to them than it would be to an American student.

This is where the famous collective thought is born and raised. The Japanese education system teaches students to do whatever it takes to be happy and harmonious in the group. Progress, actual education, and growth are all group projects, not the individual things that they are in the States.

Now, get a couple Japanese guys out for beers and they are just like anybody else on the planet. I’ve never been inside of a Japanese company in Japan, so I don’t know what happens in adulthood. I am not implying that Japanese people are incapable of thinking for themselves, just that the group dynamic is an extremely strong force for them.

Back to Civil Engineering - one student is going through hell for whatever it is he did over the summer, and the English teacher won’t step in and do anything about it. That bothered me, so I asked around and the boys’ homeroom teacher gave me the name of one student who didn’t mind talking to the basketball captain. They would be “random” partners for the English skit project.

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And so it seems that this naka is at best comfortable and at worst a vicious concept out to divide insiders and outsiders.

I had the opportunity to go on a group date, which is a very Japanese activity that falls between a blind date and speed dating. One guy and one girl conspire to arrange the group date, each one inviting the same number of friends, none of whom have met the others.

In the end, you have a number of guys who are all connected, and the same number of girls across the table who all know each other. There is only one link between the two groups, and the two who have already met are not out to date each other.

I’ve heard a lot about these group dates (called gokon) and have long wanted to participate in one. I met a college student who loves talking about girls and trying to date them and I have been trying to get him to invite me to a gokon.

He was concerned that I didn’t know any of his friends (there’s that naka again), and there wasn’t much I could do to speed things up and get invited. Finally, last weekend, he arranged a four-on-four gokon and invited me when one girl and two guys failed to show.

I rushed over to a Korean barbecue joint and walked in right after the introductions. Three attractive young women sat on the opposite side of the table from my buddy and one of his baseball teammates. I introduced myself and got right down to business, chatting it up and making the night lively.

We didn’t play any of the ice-breaking games that I’d heard about, and it’s unfortunate because most of them end up with the guy’s face in the girl’s chest or with variations on that theme. It was simply me starting up conversations and watching them fade as I took a sip of beer or a bite of meat.

My friend informed me that at a usual gokon, the participants eat quietly and look across the table from time to time. If they make eye contact with a cutie, they quickly look away and continue to eat. Make eye contact a couple times, and there’s a chance.

This sounded far too ridiculous to be true and I looked at him to make sure he wasn’t pulling my leg. It seemed like telepathy was necessary to make anything happen.

He was dead serious when he said, “We do the talking once the naka gets good.”

I asked when that happens, and he couldn’t give a concrete answer. It was some process that I was disrupting with my very presence.

However, when I talked to the girls, and even when I talked to the guys, for that matter, nobody was uncomfortable and they actually engaged in conversation. I learned that the fun and games usually happen when the group goes out to drink more or sing karaoke after eating at the restaurant.

We didn’t get to do that as we started eating at 11 p.m. and two of the girls had work the next day. Once they left, the guys marveled at how direct I was with them. They said it was like I swaggered in and said, “Hey, toots! Like me, right now!”

I don’t spit ill game (or whatever the kids call it), I just like to talk and meet women. I get the feeling that I experienced a gokon on the lukewarm side, and I was surprised to see naka make an appearance in what I thought was a casual situation.

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I will continue to observe the concept of naka. I’m sure that Americans have the same feelings about relationships with people, but I’ve never heard anyone verbalize it quite the way that Japanese people do.