A fine, fine line

There's a fine line between being helpful and falling into stereotypes.

In the staffroom of every school in Japan, there is a designated "Tea Lady." Her main job, in appearance, is to serve tea to everyone in the staffroom and to all visiting guests. One of her other duties include serving school lunch to the staff.

She seems to be the person who is in charge of fairly menial tasks, but I also heard from other teachers that this person controls a lot more than meets the eye. I have yet to figure out what else she does, but I believe them.

Our tea lady, Hitomi-san, is a funny and clever lady. She talks to our principal like he's an old pal of hers...something that few people can do.

So, for the past week and a half, Hitomi-san has been away on vacation for her honeymoon. All of a sudden, all the female teachers in the staffroom are expected to fill in her duties. The English teacher, the special edu teacher and even the school nurse were asked to serve tea in the morning! On top of that, I was asked to help the janitor serve school lunch!!

I have no problem serving school lunch, but it bothered me slightly that while I helped serve school lunch, all the male teachers sat there waiting for lunch to be served and brought to their desks.
I thought that my "gaijin" (foreignor) status would give me an excuse to not be stuck in these situations or even help people realize (what I would consider) the sexist nature of all this...but perhaps not. Zannen!