Missing

I love the way this story just grows and grows:

August 5th
33 possible centenarians 'missing'

August 15th
Missing centenarians climb to 281: survey

September 11
234,000 centenarians listed in registries missing


Give them another couple of months and there'll be nobody left!

General loopiness

Today was my first day back at work with the loopy professor. I was prepared. I had a flexible lesson plan and all the materials I needed to teach either just my own class or both our classes combined. She has sprung that surprise on me before, apparently thinking that genius gaijin teachers like myself can instantly come up with a lesson plan suitable for forty students after preparing to teach twenty. And while I will admit to occasional genius moments in the classroom, I certainly cannot produce them on demand. (Also, I have fairly frequent dumb moments, too, although I advertise those less widely.)

So today I was ready for anything. Or at least I THOUGHT I was ready for anything. I should have remembered that it is not just my boss at that place who is loopy. The entire bloody place is loopy.

It started when the loopy professor appeared in the teachers' room and welcomed me back. I gave her the little present I'd bought for her in Malaysia. I had bought this because every time she goes to some conference abroad she brings me something useless, and I thought I should reciprocate. I should probably explain how this happens, so that you can get an idea of how surprised I was when I gave her the present.

It usually goes like this. She wafts into the teachers' room, and tells me what a marvelous time she had at her conference, and all about the Very Important People she met, and then hands over her present. She tells me to open it. I do, and thank her. She assures me it is nothing at all, and gazes at me expectantly, so I thank her again and comment on how wonderful the present is. She looks delighted at my pleasure at receiving this unique and interesting key ring (or whatever it is), and continues to gaze expectantly, so I gush a bit longer about how thoughtful she is and it's just what I needed and how beautiful it is and how did she know? After a few minutes of this she leaves, satisfied.

Today, when she asked me about my vacation, I told her I'd been to Malaysia, and gave her the little present. I told her, the way you're supposed to, that it was nothing really, just a little thing.

"Thank you," she said, taking it and instantly dropping it into her voluminous bag. It vanished from sight. She had barely glanced at it.

While I was still gaping and wondering if that was the most unsatisfactory gift-giving experience I'd ever had, and also wondering if she would come across my carefully chosen gift one day a few years from now and wonder what it was and where it came from, she told me, sadly,

"One of our students has retired."

Apparently our 'retiring' student was the only thing that would fit in her mind at that moment.

But that was not what I started out to tell you. I was not going to tell you about the loopy professor. I was going to tell you about the loopy office.

When the loopy professor had finally finished telling me about the student (who had quit university rather than been blessed with an unusually early retirement, perhaps after a moment of clear thinking), I was five minutes late for class. (But that was all right, because so was my boss.) I hurried up to the classroom, and discovered that not only were my students waiting for me, so were hers, outside my classroom.

"Sensei! Sensei!" they called excitedly as I approached down the corridor. "Are we all together again today?"

"I don't think so," I said. "Er ... did Professor Loopy tell you to come here?"

"No," they said. "She isn't there. There's another class in our classroom, with a different teacher."

"Oh," I said. "Um ... come in, sit down, and I'll find out what's going on."

I went back to the other classroom and peeked through the door. Sure enough, there was a different professor in there, lecturing a bunch of bored-looking students. There was no sign of the loopy professor.

I went back to the elevator and waited. Sure enough, a couple of minutes later the doors opened and she stepped out.

I told her what had happened.

"Eh?" she said.

The upshot was that I had both classes for the first forty minutes while she went over to the office to find out what had happened and to get another classroom assigned. Then her students went off to the new classroom, and I had only my class for the last fifty minutes.

Remember my wonderful lesson plan, flexible enough to cope with either twenty students or forty? Having to suddenly adapt it to use for half a class period with forty students and the other half with twenty was an interesting (and not very successful) experience.

(It turned out that the office had mysteriously decided to assign one of our classrooms to a different teacher, and neglected to inform either us or our students.)

