なににおい？ What’s that smell?

Hey there kiddos.

I know, you’re not kids. I just like saying that and I can’t use howdy ho buckaroos every time, or I’ll wear it out. I wanted to write that sentence as, “lest I wear it out,” but I thought that would just be too old fashioned to be appropriate here. No one says lest anymore, but our man Herman Melville does, and I’m sure I wanted to write it that way because I’ve been reading the ol’ Moby Dick, and actually just finished it today. That was my work today, finally finishing that whale of a book, and this is my other work – writing this story for you! Because today is the final day of my little spring break, the sixth of the six days of nenkyuu (work leave) I took, when hard pressed to, as before this I had 26 days to take, and come July, 14 of them will go up in smoke (and be replaced with more) if I don’t use them. Like Mr. Parker Junior, I’m stingy with my days, and I’ve been hoarding them, because I don’t know what to do with them, and it’s easier to just go in to work and spend a day dinking around, busying myself with distracting the other teachers, and pestering them with Japanese questions, and giving them packets of wasabi; but this was spring break, and there are only so many days I can get by doing nothing, and so I took my nenkyuu, and forced myself to come up with some plans. I’m glad I did, as I end it having committed several acts of genius, and coming away from it with some quality writing material, and so I am able to sit down here at my desk on this beautiful Tuesday in Ozu town, on this sunny afternoon, when I would ordinarily be eyeing the clock, and wondering why I stick around for the last five minutes of the day, as my leaving time is officially 4:05, but does anyone know that but me? I wonder. I know I’m rambling a bit here, but, you see I’ve got the time, and the confidence, because I’ve already written this post out, more or less. I did it last night, the old fashioned way again, pencil and paper (I prefer pen but after three successive trips to Trial where I forgot to buy ink, I’ve run out, and am rediscovering the magic of the pencil). I hope you’ve had some acts of genius, or at least some inklings of genius, in days since the last post. My genius told me to take a solo trip to Kurume, a city to the north, which was the first time I’ve solo traveled, and went more or less how I thought it would – I made some friends, I spent too much money, I got sunburned, and saw things that I’ve seen many times before. The best part of it was the wild Japanese, and that is really what I wanted to get out of it; that and a ride on the shinkansen (the bullet train). The best parts of that trip were the parts where I was going from A to B, missing train stops, reading tickets and signs, asking people for directions, and throughout all of it using my Japanese, seeing how it holds up, seeing how much I can understand, and what more I have to learn, and what I can take away. I would compare that feeling to that of an athlete who has been training in the gym, versus performance, and on that trip I was able to perform, and I enjoyed that. Although I am living in Japan, I can still form a little English bubble around me, sometimes a not-so-little English bubble, forming around me whether I’d like it to or not, and getting out there alone, with no help, with no one to rely on, and no one to work it out for you but yourself, is a way to break that bubble. So I enjoyed the breaking of that bubble. I would just like to do it for cheaper next time.. did someone say hitchhiking?

My other act of genius on this break was to buy a guitar. I have been a piano player, but I haven’t felt like playing the piano. I have felt like playing the guitar. The electric guitar, specifically. I didn’t fight this genius, I didn’t overthink this genius, I just thought, let’s get a guitar then, and see what happens. I almost settled for an acoustic, as it was cheaper; but electric is what I wanted, and electric is what I got, and man am I glad I did. When I sit down with that baby, I feel like a wizard who just got his first wand.

I do have another update for you.. I’m wondering whether to include it now or later, and I think I’ll do it later, actually. At the rate I’m going now, this will turn into another beast of a post, it may already be a beast, and is getting beastlier by the key press.. I think we’ve enjoyed the appetizers enough; let’s move on to the main dish!

I said that I am at the end of my spring break. The beginning was last week, Tuesday. Only Monday was I required to show up to work, and that was to say goodbye to all of the teachers that were moving on. Goodbyes are interesting, aren’t they? The way you feel about the goodbye says a great deal about how your relationship was with that person. It’s strange saying goodbye to someone, who had such an influence on your life, and knowing that you may never see them again. And that is the way of the world. Every day a new life is lived, every day a new stage is set. Characters enter, and they exit, and they may return, and they may not. This play is being written by the day. And on Tuesday, the day after this exiting of some of the up-until-this-point main characters (and you know many of them – Sakamoto sensei (kind older English conversation teacher with erratic class greetings, Hiroyuki the cat sensei, Goto sensei (you know her, right?), Matsuzaki sensei (gave me dekopons), Shota sensei (I think you know him too.. genki math teacher at Shoyo)..) the cast of characters was made up of familiar ones, ones that I hadn’t seen in a long while, and they were the Higashi clan, and their accompanying friends.

