Today in one of my classes the conversation took a bizarre turn when the student asked me for tips on how to set up one of his female coworkers with a potential husband. I’m not sure why he felt I was the right guy to ask, but he asked me in English in the middle of our lesson. I guess his female coworker is bugging him to introduce him to a potential mate, and my student is not sure how to proceed. He tried hosting a small party to introduce her to one of his friends, but she didn’t respond to the guy during the party, and now they are looking for some more ideas. I don’t know how it got to the point of ‘let me ask my English teacher’ but there we were. I suggested that she be a little more social by picking up a hobby or something that would allow her to travel in different social circles, but apparently she is working way too many hours for anything like that. This is why the birthrate in Japan is so low.
I am lucky to have an internet connection at work and permission to use it before, during and after lessons. The bad news is that it is heavily protected against anything that might be non-business related, and I get the feeling that my movements on the net are being observed. I usually use it to find and download news articles for discussion with my students, but there are lots of other interesting tools and teaching aids out there, and it is really nice to have it at my fingertips. Today I played a 20 questions guessing game with one of my students, and he was trying to guess a famous actress. I picked Angelina Jolie because she often comes to Japan with her husband to promote this or that. The student didn’t recognize her name, however, so I googled her and showed him a picture and it was instant understood who she was. Another student asked me about local beers in America so I hit a few websites to show him my recommended beers based on region. The internet monitors will be interested to see the records of me looking at beer websites and Angelina Jolie pictures during my workday. Hopefully it won’t come back to haunt me later…
