Friday at school I had a weird day where all my good students were acting bad and my bad students were acting good. I’m not sure if they worked together to plan it that way, but it extended to several classes and perhaps could be established as a teaching phenomenon that would bear my name as it’s first known observer.
“These students show the symptoms of Fredricks’ disorder. Get them to a psychiatrist as soon as possible.”
“Oh my god. I didn’t know it was that serious.”
Actually, before I even arrived at school I had a weird experience. Walking to Nozaki’s house I heard somebody behind me call out “Sensei!” and when I turned around it was one of my students’ parents. Her son, Junya, was absent last week and came halfway through the lesson with his mother on Thursday nearly in tears. Although she didn’t say anything about it on Thursday (not in front of the students) I kind of had an inkling and it turned out that I was right. She said today that Junya had skipped the English class last week and was trying to do it again when she caught him walking around town instead of joining our class.
She apologized profusely and asked me to contact her if he doesn’t show up again, and I promised I would. About this time I noticed that while we were walking slowly towards the school an old woman had snuck up behind us and was keeping pace while listening in to (what I had thought was) a private conversation. She broke into the conversation by saying with more than a little astonishment that she couldn’t believe how well I spoke Japanese. This is something foreigners hear a lot in Japan – you can just say hello and they’ll say you have mastered the Japanese language.
Anyway, she was dying to talk with someone and Junya’s mom bore the brunt of the conversation while I looked for a way out. Luckily soon I had to turn right, and so I said goodbye. Right around the corner was Junya going home from school with a bunch of his classmates. I said hello to him in English and talked a little bit while all his classmates looked on with their mouths hanging open. Junya explained to them that I was his teacher and I did everything I could to make him look like he was a great student and a good speaker of English.
The students had lots of questions, and Junya fielded most of them for me. I walked with them for about two blocks, and I’m sure it was funny to see this tall foreign guy walking surrounded by lots of grade school kids in school uniforms saying “Hello” over and over because that was all they knew.
After my classes ended I came home and had dinner with Kuniko – she made a new dish that was really good – grilled ham, onions and tomatoes with melted cheese and a tofu salad. After dinner we decided to go rent a couple of movies and we stayed up late watching “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Kinky Boots”. Both of the movies were pretty good, and we have one more rental to see by next week, “The Sentinel”.
