Great Teacher A-Chan

This week I was reviewing comparitive sentences with the ninensei (e.g. 'The elephant is bigger than the cat'). As an activity students were given cards featuring two objects (with the names written beneath to make it easier), which they had to then write a comparitive sentence about using the English they'd been practising. This is pretty basic stuff, so most of them were fine with it.

One boy wrote the simple sentence 'the pen is longer than the pencil', however due to improper pacing, it really did look like he'd written 'the penis longer than the pencil'. His classmate pointed this out, but not wanting to be proven wrong, the writer insisted he'd done it on purpose, and declared that he was talking about his own equipment. This left three boys cacking themselves at the one adamantly proclaiming (complete with gestures, of course) 'Penis longer than pencil! My penis! Penis longer than pencil!'

Another boy was given a card featuring the Leaning Tower and the (Sydney) Opera House. Using any English he could think of to conjoin the two, he came up with 'The Leaning Tower is taller than the Phantom of the Opera House' (The Phantom of the Opera is currently touring in Kansai).

Wandering back to the staffroom after class, I was distracted by a horrendous shrieking from a gaggle of sannensei girls. This is nothing unusual, but you never know what these girls are up to, so I moseyed over to take a peek. a half-dozen girls had formed a circle around another two, and were screaming something along the lines of 'do it! DO IT!'. When I quietly tapped one girl on the shoulder to ask what the fuss was about, she informed me that they were trying to convince the two girls to kiss.

Now, if I'd gotten my degree in teaching, I'm sure I would've had some kind of ethical guideline for this sort of situation. Unfortunately, my degree is in science.

I joined in their prodding, calling out 'Do it! Do it! ..... I'LL GIVE YOU A SEAL!'

Now, what you should know, is that in junior high, seals (stickers) are everything. Students will do damn near anything for a seal. I always keep some in my pocket so I can ask kids English questions when I bump into them. If I had a car I bet I could get a different kid each day to wash and wax it, without ever forking out more than a couple of shiny stickers.

The two girls in question were suitably surprised to see me there, and furthermore, encouraging them to kiss. Apparently though, they misunderstood my meaning, because they then readily attempted to kiss me to get a seal (I should probably mention at this point that one of the girls in question has a habit of regularly feeling me up from behind. Nothing offensive, just gentle hugging and occasional caressing). By that point even I could figure out this was beyond the scope of appropriate student/teacher relations, so had to deny the girls. Still determined to get a seal, however, they asked if I could at least give them an English question.

My question for the day was 'What is your father's name?'. I certainly wasn't expecting the first girl I asked to respond 'No. I have no father'. Not sure what to do, I still gave her the seal (she used correct English after all), and a very sympathetic look with a pat on the shoulder. The other students, who always have a tendency to just copy the first student's answer, thus informed me that none of them had fathers. Riiiiiiiiiiighht. Well, save one girl, who, when asked 'What is your father's name?' gave me a thumbs-up with an enthusiastic 'YES!'

Posted by a-chan at 10:25 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post   

When I came to Japan, I was told that while our male counterparts would be swamped with female attention, we lady gaijin were considered evil ball-busters doomed to live a life of loneliness in the land of the rising sun. Why then, does it seem that everyone in my small community is desperate to set me up? Not just the regular I’m-drunk-let-me-get-you-a-taxi-by-the-way-would-you-mind-if-I-molested-you　type situations, but that annoying, precious meddling that’s all the more complicated to get out of.

Recently, a good Japanese friend of mine sent me a message requesting I meet with the son of one of her coworkers. Apparently his little sister is one of my students (already a warning sign) and had told him all about me. This, according to my friend, caused him great interest, and he earnestly sought to be my ‘special friend’, complete with suspicious winking emoticons.

As you can imagine, all kinds of warning bells are going off in my head, but not wanting to offend my friend, I message her back asking for more information. Who is this guy? What are his motives exactly? I tell her I’m not exactly keen on meeting some mysterious young man with an unknown agenda.

Not to worry, she reassures me. He’s not a threat. He’s a highschool student, is very cute, and to put my mind at ease, he’ll be accompanied by his mother. So could I please meet him?

What the ghey.

Not only am I being set up, but it’s on a chaperoned date with a highschool student.

But I’m an optimistic gal. Most people that extend the hand of friendship to gaijin are only interested in free English lessons. The entrance exams are coming up, so I figure he just wants to brush up a little. Having convinced myself I’m not in danger, I reluctantly agree to meet him.

The day rolls around and so do I, spotting what I can only assume to be the fated parent and child in the lobby of the community centre. My bright disposition sparks a struggling conversation, asking the student some standard English textbook questions to gauge his ability. He drops a few comments in Japanese about my high spirits and cuteness (riiiiiiiggght…) but I let them slide because it’s very common for Japanese folks to make compliments when they can’t think of anything to say. Attempting to suss out the real motive here, I ask the boy if he’s interested in English. I have to admit I’m surprised by his answer. Actually, he doesn’t really like English at all. Oh, but you must have to study it for the exams right? Well, no, he admits, he doesn’t need much English because he’s aiming for a science major. So right now I’m wondering why exactly we’re all here.

That’s when his tiny, reserved-looking mother speaks up, wanting to know what I think of Japanese men. I actually get asked this question a lot, and my standard response is that they’re skinny, with pretty faces and big hair (which the student seems to mistake for a compliment, ‘like me? My pretty face?’). In the face of the awkward laughter that follows, his mother does something unprecedented. She instructs her son to remove his jacket, which of course he does obediently (you’d have to be crazy to refuse an order from a woman only years away from a devastating oba-chan-hood). I must admit, he’s well-dressed for a 17-year-old. She then proceeds to put my hand on his bicep. ‘Flex it, son’.

