Ms. Benes moves West

Wellington.

Winter in the capital and the sun shines bright. In the past two weeks, I have soaked up vitamin D than my entire year of glacial Hokkaido. As I write this, I wear sunglasses to shelter my eyes from the much appreciated glare and stop every few minutes to eat a piece of camembert with my eyes closed. To my right sits the converted plastic cuisine I brought back from the Far East, shimmering on the coffee table amongst my mother’s trendy ornaments. 

They are the only things in plain sight that I have to remind me of Japan and that suits me just fine. 

I have settled back into the Western World with disturbing ease. Over the last two weeks, I have  formulated the answer to the inevitable ‘How was Japan’ question—asked politely by friends and parents friends who don’t care but pretend to—down to a sharp, three sentence response. “Oh yes, it was great” I begin, my eyes wearily lighting up. I follow up the probing questions with an intoxicated roll of the eyes and something like: “I don’t even know how to describe Japan, its such a whack place!”  At this point, my voice develops a warning tone, fending off follow up questions with a tight smile. If pushed, I have a few anecdotes up my sleeve (‘Black Obama’, Run crippled boy run, Fat Teacher on Ice) and I must admit, the gaping faces of disbelief do please me somewhat. But after this, it all closes down rather firmly with concluding crap about ‘good life experience’ and some serious nodding. In and out in three minutes and no mention of those soggy Suntory marathons.

Aside from these asides, my world has become flooded by the pleasures that the East could not provide. Blue vein and olives; merlot and Shortland Street; driving and sunbathing; gay people, bagels, beaches, skinny jeans and Malaysian restaurants. The ocean is not obscured by wartime blockades, and is in fact a place to be enjoyed, even in the so called winter. There is no J-Pop to be heard and even the dub music sounds sweet by comparison. Cliché after cliché and I’m sure you’ve heard them all before. I am even tempted to quote our gay ally Judy Garland and say that there is no place like home, but that would suggest a sense of tackiness that Bombay & Elaine does not encourage. Let’s just say that I feel like I have finally broken up with a boyfriend that I always hated, and the wave of relief is awesome. 

I have begun dating a boy five years my junior; a bright wee design student with the kind of perfect cheekbones and big brown eyes that I spent hours dreaming about in my Gummo town. I laugh off the ‘cradle snatcher’ jokes and walk down the street with him arm in arm. Homosexuality is relatively acceptable here, at least on Cuba Street. We smoke cigarettes as we walk and try to avoid the pigeons.  Gutter birds they may be, but after a year of crows, I could almost kiss their gnarled little feet. We throw our cigarette buts on the street and don’t get arrested. 

The design student took me for a night out at The Ivy; the new (and only) gay bar in the city. The first floor is a garden bar where balding men in sports jackets sip vodka tonics in the corners, their pinkie fingers raised at 90° angles so that even the most intoxicated patrons get the message. They make half hearted fuck eyes as the young boys in tight jeans who bounce around at the bar and wisely ignore them. The tight jeans bounce back upstairs, drinks in hand to the dance floor. 

The top floor is a spectacularly sweaty meat market with young bucks embracing in every direction. In the centre, a wasted girl grinds away blissfully surrounded by a circle of adoring males. From time to time, one or another will peel off to try their luck with a lonely looking solo dancer, usually returning to their queen bee and trying to hide their bruised ego. The speakers blared out Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys, which I took to be some kind of 90s themed novelty night. Later, the design boy told me that this was in fact the only music that they ever played at The Ivy. He told me of a now legendary blonde jock who would break into a mad interpretative dance every time ‘Mambo No 5’ came on (which was disturbingly often).  

The middle aged men don’t venture up to this level. Their shiny domes are cruelly illuminated under the wandering spotlights. They know that eventually their time will come, usually in the shape of a teary 22 year old, dejected after failing to find tenderness from the sweaty throng a floor above. A few drinks and a firm hand around the shoulder and the two will leave together, under the disgusted eyes of the bouncer. 

