catch of the program, it was unfortunate the boys would have to be educated in this fact, through wiles, trickery, deception, lies and the delicate application of make-up. After day 1, all the students were assembled in the auditorium for the opening speech; like peas in a pod the Japanese took each available seat in turn, filling up the rows exactly in order; the Westerns sprawled all over the place; JOHANN nervously took the seat next to AKEMI only after being prodded by TUSK. TUSK saw ERI trying to catch his eye and ignored her; the students sat around eating their cheese sandwiches and talking to each other, but also observing.
QUARTERBACK left and SHINO came. A single-digit percentage, certainly not as high as 15%, of the students program wide shopped for a different class. This was, objectively speaking, a mistake. From any individual’s perspective, their assigned class was in error in either of being too easy or too hard, but nobody’s ability, actually, was so far away from their assigned class that they would have wasted their three weeks in the original place. QUARTERBACK was 2/2; this was clear; but what he missed out on was that being the best student in the class offered a certain monopoly on teacher attention; he would have led his class in each model exercise but he would have learned on the side and picked up some Japanese as well. Conversely, those who went down a level just about invariably found that things became too easy. There was a big drop from basic grammar of the 2-level classes to the vocabulary-study of 1-level; apple, orange, banana, car, road, boat, train; in some senses the 1-level classes were not much more valuable than ten hours of independent study, and although they were socially and in some other senses valuable, without question no 2-level student should have dropped down to the first year classes. But people tried anyway, and SHINO shifted; she brought along an older woman who to first appearances was a relative or even mother. How can one deny the greater seriousness and social danger of Japanese culture when a girl feels a need to be accompanied by an older woman in negotiating a class change and her first three arrivals at the class? AJ-3 in any case proved to be pushy and controlling; by the end of the three weeks, she would be revealed as the odd-ball out of the older women, bitter in the end, unappreciative of her own flaws.
On day 1, TUSK having had two conversations with KANYE played for a faint Japanese social play, calling him KANYE-kun in front of the girls and making them laugh. After this episode, KANYE was mistrustful of TUSK, but actually without reason; TUSK actually became impressed after a lunch conversation with KANYE’s mind. KANYE studied History and could hold his own in any talk about culture. Day 3 AKEMI, the soft-hearted, the lover of oppressed victims but possibly self-deluder, openly picked KANYE when instructed to pick a speech practice partner; the girls noted it as just strong a signal enough to be noticeable; nobody who listened all the time rather than talked could help but notice it. DEADBOLT did very minor control interactions with KANYE and TUSK; but that about wrapped it up on the control and linguistic definitional matters; actually almost nothing was established by the end of the week.
"But actually…” TUSK smiled expectantly.
But actually there is one last hidden and devious plot, one that in a final twist of irony never even came out. All week long, Tuesday to Friday, when called upon to deliver a sentence illustrating use of the grammar point in question, TUSK had been slowly feeding the class the story of his “little sister” who had “bumped her head and needed to go to the hospital.” At first the classmates couldn’t tell if this is just a model sentence being said in immediate reaction (response), to the teacher demanding the student speak at point of moment. But he repeated several times and now the class has been fully astroturfed into an eventual meeting with said younger sister…if only! On Friday of that week, the class was scheduled to go to their first field-trip, a visit to the downtown district including artificial stream and then a martial arts dance show. With the timing of the first Yale interview corresponding exactly (a matter of chance, rather than planning), TUSK can bring out his first interviewee, a girl who is more likely than not to be pretty (intelligence is correlated with looks) and then sow whatever chaos he wants.
"But how long could that story be strung out?” wondered JOHANN.
"Possibly for an hour. In any case it would be amusing, more about chaos factor than anything else.”
This is where narration falls into patheticness. Points played for were minor, small twitches on the scale, but despite three days of planning; despite all the dramatic internal events taking place only in the head of TUSK, that Friday right before the field trip the girl showed up and she was… plain. Ahh! What disappointment! Christian, the daughter of a minister, and homey, TUSK has the quick decision: drag her to the field trip, or skip out and wait for a possible interviewee in week two. He picked the latter, a decision JOHANN critiqued.
