This is just a post to catch up on the beginning of the school year. This is the last thing that happened before the new school year, so I'm posting it before I forget it. Not incredibly amusing, but I feel it's worth recounting because I want to brag about my sports prowess.

On Gaining Street Cred

I went to Cromartie the other day, which has never been one of my friendlier schools. The staff are usually fairly indifferent towards me, which is why I was quite surprised to walk in and hear several teacher say "Good morning!" in English (at this school, I'm lucky to get 3 or 4 teachers to acknowledge my presence in Japanese, so I was a bit surprised to hear it in English). When I went up to the 3rd year students hallway, many of the boys (who are usually quite shy, and will only nod their heads if I say hello to them) went out of their way to say hello to me and ask me how I was. Why the sudden change in everyone?

A few weeks ago, I came into the staffroom at Cromartie in the morning. The principal followed me in a minute later and said in English, "Jessica, let's play softball!" I laughed, asked him when, and he gave me a specific date. An English teacher then told me that the staff had decided that they wanted to play a staff sports game. They had decided to play softball, and one of my English teachers remembered that I liked softball, so they decided to invite me to play. I said okay, since I love softball and haven't played it in about 10 years. I figured it would be a fun game amongst the staff and that most of the students wouldn't be at school. I was quite surprised to get to school and find most of the students still there for club activities. Even better, I found out that only a few teachers were playing and that we were going to play against the boys baseball team. And the best thing of all was that I was the ONLY female teacher playing. So it was me and 8 male teachers who don't regularly participate in sports against 20 teenagers who practice baseball everyday of the year. Yea!! I love a challenge. I got incredibly nervous, not having played in 10 years, and had great fears of accidentally killing someone by throwing a ball wrong or some such thing. It didn't help my nerves that all the female teachers and a great deal of students were watching and cheering for me (literally cheering for me. Everyone was screaming my name. I was like a rock star).

Luckily, I didn't do too much to shame myself. The male teachers got together and decided that I should be pitcher (turned that one down) or catcher (also said no to that), and then they decided on first base. I was hesitant to play first, but I gave it a try, and I wasn't so bad. Every time I made a slightly difficult catch, all the students and teachers watching would scream my name. I also found out that in sports, Japanese people use a lot of English terms (people would say, "nice catch" or "nice play".). I did slightly embarrass myself batting. I struck out the first time (the boy pitching threw it really fast because he thought I was good), then after that, I would yell "be nice!" every time I got up to bat, and he threw it much slower. He felt really bad about striking me out and even apologized later. Poor kid. I never did get on base, but that was no surprise, as hitting had always been my weak point. Still, I did fairly well in fielding, and I even made one kid's days when he ran into me (short kid. Very short kid. Head about the same height as my chest. Yup. Poor guy.). The teachers, much to my surprise, whooped the butts of the students. The score was something like 10-1. And after this game, I become a celebrity at my school. My students had always figured I was smart because I speak English (doesn't matter that it's my native language - the fact that I can speak it makes me smart to them), but they didn't realize that I had some athletic skills, too. I'm just glad that we didn't play soccer or something really embarrassing like that. I would have completely shamed myself and the students would have laughed at me instead of saying hello.