Gay bars aside, Wellington is of course, no more than a stopping point between journeys. As the days go by, the novelty fades somewhat and my feet begin to itch with the promise of travel and adventure. New Zealand is a beautiful place but a tiny one. In two weeks, I will be sipping Budweiser in the Californian sun. I can almost taste the Twinkies now. 

In Urakawa, things go on as usual. Sato Sensei cancels his weekend away with his increasingly estranged fiancé when his volley ball team wins their tournament. The music tyrant schedules overtime for his terrorized brass band as the school’s opening ceremony approaches. Yukki sheds a tear and practises her phrasal verbs.  And though she feels like she’s in a play, she is anyway. Or a blog at least. 

It may not resonate in my ears and in my eyes with a McCartney- refrain, but it’s there somewhere, nestled between various organs like an appendix. I guess that counts for something. 

Insert Lionel Ritchie lyrics here

Perhaps the dinner was a wrong move. Poor Yukki, already besotted with the town’s suspiciously flamboyant Westerner, almost used up the entire supply of Skype smiley faces when I accepted her invitation to dine with the family. And why not, I thought. After a year of making the same five meals over and over again, your humble narrator would have crawled across a muddy field to get a home cooked meal. Also, with the days of my contract running out, I have become suddenly desperate to cram in as many ‘Japanese experiences’ as is wholly possible. And of course, there was the underlying flattery that after eleven and a half months in Royston Vasey, someone finally thinks that I am worthy of a dinner invitation.

What can I say, dear readers; I was touched.

I was picked up at the train station by a hyperventilating Yukki and her aunt ‘Honey’ who was by far the coolest person in the entire town. She had blonde spikey hair and a chin piercing and elaborates tattoos swirling down both her arms. She wore a T-shirt with picture of a skull and crossbones and underneath, the words ‘CREAM SODA.’ She drove a pimped out four wheel drive with gothic satin cushions in the back seat and those flat screen-TVs-in-the-seats that don’t exist outside the world of music videos and the world of people who make music videos.
As I hoisted myself in, she stubbed her cigarette in gothic skull ashtray on the dashboard and heartily shook my hand. Her grip was ridiculously strong. I winced but managed to turn it into a crooked little smile. Yukki giggled.

The rest of the family turned out to be much more status quo and after meeting Grandmother, Sister and two cousins, the seven of us sat down for the much anticipated dinner. The feast in question was nabe; a traditional Hokkaido dish of meat, vegetables and tofu that are cooked in a pot of boiling stock in the centre of the table. The whole thing would be far more delicious if each item didn’t have to be dipped in raw egg before eating it.

Half way through, possibly realizing that my meagre scraps of Japanese vocabulary had been used up, I foolishly got out my camera to take a few quick snaps of the sumptuous food. This caused a commotion as Yukki squealed and whipped out her bejewelled cellphone. For the next twenty minutes, the meal was forgotten as the entire family began an elaborate photo shoot which involved four cameras, sixteen different combinations of people and more peace signs than San Francisco in the 60’s. Aunt 'Honey' did the metallica sign. I loved every moment of it.

After dinner, Yukki took me of a tour of her house. She introduced me to her three cats and her collection of handmade dolls. She showed me her bedroom and wouldn’t let anyone else come in. I sat awkwardly in the corner wearing a pair of panda earmuffs as Yuki yelled at her sister in Japanese through the crack in the door. I showed her YouTube videos of M.I.A. and Justice and she freaked out. I guess there’s not much call for Srilankan rappers in rural Japan.

As I left, Yukki slipped me a small present, telling me to open it when I got home. After I had bowed and thanked everyone and made it back to my apartment, I opened it to discover a sparkly letter ‘Y’ dangling on a silver chain.

Yesterday was my last day at Yukki’s school. As usual, she accosted me on the train and proudly showed me that addition of ‘D.A.N.C.E.’ on her iPod nano. I smiled and nodded and pretended to be very tired. She didn’t buy it. The crunch came in third period; the last ever class and an emotional occasion even for me. In the final ten minutes, I was presented with a leaving card with messages from the entire English class, all of which were in Japanese. The exception was Yukki’s, which read in shaky English; ‘I was so happy until now.’

