Today was the practice day for sports day – the real one is happening this Thursday. Since it was practice, the students did just a few preliminary events. Most of their time was spent marching around the field. They are quite good at marching – I was surprised.
I spent the entire day outside walking around and talking with students. We talked quite a bit in both English and Japanese. Some of the conversations I got involved in were absolutely bizarre.
One boy had learned a few new words, “dick” and “johnson”. I wasn’t surprised that he knew “dick”, but “johnson” is a little bit of a specialized term. After further questioning I discovered that he learned them from Mr. Hayashi. Yikes! As I left he pointed to a student sitting next to him and said, “His dick is very, very small!” in English. The guy who he had indicated nodded enthusiastically and waved goodbye to me.
A couple of boys were pondering how I could look so cool no matter what clothes I wear. I’m not joking and they were not being sarcastic. They thought it was some kind of magical American ability that I have. They were deeply interested in hip hop music and asked me who killed Tupac Shakur.
Girls throughout the day would wave and giggle and say hello to me, and some even said “You are very handsome!” or “You are beautiful!” After two years I still haven’t figured out the correct response to this.
One boy asked me if I was “experienced”. It turned out that he wanted to know if I have had sex. I answered honestly that yes, I have had sex before, and then he wanted details. Where? Did it feel good? I started to pretend that I couldn’t understand and got out of there.
A boy asked me if Americans really call Japanese “yellow monkeys”. One girl asked me for recommendations of places to visit in America. I had my picture taken with several groups of boys and girls.
All in all it was a typical day out on the field. Everyone was glad that there were no classes. We just sat around out in the heat.
The heat did have an effect, however. Every now and then a student would collapse, and they would cart them off to the nurse’s tent. I was sitting next to the nurse’s tent for a while, and at one point there were eight kids laying around trying to recover from some kind of injury. One kid was in really bad shape, so they called an ambulance.
When the ambulance arrived, the drivers got out and looked at all the students laying around and wanted to know which one to take. It turned out they took two, and called another ambulance to take two more. It made for some drama around lunchtime.
I left school early to meet Kuniko in Sannomiya for some wedding planning. She saw me and said I looked exhausted. I have a pretty good sunburn all over my neck and face, so that might be why.
Why spent about an hour and a half at the wedding place, and then from there we stopped in for some ramen at a restaurant nearby. I had some Chinese style spicy ramen with a spicy broth full of sesame seeds and hot oil, and in the middle was a big pile of spiced pork which was tender and juicy. Of course there were plenty of noodles in there too – so good. Kuniko finished her bowl of ramen, but it was a lot of food, and we came back with our stomaches aching just a little.
I’m off to bed now – tomorrow is a regular day at school. I have two classes tomorrow, but they’ve been shortened to 40 minutes each. I can’t wait to see what color my skin will be when I wake up.
