Scary

(Summer 2004 Issue)

We had a lot of fun, confusing, and bizarre experiences while we were living in Japan.  But what was your scariest experience on the
JET Progam?

Some of our fellow alums recount their moments of fear.

Getting appendicitis and having an operation in a Japanese hospital! Being told by a Dr. in Japanese that i would have to
stay in the hospital for a week and have my appendix removed while not fully aware of what he was saying, at the same
time thinking that i couldn’t possibly be translating his comments correctly because there was no way that I could be that
seriously ill.  I hadn’t ever been in a US hospital, so everything about the experience was new to me.  Listening to all of the
Japanese was surreal, but when they called my supervisor and he translated for me, the first English words he spoke
were, “I am very worried about you”.  Scariest moment hands down!

Getting pulled over by Police on a drunk driving sting in ‘Bonenkai season‘ and managing to get by with just a warning (the
old trick about sucking on a penny before taking a breathalizer test seemed to work…but the wait was excruciatingly
nerve-wracking!!!)

Living in Iwate prefecture, one is used to driving in snow, but the night my car slid backwards back down a narrow road (is
there any other kind in Japan?) with a 30-foot drop into a gateball court on the one side was one of the heart-stopping
moments of my JET experience.  Lucky for me, the car slid and spun and back into the ditch on the other side of the road.

Hitching a speedboat ride back to the mainland from some Japanese folks we met on the beach on a holiday island
seemed like a good idea at the time…until we realized – speeding and careening wildly across the water and narrowing
missing other boats – that our jovial, driver was pretty much bombed out of his mind.  Didn’t help that he kept turning
around and talking and joking with us when he should have been watching where we were going.  That was kind of scary.

I met the kucho of the ku where I lived, and when I told him that I snowboarded a lot, he said “Oh, that’s great! My
daughter wants to learn to snowboard. I’ll introduce you.”  I smiled and said “Great!” while thinking “Holy ****, I don’t want
to be responsible when your daughter breaks her arm on her first day on a board.”  Fortunately, he forgot about it by the
end of the evening…

When I was on the bus, on the way from Tokyo orientation to my new “home” in Gunma-ken, I was called to the front by
the CIR. She said she had to tell me something before I got to my town.  Apparently, my predecessor had died in my
apartment. One month into her time in JET, she was found dead, in the apartment, on the futon. The cause of death was
never discovered.  No one had removed any of her stuff from the apartment (apart from the fateful futon) or from the desk
at school. I saw photos of her and she looked kind of like me. And, I discovered that I had worked with her brother in the
Prosecutor’s Office in Seattle a couple years before.  For most of my first year there, when people learned that I was living
in that town, they said, “Oh, so YOU’RE the one who got assigned that town…”

When I made a boy cry. I had a coalition of genki boys who followed me around the school, taking turns yelling “I amu
curazy boy!” in the hallway. One afternoon I was teaching in a san-nen-sei class where the baddest ass of that group
ruled, and he just wouldn’t be quiet. I told him to shut up in English, then Japanese. (My JTE, as usual, did nothing.) He
was insistent in his curazy boy-ness. Finally, in frustration, I called him a hen-jin. The class actually applauded. The boy
responded by throwing a pencil at me, then bursting into tears: This tall, spiky-haired bad ass was crying. The JTE took
him outside, and I continued with a silent class. When I got home that day I cried myself.

My scariest JET moment was when I was hit by a car while riding my bike.  The car clipped my back tire and the bike
collapsed under me, with my knee at a weird angle under the bike.  The scary part was trying to get help.  I didn’t speak
Japanese and most of the Japanese people I ran into didn’t speak English, so they didn’t help me out.  I had to drag me
and my bike probably half a mile to the closest hospital.  When I actually got to the hospital, I didn’t know how to ask for
help.  I stood around for a few minutes until I got lucky and ran into a German lady who spoke English and Japanese and
she was able to translate to the doctors.

I was living in Kyoto for a month during the summer and going to Kyoto International school of languages.  One night, I
was out really late with a bunch of friends -until about four- and felt it safe enough to make a short walk to Kyoto eki after
separating from my friends. Sure enough, as I turned the corner, there was a buck naked Japanese man flogging the log
on my behalf in a closed store front. I was so shocked, I didn’t know what to do , so I just ran away as fast as I could. As I
tried to flag down a cab, I noticed the motherfucker coming at me on a bike!!! Yeah, my guy friends I told the next day
seemed to find it rather funny, and I’m sure it does sound kinda funny from a guy’s perspective, but I can assure you it’s a
really violating act!

At one of my schools there was a notoriously xenophobic teacher who came up to me one day with a huge smile on his
face and said ” I heard there was a massacre at an American school in Colorado!”  It was the day that Colombine
happened and to this day, I can still remember the insult to injury that asshole brought.

I travelled to the Beppu Prefecture one weekend and I was in a popular onsen town there.  I hunted for a particular onsen
and when I arrived, there was no kanji for men or women on the door.  I peeked around the doorway and the onsen was
right there so I thought I might be at a co-ed one.  I didn’t really want to take my chances, so I began to walk away.  Before
I could, a man comes to the door with only an onsen towel around his waist and a camera in his hand.  He asked me to
take a picture of him in front of the onsen.  As I was getting ready to take the picture, the man takes the onsen towel that
was wrapped around his waist and ties it around his forehead and poses for the picture.  Yes, I found myself taking a
picture of a very naked man.  I was so surprised that I think I broke his disposible camera!

About five days before I was due to leave for Japan I had a dream in which a friend of mine from college dropped me off
at my new apartment in Japan (which I of course had never seen.)  My friend said goodbye and left me in my apartment
all alone and I was freaked out because I didn’t know what to do next.  After I got to Japan, the board of ed people took
me to lunch and then dropped me off at my apartment with no further instructions.  I didn’t know any Japanese, I didn’t
know where the heck I was and I had no idea how to use any of the appliances in my apartment.  It was just like the
dream.  I just sat there freaked out thinking what the heck do I do now?