As the bell rang and the students began to shuffle off the gym, Yukki who had been looking ashen face for the whole hour suddenly burst into tears. She started sobbing and had to be led away down the corridor by her best friend; a tall plain looking girl with glasses who was clearly the Monica to her Rachel. Unfortunately, this was the only exit and so the English teacher and I had to follow them all the way back, keeping a good ten feet behind like a funeral procession.

We had almost made it when a group of sweaty, post-basketball Jocks burst in from the gym. At the sight of a crying girl, they started pointing and laughing and Yukki gave a high pitched wail and was veered off to the side by Monica. She disappeared down the hall but I could still hear her sobbing for a good few minutes.

At least she has Justice. That song could brighten up the Apocalypse.

Yet another Brick in the wall

With four weeks to go, I can’t help but wonder if Bombay & Elaine will survive outside of fair Japan. The odd music rant aside, B & E has developed a distinctly Asian flavour; sticky with soy sauce and steeped in the scent of cherry blossoms. How will he fare in the Western world, amidst the clatter of pronged cutlery? People say it takes a while to adapt to a new culture, especially at a young age. The poor thing is hardly walking.

My hope is that B & E will evolve as he grows, adopting to his surroundings and making new acquaintances wherever the windy world of the web takes him.

To put it in hipster’s terms, B & E is like The Wire. It relocates and picks up in a new sector as the seasons pass. The theme song changes and yet remains the same. You miss the towers but you get the docks; you keep watching it.

(I realise the audacity of comparing my humble word journal with what might well be the greatest television show of all-time, but it’s serves merely as a change to drop another pop culture reference into my already jam packed cyber-basket. Pathetic I know, but I’ve always wanted to be one of the cool kids.)

In short, it prevails.

At present, the staffroom is all a flutter for the school festival next weekend. Twenty foot long banners line most the corridors. Students cluster around them, furiously applying brush strokes to dizzying murals of trees, flowers and smiling suns. In one of these murals, someone had painted me; a little white smiley face with Harry Potter glasses the words ‘I love kiwi!!’ written above in green capitals. I was touched.

Sobs echoed down the first floor this afternoon amid the heartbreaking sound of ripping paper. Somewhere within the vast expanse of painted landscape, a teacher had spotted two stick figures (one with pigtails, one without) locking acrylic lips, while a stream of tiny love hearts rose up between them. He then proceeded to give the terrified 15 year old girls a rousing lecture about family values and the presence of small children at a family event before deeming their mural ‘unsuitable’ for the festival and tearing it up.

The girls appeared at the staffroom an hour later, still in tears and begging for forgiveness. Eventually after a long silence, he relented and allowed them to attend the festival as long as they stayed afterwards to help clean up. They accepted, teary but grateful.

The teacher in question is one of the school’s totalitarians. He has slicked back hair and watery blue eyes and suffers from intense headaches. He conducts the school band and can hear a flat note over a row of perfectly tuned violins. His practises last four hours a day and he has been known to knock it up to six for special occasions. He can be heard screaming at the brass section the whole week before they play ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ for the school graduation ceremony. To be fair, their performance was perfect.

If his head starts aching in the middle of a practise, he doesn’t stop but instead continues conducting the instruments in front of him. The more he conducts, the worse it gets and it is then that his temper really begins to rage. My students have told me that they dread the days when the vein on his forehead starts to throb. He begins to single out terrified students with his baton and scream insults at them, telling them they have no talent as they play their required solo over and over again with trembling fingers. Once, after a particularly trying five hours of ‘Some Enchanted Evening,’ he stormed out of the music room in a rage and slammed the door. The band members were too scared to move and sat petrified in their seats until he came slinking back fifteen minutes later, reeking of cigarettes.

