Next week

My English to Japanese dictionary is very useful; in fact it is so incredibly and coincidentally useful that sometimes I wonder whether when I learn a new word from it causes some accompanying cosmic change in my life. It’s like the invisible lines of fate that we all travel down, which divide and split randomly with every decision and action we think we are making, suddenly lurch in new directions depending on what I read from my Oxford Beginner’s Japanese Dictionary.

For example, recently I looked up “as” and one of the examples was this:

サンタ　の　かっこう　を　しました。

Which means: “I was dressed as Santa.”

The next week I am sitting in the teacher’s room when the vice principal gets a call from the kindergarten my school is attached too. He calls me over to his desk and tells me that they want me to be Santa for them next Wednesday. He asks me if I would like to do it and I quickly go through the stages of shock, amusement, fear, indecision and finally that stage where you just say “ok” without really knowing what you are getting yourself into.

I asked him what I thought was a stupid question; whether the kindergarten would provide me with a costume. He said that he wasn’t sure. You can’t seriously expect someone to provide their own costume can you? It’s not like dressing up as a ghost or vampire for Halloween where you can kind of put together something vaguely right from regular clothes and then make some plastic teeth to top it off. Santa has some very specific requirements, like the curly white beard, for example, or the red hat with the white thing at the end.

The only person who wasn’t surprised when I told them what I have to do next week was Adam, the Canadian English teacher from another school I teach in. Apparently, he was Santa last year and said, “It’s like being a rockstar,” because of all the attention and advised me to, “Be careful, they will be trying to touch your butt.” When a kid punched me in the most painful place a month or two ago and I told Adam about this he said, “it goes with the territory.” He’s been teaching for years so is wise and sagely, but still I don’t see how getting punched by kids in the genital region is in the same territory as teaching English.

On Thursday of this week I was there when Adam was told, five minutes before the woman came with the costume for him to try on, that he would be dressing up as Santa on Tuesday. The costume they had ready for him had everything, Even Santa eyebrows which where about two inches long and would blind you if it was windy.

I find myself wondering, what if the kids ask me questions or yell things out to me in Japanese, expecting me to answer? Chances are I won’t be able to understand them so what am I supposed to do? Do I explain, “Sorry kids, Santa doesn’t speak Japanese,” or do I just smile and hohoho all day. I hope they don’t do the whole Santa’s grotto thing and let them sit on my knee. Firstly, I have no idea how to say, “So sonny, what do you want from Santa this Christmas?” in Japanese and secondly it would increase my vulnerability to genital attacks.

Oh the things I do for money.