After that it was lunchtime. I went down to the river to relax a little and have my lunch. After eating, while I was wandering along the little path following a butterfly, I accidentally kicked a rather large snake. It was one of those sorts of days, possibly for the snake as well, which seemed more surprised than I was.

I had two more classes after lunch. The first one held no surprises aside from the ear-splitting screams of happy welcome when I walked in the door. I have no idea why that class likes me so much. It is my most difficult and tiring class of the week, and I can't say I'm particularly fond of them. They never listen. They never shut up, although they usually apologize (and immediately start screeching again) whenever I cringe and cover my ears, which is often. They never show any inclination to learn anything. I end every class with my ears ringing from the noise, and have had to cultivate a zombie-like calm to deal with them. Nothing else works. (Actually the zombie thing doesn't work either, but at least it prevents me from being climbing the walls or resorting to drugs.)

In other words, everything went normally in the only class I would have liked to have been a little different for a change. My lesson plan did not work very well, but it worked as well as anything ever does with that lot.

Before the last class, the teacher who has the other half of it told me that she had finally been given the official class lists for our two groups of students, and discovered that the way we'd split the class into two was different from the way the office had done it. Previously, they had only given us one list, and we had split the class ourselves, the most logical way – straight down the middle with nineteen in each group. But the way they did it was apparently random, with twenty-one students in one group and seventeen in the other, and not in the same order as the original list.

And, she told me, they insisted that we had to do it their way in the second semester. We had been doing it WRONG. This meant that five students from one class had to move to the other, and seven had to go the other way. Also, the lists I had so carefully typed up for each class on my spreadsheet program, the attendance and grading sheets from these I printed out over the weekend, AND the name cards which I'd numbered according to where the students were on those lists, all have to be changed.

It also meant that we spent the first twenty minutes or so of the last class moving students around and generally having a messy and annoying time trying to sort out where everybody was supposed to be. Some students did not want to move. They had made friends in the first semester, and we were separating them. Waaaah! Normally fairly cooperative and sweet, they became a little sulky, blaming us. But apparently it is more convenient for the office to move students around unnecessarily, disrupt classes, create paperwork for teachers, destroy trees, and generally be illogical, than to go into their computer and change their lists to something more sensible (or to give us the 'correct' lists at the beginning of the year).

And, of course, my lesson plan was too long. I had not prepared for sixty minutes. I had prepared for ninety.

Unfortunately, today's experiences have not taught me anything useful about how to prepare for first day classes at that place. The only thing I learned was that no matter how many contingencies I prepare for, I will be confronted with something completely different. I also learned that if you kick a snake on a day like today, it somehow doesn't feel quite as surprising as it normally would.

When I came home The Man had a question for me.

"When dogs pees on a lamppost, do you say they are addressing the lamppost?" he asked.

"Pardon?" I said. "Do you mean when they mark their territory?"

"Yes," he said. "Can you say they are 'addressing' their territory?"

"No," I said. "At least, I don't think so, anyway. Why?"

He looked disappointed.

"Oh, no reason, really," he said. "I just thought maybe you could call it an IP address."

That probably shouldn't have cheered me up as much as it did.

High standards

This is an interesting little news item, at least to me.

The education ministry has decided to craft curriculum guidelines for undergraduate programs setting minimum knowledge and techniques required for graduation, with the aim of maintaining the quality of education at universities, ministry sources said Tuesday.

It all sounds so enlightened and progressive! But I know what happened the last time the ministry tightened up on their guidelines. Their idea of quality education is more time spent in classrooms, which meant that they suddenly decided that there had to be fifteen weeks of classes per semester and no fewer. They came down very hard on this at one place I work (the women's university), and the result was that suddenly our semesters got longer and all the teachers had to dream up something to fill an extra class or two. Also, the teachers could not have sick days any more, unless they made up the classes later.