To get an idea of how unhinged this man is, we must turn back our stopwatches to the night of last year’s school dance. The moon is full and a line of smartly dressed boys and girls in shimmery dresses snakes politely around the gymnasium. Teachers stand by the door, checking tickets and reiterating the ‘no kissing’ rule. One of these is the Music Tyrant.

Things appear to be moving smoothly. Inside the gym, the boys and girls blush and whisper to each other and some even begin to dance awkwardly under the steely supervision of the vice principal. There is a big bowl of red punch; the students are allowed to help themselves to one paper cup’s worth. Doling this out is Fat Cake Bitch; another teacher who I will flesh out at a later date. For now, imagine the mother of that friend you had in primary school who grudgingly let you play at her house after school but scowled the whole time.

Suddenly, there is a commotion at the door. The swaying couples turn around, using the opportunity to put their little arms tentatively around each other as the chaperones rush to the entrance. Cake Bitch is already there, waving her ladle.

One of the third year girls had turned up with highlights in her hair. They look sweet, if a little Blossom-esque. She clutches her tiny handbag, terrified, as the Music Tyrant towers over her, yelling and pointing with his big finger. Eventually resigned to her fate and tears ruining her carefully applied mascara, she is ushered into a corner. the Music Tyrant pulls out roll of brown paper and wraps it around her neck, her hair splayed out over the top. And then, like something out of Carrie, out comes the can of black spray paint.

There were no more school dances after that. The girl was allowed to attend the rest of the dance but her dress was covered in black stains and her hair hung limp and dead. She smelt like a fumigated house. Her confidence, I would assume, was somewhat ruffled. On Monday, her hair was back to its natural black, the same as every other student in the school.

I sometimes have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not living in a Roald Dahl book. But then I look around and realise that none of the kids are ever going to break the rules and slip a newt in their teacher’s water jug. They’d probably be deported.

And it’s not The Wire either. You can empathise with the bad guys on that.


Next week, Cake Bitch.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Sato

Mr M.’s replacement, Sato Sensei, represents for me the stereotypical put-upon Japanese male. In the four months since his arrival, we have up struck up the closest thing I have to a real Japanese friendship. He’s a nice guy; friendly and soft spoken with a perfectly pressed suit and his hair gelled into an awkward fringe. The system has not yet beaten him down, but I predict that it is only a matter of time. Also me to spin for you the traumatsing tale of the everyman from Japan.

Sato Sensei didn’t want to teach in my small town. He is in fact from Sapporo; the largest city and, by my reckoning, the only bearable place in Hokkaido (the second largest, Asahikawa, is a sprawling ugly wasteland of a place with the coldest temperature in Japan). He worked hard during his school years and went straight to teachers college. Here, he was unable to partake in the (semi) boisterous life of the Japanese student as he lived with his parents who forebode his from drinking even at age 21. Post-graduation, Sato not-yet-Sensei asked to stay in Sapporo with his family and friends. More fool him. As with all teachers in Japan, choosing a teaching location in not allowed. Ever. You can make requests, sure, but you won’t get them. Instead, our protagonist was shunted to a small town, a sobering five hours drive from everything he ever knew.

(Readers may, at this point, as why Sato Sensei was not in favour of a more exciting placement than Hokkaido’s frozen terrain. Apparently, a Hokkaido teaching degree does not translate the other islands of Japan. If a teacher has a sudden urge for the bright lights of Tokyo, he must spend another two years completing a diploma which permits him to teach outside of Hokkaido. This makes no sense given that the teaching curriculum is exactly the same throughout Japan. For a country so obsessed with ‘Black’ Obama, change is disturbingly low on the list of priorities.)

