by Tim Anderson
The meeting seems to go on forever. Several speakers take the podium, each bringing his own overhead projector sheet onto which he writes his main points. As my head bobs and I and the rest of the listening audience begin to slip into eternity, the chief speaker calls Mr. Takeda over to talk about the new English class he’s spent so much time organizing.
Mr. Takeda takes the stage and enthusiastically explains these new classes. Then he pulls out some of his own overhead projector sheets, and I begin to wonder if I was supposed to bring some. The first one gives the days and times for the classes, and the cost. As he speaks, people glance coyly over at me and smile, embarrassed if I catch them looking. Mr. Takeda quickly moves on to the next sheet he has prepared, which gives information about me, the teacher. I continue watching Mr. Takeda as he talks until I begin to hear tiny eruptions of giggles coming from the audience of shirts and ties. I look up at the overhead and see why.
Up on the screen is an information sheet about me, including some personal details like teaching experience, nationality, and hometown. But it is the accompanying photo that has people giggling. It is not a picture of me; Mr. Takeda never asked me for one. (I swear to God it wasn’t on my list of things to do.) No, the black and white image staring out at those sleepy-eyed company folk is, spectacularly, Bruce Willis, circa 12 Monkeys. Admittedly, it’s a more appropriate choice than, say, Posh Spice, but I am a little sad that Mr. Takeda didn’t consider a full-color glossy of a shirtless and oiled-up Brad Pitt circa Fight Club to be the logical substitute.
“So,” Mr. Takeda says to the audience, switching to English, “I would like to present you to Mister Tim Anderson-sensei!”
There are a few lonely claps as I take the stage, the ghostly, sweaty, and shell-shocked face of Bruce Willis shadowing me in the background. It’s been a long time since I last stood in front of this many people, and it’s been absolutely forever since I stood in front of this many Japanese people. I stammer a bit and say, in Japanese, “This is a little scary,” which gets me a few chuckles. Actually, I’m not sure if I said, “This is scary,” “I’m scared,” “I’m scary,” “You’re scary,” or “This is scared.” But I get a few chuckles.
Then, continuing in Japanese with sweat beads covering my face and body, I introduce myself, make a few short statements about how long I’ve been in Tokyo (“I’ve lived in Tokyo first year”), how much I love Japan (“I love Japanese things!”), and at Mr. Takeda’s request, I say one thing in very basic English using words and phrases I think everyone will understand: “I’m looking forward to having exciting English lessons and making a special program for nice conversation and enjoyment!”
This country is ruining my English.
Classes start the next week. The students are chosen in a company lottery, and the lucky winners for my first class are seated with notebooks open, and pencils poised and ready for action when I walk in, sweaty and breathless from my dash from the train station through the soupy humidity of the city.
I generally like to open the floor to questions at the beginning of a new class. Mr. Takeda has told me that, for most of the students, this will be their first time meeting a Westerner; consequently, they’re very curious about me and bursting with queries. I pretend I’m Carol Burnett telling the A/V guys to lift up the lights at the beginning of her show.
“Anybody have a question? Yes, you. Please say your name and where you’re from.”
“Yes, hi, I am Hiroshi from Tokyo. Why do you come to Japan?”
“You know, I’m really glad you asked that. I came because I love noodles and weird skyscrapers with fast elevators. [Laughter.] Anyone else? Yes, you. Hi.”
“Hi. I am Kobayashi. I am from Kawasaki. You like the women?” There are some questions I’d rather not be asked by straitlaced, straight-faced Japanese men in the first five minutes of class, and this is one of them. Hmm. Let’s see, now. How do I answer this convincingly?
“Yes, of course!” I say with a wink.
“What kind of the women to like?”
So Kobayashi from Kawasaki wishes to continue his line of questioning.
“Well, I like beautiful women.” Everyone nods in agreement. “But I like strong and smart women too,” I add, pointing to my brain. Kobayashi looks unsatisfied. I think he wants names.
“For example?” one of the students, Yukihiro, asks with a mischievous grin.
Ugh. Now I have to think of someone famous who embodies these very qualities. I wrack my brain.
“I like Angelina Jolie,” is what comes out. How can you go wrong with Lara Croft: Tomb Raider? There are a few nods.
“Me too,” said Yukihiro. “She has very big mouth.”
Everyone nods again, a little more enthusiastically this time. I’m not even ten minutes into the first class and already I’ve created a sexually charged classroom-funny, because, in my heart of hearts, I really wanted to say Dolly Parton, but I hadn’t wanted to make things too weird on the first day. (And then we’d just be talking about boobs.) And anyway, the important thing is that the gentlemen are all at ease and comfortable, and one certainly must be relaxed when one is learning how to order alcohol in a hotel bar in New York, which is the role play I have planned for today.
Class continues with no major screw-ups, and each student successfully orders the cocktail of their choice by the end, with me as their bartender. I throw in a few curveballs (“I’m sorry, we’re all out of martini glasses; can I put that in a paper cup?”) just so they don’t get too comfortable, and I think everyone enjoys the supreme discomfort of having to sit in front of the class and pretend to order booze in front of their fellow students, who are all laughing at them.