But the best bit was that when the Ministry inspected the university and discovered that semesters had not been fifteen weeks the year before, they insisted that school nurses or kindergarten teachers, who had ALREADY GRADUATED and HAD JOBS, had to come back and sit through one more lecture, to make up the shortfall, otherwise they would lose their licenses. I was lucky, as my courses were not relevant for this requirement. Other teachers were not so lucky, and had to come in during their holidays to teach one more class. I do not know how many of these graduates actually attended, but I would not be surprised if there was a high level of absenteeism. Probably not on paper, though. I am sure that on paper this worked perfectly, and kept the standard of education (according to the Min. of Ed.) really, really high.

So the end result of the last attempt to improve education by the Ministry was completely ineffectual as far as education was concerned, but extremely annoying for teachers. At the women's university, since there is now an unofficial rule that we cannot fail the students (I am fairly sure the Min. of Ed. does not know about that one), and attending two thirds of the classes is the only requirement for passing, what it has meant is that the only requirement for graduation is that students keep seats warm for ten out of fifteen classes instead of nine out of fourteen, for four years.

(Incidentally, at that university, when I told a student that listening to music on her portable music player was not acceptable during my classes, she got all hurt and indignant. "But everybody does it!" she told me. "None of the other teachers mind. Why is this class any different? Why are you picking on me?")

On paper, these students are getting their quality education, as prescribed by the Ministry of Education.

I predict that the new curriculum guidelines and evaluation standards will also be followed faithfully, on paper. Dozing students will be lectured at on any number of fabulous things, and the tests (which everybody will, of course, pass) will look much harder.

The really interesting bit of this article, however, is right at the end:

The move also reflects Japan's apparent bid to streamline university education evaluation standards since the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is considering launching a study to assess university educational outcomes using the world's standardized criteria and Japan is set to take part in the study.

It will be very interesting to see how the Min. of Ed. gets out of this one. Will they cherry-pick the universities and students to take part in this study? I cannot see any other way they can avoid an ABSOLUTE DEBACLE.

(Im)moral support

I found out today how my Monday/Wednesday university is going to prevent us nasty gaijin from failing students without actually ordering us not to. As usual, I got this information from the one Japanese teacher who treats me as a professional equal rather than as an English-speaking parrot. (Unfortunately she is also a part-timer.)

She told me that she had been told (by the loopy professor) that when the grades are being given for these classes (which are taught half by a foreign teacher and half by a Japanese teacher), the grade is to be calculated so that forty percent of the total comes from the foreign teacher and sixty percent from the Japanese teacher. This means that nobody gets the embarrassing task of explaining to the foreign teachers that the university has no academic standards. I can give a student zero points if I want to. The Japanese teacher will then give the student sixty points, and since sixty is a passing score the student will magically pass their English course.

This is, actually, a brilliant way around the problem of what to do with fussy gaijin who insist that at a university students should actually do something to earn a grade. Only a cunning, sneaky, underhanded person could have dreamed it up. I had no idea the loopy professor was so clever.

But it is also incredibly insulting to the foreign teachers. These classes are supposed to be for 'oral English.' I teach four of them, along with three Japanese teachers. (The loopy professor teaches two with me, and two part-time Japanese teachers teach the other two.) I am the only teacher out of the four of us who is actually qualified to teach the English language, and in particular, spoken language. (The loopy professor's PhD is, I discovered recently, in Japanese Studies, and the other Japanese teachers' qualifications are in English literature rather than language.) I am still deciding how insulted to be, however. If I protest too loudly I could end up with no classes at all there, and then where will I get all my bird pictures from? This is the university next to the little river.

I also found out today that most of the Japanese teachers' grades will come from a written test that they all have to use, put together by the loopy professor. This test is mostly in Japanese, and how it is supposed to assess spoken English is a mystery nobody dares to question. My part-time colleague is outraged. She wanted to use her own test, but she is also not protesting too loudly. (It was refusing to use this test that cost another part-timer her job.) She and I have decided to get together over the grades. We will collaborate to make sure that students who deserve a high grade actually get one, whatever their test scores. We may not be allowed to fail anyone, but at least we can be as fair as possible.