And so, unable to travel afar and unable to stay put, Sato Sensei was placed in a non-descript small town which I believe was famous for growing turnips. Here he stayed for two years, coached the basketball club, making a few teaching buddies and finally began to feel like he was part of the turnip-themed community. Then, as with all teachers, he was relocated to ANOTHER Gummo-esque town three hours north. This one was bigger but colder and here he coached the archery club because he had to. Still, things started looking up when he began courting the school’s demure, tracksuit wearing P.E. teacher. She was the only female teacher not married and they had romantic dates at the town’s local yakiniku bar and held hands under the desk at the teachers’ meeting. He even sang her a shaky version of The Carpenters’ ‘Close to you’ at the end of year karaoke party, after which the other male teachers slapped him on the back and told him that he was now ‘a real man.’

A year went blissfully by and the happy couple got engaged. This was not altogether unexpected. Japanese teachers nearly always marry other Japanese teachers, for the simple reason that most of them never have the chance to meet anyone else. This is especially true in deathly small towns, where men and women never go to the same pub.

Unfortunately, this declaration of love meant nothing to the Hokkaido School Board. Being the Iago in our Shakespearean tragedy, the Board completely ignored the pleading requests for the two to continue their journeys through life side by side. Instead, the new engaged couple was split up and placed six hours apart at opposite ends of the island. There were tears and the exchanging of personalized coffee mugs and then they parted ways; she for a town of 12,000 to the north and he for a small town in the south known primarily for its seaweed.

It is here where your humble narrator came across the poor fellow, two desks down from his own and struggling to unpack a box of tattered English textbooks. He gave me a weary smile and after we began to converse in fractured English, I could see that this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Upon his arrival, Sato Sensei was instructed to coach the tennis club, which involved standing huddled in a corner of the freezing tennis courts for four hours every afternoon from Monday to Saturday. If there is a tournament on Sundays, he has to organize rides for all the team members; weekend plans be damned. As a result, he is only able to undertake the six hour journey to visit his fiancé about once a month. He told me this on one of our cigarette breaks (which happen often, him being addicted and me being bored), showing me a tiny photo of the women in question and telling me in a sad, tiny voice that he might only spend ten nights with her in one year. He told me that he hated tennis and tears welled up in his eyes. I felt a lump in my throat and took another long drag of my Lucky Strike. It’s times like this that smoking is not only acceptable but pretty goddamn mandatory.

Sato Sensei is stuck here for at least three years and from there is it wherever the Hokkaido School Board chooses. He stares wistfully at my travel plans, knowing that he will probably never get a chance to see the wide world. Teachers in Japan get maybe one week’s break after club activities are all set and done and these are mostly spent visiting their parents or their parents’ graves. Some do attempt to fit overseas travel into their limited vacation time like Mochi Sensei; the teacher at my school who flew to Europe for a three day 'holiday of a lifetime' in between softball tournaments.

Sato Sensei hopes to one day settle down with his tracksuit-covered beloved and raise a family. Still, on the likelihood of this, he is unsure. The Hokkaido Board is no more accommodating to a married couple than an engaged one. It may be ten years before the two can be together again.

And yet, I have saved the most heartbreaking part of the story for last. Sad and lonely, a stranger in town no one would ever want to call home, Sato Sensei decided to get himself a pet. A cat, a dog, a hamster...anything so long as it would be glad to see him when he returned after his six hours of teaching and four hours of tennis. Upon finding this out, the Hokkaido School Board contacted him and informed him that pets were not allowed in the house he was required to live in. Not even a goldfish.

In five weeks, I will leave my small town forever and breathe a sigh of long anticipated relief. I hope Sato Sensei will be ok. I have promised to send him a postcard from the magical world of America and may even attempt a Skype conversation at some point. As I write this, he is frantically trying to prepare his fifth lesson for the day, his brows furrowed with concentration. Sometimes when I walk past him, I give him an affectionate pat on the back. He turns round, startled and confused, and smiles weakly.

Does he dare disturb the universe?

Exploring the Novelty Pash

Yukki told me last week that she is planning to follow me to New Zealand when I leave. I would have been more amused if I was sure she was joking. I told her it was six weeks and she shook her head and said “Shocking ....oh, shocking! Shocking!” She has also begun the passive aggressive threats of a clingy girlfriend during our Skype conversations. The number of crying faces in one message has reached double digits. Last night, I accidently got drunk on sake and danced around my apartment playing ‘Little Bird’ by Annie Lennox on repeat while cooking dinner. On learning this, mainly through the little dancing black man symbol available on Skype, Yukki sent me a beating love heart and this video delight, accompanied by the phrase: “Please...it dances!!!”




