Mr. Footsie

I just finished teaching a high school class. The teacher I work with is a nice guy, but sometimes a little peculiar. Today he was putting his feet on one of the female students' stockinged legs and saying in Japanese, "Warm! Very warm!" Mind you this had absolutely no correlation to what we were covering in class. As I was wondering to myself, "What is that about?", the student in question turned to her friend and said, basically, "I don't know what that's about." The teacher repeated the exercise more than once during class, as if he were Jacques Cousteau and he had just made the most fascinating discovery. "Your leg is so warm!" We were all a bit perplexed by the whole situation, so I thought I might provide some comic relief, and maybe make a point. I pulled up the leg of my corduroys to expose my right calf, and said, "Sensei, my legs are warm too. Would you like to feel?" Of course everyone understood it was a joke. He blushed and said, "Oh no, not a man's leg!" He didn't stop putting his foot on the girl, though. Neither did the students (nor I) cease to be utterly befuddled as to what was going on. At one point he asked another girl, "Is your leg warm, too?" Finally one of the boys said, "Sensei, what are you doing?" He replied, predictably, "It's warm!" The students invariably looked at him like, "Yeah, and?" One of the students then jokingly accused him of sexual harassment (a rather cliche joke in Japanese schools--"sekuhara!!"), and the teacher said, "No, no. It`s warm. Really." Huh? If her leg were cold, now that would be another story. Definite grounds for a lawsuit then. Anyway, I said no it wasn't sexual harassment, the teacher is just a strange old man (which is another common Japanese joke). It wasn't a big deal at all, just weird. But I don't think the students were too bothered by it, though a bit confused. I think they just chalked it up to his age and tolerated it. He's not yet 50, but relative to the students he is elderly--at least in their minds, or so it seems. I on the other hand don't think his age has nearly as much to do with it as the fact that he is a sax player.