Life As An Ikemen

I think I just got one of the greatest compliments I could ever hope to receive, either in Japan or in the U.S. Or anywhere else for that matter.

I caught my students having a conversation about how ikemen I am. I’ve never been so flattered in my entire life, unless someone were to tell me I should totally go into hosting because I’d make a killing doing it. And although I have a definite image of what it is to be ‘ikemen’, and it’s definitely not me, I’m not one to turn down compliments.

Now, ikemen is a tricky word. It’s a slang-ish word that means a guy who is good-looking and has a general aura of suaveness, and even I don’t have the ego to say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s me for sure’. However, ikemen can also mean the complete opposite and be used sarcastically to mean someone who is pretty much the opposite of hot and awesome, but thinks he is.

Yet, I’m certain the student who said it meant it in the first way. Primarily because this girl and her friends are borderline unhealthily obsessed with me. No egomaniacal joke. I actually had my team-teacher of these girls talk to me after class and go, “They’re really into you. Like, really, you know. Even when you’re not here they’re always talking about you. Be careful OK?” These girls also think I understand way less Japanese than I let on to, which makes for easy eavesdropping, like in situations where we’re standing in the hall and they’re talking with their friends about how ikemen I am, as a hypothetical of course.

What’s creepiest about their putting me on the level of revered ikemen is the fact that I really try to be pretty firm about boundaries, but I think they interpret it as shyness, which makes me all the more ‘kawaiiii!’.

And while I’m totally aware a large part of their obsession comes from the fact that I’m the School Foreign Novelty and I’ll be forgotten about as soon as I leave, I was pretty flattered when I was described as ikemen. And as I looked at my black pants, Keds shoes, white shirt, and grey cardigan, the very antithesis of ikemen, I thought ‘No way’. This school (my lovable bastard child Technical High School) has plenty of very real examples of ikemen, of both kinds, and I’m not one of them, by any stretch of the imagination. But if they insist…

Then I thought, well maybe I do have a bit of an ikemen aura afterall. I’ve gotten cab fare randomly reduced more than a few times (by female and male cab drivers; my ikemen-ness knows no boundaries of sexuality), the people who sell bento outside the school sometimes give me discounts, and being talked to by random people (in Japanese) at the bus stop is pretty much a foregone conclusion.

While it could be easily argued that this is all the result of being nice to Novelty Foreigner, and I would tend to agree, the consistency of it makes me want to believe in the ikemen hypothesis instead.

The tricky part is now going to be continuing to be ikemen without trying to be ikemen. It’s easy to be ikemen when you’re being average English teacher, but once you find out you’ve been labeled ikemen, you may have the tendency to try too hard to live up to that label and in the process put yourself in the bad type of ikemen. Tricky, profound stuff, I know.

You know you’ve made it in Japan when you get to join the hallowed few in being described as ikemen. And honestly, part of me hopes that it's a trashy label no one wants, used only by those who are looked down upon by the mainstream (like Gyaruo) as I'd be doubly honored to be accepted as part of trashy Japanese subculture.