I danced alright.

Cryptic messages are perhaps the best part about being adrift in the sea of Japanese speakers. The boy in the tattered grunge jeans whom I ‘novelty pashed’ in Odori Park last week has begun getting in touch. At first, his messages were all in hiragana. When we exchanged numbers, he asked me if “Japanese message ok?” and, being drunk and not really caring, I nodded which was a blatant lie. I can’t read any Japanese at all, except for the kanji for ‘male’ and ‘female’ and useful food things like ‘ramen.’ It’s really all you need.

I ignored the first three kanji messages he sent me and as they continued and the number of exclamation marks grew, I sighed and emailed back a message entirely in English and a kissing face. I think this offended him as he sent me a reply which read: “If it is a kiss it does even times too many” and a picture of what looked like an exloding mushroom cloud. It didn’t seem like a good sign.
However, an hour later, I received another cryptic message. “Do you have wanting do something ???” Confused more than anything else, I chucked him a reply about being in Sapporo for the weekend.

There was no way I could make sense of any of this. Japanese boys are notoriously cautious about treading in the gay pool. The manly baseball players hold hands as they walk to school. The straight ones carry handbags and paint their nails. And this boy, dressed like a Pearl Jam groupie complete with Timberlands, had told us that despite the five second pash we shared, he liked girls. I had tried my best to sway him, blowing my cigarette smoke out in a seductive stream while he awkwardly coughed and grudgingly complimenting his Timberlands. I even told him (through Moraya, my fellow ALT and the only one who could speak bridge the language gap) in a bout of drunken desperation that I back in New Zealand, I was the crown prince and that I had my own castle. His eyes widened but then Moraya, bored with playing the amenable translator, added that my last girlfriend in New Zealand had been a sheep.

And so, were these messages more in the direction on a ‘whats up homie’ or a booty call? Did I even care? Even after being stranded for almost a year in a sexual desert, I just couldn’t see him in the box marked ‘option.’ His teeth were just too wretched to be taken seriously. And yet I kept replying. He kept offering me quotes from The Silence of the Lambs: “If it is a kiss, it does a lot.” “One knows a thing that some should sometimes quiet.” And my personal favourite, which I assume was some attempt at a dinner invitation: “The meal also puts the feedbag on.”

I have come to the conclusion that there is a lot more to the ‘novelty pash’ than people realize. It is the desire to lock lips with someone which, although awkward, embarrassing and frequently regrettable, will leave you with a good story to tell. The ‘novelty pash’ can be ethnic based, religious based, or height based. It can include puppeteers, celebrities, people who look like celebrities, people who work at your local cafe, people you secretly hate, goths, drag queens, break-dancers and angry feminists. You may be repulsed and disgusted, but you force yourself on just so that you can come stumbling into your flat at 3am and scream: “Oh my god I just hooked up with that guy from the library whose head looks like a mop!”

The trouble comes when you try and move your novelty pash to the next level. All too often people attempt to move into onto a ‘novelty date’ stage so as to keep the novelty value alive. Sadly this never works, as the novelty factor dies almost instantly. I believe I have fallen into the novelty pash trap with Mr. Pearl Jam. I have to be strong and tell him that I cannot put my feedbag on and accompany him to dinner. I should really just tick off the ‘straight Asian boy who speaks no English’ box on my pash list and move onto something else.

Sexually confused rabbi perhaps?

We thank you for your co-operation

There are two supermarkets in my town. One, the local (Baby Co-op), is the size of mid-level Four Square and a minute’s walk from my apartment. The other (Mamma Co-op) is exactly the same but four times the size and, with my inability to acquire a Japanese driver’s license, a frustrating hour’s walk away. Sometimes, on those long Polanski-esque weekends of solitude, I arm myself with my walking stick and a packet of camels and brave the three kilometre trek there; a distance which seems much longer on the way back, with a bag of groceries dangling from each arm.

