The roar of the Mouse…

We have a series of interesting classes that don’t fit inside our normal curriculum. Indeed, they are unique even in their numbering scheme (They are classes 5 and 6… but there are no classes above 4…)

I remember my first day asking what that meant and the answer was… “They have a weak heart…”

This is Japanese for “Mentally retarded”.

And I have come to really love these kids…

I don’t know what it says about us, but they are the most American kids I have…

I don’t have any real feel for class 6 yet, they seem to be just frustrated (It should be noted that with the exception of one young lady, none of these children are actually retarded in the sense that Americans put them in, they are simply slow to process… I guess in Japan that is enough to put you in the severely retarded category).

Class 5, however, consists of two kids, both 1st years. A boy and a girl.

The boy’s major issue (Besides the fact that he is obese… which is odd in this society, but not entirely rare) is that he speaks his mind… he is slow, but he is just a riot. When I got into a discussion with the teacher, he said, bluntly; “Sensei, we are in a class here…” This, ironically, is refreshing to me. He’s awesome. I call him “Direct-Kun”. He is very slow, and it takes a long time to get through a lesson with him because he does need help all the time… he rarely gets the instruction on the first try and Ms. 1st year has to go over it many times for him to get it.

But as wonderful as he is, he isn’t the puzzle that the little girl is. I shall call her Mouse-chan. She has an awful speech impediment, which prevents her from being able to pronounce the first sounds of her speech (In Japanese that would be all of the consonants), so all you get are the vowels. She has a scar (A light one, not ugly) on her face that runs from her eye down her cheek to her chin… and she has a pronounced under bite. It should be noted that she isn’t an ugly girl by any stretch, and since she’s still a child (Read: tiny), she is actually rather adorable.

She sounds bad and I can’t understand a word she says in either Japanese or English, but I noticed last class that she is writing English just fine. In fact, her handwriting is better than mine ever was. She’s not the fastest child I have, but she certainly isn’t the slowest. I’m not sure she even belongs in “Weak Heart English”. She is doing as good as the average 1st year…

But one must understand the way she has been treated…

You see, someone like this in America would be laughed at and their heart would become a cold, bitter place by the time they reach 7th grade.

Not in Japan.

Here, if you are deformed in some way, everyone treats you like fine china. And they patronize you in a non-condescending manner… It’s surreal. They just know that Mouse-chan is a lost cause and so they are doing their best to make her as comfortable as possible while they can…

It’s as if she is going to die…

She, of course, isn’t. I might add, that except for the fact that her social skills are of an elementary school child (She was drawing pictures on my back and having me guess what she was drawing during art club this evening… a flower, a hart, etc), which is likely a direct result of being treated like an elementary school child, I don’t think she is missing much intellectually.

When some of the girls in the art club decided that while I was in the club, they would just call me “Guy-san”, dropping the “Sensei” part of my title… Mouse-chan would not have it. She got downright adamant about my title, declaring (I believe, normal Japanese is hard for me… her Japanese… virtually impossible) that I was still a teacher, even if it is after school. She even pointed out that they had to call Ms. Art sensei even if it is after school.

Ironically, Mouse-chan and Direct-Kun are the only students who actually treat me like all the other teachers.

Even among my fellow teachers, I’m sort of treated as mentally slow… mostly because my Japanese is really bad (I don’t get that response from the English department, they know I’m thinking… It’s just all the other departments).

But, like Mouse-chan, they just can’t see what is going on in my head.

Well, Mouse-chan, I hope I stay here long enough to see you roar.

…I certainly intend to.

---Me.