English Conversation School in Japan — Blog

Sometimes I can’t shake the feeling, the sinking feeling, that my life is little more than the punchline of a bad joke. And when the day comes when I can’t take it anymore, when I cry “Uncle!” and end it all, I suspect that God will be waiting for me. The almighty bastard will give me a friendly jab to the shoulder and say, “Sorry, Peadar[1], I was just feckin’ with ye.”

Looking at my reflection of the darkened window of the subway car, I can see I’m a mess. After what the Almighty Prankster has put me through this morning, it’s hardly surprising.

As the train pulls into the station, my gut rumbles. Nature has been calling for the past half hour and I really should pop right into a toilet and relieve myself, but, I haven’t a minute to spare.

Abazuré[2] couldn’t have been more explicit about being on time. “You cannot be late,” she said at the end of last week’s interview. “Not even once.”

I had arrived twenty minutes late for it. What can I say for myself? I’m human and, well, stuff happens.

“I do not tolerate sloppiness or tardiness,” she said. “Is that understood?”

“It is.”

“Your boss told me that you were often late.”

The bastard!

I admitted that I might have been late a few times over the course of the year. But often? No, no, no. That was an exaggeration. “Did my boss inform you that he had me travelling all over Kitakyūshū in the rain, sleet, and snow? Yes, I may have been a few minutes late every now and then, but I always overcompensated by staying . . .”

“Well, I won’t tolerate you being late even a few minutes,” Abazuré said. “Is that clear?”

“Crystal.”

“Can you promise me that you won’t be late?”

“I can,” I answered wearily.

“Then I’d like you to come again next week. And be there by nine sharp.”

“Nine o’clock sharp,” I said, writing the time down in my day planner. “I will be there. You can count on me.”

And yet here I am, and it’s two minutes of nine when the train pulls into the station. I’m one misplaced step from getting sacked even before I’ve been officially hired.

My intestines do a somersault as I get off the train. I really should head straight for the restroom, but time’s not on my side.

If only I hadn’t taken the slow train. If only I had made the connection. If only . . .

Twenty-six years old and my life is already a litany of regrets.

Climbing up out of the subway station, my gut calms somewhat, giving me a reprieve. It’s the first bit of luck I’ve had all morning and so I quicken my pace, but not too fast. Heaven forbid I jump-start my bowels.

A few minutes later and short-winded, I stand before the foot of the stairs that lead to my next place of employment: The American School. After catching my breath, I climb the steps and introduce myself to a dour young woman sitting behind the counter. She says that Abazuré-sensei hasn’t arrived yet and, gesturing toward the next room, tells me in to take a seat and wait.

Plopping down on a shit-brown vinyl sofa in the lobby, I thank my lucky stars that I managed to get here before the president of the school.

The American School is a bit larger than the dismal little eikaiwa[3] I’ve been slaving away at for the last twelve months, but no less bleak. Like a dozen other private English schools in the city, many of which I’ve had the “pleasure” to visit for interviews before Abazuré finally called me back, there are the usual weathered stencils on the window declaring it to be an “English Conversation School”. There are classes for children and adults. Students, a sign states, may enroll at any time.

There are chalkboards instead of the more common white boards. In the largest of the school’s four classrooms small desks are arranged in a circle. The walls are decorated with the kinds of cheap posters you find at a teaching supply store in the States, and photos cut out of magazines. The lobby has been furnished with secondhand furniture. The sofa I’m sitting on was, I imagine, once in Abazuré’s own living room.

It is, in short, an uninspiring place. If the schedule weren’t so ridiculously easy—only two or three classes a day compared to the five or six that have been teaching—I might have taken up employment at Yeehaw! English School, instead.

Being paid more to work less—that’s what this gig amounts to. As intractable as the dreariness hanging in the school’s air is, that is still a song I can dance to. Better still, I’ll have a boss who seems to know what she’s doing, rather than that moron in Kitakyūshū who clutches at straws just to keep from going bankrupt every month.

Even if the expiration date of my visa weren’t bearing down on me, I tell myself, I would still leap at Abazuré’s offer.

