Eight-legged misconceptions make for a strange slices

I would kill for a decent pizza. Thin crust, thick crust, spicy, plain, topping-overloaded, anything. Several nights ago I split a paper thin pizza decked with mozzarella and blue cheese. It wasn't anything I'd ordinarily call pizza, save for that it was round, had some sort of sauce, and aforementioned cheese. This was not, however, "Japanese pizza." Like most things in Japan, loose interpretations abound. Japanese pizza has neither tomato sauce nor cheese. It is made in a stove, not on an oven. And sometimes, Japanese pizza has octopus. It's called okonomiyaki. Really, the only thing it has in common with regular pizza is that it's round and delicious. I'm quickly learning that all expectations are best left by the wayside.

So when I arrived at the Going Away/Welcome party for the old teacher (Big O)/new teacher (yours truly), I was struck by an incisive observation: 99% of my students are women. Why are they mostly women? Because my school is not so much a school as it is a place for bored housewives to ogle a foreigner. I am a foreign English-speaking man-whore. This is not the type of eikaiwa (English conversation school) I was expecting.

Big O explains to me that for many students my school is the only place they will ever speak English. There's one woman who's been going nearly 20 years and her English is fantastic, but she doesn't do anything with it -- it's just a hobby for which she shells out ~$50/week. There are some students who genuinely want to learn, as, I believe, there are some schools that have a fairer gender balance. But for the most part? My job is to entertain.

It's no surprise that at the restaurant, I was asked my age, my blood type (in Japan, that's like asking one's sign), and was told that I had beautiful teeth. This frightening girl who reminded me of Sloth from Goonies immediately started hitting on me. You know that feeling you get when you think it's possible that a spider has crawled up your pants and could be mere seconds from biting something vitally important to your future and possibly the future of mankind? Roll with the punches, Japandrew -- for the most part, she was harmless.

No sooner had Big O delivered a speech than I was asked to give one of my own ("...if you'd like to but you don't have to so really it's ok" -- ah, Japanese subtlety, I know thee well). "Kampai!" (cheers) I yelled, eliciting a laugh. That's about all that most of them understood and about all I remember having said, but I think I winged it ok.

I made the rounds and met most of the students that attended the party, and then we were out the door, preparing to go home, when Sloth jumped up behind me and I practically sucked out my fillings. "Where do you live?" I give a broad answer. "I live close to there... let's go!" (Turns out "close" meant "other direction.") I hemmed and hawed until Big O came to the rescue and asked me to stick around for a few minutes. Eventually the flotsam drifted away and we found ourselves at a karaoke place.

Big O's wife, Free Spirit, immediately identified me as a former choir boy: "you have an amazing voice!" She also pegged me as a Robert Deniro lookalike, a similarity I'm hearing often these days. I don't know if everyone recognizes him in me or if it's just the incestuous nature of the Japanese to make public all information about everything. The first day I arrived and Mrs. Eh was showing me around my apartment, she asked if I liked coffee to which I said no. When I arrived at school the next day, several colleagues hit me with, "Oh, so you don't like coffee, I hear."

A couple hours, many songs, and a drink or two later, the night was through and I, still jet-lagged and preparing to face my first foreign hangover, went home and slept for hours.

Karaoke Pictures. (Ok, ok, I know I look really angry in a couple shots, but I was asked to join in a song with a register entirely out of my range.)