Bob Sanchez’ BS

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.