An Irritant Known As The Staff Room Shuffle

Enter the staff room. Right now it’s fairly empty almost all the time. I see the teachers arrive in the morning and yet they somehow all find somewhere more exciting to be during the course of the day. Once I get tired of my surroundings here I am going to have to slyly track them and see where they all go. Classes haven’t started yet, so they’re not going to those. I’m convinced they’re all doing something joyously entertaining and fun without me. Yes, I am a six-year-old child.

The room is huge with about five double rows of square, gray metal, depressingly ugly desks lined up. It’s all incredibly regimented and the desks are uniform. On each desk is a series of three vertical shelves. I’ve had an entertaining time noticing the personal touches each person adds to his/her desk.

It seems standard to have a leaning tower of pocket-sized tissues on your desk in Japan. More than one teacher has this and to be honest I find it weird. Whenever one buys something in Japan one is given a ‘small gift’ as the store’s way of saying ‘Thanks for buying that cell phone that is entirely in Japanese, will never be able to be switched over to English, and will only make that vein in your head stand out more! You can use these tissues to dab at the frustrated-sweat from your now-permanently-furrowed brow.” At least, that’s how I got MY first free pack of tissues. Teachers seem to collect these and stack them on their desks. I’m only up to two.

Generally speaking books, various multicolored organizers and filing folders inhabit the shelves on my fellow teachers’ desks. However, I always find it amusing when the men in the office have things like hot pink Hello Kitty racing car paraphernalia sitting happily next their tea mug. The gym teacher here even has a series of little miniature racing cars that takes up a good portion of his desk. He’s also got a series of cell phone decoration charms, tassels and banners decorating his shelves. I still find it somewhat difficult to keep a straight face when any of the male teachers yanks out his cell phone only to see it accompanied by a long trail of beads, bangles, miniaturized cutsie-pie animals and fairly large stuffed animals all joined together by bells and ribbons, the mass of which is about twice the size of the actual phone. A fellow JET commented to me that he thought it illustrated how the country was more ‘mature’ in that men can do that here without being ridiculed. In America or any other western country for that matter, such a fellow would be the source of jeers, emasculating jokes, and all around small penis mockery. In Japan – it’s standard (the cell phone bangles and ribbons, not the small penis mockery thing - at least as far as I know). I don’t think ‘mature’ is the word I’d use to describe grown men sporting Hello Kitty and Spotty Dottie on their cell phones though. It’s just… different.

Various sounds resonate throughout the staff room – many of which I have already become accustomed to – the slightly electronic/tamogachi-ish ring ring of the phones (I find it interesting how every country has a slightly different dial tone and ringer – the tone is never quite the same), the sliding grate of the large gray entrance door, the reoccurring ‘shitsureshimassss’ every time a student enters, etc. But there’s one that continually causes me puzzlement and some degree of annoyance: And that is the sound produced by the feet of the women in the office. Their feet seem to be perpetually flustered and it seems impossible for them to move without scuffling around twitching nervously. Whether they be coming, leaving, answering the phone, getting a glass of water, or simply walking to a desk – the feet are constantly SHUFFLING. *Scuffle scuffle here, shuffle shuffle there.* It’s peculiar – you’d think their feet were incapable of moving more than a millimeter off the ground. Since in Japan everything runs on such a calibrated correct clock and schedule I see no point as to why they cause their feet to flail and worry about in such a fashion like a frightened deer wearing slippers.

The men do not have this problem. They walk like normal human beings, fully capable of all their limbs and not as though there are crazed dragonflies hyped up on crack in their slippers in place of their feet. The fact that I can’t and simply won’t to adapt this obnoxious shuffle causes me to feel somewhat masculine in the work environment. But it’s either that or I drive my brain crazy with my feet.

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Published:
8.30.06 / 5pm
Category:
classroom antics, what i call life, culture