But that's only for one class, and I was still feeling pretty irate when I got home today. The Man was sympathetic when I told him what was going on. His helpful suggestion was that I should arrange for the loopy professor to slip on a banana peel at the top of a steep flight of stairs.

I found this idea curiously cheering. When things are not going so well at work it is extremely important to have moral support at home.

Or some sort of support, anyway.

Silly, silly, silly

There is a new law in Japan, which started last week. All foreigners who enter Japan have to be fingerprinted as they go through Immigration. Debate is raging about whether or not this is a good idea. Most of the people I know think it is a Very Bad Idea.

I have to say I agree with them, for several reasons. One is that although in principle this should be a way to keep track of potential terrorists, this is Japan, and my experience with bureaucracies here does not give me confidence that it will do anything of the kind. They are more likely to mix up their records and arrest somebody's visiting grandmother. Either that, or they'll lose the records altogether. They're good at that.

The second reason I doubt this will be effective is that any terrorist who really wants to come into Japan will find a way around this law. I know this personally. My own brother (who is, as far as I know, not a terrorist) once came into Japan with no visa at all. I will not tell you how he managed it, but I can tell you that it was as easy as pie. Also, he was wined and dined in lavish style by some shady people and had a very nice evening, thank you very much. If the fingerprinting law had been in place at that time, and he had wanted to blow up the Diet buildings, he could have left his fingerprints all over the place. They would not be in the database. He did not go through Immigration. Officially he was never here at all.

The third reason is that the only terrorist attacks so far in Japan have been committed by Japanese people, to whom this law does not apply. And here's something to give pause for thought. As I was hunting for a suitable link on the Aum subway gassings, look what I found:

Aum Shinri Kyo's use of related companies and its role as a subcontractor made it almost impossible for ministries and organizations to be aware that they were buying computer systems from the cult, computer experts said. In the years following the subway nerve gas attack, the cult, now called ``Aleph,'' has designed software for various government agencies and ministries. It developed a software system for Japan's Defense Agency that would manage classified communications. (Bold added.)

That report goes on to say that The government recently ordered ministries to stop using software developed by companies associated with the cult, but remember, this is JAPAN. The ministries are BUREAUCRACIES.

There is also the problem of what happens to the data, which I will not go into here because it's too big a topic for me. That is discussed here, if you're interested.

The final reason that I am not in favour of this new law is that it also targets permanent residents. Quite aside from the fact that this means that people who have been here for a large part or even all of their lives are going to be treated as 'foreigners' and potential terrorists (we're used to that, not that that makes discrimination any nicer), this is going to be very annoying for me personally, because it means that when The Man and I come back from overseas we will have to go through different lines at Immigration, and he will have to wait for me to go through the whole process. (You can pre-register your fingerprint to speed things up, but only at Narita airport, which we never use.) The way it used to be we went through the same line together. It was relatively fast and hassle-free.

This is, of course, a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things, but I feel for those of my colleagues who have children. Since the law does not apply to children under sixteen or to Japanese nationals, this means that when they travel with their children, the children will go through one line and their parents through another. One of my colleagues is particularly anxious about this. She sometimes takes her kids to visit their grandparents in Canada, without their Japanese father, and she does not know how this will be handled at Immigration. Will they insist that her five-year-old be separated from her and sent to a different line because he has a Japanese passport? I told her that I expect they will allow him the privilege of waiting with his potential terrorist mother in the foreigners' line, but what about when the kids are older?

So my attitude to this law is that it is a silly one, it achieves very little of use, the information collected could be used in less than savoury ways (or, more likely, lost, or released to the wrong people by mistake), and it is likely to cause a lot more trouble and inconvenience than it supposedly prevents. But it is also rumoured to be a cash cow for certain well-placed people, so I expect it is unlikely to be repealed at least until they have milked the cow for as much as they can get from it.

