Otherwise known as One of the Ten Best Nights of My Life
No, not that kind of night.
From July 2001 to June 2003, I returned to Japan to teach English to students of all ages at Berlitz's Fujisawa Language Center, which was about an hour southwest of Tokyo, on the coast... about fifteen minutes from Yokohama. At Christmastime in 2002 I went home for the holidays. If I remember correctly, I took about three weeks off to visit my family in Florida, my then-boyfriend's family in Quebec, and to tour the campus of Acadia University in Nova Scotia, where I was applying the following spring for admittance into their Master's of Education program in Counseling. It was a whirlwind three weeks, and I returned to Fujisawa, absolutely exhausted.
My first day back at work in January, the phone rang while I was standing near the receptionist's desk. She looked at me and covered the phone. It's for you Jen-chan... it's Suzuki-san.
Suzuki-san... for me? Really? He was the head salesman for Berlitz in Japan. I took the phone, and the conversation went something like this...
Jennifer-san, this is Suzuki. How are you?
Suzuki-san, it is an honor to speak to you. I am fine. I have just returned from visiting America.
Very good. We would like for you to be featured in our next campaign for Berlitz Kids' Program. The photo shoot will be next Monday at 5:00 p.m. Are you available?
Well... I will have to speak to my Director. I have lessons that night.
At Berlitz our schedule changed every day... with the exception of kids' lessons. With our kids' groups, we kept the same schedule each week. I had three or four kids' groups that I taught every Monday, which worked out really well. My lone day off each week was Tuesday, which coincided with Pierre's day off at his school (who is chronicled in Learning French... in Japan). I worked six days a week, from 8:30 a.m. to 9:10 p.m., with breaks in between (usually I had a 2 or 3 hour break in the afternoon which would let me return home, relax, and make a bit of lunch...) but quite a schedule nonetheless! Because I had kids' lessons on Monday evening and Tuesday was my day off, I was quite often able to leave by 7:45 on Mondays, which a wonderful way to start my "weekend"!
I have already spoken to Furuya-san. She is releasing you that evening so that you can come to Tokyo.
Until Suzuki-san said the name Furuya-san, I was convinced that he had me confused with another Jennifer-san for the following reasons:
1. My name is very common among my age group.
2. I'm not exactly Heidi Klum. They wanted to take pictures of me in an advertising campaign?
In that case, I would love to!
Great. Please come to Tokyo Language Center at 5:00 p.m. on Monday afternoon. See you then.
I was so excited! I had once been on a television show in South Korea (that's another post!) but I had never done modeling of any kind outside of having my senior picture taken! And they wanted me?
To be truthful, I did have a good reputation as a kids' lesson teacher for Berlitz. The head salesman for kids' lessons was named Yamaki-san. He had children who attended lessons at our school in Fujisawa. His wife was from Minnesota, and was very, very nice. Yamaki-san told me that he often requested me to do demonstration lessons at kindergartens where he was making a sales pitch... because he always made the sale after the director saw my lesson. They didn't always get me for their teacher after the sale was made, but by golly they purchased the kids' package after watching my interactions with their students. It was fun, too. And took a lot of energy!
Something told me not to tell the other teachers about my modeling opportunity. I was only paid my normal hourly rate, but how awesome was it to be able to travel to Tokyo and participate in such a neat experience?! It's very un-Japanese to brag, and also I didn't want my colleagues to think that I was getting any kind of special treatment or leg up in the company. So... I was uncharacteristically stealth. (Anyone who knows me knows that more often than not, I am the opposite of stealth!!!)
Soon, the day of the shoot arrived. I worked that morning in Fujisawa, then left to take the train into Tokyo. I met Suzuki-san, and another teacher-- a male teacher who was also in the shoot-- at a Berlitz language center in Tokyo. We traveled from there to a cool warehouse district. When we entered the building, there was jazzy ambient music playing, and the photographer was wearing glasses with thick black frames and a black turtleneck. He was a total cliche, and I loved it. There were a few kids around the age of twelve at the shoot as well. One by one, we each had our hair and makeup done. There was a lot of waiting around while they got the props just right.
Finally, they asked me to hold the teachers' manual while they did an overhead shot. I had to stand, bent over a table, holding the pages just so, while they took pictures of my hands holding the book. The rest of me was not in that shot. I was mere hand model. Every few minutes Suzuki-san would tell me to straighten up and relax while they were changing camera lenses. Honestly, being in the bent-over position hurt, but I still was grateful to be a part of the shoot. A few minutes later, they had the children come to the part of room that had been set up like a classroom, and gave me a huge stack of flashcards. Suzuki-san told me to just act as if I was teaching. I held up each card, and asked them questions about the pictures in the cards. I held up one card that showed a supermarket, with bright red tomatoes in the produce department.
Are they red tomatoes?
Yes! They are red tomatoes.
Are they purple tomatoes?
No, they aren't purple tomatoes.
What color tomatoes are they?
They are red tomatoes!
Are they red or purple tomatoes?
They are red tomatoes!
This is an example of the yes-no-key question-or method that Berlitz espouses. The kids answered the questions, the crew answered the questions, I laughed... everybody laughed. It was so cool! I remember that one of the kids told her mom that she wanted to take my lesson at Berlitz... but alas, she lived in Tokyo and wasn't going to travel an hour to Fujisawa just so she could take English lessons from me.
The shoot lasted until around 9:30 at night. After that, Suzuki-san took the other teacher and I out for dinner at a chichi restaurant on Tokyo Bay. We ate, we drank, we were merry. The food was incredible. The whole night was too much for me to take in, you know? Just one of those experiences where you try to remember every little detail because you know that it's never going to happen... again.
We left to catch our respective last trains home well after midnight. When I got to Fujisawa Station, I splurged and took a taxi to Kugenuma-Kaigan, my wonderful little beach town that was... home. A few weeks later the brochures came out with my picture on them... my colleagues asked me about it but I downplayed the experience in typical Japanese fashion.
It was without a doubt, one of the most memorable evenings of my life. And they really did... want... me.
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