I only have 2 more weeks of teaching class at my international high school here, but that doesn’t make all co-worker stories irrelevant. Some of these are too strange for me not to type up. And that brings me to The Naga.
The Naga is a new English teacher (although that’s only part of her name) and it’s her first semester ever teaching. It is also her first semester teaching an English Conversation class with no text book and TWO foreign devils as assistants: yours truly and the Humorless (but very professional) Jamaican. This is a situation that would make many teachers pee themselves and drink cans of sake on the train home. I can empathize; two native speakers and no textbooks can be a bit scary.
Naga is 27 years old, two years younger than me. When we got our new shipment of English teachers I was told we had a young single gal. Jimmy, the other American, was told not to fall in love. I honestly didn’t figure out that The Naga was the young one for a few weeks. Jimmy immediately figured out that there was NO risk of him falling in love.
The Naga isn’t old in a way you can clearly identify, but you wouldn’t be surprised to find that she is single. She’s not ugly. Her skin is clear, her teeth are normal, her body is petite and thin. But there is something too sharp about her features to be called pretty or cute, yet not distinctive enough to be dramatic or memorable. She favors pastels, but somehow the combinations always suggest older Japanese mama-sans and not young pink OL’s. If I were to describe her I would say she looks efficient and tidy.
Who wants to look tidy?
At first I thought she didn’t speak much English. Planning classes with her tired us. The pauses in conversation stretched out across my lunch hours and blocked my way home. But I was wrong to think the silence was a lack of language comprehension.
I came to realize her language level was much higher than I had initially estimated; I had to change my theories. I thought the awkward jags were because she is shy, which is in part true. She and I had long talks about how she would have to take initiative and speak in class. How I would not MAKE her talk, but that if she remained silent our class would slaughter and disrespect her in the other classes she had with them. She learned and improved.
But the silence masked another, more monolithic, flaw. She does not have most of what I consider to be very basic social skills. Her inability to judge how to joke and make small talk quickly irritated some of our co-workers. Jimmy, who shares and office with her, no long speaks to her. She’s made one too many comments about his huge forehead and he has retaliated against rude comments in a very unproductive passive aggressive way. And a few days she made odd comments which lead Jimmy to think she was hitting on him. And for a while I defended her. I said her problem was some flaw in social skills and that he and others should perhaps lightly comment on what they find to be rude WHEN she says it…train her as it were. And I taunted Jimmy with the phrase “Don’t fall in loooove.”
I had to defend her because I have to teach with her. If I start feeling disrespect or frustration about her the students will be able to smell it on me. They’re perceptive. And if an ALT undermines the respect of a teacher it can be very hard to regain control of a classroom. Besides, I could afford to be kind, I’m leaving soon!
But the small talk wasn’t the worst of it. I began to feel like she was seeking me out to ask probing questions about my social life, views, and so on. She seemed to latch onto me after the Humorless Jamaican showed himself very skilled in diverting her questions. This in and of itself wasn’t that strange. I’m the other unmarried teacher her age. She may feel we have something in common or she may wish to adapt some of my traits…Who knows? I often felt like her questions were an attempt to live somewhat vicariously through me. We started to have very bizarre talks ranging from questions about mormons to iron intake to her habit of drinking hot water all day long. I learned all about her favorite TV series (Fuyu no Sonata) and the necklace she wears and how it is connected to this TV drama. I also began to learn that she’s got a semi secret love of Anime and Manga and I didn’t hide my own knowledge.
Around this time more teachers were admitting to finding her a bit above and beyond the usual level of creepy and odd. I mean, we’re English teachers in a Japanese high school. I don’t think high school teachers ANYWHERE are considered model citizens of normalcy. If you remember your high school teachers it is due to the eccentricities that either engaged you or turned you off to the subject. Teachers are freaks. Truth. And the primary complaints were thus: She asks very direct questions that are often too personal for our working environment, she maintains intense eye contact for a painfully prolonged time, she does not respect people’s personal boundaries.
Let's review those last two complaints with some cultural context. She maintains intense eye contact for a painfully prolonged time and she does not respect people’s personal boundaries…IN JAPAN…Japan is not a touchy feely place. Sober people in Japan do not touch each other often and have very clear boundaries of personal space and eye contact. ALT’s can tell you that the amount of casual physical touching of others decreases dramatically in the transition from elementary school to Jr. High to high school. And it is intuitively understood by all that if you are packed ass to crotch on the train that everyone compensates for the breaking of personal space by fastidiously creating mental space by not making eye contact with the other people on the train.
The Naga had been sitting and standing so close to some of the male teachers that they felt the need to leap from their desks and fling open the office doors so that nothing would be misunderstood…okay…Japan land of the institutional harassment and men are going out of their way to say HEY! Nothing is going on!
And while I defended her, it was becoming less helpful. I would just tell guys not to worry, because she did the same thing to me as well. When we’d have our strange talks she’d pull the chairs so close and lean towards me. At moments our faces were probably about a foot and a half apart.
The weirdness started a few weeks ago. One day, after talking about lesson plans, she turned away from the Jamaican and latched into me. She’d brought a manga and began asking me if I liked to read comics. I explained that, yes, I do, but I still need Japanese comics that use furigana ( small writing next to kanji to show pronunciation) because it is frustrating to have to stop and look up new kanji each time I come across one. With furigana I can learn the new pronunciation and meaning and then move quickly. She showed me the comic, explaining the story. I joined in, reading enough that she could glean my general level of Japanese. She offered to make copies and add all the furigana herself and I told her that she didn’t have to go through all that trouble, really. It was all very odd, but I figured she was just trying to make friends and help me out…something felt strange but I ignored it.
Next day she comes to my office again. She’s got a different comic. It’s a collection of stories that all take place at a girl’s school and a movie had been made of it I don’t remember the name of it. I’ve blocked it out. We continue to talk and she continues to sit almost in my lap. And she tells me there is a part she wants me to read. I humor her. I figured it was time to watch the gaijin read. The act of being watched when I read out-loud, and these tests of my skill and proficiency always reminds me of the dancing bear, as in “It’s not how well the bear dances that amazes people, but the fact that the bear dances at all!"
So, I start reading this scene. It is two girls. One is sad because she is tall and undesired by guys…the other girl begins to ask if it must be a guy who loves her…I start to falter. Yes, The Naga has brought me a comic and flipped it open and asked me to read a scene in which two girls begin to declare their love for each other. There is no context for why me, why her, why this scene. And when I end she just sort of smiles and the conversations continues in the rambling illogical way it always does when I speak to her…
While I was reading it I realized that had a male teacher asked me to read any sort of love scene I would have questioned him directly…if a hardcore gal was hitting on me in a way I understood, I also could have dealt with it…but this was so random and without any recognizable landmarks I just remained confused as to what had happened and what, if anything, it meant.
My boyfriend thinks it is hilarious and wants more answers. I continue to report her oddities to him…last week she called me and asked me to come to her office so she could ask some grammar questions. She pulled her chair so close to mine that our knees were touching and when I had finished and asked “will that be all?” she began to rapidly re-examine the text as if she wanted to ask more in order to prolong my time there.
I want to finish our classroom time together before I even think about asking “so, what the fuck?” I just had a class with her ( the Jamaican is on holiday) and after the class ended she was standing, in silence, with her tidy head tilted and her knees knocked inward in the Japanese little girl pose of helplessness and transfixed admiration and I felt like running, not asking.
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