(Contamination has written several posts about this issue.)

Mood: annoyed

Last Thursday I had my last classes at one place, and handed the grades in on the same day. I managed this by working frantically the entire weekend before that, and on Wednesday evening, and by going in early and staying late. I left the house around six thirty and got home after eleven, which left me pretty well as knackered as that duckling.

Handing in the grades meant traipsing all over campus to the various faculty offices, because there is no central office for this sort of thing. There used to be, but things get sillier and sillier at that place as each faculty pulls in different directions, jealously guarding their power. A couple of years ago they even physically moved their offices so they're not in the same building as each other any more. It is now like working for several universities rather than just one, and is, as I think I've mentioned before, incredibly irritating.

Anyway, I rushed around all over campus to catch offices before they closed (they all close at different times, and you have to get the order right), handing in different bits of paper to different people, and ended the day by having a beery dinner with colleagues. When the long day finally ended I was exhausted but extremely pleased with myself for having achieved what had seemed like an impossible goal. I hate doing the grading after the last day. It means I have to do that horrible long commute once more just to hand in bits of paper, because we are not allowed to post them, even by registered mail. The other problem is that the grading deadline isn't actually until late August sometime, and I keep procrastinating it. It hangs over me all vacation, like a bad smell. And the OTHER other problem is that I like to tell students their grade on the last day, so that if there are any complaints or problems they can talk to me about them instead of going through one of the various offices. The administrative staff are always unpleasantly hostile when that happens, even if (ESPECIALLY if) the grading problem was their mistake and not mine.

Excuse me while I go off on a tangent.

At that university they have had a computerized grading system for several years now. Nobody uses it, however, because it is optional. If we do use the computerized grading system, we still have to hand in the handwritten grades as well. Every year they cut down another forest in order to print an incredibly detailed booklet which they send to all the teachers about how to use the fabulous new computerized grading system, and every year several hundred teachers chuck their booklet into the round filing cabinet because the computerized grading system is so horrifically complicated. And, more importantly, OPTIONAL. And EXTRA. ("Look! Here is a fabulous opportunity to use the latest new computerized grading system from 1985 and double your workload!")

The level of computer technology at that place will soon be at 1986, I reckon. For the past three years, instead of getting our student evaluation summaries on paper, we have been getting them on paper AND on a floppy disk. A floppy disk! Many of us had forgotten what they looked like, and the faces in the teachers' room when we opened our envelopes were priceless. ("Hey, look at this, guys! It's a . . . it's a . . . it's a FLOPPY! Did you get one too?") When you dust off your floppy disk reader and plug it in, and insert the floppy disk, you are miraculously presented with a blank Excel document. (And yes, my floppy disk reader does still work. I tested it.) Every teacher (who actually has a floppy disk reader) has the same experience. Some use Windows, some use Macs, some have English systems and some have Japanese systems, but we all get blank Excel documents from the university, every year. The first year we mentioned it, and were told that the document was FINE and there must be something wrong with our computers. (They're too new, probably.) These days we just file the floppy where floppies belong, along with the computerized grading system instruction booklet.

End of tangent. Where was I?

Oh, yes, the grades.

Today I got a very unwelcome envelope in the mail. It was from the university and contained a cover letter and a medical certificate for a student whom I had told, three weeks before the end of semester, that IF he came to the last three classes and worked hard, and IF he handed in his homework, and IF he did all right in the test (second-to-last class), then he would pass. He did the homework, and the test, and the results weren't great but were just enough to squeeze him through to ALMOST a passing grade. Then he missed the last class.

So I failed him.

The medical certificate explained that he had missed the last class because he was being treated for a corneal ulcer, whatever that is. (Dr Google...? Oh. Eek!) The cover letter, which says not much more than yoroshiku onegaishimasu ('please be nice,' sort of), means that the university expects me to pass him. He was absent four times because he couldn't be arsed getting out of bed. But he was absent the fifth time because he had a corneal ulcer. WELL JUST LOOK AT THAT! A VALID EXCUSE! PASS THE POOR BOY YOU HEARTLESS FOREIGNER!

