John W. <worthj1970@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Kevin Gowen <kgowenNOSPAM@myfastmail.com> wrote in message
> news:<2q0sbmFns2kdU27@uni-berlin.de>...
> > > fjlij@hotmail.com (Jason Cormier) wrote in message
> > > news:<5c5b95a0.0409041345.7ec5b170@posting.google.com>...
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Sometimes I feel genuinely sorry for Japanese school teachers.
> > 
> > Me too. But then, I remember the ?????.
> > 
> I used to live near a high school. Well, near it if I rode my bike up
> a big hill or went for a nice long walk, right around mid/late
> afternoon. I hated having to return to the station amid that throng of
> teenage girls showing more leg than a prostitute on a slow night.

You would have hated even more being in that Yamanote train heading for
Shibuya one afternoon, when a large-ish group of girls from a school
with a restrictive dress code where preparing for the evening. There
seemed to be two schools of thought over how to shorten the
regulation-length skirts--one group hoiked the waistband up to armpit
level then tied off a new waistline with a belt, the other group folded
the waistband over-and-over into a roll at the waist (the extra bulk
didn't matter, because the huge sloppy sweater covered it). 

Both groups needed lots of inspections from the others, to check that
the pleats were still aligned and that just a precisely-judged amount of
underwear was not-quite showing. And all done in apparent obliviousness
of the other people in the train.

And yes, I was fascinated. Or jealous. Or both.

________________________________________________________________________
                   Louise Bremner (log at gol dot com)
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