Tim Anderson - Tune in Tokio

I look around uncomfortably at the pensioners in the class, poor Shizue and normally unflappable Takehiro, but it is impossible to read their expressions. Tomo, the catcher in the rye, looks at Naomi and rolls his eyes like he’s never seen such a total phony in his life. I look back at Naomi and brace myself for the rest of her story.

“At their court, they were punished, but it was much less than if the same thing was done by men to a woman. I thought that was interesting.” She smiles in the manner of Cruella De Ville.

I ask her, “Do you think their punishment should have been more severe?”

“I’m sorry, severe , what means severe ?”

“ Harsh , serious ,” I explain. “Occasionally merciless , inhuman , or brutal .”

She pauses and looks around the class that she holds transfixed.

“No,” she says with a giggle and another quick look around the classroom, gauging the reaction.

Wow. Now here is a woman who clearly likes to bait people. Japanese folks are generally quite loath to speak about contentious topics like, say, public sexual assault. Naomi-san is obviously not. What she wants, it is becoming increasingly apparent, is to get a reaction from her fellow countrymen.

She is a troublemaker. A breath of fresh air. I love her. I am afraid of her.

“OK, anyone have a comment?” I ask. No one has a comment. I am uncomfortable because, even after teaching over two million lessons, I still never know exactly how to read a class of Japanese students. They like to preserve the appearance that nothing is wrong, while underneath that polished surface likely lurks irritation, fear, loathing, dread, and/or arousal.

I don’t feel comfortable giving the class this topic to discuss for three minutes and report back on. Naomi wouldn’t mind, but I will not fall into her trap, no, no, no. As much as I appreciate her left-field suggestion, we will talk about civilized things in this class, like good ways to stay cool in the hot Tokyo summer or favorite amusement park rides. Not reverse-gender gang rape. Definitely not reverse-gender gang rape.

“OK, great, thank you, Naomi. Anyone else have an interesting topic?” Shizue quickly comes through with the lifesaving-if boring-suggestion of favorite restaurants in Tokyo. The next three minutes go by without a hitch.

After this warm-up activity, I broach the topic of the first hour of the lesson, which, in our appalling textbook, is “Expressing Thanks.” Now, the good thing about these high-level classes is that, once the class gets warmed up, the students should be doing most of the talking, making the teacher’s role that of advisor and confidante. Just give them some things to discuss and let ’em go. But don’t be fooled. It’s harder than it sounds. After all, these students have taken a lot of lessons by the time they reach this level. So the threat of repeating an activity that a student has done recently with another teacher is very real. There’s nothing worse than being informed by a student, “We talked about our most embarrassing moment in my last class.”

I pair them up and then write a few questions on the board to give them something to talk about: “What is something that someone did for you recently that you really appreciated? How did you show your thanks?”

Innocent enough questions. I envision answers involving taxi drivers who are nice enough to help their passengers get their heavy bags to their apartment on the second floor or young boys helping old women pick up the change they dropped at the station ticket machine. They all begin talking, and I sit my chair in the middle of the small classroom and begin listening in on what they’re saying.

Shizue is telling Kumiko about her husband cleaning his own rice bowl the night before, while Takehiro sings the praises of a shop assistant who was so instrumental in helping him choose the right suit (and, consequently, relieving him of about a hundred thousand yen).

Naomi is partnered with the aforementioned Minnie Mouse look-a-like, Kayoko, who in every class is sweetness and light, always has a smile for everyone, and always wears extremely fashionable shoes. Naomi eyes her with suspicion and annoyance; might she feel the need to shake up her world and rearrange it a little bit?

“So,” Kayoko begins, gesturing to the question that I wrote on the board, “what is something that someone did for you recently that you really appreciated?”

The whole class is alive with broken English conversations, but I have my ear pricked in the direction of Cruella and Minnie, dying to hear what they’ll come out with.

“Well,” Naomi begins. Ideally, at this point, the lights would dim, the spotlight would cast its dramatic glow, the strings would begin to flutter, the rest of the room would fall silent, the saxophone would sing, and Naomi would take center stage, a Benson and Hedges Deluxe Ultra Light 100 poised between her fingers, ready to tell the cold, cruel world her story. Thankfully, none of this happens, because her chosen subject is even less appropriate than I could have ever possibly hoped.

“Ever since my husband and I were married, we’ve agreed never to fart. In front of each other.”

My God. She said fart . This is soooo not an answer to the question.

Kayoko’s face tilts questioningly. “ Fart ?” she says, with the same blissfully innocent tone a young girl might use to say the words “flower petals?” or “Reese’s Pieces?” “What’s fart ’s meaning?”

I’m paralyzed. I know I should perhaps intervene and suggest to Naomi that her answer is kind of inappropriate. But I don’t wish to anger her. Plus, I’m desperate to see where this is all going. I bow my head and hope for the best. As the other students’ conversations continue to fill the classroom, I listen as Naomi tries to explain to Kayoko in English what a fart is.

“It’s a noise we make. When we eat some foods, especially Mexican food.”

In American middle schools this would’ve done the trick, but Kayoko still isn’t clear.

“Shout?” she guesses.

“No.”

“Clap?”

“No.”

“Laugh?”

“No.”

This goes on for far too long, until finally Naomi has mercy and whispers the word in Japanese into Kayoko’s ear. Kayoko promptly turns an impressive shade of red and looks as if she wishes she were dead.

So let’s recap. Naomi is grateful that her husband has never farted in her presence, and this is the inspirational story she has chosen to tell her partner, the poor, quivering Kayoko.

Naomi is an enigma. Everything that comes out of her mouth is meant to rile people, to stir them up and make them wriggle in their seats. So far she has used every opportunity she has been given to force us to see the world as she sees it. It’s a dirty, blood-red piece of fleshy, sexually violated pulp. I want to see more.

In the second hour of the lesson, I ask for someone to give me an example of a restrictive relative clause (because I have no idea what one is), and she quickly chimes in with, “My mother-in-law, who is very particular about housekeeping, drives me crazy and makes me want to vomit.”

At the end of class I ask if anyone has any questions. She raises her hand and utters the words I’ve now begun to simultaneously dread and hope for: “Anything OK?”

“Sure, why not?” I say.

“Well, is it true that when men go into the toilet for the purpose of performing a bowel movement, they first spit into the bowl?”

Tomo looks at her wide-eyed, like maybe, just maybe, Naomi’s not a phony at all. She might just be the real thing.

Up until this point I’ve pretty much gotten off scot-free, but now I’m the target. Obviously Naomi wants her teacher to share in the atmosphere of unease that she’s created in the room. What does she want me to say, I wonder. I really don’t think she cares about the answer. She just wanted to ask the question, to just toss the sludge against the wall and see what would happen. Should I just laugh and say, “Oh, Naomi, you’re so funny. OK, see you all next week!” and then run away? Something tells me this won’t let me off the hook.