The 72 Japanese Microseasons of my Discontent - Part 9 : 芒種 Bōshu (Grain beards and seeds)

June 6–10蟷螂生 Kamakiri shōzun - Praying mantises hatch

June 11–15腐草為螢 Kusaretaru kusa hotaru to naru - Rotten grass becomes fireflies

June 16–20梅子黄 Ume no mi kibamu - Plums turn yellow

Another one of okasan's set of spring postcards - this one, of an old samurai helmet, to commemorate Children's Day.

Enter Erratica and Long Covid. A prelude to the rise of Kinder Queen Geedorah...

With all those warm fuzzies a month behind me, as I rode my bike out to do my first 'gig' of the new term on April 19th, I wondered who'd be filling those two vacant positions in the five year old class. I had no inkling that my 27th year out at Mr. Insecthead's was going to get off to a decidedly less than spectacular start.

The weather was mild, sunny and beautiful. I locked my bike inside the front gate, donned a mask, and made my way across the playground and up the stairs to the school's small office. Apparently I'd been spotted. I could hear little shouts of 'Shaun sensei! Shaun sensei!', ringing out across the school yard as I swapped my running shoes for slippers at the entrance to the office. All the lights were on, and everything looked to be in full swing. Mr. Insecthead immediately came 'click-clacking' out from his computer nook with an upbeat, "Good morning!", which I returned in kind. We made a little light small talk as I stowed my bag and bike helmet. "How are you, nice weather, long time no see"...routine stuff; but pleasant enough. So far, so good. After making my usual pit stop at the office lavatory, I stepped out on to the second floor landing and picked my class materials up from outside of room #1's partitioned side office.

Insect Daughter was waiting just inside the slider with another upbeat, "Good morning!"

Here's where I start feeling old.

At the tender age of 28, Insect Daughter is the youngest of Insecthead's three girls. She started working at the school six years ago, after finishing college, and claims to have gone through three years of my class a quarter century ago.

Needless to say, of the thousands of kids that I've seen pass through there over the last 26 years, I couldn't place her as Insecthead's daughter, let alone a 'former student' - but when she came to 're-introduce herself' to me on our first day as 'co-workers', I gave her a big smile and welcomed her back, just the same.

Fortunately, it seems that she has fond memories of my class, which may or may not have been the impetus for her to cobble together a reasonable level of spoken English over the intervening years. She's also amiable enough - and being Insecthead's youngest and last un-married daughter, the most likely candidate to take up the reins of the operation when he and Insect-Wife decide to retire.

After a brief round of pleasantries, she informed me that today would be,

"Only fives"

Of the three morning sessions I do per month, one is set aside exclusively for the five year olds. On that day, the threes and fours get a break, and the fifty-odd fives are split into two groups, each shepherded by one teacher. From 10:30 am,

I do two thirty minute 'gigs', back to back. While it's basically the same show twice, I throw in a little variation depending on the crowd. Over the years, I've noticed that one group always tends to be a bit more responsive than the other.

The school is configured into an 'L' shape. There are two classrooms on the second floor - a large semi-partitioned one immediately adjacent to the small office at the top of the outside stair case, and a mid-sized one on the other side of the inner staircase, on the shorter stretch of the 'L'. Sometimes I'm shuffled from the larger to smaller room. If I'm lucky, the teachers let me set up in the larger room, and just ferry the kids back and forth.

Needless to say, I far prefer the more spacious semi-partitioned classroom #1, adjacent to the office. Poor housekeeping is an issue, and the mid-sized classroom #2 is often so cluttered with stacked tables, piles of gym mats and P.E. equipment that access to the blackboard is essentially blocked. Owing to the attendant limitations of this poorly managed space, the range of activities possible with even half the group is seriously limited.

Enter the era of COVID; though it seems pretty obvious that room #1 is more size-appropriate for the type of class I do (particularly if I have the full compliment of fifty on board), I'm often shuffled into the clutter of room #2, anyways.

"Only fives"

Masked up, with fingers crossed and my bag of class materials in tow, I headed straight down from the office to the open sliding door of room #1, which I hoped would be the venue for our first session of the new year. As expected, a few of the kids heralded my arrival with shouts of,

"Shaun sensei! Shaun sensei!"

Three of them dashed out of the doorway. Two started grabbing at my shirt and pant legs, and one tried to relieve me of my carry bag.

"Shaun sensei! Good morning! Good morning!"

"Good morning, good morning guys. Long time no see!"

10:30 am, on the dot. Showtime. I make a point of being as punctual as I can - if not a minute or two early. The Japanese can be real sticklers for precise timing.

