Goodbye, My Friend

From earlier this week ...

Teachers in Japan are forced to switch schools every seven to eight years, sometimes when they desperately don’t want to move, and sometimes at their own request. So it was my bad luck (although in the end, probably their good fortune) that two of the teachers I’m most friendly with were transferred, including my fabulously sweet and easy-going supervisor, Sasaki-sensei. She most definitely did not want to leave. Her school is probably one of the more difficult around. The students can get pretty wild and the atmosphere in the teachers room is surprisingly tense. Yet, I guess she’d gotten used to it. Also, the school’s five minutes from her house. Her new school is about 40 minutes away, just one example of the sudden change that is thrust upon teachers. They don’t find out until late March that they’re moving. Two weeks later, they’re gone. Like I said, this is bad for me because we got along great. As the baseball coach observed one day, “Sasaki sensei, she’s the only one who talks to you.”

Her replacement is fine, although she seems a bit overwhelmed. One day she was sitting at the public computer, which is right next to my desk. I noticed she hadn’t moved in awhile. I looked over, and she was asleep. At the end of the first week, I asked her if she had any plans. She told me, “I want to sleep all weekend.”

As it’s the new school year here, we reintroduce ourselves to all the students in all the schools. Here were some of the better questions I received:

May I have some comments about human right violations in China?
Who do you support, Mr. Clinton or Mr. Obama?
What do you think about my beauty?
Do you own any guns?
What is the current trend in U.S.?

And finally, my favorite:

What are your thoughts on the sub-prime loan program?

Finally, if you haven’t, read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Its stunning. Unlike anything I’ve ever read. I cant stop thinking about it.

If you don’t trust me …

“Trenchant and terrifying, written with stripped-down urgency and fueled by the force of a universal nightmare. The Road [has] stunning, savage beauty. This is an exquisitely bleak incantation–pure poetic brimstone . . . [Cormac McCarthy] gives voice to the unspeakable . . . Yet this narrative is also illuminated by extraordinary tenderness . . . This is art that both frightens and inspires . . . Its fearless wisdom is more indelible than reassurance could ever be.”
–Janet Maslin, New York Times

… even if it is an Oprah Book of the Month selection.