I don’t know exactly what I’ve written about the Higashis, but I know I’ve at least mentioned them. This is already shaping up to be long, and with the Higashis, and our history, it could come out to be any of several varying degrees of long, from a bit long, to extremely long, to just too damn long, and I think I’ll have to exercise some creative control here, and not allow that to happen. I want to tell you everything, of course, but we just don’t have the time – I’m not writing a novel, after all; I’m just writing a blog, and one that I’m trying to post weekly on, at that (we’ll see how long that commitment will stand for, I’m already two days past my Sunday deadline, one day later than last week). So, I really just need to give you enough that you can work with, for the time being, to make this story come alive just enough for you, that you can appreciate it. So, without writing a novel, who are the Higashis?

I’m already paragraphing.. that’s a bad sign. We’ll stick to it, though. We can do it. The Higashis are a family that I have befriended in Kikuchi. That’s description level one. If we upgrade, I can say that I met them when I first came to Ozu, as they hosted me at their home for the first four nights after my arrival. It was originally supposed to be two, but then came my first typhoon, and, knowing that I am an Indiana boy, who has yet to be indoctrinated in the ways of the natural disaster, Maki, the momma san, kindly said to me, “Why don’t you stay longer?” and so my stay was extended. It is a custom for some schools to have their ALTs stay with a host family when they first come to Japan, and I was a beneficiary of such a custom. I was lucky. Some ALTs don’t have this experience, and possibly worse, some ALTs have this experience, like my predecessor did, and they end up spending a night or two with a family in the midst of domestic turmoil, and living in squalor, and being generally ignored by the family, and coming away from it with the experience of seeing their first husband sleeping on the couch, and sighting their first cockroach in Japan. I came away from it with lifelong friends, with a new Japanese pseudo-family, who took me under their wing, and introduced to me countless sights and trips and cultural experiences that I’m sure I would never have had otherwise, and so I am extremely indebted to them, and recognize that I got, just like with my schools, and my supervisors, incredibly lucky with being connected to them. And for the time being, I think that can be enough on the origin of the Higashis, and why they are important part of the act of this play, of my time here in Japan.

I can remember that I mentioned Eichi, the father, because I know that I told you that his name, converted to English, is English #1, and it’s funny, because in the Higashi family, at least, Eichi is not English #1, or 2, or 3.. he might be competing with Haru, the seven year old, for fourth place. He is behind Maki, the momma san, who is probably #1, but is in a close race with the oldest daughter, Misaki, who is now a second year university student, who is an incredible artist, but also an incredible English speaker, and for her age I would say her level far surpasses that of her peers. Out of the Higashi children, Misaki holds a special place in my heart, because she was the only one I could have any real conversation with, when I first got here, because I couldn’t understand the kids (the real kids, Haruma and Ryouma) at all, and Suzuka, the second oldest daughter, was too shy to use her English with me. So, Misaki was my best friend, and on the various adventures I had with the Higashi family, in those early days, when all around me was essentially gibberish, Misaki was there for me, and I would wait patiently in my confusion, for Misaki’s words of clarity, of solace, of English. Maki san also speaks fluent English, but Maki san could not at all times be in attendance to me, and when she was off telling Haru to stop climbing on something he shouldn’t be climbing on, or making plans with English #1 on the smartwatch, or was in some other way preoccupied, Misaki was my go-to. When I first met the Higashis, and started teaching at Ozu High, Misaki was a third-year (the final year) there, and that’s how the connection was made, but Misaki has since moved on to university, and so unfortunately enough, she was no longer around at our hangouts, and I had to get a little more familiar with the younger Higashis, especially Suzuka. Haru, the youngest, had bonded to me pretty quickly, as much as it is possible to bond when you can exchange no to very little information verbally, but Ryouma was a bit more inaccessible, and Suzuka had just been shielded from being my best friend, as Misaki had mostly kept me at bay before, but now that she was gone, someone had to be my new best friend, and being the oldest, now a high school student, we could have conversations about more than just Splatoon and Beyblades, and so she was it. All of the children are gifted artists, which I learned, during one long car trip back from Amakusa, that probably in large part came from Maki’s father, who was an incredible painter. Misaki is now studying art at a college in Oita, the prefecture east of Kumamoto, where I go to visit Mr. Parker Junior, and has created several large paintings that are now hanging up in the Higashi home that to me look like they could be in any art museum (and at one time they were, as the art students at Ozu had an exhibition at the art museum in Kumamoto city, where I went with Maki san to see Misaki’s and the other student’s works, and that was when I learned that Ozu High school has some amazingly talented artists – my favorite work was a giant pink paper mache frog riding a moped (a real moped) overgrown with grasses and flowers).. And.. Oh boy, I’m writing a novel here aren’t I. I think I just have to move on from this, or we will never actually get to the story. Although, if I do this now, I’ll never really have to do it again.. But this part is important, and at least, I wanted to convey to you that Misaki holds a special place in my heart, and so I was very pleasantly surprised, when after not seeing her for many months, when I hopped into the car that Tuesday at noon, to head out to the south of Kumamoto, to go “camping” with the Higashi clan, I was pleasantly surprised when I looked across the table in the back of the car, to the girl sitting next to Suzuka, to ask who the new friend was, when I realized that it was Misaki, and I said, “Oh! It’s Misaki!!”