I looked up, and just as I was about to step in to the classroom, I stopped short.

The 'new' teacher had leapt out in front of the doorway with outstretched arms, in an obvious attempt to block my entrance to the room.

In 26 years, this was a first.

I had no idea how to react.

Before I could say a word, she let loose with a fast barrage of Japanese that roughly translated, came across as something along the lines of,

"Whoa, whoa...where do you think you're going?!?"

The whole scene was reminiscent of a startled a mother bear rising to protect her cubs from some kind of 'dangerous interloper'. Unbelievable.

Maintaining her 'blocking posture', she leaned out and started shouting across to room #2, all the while pushing her open hands at me like some kind of traffic cop motioning for an encroaching vehicle to slow down or back up.

Meanwhile, kids were squeezing past her and running in and out of the room between her legs. The scene was chaotic.

"Shaun sensei! Good morning! Shaun sensei! Good morning!"

This seemed to rile her up.

She looked like someone who was desperate to assert some sort of authority or control, but simply didn't have the natural ability to do so. In an attempt to compensate, she was resorting to exaggerated gestures and over-reaction. Her frustration was palpable.

Like animals, kids can sense weakness. They'll exploit it right away, given the opportunity.

This was all unravelling fast. I started to feel my heart start racing. Maybe the very outside edges of a panic attack coming on. Not good.

What the actual fuck?

I took a big step back, and got a good look at her.

Enter Erratica - - - the neurotic head case from last year's ill-fated four year old's class.

Oh, god.

No.

She appears to be 24 or 25...of average height, and slight of build, with a bit of a late blooming acne problem. I couldn't say whether she'd been around the school before the pandemic or not. If so, she'd blended in fine, and not done anything to set herself apart of draw attention. In any case, she’s only really been on my radar since the end of the winter term, when she pulled a couple of stunts in the four year old's class that raised my hackles.

The closest thing that I can compare her to is an incompetent roadie or tech that continually runs on stage and messes with a band's gear or instruments while they're trying to perform. She seems to have some compulsive need to troubleshoot and micro-manage everything, whether there's an actual problem or not. Perhaps it's her way of trying to claim territory, or assert control. My class has always been a free ride for the Japanese teachers. Aside from occasionally helping me model a new song or game, they can basically take a break, and go on auto-pilot for the duration. The old idiom, "Too many cooks in the kitchen..." really rings true here.

Until the end of last term, I 'd never had anyone interfere with my class in any way.

Her shift in comportment was rather sudden...really manifesting after the four year old class finally came back from a string of cluster infections that had seen it shut down from the second week of January until almost the beginning of March.

Had she caught a dose of coronavirus that had triggered some type of latent neurosis...or had I inadvertently said or done something to push her over the edge earlier in the first term? In just over a quarter century, I'd never actually had issues with any of the staff on site.

Well, for the most part, anyways.

Sure, there had been some useless tits on deck. Last term there'd been an incident in which I'd had to scold one new teacher in the three year old group for provoking an extended chat with a few of the other teachers in middle of my class. She should have known better. Real high school level stuff - rude, and totally inappropriate behavioural modeling for the kids. That was a first. While I'm certain that she hated me for reporting her to Insecthead, the situation never carried over into anything else, and we managed to finish out the year without any similar incidents. I was a bit surprised that I never got any sort of apology from anyone involved. I suppose that would have been expecting too much.

It appears that she quit or was let go at the end of last term.

Good enough.

As for the situation at hand, toward the end of last term I recall actually worrying about what I'd do if I had to work in closer quarters with Erratica. I was hoping that she would either quit, or get demoted to kitchen duty. I'd seen that happen to other teachers.

That she'd been promoted to co-head the five year old class was the worst possible news.

Anyways, with all of her exaggerated 'shrew on a sinking ship' waving and jabbering at room #2, she finally managed to elicit some kind of positive confirmation that, 'YES', I was, indeed, supposed to be there. I maintained my distance, with my back to the railing, while she kept on with the patronizing pantomime traffic cop gestures - just to make double sure that I didn't attempt to enter the room before she was ready to give me the 'green light'.

It was hard to wrap my head around what I was watching. She was behaving like some kind of histrionic control freak. Framed a little differently, the spectacle might have been almost humorous to behold.

Meanwhile, nearly five minutes of the kid's class had been frittered away. I shrugged, put my class bag down, plucked out my bottle of tea, turned around and leaned over the railing. The sky was a rare, crisp azure blue, and the sun was warm and pleasant. I really wasn't up to all this drama.

I started to speculate on the identity of the second five year old teacher. Could it possibly get worse?

