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The second floor

A few years ago, I worked as a middle-school English teacher in Aichi prefecture, Japan. As an ALT (assistant language teacher), I was assigned to three schools in my contract. My assigned city was a small, rural village called Seto. Aside from being known for pottery, Seto was a pretty uneventful place. The only thing that really stood out about it was this depressing feeling in the atmosphere. It was like a ghost town, but with people still wandering around.

The three schools I was assigned to teach at were Minase JHS, Soto JHS and Motoyama JHS. I could walk to any one of them from my last train, Owariseto station in less than 25 minutes. They were all on top of hills, though, and were never a very fun walk. Regardless, I still enjoyed seeing my kids and having fun playing games with them. The perks of teaching at a rural school come mainly from the small classes, creating an atmosphere that the Japanese like to call 'at-home'.

Teaching at three schools wasn't easy, though. Every week, I'd spend Monday through Friday at one of the schools. Towards around the middle of the week, I'd get a fax (yeah, a fax) from the school that I'd be going to next week with a schedule of what page from the textbook I'd be teaching from. You end up spending a lot of time making lessons and activities, and your work never really ends. Some teachers are there from six in the morning to nine at night, and many of them are married!

I had my fair share of days late in the staff room, leaving school at the latest seven and getting home at nine at night, walking alone on a road with no lights and relying on the moon and my, nearly dead, phone's light to guide my path. Japan is a very safe country, but it holds it's traditions in place without fail. It's a country that, at times, feels stuck in the past. Deja vu becomes a daily occurrence.

It was mid-December when we went on winter break. Japanese companies reward their staff with a bounenkai, or 'end-of-the-year party'. School staff were no exception. I was lucky enough to be invited to my favorite school's bounenkai, Motoyama JHS. We all laughed, danced, sang and joked about the principal's drunken stories. It didn't feel weird being the only foreigner; I was apart of the family.

And that's when the principal started sobering up. "So, Chris-sensei", he chuckled, red in the face. "You like scary stories?"

The room of about fifteen staff members suddenly grew quiet, their faces slowly turning into awkward smiles.

"You know I do!" I joked back.

"When is the next time you go to Minase?"

"After winter break. I'll go straight there. I think it's a Tuesday?"

That's when everyone really got quiet. All eyes were on me and the principal, who was still smiling at me with his eyes half-closed and face red.

"You know," he started slowly. "Minase is haunted. There's a lot of schools in Seto that have a dark past. Even our school Motoyama has some history."

I assumed this was some kind of initiation prank. Everyone was staring at us while he was talking. He looked like he was holding back laughter, but that could have been the alcohol. I played along.

"How so?" I said with the most innocent, lost-foreigner face I could muster. I leaned in closer.

"On Friday nights at Minase, a student who committed suicide in the late 60's comes back to her old classroom, looking for the teacher who mistreated her. She apparently shows up to the school at exactly nine in the evening, right on the dot, and heads straight to the G-class until she just... leaves. Every teacher who's ever seen her immediately quits. Many of them end up committing suicide themselves in a similar manner."

"Principal, maybe that's enough?", one teacher nervously laughed. "Chris is young and impressionable, he might be too scared to go home tonight."

"C'mon, he's fine. He's a big, strong American!" the principal joked, putting me in a headlock. He let me out and waved the teacher off jokingly. I was a bit confused about the whole story, though. I was also very interested. It was more than likely either a practical joke they were all in on, or a Seto urban legend. I've always liked a good campfire story, though, so I wanted to get more details to paint the picture in my mind.