Sometimes it is easy to forget that while my students are working on studying English with me, they are also still studying Japanese. I can easily fall into this mental trap where they see me as an expert of English, so they must be an expert in Japanese – and sometimes this is just not the case.
The other day I was talking with my students about my favorite things to order in a yakitori, so I was naming the items in Japanese. One of my favorites is “negimi”, which is chicken and onions alternating on a stick that is barbecued. The students corrected me and insisted that it was “negima”, which sounds the same, just a little bit different.
Of course I’ve been ordering in a yakitori for a few years now and I insisted that it was really negimi, and they know I’m a foreigner so I must be wrong and it is “negima”. So I go home that night and ask Kuniko, and she says that it is both. So we were both right, and I’ll share that bit of information with them next week.
On the scary news front, a seven year old girl in Befu (a couple of train stops from Futami, where I used to live) was stabbed to death in front of her house last night. It made national headlines and had everyone shaking their heads. I had a little scare because the girl had the same first name as one of my students, but that neighborhood is a little out of range from my classroom.
Today I expect that a lot of mothers will be escorting their kids around, and I won’t be surprised if we have a few mothers today bringing their kids right to the door of my classroom.
