In case you don’t know, I am a teacher in Japan. I am deep inside the Japanese education apparatus… deep, deep inside. A sleeper agent if you will. Summer vacation has just begun, and we had our first semester closing ceremony yesterday (yes, they have a ceremony for that). It basically was a lot of bowing, standing, and sitting, but there was one thing that caught my ear. After the ceremony one of the teachers went in front of the entire school and gave a speech outlying three rules that they absolutely must follow during summer break. The thing you must understand about these rules is the seriousness the tone of the teacher’s voice was while he said them. A seriousness so well conveyed, every single person in the room knew that if they broke the rules, they would destroy the balance of the universe, or at least Japan. Here are the rules and parts of the speech he gave:

1. Don’t die (死ぬな）

Don’t die. Don’t be dead. Don’t be beheaded. Don’t drown. Don’t get hit by a car. School is a safe place, people don’t die in school. I protect you in these walls. People only die outside in the scary world, where I can’t save you all the time. So don’t go outside of school and get killed, or I will haunt your eternal soul forever.

2. Don’t steal（取るな）

You god damn kids better not steal. Do not take one piece of candy, one spec of dust from anywhere. Do not take anything that does not belong to you. Don’t steal from your friends houses. When you are invited to someones house you are their guest. Even if your friend says you can borrow something and you take it, you are stealing. That is not their property to give and you just took it, you are beyond scum. I will find you, and I will give you my divine justice.

3. Don’t be a lump（だらだらしない）

You are all required to wake up everyday at 6:30 in the morning and do radio calisthenics. Do not lump around the fan all day talking into it. Yeah it makes your voice sound funny, but do it for one more second and the blades may cut your tongue out. You always have something to do at all times, whether it be the one months worth of homework we gave you, or helping your parents, or even just running around your house, do not stay still. You must moving. If you stop, we will find you. We know.

The teacher walked off the stage. Those kids were going to follow his rules, he knew it. He wasn’t exaggerating one bit, and they knew it. It was going to be a long summer.

All I could think about throughout the whole speech was, “Crap, Mr. Fan, don’t take my tongue!”.