Breathe in, count to seven. Breathe out. Enjoy the sunshine. No panic attacks. No panic attacks. Try to block out the hysterical shouting coming from room #1.

It took Erratica another five minutes to 'allow' me into the room, at which point a third of her group's class time had circled the drain and hit the pipes. The remaining twenty minutes went by so fast that she didn't have an opportunity to fuck anything else up. She'd be sure to amend that situation halfway through the second group's class.

At 11:00 am it was change-over time, and I'd finally get to see who'd been chosen to head up the other half of the five year old team.

As Erratica and her group took their leave, it looked as if I'd at least be lucky enough not to have to de-camp to room #2.

As the second group of five year olds started to filter in, I heard a hoarse, deep cough just outside the door.

Enter Long COVID.

We nodded politely at each other. As far as rank-and-file teachers go, she's been at Mr, Insecthead's school for an awfully long time. More than a decade, for sure. There's only one other girl over there that's been down in the trenches that long.

Three or four years ago she'd been exiled downstairs to the kitchen for a spell. I have no idea what she did to deserve that. In most cases, they get promoted into 'girl Friday' type office positions if they're around as long as she's been. I've never had any bad experiences with her. No good ones, either. She must be in her mid to late thirties now. Long COVID has a kind of 'tough girl' air about her, accentuated by what could only be described as a serious case of 'resting bitch face'. Of course, that's been blunted by the ubiquitous masking of the last couple of years; but the general atmosphere is there.

Recently she looks tired, and a bit gaunt. Like she's been sick for awhile. She seems to have had that persistent hoarse cough for close to a year and a half. I'm always careful to give her as wide a berth as possible.

Fat Wife has exactly the same deep, chesty cough. I'd noticed it at my brother-in-law's funeral, and again when we were over at Mayumi's place this past Shogatsu holiday. Over two years after having 'recovered' from the virus, she's still taking some rather strong over-the-counter cough mixture to help alleviate the worst of it.

Being the senior staff member of the two, I hoped that Long COVID would at least provide a level counterbalance to Erratica's over-the-top histrionics. Seeing as they're both veterans of last year's ill-fated four-year old's class, they should at least have a decent working rapport with each other, and the kids.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

We must have been about fifteen blissfully uneventful minutes into the second group's 'gig' when an unfolding commotion over at the open sliding door drew my attention, and started to distract the junior punters. This is bad news, as kids that age have a notoriously short attention span. Once 'the spell' is broken, it's a real challenge to get everyone back on board and re-focussed.

It seems that in her haste to get the first group out of the class and into room #2 at 11:00 am, Erratica had forgotten to get them to fetch their melodicas from their cubby holes.

Her solution?

Not to substitute another activity or game, and wait the fifteen minutes until our class had finished. No. She was going to attempt to have her 25 kids 'sneak in' behind a wall of unwieldy blue gym mats, snatch their melodica cases, and slip out 'un-noticed'.

What could possibly go wrong?

The scene that then unfolded along the far wall of the class was nothing short of a complete debacle. Imagine a bunch of disorganized five year olds attempting to re-create a secret WW2 commando operation behind a jury-rigged shield wall made up of over-sized gym mats. I felt sorry for them. She'd made eight of the kids run in first, two on either end of four of these big floppy gym mats from the stack in room #2, in an attempt to make a 'wall' to hide their classmates, who were to crouch down and run in behind them, fetch their melodica cases, and slip out un-noticed. Well...the mats were too big and heavy for the little kids to handle properly, and kept drooping over. There wasn't enough space between the 'mat wall' and the bank of cubby holes for the crouching kids to manoeuvre in correctly, leading to a bottle neck when the kids all started rushing in and grabbing for their cases. Chaos ensued. No one in the class could take their eyes off of the comedy of errors that was unfolding. I tried to soldier on with the song we were doing, but the kids were too distracted by what was going on.

Finally, it seemed like I was the only one clapping and singing.

"If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands (clap,clap), If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands (clap,clap)"

Very awkward.

To add insult to injury, just as the ill-fated sing-a-long was starting to bite the dust, Erratica suddenly undermined her entire 'secret operation' by dashing right out in front of me in a half-crouch (?!?) to grab a folder that she'd forgotten on the far table. Holding this pose, she then ran back in front of me on her way out. At that point, I couldn't figure out why on earth she was crouching. Did she think it made her invisible? Was she expecting incoming fire or something?

Through it all, I got nothing from Long COVID but some hoarse, chesty coughing. She seemed satisfied to simply stand back and watch the class disintegrate into a shambolic mess. Maybe she wasn't feeling well.

From the onset, she'd certainly looked a bit peaked.

