Let's Japan.org

I had to get a day off, which is not the easiest thing to do at Nova, with one week's notice. Of course I could have just called in and said 'not today I have suddenly found a great drinking buddy on the train last night so I won't be up to 7 seniles all day' (the first level at Nova is 7C and the students are rarely beginners so the lessons are frightfully boring for the students unless the teacher acts like a monkey or worse窶蚤 drunk lunatic desperately seeking intelligent interaction), which is what my schedule seemed to be full of at this point.

I needed the day off, as I had a gig(as in played in a band). We didn't usually play on Thursdays so I forgot about until Atsushi, the guitarist, called and reminded me. I was a bit nervous and didn't who to ask so I asked around the guesthouse I was living in, there were about 15 Nova types there. One woman who had been at Nova for a year told me to ask the secretary and not to worry so I asked the first secretary I saw the next morning. She immediately said 'no.' And that was all she said. I thought I was outta luck so I asked another teacher what he would do in my situation. Well, he got all paranoid and said 'who told you I was a musician?' Nobody had. I told him as much. He didn't believe me, but I kept at him about what to do. As he talked and I started to wonder why anybody would hide such a fact, we both could hear the secretary calling the manager at home to ask her what to do about my problem. Neither the newly discovered musican nor myself let on at that school that we could understand Japanese. So the newly discovered musician finally says I should just ask another secretary when she starts her shift and then use her 'yes' against the manager's 'no' so as to put them into a face-saving situation. I did ask the other secretary when she started her shift and received another 'no.'

The next day I decide I'll have to ask the manager directly and have it out with her if she says no. Well, for some reason after I ask her whether I can get the day off, she says 'you have to talk to the assistant area manager.' I call him and ask. He says 'well, I don't know I'll have to ask your manager so fill out a form.' I scratch my head at the logic of it all, I fill out the form wondering if this is going on some record somewhere, and I fax it.

I get it back in ten minutes and I have the day off without having filled out the reason why I wanted a day off on short notice.

I never tried this process in reverse order. I wonder if it would work. One never knew at Nova. I never told anybody how I got my day off in case they thought it was the "right way to go about things" because any day at any minute things just seemed to change at Nova and heaven knows you don't want to be the person who screws up somebody's day off, or uncovers somebody who is a persecuted musican.

Rob S.