Me English Fun!

As part of the April shuffle the Toyama General Board of Education have 'wisely' decided that for the last three months of my once-weekly special needs teaching career I am to teach elsewhere in Toyama. I was told this a few days before I was due to go to my 'old' special school.
"So I'm not actually going back to Koshiyogo?" I asked? No. A day later I got a fax from Koshiyogo:

"How are you doing? We were very surprised to know at the beginning of april that we cant study with you this coming term, we are very disappointed and I asked Toyama Prefectural Board of Education for your stay at Koshi in this term, But it answered "no you can't." We were looking forward to seeing you soon We enjoyed English with you and students like English very much thanks to you. Of course we all like you very much. We wish your good luck in the future. Thank you for everything can I pass Richard your sneakers?"

Which just goes to show what a super chap I am and that even Japanese people can't stand my trainers.

My new school is called Koshiyogo Komadori - a branch school of Koshi but in Takaoka, a city three stops on the train from Toyama.

So to my new school I went. With a train and tram timetable printed out for me entirely in Japanese by my 'supervisor', and some actually helpful directions from JETs in Takaoka, it took an hour to get there. Having been told merely where to get off the tram by those in authority, and not actually where the school was, I got off the tram and looked around.
"Hmmm. I know, I'll walk a little down the road. Oh, there's a huge complex of buildings. Ah, it's Takaoka City Hospital. Stands to reason its in there eh? I should go in there and ask. Now what is "where is Komadri school" in Japanese, ah yes..."

So, I ask at the hospital where their special school is and get absolutely blank faces in return.
"I am an English teacher. An ALT" I try in Japanese. Still nothing. Often Japanese people will look at you when you speak Japanese to them as if you are a magically talking bear whose voice causes actual physical pain. Obviously in this case the nurses must have been in shock at seeing such a tall and handsome talking bear. Out I wander to phone my base school,and to leave the nurses to jabber in astonishment to each other. I get a telephone number, and after a quick conversation with the special school I finally find it - 50 feet to the left of the main entrance of the hospital.


"What will you teach?" I am asked as I'm still taking off my coat.
"Um, English? What have you got planned?" I reply, hopefully.
"..." he stares at me.
"What kind of lessons do you do?"
"..." he stares, this time at the ground.
"What level are the students?" He looks at me, looks back at the floor and finally replies,
"...low."

After half an hour I discover that for the piddling three months they've wrenched me out of Koshiyogo (with whose students I had built an excellent rapport) and thrust me into a different school that:

- I'm teaching four students

- most of it is in Japanese

- by the FIVE other teachers there.

- Two of the students can't actually talk. English or Japanese. They. Cant. Talk.

The other two students cant keep themselves upright, and they are not given any other support by the teachers, so, they sit there - in their own laps. This makes the speaking of English dificult. And strangely enough also the teaching of it. Also, they only really know "my name is..." and can only say it after a ten-minute build up, several boxes of tissues, and the Japanese teacher finally saying it for them.

It is not in fact a school for the physically impaired as advertised (and like my old school) but for kids with severe learning difficulties.

What, you might ask, am I doing there? It seems I'm there to fill that function that the Japanese education and skills ministry define as 'internationalising' - I am the funny foreign man. I just 'be' there.