I put camping in quotes, because while it was said that we were going camping, and I was invited to go camping, and we had been talking about camping, what in actuality we were doing was not really camping, but glamping. At least, I should make the distinction, because when you think about camping, you probably don’t think about staying in a comfortable house, with a bath, and a stove, and lights, and air conditioning and heaters and futons and all that good stuff, which is what we did, but rather about staking out tents, and unravelling sleeping bags, and lighting a campfire, which is what we did not do. We have done the camping of that variety, but this time around, not only did we do the glamping, but we did it in style – we stayed at a traditional Japanese home, complete with the (let me flex some new vocabulary on you here) いろり (irori)、a cement fireplace sunken into the center of the living room, かまど (kamado)、a traditional iron stove-like thing for cooking rice, with two iron bowls for rice sitting above small chambers that are filled with wood and lit, and a 五右衛門風呂 (goemonburo, this is pronounced go-eh-mon-bu-ro), an iron, circular tub, that is filled with water, and then heated from below, by again filling a small chamber, this one outside of the house, situated under the tub, with wood and lighting it. It was wide, it was spacious, it was comfortable, it was beautiful; and that is why I call it glamping, although I know you could have all those things on a nice sunny day out in the field as well. We went a few hours down south, staying at a place up in the mountains, looking out over the flatter plains and rolling hills of the Aso-Kuju national park, and looking to the north, when the sky was clear.. I was going to say you could probably see for fifty to a hundred miles, I don’t really know – but from the point where we stayed the Kuju mountain range did not look all that far off, although it must have been at least an hour’s drive away. I don’t know how accurate any of these numbers or estimates are. You could see far. It was beautiful. And in between the mountain range, and the top of our small mountain, the land between was filled with hills, and pines, it felt like we were raised up on a small island in the midst of a forest sea, and it was all quite enchanting to look out over.

I’ve gotten to the description of our campsite, and the place where we stayed, and yet I haven’t even made it past the getting into the car, and being pleasantly surprised to see Misaki. I’m getting things a bit out of order here, I know. I got into that car then, that enormous car the Higashis have, to go glamping, although I should say that I got into that living room, because the back of that car is essentially a living room. That car consists of a driver’s seat, a passenger’s seat, and then a living room – complete with two sofas facing each other across a large table, and with a bench underneath, and a chair on the side. And riding in that mobile living room, with English #1 manning the helm, was myself, Misaki, Suzuka, Suzuka’s friend Hikari, who I have gone on several adventures with before, and almost never stops laughing, Ryouma (I didn’t mention much about Ryouma, aka Dragon Horse, he’s maybe nine or ten, is a bit shy, can eat more onigiri than me, likes volleyball and Minecraft) Haruma (aka Spring Horse, I usually just call him Haru, he is bolder than Dragon Horse, is only still when he’s sleeping, and likes to use English – we have had speed reading competitions, in English and Japanese, and he will often surprise me with.. surprise English), and finally, a 6th grader (looks like he could be in middle school) who is the son of a co-worker of Maki’s that I have spent many a barbecue and karaoke with, and who’s name I am ashamed to say that I still don’t know, as I missed my chance at the beginning of the outing to own up to the fact that I had forgotten his name, if I ever knew it, and spent the rest of the time waiting for a chance to pick it up, and never did. We have to give him a name, and I’m going to create one for him, for the purposes of this story, and it will be Mr. Glasses, as he was the only other guy wearing glasses, and he wore them well. And then, everyone in the car has been named, and I am now sitting smack dab in the middle of all of them, at the start of this adventure with the Higashis, on this noon on a Tuesday.

