Mr. Ichikawa

Mr. Ichikawa

Koniti wa. Louder! Ko-ni-ti wa! LOUDER. KO-NI-TI WA!!! Good! Every day, Mr. Ichikawa made us greet him with fervor and energy higher-than-Mt.Fuji Mr. Ichikawa was radical. He used to teach Japanese salary men how to be proper salary men. He used to work in a “real Japanese company” – as he told us. For some obscure reason, however, we found ourselves having Mr. Ichikawa as our teacher for the first few weeks in Osaka…

Mr. Ichikawa’s class felt like a boot camp. Every morning we bowed and got scolded if the bow was not deep enough. We shouted “ohayoooo gozaimasu” and were shouted back at if we did not scream with enough vigor. Mr. Ichikawa put us into teams of four based on assumed geographic location of our origins. Elly was the Taipei-Team (I think her parents lived in Taiwan at some point, but I’m not sure…) Rika was the Pittsburgh-Team. I was the Czech-Team. Desiree, Hispanic girl from New York City, was the Caribbean Team. Has she ever been to the Caribbean? Nope. Mr. Ichikawa couldn’t care less, however. She looked Caribbean so she was the Caribbean-Team. What’s the big deal?

After the second week, I noticed that Desiree seemed a bit disconcerted that she was racially profiled on a daily basis. She seemed troubled by her membership in the Caribbean-Team. So, I decided to have a man-date with Mr. Ichikawa after class. I told him that in America people get sometimes offended when they are put into Caribbean teams when they have in fact never been to the Caribbean. Mr. Ichikawa looked puzzled for a while but then exclaimed: Naruhodo! Got ya! He seemed to understand my point.

The next day Mr. Ichikawa said he had to make an important announcement before the beginning of the class. “Dear Teams, I would like to share a childhood dream with you. As a child, I always wanted just one thing: to go on a cruise. There are many cruises in the Pacific but I only wanted to go on a cruise in the Caribbean because I think the Caribbean is the most beautiful part of the world. With Palm Trees, Bananas, Beaches and Pirates. I have nothing against the Caribbean. Please understand. Are we cool now, Caribbean-Team?!?” Desiree just nodded. We all said we had also wanted to go on a cruise as children (which was a lie on my part). With his wide smile, Mr. Ichikawa shook our hands. And the class went on as usual.

Mr. Ichikawa had a very specific way of teaching Japanese. He made sentences for us that we had to repeat after him. Sentences such as “I take my girlfriend to movies every weekend” or “By the age of 25, I will be married and happy.” I told Mr. Ichikawa that I don’t really have a girlfriend. He smiled, shook my hand, and then he said, “Between us guys, I know what you mean.” I did not know what he meant. Taipei-Team told him that she did not want to get married. Mr. Ichikawa corrected her Japanese. He said: “You mean you don’t wanna get married TODAY.” She said she just did not want to get married EVER. Mr. Ichikawa ignored the comment.

One day, we all got a bit frustrated by Mr. Ichikawa’s fervent endorsement of the marriage-agenda. We had asked him whether he was married himself. First, Mr. Ichikawa pulled an Ichikawa: he pretended not to hear. We didn’t want to let that one just fly by. So we insisted. Mr. Ichikawa got nervous. He started sweating (and sweating he used to do a lot). With a strange tick in his right eye, he said: “Is that because I don’t have a ring? How did you guys know!!!!” He told us to go take a break. He took out a handkerchief and started wiping off sweat from his forehead. We never talked about the issue again. And so, I guess Mr. Ichikawa wasn’t married either.

Mr. Ichikawa sounds like much fun. But he was pretty difficult to listen to for four hours a day. He wanted us to become his perfect teammates, perfect employees of the Ichikawa Company. But we were probably too undisciplined for Mr. Ichikawa’s great plan. Our worlds were just too far away from each other. We told him not to put us into Caribbean-Teams based on our skin color. He played a dead fish when we asked too many questions…Mr. Ichikawa was just like the Pokemon– entertaining, high-energy but also a bit odd….

Last week, Mr. Ichikawa got fired. On Friday, we took a picture with Mr. Ichikawa and on Monday we got a new teacher,Mrs. Fuganawa. She calls us by our names (we’re no longer teams), she does not make us take our girflriends to movie-theaters and to get married at age 25. She doesn’t seem to care much about the Caribbean. She does not require us to bow or shout “Good Morning” every morning. She’s married with a ring and doesn’t get embarrassed when talking about her husband. She probably never worked at a real Japanese company.

And so the Osaka days go by without Mr. Ichikawa. Sometimes I pause during Mrs. Fuganawa lecture on Japanese honorifics and imagine what Mr. Ichikawa is up to. I wonder whether he lives alone or with his mum. I wonder whether he had started wearing a fake-wedding ring to avoid further inquiries about his marital status. I wonder whether he went back to a real Japanese company. And in fact, the more I think about Mr. Ichikawa the more I see him as an otherworldly Pikachu. Upbeat, restless, and bizarre, he really was like the Pokemon. No matter how hard you try, you can never catch’em all.