February 28, 2008
Every day that there is an assembly or some kind of gathering event, I usually find a piece of paper, in Japanese, explaining the details of that day’s events. Yesterday’s paper was yellow and it had what looked like a script written on the front and continued onto the back. I glanced at it unenthusiastically, looked for a few words I might know, and with no luck I put it aside and began to prepare for my classes.
The bell to end the first period surprised me when it rang 10 minutes earlier than it was supposed to. The same bell rang early again the next period, and when I paired this with the sheet I received on my desk earlier that morning; I deduced that yesterday was going to be different than usual.
There’s a little, old woman that sits across from my desk and acts as my surrogate Japanese mother. Every morning I’m greeted with a warm, “ohaiyo gozaimasu” and then she offers to get me some coffee. Whenever I have a period off and she is around, I usually try to work on my Japanese because no matter what I blurt out, at the end, she always compliments my abilities. It’s good for morale.
I get to my desk and I notice on the day’s schedule there’s a big X where 4th period should be. The woman points to my yellow sheet and says something in Japanese. Not sure what’s going on still, I pull aside one of the English teachers, who speaks English pretty well. This is what he tells me, nearly verbatim:
“So today, there will be kind of like a problem. There will be a stranger who comes into the school and we must find him, before he gets to the students. My job is to find him and call down to the teacher’s office to tell them where he is. Hopefully, they will be able to catch him. If he finds me before they do, I might die.”
WHAT!?! You might die? What does that mean? I mean, I know what that means, but what does that mean exactly? I wanted to ask him this but I decide to ask him something more important instead.
“So then this is like a practice, like a fire drill right? But with a stranger, right?”
“I dunno about that,” he says, “but I have heard about this happening in Nagano prefecture maybe a month ago, and in that case, he took, umm what is the word…. hostages. He took a couple of teachers and a foreigner who worked at the school and stabbed them. So maybe, you should be careful.” He says this with a straight face, grabs the yellow sheet and hurries out of the office.
He literally said what I just wrote and I focus on trying to figure out the two most important things at this juncture: first, is this is thing real or not? And secondly, why did he have to kill the foreigner? That’s messed up. Thirty seconds later, the bell rings and it begins.
I’m sitting at my desk in the teacher’s office and there are immediately teachers rushing around. Telephones start ringing and one of the office doors slides open. Two police officers enter and then my ears are bombarded with Japanese, coming from all sides. The police officers rush out and two teachers follow them. Everyone’s face looks legitimately concerned, and this, paired with Taka’s “warning” makes me a little concerned myself.
I watch as everything is going on. One or two teachers run in and out of the room. A teacher quickly gets on the intercom and says something, hangs up and runs out of the room. The lady across from me is now on her cell phone! All the while, I can’t understand a thing and really all I want to know is if this is real or not? Earlier, I was leaning toward it being a drill, but after seeing these serious faces and the police, I’m getting uneasy.
Then, suddenly, the woman from across my desk approaches me, delicately yet deliberately. She’s holding something in her hand but I can’t figure out what it is. With her body language and broken English, she tries to tell me that we have to go find “the stranger”. I remain sitting in my seat, trying to avoid her. I want nothing to do with this. She tells me to get up and thrusts what’s in her hands toward me. In one hand, she is holding a bamboo stick, about as thick as two fingers and as long as my forearm. In the other hand, she pulls out a 12-inch ruler. She gives me the ruler. I slowly realize that this will be my only weapon.
She then proceeds to get me out of my seat and tell me the plan, all the while, using hand gestures to act out everything. “We must go find. We must hit him and get him.” I now understand the plan. We have to find the stranger, hit him with our bamboo stick and ruler and then capture him. I begin to follow her and right when we get out of the office, she ducks down in a hunched position, keenly looking in every direction. Scaling the wall, she keeps a brisk, yet careful pace and every so often, gestures me to mimic her moves. Every now and then she looks back frustrated, like I’m slowing her down. Finally, I catch up; head ducked and ruler in hand.
It’s hard to keep this pace she’s set and I feel like I’m in a Bond movie. The only difference, and I mean ONLY difference is that I’m following an old Japanese woman, and instead of sweet gadgets, I have a dull, wooden ruler. If this guy pulls a knife, I won’t be safe at all, but at least she can slow him down with her bamboo. I breathe a sigh of relief after thinking that.
We don’t get too far, about halfway up a staircase when we hear a bunch of people running toward us. I get my game face on and hide behind her. The two people who turn the corner are teachers, one of them an English teacher and both of them are out of breath. Wearing a successful grin, he finally manages to get the words out, “we got him.”
Apparently, this was a drill. Much like a fire drill back in the States, but then again, not at all like that. Of course we don’t do this kind of thing in America, although we should and therefore, the entire process for me was both new and scary. After the drill, they also had an assembly where the police officers talked to the students about what to do in this kind of situation. What they said and the advice they gave was definitely good information to know. I didn’t understand any of it, but it looked like everyone else was listening.
Anyway, the old woman and I are pretty close now. We talk in broken English/Japanese often and give each other chocolate treats from time to time. I really learned about her character through all of this and now I know in the bottom of my heart, if a bad guy ever rolls into Matskura Junior High School, she’s got my back, and that’s all I need.
