parasitegirl | Last Camp Entry! (Reply)

The most important part of the last day was the fact that it was the last day. This colored my perceptions of it all. I needed very little energy to propel me to my final destination and goal, to be in my apartment, alone.

Once again, the promised uprising failed to appear. We awoke and folded our linens. You may think of folding as a very mundane activity, a no-brainer as it were. I too once held your views, but that was before I came to Japan and participated in any internationalization seminars and English camps. It’s not that the Japanese have a complex form of bedding or that there is some sort of linen origami that school children grow up learning, but there is an anal attention to bedding details that taints the youth-facilities and hostels of this country.

On my third day in Japan, ever, I attended my first Internationalization Seminar in Kamogawa, Chiba. There I watched a leader at the seminar explain to all of us, using a miniature bed, bedding, and Barbie, the correct way we would be expected to fold our bedding once we finished using the bunk beds. I thought it was a fluke. Since then I have watched physical demonstrations, videos, and have perused various diagrams and photo-explanations at other seminar/camp locations.

I have learned to obey these edicts. I know, first hand, that if I dare to fold the blankets and put them on the bed with the raw edges pointing outward (instead of the folds) that inevitably me and me fellow councilors/ALT’s will be called back into the room and a dreadfully earnest Japanese leader will explain to us our mistakes and make us refold everything with him/her. And this will all be done with a straight face tinged with pity, as if it is we who are terribly foolish and sadly barbaric…and not, in fact, the facilities being run by anal-compulsive rule-making wankers.

But, without an uprising, I figured it would be best to obey the folding diagrams.

I had my last breakfast with the Peaches, a quiet affair as all of us were totally knackered. And then, as the Peaches went off to fold their own bedding, me and the other foreign coffee fiends gathered together to continue insulting each other and double-check the questions that are mandatory when encountering any other foreign ALT/FLT/CIR/NOVA in Japan.

-Where do you work?

-Where do you live?

-How long have you lived here?

-Where is “back home?”

If you know anything about Japan you know there is always an understood complex system of social hierarchy and the whole unchanging rules of being sempai and kohai. Most foreigners like to pretend that they come from countries which are passionately attached to individualism and that social rank is based only on respect and experience and that these Confucian concepts just don’t manner, but they do and they are less clearly defined. Suffice to say the answers given to the above questions (with the additional ranking of how well you speak or read Japanese) are the basis for our own complex equations of social rank, snobbery, verbal abuse, and so on in society of foreigners who teach English here.

We went to the play hall and the winning three teams were announced. And then, in a moment of cruelty, the final scores of all teams were unveiled. We suck. Angels suck more. Take that, you tykes!

Then there was an orgy of permanent markers as we all received our white camp t-shirts. I decided to stay stationary and let the kids line up for me. I have no idea how many t-shirts I signed with my name and a basic doodle of a little girl with ponytails. At the end of this we all put on our newly decorated shirts, at which point it became clear that the Team Leader had made an error in handing out shirts, the youngest boy in our group had a adult medium shirt that fit him like a tunic, I had an adult small that fit me the way I prefer shirts to fit me, close. I win!

There was time for each foreign leader to say a few words in closing. People looked at me funny when I said goodbye to my Icky-Monkey-Butts. We then took pictures and little Momoko spent the last 30 minutes firmly attached to me. I’ll grudgingly admit that she was pretty cute. I’m told that at some point in 4th grade the kids start to learn embarrassment, how to stand aloof, and stop giving the hugs.

We got on the bus. Jimmy and I scored the same front seats we’d had coming to camp. We sat with Chizuko, a wonderful and humorous woman who runs the camp. And ate our lunches. Chizuko brought me some extra rice balls to go with my banana and bread, which was far better than the baggies of wet-slimy sausage and wieners that the meat-eaters got. “How the fuck am I supposed to eat this?” Jimmy asked. After one councilor turned green the rest decided the nasty meat was not worth the mess and held out for the next rest-stop convenience store.

The 4-hour ride was uneventful except at the 3rd rest stop where we rescued a stranded junior high school boy who had been abandoned by his bus on a tennis club trip. Poor, unloved boy, the buddy system must have failed him, which is never a good sign.

After the bus ride was a 1 ½ express train with Jimmy, where I slipped in and out of slumber and managed to take a few phone calls from Kazu (in which I agreed to go out with him and his American buddy that night…but only after I had a shower and a few precious moments of alone time.) It was also on the express train that Jimmy told me how flabbergasted he was that I hadn’t snapped once at camp and how low his expectations had been. He of little faith.

By the time I was on my last train home I was filled with explicit shower fantasies. Under normal circumstances, when most people have shower fantasies they are imagining being in a shower with a specific someone (or someones!) or are picturing a steamy-slo-mo view of one particular person lathering and rinsing and being all wet ‘n sexy. But on that last train my fantasy shower was one in which I was perfectly alone. I would grab my shampoo, pour it into the palm of my hand, work it slowly through my own hair with my own fingers, and when I rinsed and shook my head I would see no one else.

And like the last leg of any long journey, or sleepless night walking angry through Tokyo, I began to imagine this fantasy and the additional sensual pleasures of being alone, in great detail…

I will put my keys on that hook. I will fish my wallet from my backpack and then let everything just drop to the floor. I will walk to my bedroom and while checking my email I will strip down, tossing my sweaty-unflattering clothing and my damp knickers and bra directly into the hamper. I will slip on the cotton yukata I wear as a robe and walk through the kitchen and into my shower area…no need to worry about exposed skin because I will be alone in my own apartment…on the way I’ll remember to hit the hot water button…

The shower, the naked in my apartment time, the yukata, and the clean clothing I slipped on to go meet Kazu and Craig, it all lived up to my fantasy. Even the swelling itchy pain of my mystery potent bug bite could not erase the joy of such simple solitary pleasures…

Home, again, home again, jiggity jig!