Naturally, we go drinking after class, and I teach them drunk English. (“Highball me!” “Lite beer is for losers!” “Dude is wasted.”) They treat me with an interest and respect that is strange and undeserved, yet really addictive. Sometimes it seems like they ask me all the questions they’ve always wanted to ask an American but never had the chance, like “Do you have a gun?” and “Do you love Meg Ryan?”
Junichiro, a fifty-something silver fox of a man who plays guitar and is a huge Led Zeppelin fan, asks my favorite question of the evening. During the lesson I explained to them that some verbs we rarely use in the progressive (“-ing”) form-verbs like “have,” “like,” and “love.”
“For example,” I said, “we don’t say, ‘I am having a pair of glass slippers.’”
This declaration seemed to bother Junichiro and, after a few beers, he’s lubed up enough to address the topic again.
“Excuse me, Tim-sensei, I have question,” he says.
“Junichiro!” I rejoin as I put my arm around him, my belly filled with three beers and quickly absorbing a fourth. “Call me Tim-san! We’re friends!”
“OK,” he laughs. “Tim-san. In Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant is saying ‘since I’ve been loving you.’ But you say we no can say ‘loving.’”
“Wow, that’s a really good point, Jun. Can I call you Jun?”
He tilts his head as if to say, “I’d rather you didn’t,” and laughs.
“Well, I’ll tell you, and not many people know this-Mr. Plant had to get special written permission from the queen to do that.”
Junichiro tilted his head again as if to say, “You’re shitting me” or “Speak more slowly and less slurry.”
“But,” I continue, taking another swig of Asahi Super Dry beer, “you know, she was a really big Zeppelin fan, so, you know, it was cool.”
After a few more rounds of drinks (none of which I have to pay for) and innumerable toasts made in my honor, I declare to my students that our next lesson will be at a karaoke box and that everyone should be sure to bring their tambourines. And I promise to sing “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”
Meanwhile, my classified ad has borne fruit. A woman contacts me about teaching her children. Being deathly afraid of children, I was at first reluctant to take on the job. They-children-are always plottin
g against me and/or making inappropriate comments about my hair, my glasses, my clothes, my speech patterns, and/or my sexual preference. But then I reconsidered, thinking I could charge a nice price for private at-home instruction. So money talked, and my ears were pricked. Besides, though I fear them, I’m pretty good with kids. They like it when I cuss in front of them.
I experience a rude awakening on the first day of the job. You see, though I am a revered and admired superstar at my business classes, basking in my students’ unshakable interest in me and all that I have to say, the children I will be teaching couldn’t give a good goddamn that I am a native English speaker from the exotic country of America.
Their names are Kai, age thirteen, and Daisuke, age eight, and they have just returned from the U.S., where they lived for about three years while their father was on an assignment for IBM. They know a good bit of English already, but their parents are worried about them losing their speaking skills now that they’re back in a completely Japanese environment. Kai and Daisuke do not share their parents’ concern.
Since they have just returned from spending three years in the U.S., having an American tutor isn’t so exciting for them. In fact, I can say with complete certainty that I am of absolutely no interest to them whatsoever. For three years, they went to school with Americans, lived next to us, ate our food, watched our television, played with our toys, read our books and magazines, and wore our clothes. They went to our ugly strip malls and Walmarts and realized how fat we actually are. To them I am not an entrancing enigma, a handsome stranger from the West. I am just another white guy. So when I try to get them to ask me questions about myself during their respective lessons, a warm-up technique that never fails to work with students who haven’t spent much time away from Japan, it falls flat.
“Who are you?” Kai asks.
“Why do you come to here?” asks her brother.
And since they spent a lot of time with American kids, they have also picked up some expressions that I am not used to hearing from my other Japanese students. For example, “give me a break,” “that sucks,” “aw, man,” “you suck gorilla butts,” “what’s your problem?” “no fair,” and Daisuke’s personal favorite, “that’s gay.” One time Daisuke even called me a “nasty old Yankee,” which I would have reprimanded him for severely had I not been crying tears of laughter.
I teach them three afternoons a week. We spend a lot of time reading and working in the grammar workbooks their parents bought from the Kinokunia bookstore. Actually, the first few lessons I spend trying to get them to talk to me without rolling their eyes.
Daisuke at first seems only able to communicate with Legos. Every time I walk into his room he’s on the floor making cars, houses, aircraft carriers, and alien colonies with his beloved Lego set.
“What’s that you’re making?” I say in my kindly teacher voice.
“I no tell you. You no need to know,” he grumbles.
“Come on, tell me, what is it?”
“You have to figure out.”
Towards the end of my hour with him, I’m eventually able to coax him up to his desk to do a bit of reading or grammar, but he always huffs and puffs the whole time, and he usually brings at least two of his Lego creations with him to play with.
Soon his uncooperativeness starts to bug me and I decide to put my foot down.
“Put the Lego robot down, Daisuke,” I command him.
He slams it down and breaks it, then picks it up and puts it back together.
Ugh, I’m not getting anywhere with this kid, I think. I’ve got to show him who’s boss. Looking down at the floor on my side of his desk, I see a Styrofoam gun that shoots out little Styrofoam missiles when you squeeze it. I pick it up and point it at him.
