I Almost get into a Fight

Perhaps that’s an exaggeration. I’m not sure if punches were actually about to be thrown, or not. At the time I thought we were a breath away from hitting each other, but perhaps my adrenaline at the time caused me to misread things. At any rate it was a tense situation.

It all started two weeks ago when I was walking through Gifu city. I come into Gifu city often for Japanese class, and one day I came a bit early, so I was walking around the shops there. I was approached by a Japanese girl who asked, “Are you Joel Teacher?”

I’m not used to people randomly coming up and asking me this question, so it threw me off a bit, but I answered that I was in fact he. Turns out she lives in Godo town (the town I currently work and live in) and she had read about me in the town newspaper. She wanted to learn English and had wanted to meet me, so she was quite happy to run into me. I said I would be glad to teach her English, and we exchanged contact information and worked out a schedule to meet.

I don’t think she’ll ever read this weblog, but let’s change her name anyway and call her “Aya.” She was 22 years old, and not currently in school, but interested in learning English so she could study abroad and become a nurse. She had failed the nursing test in Japan. Because Japanese society can be very strict, there exists a section of Japanese people (mainly women) who want to escape from Japan and live abroad.

I met her that weekend and we talked about what she wanted to study. I suggested she keep an English journal that she would write in every day, and then I would meet with her once a week and help correct her grammar, and teach her about any mistakes she made.

We met on Tuesday and I looked through her journal. She had written a lot of personal things in it. In particular she wrote of harassment she had received from someone named “Tom” (not his real name either).

Apparently she had been studying English in a coffee house about a month ago. Tom had seen the English books on her table, and offered to teach English to her. She accepted and gave him her telephone number, but soon became aware that Tom had ulterior motives. “It was the start of nightmarish days for me,” she wrote in her journal. “He was very selfish and forced me to do many things. His only purpose was my body.”

She had written that she changed her telephone number to avoid Tom, who was apparently calling her up to 40 times a day. Then, Tom had gone to her place of work to confront her. Fortunately her boss intercepted Tom, but Tom became angry and started yelling at her. The boss prevented Tom from getting close to her, but he yelled out all sorts of nasty things about her in the presence of her co-workers. Eventually the police were called and they escorted Tom away. The last line of her journal read, “please help me.”

There is actually someone named Tom who works for the same company as me, and I wondered if it might be the same person. This Tom was a bit of a loose cannon as well. He had liked Monika, but when she refused his advances he degenerated into a huge temper tantrum in the middle of Nagoya city, in which he yelled all sorts of nasty things out at Monika and her friends. It sounded like the same person.

“I think I might know Tom,” I said to Aya. “Can you tell me anything else about him? What is his last name? Where does he live? What company does he work for?”

Aya began to worry that I was friends with Tom, and that I might believe his side of the story instead of hers. Although it supposed to be an English lesson, I broke into my Japanese to explain to her that my purpose was to find out if it was the same person so I could call the company and hopefully put a stop to this. She still seemed very concerned that I not listen to whatever Tom had to say about her. The intensity with which she defended herself against accusations yet unmade caused me to think that there was something she wasn’t telling me, but I wasn’t even worried about that. Whatever had happened between her and Tom in the past, the important thing seemed to be that he left her alone now, and I tried to tell her that was all I was concerned about.

Aya could tell me very little about Tom. She didn’t know his last name, or where he lived, or what company he worked for. She knew he was European, and spoke multiple languages, and taught for an English conversation company. None of this information seemed to square with the Tom I knew, and yet the similarities between the way the two of them had acted still made me suspicious.

I called up Monika on my cell phone. “Listen, this is rather bizarre,” I said, “but I’ve got a Japanese student who’s being harassed by someone named Tom. Do you think it might be the same person? Has Tom spent a lot of time in Europe? Do you think he might be teaching for a conversation company on the side?”

“Hmmm, he’s not European,” Monika said, “but he could have lied about it. I don’t think he’s working for an English conversation company also, but he might be.” Monika agreed that the similarities were eerie, but there were enough pieces that didn’t fit so that we couldn’t come to a definite conclusion.
“I suppose this isn’t enough information to report him to the company,” I said.
“No, it’s not,” Monika agreed.

Monika gave me a web address where I might find pictures of Tom. I asked Aya if she wanted to go to an internet café to look, but Aya said it wasn’t necessary. “He won’t bother me again,” she said. “I’ve told him I’m through with him, and the police told him not to come back to my work.”

