Unlike most dorky white guys that show up in Japan I got married to a hot Asian woman BEFORE I came here. What kind of job can two American gaijin (foreigners) get in Japan without knowing much Japanese? Teaching English of course! Although we are both teachers we're the ones learning all sorts of strange and interesting life lessons from Japan.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

It’s All Fun and Games

As explained earlier with the "Cicada Sensei" incident some of the lesson plans the schools want me to do have undesired consequences. Soooo I have to give a lesson on body parts and demonstrate the lesson by saying a body part while touching myself there, no problem. I decide to have a Simon Says game for this lesson, sounds good right? Instead the teachers, in their infinite wisdom, want the kids to get into groups and when I call out a body part have the other kids touch them there. Knowing how much these kids like to grab and poke each other's nether regions I try to dissuade them to no avail. I decided against using the approved words: eyes, waist, and chest for obvious reasons, but these kids are resourceful.

The game starts and I say 'leg' the boys start grabbing each other's penises. I say 'back' and they poke each other in the butthole. I say 'shoulders' and they give each other the Vulcan death pinch. Some of the most vicious offenders are the girls. I say 'hand' and one girl takes this other girl's hand and made her slap her face with her own hand. I say 'hair' and this burly mean bitch yanks this small innocent girl's hair (who isn't even in her group) and pulls her to the ground. At least the boys were laughing while they were squeezing each other's nuts, but the girls were seriously pissed off and some of them had murder in their eyes. It frightened me.

Another brutal but benign sounding game is 'fruits basket.' I call it death basket. If the lesson is fast food then each student will have a card like french fries or hamburger or curry and rice. These students will be in a circle sitting in chairs with one student standing in the center. When the student in the center calls out 'hamburger' the kid in the center and all the kids with a hamburger card run around looking for a seat. There is the expected pulling away seats and hiding chairs, but then it goes further.

A lot of the kids don't even try to find a chair they just get up and start beating the holy hell out of each other. Usually the kid that ends up in the center in the one that is lying on the ground, trampled and left for dead. Somehow he/she pick themselves up and the game starts again. Best part is? I get to play too! I teach the kids the game and start off in the center and try like hell to avoid the melee. However when 'zenbu' or 'all' is called everybody gets up and has to find a chair. It's madness. When I'm dragging one kid on each leg, another is on my back, and I'm swatting down dick and ass grabbers left and right I think, "How the hell did I get into this situation?"

Most teachers are smart enough not to participate in death basket, except for one. He is a 6th grade teacher I'll call Mr. U. He is one of those super nice guys that wants desperately to be friends with all his students and consequently has one of the wildest classes I've ever seen. 'Zenbu' was called and he was instantly mobbed. While being gang raped I saw one of the larger boys sucker punch Mr. U in the kidney. The look of agony on his usual joyful face was apparent so I stopped the game and helped him to a chair, I told him who the boy was that punched him but he just laughed it off, though winces of pain.

Lesson learned? Never get too close to the kids especially during games of grab that body part and death basket.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Language is a Funny Thing

Engrish or Japanese English is a pretty well know hilarious phenomenon. Typos, poor grammar, and outright strange word selection and combinations are everywhere in Japan from clothing, to foodstuffs, and even office buildings. Just like the way some buffed out frat guy has Chinese characters tattooed on his arms, the Japanese use English as design and often have no idea of it's meaning. Seriously though for the sake of foreigners can't somebody use spell check or grammar check before they print a T-Shirt or paint a sign? Besides that annoying point, some of the mismash of English words are really funny.

Thirsty for excellence! – Is this the latest slogan for a Japanese sports drink? No! It's an axiom written in huge bold letters in front of the prefectures most prestigious hospital.

I came too hard / I never came so hard– I've seen this on a couple of T-shirts so I think it's pretty popular. Although the latter was worn by a middle school aged girl...

I have HOT WEATHER COCK – This shirt design was worn by a dumpy middle aged woman. And yes she is a teacher at a school I work at. And yes I had her class on the day she wore that shirt.

There are other ones that I can't think of right now. More to come. Hard.

The Japanese really like bugs. Diagrams of the insides of beetles and dragonflies are found on the walls of many classrooms and a conspicuously large number of nature shows are about insect collecting, fighting, and mating.

One English lesson I'm forced to do involves teaching the English names of various insects. These kids may not know colors, days of the week, or basic greetings but damn it all if they can't say mantis or cockroach when I get through with them. One insect that is guaranteed to send the students into fits of laughter is cicada. Why? Because cicada sounds like the Japanese word for 'sexual harassment.'

The homeroom teacher always laughs along with the kids and never helps to settle them down. I've had some teachers make things way worse by mimicking a bug touching a girl's butt or breasts, which was pretty damn funny but these are elementary kids… In the end I waste a minimum five minutes of class time trying to settle the students down and for the rest of the lesson whenever cicada is mentioned they bust out laughing again. I've pressed upon the teachers the dangers of cicada before the lesson starts, but they always want the lesson as is.

I don't blame the mostly bored kids for laughing because when I was in 5th grade and some foreign teacher was showing me a picture of a weird looking bug and yelling, 'SEXUAL HARRASSMENT' I'd laugh too. However, the worst part about all of this is that some kids have taken to calling me cicada sensei.

Japanese girls: "Ahhhhhh it's cicada sensei! Run or he'll sexually harass us!" Then they sprint away screaming for their lives.

Can I go back to being called Michael Jackson? If only these kids knew that it's really the same thing then I'd be in really big trouble.