So tomorrow I'll be doing that horrible commute one more time, to change one bad student's grade to something he does not deserve, because If I don't, I'll have to justify failing him. And I really don't want to have to do that, even though he actually should fail. it's just too borderline a case to waste my vacation arguing about.

Besides, I'd lose, one way or another, and it's not worth it.

I do resent it, though.

Still, he's quite likely to be in my class for the second part of the course next semester. If he carries on the way he did in the first semester, I'll fail him for that one instead, only more thoroughly.

I'll make sure there's nothing borderline about it.

Getting away with it

I had an excellent day yesterday. This was not so much because of what happened, but because of what did not happen. My clothes did not fall off, and I finished another week without handing in that particularly stupid bit of paperwork.

It started when I was walking alone the train platform this morning and noticed that one of my feet felt a bit funny. I looked down, and discovered that the sole of my left boot - and these are my favourite boots and have been for the last eight years - the sole was cracked and a big chunk of lovely, bouncy sole was coming loose.

There was no time to go home and change, so I decided I would have to spend the day walking very, very carefully. I thought about wrapping a rubber band around the boot to stop the flappy bit from falling off on my frequent climbs up and down stairs at train platforms, but I didn't have a rubber band, so couldn't.

Shortly after that, at the first train change while I was walking carefully up some stairs, I noticed that my skirt felt funny, too. When I checked to see what was going on I realized that it was slipping down a little further with every step I took. The elastic in the waistband had suddenly given out. I grabbed at it nonchalantly (it is important to be nonchalant when things like this happen) and continued on to work, even more carefully than before. Things were getting rather complicated.

When I got to work I was a little later than usual (careful walking made me miss a connection), and one of the secretaries had arrived already. Usually I get there first, sign in, and disappear to the other side of campus before seeing them. (The cleaning staff open the office for us early-bird teachers.) I greeted her and tried very hard not to think about the form I have not handed in. I am just NOT BLOODY DOING IT, and when I saw the secretary I didn't want to think about it in case she read my mind. I do not want a confrontation, which I would never win. (Foreign teachers never win open confrontations with stupidity. An open confrontation means you've lost already, both because you are foreign and because you dare to openly confront stupidity. That puts you in the wrong automatically, and it doesn't matter how right you are.)

My boots and my skirt may have been in danger of falling apart, but my wits were not. The secretary and I greeted each other, and when the secretary got That Look on her face and opened her mouth to say something, I moved in to attack first. I pounced. I was vicious, underhand, and devious.

"Oh, my goodness!" I exclaimed, gasping with shock. "You've got a new haircut, haven't you! It looks WONDERFUL! Absolutely LOVELY! It makes you look so YOUNG! It's FABULOUS! And that cardigan is new, too, isn't it? And you look so slim! When did all this happen? You look so BEAUTIFUL!"

It worked. She was totally distracted by her own staggering beauty. She preened. She put her hand up to her hair and was revoltingly coy.

I gazed in admiration. She simpered. Then she showed signs of remembering what she wanted to say, so I pounced again. It is not possible to go overboard with this woman.

"Show me the back," I urged, and she did a slow twirl, giggling girlishly.

"Beautiful!" I breathed, and she said,

"It's much shorter, though."

"But it's perfect," I said. "You should wear it like that all the time. It suits you SO well! It's a whole new look! I almost didn't recognize you! It's - "

I glanced at the clock and gasped.

"Oh, look at the time! Must run!" I said, and she smiled at me patronizingly, pleased that her wonderful new look had caused me to run late.

I quickly signed the book and made a dash for the door. It was a careful dash, though. I did not want to leave my skirt behind.