Well there didn’t seem too much point in tracking him down then. “OK, well let me know if he bother’s you again. And if you meet him again try and get any information about him that you can.” And we called it a night at that.

The following day I was in Gifu station and walking towards my Japanese class. I stopped briefly in a bookstore to look at the English books, and as I was leaving I heard someone calling to me, and there was Aya. She had been in the same bookstore.

We chatted briefly. I said I was going to Japanese class, and didn’t have a lot of time to talk. She said she had just finished work, and was about to take the train home. And then I became aware that there was another person hovering right next to us. Since he was obviously waiting to talk to us I broke off the conversation with Aya to turn to him.

Aya, upon seeing him, immediately grabbed my arm and hid behind me. “It’s him,” she whispered. Indeed, it was not the Tom I knew, but someone I had never met before.

Tom initially ignored me, and tried to talk over me to Aya, who was still hiding behind me. “So, we had an agreement to meet in that coffee shop,” he said to her. “Have you not learned good manners? Were you going to come to that coffee shop or were you going to keep me waiting?”

Sometimes there are moments of crisis in life in which we realize that the person we fantasize about being, and the person we actually are, are very different people. This was one of those moments for me. The previous night I had assured Aya that every thing would be all right. I had envisioned myself meeting Tom, and sternly and forcefully telling him to leave Aya alone or he would have to deal with me. And now that I was actually meeting him, I was terrified of conflict.

Tom was roughly about the same size as me, maybe a little bit shorter. It was winter and we were both wearing heavy clothing, so it was hard to tell who was bigger muscularly, but I thought I had a good chance. Of course I’ve never been in a fight in my whole life, and that counts for a lot. But if I held myself aggressively and made use of my size in an intimidating way, maybe he wouldn’t want to fight. After all, they say most fights are over before the first punch is even thrown.

And yet there I was, with my heart beating rapidly, scared not just of a fight but even a harsh exchange seemed distasteful to me. I knew I would get nervous and start stuttering and saying stupid things, and at that moment I wanted nothing so badly as to make this whole incident go quietly away.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” I said extending my hand. “My name is Joel.”

He shook my hand as well. “I’m Tom.” We exchanged pleasantries briefly. He was from Germany, andI told him I was an American. And after this brief exchange he said to Aya (still behind me), “OK, I’ll be waiting in the coffee shop for you then,” and left.

“That was him,” Aya said as he walked away.

“Oh, so that was him,” I said, not sure of what else to say.

“I wanted you to help me,” she said in a slightly whiny voice. “Why didn’t you help me?”

I felt simultaneously ashamed of myself, and at the same time unsure of what to do next. “He’s not the person I thought he was,” I said. “I can’t call my company, it wouldn’t do any good.”

“But I wanted you to help me,” she repeated.

“Well, what do you want me to do?” I said, somewhat thinking aloud as I talked to her. “I can go talk to him if you want, but if he’s already talked to the police, and if you don’t think he’s going to bother you at work anymore, maybe everything is okay. Do you want me to talk to him?” She seemed unsure, so I said, “Well, I have to get to Japanese class, and you should get home, so how about if I just walk you as far as the train to make sure there’s no trouble, and then you can head home.”

She agreed to this, but as we were walking past the coffee shop, Tom came out and demanded to know where we were going. “You had a promise to meet me,” he said. “And if you don’t keep your promises, then you haven’t learned anything from me, have you? And now we have to have this talk in front of this nice gentleman here,” he referenced me “who has nothing to do with it and I’m sure has no idea what you’re really like.”

Tom seemed to appreciate my situation, and made a couple more references to the fact that I was in an awkward spot that I didn’t deserve to be, and that he didn’t want to involve me. But it was too late. I was involved. I let the two of them argue for a little bit to see if the situation would resolve itself, and then felt like I had no choice but to step in. “Look, she doesn’t want to talk to you,” I said.

“Oh, and who are you? Have I met you?” Tom asked.

I was unsure if this was a trick question or not. “Well, we just met over there a few minutes ago but…no you don’t know me.”

“So this is not your concern, is it?”

“I’m concerned that you’re harassing her at her work,” I said.

“And so what are you going to do about it, American? Are you going to kill me, just like your President George Bush would do?” He spread his arms out to the side, the way people sometimes do when they are inviting you to throw the first punch.

“I want you to stop it. I want you to leave her alone.”

“I don’t care what you have to say. If she wants me to leave her alone, I want to hear her say it.”

We both turned to Aya, who had gotten somewhat lost as the conversation had turned to rapid English, and I’m not sure she knew exactly what we had been talking about. "Tell him," I said.
After a second of giving each of us confused looks, she turned to Tom and managed to say, “I don’t want to see you anymore.”

