My Humanoid Timepiece

Father Time is a dastardly dictator in Japan; everything ranging from trains, camps, sumo matches to boys on their bikes run according to a fairly rigid clock. In fact, I’ve given up wearing a watch entirely.

Every morning I begrudgingly leave my house around a certain time. Without fail I will see a flock of boys hurtling down the mountain that I must climb everyday. These boys are my water clock, my Big Ben, my pretentious pocket watch, my primitive human sundial. If they are already across the bridge, I know to speed up a bit. If they have yet to reach the bridge I can take my sweet time and admire the mountainous scenery looming up before me.

These boys also function as my weather gage. As the fog encloses the mountains a thick blanket of mist envelops all of Niihama today. The boys, without fail, come careening towards me wearing their student kappas. Now what, in God’s name, you say is a kappa?

One would think that after centuries of being plagued by incessant rains, gray, dismal, soul-destroying clouds, and misty fogs that make one feel as though they are watching a painfully overdone pop concert with smoke machines used excessively, that the Japanese would have come up with a more suitable way of defending themselves against the rain than these so-called “kappas.”

A kappa is, essentially, a glorified plastic bag. The students wear these strange waterproof frocks that cause them to become evocative of either large sea-foam green frogs on bikes or contagion experts at the scene of a horrific flesh-eating virus outbreak. These homely, ill-fitting plastic sacks cover the entire body from head to ankles and are completed by a green hood with a bit of a plastic flap covering the front of the face.

If I woke up to find five kappa-clad figures standing over me it would cause great alarm, and I would immediately start checking the back of my neck to see if a tiny little chip or bar code had been implanted. Then I’d call Mulder. However, despite the fact that I am dubious about the fashion statement these kids are making, the garments are indeed functional and the kids seem to remain dry.

As my students from the technical all boys school fly past me all decked out in matching chemical-plant-garb they wave and say their heavily accented “good mornings” as always. The loudest “good morning” coming from my favorite – the boy who always wears dark emo-glasses. Today the lenses are a bit fogged up.

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Published:
12.7.06 / 6pm
Category:
what i call life