at lunch...

the kids at middle school relentlessly pick on each other over the pettiest things. there's the obvious weight, attractiveness, dorkiness issues, but you're also a target if you don't spread your margarine on your bread correctly or if your handwriting stinks. today's victim...kengo kun. at lunch everyone piled their broccoli on his plate until you could barely see the tiny kid behind a mountain of green. he's in that awkward stage so he takes a lot of crap. [it was terribly cute to watch him try so hard during the sports festival. he danced like an epileptic in a strobe light factory and, even if you'd offered him a million bucks, he simply couldn't keep in time with the march.] today i was secretly wishing some of the kids would give me their broccoli too. no luck. the other options on my plate were doughy udon noodles with watery soup or kozakana and almond salad.
kozakana means baby fish...they're deep fried whole and don't taste all together gross, they just leave you with a filmy, sardine flavored mouth that doesn't turn me on.

luckily most school lunches, or kyushoku, escape being classified with adjectives such as watery and filmy. they're usually well-planned, filling, traditional japanese meals, i.e. lunches that you could never get american kids to consume. unfortunately we sometimes part ways over the lunch ladies liberal use of eggs [from any of a number of animals; chicken, fish, quail...] and tiny, whole, worm-like fishy things, similar to what's pictured above, that they sneak into the most unlikey dishes.

i'm not exactly sure what to do about all the teasing and harassment. my natural instinct is to rush to the rescue of the victim, but as i've seen before, that has the potential to leave them subjected to a different kind of taunting. i often try to rationalize with the bullies [c'mon, you know it really doesn't matter if you put your margarine on bread in dollops or streaks...] but once they have the attention of other students, their momentum is hard to stop. it calls to mind…

yasegaeru
makeru na
kore ni ari

a haiku by famed poet issa which is often translated as

skinny, feeble frog
don’t give up the fight
i stand by your side

i’d ran across the poem online and was touched; first by it’s simplicity but depth, and secondly by the story surrounding its creation. issa was born in kashiwabara, in the north of present-day nagano prefecture. he was a devout follower of buddhism which inspired in him empathy with small animals that often became the subject of the more than 20,000 haikus he penned.
there’s a famous temple where issa stayed when he visited what was then known as the edo area. next to this temple, entenji, is a small pond where issa witnessed frog sumo, or the ritual fights between males over females for mating.
several weeks after discovering the haiku i found myself standing at the edge of a small pond near obuse, nagano when it occurred to me that i was staring at the inspiration for the poem that had so captivated me. it was a very strange emotional moment. and although it wasn’t mating season, frogs abounded…and not just the cold-blooded croaking kind. shelves lining inner and outer walls of the temple were adorned with all sizes and shapes of amphibian effigies.



luckily all my school lunches aren’t seasoned with taunting and teasing. at every school i rotate eating in homeroom classes with the kids. this provides some unstructured time for conversation and general screwing around. in middle school, the students are starting to develop the shyness that will haunt them, as it does so many adults in this society. it’s unnerving and disappointing when someone looks you in the eye, as if to acknowledge you are addressing them, and then walks away without speaking. others refuse to entertain my conversation by waling protests against english [although i usually posit my inquiries in japanese since that tactic most often illicits a response]. but some others are interested in testing me; my tolerance for ridiculous questions or my japanese language ability. the first year students are remarkably warmer than the third years. this trend continues on for the even younger children. elementary school is definitely the most exciting. the kids are eager to talk and climb all over you and feel your hair and eyelashes and poke you in the butt, literally. it doesn’t take much, other than being foreign thus different, to be elevated to star status there. recently i followed the lead of the other students in trying to collapse my milk carton as much as humanly possible before throwing it away. apparently i figured out a new way to fold it into the tiniest of tiny squares. the kids were so mesmerized that i spent 30 minutes teaching everyone and it has now become the coolest, hippest origami around.



elementary school also rocks cause grub time is followed directly by recess. that’s my play time too [note that i didn't say rest time]. i’ve been able to rekindle my love of jumping rope and those horizontal iron bars that you flip around using your belly as a fulcrum. my great-granddaddy used to call it ‘skinning the cat’. the yards at these schools also double as farms, with chickens and goats running around, mostly trying to avoid being tormented by the kids. there are games of devil tag, dodge ball, soccer and some interesting group activities whose governing rules i haven't yet been able to discern. then there’s the bike rack out back lined with unicycles [some are even big people sizes!!]. i haven't quite mastered these odd vehicles yet, but luckily there are about 700 young experts eager to help teach me.