I needed some pictures of celebrities and characters for something I wanted to do in a class. I had a pretty good selection including Utada Hikaru, Ryo Ishikawa, Otosan the SoftBank dog and Asada Mao. I wanted to use the six year old girl who recently is featured in every Japanese TV commercial, like the "Maru Maru Mori Mori" ad which is the most annoying piece of TV ever. It played during every commercial break of the high school baseball, which I watched on the ferry back from Ogasawara.
I asked an English teacher for the name of the Maru Mori girl and she laughed and like all teachers do in the staffroom, the volume in which she spoke was unnecessarily loud for a private conversation between two people. The vice principal overheard our English conversation and heard the name "Ashida Mana" and laughed and said, "So, James, you're interested in Ashida Mana?" and the English teacher explained that I had seen her TV and I wanted to know her name... and didn't mention that all I wanted was a picture for a class.
Back at my desk I was on my iPhone searching for a picture of Ashida Mana that I could print A4 size for my class. Then the vice principal came to my desk with five pages of information about Ashida Mana that he had just printed off. Five pages of Japanese which he probably knows I can't read. Two female teachers who sit across from me saw the vice principal give me five pages of info and pictures of Ashida Mana and they said "Oh, you like Ashida Mana? She's a cute girl, right?" It would have been easy for me to say that I was looking for something to use in a class but I just sat there and grinned a pervert's grin and said nothing.
Part of my reason for keeping silent was that if someone is denying that they are a certain thing, like a wife beater or sexist or a crook, it's usually because they've already confirmed their guilt through their actions and they have to lie about it because of shame. Like in Jersey Shore when Ronnie shoved Sammi into a wall then said he would never hit a woman, or when David Cameron laughed at a woman for talking then said he isn't sexist.