“Drop the robot, Daisuke.”
He puts the robot down, reaches over to his side of the desk and picks up a big-ass toy rifle, points it at me, and pulls the trigger. It goes “rickety ricket rick” and shoots out a rubber ball, which bounces against my forehead. Then he puts it back, picks up his pencil, and does some grammar, every so often looking over at me with a little Japanese smirk on his face.
He finishes two whole pages of grammar exercises, and, elated that I now have some actual proof of work that I can show his mother, I tell him that if he does better next time, I’ll bring him some candy. He promptly writes down for me what candy he likes and hates. I bring treats the next time, and he spends the entire hour on the floor with his Legos. I tell him I’m not going to beg him to do his work.
“Look, Daisuke, I’m totally fine with sitting here and reading my Vanity Fair. I’m not going to beg you to do your work. It’s up to you. I’m not going to beg.”
Forty-five minutes later I’m begging Daisuke to do some work.
“Please, Daisuke, we’ve got to show your mom that we’ve done something, OK? Come on! Just five minutes! Five minutes!”
Thankfully, Daisuke seems to respond to near-nervous breakdowns. He sits in his chair and finishes his vocabulary worksheet.
“Can I have some candy now?” he asks.
“Um, no, Daisuke, you can’t have any candy. You worked for five minutes.”
He picks up his worksheet and makes like he’s going to tear it in half.
I take some candies out of my bag and put them on his desk. Then I swipe the worksheet from his hands and pick the candies back up.
On my way out of the room a Styrofoam missile hits me in the back of the head.
Kai is a little more mature about things, but no more excited about having to spend an hour and a half after school with an English tutor, no matter how tall and handsome he is. Every day she sits at her desk listless and bored. If I don’t constantly prompt her to answer or move to the next question, she will happily sit silently staring at the page until I slowly disappear from her life.
“OK, what do you think about number two?” I ask, to which she shrugs her shoulders, to which I say, “Give it a try,” to which she then answers with something like, “Had been watching,” to which I say, “Exactly, very good,” to which she says nothing, after which there is a pause, and then, “OK, what do you think about number three?” and the cycle continues.
A few weeks in, I have a breakthrough. Extremely hungover from my previous night’s lesson with my business students, I can’t bear the thought of teasing English out of Kai for an hour and a half. I take the easy way out and ask her about her print-club pictures, the instant photos you can have taken at shopping plazas and game centers all over Japan and that are decorated with titles of your choosing, generally messages like “Happy Camping!” or “Laughing Party!” and always feature at least one cute animated creature waving at the camera from the corner of the photo for good measure. When I ask her if she likes taking print-club pictures, it is a watershed moment. Immediately she is seized with a new energy. Her face lights up, and she seems to float across the room to get her pocket organizer, where she keeps all the stickers. She returns to her desk and opens the organizer.
“This is me and Kumiko at game center in the Shibuya,” she beams. “And this is at mall near to my house. Oh, and this is mall in Shinjuku.” That’s just the beginning. We spend the rest of our time that day looking at and discussing photo stickers of her alone, her and her friends, her and her boyfriend-whoisn’t-really-her-boyfriend-really-but-they-kissed-once, and her friends alone and with their boyfriends-who-aren’t-really-their-boyfriends, all taken in malls and game centers throughout West Tokyo. She never asks to see my print-club pictures, even when I offer to show them to her (I only have two), but I don’t push it. I have just successfully moved our awkward teacher/student relationship to the next level, so I can hardly complain. Plus, I get to learn that Kumiko smokes cigarettes sometimes, plays the guitar, and has talked about going to a tanning salon.
One day, she asks me a peculiar question. “What’s a cinderblock?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because my friend Denise telled me this jo
ke at the summer camp in U.S., and I never understand it.”
“What’s the joke?”
“OK, a girl named Rose ask her father how she got her name, and he say, ‘When you were born, rose petals fell onto your face while mommy was holding you.’ Then his other daughter Violet ask same question, and he say, ‘When you are born, violet petals fell onto your face while mommy was holding you.’ Then his third daughter asks same question, and he say, ‘Shut up, Cinderblock!’”
I explain to her what a cinderblock is, and she covers her mouth and laughs. Then she gets on the Internet and starts translating the joke into Japanese for all her friends.
Seizing on this moment of lighthearted fun, I say, “OK, and after you finish doing that, we can finish this worksheet!”
She pretends not to hear me, and I sit in silence as she click-click-clicks her fingers on the keyboard, telling the sad story of poor, lonely, unloved Cinderblock.
This job leads to another job with a little first grader named Ryuji. His mother works for IBM and knows Kai and Daisuke’s parents, which is how I get the job. Since I’m now on a mission to make children like me, I gladly accept another tutoring gig. Ryuji, his mother, and his grandmother have also just returned from a stint in the States, so Ryuji is continuing his study of English in the same fashion as Kai and Daisuke.
The first day of class, I show up at his house, ring the doorbell, and Ryuji answers the door with a puppy in one hand and a paper airplane in the other.