I am now wondering how I introduce what is to be the main drama of this scene, of these scenes, in this act, of this play. I think I just have to come out and say what it was, and let the story progress from there. There is a reason why I chose to write about this particular trip, and while I love the Higashis, and this is a good chance to introduce you to them, and I love Japanese culture, and this is a good chance to study up on that as well, neither of these things are the real reason why I chose to write this story. These are good things, but they are not what lifted this excursion up, they are not what elevated it to the status of being blog-worthy, not on their own. To make it to this page, it takes something extra, something unplanned, something unpredictable, to give the story the spice it needs to reach the stage of being worth sharing, of worth writing about. And what that something extra was, that thing that brought this out of the realm of the ordinary, and into the realm of the shareworthy, was that for the entirety of the approximately thirty-six hour window that I spent with the Higashis, on this glamping trip to southern Kumamoto, I was consistently releasing a steady stream of the deadliest, most insidious, air-defiling, lung-corrupting, soul-corroding, sickness-inducing, vitality-sapping flatulence that I have ever had in my life. I have been alive for a quarter of a century, and I have never had any kind of flatulence, that reached such a level of potency, nor for such an extended period of time, as I did over the course of these two days; and who was it to receive the brunt, who was it to bear the brunt of such an unfortunate and cursed bombardment of Hellish stinkings, but none other than the blessed Higashi family. Our entire time spent together, there was, from the first fart, not a moment, hardly a moment, where I was not stinking, where I was not defiling all air around me, the inverse of a walking air freshener, and there was almost nothing I could do about it. My mistake was this: in the day before, Monday, I had eaten an entire bag, 250 grams, (dried weight), of black beans. Before that, I had only ever eaten at most half a bag. Black beans are cheap, black beans are high in protein, black beans are delicious. I have recently been incorporating them into my diet, and that day I cooked up a whole bag, and mainly out of convenience, I ate them all over the course of the day. Eating even up to half a bag, I hadn’t noticed any serious changes in my gastrointestinal state, and so there was not any indication, there was no clue, no sign, no omen, of what was to come, and I thought nothing of this eating an entire bag, over 1000 calories of black beans, in the day before my glamping trip with the Higashis. I have now learned, the hard way, what such an act will do to me, and what it will do to those around me, because I spent the next two days, from the first fart, until the minute I finally reached home once more, thinking about how horrific the gas emanating from my bowels was, how powerless I was to stop it, and how sorry I was to everyone for dousing them with it. It was just their luck, that they happened to think, “It’s been awhile since we last saw Steven, let’s invite him to spend two days with us, with most of it confined to a small car, sitting around iroris, or otherwise crowded together in some way!” at the same time in my life that I happened to think, “I’ll eat a whole bag of black beans today!” It was nothing but fate, nothing but the moving of two great celestial bodies through the universe, on their predetermined courses, unalterable, and headed for jarring and dramatic collision.

