I Call Shenanigans on You, Japan

So, as most of my six steady readers know, I am returning to the States for a triumph. (Yes, I expect four white horses, a Roman chariot, trumpeters, slaves throwing olive branches in my wake. All that jazz.) But it has come to the attention of my supervisors and the Kyoto Board of Education that my trip home to Arizona is planned right, smack dab in the middle of the most vicious, vile and murderous plague on humans since, well, the Plague of a blacker nature.

Yes, of course you all know what I am talking about. Now introducing, in the left corner, coming straight from the pig's mouth, transmitted humanoid to humanoid, the most delicious sounding of all the flues in human history; the Sultan of Swine, the Frothiest of Flues, the most Dangerous of Diseases, the most Porkiest of all Plagues: H1N1.

My upcoming trip to "ground zero in the fight against the Pig" has my supervisors and their supervisors up-in-arms. I'll start from the beginning of the story because, well, that's usually the best place to start. I will do my best to retell the story as accurately as possible, it may falter here or there but that is because during the meeting that occurred on Tuesday May 12, between 5:01pm and 5:32pm, I was laughing my ass off inside my head.

The Tuesday began as any other Tuesday, me sitting at my computer at my visit school about an hour and twenty minutes trip from my base school. When all of a sudden, the vice-principal approaches me and in his limited English tells me that, "After work today, You should go to your base school for an important meeting." I was a bit shocked and slightly alarmed. I knew my base school would have a meeting with me about my trip but what could be so urgent that they would need to talk to me today that could not wait until Thursday when I would return to the base school. I was afraid that they would ask me to cancel my trip because they needed me to do work at school. (HAHA, "work") So the rest of the day went off with out a hitch. After my last class I decided to check my email and relax until the bell rang and I could legally stand at the bus stop and wait twenty minutes for the infallibly late bus. (They really should just update the bus schedule if it is going to be late every day) It was at this time when a teacher came to me and told me that I was supposed to be gone an hour ago. Of course the difference between, "Go after you finish your work" and, "Go after work," was lost on the vice-principal.

So I ran two kilometers down hill to the train station so that I could make the early train and get to the other school fifteen minutes earlier (What a waste of energy this would turn out to be.) Eventually I arrived at my other school and sat down for my meeting with the vice-principal, the principal and an English teacher for translation. The principal showed me an article in the Kyoto newspaper that showed the numbers of the world wide plague, known as Swine Flu, broken down country by country.

He decided to have this meeting to tell me that, of the 6,000,000,000 people there are in the world, 5,200 have Swine Flu. And of that 5,200 people world wide, 2,600 people have it in the United States. As a result, my trip to America was not only my concern, but a National and International concern. According to my principal, I am to:

1. Take my temperature everyday while I am home and keep a log to show the people at the airport.

2. Where a face mask, constantly.

3. Be prepared to give a blood sample at the Kansai Airport when I return.

4. Be prepared to be quarantined in a hotel near the airport if I have a fever.

5. Call my school the day before I am to come back to work to ensure that my blood test at the airport passed. If it does not, I will be suspended from work for ten days.

6. Wash my hands all the time, I think he said, "ichinichi" meaning "all day long."

7. Gargle with the patented Japanese brown garble sludge, which reputedly is supposed to kill germs and ward off evil hippo spirits (there's a hippo on the bottle.)

8. Don't come to work if you have the coughs, sneezes, farts or blinks.

9. Don't return if you to work if haven't bathed in fire and gargled bleach.
And So On. (The last two rules were slightly exaggerated.)

All-in-all, I am very excited to have the same exact meeting again on Monday to ensure that I understand everything. I wonder how freaked out they would be if I brought them bacon back as Omiyage (souvenirs).