I Wanted To Be Mr. Softee. She Wants Implants.

I’m trying to remember what I wanted to “be” in high school. I don’t think I was ever really asked. “What is your dream? What is your ambition in life? Are you ever going to MAKE something of yourself, you little twerp?” These were the questions one was asked when a young pupa without much in the way of rational cerebral activity. In elementary school my grand (and rather motley) aspirations included becoming a ballerina, a zookeeper, a photographic journalist, a writer, a pianist, and perhaps my loftiest ambition of all: an ice cream man. By the time I reached high school they seemed to figure it was a hopeless task to attempt to get a group of sullen, sulky, uncomfortable-in-their-own-skin teenagers to have rose-tinted expectations of life laced with ice cream and puppies. However, in Japan this is a common question to pose in an English class.

When one asks this question with incalculable possibilities to an elementary school student a wide array of answers results: a doctor, an astronaut, a movie star, a teacher, a singer, an archaeologist, a baseball player. However, when Japanese high school girls are presented with this question the responses sometimes tend to make any self-respecting girl cringe and want to stick meat forks in her eyes.

I’m not a bitter, angry feminist brandishing a burning bra over my head whilst preaching for worldwide castration and equality. I don’t go around standing on soapboxes decrying the phallus in general, and demanding more government funding for research because men should feel the cruel pangs of childbirth. Besides, I must be practical; such things would never go over well in Japan. However, when I ask a girl what she sees in her future and she tells me she yearns to be a super star with cosmetically enhanced saline implants bouncing around in front of her, I can’t help but want to jump on a soapbox, burn underwear, and start writing a Wollstonecraft-like essay entitled something like “Feminine Force: Why All Men Should Be Eunuchs”.

Of course she does not say this in English.

“What do you want to be?”
“Su-pa-su-ta”
“A superstar. Cool. Okay.”

She launches into a torrent of Japanese which my JTE may have let slide however I had to ask.

“What did she say?”

“She says she wants some larger…. “ He makes two gestures with his hands indicating curvy and voluptuous bosoms.

Christ, this ought to be good.

I briefly muse with playing dumb to see how many synonyms in English he knows for the vocabulary we’re dealing with.

“Surgery?”

“Yes, surgery. She says she wants some surgery.”

“Ah, plastic surgery. Gotcha.”

Despite my assurances that she does not, in fact, need plastic surgery, nor would it be very healthy for her to have two, large, very foreign balloons of saline tucked away in her chest, she seems very adamant about it. This is, after all, her only path to su-pa-su-ta-dom.

The other girl in the class tells me she wants to be a celebrity.

“A celebrity. Cool. Do you sing?”

“No.”

“Do you act?”

“No.”

“Are you willing to eat disgusting cockroaches that have been burrowing away in a barn full of cow dung as fast as you can upside down for a million dollars?”

“No.”

My JTE butts in, “So, what do you do?”

She shrugs.

This provides a glaring insight into the Japanese entertainment industry. One can have zilch in the way of talent – no thespian training, no angelic voice—yet still hope (and manage) to worm his or her way into the business. It seems to happen everyday.

In an attempt to change the subject to something perhaps less distressing, I ask them how they spent their spring vacation.

“How was it?” I inquire.

“BAD,” replies The Hopeful Celebrity.

“Why was it bad?”

A stream of Japanese follows. I grasp most of it but turn to my JTE to make sure I don’t offend her: “She said it was bad because she doesn’t have a boyfriend.”

Oh good lord.

The Hopeful Celebrity hangs her head in Singleton Shame and tells me how lonely her spring vacation was.

“But, you have friends!”

She doesn’t seem to care about this, as her existence is meaningless without some fifteen-year-old boy to drag to puri-kura, hold sweaty hands with and giggle about.

I assure her that she is young and doesn’t need a boyfriend. She has years and year to pine, brood and moon after some lame little boy with plucked, shapely eyebrows, but she only slouches in her chair, hair covering her face, and moans “sabishiiiiii.” Lonelyyyyyyyy. .

This class has two students in it. TWO. Should conversations continue in this vein they are only going to learn two phrases from me:

This, my darlings, is an eye roll.

This, my dears, is an eyebrow being raised in shock, horror and grim disapproval in general.

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Published:
4.20.07 / 7pm
Category:
classroom antics, amusing incidents