Wednesday, all day, the other Kiritaka teachers are debating about the composition of next year’s incoming class. Yours truly is left to his own devices, puttering around the computer lab, studying kanji, reading British science fiction, etc. The teacher’s room is even more barren than the test-taking days; those only require the proctoring of about half the teachers at a time, and even then only for the first 2/3rd of the day. Wednesday, poring over the results, is an all-day affair.

Usually on Wednesdays I visit Omama, my secondary school. I thought I’d go there today as well, but my Kiritaka teachers told me no, every school in Gunma will be going over entrance exam results today, there’s no need to go anywhere, just stay at Kiritaka. So I do. Then, at 10:15, I get a call from my English-inept English teacher supervisor. (All the other English teachers at Kiritaka are super-competent. Only my supervisor, randomly assigned each year, is continually surprised by the English language.) Per usual, her halting attempts to communicate with me in English soon give way to Japanese. “Omama’s kyoto-sensei called. He wants to know why you’re not at Omama. Omama has class today.”

“Excuse me?” I ask.

“You should go to Omama. Be careful,” she says.

“YOU TOLD ME I DIDN’T HAVE ANY CLASSES TODAY,” I say, shouting not out of anger or frustration, but sheer panic.

“Sorry,” she says, clearly not.

Timetable update: my regular first class at Omama is third period, which starts at 11:00 A.M. It takes me 25-30 minutes in the morning to drive to Omama. I have yet to Xerox any printouts for today’s classes, assuming they were cancelled; this class takes double-paged B4 materials, so it takes about 8-10 minutes to generate the papers.

I run home, grab the papers, hop in the car, and start driving. Traffic is lighter at 10:30 A.M. than at 8:00 A.M., so there’s plenty of room to speed. I do about twenty kilometers over the speed limit the whole way – it might not sound like much, but it’s a 50% increase over what’s recommended on these country roads. I’m not so worried about getting a ticket; I’m more worried about my rattling kei-car falling apart. My car doesn’t have a working radio, so I often sing to myself while driving to stave off boredom. This morning, I sang the “Bullshit!” song at the top of my lungs the whole way here. (Sample lyrics: “Bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit this is bullshit bullshit bullshit!”) Miraculously, I pull into the Omama parking lot at 10:40.

Just in time to hear the chimes.

Goddammit! They’re on an accelerated schedule today! If it’s a 5-minute acceleration (45 minute classes), I still have ten minutes to make copies. If it’s a 10-minute acceleration (40-minute classes), then third period just started.

I rush into the genkan and find that someone’s moved my shoes. Someone ALWAYS moves my shoes. I don’t have a regular teacher’s cubby at Omama, so I always leave my indoor shoes in guest cubby number 19 at the end of the day. They’re rarely there by the next week. There’s over fifty guest cubbies; I can’t understand why someone is compelled to move them. I start flipping the guest cubbies open willy-nilly, finding my shoes in number 34. I slam the open cubby wall shut three, four doors at a time, strap on my shoes and run upstairs.

“Class just started,” says Moroda-sensei.

“I HAVEN’T MADE COPIES YET,” I shout, eyes wide in panic. I run through the teacher’s room to the copy room and take out the four A4 papers I use in today’s lesson. I make a snap judgement as to which two live and which two die and start making a single B4 sheet, planning to fake/jettison the rest.

I’m in the classroom, out-of-breath, copies in hand, by 10:45. Takeda-sensei is surprised to see me. It turns out that he was planning to review the recent final exam with the students today. I propose that he do this some other time and let me teach the lesson I have with me instead. I think he can see from my physical state that this is a good idea. He acquiesces.

We teach the class and it goes well enough. By 11:20 I’m back in the teacher’s lounge, a bit calmer, ready to make a decent set of materials for the afternoon’s pair of classes, coming to grips with my expected Wednesday off turning into the regular grind.

“There are no classes this afternoon,” Moroda-sensei tells me. “We’ll be going over the entrance examinations.” I guess when your academic standards are as low as Omama’s, the afternoon is enough. It’s noon now, and that’s my day to date: boredom, panic, speeding, panic, thirty-five minutes of class, and now I’m done.

WHY DO PEOPLE DO THE ABSOLUTE STUPIDEST THING EVERY GODDAMN MINUTE OF EVERY GODDAMN DAY?!