Considering how miserable my first year in Japan has been—after twelve months I’ve emerged heart-broken, humiliated, physically and emotionally exhausted, not to mention broke—you’d think I’d be ready to return to the States like everyone else I know is. Blame it on misfiring synapses, if you like, but it is precisely because the year’s been so patently awful, that I sit here on a shit-brown vinyl sofa and think with muted optimism: Things can only get better. Things can only get better. Things can only get better.

It’s a congregation of one, of course, that I’ve been preaching to. No one else will listen. Every gaijin I know is going back to his or her home country, including my closest friend in Japan, Ben, the only person who can honestly say that he’s had a fulfilling year.

None of my expat friends mince their words. “You must be a masochist to even consider staying another year,” they tell me. “Why subjugate yourself to another twelve months of what will surely be more of the same bullshit and hassles,” they ask.

Like a proselyte whose faith has been challenged, I defend the choice and remind them that I will not only be teaching less but will be living in Fukuoka City rather than godforsaken Kitakyūshū.

I’m not very convincing, though. How do you expect me to be when I can’t even win myself over to my way of thinking?

Fifteen minutes pass and still no Abazuré.

So much for the importance of being punctual . . .

I’ve been feeling like crap lately, really awful. And today my chest aches from the congestion, my nose dribbles nonstop. Every time I breathe in, the fluid in my lungs rattles like a hookah. And, if that weren’t enough, my stomach has started to act up again. The coffee I had earlier seems to have gone right through me.

Just as I’m about to stand up and inquire about the restrooms, Abazuré arrives. The four-foot-eight powerhouse smiles widely and bellows out a sunny greeting, then disappears into the office. I’d love disappear myself into the restroom, but figure it is best to wait, in spite of my stomach doing flip-flops.

Abazuré gives the girl in the office a big “Ohayō” after which the two chat in hushed voices. With the restroom beckoning, I’m tempted to interrupt but then Abazuré emerges. The broad smile she was wearing when she arrived is now gone.

She directs me to a smaller classroom where we sit across from each other at an old dining room table. She looks down at the document before her, hard nails tapping at the surface of the table. The woman is fuming about something and I haven’t got the courage to ask what about. She looks up from the document, and stares at me through her steel-rimmed glasses. For a woman of such small stature, she comes off as formidable, intimidating, and downright frightening.

She inhales slowly, deeply, before speaking. I inhale slowly, shallowly, so as to not shock my bowels. I’ve begun to percolate and want nothing more of this world and this woman before me to be excused. Nature has stopped calling and is now shouting, imploring me. The way Abazuré is looking at me, however, tells me there’s nothing I can do as my insides churn but try to squeeze my butt-cheeks together.

“In our conversation last week,” she begins, “I made it very clear that you were not to be late . . .”

“Y-yes, I know.”

“Yes, you know . . .” She glares at me over the tops of her spectacles. “But, you were late today, weren’t you?”

Jesus Christ, that bitch in the office went and told her I was late.

“Yes, but only . . .”

Oh, Mother of God!

My bowels have started doing the rumba.

“I have a right mind to tear this contract up and find someone else. It wouldn’t be hard, after all. There are more than enough people out there looking for work.”

And then, Abazuré actually picks up the contract and rips it in half.

What the fuck?

I woke up shortly after dawn and stuck out my kitchen window to check the weather. The cold air bit my cheeks and my breath clouded before me, but the slag heap to the west of the working-class neighborhood that had been my home for a year was bathed in the glow of the rising sun. With the sky promising to clear up, it made sense to dress lightly, to endure the chill in the morning rather than sweat through what promised to be a lovely spring day.

After a shower, I dressed in a light suit and tie, and hurried out the door. As I was walking away from my apartment, appreciating the sweet smell of magnolias in my neighbor’s garden, Ben rounded the corner. He had the habit of jogging in the morning and steam was billowing from his head and shoulders; the front of his gray University of Wisconsin sweatshirt was black with sweat.

“Leaving already?” he asked.

“Yeah, I have to be there by nine this morning to sign the contract.”

“You might wanna bring an umbrella,” Ben suggested. “TV said it’s gonna rain. Niwaka ame. I think it means a sudden shower, or something like that.”