"Even a homely girl would have been amusing; shows easy-goingness and friendship with a wide variety of people.”
"But I thought maybe in week two I could bring out one of the aces.”
The decision, in retrospect, was clearly wrong. TUSK also missed the first half of the field trip; there is a subtle social diss the girls felt; they will be by the tiniest of fractions less sympathetic to TUSK. And though he had a cell phone and met up with the group again outside the martial arts theatre, the girls seeing him walked past him at first; the relationship is merely cordial, and he had missed all the lunches as well that week.
"That was a definite point off your reputation,” commented JOHANN.
"True, but I had also gone to a non all-girl program once, and everybody made completely different friends the second week rather than the first.”
"Still points off.”
"I would critique other factors in your first week; primarily with regard to LINGLING.”
At the martial arts theatre the students sat next to each other, naturally. Yet TUSK was aware of a feeling of awkwardness; he did some groundwork preparation for deviousity. When QUARTERBACK is picked by the performers to go on stage and be part of the show, TUSK as naturally as if he knew QUARTERBACK all his life tells KANYE to “Take a picture, take a shot!” Such commentary implied greater familiarity than actually existed, yet KANYE was free and easy. He took the shot. And JOHANN, encouraged later that evening after the show to “organize something. I know you’re the fulcrum of our class!” at first suggested both wait and see, then indeed played into action, and the first evening’s night out was begun.
"Karaoke? Anybody want to go out?”
It is AKEMI who did the organizing.
"Me!” “Me!” “Me!”
Analysis, symbolism, psychological profiling; all this will come later. What is recorded now is that AKEMI gathered around TUSK, JOHANN, LINGLING, KANYE, ERI and two other students from the 1-level of the program, never to be seen again, but enough for a mad night out at a cheap karaoke place. The youngsters sang. They drank alcohol. At the end of the night they hit up TUSK for a lion’s share of the bill and then people went their separate ways, although JOHANN was seen leaving with LINGLING (“Are they previously boyfriend and girlfriend?”) and KANYE slept over at TUSK’s (“They said there was no more housing available, how did you get it two weeks ago?”). AKEMI, it is now learned, was at the neighboring university’s dormitory, and the two 1-level students were seen to be pretty cool, but no phone numbers were exchanged.
"See this is where you went wrong,” offered TUSK.
"How so?”
"To you, LINGLING improves your face because you are seen being chased by a girl. But you actually put your arm around her; you were seen disappearing with her. These are considered serious gestures in Japanese dating culture; the J-girls figure you guys are a couple, and after all, she is not totally beautiful.”
"She is unfortunate looking.”
"Indeed.”
The story of this first week is not really, however, a socially-devious American and a cynical German’s take on things. W
hat is really is, of course, is that final crowning Saturday, when KANYE and AKEMI go out on a date. The gods, one thinks, smile down on the innocents of the world; this is the first date recorded—but it is also the very last time two innocents will meet. From this point on in the text, at least one of every two individuals comes from a cynical set of beliefs; at one and sometimes both are devious, emotionally distant, cold, controlling individuals. The karaoke night out on Friday was like the division of the kingdom by King Lear: two of the individuals (TUSK, JOHANN) are cynical and face-aware; one is the innocent, KANYE. We know Cordelia is the child of this world, eternally youthful, eternally naïve. But is she also something else? Freud said Cordelia was death. In that case, KANYE is also death; his death’s head similar to the president of the United States’ no less, a grinning death’s head that reflects a subconscious desire to die. Have the American people become semioticians? Are we devious and more European? Politics is just conversation in circles…
TUSK and JOHANN, new humans, watch KANYE go off but both suspect nothing will come of the meet-up with AKEMI. They can’t be sure, of course; human beings rarely can, but KANYE will not find a Japanese girlfriend this weekend.