Mama Co-op is somewhat overwhelming. Supermarket staff stands in every corner handing out free samples on toothpicks and yelling in high pitched Japanese. Mothers cram their trolleys full of frozen chickens. There is an entire refrigerated section devoted purely to tofu. There is a whole aisle just for soy sauce. I am not joking.

Throughout all this, the store’s theme tune plays at a dangerously high volume. Mama Co-Op plays the same 30 second jingle over and over again through every speaker in the store. It cannot be brought to justice through words, but if you see me in person and buy me a stiff drink, I might sing it for you. The lyrics go something like this:

“Ju bye, ju bye...who wants a ju bye?”

Then, after an elaborate synthesiser chord, it resumes:

“Nana bye, nana bye...who wants a Nana bye?”

The lyrics in question are sung in a baby voice, either by a small child or a playschool-themed female performance artist. This is followed by a jolly man with a belly laugh who thunders out "hey, juuuuu bye" and what I assume is the Japanese for “Our shop is the best! We have many things you can buy! Look at all our soy sauce!” It ends with a double drum kick and, all things considered, makes for a pretty good little ditty. The trouble is that two seconds after the concluding drum kick, the whole thing starts all over again, baby voice and all.

After walking an hour to get to the magical land of red onions and other things not available at Baby Co-op, I am determined to take my sweet time about it. I like a casual stroll through the produce section, a wander down soy sauce lane and a chance to sift through the store’s array of elaborate bento boxes. And so, after a thirty six minute shopping excursion, my ears have delivered me the ‘ju bye’ jingle SEVENTY TWO times. By this time, my fingers have begun gripping the edge of the trolley and the left side of my face has developed a nervous twitch. I try to smile at the cashier but it comes out as more of a leer and I think about how this nice girl’s ‘ju bye’ intake must be in the thousands and I die a little inside. It is at this point that I remember why I bought the camels.

Baby Co-op provides a much more soothing auditory experience. The preference here is for mainstream pop hits played out on analog synth. Sometimes these are matter of fact clichés that you’d hear in any elevator worth its salt: ‘Super Trooper,’ ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Strangers in the Night’ set the bar and you’d think things would stay there. Not so.

Amid these tired classics, Baby co-op offers a selection of hip tracks that should never be played through the guise of easy listening. The first time I heard ‘Bullet with Butterfly wings’ muzak-style, I thought that I’d hit the jackpot. But over the next ten months, I was also privileged to hear the likes of ‘Enter Sandman’, ‘You Outta Know’, ‘The Real Slim Shady’ ‘Love will tear us apart’, ‘Don’t cha’ and ‘Killing in the name of’ all beautifully presented through the medium of the moog. My personal favourite is still the bizarre inclusion of a funked up version of the theme from Jaws. As I remember, I was standing by the fish section when it played and I snickered and tossed a tray of salmon fillets into my basket.

For the 8.45pm to 9.00pm every night, Baby Co-op switches to ‘closing music.’ Put simply, this consists of fifteen minutes of ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ It both soothes me and confuses me as I gather my basket of snacks for the evening ahead: What the hell do they do at New Years? Do the staff play it during Baby Co-op's closing time on New Year’s Eve and then, at midnight, drunkenly embrace and sing along to the ‘ju bye’ jingle? Perhaps they get a couple of self-assured party goers to act out the baby voice part and the jolly man part. Perhaps there is a ‘ju bye’ drinking game. I imagine it would involve a bottle of tequila and a loss of will to live.

The twitch is back. Camel me up, baby.

Forgive me for prattling away and making everything all oogy.

I have my very own number one fan. I ever have it in writing: “I am a fan of Telford!” In some respects, she reminds me a little of Kathy Bates in Misery, except psychically, where she is the complete opposite.