“Yeah, right,” I replied looking up at the sky. As much as I liked Ben and had come to depend heavily on his advice over the past year, his comprehension of the Japanese language just could not be trusted. The fact alone that the man still hadn’t realized that his Christian name, Ben, meant excrement in Japanese was enough to peck away at the urgency of taking an umbrella. “Besides,” I said, “I’ll miss the bus if I go back now.”

I should have listened to him. No sooner had I started up the hill towards the bus stop than the wind picked up, the sky darkened, and heavens opened up, the rain falling in torrents.

Niwaka ame. I’ve learned a new word.

Halfway between the bus stop and my apartment, I was paralyzed with indecision and getting wetter by the second. Do I run back and fetch an umbrella only to risk missing the bus, or do I hightail it to the bus stop, and try to find some shelter under the awning of the rice shop until the bus comes?

The rain had already soaked my head; icy rivulets were now running down my neck and back. Umbrella or no umbrella, I was going to get drenched, so I forged ahead, up the hill. As I neared the bus stop, the approaching bus plowed through a cascade of water flowing along the curb, sending a wall of water towards me. I tried to leap out of the way, but wasn’t fast enough. By the time the bus stopped, my pants were sopping wet from the knees down, my feet sloshed around in their loafers.

Looking like something that cat drug in, I boarded the bus and took a seat next to a floor heater. I rolled my pants up and tried in vain to dry my feet.

As the damp settled into my clothes, a chill rattled up my spine and the chest cold that had been pestering me for a month started pestering me some more. I managed to suppress the first sneeze. And the next. But the third one was doozie. It developed up deep inside me and, as it gained strength, I rifled through my pockets, frantically looking for a handkerchief.

For the love of God, how could I forget a handkerchief?

The sneeze came, carrying with it the generous contents of my nasal passages, and deposited it all into my cupped hands.

Opening the window, I stuck my hands out into the rain to try to rinse the snot off. Then, taking the silk pocket square out of my breast pocket, I dried my hands.

By the time the bus arrived at the train station, the niwaka ame had already passed. The sky, however, was still overcast and the air much colder than it had been when I left my apartment. Looking around at the sleepy mob standing on the platform, I could see that everyone, but me, was wearing a heavy winter coat over his suit or a scarf bundled around his neck. Spring may have been evident in the buds of the sakura trees and in the frenetic activity of birds, but the wind barreling down the platform was all winter.

A “local train” rolled into the platform. I knew I’d be cutting it close if I took it, as it would stop at every blessed station from now to Hakata, but the limited express train wasn’t scheduled to show up for another fifteen minutes. I’d surely catch myself a death of a cold if I waited on the platform, exposed to the cold wind. I hopped on, figuring I could always transfer to one of the express trains several stations down.

It was lovely inside the train. Unlike the express in which salarymen and office ladies are usually packed in like cattle off to slaughter, there were only a handful of students dozing off or staring blankly out the windows. It was an older model of train, and the thinly padded pews-like cubicles offered a modicum of privacy.

When the train jerked into motion, the heaters below the seat kicked on. I removed my shoes and socks and tried to warm my poor little blue toes.

Warm air bathed my calves, climbed up my legs, enveloping my knees, and drifted toward my face. Before I knew it, the heat and relaxing sway of the train as it made its easy way to Fukuoka lulled me to sleep.

When I woke up the train was completely empty. Looking out the window, I couldn’t recognize the station.

“Shūten des’. Shūten,” came over the PA system.

Last stop? You gotta be kidding. How long have I been asleep?

I pulled my warm but slightly damp socks over my feet, slipped on my soggy loafers and scrambled out of the train. The platform clock showed eight twenty-five, giving me thirty-five minutes.

But where the hell am I?

I cornered one of the clean-cut uniformed station employees on the platform told him where I wanted to go and was directed with a white-gloved hand towards the stairs.

I dashed down them and on to the turnstiles where I asked another employee for directions.

“Sutorayto. Sutorayto,” he said.

“Straight. Gotcha!”

I hurried out of the train station and back into the cold, continuing “sutorayto” as directed where I was supposed to eventually come upon a subway station.

