I Have Seen Hell And It Is Full Of Children!!!

This morning, another rainy one, I boarded a train to a station three stops away from the heart of Osaka so that I could attended another Company meeting. I wasn’t looking forward to this meeting. The dark cloud of knowledge hovered above. At this meeting would be the Japanese teachers that have been attempting to get me quickly on a plane back to the land of syrup and snow. Now there was no grand confrontation, all Leone like, guns blazing, because I had already told myself I would keep my normally loose tongue restrained and, instead, do something completely out of character and unexpected. I decided to be friendly. Now, I don’t just mean I decided to smile and tolerate, I mean I decided to be vomit inducing friendly, smiles the size of a circus clown and oozing so much sap you’d think I was a pine tree. You could tell that they were expecting some great fireball of a blowup as they wouldn’t even acknowledge my existence, sort of like what I do with any Patrick Swayze film that isn’t Donnie Darko. There eyes would dart away when I would glance in their direction. Perhaps it was embarrassment or fear of a confrontation or maybe they were just seething inside that I was even at this meeting and not wallowing in sorrow on an airplane over the Atlantic, but whatever it was it made my over embellishment of kindness all the more poignant. The thing is I know I am not going to sway these women to my side. They have marked me, the lines are drawn, and we are on opposite sides. They were not the only Japanese teachers in the room, though. I decided if I could win over some of the other teachers then perhaps the higher ups, should the time ever come again where they need to shower me with lunacy, would realize that wasn’t as terrible as I was being made out to be. With that idea in mind, I brought a bag of tricks, in one instance literally, to this meeting.

The purpose of the meeting was one final group demonstration of summer school, which I will get to in a moment. Here we were to branch off and into little groups, one foreign staff to about five Japanese teachers, and put on a short performance of what our summer school lessons would be like. For these demos I carted along some props. I had a bear puppet, a magnifying glass, some large cardboard markups of some of the lesson criteria, a magic wand and a deck of playing cards. The last two were used to perform a self taught magic trick I had been trying out on the kids. They have loved it and I have enjoyed baffling them with the simplicity of the trick. I wonder if it would carry the same kind of enjoyment in adults. In the middle of my first demonstration I worked it into the mix and they loved it and as the day progressed the normally shy women became less so and my plan started to develop into a success. At the end of the day my supervisor would tell me I received many compliments for my demonstrations and that the women really enjoyed my company. Well, not my own Japanese teachers, of course, they still loathed me but I wasn’t out to wow them. In other words, my friends, mission accomplished.

Summer school comes at the end of the month and is just another one of these surprises with this company that only merits a small grazing in training. Everything I had read about training being the hardest part of the year gets tossed out the window and run over by a dump truck when you find out about summer school. Basically, the parents can fork over more Yen to have their kids take part in five days of extra lessons in the summer. These lessons are a little more laid back then usual, don’t follow the normal curriculum and are catered around lots of props and extras for the kids to keep. Basically, summer school is a big tit sitting out there pumping out more money for the company. A lot more effort has gone into summer school then the regular courses, it seems, especially from the view of training. Whereas I received two weeks training for the main aspects of what I would be teaching I have dealing with summer school related speeches and demos and meetings since March. The lesson materials are more elaborate and they look more professional. We were basically told that summer school is a very pivotal point for parents in their choice to keep paying into the Company. This would explain the jump in quality. Summer school, I have heard time and time again, is very, VERY important. No pressure or anything, huh? Well, not really…not really into you get to the part where the first course you teach has parental participation and you are also expected to teach them to a certain extent then, yes then, there is some pressure. Christ, that wasn’t in the job description. TEACH CHILDREN IN JAPAN, the ad read. It said nothing about TEACH CHILDREN AND TRY TO TEACH THEIR PARENTS FOR A WEEK DURING THE SUMMER TOO BECAUSE THEIR UNDERSTANDING OF THE LESSON LINKS TO WHAT THE KIDS HAVE TO LEARN IN JAPAN. Okay, I thought, I can deal with this. In my first week I sat with the lions, I have been there before, I can do it again. Besides, summer school can’t be much more work then what I do now and…

…and…

…and then I was handed my schedule and saw hell, a hell that was populated with dozens of children sharpening knives and licking their chops!

Remember me writing about the Eliminator, how much I dreaded the Eliminator, how hard it was but how it was only one day a month? Okay, take the Eliminator, add another class bringing five lessons up to six, add parents watching you and multiply that day by four. I knew that I might be working eight straight days for summer school back in April but I didn’t realize that these days could be this packed. There’s more classes in these days then boot shavings and pig entrails stuffed into a Pizza Pocket. My week tapers off near the end but day one and two are six full classes followed by day three and four being five classes. The first two days I get a break in between. The next two I don’t. Even the Eliminator gives me an hour for lunch. And where are these lessons to be taught, where out of my four monthly classrooms do I find myself with this grueling task of teaching four days of the Eliminator? If you guessed the two classrooms where I have no problems at all with the Japanese teachers then you’d be assuming that luck and fate are good friends of mine. Wrongo! The two packed days are at the schools where I am dealing with those scrutinizing Japanese teachers. Despite all this, and although I foresee some burn out happening after day four, I am sure I can survive summer school. I have been eating raw eggs and running up flights of steps to prepare and when I walk into that classroom on day one I am going to blast Eye of the Tiger through the MP3 player, clench my teeth and dive into the whatever. To fight a war you have to become a war. Summer school, let’s throw down!