"Oh no! It's 9:30!" (i'm dizzy) "miyoko, i overslept! i'm sorry!!"
"you are at your home right now?" she can't believe it. neither can i.
"oh no! i'm so sorry.. gomen nasai!!"
"alright. so.. (something in japanese) we can maybe take the next train. i will call you again, ok. please make yourself prepared!"
"shitshitshitshit! i'm so damn far from prepared." i stumbled through a top-speed shower/dressing still wigglelingly drunk from last nights high jinx. what the hell was i thinking..
miyoko is an ecc junior teacher/administrator who works in the cramped back office of ecc with 2-12 other very busy japanese. she's the one that's about 7 months pregnant and spends most of her time performing intensely polite phone calls in her straight-backed, tourguide voice. i know because i can hear every unnecessary apology from my little glass both (where i spend most of my time performing hideously demeaning "lessons" in my talking-to-morons voice). this morning miyoko was standing on platform 12 in crisp clear december learning that the man she had chosen as her santa claus was an unreliable, alcoholic buffoon. i get the feeling she was only half surprised. despite my attempts to assimilate, i feel like i still come off as unprofessional and unpresentable when compared to japanese standards. anyway, i'm sure i only overslept to satisfy her expectations.
weeks and weeks ago she asked me if i could attend the ecc junior christmas party. it was on my day off, but i figured i could score a free lunch. i thought it was strange that she was looking for a commitment rather than a simple "sure i’d love to", but i was happy to be a willing team player and told her i would be there with bells on. if i had known then how literally i would be wearing bells, i would have thought twice about the christmas party.
in the more recent weeks, miyoko occasionally dropped by apologetically to give me more information on the christmas party. turns out it was actually a group lesson/craft session for about 25, 5-8 year-olds (so, these gigs are more like work, but they pay). she gave me an outline of the lesson plan and it seemed pretty standard - hokey pokey and christmas card and what not. she told me only yesterday that i would be appearing as santa clause.. "oh, and please pack a lunch." (damn)
i flew from my apartment! coughing and congested, i pedaled like the wind! i ran through the station and out onto the platform! i found miyoko with a phone call and plopped down next to her. so began a long series of sincere apologies. it turns out we would not be late by american standards (or even technical ones), so i would not have to commit ritual suicide. i felt drunk and can only assume that i appeared and smelled as such. realizing that this was one of my lifetime low points, i decided to go ahead and eat my breakfast on the train (considered rude.. but at this point, who am i trying to impress?).
we rode the train into the distant countryside and got off at a one-horse in the middle of a rice paddy. another teacher was there waiting with a car and we drove a short distance to some kind of war-era concrete construction. there was a strange little shanty town surrounding the base of it. we walked under hanging clothes and past a golden retriever tied to a tricycle. we entered the abandon(?) building and climbed up to the second-and-a-half(?) floor. we went outside(?) and then into a tin shed(?). i didn't question any of this at the time.. but when we got inside the shed everything was whitewalls and halogen lights. i took my shoes off and stepped into a carpeted room of nearly 40 children.
dude, they were so small - i was in complete shock - i had NO idea what the hell i was doing.. miyoko had to spoon fed me every little instruction in tiny manageable bites. she told me everything to say, everything to do - i was so very much a puppet. it didn't become clear until hours later, that she had actually expected me to lead the class.. even the kids could see i was green (in every possible sense of the word) and they took full advantage. it didn't help that the planned activities included playing "*gaijin says" and making a christmas "*kiku mi" sign.
proving that i was completely useless in every other capacity i was paraded solely for my status as a "native english speaker" and was the subject of some mild exploitation when i reentered the room dressed as that hateful red abomination. i was the white guy dressed as the ambassador of cultural westernization. but no one seemed to be disturbed by this image, so i played along (maybe they all thought I was colonel sanders?).
eventually the mass of small people was gone and i was free to take off that damn beard. i had a short break to eat an embarrassingly western lunch for the amusement of my coworkers and finally had some coffee. i had an adventure with the toilet that time forgot and by the time the next group of kids arrived i was in much better condition to deal with them. thankfully, we only had 2 more groups of only 5 students each. they were little tiny tots just 3-5. so cute! they were shy at first, but eventually warmed to the strange foreign man. miyoko still directed me as before.. i doubt she'll trust me near children again - probably wonders how the hell i dress myself.
when it was finally over, i was shuttled to the train station. i was again very apologetic for my lateness (and for my complete ineptitude) and thanked everyone. i was thankful that they didn't hand me an envelope of cash - i really couldn't have accepted it.. but when the money just shows up on my paycheck next week, i won't feel so bad.
*inside joke explanation:
"gaijin says" = simon says, but with a foreigner in japan
"kiku mi" is katakana for "kick me"
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