ON CURRENT EVENTS
And in the news: I'm going to recontract for a second year. Hopefully next winter in Japan will be just as warm as this one.

ON INSECRITY
For once, I won't be talking about my own insecurities (which there are too many to list here, anyways), but those of people around me. Specifically, that of a male coworker. There are many things that I had never thought would happen in my life. And it's not like I never thought they'd happen. They were so remote a thing that they never even entered my head as a concept of something that could happen to me. One occurred yesterday in the form of a Japanese man coming up to me and asking, "Am I fat?"

The teacher that asked this is sort of new to my school. He came in to replace another teacher in October, and I noticed that he was always staring at me. Slightly creepy. I came to find out that he enjoys speaking English, though he doesn't speak it really well, but he was too shy to start a conversation with me at first. I told him not to be shy. In retrospect, that was stupid. At the time that I told him that, I didn't realize his voice could do the work of a fully functional bull horn all on its own. When he's talking to someone, EVERYONE in the staff room knows about it. The man has no "quiet" setting to his voice. It's permanently stuck on the "make the ears of the person next to you bleed" volume. People who know me know that I don't usually like much attention to be called to myself, as I am incredibly self-conscious. This guy makes it impossible for me to sneak anywhere. I'll be sneaking into the staffroom 2 minutes late (well, actually, I'll be 8 minutes early instead of 10, but in Japan, you should always be somewhere 10 minutes early), and I'll almost be at my desk when I hear it. "OH! GOOD MORNING, JESSICA!" I always sigh, but only inwardly, and put on my genki face as I quickly and quietly reply, "Good morning!" while dashing to my seat with my head down. I sometimes dread going to Cromartie (the school) because I KNOW that I'll have to have an embarrasingly loud conversation with this guy. But hey, he likes speaking English, and this is the only time in his week that he actually can, so I humor him.

And no, he doesn't like me, so those of you with those thoughts, please put them aside. I should amend that and say that he doesn't REALLY like me, he just likes me like every other male in this country likes me. You see, to many Japanese, foreigners all look the same. That is to say, we all look completely different from most Japanese people. So we are mysterious and inherently interesting. Until this week, my blog profile read something like, "I'm not very interesting." After numerous protests from my mother, I finally took it down after I realized that right here, right now, I am intensely interesting to most people around me. In America, I'm not a stand-out in many things, but in Japan, I stand out just because of what I look like and where I come from. Most people find me intriguing. I think I shouldn't stay here much longer or this might go to my head. It's flattering until you realize that they aren't interested in YOU, they're just interested in foreign people/things. So if there was any other AET here besides me, that person would get just as much attention as I do. It's not because I'm am incredibly special. This all leads back to say that when I get attention from Japanese guys, I don't let it get to me. They don't actually like me, per se, they just like the foreigness of me. So this teacher doesn't actually like me, he just like the thrill of talking to a foreign woman.

So yesterday, this teacher came up to me and obviously wanted to talk. I had nothing to do, so I politely turned to him. Sometimes it's hard to talk to him because his English, while loud, isn't always so good. I have to try to use as simple English as possible, which is a real challenge given the topics he sometimes wants to talk about. This is how the conversation yesterday started.

Him: OH, HELLO JESSICA!
Me: Good morning.
Him: I HEAR THAT AMERICAN PEOPLE EAT A LOT OF FOOD.
Me: ... um ... I guess some do.
Him: OH, I SEE. DO YOU?
(It was incredibly difficult to restrain the eyeroll and bitchslap that were tempted to appear).
Me: ... (about 6 comments were mentally deleted before I settled on) Not usually, I think.
Him: OH, I SEE. WELL, I HAVE A PROBLEM. I EAT TOO MUCH.
Me: Really? (This had the feeling of an internet chat. I wanted to say "lol", but I doubted he would understand that.)
Him: YES. AM I FAT?
Me: ... (smile, look slightly puzzled, sit back and look at him to see if he's serious, give a quick answer) No, you're not. You're not fat.
Him: WHAT? I'M NOT SMART?!
Me: ... ?! NO! I said you're not FAT. You're NOT FAT!
Him: OH, I SEE. I'M NOT SMART. BUT I'M NOT FAT.
Me: NO! You are NOT fat. You ARE smart. You are a math teacher. You are smart. Math is difficult.
Him: OH, REALLY?
Me: Yes.
Him: SO I AM SMART.
Me: Yes.
Him: AND I'M NOT FAT. OH, I'M RELIEVED.
Me: Good.

He walked away smiling, which I guess can be considered a satisfactory outcome for any intercultural exchange. I'm just wondering why he suddenly decided to ask me that question out of the blue. He sounded like a teenage girls asking, "Does this make me look fat?" Maybe he rented some American tweener movie and wanted to try out some of his new vocab on me. Whatever the case, I've decided that I'm going to try harder to dodge him in the future. Next thing I know, he'll ask me, "Does this suit make me look like a skank?"