How Not To Get Killed By Bears
Oct. 19th, 2004 03:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanI was sitting at my desk studying for 一級 when my Vice Principal comes up to me and says laughingly, "You should read this too." He puts a city hall-approved handout on my desk. The title of the handout is "How Not To Get Killed By Bears."
Yes, there have been several wild bear attacks in our area. When factored in on top of the suicides and the typhoons and earthquakes* that never quite materialise (but always threaten), one can safely say I'm living in Xtreme Japan!
Of course, I think all of these horrors are manufactured distractions perpetrated on an unsuspecting populace by the giant crows who really run The Oaks. At any rate, the bear handout starts like this: "Recently, many wild bears (hereafter: 'bears') have been sighted throughout the prefecture..." and goes on from there. Bear avoidance, the reader learns, is a delicate and complicated matter involving the age of the bears, their location, which stage of the reproductive cycle they're currently in, the season, and above all, the level of stupidity possessed by the human doing the encountering. The handout itself is a scream; I may translate it for you guys if I have time. After all, no one wants to be killed by bears.
*(After our fire drill yesterday, the chief of the fire department treated us to an earthquake safety lecture. "This city hasn't been hit with an earthquake in over 400 years," he said. "But that doesn't mean it won't happen at any moment.")
In other news, smell my trophy!
I'm sitting at my desk during cleaning period when two crying, giggling female students tumble into the classroom desperately searching for their homeroom teacher. "Katsurai-sensei!" they wail, "It's not our fault!"
Katsurai-sensei comes rushing over, desperate to know just what it is that they've done. He's a little green in the face; there have been a slew of discipline problems at this school recently, several of which landed students in the hospital. So two apologetic and giggly (the Japanese laugh when they're worried or embarrassed) students does not spell anything Good.
It takes awhile to get the story out of them. The story is this:
In the course of dusting their homeroom, student A picked up one of the interclass trophies. And broke it.
This is a big deal. These trophies are big deals. The trophy in question is large and silver, and pretty old. One is not supposed to play around with them.
"But, but," she sputters, "look! Someone else broke it first and glued it back together!"
And sure enough, one can see the dried strings of the glue which had been used to repair it.
"My god," says Katsurai-sensei, trying not to laugh. Other observers are not so tactful. "Someone else did break it!"
"It's not our fault," the girls insist. Everyone present agrees.
"But why did you even go near the thing in the first place?" Katsurai-sensei asks. "It's not like that would have been necessary."
"Because," student A says, and here has to stop while more giggling ensues, "it smelt like nattou!"*
Katsurai-sensei smells the trophy. It indeed has been home to quite a large quantity of nattou in the not-so-distant past. He erupts into laughter, as does the rest of the staffroom, and the relieved students.
The trophies exchanged hands a few days earlier at the school festival. It looks like someone left a little going-away present in 3-5's trophy. Brilliant.
*Nattou, for the uninitiated, is what results when one buries soybeans underground for several months. The Japanese exhume the stringy, smelly, sodden mess (and when I say smelly, I mean smelly. Pig manure has a more pleasant scent than this stuff), and then eat it.
Of course, I can see why this might have been necessary several hundred years ago when Oops! the rice crop was eaten by locusts again and if we don't eat this shit we starve, but it seems that no one's yet informed the Japanese that thanks to the wonders of refrigeration and food preservation techniques, one does not have to eat decaying crap to stay alive. Ah, well.
That will be all.
Yes, there have been several wild bear attacks in our area. When factored in on top of the suicides and the typhoons and earthquakes* that never quite materialise (but always threaten), one can safely say I'm living in Xtreme Japan!
Of course, I think all of these horrors are manufactured distractions perpetrated on an unsuspecting populace by the giant crows who really run The Oaks. At any rate, the bear handout starts like this: "Recently, many wild bears (hereafter: 'bears') have been sighted throughout the prefecture..." and goes on from there. Bear avoidance, the reader learns, is a delicate and complicated matter involving the age of the bears, their location, which stage of the reproductive cycle they're currently in, the season, and above all, the level of stupidity possessed by the human doing the encountering. The handout itself is a scream; I may translate it for you guys if I have time. After all, no one wants to be killed by bears.
*(After our fire drill yesterday, the chief of the fire department treated us to an earthquake safety lecture. "This city hasn't been hit with an earthquake in over 400 years," he said. "But that doesn't mean it won't happen at any moment.")
In other news, smell my trophy!
I'm sitting at my desk during cleaning period when two crying, giggling female students tumble into the classroom desperately searching for their homeroom teacher. "Katsurai-sensei!" they wail, "It's not our fault!"
Katsurai-sensei comes rushing over, desperate to know just what it is that they've done. He's a little green in the face; there have been a slew of discipline problems at this school recently, several of which landed students in the hospital. So two apologetic and giggly (the Japanese laugh when they're worried or embarrassed) students does not spell anything Good.
It takes awhile to get the story out of them. The story is this:
In the course of dusting their homeroom, student A picked up one of the interclass trophies. And broke it.
This is a big deal. These trophies are big deals. The trophy in question is large and silver, and pretty old. One is not supposed to play around with them.
"But, but," she sputters, "look! Someone else broke it first and glued it back together!"
And sure enough, one can see the dried strings of the glue which had been used to repair it.
"My god," says Katsurai-sensei, trying not to laugh. Other observers are not so tactful. "Someone else did break it!"
"It's not our fault," the girls insist. Everyone present agrees.
"But why did you even go near the thing in the first place?" Katsurai-sensei asks. "It's not like that would have been necessary."
"Because," student A says, and here has to stop while more giggling ensues, "it smelt like nattou!"*
Katsurai-sensei smells the trophy. It indeed has been home to quite a large quantity of nattou in the not-so-distant past. He erupts into laughter, as does the rest of the staffroom, and the relieved students.
The trophies exchanged hands a few days earlier at the school festival. It looks like someone left a little going-away present in 3-5's trophy. Brilliant.
*Nattou, for the uninitiated, is what results when one buries soybeans underground for several months. The Japanese exhume the stringy, smelly, sodden mess (and when I say smelly, I mean smelly. Pig manure has a more pleasant scent than this stuff), and then eat it.
Of course, I can see why this might have been necessary several hundred years ago when Oops! the rice crop was eaten by locusts again and if we don't eat this shit we starve, but it seems that no one's yet informed the Japanese that thanks to the wonders of refrigeration and food preservation techniques, one does not have to eat decaying crap to stay alive. Ah, well.
That will be all.
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no subject
on 2004-10-19 07:16 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-10-19 07:34 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-10-19 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-10-19 09:35 pm (UTC)Learn new things every day.
no subject
on 2004-10-20 03:16 am (UTC)Come on! Just a little taste...
no subject
on 2004-10-20 03:16 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-10-20 03:18 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-10-20 03:19 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-10-20 05:05 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-10-20 05:05 am (UTC)i... am such a drama queen. <3
on 2004-10-27 02:21 am (UTC)*glomp*
Re: i... am such a drama queen. <3
on 2004-10-28 06:43 am (UTC)