Big Cheeses

The advantage of not writing diddly-squit for ages and then bursting out with a torrent of crap is that you can kind of cast an eye back, a retrospective, and tie things all up nice neat, draw threads and pick out all the pairs and similar things.

A while back, then, there was a training day for all the English teachers across the city. Aside from me, there was only one other English assistant, Nick. When asked for comments and questions, he stood up and asked what mistakes ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers- us) make, in order that he can better himself, improve etc bless his cotton socks. You could almost hear the collective sucking of air through tight teeth. Nobody ventured an answer, and I watched in rapt fascination as the question was bounced from the Professor heading the meeting, to another teacher, and finally to me. So I, as an ALT, ended up answering on behalf of the teachers a question about common mistakes we make. Unberievable. You just cannot get anyone Japanese to speak their mind in front of others.

But that's not what I wanted to write about.

By virtue of being foreign and nothing else, following the Professor's speech, Nick and I got invited along to the Head-Teacher's office with the diminutive man to take tea and discuss matters English. The professor had put one hand in his pocket as he worked with the chalkboard during the speech and he had a fussy, boisterous manner about him when you said something he didn't quite understand, which isn't to say I disliked him. I just didn't particularly like him either.

His speech had included a model of concentric circles, inner and outer, representing various Englishes. The Inner was native, the outer, pigeon, bastard, fresh, like Nigerian pigeon English. And I felt it strangely appropriate, given that I was invited into a different kind of inner circle that day, to take tea and discuss.

That's all for that one.

Next was the Governor of Yamagata. I first met him at the reception desk of the Komian Club, the social venue for film makers and fans alike at the Yamagata Documentary Film Festival (come on, you must have heard of it..). He was volunteering too. I was wondering why everyone was taking his picture, and upon questioning I found out who he was. But every time I asked a question, he'd look at me real strange, as if to say, 'And who are you to ask me?' before literally turning his shoulder on me, having given as curt an answer as was feasible (he spoke immaculate American English).

Two nights ago I saw him again, at the after-party for the volunteers of the Komian Club. Nothing happened but for me to get a picture taken along with him. I didn't want my picture taken with him, but when Satomi Sensei took my camera, I had little say in the matter. With all the hauteur of a traveller returned he regaled a small audience at one table with anecdotes of his time abroad (he worked at the IMF once). He told exactly the kind of stories you'd expect the Governor of Yamagata to, and I noticed he even wore a badge on his jacket lapel of the little green monster character that usually sits above the slogan 'Oishii Yamagata', advertising home-grown produce and local specialities. A big fish, a puddle.

Then yesterday I met Oba Sensei, top dog, boss of bosses, the man I don't see often and don't want to annoy. I want to get a famous foreign t.v. 'Tarento' guy called Daniel Kahl to come and speak at Nanachu. I think the kids would get a kick out of it. It just so happens he was an ALT here back in the day when there weren't any others. He travelled all over the prefecture, only visiting schools that requested him. That seems so refreshing. He mastered the local dialect, Yamagata-ben. He made his mint. He pissed off to Tokyo.

When I told K-T the idea at school, he said go speak to Oba Sensei. Daniel Kahl still returns to Yamagata and he still sees Oba Sensei when he comes back. So. I duly did that. Butter up the big man and get Daniel Kahl along to school.

So I feel like I've been mixing amongst the elite of Yamagata lately.