All 3 preschools worth of 5 year olds came to the elementary school for their pre-entrance physical evaluation. I was asked to go to the meeting room and keep all 90-100 of them occupied. At once.
Yes their parents (read: moms) were the…re, but that mattered little once the first one spotted me.
5 year old kids get extra, extra genki with a foreigner around, especially one they know. Essentially this involves about 20 kids swarming you at any given moment. This UNQUESTIONABLY involves getting punched in the nuts repeatedly, getting fingers up the ass, having one or two kids trying to pull you in one direction by your shirt while another 2 pull on the opposite side of your shirt, often resulting in stretches or tears to your clothing, having several kids hanging on your legs ensuring you can’t move, another kid or two climbing on you somehow, and there is a high likely hood of getting fingers in your mouth/nose/ears at any given second. The rest of the kids get into little kid physical pushing matches to see who can molest you next.
All of this is a bit overwhelming, to say the least. The over excited kids I can deal with. My groin and ass being invaded like I’m a boy at Catholic school can not. I also only have a finite supply of clothing and that stuff is expensive here! My strategy is to find a wall, stand with my back against it, do my best to scout upcoming nut shots in advance in order to block them, grab kids hands before they can get your clothing and generally just survive the onslaught.
What annoyed me was when, after 15 minutes or so of my balls being fondled by 5 year olds, my sweater sleeves being stretched out, and one girl crying because she was violently pushed to the ground by a much bigger boy, I decided to get out of dodge and my supervisor chided me about how I need to “play” with the kids. Apparantly I hadn’t been doing that since I was just standing there (seriously, for you who don’t know look up “kancho” and tell me you wouldn’t adopt a stand-against-the-wall strategy”) and playing jungle gym with the kids. When I had a free second I would try to give them boosts for a big jump and whatnot. Also, I was supposed to stay in there and take the abuse for at least another hour, to which I responded I’m not really up to that and got an evil eye.
I guess it’s just my silly American sentiment talking but there’s only so much invasion of personal space and damage to my clothing I can take before I’m checked out. Not to mention physical fights breaking out simply because I’m in the area and kids don’t have access to me in lieu of the dozen other kids crowded around me.
For those of you not in Japan, for some reason kids prodding your nether regions is perfectly acceptable. They have to sit a certain way at all times when sitting otherwise they face strong scolding, but sticking your finger up someone’s bung is behavior worthy of being laughed at by all adults present. So, it’s not quite like I was going to get rescued by parents. Well.. that is except the few nut shots that actually landed flush and the anguish on my face told the mom maybe letting her kid wail on my sac while two other kids occupy my arms isn’t so enjoyable for me. After those blows they seemed to have a concerned look on their face ( I could see it through my tearing eyes), but still did nothing.
I guess I’m just selfish. At least by Japanese standards.
(note: the above rant is 95% accurate)
Update: So I took a breather, and went back about 25 minutes later. There were about 10 kids in the room. My supervisor approached me and said, “it’s pointless for you to be in here now. There are not so many kids around. You don’t need to be here. But, when many kids were here, you were absent. That isn’t so good.”
Excuse me!? Absent? I was there for 30 minutes during the peak time. Yeah, I realize it wasn’t THAT long, but I didn’t see anyone else being treated like a human pinata in there. Plus, according to supervisor my previous efforts weren’t up to par anyway. My irritation went to a “f# this” fairly quickly.
Japanese have a word for this kind of thing – putting up with a situation that you feel is either below your dignity or you really despise but putting your full energy into it anyway and acting like you enjoy it. To my knowledge it has no English translation.
Sorry about a “bitch post”, it’s not really what I want to do with this blog but this whole thing irked me something bad.
So much so I didn’t even bother checking my grammar or spelling. A rarity.
roaminsticka 