I was not late, of course. I had plenty of time, because for once I was well prepared for classes, except for the clothing problems. But they were easily taken care of, and I did not have to spend the rest of the day walking as though I were trying to keep a pencil clamped between my buttocks. I found a small but strong paperclip and clipped the waistband of my skirt so it would not fall down. I examined the boot, too, and decided a rubber band was not necessary. The flappy bit was still more attached to the boot than I had at first thought, although not as attached as I am. (I will MOURN those comfy boots.)

And I still haven't filled in the form.

Just two weeks to go. I think I'm going to get away with it!

(Incidentally, that paperclip picture comes from this page, which has some wonderful statistics. If you take that first sentence and change the 80% to 99%, it describes my Thursday/Friday university PERFECTLY.)

That form again

When I got to work yesterday one of my colleagues was sitting at the big table and sipping coffee. I noticed a form sticking out of her bag. It looked familiar.

"That's not that stupid form about what classes we teach, is it?" I asked, horrified. "You're not going to hand that in now, are you?"

"I have to," she said, gloomily. "I'm taking it over later today. Usually I don't even see the secretary, but on Wednesday I got here a bit later than usual and she pounced on me. I've been practicing abject apologies ever since. I'd forgotten all about it. Did you hand yours in?"

"No," I said, "I always get here too early for her. And anyway, I'm bloody well not going to! It's two weeks before the end of semester, and she never needed it in the first place!"

"I know," she said.

"When you hand it in, ask her what it's for," I said.

"Oh, I CAN'T," said my colleague, horrified. "I wouldn't dare!"

"Oh, go on!" I said. "I don't mean you should confront her. I mean just ask her, innocently. Apologize like mad, then say you have always wondered what the form is for, like you're stupid and she's really, really clever, and see what she says."

My colleague looked momentarily thoughtful, then gleeful, then came back down to earth. She shook her head.

"No, I can't do it," she said. "She'll know I know. I'm no good at pretending. It'll show in my face."

"But she'll have to come up with something different," I argued. "She CAN'T tell you she needs it so she can inform the faculties when you call in sick, because we've been told that we are absolutely NOT allowed to call her. We have to inform them ourselves, now. Remember the memo at the beginning of the year?"

"Yes," said my colleague. "And I teach four different faculties in one day, so I have to make four phone calls if I'm sick."

"She does absolutely NOTHING for us, and she's supposed to be our secretary!" I said. "And don't forget we have to call our boss, too, so that makes FIVE phone calls. We could be dying, and we'd have to make FIVE PHONE CALLS for ONE MEASLY DAY OFF. FIVE PEOPLE listen to you and make you feel as if you're a lazy gaijin, faking it. You know they always do that. 'Oh, you're SICK are you?' they say. 'Riiiight. When will you make up the classes?' "

My colleague laughed bitterly.

"They do, don't they?" she said. "Why do they do that? I never call in sick unless I can hardly move, and they always manage to make me feel worse than I did to begin with."

I could see I was breaking her down, and kept pushing.

"There isn't even the SHADOW of a reason for her to have those forms, now. Oh, go on! Ask!"

My colleague pulled the form out of her bag and stared at it. Every little box had been filled in with her careful, childish Kanji. Every fiendishly difficult faculty and department name had been painstakingly copied. Every class was listed, along with the course title and classroom number. It represented a lost evening of headache-inducing irritation, and was destined to be filed away and never looked at again.

"Weeeell . . . " she said.

"Just do it!" I urged. "It will make you feel better. Besides, I can't wait to hear how she justifies it this time."

She put the paper away again.

"No, I can't," she said, firmly. "It will show. She will KNOW."

Damn. Why can't everybody be as sneaky as me?

But I can't ask her myself, because then I'll end up having to hand in the form. You do not defy the secretary, at least not openly. She is related to the president of the university, so you have to work on your passive-aggressive skills to get anything past her.

And I am bloody well NOT going to fill in that form, and especially not two weeks before the end of semester.

I'll have to find somebody else to ask the question.