Of course there were no apologies of any kind from Erratica. The 8 kids holding the four mats were the last ones left, and looked confused as to how they were going to grab their melodicas and make their exit whilst holding up the mats.

Erratica had effected her retreat, and was nowhere to be seen.

At that point, the class was basically a done deal. With just over five minutes left, I attempted to wrap it up with a round of 'Simon says', grabbed my class bag, and got the fuck out of Dodge.

I had no idea what to make of what had just gone down. In 26 years, I'd never seen anything like it. I debated whether it was worth mentioning to Mr. Insecthead on my way out, and decided that I'd just let it go this time. Crack it up to an 'awkward' first day. Truth be told, I really didn't have the energy to get into it. The whole ordeal had left me feeling completely drained; I just wanted to get on my bike and get the fuck out of there. If things went south on Friday, I'd have no choice but to say something. Hopefully it would be OK.

Deep down I knew that it probably wouldn't.

And it wasn't.

...to be continued in The 72 Japanese Microseasons of my Discontent - Part 9 : 夏至 Geshi (Summer solstice)

It's hard to believe that we're already just over a couple of weeks away from mid-year. I find that kind of depressing, to be honest.

After a spate of pretty reasonable weather, it looks like rainy season is almost upon us. Yesterday was Atsuta Matsuri (the Atsuta Shrine Summer Festival), and they put on the big evening fireworks show for the first time in two years. Atsuta Shrine is a 15 minute walk from our place. It's 1800 years old, and the second most revered Shinto shrine in Japan. The festival and evening fireworks display always draw a big crowd; but the weather can be dodgy, as it's on the very cusp of the annual six week rainy season. While it didn't pour with rain, it did start drizzling about ten minutes into the big show. As expected, there were walls of people and traffic was backed up everywhere. As June 5th fell on a Sunday this year, and there hadn't been a fireworks show or proper festival since 2019, the crowds were that much heavier.

Mina loves her some fireworks, so we usually go out and stand on the broad pedestrian overpass that connects Jingu Higashi Park North and South. There are usually 50 or 60 people from the surrounding UR danchii complex up there. Last night it looked like there may have been three times that many. It was so crowded, it was actually difficult to find anywhere to stand, let alone a decent vantage point. Two family groups went so far as to bring chairs, coolers and an entire picnic up there. They spread out and took up way too much space, stuffing their faces, mouthing off and essentially ignoring the fireworks - - - all maskless, of course.

I expect they'll have inspired some copy-cats to try the same thing next year. From there, it'll just be a matter of time before it spirals out of control, someone complains, and the cops outright ban any type of gathering on the bridge at all.

While local COVID numbers appear to have been on the decline for the last couple of weeks, the issue of 'to mask, or not to mask' seems to be front and centre once again. The local natives seem thoroughly unable to exercise any degree of common sense. They all want the government to come out and hold their hands, or publish some class of 'definitive manual' on when and when not to mask. I still see people out running on virtually empty streets in 30C heat, masked up like bandits. I guess they think they're 'helping', or something.

In addition to being hopeless submissives, the Japanese are what I term 'compliance junkies'. They love nothing more than following orders - uniformly, without question, and in unison. I guess this has a lot to do with their history and culture. It's something that I've never been able to get used to. It actually irks the shit out of me.

In any case, we managed to find a small spot against the east railing soon after it started to drizzle. The display went on for about 40 minutes, and was nothing to write home about; but Mina was pleased that we'd been able to go up there and watch, nonetheless.

We'll be free from okasan this coming weekend, as she's making a trip out of town with Mayumi for a couple of days at the end of this week. Her eldest sister is full of cancer, and undergoing treatments. There's some sense of urgency that okasan and her second sister should go out and spend a few days with her while it's still possible. Okasan's two sisters are both in their 90's. I think the senior one is 94. Of course, we'll have to host her over here for last two weekends of June. It'll be full on rainy season. Lord knows how that will go down.

Every weekend with her over here is like a crap shoot. Her moods are unpredictable; as the weather gets hotter and more humid, the potential for things to go sideways increases exponentially. As far as her last bi-weekly report card, she managed a solid 'C' - - a marked improvement over her previous 'D'. She was mopey and depressive, and spent most of her time watching TV or working on her postcards - as opposed to mouthing off and causing problems.

Anyways, we'll have to make this weekend count...because that'll be it for us until the beginning of July.

Two weeks henceforth, I'll be back to unspool the climax of our ongoing Mr. Insecthead's Kindergarten serial, along with whatever else rolls down the pipes and seems worthy of mention. Until then, you'd do well to remember that,

"No matter where you go, there you are".

There, and nowhere else.