The bell to end the first period surprised me when it rang 10 minutes earlier than it was supposed to. The same bell rang early again the next period, and when I paired this with the sheet I received on my desk earlier that morning; I deduced that yesterday was going to be different than usual.
There’s a little, old woman that sits across from my desk and acts as my surrogate Japanese mother. Every morning I’m greeted with a warm, “ohaiyo gozaimasu” and then she offers to get me some coffee. Whenever I have a period off and she is around, I usually try to work on my Japanese because no matter what I blurt out, at the end, she always compliments my abilities. It’s good for morale.
I get to my desk and I notice on the day’s schedule there’s a big X where 4th period should be. The woman points to my yellow sheet and says something in Japanese. Not sure what’s going on still, I pull aside one of the English teachers, who speaks English pretty well. This is what he tells me, nearly verbatim:
“So today, there will be kind of like a problem. There will be a stranger who comes into the school and we must find him, before he gets to the students. My job is to find him and call down to the teacher’s office to tell them where he is. Hopefully, they will be able to catch him. If he finds me before they do, I might die.”
WHAT!?! You might die? What does that mean? I mean, I know what that means, but what does that mean exactly? I wanted to ask him this but I decide to ask him something more important instead.
“So then this is like a practice, like a fire drill right? But with a stranger, right?”
“I dunno about that,” he says, “but I have heard about this happening in Nagano prefecture maybe a month ago, and in that case, he took, umm what is the word…. hostages. He took a couple of teachers and a foreigner who worked at the school and stabbed them. So maybe, you should be careful.” He says this with a straight face, grabs the yellow sheet and hurries out of the office.
He literally said what I just wrote and I focus on trying to figure out the two most important things at this juncture: first, is this is thing real or not? And secondly, why did he have to kill the foreigner? That’s messed up. Thirty seconds later, the bell rings and it begins.
I’m sitting at my desk in the teacher’s office and there are immediately teachers rushing around. Telephones start ringing and one of the office doors slides open. Two police officers enter and then my ears are bombarded with Japanese, coming from all sides. The police officers rush out and two teachers follow them. Everyone’s face looks legitimately concerned, and this, paired with Taka’s “warning” makes me a little concerned myself.
I watch as everything is going on. One or two teachers run in and out of the room. A teacher quickly gets on the intercom and says something, hangs up and runs out of the room. The lady across from me is now on her cell phone! All the while, I can’t understand a thing and really all I want to know is if this is real or not? Earlier, I was leaning toward it being a drill, but after seeing these serious faces and the police, I’m getting uneasy.
Then, suddenly, the woman from across my desk approaches me, delicately yet deliberately. She’s holding something in her hand but I can’t figure out what it is. With her body language and broken English, she tries to tell me that we have to go find “the stranger”. I remain sitting in my seat, trying to avoid her. I want nothing to do with this. She tells me to get up and thrusts what’s in her hands toward me. In one hand, she is holding a bamboo stick, about as thick as two fingers and as long as my forearm. In the other hand, she pulls out a 12-inch ruler. She gives me the ruler. I slowly realize that this will be my only weapon.
She then proceeds to get me out of my seat and tell me the plan, all the while, using hand gestures to act out everything. “We must go find. We must hit him and get him.” I now understand the plan. We have to find the stranger, hit him with our bamboo stick and ruler and then capture him. I begin to follow her and right when we get out of the office, she ducks down in a hunched position, keenly looking in every direction. Scaling the wall, she keeps a brisk, yet careful pace and every so often, gestures me to mimic her moves. Every now and then she looks back frustrated, like I’m slowing her down. Finally, I catch up; head ducked and ruler in hand.
It’s hard to keep this pace she’s set and I feel like I’m in a Bond movie. The only difference, and I mean ONLY difference is that I’m following an old Japanese woman, and instead of sweet gadgets, I have a dull, wooden ruler. If this guy pulls a knife, I won’t be safe at all, but at least she can slow him down with her bamboo. I breathe a sigh of relief after thinking that.
We don’t get too far, about halfway up a staircase when we hear a bunch of people running toward us. I get my game face on and hide behind her. The two people who turn the corner are teachers, one of them an English teacher and both of them are out of breath. Wearing a successful grin, he finally manages to get the words out, “we got him.”
Apparently, this was a drill. Much like a fire drill back in the States, but then again, not at all like that. Of course we don’t do this kind of thing in America, although we should and therefore, the entire process for me was both new and scary. After the drill, they also had an assembly where the police officers talked to the students about what to do in this kind of situation. What they said and the advice they gave was definitely good information to know. I didn’t understand any of it, but it looked like everyone else was listening.
Anyway, the old woman and I are pretty close now. We talk in broken English/Japanese often and give each other chocolate treats from time to time. I really learned about her character through all of this and now I know in the bottom of my heart, if a bad guy ever rolls into Matskura Junior High School, she’s got my back, and that’s all I need.
2 comments:
That was Great!! I always knew you'd be good with a ruler!
--MOK (mother of Kyle)
2008-02-28 15:44:54 GMT
You forgot to mention that not only do you exchange chocolate treats but that you give her gum, which she swallows 10 seconds later :)
--Chels
hahaha, yes!! I forgot about that.
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