I spent the school week doing not much at all. My students were writing exams, I had no classes to teach or papers to mark. I spent the days gently coaxing my ancient work laptop through the internet trying to simultaneously educate myself about the upcoming US election and the history of the Booker Prize. I learnt that even though Obama is a person with personality, once he starts talking economic policy, he's as boring as any other guy and that Booker fans get frighteningly Xenophobic when it comes to Indian winners (Mr Rushdie being the obvious exception). I also fell in love with the new Mac Book and the shiny yellow nano - both of which are on my shopping list - I do like being paid in Yen!
On friday, as an after-exam reward, the students were shipped off to an amusement park and the school kindly allowed me a break from the electioneering and mac perving so onto the bus went I. Amusement parks in Japan, it turns out, are exactly as tacky as amusement parks anywhere else in the world. The same pastiche all faded and rusty. It should look magical but it looks old and depressing. Consequently, all the time you are lying to yourself saying "I feel magical!" No dear, you feel old and depressed. The rides were cool I guess, I crapped my broeks just as I had been hoping - metaphorically of course. The setting of the park was the best thing about it; its in Okayama prefecture, high on a hill surrounded by sea and islands - the breathtaking view I have become so blase about these past couple of months. Seto inland sea? Thousands of islands connected by chugging ferries and bridges glimmering silver in the sun? yawn! I see it like every day!
The park, as some kind of nod to the Brazilian immigrant population of the area, had a mardi gras theme (see creepy guy in header photo - he's the equivalent of the boerish miner outside gold reef city making sure you're tall enough to go on rides). At lunch time everyone in the park made their way to the central arena with their bento or trashy fried foods (theme park food is the same the world over too) for a dancing performance by the parks' mascot - inexplicably its a mouse with an enormous pink head. The mouse danced mournfully to music provided by tinny speakers and a demented shirtless guy on bongos. Then the strangest thing happened - a statuesque Brazilian man came on stage in drag and hosted a bingo game, we had all received bingo score cards along with our entrance tickets. I guess a man in drag is not such a strange thing but his behaviour and how he was received was very strange indeed. He was very pushy and sexually aggressive particularly to the school boys in the audience. Whenever anyone had bingo he would totter towards them in his wedge heels and sit on their laps, flicking his wig in the face and rubbing his fake boobs on them. And everyone loved him! The teachers sitting away from the main area thought it was glorious fun to watch this enormous, muscly man humiliate their charges. I couldn't understand why this raunchy character didnt get up their nose, why he was so unanimously accepted. It felt like someone had hired a drunk prostitute to babysit the neighbourhood kids, and no one batted an eyelid.
I met the performers after the show (they tried to get on the bus and continue torturing kids again, who knows why) and they were all Brazilian nationals, really nice, really genki just trying to do their job. I thought about how I had spent my week at work, feeling mismanaged and spare and out of touch. It didn't seem so bad now, looking at these foreigners who had to wear hot pants and mouse suits in order to get their Japanese work permits. In so many ways Japan is Utopian - things run like clockwork, they think everything down to the last detail and every kind of work and play is structured and available. At some point though you start thinking that someone has to be losing out, all this perfection has got to be at someone's expense.
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