The first fart happened early. I had probably only been in the car for a few minutes at that point, probably some time after I had recognized Misaki, and settled into my seat. I had let out a few that morning, but I hadn’t yet realized the implication of what it meant, did not yet foresee what the future had in store for me, for us, until several farts into that car ride. Trapped in that car, seated shoulder to shoulder, with the windows up, and not even a draft of wind, there was nowhere for my farts to go, but up into that stagnant air, and into my own nostrils. I could smell them before, that morning, even in my apartment, when there was room for them to disperse, where I was moving about; but in the car, I was made to bask in them, to bathe in them, and then I knew how bad they were. I was at first not so concerned, but as the farting continued, at regular, and increasing, intervals, so I continued to become gradually more concerned. We sat around the table, in the back of that cavernous car – the kids were jostling about, Haru grabbing my iPhone, asking for my password, swiping across the screens, hunting for the app store, searching desperately for games, while I repeatedly tell him, sorry kid, there’s nothing; Do you like the news? – I ask the high schoolers how their final exams went, if they got good grades in English; they both say yes, Hikari says that Suzuka is lying, a tiff ensues – I ask Misaki about college, she tells me interesting stories about working at Seven and I (the Japanese name for Seven Eleven, the Japanese are inclusive with their marketing) – we’re singing along to pop songs, anime songs, Crazy Frog songs (a play by DJ Haru), we’re drawing pictures, playing shiritori (word game) – and throughout all of it, throughout all of this, permeating the air, hovering over all activity, is a silent, sickening, undulating stink, rising in intensity in the seconds following expulsion, receding in the minutes, but always and ever present, and lingering. I am all too aware of this, and like the air, it fills my thoughts. I knew that being in the car, in such a confined space, and with the smells being of such potency, if I could smell these farts, then someone, at least one member of this crew, must be smelling them too. I was constantly consoling myself with the thought that, just maybe, no one else was noticing. It was possible, after all – I couldn’t know that they were smelling it, at least they didn’t reveal it to me. For after each puff of death gas, I would scan the room, subtly looking into the faces of each member of the car, looking for any sign, any hint, seeing if I could discern any trace of discomfort, any whiff, or reaction to such a whiff, of the stench. But, in that hour car ride to the giant stone bridge, 通潤橋 (tsuujyunkyou) I perceived no distress, and no indication that anything had been wrong at all, and certainly not that I had been the culprit of it, except for one slight movement made by Suzuka. At one point, in the middle of a peak wave of stinking, Suzuka ever so slightly appeared to be disturbed, and proceeded to check the three bags in the car, one bag with food in it, and two with trash. I noticed this – but of course, I reasoned that while there was a chance that she was searching for a source, for a cause of that hideous odor in the air, there was also a chance that she was just searching for something in one of those bags, a snack, or something she misplaced, and having nothing else to use as evidence for reasoning one way or the other, I couldn’t draw any definite conclusion. And so, upon arriving at the campground, after two or more hours of being a human stink bomb, I had escaped detection.

The car was the danger zone. The house was not so much. We were outside often, the doors were open, there were competing smells, the smells of the cooking rice, and curry, and pizza, and alcohol. But every so often, I would let out again another stinker so intense, that I would have to look around, and wonder, again, if this was the one that would finally draw a comment, if this was the one that would find me out, and I would quickly duck away in shame, and find a fresher spot to permeate with my poison. As the night progressed, and the frequency and stink of my farts refused to abate, with each one I felt an increasing urge to apologize to everyone, knowing that they had all now been thoroughly soaked in my flatulence, and had most likely been smelling it, and putting up with it, for a majority of this trip. I have a distinct memory of standing close to and across from Misaki, in mid-conversation, with Maki san, English #1, Mr. Glasses and his mom, and Hikari chan all in my immediate vicinity, and having the stench assault my nostrils yet again, and thinking, “This just isn’t right.” And it just wasn’t right. It was just wrong. I was thoroughly defiling everyone and everything around me, I had been all day, I was at that very moment, and could they smell it? As I stood there, eating my green pepper pizza, attempting to correctly say “I will slap him until he cries” (Misaki was quizzing me on the difference between the verbs 当たる、殴る、叩く – different ways to say slap, hit, beat, strike, etc.), surrounded by a chorus of chatter and giggling from the rest of the party, with that smell yet again wafting into my nostrils, I had to look her in the eyes and maintain composure, simultaneously wrestling with a series of thoughts such as: Does she not smell this too? And does she know it’s me? And should I say I’m sorry? And how do I go about doing that, exactly? It’s hard enough to make that confession in your native language – in one that you’re liable to be misinterpreted, that you’re liable to butcher, it’s even harder. And so, I said nothing, and we continued on that way, all night. Sitting around the table playing kanji karuta (kanji matching card game) with Haru and Mr. Glasses. Can they smell it? Lying wrapped in futons with Suzuka falling asleep next to me, Ryoma lounging at my feet. Can they smell it? Squatting at the fire with English #1 and his friend, talking about the perfect burn level for roasted marshmallows. Can they smell it? I felt like, this whole time, I was living a double life, like I was holding a dark secret, like I knew something that they didn’t, like I had a burden, a demon in my closet, and I desperately wanted not to be, but I couldn’t bring myself to admit it, and I couldn’t make it end, and so I had no choice but to keep the secret, keep playing the game, keep forging on, keep the torment alive.

