As soon as we told Chris we were visiting Japan, he asked us if we wanted to meet his students. How could we refuse? He teaches at a number of schools, but we were only able to get to one of them, where he teaches two eighth-grade classes.
And so it was on a very cold, windy Friday morning that we found ourselves taking off our shoes in the lobby of Erimo’s middle school and, because we had foolishly neglected to bring our “indoor shoes,” (doesn’t everyone have indoor shoes?) donning little slippers. I mean little slippers. They might have fit American eighth-graders; then again they may not. By scrunching up my toes I could just about fit into the slippers, and thus avoid getting the floor dirty, I guess. (And this was ordinary tiled floor, nothing delicate.) And then… showtime. We started by introducing ourselves, talking through some pictures of our homes and families, and pointing out our homes on a map of the world. And then we opened up the floor for questions.
So. We’ve all heard the stereotypes about scarily repressed Japanese schoolchildren. I dunno. Maybe they’re somewhere else; maybe Tokyo is different from Erimo, or high school is different from middle school. These kids weren’t repressed. They were amazed how tall we were, and told us so. (I was amazed how small their feet were, but didn’t tell them so, even though I think my circulation was more or less cut off by that time.) In fact, Chris told his class, we were short in comparison to others in our family, which is true. Chibi gaijin. Midget foreigners. They were astonished. And then one of them noticed that we were both male, and traveling without any women…
”Are you…” one of them asked, and then paused, finding the word… “homosexual?” He said this very slowly and carefully, but, no.
They had other questions for us. They wanted to know if we had played Dragon Quest, which I had known was iconic, and whether I had met Bill Gates, whom I had not known was iconic. I think the latter still disturbs me a little.
And then it was time for souvenirs! For the first half of our trip we had dragged luggage full of comic books and candy, all of which they snapped up greedily. They had never seen M&Ms, and were utterly bewildered by sour candy. World peace through exchange of junk food.
And then it was time for lunch. We met the principal, who bowed and greeted us and invited us into his elegantly upholstered office. Through quirks of custom we ate several lunches, and then it was time for mini-volleyball. Is Japan-size volleyball, Chris explained. Small ball, small net, small country, Ryan taking great pleasure in spiking the ball without even jumping. And thus are legends made.