I’ve been wanting to write about how different the idea of touching someone else is here in Japan, and today one of my students forced the issue for me. I was groped by a student. More shocking – it was a boy.
When I first arrived in Japan, I was a little shocked to see women walking hand in hand down the street. To me, that meant that there was a certain level of intimacy between them. As it turns out, it’s perfectly common here, and I’ve grown used to the sight of women holding hands, holding each other’s arms, etc.
When I got to the classroom, I noticed that the behavior extended to the boys as well. Boys in my classroom sit on each others laps, drape their arms over their friend’s shoulders, and get really comfortable with each other physically.
Again, I was pretty surprised. Things are different here. In a culture where homosexuality is very rare, things like giving your classmate a neck massage in the middle of a lesson aren’t nearly as provocative.
Today in class one of my students was all over me – he was feeling my chest, my arms, my stomach, and generally trying to get an idea of the muscle tone in my body. Before I could say no thanks, he had made a pretty thorough evaluation. I’ve been touched before by other students both male and female. One of my students cannot resist reaching out and touching me every time we pass in the hall. This was a weird experience, but more weird in that nobody else found it strange at all.
Even though I’ve been here a year, the sight of members of the same sex touching each other like that still surprises me, and I suppose it’ll take some time to get used to.
This evening I went over to the yakitori for dinner after my tutoring lesson. I had a great time chatting with the master. We are going to try to arrange a dinner one of these nights. He wants to invite the entire softball team over, and I imagine that the noise from that size of party would get me kicked out of the teacher apartments for sure.
He also invited me to a year-end party in the yakitori on Christmas night. Kuniko is going to be stuck at school that night, and since I’ve got no special plans for Christmas, I might as well head over to the yakitori and participate in a drunken bonanza.
Tomorrow and the next day I’m going to be attending a conference in Kobe, and I’ve been tapped to help out with the organizing and moderating some workshops. As I told one of my teachers – it’s not often that my name is mentioned in the same breath as the word “moderation”. He just stared at me and waited for the punchline.
