A bully becomes a monk
Mood:  not sure
So this is a very strange thing that happened as a result of noticing a bully picking on a kid in one of my classes. Yesterday wasn't the first time I had seen this particular kid messing with the student in front of him. The kid who sits in front of him is admittedly very shy and smart - the exact formula of prime bullying material. The kid behind him is the exact opposite - not very bright or particularly good at English, and not nice by any means. I had seen this student sprinkling something into the collar of the smart kid several weeks ago, and after figuring out what he was doing, I yelled at him to stop. I hoped this would be the end of it, but lo and behold, yesterday he tried to pull some more bullying under my nose. Anytime I wasn't looking, the bully would pull the other's chair back using his feet, and the smart kid couldn't bring himself to tell him to stop. After noticing a particularly jarring one of these, I yelled, "Oi! (This means the same in Japanese as is English) What are you doing? Stop that!" The bully mimicked me, "Stop that? Stop that?" He might not have known the words, but it was plenty obvious what I was talking about.
I hate to pull my trump card of telling a class's homeroom teacher something they've done so they'll get reprimanded, but I couldn't stand for this to happen again. The class's teacher is known for being a hard-ass and super strict, so I thought he'd be able to do something.
Well, I was right. I told the teacher, he looked very upset and concerned that this was happening in his class, and said that he would take care of it. When I was going home yesterday, my bike passed the bully, and what did I see? His head was completely shaved to the skin! Surely there's no connection, I thought. Well, today I found out that the whole head shaving WAS because of what happened. It seems the teacher wasted no time in reaming this student, and in turn telling him to shave his head to remember what he had done! Can you believe it? I can't imagine this scenario ever playing out in the states. I feel slightly bad that the punishment was so strange and extreme, but when the bullied kid thanked me today for noticing, and being the only teacher to do something, I realized my American nosiness and bravado payed off.