I think I’ve written before about how much fun it is for me to walk around my school. In kind of a high school do-over situation, I’m the most popular guy around. The guys all say hello and the girls purr and coo and giggle when I walk by. Actually, a couple of the guys purr and coo as well.
I’ve got my students trained really well, too. At our school they hammer into the students “aisatsu, aisatsu!” which means “greetings”. One of the things they want to train our students is how to be polite, and being polite starts with saying “good morning” in the morning, “hello” during the day, and “goodbye” at the end of the day when they pass a teacher. Of course, these greetings are all in Japanese.
My first term at my school I did my greetings in Japanese, but soon after that I completely switched to English. After two years the students have caught on, and so now the students will greet me in English. With some exceptions they do really well, and they like the chance to use English in the hallways. Some refuse and stick to Japanese, others will shout out “Good morning!” as we’re leaving for home, but generally my students have got it figured out.
I spent time today with Miyake sensei, checking her English transcription, explaining some difficult English expressions to her (like “hit it off”), and studying English. During our free conversation she told me about a friend of hers from Hokkaido that came to visit. She has two kids, one is two years old and the other is just one year old. Her friend and her husband lived in Los Angeles for three years, and so their oldest daughter speaks very good English and Japanese. The family is trying an experiment, so the mother speaks to the girl in English, and the daughter responds in English. The father speaks to her in Japanese, and she responds in Japanese. It sounds really confusing, but evidently it’s working out just great. At that age kids soak up language like crazy, and does it make that big a difference if you throw in two languages instead of just one? Interesting.
Today after school I went over and played ping pong with the ping pong club. The new first year students were merciless, defeating me on almost every point. They’re pretty serious about ping pong here (called “takkyuu”), and when the guy you are playing against stops to spray chemicals on his paddle after every ten points, you know it’s big time.
I went back to class and bumped into the girls basketball team. They’re really cool and ever since I came to watch some games last year they are really enthusiastic when I walk by. I stopped and chatted with them in English, and met some of the new members. One of them is also in my ESS club, so it was cool to see someone doing sports and academics after school.
Midterms are coming up, and one of the exams that I’m doing involves identifying parts of the body. I downloaded a medical illustration of a guy so that I could have the students write “shoulder”, “arm”, “foot”, etc. The guy is not facing you as you look at it – it’s a drawing from the side. The guy is naked, but he has one foot on a step so it nicely blocks any genitalia from being displayed. It’s a drawing – not hot stuff at all. Still, Matsubara sensei drew pants on him – I think she was worried about the reaction. I’m not bothered by this infringement of my artistic values, but it makes for a funny story. And, he looks funny in little penciled in pants.
Tomorrow I’m hoping to meet up with Kuniko for a dinner date after she gets off work. If all goes well we’ll meet up for ramen noodles – not the most romantic place to go, but we should save the fancy stuff for the weekends.
Thursday midterm exams begin, and I’m hoping I’m on an abbreviated schedule. I begged off the teacher softball game – I’ve seen too many horrible, horrible injuries to people over thirty on the softball field. Friday I’m probably going to meet up with Antoine for a guy’s night out… I think he’s looking for some advice about his future. I hope it’s not a heavy meal.