The sun I’d been counting on when I left my apartment was now hidden behind a menacing layer of black clouds and a chilly breeze was blowing in off of the bay. Before long, I was shivering like a maniac and my cold was acting up: my chest ached and my nose ran like a leaky faucet.

At a vending machine I bought two cans of Georgia coffee, which I tucked them under my armpits for warmth. Pressing on, I walked, hunched over, hot cans of coffee under my armpits, until I came to the subway station. I now had twenty minutes to travel six stops and walk from the station to the school; meaning I’d just make it by nine.

I purchased a ticket and as I was about to pass through the gate, a gust of warm air blew up from the bowels of the station, followed by the horn announcing the train’s approach. I scampered down the first flight of stairs to a broad landing where I was offered two options: left or right. The signs were all in goddamn Chinese characters, no English to be found.

Although I’d been studying the language for a year, had even been scribbling the pictograms down in a notebook, I couldn’t recognize any of them on the sign.

I turned to a man and blurted out the name of my destination, but he scurried away without answering me. A young woman avoided me altogether. Then a soft-spoken middle-aged woman approached and asked in fluent English where I was going.

“The Ōhori Park station. Ōhori Kōen.”

“Oh, Ōhori Kōen. Yes, yes, it’s very nice this time of year.” The words trickled slowly out. I could hear the swoosh of the train doors opening, the click of heels on tile as the passengers got off.

“Yes, yes, I know. Which . . .”

“In a week or so, the cherry blossoms will be at their most beautiful . . .”

“Yes, I, I am well aware of that. Which platform do I . . .?”

“Oh, yes, the subway is a very convenient . . .”

“Oh, for the love of God, lady. Left or right?”

“I’m sorry? Left or right? I don’t understa . . .”

“Which platform?” I said pointing towards the stairwells. I could have strangled the dimwit.

“Oooh, I see, I see. Platform Two, of course. I’ll show . . .”

“No, you won’t. I’m in a hurry. Bye.”

I ran off towards Platform Two, flying down a second flight of stairs, three steps at a time, towards the platform, but mid decent a soft bell chimed, the doors closed and the train departed.

“Ah, fuck me!” I yelled, the curse echoing throughout the station.

Plodding down the remaining steps, I came to the platform and made my way to a row of seats where I plopped down. As I waited I drank the two cans of Georgia coffee.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long. Within a few minutes a second train came, but before I could count myself the lucky beneficiary of an efficiently-run, white-gloved public transportation system, I learned that the train wouldn’t take me all the way to Ōhori Park. I would have to change trains at yet another shūten.

Time was ticking.

The shredded contract lies on the tabletop before me and Abazuré has a look on her face like I have wasted her time and, would you just get out of my sight. If it wasn’t for the fact that my visa is going to expire in less than a week and I now have no other prospect for employment, I would flip Abazuré and that other bitch in the office the bird and storm out of the building. But I need the job. Good God, do I ever need it. But more than that, I need a toilet . . . NOW!

As Abazuré glares at me, the realization that I’ve made a huge mistake hits me like a kick in the gut and I can’t take it anymore.

“I’m sorry,” I say standing up carefully, “but, I’m feeling very, very ill.”

I dash out of the classroom, pass the lobby and office, and hurry towards a door that has “o-tearai” (honorable hand washing) written in Chinese characters on it. Opening the door and hoping my troubles are over, I discover they’ve only just begun: the school has a fucking Japanese-style squat toilet.

Oh, for the love of God!

Taking a crap on, or should I say above one of these toilets is like trying to void your bowels into a shoebox.

In the floor of a slightly raised area is a narrow porcelain trough barely a hand’s length wide. I mount it and squat as well as my stiff Achilles tendons will allow me, but my arse is hovering precariously above my pants gathered at my ankles.

With the forces of nature in motion, I grab onto a large sewage pipe that runs from the ceiling down to the floor and hold on to it for dear life. I then lean back and peer down between my legs like a bombardier might until the target comes into sight. When it does, it’s bombs away!

Good grief!

The collateral damage is worse than expected: half of my payload lands far off target.

After I’ve done my business, I spend several minutes tidying the toilet up. No matter how much I wipe the porcelain down, a heavy smell of death hangs in the restroom.