This is about the wrongest situation I can imagine right now. I’m expecting the Japanese candid camera crew to leap out and catch a pink-haired white girl in the act of feeling up a student’s manly muscles while his mother watches and occasional offers advice. This is probably going to air the following evening, complete with giant subtitles for everything I say and the inset faces of several inane Japanese celebrities laughing at my gaijin tomfoolery.

I’m really not sure what to say as this sweet young lad happily flexes his (giant, due to his position on the kendo club) biceps beneath my grip. When in doubt in Japan, be excessively polite. ‘Wow, it’s big, and really hard’ (stop laughing. I just thanked the sweet Lord above that he didn’t understand enough English to make a euphemism of my remark). Then for good measure, I punched him really hard in the arm, hoping that gaijin ball-buster stereotype I mentioned might scare him a little. Evidently not.

The conversation progresses slowly, littered with compliments about my cuteness and subtle hints about dating and what a good couple we’d make, from both the boy and his mother. I can’t believe this has been going on for over an hour. Ok, it’s time to put my foot down. I make an obvious gesture with my hand in order to flash my beloved CockBlock Ring™, and start talking about my boyfriend back in Australia, how wonderful he is, and how much I want him, I need him, oh baby oh baby (those that know me will know just how much truth there is in this). Unfortunately, this only serves to assure the lad that my current loneliness necessitates a Japanese boyfriend, and renews his attempt to set up a date.

Finally, after over 90 minutes, I make an excuse and head off, trying to make sense of this delightful new situation. I can tell this one’s only going to get worse. And I wonder just how long it’ll be before his little sister spread the word at the junior high school about our imminent engagement.

Posted by a-chan at 6:18 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post   

It seems that my duties as an AET extend further each day. Granted, the actual duties aren’t that heavy to begin with, so I’m happy for anything extra that gets thrown my way – whether it be doing another teacher’s photocopying, or drawing character pages for the art club.

Last week I was approached by one of the English teachers with a small piece of paper. He asked for my help as he showed it to me. The paper bore only two scrawled words, ‘Rad Wimps’. The confusion must’ve been written all over my face, so he explained that a ninensei boy had asked for my help. He was contemplating a name for his band and wanted to know if ‘Rad Wimps’ was appropriate. I asked if he knew what it meant, and the teacher seemed to have the definition downpat, so I gave it the thumbs up. Keep your eyes open for a delinquent garage band called ‘Rad Wimps’ in Kyoto’s underground scene.

At another point, the school nurse held out to me a piece of paper bearing various doodles of anime characters, predominantly of Naruto. She pointed to a particularly prominent character and asked ‘Do you know him?’. Before I could stop myself, the words ‘Sure, it’s Gaara’ were out of my mouth, much to nurse-san’s amusement. I’m really not much of a Naruto fan myself, but since so many of my kids watch the show, I feel the need to know at least enough to get by in conversations. Nurse-san was greatly encouraged and gave me the name and class of the student that did the drawings, urging me to talk to her whenever I could. ‘She always draws him [Gaara], so please talk to her about him every time. She will be very happy’. Does this mean I can sit in the library watching anime during school hours and write it off as ‘preparation for student interaction’?

Yesterday, while doing my usual rounds of ‘Hi! How are you?’ One boy answered ‘Nnn… I’m sleepy’.
‘Oh really? I’m hungry. I want to eat some chocolate’
‘Oh,’ he pondered, then grabbed his friend and offered him in my direction. ‘Here. It’s chocolate boy’.
Of course, the friend realized what was happening and quickly switched from ‘Eh? Are are?’ to ‘No no no noononononno!’. The poor kid honestly looked like he thought I was going to eat him. Maybe I shouldn’t have made a comment about how delicious he looked while licking my lips.
Also, in other news, that first year boy is still after one of my pink hairs.

Posted by a-chan at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post   

Recently the ichinensei had a test that involved them writing their daily schedule accompanied by pictures, which I had the distinct pleasure of marking. A typical page will read along the lines of ‘I get up at seven. I leave home at seven fifty. I come to school by bike. I get to school at eight fifteen’ etc. The delinquent students (those that actually did the homework) made no attempt to hide their tardiness, proudly scribing ‘I get up at nine. I come to school at eleven’. One student, edivently with the ability to time travel, wrote that he left home at eleven to reach school by eight.

Of course the best part by far was the illustrations. Most students simply copied the pictures directly from the textbook example. Actually, the same can be said about 95% of any English homework Japanese kids do (no seriously. I set a writing test for this class about their school trip, with simple questions like ‘Where did you go?’ and ‘What did you eat?’. But still the other teacher ‘improved’ the test by adding examples like ‘I went to _______. I ate ________.’ Essentially turning the ‘writing test’ into a glorified fill-the-blanks). But those that had at least 3 cells of originality in their bodies came up with some delightfully amusing doodles.

Many of the girls went with the predictably generic cutesy anime style. Apparently boys aren’t allowed to draw this way because they always tried for something more similar to Beavis and Butthead. Of course, some students weren’t comfortable with conventional drawing styles at all, and thus depicted themselves as something less personal, like a stick figure with the kanji for their name in the place of a face, or a dog or snowman.
One boy was so tied to his identity as a kendo club member, he depicted himself in his kendo armour all day, from waking up at 6am to going to bed at 12. Another boy drew himself with an enormous afro – I can tell you right now that none of my students have an afro, especially not the first years. If I didn’t have to give these back to the kids I would’ve kept them to put on my wall.

Posted by a-chan at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post