It Never Rains but ......

"Rory Sensei."

"Yes, Kobayashi Sensei." (Kobayashi Sensei is my supervisor and English-speaking link to all matters administrative at school)

"You have no classes today."

"Oh, really Kobayashi Sensei. No classes at all?"

"That’s right Rory Sensei. No classes at all."

This, therefore, is the day I bite the bullet and surrender myself into the evil clutches of that master of torture, the dentist. In such situations I usually request, nay insist, on being provided with the finest drugs available. I figure, what the fuck - if the dentist is going to have fun so am I. Administrations of nitrous-oxide gas and intravenous Valium are to my liking but anything will do - so long as it works. In the hands of a skilled druggist a patient won’t even know where he is, let alone realise that his head is being ripped apart. Unfortunately, Japanese dentists are keen exponents of the gambatte kudasai (grin and bear it) approach to pain management. You know exactly where you are and what is happening - at all times.

With this in mind I wobble out the school gate at about nine o’clock in the morning. As I leave I notice that parents are beginning to wander into the school grounds. That’s strange. Nobody told me about parents coming to school. Maybe that somehow explains my lack of classes today. I don’t give it much thought however. My mind is elsewhere. Somewhere in Funktown Mimasaka a dentist is sharpening his wicked instruments and chuckling gleefully, pausing only occasionally to glance at his empty drug cabinet. As I speed towards my fate I notice that off in the distance dark clouds are crowding the horizon. Little do I realise that the forces of evil are similarly massing to plot my destruction.

Japan has four seasons: summer, autumn, winter and spring. Sandwiched between spring and summer, however, is another season, a bonus season, a rainy season. In this season the skies open and everything falls out: rain, frogs, baby birds, small children, little old ladies all come tumbling down and end up flailing about in dirty ditches and gurgling drains. In this fickle fifth season it pays to be prepared. In this season I carry wet-weather gear whenever I ride my bike.

I wheeled into the dentist’s car park just as the heavens opened up. It rained and rained while the dentist drilled and drilled. I squirmed and sweated and cursed and gurgled obscenities. He scooped the rotten dead bits out for prosperity and prodded the live sensitive bits for fun.

"Ahh shinkei desuka? Gomen. Gambatte kudasai"

"Yes of course that’s the fucking nerve you butcher!"(said with a mouth containing hissing aspirator, clotting blood, dentist’s fat hands, high-speed drill, shattered tooth and recalcitrant tongue comes out as "ygu ahhh kkluuu kluu ahhhh"). Bastard.

Finally the drilling ended and the gaping hole was plugged with a temporary filling. The rain, however, had not stopped. I donned overpants and rain coat and cycled off in the direction of school. I had a splitting headache and my mouth hurt and it was two o’clock. I was late for school lunch and it would be cold. It was raining so hard that I could hardly see where I was going. I just knew that I was getting away from the dentist and that was good enough for me. Once back at school I removed my wet-weather gear to find that I was basically dry except for my crotch which was stained dark where my overpants had been rubbing on the wet saddle. I looked exactly like someone who had just pissed himself.

I walked bow-legged and uncomfortable into the teachers’ room. Mercifully there was almost nobody about. But I just knew what those present were thinking, "The bloody ALT has pissed himself again". I scooped up my cold school lunch and hobbled shamefully to my desk. With no breakfast and a late lunch I was really hungry. I could have eaten anything. Infact I was so hungry that I ate all my food and my TEMPORARY FILLING in a matter of minutes. Gobble, gobble, gulp. fuck. fuCK. FUCK!!!! YOU IDIOT. This meant that I would have to cycle back to the dentist - four kilometres each way - in the pouring rain to get another temporary filling put in. FUCK!!!!!!!!

I sat there staring at the pathetic remains of my cold lunch, seriously considering the logistics of seppuku (ritual disembowelment) with my soiled disposable wooden chopstick. My numb tongue morbidly probed the freshly drilled cavity in my head. From a seemingly great distance a quite little voice gradually seeped its way into my consciousness.

"Rory Sensei". It was Nakashima San, the school secretary, "Rory Sensei. Denwa desu."

"The phone? For me? Okay arigatou." My bruised mouth struggling to form the words.

It was Haruna Sensei my first grade English teacher. He sounded unusually tense, "Rory Sensei what are you doing now? Our team-teaching class started ten minutes a go."

Fuck!

As I leapt up the stairs two at a time and ran down the hall two thoughts crossed my mind: 1) things couldn’t get any worse, 2) they probably would.

I burst into Haruna sensei’s class wondering what the hell we would do for a lesson. We had prepared absolutely nothing. To my infinite horror I discovered that the back of the classroom was packed with parents all eagerly waiting to see how their tax was being spent importing young professionals to competently teach their children English. Boy, did they get a surprise! Before them stood a sweaty fool with a hole in his head and a tongue which refused to work. Late, ill-prepared, wiping lunch from his face and looking suspiciously like he had just pissed himself. I looked at them. They looked at me. I looked at Haruna Sensei. He looked at me - not a hint of emotion on his face. I wanted to kill him AND my supervisor. A nervous giggle escaped from my lips. The students looked up from their desks - a little panicky. My giggle gradually turned into the hysterical laugh of someone who had been royally and systematically rogered from every angle and could do absolutely nothing about it.