I look in the small cabinet above the toilet, hoping to find a book of matches, but there is none. Next to a few rolls of the rough brown toilet paper I sanded my ass with, I find a can of what, judging by the picture of a field of flowers on it, must be air freshener.

I give the room a liberal spray, and stir up the air with my arms, but an obtrusive hint of ordure lingers stubbornly in the sweet floral fragrance, like a filthy pig lolling about a flower garden.

Several minutes later, I return to the small classroom and apologize to Abazuré. “I’m not feeling very well,” I tell her. “If today’s meeting weren’t as important as it is, I would have cancelled it and suggested meeting later in the week when I was feeling better.”

Abazuré softens somewhat. She’s still visibly irritated, however, with the foul souvenir that has trailed me back into the room, the woman cannot doubt my candor. I am clearly ill.

Just then a shriek comes from the direction of toilet. The young woman in the office has ventured into no-man’s land.

Serves her right.

Abazuré stands up and leaves me alone in the classroom (Could you blame the woman?) and returns a few minutes later with another contract, which she places on the table before me. She asks that I read through it.

As I go through the contract, my jaw drops onto the tabletop. Each item in the contract is written in the bluntest of terminology—namely, do this and you’ll be fired; do that and you’ll be fired. There is no room for mistakes at The American School.

If I am ever late—regardless of illness, accident, ill-timed bowel movements, or what have you—my employment will be terminated on the spot.

I swallow hard and sign the contract. What else do you expect me to do?

Once all the paperwork is complete, Abazuré instructs me to meet her at Immigration next week, the day before my visa expires.

“If you are even a minute late,” she warns, “I will have no choice but to look for someone else. Am I understood?”

“Y-yes, you are.”

“Well, then. See you next week.”

“Fired if I’m late?” I shake my head in disbelief as I make my way back to the station. “Fired if I’m ever absent? Fired if I ever accept presents from the students?”

I take the subway to Hakata station where I then transfer to a limited express that takes me back to Kitakyūshū. As we travel away from Fukuoka City, the train crosses the Tatara River. It’s from the bridge that spans that slow, muddy river that I can see a solitary tall apartment building and the flashing neon lights of a pachinko parlor beside it. It’s where my ex-girlfriend Mié lives and works. It’s where I fell in love with her, experiencing some of the happiest days of my life, and where my heart was broken one morning last October when she left me for the second and final time. It has become a Mecca of sorts, towards which my prayers are offered. And every time I cross this bridge, either coming or going, I crane my neck so as to keep the building in sight on the off chance that I might catch a glimpse, however fleeting or distant, of Mié. In a similar manner, I signed Abazuré’s contract this morning putting my pride up as collateral on the off chance that I might be able to one day meet Mié again.

A rational person would have probably told Abazuré to shove the contract up her small, flat arse, and gone back to America or wherever, dignity intact. Unfortunately, I stopped functioning on reason the day Mié dumped me. Pure impulse and desperation has been my guide. So, I signed my name on the dotted line knowing that more than anything in the world, I wanted Mié back in my life, or, at least, to find someone who’ll help me achieve the seemingly impossible: to forget her and move on.

Someone, perhaps, like Nozomi . . .

[1] Peadar, pronounced “Pah-dr” or “Pah-dish”, is the Irish form of “Peter” and still in common use in Ireland today.

[2] Many foreigners who have any experience in Japan will be struck by the oddness of the name, Abazuré. It is not an actual surname, but rather a somewhat obsolete Japanese word that means “a real bitch” or “a wicked woman”. I have taken quite a lot of license in creating Japanese names for this novel, such that many of them have a hidden meaning.

Also, I have also added accents to some Japanese words so that those who are not familiar with the language will be able to pronounce the words correctly. Rice wine, for example, is written saké, rather than sake to prevent the reader from reading the word as if it rhymed with “steak”.

[3] An eikawa is a private school at which “English conversation” is taught as opposed to the grammar-heavy textbook English taught in most junior and senior high schools. Until about the mid 90s many teachers of English couldn’t actually speak English. With the introduction of ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers from English-speaking countries) at most schools throughout Japan and changes to the curriculum, the ability of both teachers and students has improved remarkably.