That night, we made curry for dinner. Misaki really made the curry; I just ate it. And ate it I did. Way too much of it. This was a critical mistake. Under normal circumstances, curry can be a meal of some concern, in terms of the stink factor. For a man who is already gastrointestinally compromised, it can be a disaster. And disaster it was; I could not stop eating that delicious Golden Curry, even though I asked Misaki to stop me several times. That night, as we had started eating so late, I had made the call to break my fast (my fast was the source of much interest – I can’t say how many times I said, “十二時から二十時まで” (from 12 to 8, my fasting window), and I did learn how to say noon from this, 正午, shougo.) Apparently intermittent fasting is becoming trendy in Japan right now, and Maki san was doing it too. So fast I broke, curry I ate, and worse my gas became. I woke up the next morning to find that my gas, that was already so thoroughly putrid, that made you feel sick after a single sniff, did the impossible, and now had, on top of it all, an additional, wholly evil bite to it. When we piled back into the car, after folding up the futons, dusting off the tatamis, and taking a walk around the grounds, to see how the others glamped, and to admire the beautiful sakura; when we got back into that car, to begin the journey to Aso Farm Land, I knew then that it was only a matter of time. It was now all but impossible that I would be able to end this journey without being exposed, without my secret being uncovered. As I clambered up into the living room of that gargantuan vehicle, I aimed to take the seat in the middle, between the two sofas, and this was a strategic move – I thought that by positioning myself at near equal distance from all members of the car, there was less of a chance that the stink would be traced back to me. This seat also afforded me slightly more space, as I wasn’t immediately flanked by anyone, but had a slight gap between either sofa. As I stepped up to assume to my tactically chosen spot, English #1, in all his misguided courtesy, thought that that seat looked to be a little too small, and a little too uncomfortable for me, and so he offered to me Ryouma’s seat, and knowing that this would be doom for me, and for the rest of the car, but not wanting to ever reject his polite suggestions, I agonizingly obliged to trade seats with Ryouma; and this was doom. I was now positioned in the back left corner of the car, snuggled in next to Suzuka, and while this was a more comfortable seat, it was also the seat farthest positioned from the window, and in this tank, in this submarine of a car, that small window, in the upper right, right behind the head of the driver’s seat, that tiny porthole was the only source of solace, was the only source of deliverance, from the stagnant air that was so full of my festering. Haru was positioned right by this porthole, he was in full control of it, the life-link between the fresh, unsoiled Aso air, and the rank, defiled air of the car. Deep in the bowels of this submarine, as far as possible from this link to the outside air, where hardly a draft passed through, jammed up next to Suzuka, there was now not a single hope that I could survive this trip undiscovered, and so I took that seat that had been so generously gifted to me, and waited patiently for my end.

I say my end, but that is selfish. A farter does not often smell his own farts, and when he does, I think he is often, if ever, not able to comprehend the full strength of their foulness. What this experience must have been for the rest of the group, I could only surmise, up until that fateful moment. Pressed up against poor Suzuka, whose nose was but two feet from mine, she may as well have been farting those farts herself. I don’t know how long into that return trip it was, but after some time, after some preliminary stinking, there was a lull in activity, with the conversation between Hikari and Suzuka dying down, with Ryouma daydreaming, Haru gazing out of the window, Mr. Glasses half asleep; and in this lull, I released a gas, so sickening, so wretched, so cursed, so vile, so insidious, so pestilent, that the second it reached my nostril, I recognized that I smelled the end. This would be the one. I waited, and then I turned. Slowly, my eyes cast low, looking up just enough to be able to read Suzuka’s expression, and when I saw her begin to react, I turned fully towards her, and she towards me. With a distorted face, nose scrunched up, brow furrowed, she looked to me and said, in a voice mingled with soft desperation, burning curiosity, quite pleading, deep frustration, she said, “なに、におい？” “What is that smell?” I held her gaze for a moment – I could see the pain in her eyes. I looked down at my hands, now open, as you do when you are begging, pleading for forgiveness, and chose my words carefully. This was my time, this was where I came out with it, this was where I finally apologized, where I could begin to right the wrong, where I could somewhat atone for my sins, where I came as clean as I possibly could, while immediately bathing in such a festering, gaseous cloud. I looked up and saw the three kids, sitting across from me: Mr. Glasses, Haru, Ryoma, finding all three pairs of eyes now staring back intently into mine. Time seemed to have stopped; all was silent, everything revolving around the words I was about to speak. I looked back down at my hands, I sighed deeply, and summoning the courage, turned back to Suzuka, and said the only words I could. “僕です。本当にごめんなさい.” “It’s me. I’m so sorry.”

