Ex-Tabula Rasa

An Eye Transplant with a Fucking Pokemon

Overnight I got my first Facebook friend request from one of my students in Japan. She had to have been a part of my English language after-school club, because I exchanged emails with the ten or so members just before leaving the country, and there’s no other way she could have found me, really.

I didn’t recognise her profile picture, but when I looked through my old emails her name cropped up. The email read thusly: “Dear Mister Fuiru. Then, it eats rice in daytime now. Moreover, it emails. Good-bye.”

I figured it was a bit weird that I didn’t recognise her, even after six years. Then I noticed that it was because her eyes were odd. It was a “print club” picture, where people go into booths and make peace signs while a camera takes photos, then they go around to a touch-screen monitor on the side and add words and pictures. A quick Google search showed me why she looked so different: now these machines have settings where they make your eyes look bigger and whiten your skin, so you effectively look like some freakish anime character.

With curiosity getting the better of me, I looked through her friends’ pictures to see if I recognised any of my other students, but all I saw where young Japanese men and women who looked like they’d had an eye transplant with a fucking Pokemon.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared.