This week was pretty crazy...I'll try to be short this time.
I'm sure you remember last week's protagonist, the spinster Miss Fushimishi.
On Monday I had a lesson with Miss Fushimishi and she seemed to be a bit upset as usual. The class went well, and in the end the Australian teacher came in to prepare for the next class in the room. When we finished, I went to the back of the room where he and Miss Fushimishi were talking. When she looked at me, it was written on her face that she was about to explode. She immediately attacked me in a very disturbing tone: "You made a mistake!"...yeah, so what?- I wanted to say, but I disciplined myself and asked her what the problem was this time. She was mad, because I traslated the English verb "judge" into "discrimination" in Japanese. I did it because she was not helping me, and discrimination was so much easier to explain with gestures and words, than judge. The sentence was out of context, and after all discrimination is also a form of judgement, so I told her it wasn't that big of a mistake, so she should take it easy. Guess what she said! She said she checked it in the Bible!! Not in a dictionary, but in the Bible...Oh, God.
You see, I am a Christian (Roman Catholic to be precise), just like her. Christianity is not very popular in Japan, I think probably about 5 % of the nation is Christian, thus she is the first I met at work, and apparently she is one of those zealous Christians, who read the Bible, and probably go to church everyday and stuff...I don't even have a Bible at home. I do have internet :) and I go to church when I feel like it.
I thought it was over, when I went up to the staff room, where she was explaining to the other teachers what a grave mistake I made. I got pissed, but I just said I don't think it was a mistake, and I asked her what problem does she have with me, that when she can't find a mistake in my English, she tries to find it in my Japanese. (I didn't even say that word in Japanese, a kid said it when I explained how we judge people, and I accepted the word "discrimination" as a translation). Then she mentioned Friday's thing again, how rude I was to call her like that (on her family name, without using "Miss"- I actually said it, but she couldn't hear it it seems) . This time however, she claimed that I had called her like that three times. I rejected that. Then she said in front of my co-workers: "You are a liar!"
In that very moment I lost my cool. I started shouting at her "What the hell is wrong with you?" How dare you accuse me like that? You have no right to complain about my lesson if you don't ever help me in the classroom." She went too far. Then she said that I have been bothering her since I came to this school and stuff like that. The main teacher (one of the elder guys) said we should calm down and he's gonna listen to our stories one by one next week, but this week he is too busy. We didn't talk after for 3 days, and she wouldn't even greet me, even though I said "Good Morning" and "Good bye" to her every day. Oh, well...who cares.
Wednesday evening I thought I'll give reconciliation a last try the next day. We had a lesson that day anyway, so I decided I'll talk to her. Next morning I was really surprised, she came in smiling and all too happy, and she was like that all day. When I asked her to talk, she gladly said yes. I apologized for shouting at her, and asked what her problem is with me. And guess what! She APOLOGIZED TO ME! Saying she was in a bad mood and after all we are "sisters" (referring to our common religion) and we should be friends. I froze. I accepted her apology and her request to be friends, but she didn't really wanted to tell me what her problem actually was with me...I didn't want to be pushy, so I gave up on finding that out. She also advised me that I should read the Bible in English and in Japanese to improve my Japanese...yeah, sure...
No comments:
Post a Comment