It all started last year. Over a casual bowl of ramen, my neighbouring ALT mentioned that he had a student who had seen me out and about and had apparently fallen into crush mode. I slurped my ramen and laughed. Crushes. Surely a mandatory part of any teaching job. He told me her name and I nodded and then forgot it, as I forget everyone’s name in this country.
Later (a number of weeks if I remember correctly), a drunken Friday night and my neighbour persuaded me to send the said student an ‘I love you’ text from his phone. He told me it would make her freak out ‘in a good way.’ I shrugged and OKed it and he sent the message off and we got kept drinking and soon moved onto more mature topics like camping and rim jobs.

Months passed. Seasons changed. The White house got a little blacker and Susan Boyle made hundreds of hard working music students take to the bottle. The school year ended and a new one began, ushering in a tide of tiny, tidy, immaculately dressed fifteen year olds, with epic fringes and novelty charms dangling from every piece of stationary. I was at my monthly visit to the high school one town over, when I heard a high pitched squeal from the back of the classroom. I ignored it and continued dictating the list of sports-themed verbs.

The second the class ended, a pair of feet pattered up to the front of the classroom. I turned around and looked down. In front of me was the tiniest girl I had ever seen. She had huge eyes and ridiculously long hair that was done up in pigtails and made her look ever shorter. She started babbling at me in Japanese, her eyes getting wider and wider as it became clear I had no idea who she was or what she was talking to. She suddenly thrust her Hello Kitty-themed cellphone at me and said ‘I lub you I lub you I lub you!’ and tried to find the said message with shaky hands. I clicked.

It is at this point where the phrase ‘just nod and smile’ really comes into its own. I nodded and smiled. She squealed and hopped around and covered her mouth with her hands. I have never used the word swoon before, but I think she fulfilled the definition. She actually swayed from one side to the other like she might tip over, but somehow managed to stay vertical. Eventually, I managed to pry myself away and head to staffroom, as she followed my down the corridor waving manically and screaming out ‘kawaii’ (The Japanese favourite word meaning 'cute') as I secured myself inside.

A week later, she added me on skype. I accepted her because I had no idea what her name was and that ‘Yukki’ must have been the name of someone eligible fellow I met in my one and only gay night in Sapporo. This happens a lot; the forgetting names, not the eligible gay Skype buddies. As a result, our first conversation was a terrifying experience as I tried to figure out who the hell I was talking to through my fractured Japanese. It didn’t help that the profile picture was an anime warrior holding a gleaming sword.

I finally figured who was on the other end when Yukki asked when I was coming back to ‘the school.’ I told her I would be there in three weeks which brought on a tirade of giggling smiley faces and the phrase: “OK!!!!!!The enjoyment!!!!”

Throughout the next few weeks, I found out many things about Yukki as she guilt tripped me into numerous Skype conversations. If I didn’t respond, she would play the ‘sad face’ card which works much better on Skype where the sad face actually cries tears over and over again. I discovered that her hobbies were ‘movie watching & music appreciation’ and her favourite food was chocolate with twelve exclamation marks. I told her I liked running and she suggested in capital letters that we run together. I grimaced and told her ‘lol’ but she sent back the confused face that meant she didn’t understand so I gave up and just said ‘NO.’

She approached me on the train on Tuesday and handed me a cellophane bag filled with chocolate treats. I walked to school with her and her friends (who were instructed to stay several steps behind us) and she told me that I was ‘very very very cool’ and that I had beautiful eyes. The friends giggled and I blushed. I let it slip that I was leaving the land of Japan the next month and Yukki stopped dead. She looked up at me and shook her head. Her eyes filled with tears and she yelled at me: “No! No! You stay here! Stay in Japan. New Zealand no! I lub you!” I told her I would think about it.

Eventually she cheered up and asked if we could still talk on Skype if I went back home. ‘Sure’ I said and I meant it. She’s sweet and really means no harm to anyone. Plus, she’s tiny so if she ever tried any Kathy Bates shit, I could blatantly take her.