The Talk

*sigh*

The number of times I'm being asked to teach at elementary schools is on hitting an all-time high. This week alone I'll be spending part of three days at them. The government here really rushed into implementing their English-for-elementary-school-students scheme and did a shoddy job on the curriculum, by which I mean there is no curriculum. No school wants the same thing and there are no materials, leaving me to make it all up as we cruise along. So far only one school has a teacher with the English comprehension to teach it and I haven't heard how the extra load will be shouldered. One more teacher at each school? Already overloaded JHS English teachers to teach classes at adjoining or nearby elementary schools? Little ol' Matt roving around like a ronin? I would like to emphasize once more that I am not and accredited teacher, only an assistant. Like it matters...

I had one such class yesterday at tiny Hiju JHS's attached elementary school—a school so small they actually had to bus kids in from another school to bolster their numbers...and even then there were only fifteen kids! Thankfully these kids are pretty darn great and they knew me from past games of kickball and other lunchtime shenanigans. Most of these kids are also residents of the rural Onobaru neighborhood located literally across the street from the JSDF aerial bombing and artillery range, having grown up with the sounds of bombs, machine guns and tanks just outside their front doors. But anyways, all went well and there was back-patting all around the teachers room.

While I was teaching the young'uns though, back at the JHS the real “action” was happening. My students got “The Talk” from their teachers.

I'm a bit irked I wasn't able to see this momentous occasion. I wouldn't say it was even remotely one of my goals here to see/hear how Japanese schools deliver the sex ed spiel, but from a sociological standpoint I'd love to be a fly on that wall. Another sticky trophy on my mantle, if you will (eww...). I'm the only teacher who eats with the students in the library room and the meal was abuzz with talk of the upcoming spectacle. You know the chatter: six kids bullshitting loudly, all trying not to let on how paralyzingly uncomfortable they are with the subject matter to come. I pretend not to understand and just let the flies fall into my web. Will they teach us about how to do it? asks one. Yuki will be able to do it with so-and-so from EXILE (a horrible boy idol band) says another. Has Matt done it? asks a third. Don't ask him that!

The Talk, I'm sure, comes not a moment too soon for the kids of these small mountain schools. In California, in somewhat-rural places like Red Bluff, Sonora, Oroville and the like, I've had the opportunity to meet young representatives of the local color who all assure me that languid nights in their respective towns means fucking, drinking and/or drugs. Mix and match the order as you please. In Hiju, Yamaura, Kogo and all those backwoods villages that hardly merit the smallest dot on a road map, where drugs stronger than aspirin are considered the devil's own tic-tacs and there isn't a liquor store—or any store—around for 10km in any direction, options for Saturday night are quickly being exhausted and the weather's heating up nicely...

--Matt