With these words, a spell was lifted. The oppressive stench oppressed no longer, for ignorance leads to fear, and now that the source of the horror had been discovered, there was no fear, there was no mystery, no confusion, but understanding, and words could be spoken, anger, frustration could be directed, action could be taken. That apology sparked an uproar. Suzuka’s immediate response was to hang her head, shut her eyes, and reply, as if I had just confirmed what she had been suspecting all along, “まじでーーー ” (Reallyyyyyyy). Hikari immediately burst out into wild laughter, and Mr. Glasses, recoiling in his seat, to now position himself as far away as possible from the source of all of this poison, with a pained grimace on his face, said, “くさい!” “It stinks!” By his tone of voice, I could see clearly that Ryoma had been suffering. “くさーい” he whined painfully. Haru barked at me, with passion, and a tinge of enjoyment, possibly finding the current situation, of a grown man’s embarrassingly confessing to a car full of kids about his stinky farts, amusing, “Steven くさいよ！” “Steven, kusaiyo! It stinks!” Mr. Glasses repeats, “くさい、本当にくさい。” “It stinks, it really stinks.” And all I could do was take it, each and all of their varying emotions, all of their outrage, all of their indignation, all of their derision, because they’d been putting up with it for so long, and it was their chance to strike back. I couldn’t fight it, I could only accept it. What could I do? Of course they were right; it was so, so stinky. I kept my eyes on the floor, thoroughly shamed, shaking my head back and forth. “ごめんなさい。本当に。僕は腐っている。” I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. I’m rotting” (I threw this out, using a word I had picked up from Princess Mononoke (もののけ姫), kusatteiru, rotting, decaying, festering.) Since the confession, Hikari hasn’t stopped laughing, the kids haven’t stopped calling me stinky, but Suzuka, being more mature, and perhaps feeling some responsibility for me, being a family friend, and having some small respect for me, given that I have somehow in my life managed to reach the status of Sensei, quickly recovers, and moves to relieve my embarrassment. She says, consolingly, “自己申告、ね。”Jikoshinkoku – a self-confession. As if she were saying to me, that was big of you, Steven. That must have taken a lot of courage. And I appreciated that. I had confessed, and like many who finally confess to their crimes, who bring their sins out into the light of day, to let the world judge them as it will, and to end their personal torment, on making that confession I felt as if a massive weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. We would suffer in silence no more. To confirm, as a final piece of evidence, as a final bearing that my flatulence had this whole time been as bad as I thought it had been, I ventured to ask English #1, sealed off at the captain’s helm, if he thought it was くさい (kusai) too. I knew that, given how polite he was, and how protected he was, sitting up at the front cordoned off from the rest of us stinking mongrels, if he responded in any way in the affirmative, then it was really as bad as I thought; and he did. Holding up his fingers, thumb and forefinger slightly pinched, he turned his head slightly to the left, leaned a bit back towards me, and replied, with a little hint of apology in his voice, ”ちょっと。”　A bit. And with that, I had had enough. I would not torment this family any longer. Haru moved to open the porthole wider; I picked him up, and sat him down in the back, and took my rightful seat by it. Once upon a time I would have thought that this would only serve to give my fumes an added velocity, as the wind carried them on its wings throughout the car, but I have since learned from watching those COVID particle dynamic videos that having a window down can only help to diffuse and remove dangerous molecules from the air, and so I felt confident that this was the best thing I could do to somewhat rectify this sad situation, to exercise some control over it all. I wish I could say that, after that pivotal, climatic confession, that was the end of this gassy affair – but it wasn’t. I continued to fart, continued to fart all the way to Aso Farm Land, continued to fart as I petted capybaras with Suzuka and Hikari, continued to fart as I raced Haru down the steel slides meant for six year olds, bruising every bone in my body in the process, continued to fart as I laid blissfully on a flat warm rock in a cozy steaming sauna with Ryouma.. I wish I could say that I stopped farting then. I didn’t, but at least they stopped tormenting me, and perhaps all of us. Psychologically, that is, for sensually they were still every bit as pestilent as they had been at the beginning. After Aso Farm Land, I rode back to my apartment in Ozu with Maki san and Misaki, my two favorites, enjoying some nice conversation, and chowing down on squid flavored chips, now mainly in that language so comfortable to me, and still farting; and after reaching my apartment, and saying goodbye, I found myself thinking two thoughts: how nice it was to see them again, and how fun of a time we had; and how free my bowels now were to breathe out the last of their befouled breaths in the peace of my home, without guilty conscience.