“Okay, so everyone’s clear here now?” I asked. “We all understand each other?”

“You wanted to meet me last week,” he said. “You like foreign boys. You were very eager to play with me and Jim and…”

“That’s not true,” she said, more to me than to Tom. Than turning to him she said, “I never loved you. I love…” There was a brief moment of panic, as I suddenly thought my name might appear at the end of that sentence, and then I would have to tell her that she had gotten the wrong idea, and at the same time telling Tom to leave her alone, and simultaneously arguing with both of them. Fortunately she paused, and Tom cut her off.

“I don’t care about that. But you love to play with foreign boys and you haven’t been honest with me.”

“Okay, so we’re all done here?” I asked. “You’re going to leave her alone from now on?” I did my best to inject some authority into my voice, and perhaps that’s why Tom got so angry.

“This is none of your business,” he said. “You Americans always want to pick fights, don’t you? You think you can always charge into other people’s problems, but in Europe we’ve learned to be more civilized…” I thought he was acting pretty aggressive for someone who was advocating the virtues of not fighting, but I let it go, “…and if you Americans would just study history, you would realize that.”

“I know German history,” I answered.

He took a step towards me aggressively. “What did you say?”

“I said I’ve studied German history.” He asked me to repeat myself a third time, and I did so.

I was doing my best to act tough, but I’m not very good at fooling people, and I suspect he could see how nervous I was. Maybe that’s why he asked me to repeat myself 3 times, because he figured eventually I would break down and lose my cool. I did my best to keep my voice steady though.
On the other hand, given his heavily accented English, maybe he legitimately didn’t understand me the first couple times. Or maybe he was just trying to buy time to think, because even after the third repetition he seemed unsure of what to say in response.

“Oh, yes, well, and what are you?”

“I’m an American.”

“No, I mean you’re blood. All Americans have European blood.”

“I’m Dutch.”
I had an idea of where this was all going. He was going to talk about all the atrocities in Dutch history, and then say that I could no more hold him responsible for German history than he could hold me responsible for Dutch history. And then I would say something like, yeah, okay, but if that’s your point than let’s knock off all this “You stupid American” crap.

And suddenly I had a feeling that this was not a conversation I wanted to be in at this time. Indeed I probably should have realized this before, but in an intense conversation sometimes you just get so caught up in what you are saying at the moment, you forget to think about where the conversation as a whole is headed.

“But that’s not the point,” I added. I think he had the same realization about the same time as me, because he quickly agreed.
“No, you’re right. That’s not the point.”

“So you’re going to leave her alone from now on?” I asked

“I’m through with her,” he said. “I just feel sorry for you now. If you keep seeing her, she’s going to get you into trouble.” And he went back into the coffee shop.

I walked Aya the rest of the way to the train. Aya had not understood much of what Tom and I had been saying to each other, and was concerned that he had been saying awful things about her. “Whatever he said about me it isn’t true,” she said. “You mustn’t believe him.” I thought about trying to explain what we had actually been arguing about, but it all seemed so stupid now that I just told her not to worry. I wouldn’t believe anything he said.

“I want to go back with you,” she said.

“I’ve got to get to class,” I answered. “Besides Tom is still around, so it’s not a good idea for you to hang around here. Just get on the train.” And that was the end of that incident.

I retold the story a couple different times that night. “I think I know that person,” someone said. “He hangs out at the beer hall.” Great. Beer Hall is the local hang out for foreigners here. If he hangs out there often, I’m going to have to find a new place to frequent.

“I can’t believe a German person would bring up the subject of history” I heard several times. Or “He really set himself up for that one, didn’t he?”
I don’t really understand it either. Who knows what was going through his head. All I can say is that it did indeed happen. A German person tried to shame me about my American history. My only regret is that I didn’t say, “You bloody Kraut. Do you want me to kick your ass for you like we did in the last two World Wars?” But people always think of the ultimate comeback after the situation is over.
Or maybe it’s just as well I didn’t say that. I can never make up my mind.

I retold the story to Shoko on the telephone that night, and she had a good laugh. “You must have been quite happy when he brought up the subject of history,” she said. “A pity he didn’t bring up the French Revolution. You would really have been in your element then.” She later added, “Really, the most bizarre things seem to happen to you. You’re the only person I know who would be just about to fight someone, and then get into a debate about history.”

And just when I was beginning to think that my “Calvin College History Major with a European Concentration” would never come in useful.