Those crazy kids

Being an ALT in Japan is about as close as I will ever get to being Zac Efron.

I assume it is different teaching in a big city, but in a small League of Gentlemen township like mine, the white man really does walk alone, mainly because there are no other white men within a radius of 50 kilometres to walk with him. For many of these young, country schoolgirls, the only westerns they have seen have been separated from them by a TV screen and several time zones. Even these avenues are limited. There is a movie theatre in my town but it is one of those rickety Cinema Paradiso things without the charm. It sits slumped down a backstreet with peeling paint and posters of films features Japanese boys who look like they have had way too much Ecstasy (but ironically will probably never touch the stuff) and girls with pigtails wearing Alice in Wonderland dresses. The cinema has shown three English films in the last nine months; Atonement, P.S. I love you (Hilary Swank doing a romantic comedy about a treasure hunt from her dead boyfriend played by the lead Spartan off 300) and Mamma Mia, which arrives next week, a year after its western release.

The next ‘real’ movie theatre is in Sapporo, several hours drive away. Apparently movie going in Japan isn’t quite the lark it is back home; a fellow ALT went to see Burn After Reading and found that he was the only one who laughed the whole movie while the rest of the audience sat in complete silence. This is rather impressive slash mortifying if you have seen Burn After Reading, which IS hilarious and would surely a laugh from the drabbest individual when Brad Pitt calls John Malkovich a ‘dickwad.’ Also, Japanese people don’t get up and leave when the movie finishes but sit stonily until all the credits have rolled. Then they leave quietly, in an orderly fashion, not speaking until they are well outside the theatre. Even then, I doubt there is much in the way of banter.

Anyway, back to Efron. My arrival in the country prompted a Mexican wave of Japanese wonderment from the girls in my Local town. My two former ALTs were both girls and as far as I could tell, this was the first time most of these schoolgirls had set eyes on a Western male outside of a Harry Potter movie. For months, my route around the school could be traced by the sound of screams, giggles and sharp intakes of breath. Girls would cower into whispering groups in corners, waving to me and then shrieking with delight when I waved back.

Months went by and things didn’t end. I would be spotted by two girls in the local supermarket who would proceed to peek at me from behind the minimal produce section. The next day, I would be informed dryly from one of the teachers that someone in his class had seen my buying a bag of eggplants and now everyone wanted to know if this was true. The first question I was asked in a new class was “Do you have a girlfriend” to which I would smile secretly and shake my head. The group of girls who had plucked up the courage to ask this would then become hysterical and, after another few minutes of feverish whispering, usually follow it up with the slightly more awkward “what kind of Japanese girls do you like?” For this, I would stare out at the eager classroom of 15 year olds use my favourite Japanese word: Himitsu (Secret). This didn’t do much to calm them down.

Believe me, this is not a subtle attempt to blow my own trumpet. I could have rubbed myself raw with a cheese grater and pulled out a row of teeth and I don’t imagine the reaction would be any different. And I tried to feign off the fawning in any way possible; food stains on my shirt, unwashed hair, deep sighs whenever I was waved to in the corridors. For I while I even adopted a limp, but this only resulted in sympathetic glances and kindly smiles from the girls and at the end of the week, a ‘get better’ anime pencil charm turned up on my desk in the staffroom.

Good grief, they were persistent. Once, I received an email from a fifteen year old student from one town over. She insisted we could be ‘good friends’ if we met up sometime (wink face). I have no idea who she was or how she got my email address. She sent me a follow up email a week later when I didn’t reply, which was empty except for a sad face and the phrase ‘I cry now.’ Another girl accosted me in a classroom during cleaning time and showed me a tiny purple condom nestled in her Hello Kitty wallet. I smiled nervously and vowed to stay as far away from her as possible.

I hope that when I leave, my successor will be a women; kind, maternal, preferably late thirties and hair in a bun. There has been enough excitement in Local town for the next few years; Zac Efron has no place trying to steal the preciousl things of the shop. Heck, she could even get a cat.