I wonder what words were shared by the Higashi family that evening. I wonder if my flatulence was mentioned. It could have been as much as a single comment – “Stevenのおならは本当にくさいね。” Steven’s farts are so stinky. It could have been a greater family discussion – what was wrong with Steven? What was that? He’s never done that before – that was terrible. Do you think he’ll do that again the next time we go glamping?

I hope they do invite me back. I think it was bad enough that the next time I see them, I owe them some token of gratitude, for their inviting me, but also for their enduring me. A candle might be a nice gift.

That is then, more or less, the end of this story. I spent a third of my spring break under the worst bout of gastrointestinal discomfort that I have ever been unfortunate enough to have, and the Higashis were unfortunate enough to suffer through it with me. And yet, that was in some part the highlight of my vacation. Life is a strange thing, isn’t it? I will say that, although it was fun, I do not plan to do this ever again. I know that my social status, and my financial as well, depends on it. I feel bad for the Higashis, but thank god it was them, a family who knows and loves me, and not my poor senseis, some who love me, and some who abide with me. I can’t imagine dropping bombs like that as I skirt about the classroom, making comments on this or that worksheet, or this or that skit, leaving confusing English advice, and a deathly scent, in my wake. I have a fairly good reputation at the schools, and I still don’t think it would last long in the face of gas like that. I would be sent home on sick leave soon, and if I kept it up, let go. No, that can’t happen again..

I want to keep eating black beans. They are too good to let go – nutritionally, that is. I can try other beans, if it really comes to it.. but I think at first, I’ll adopt a three-pronged approach, of eating less beans, looking for foods that will help me to better digest the beans, and then building up a tolerance to beans. Annie said that, after hearing this story, it takes time to adapt to changes in diet, like eating thousands of calories of beans in a day. I hope that’s true, but people often say that about spicy food, that you can build up a tolerance to it; but I’ve drowned my food in enough Tabasco, and yet my tongue still winces at the touch of it. We’ll see.

So I’ve written an entire story about farting! It only took fourteen posts (is this the fifteenth?) – not long, you might be thinking. I hope that I didn’t tarnish my relationship with the Higashis too much, and I don’t think I did. Maki san has already invited me to join her in a new adventure – harvesting bamboo shoots. That sounds like work I can do, flatulence or no, and may be a good story. I would like to write about them again, with more of a focus on them, and less on their reactions, to me, and my odors. They’re a great family, like I said, which I why I felt so much the worse for doing what I did to them. But, sometimes.. 仕方がないね。It can’t be helped.

I say I’m not in the business of writing novels and yet this turned out to be another novel length post. At least it felt like that when writing it. Do you still want a quote? Do I have anything even mildly related to the theme of this story? Let me see..

In honor of finishing Moby Dick, why don’t we take a quote from it?

“For, they say, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing out of this world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.”

Or, when cruising in a flatulating body.. get a good story out of it, at least.

Until next time.. Keep your bean count low, unless you want to have such a story of your own. Or, if you’ve got a bean tolerance.

Beans beans, the magical fruit. There really is truth to it…

じゃあね！

Update: About the picture. I don’t know what that plant is (is it a grass?) but I’ve been seeing it often and I like it. And actually, I just asked Red Star Sensei what it was. It’s kumazasa – kuma bamboo grass. So it is a grass! I was struggling to choose as my picture for this post, as I somehow came away with no postable pictures from my trip with the Higashis, between this kumazasa, and the train tickets of my trip to Kurume. I thought this was sexier – who doesn’t love a good grass?