Getting weird

Yesterday I had a class of two middle school students who are pretty good with their language skills. This week they have a ton of tests so I thought I would take it easy, skip on the book and just ask them questions.

One response I was given reminded me of a David Sedaris story from his When You Are Engulfed in Flames collection of essays. This story involves him and his boyfriend traveling to Tokyo and a lot of his experiences mirror mine (though having a boyfriend is not one of those that I expect to mirror in the near future). He was talking to a Japanese college student who confessed he was afraid of moths. I have seen this fear in one of my colleagues, a 37 year old man who was hunting down a moth with RAID spray. I guess I can see why after watching "Mothra".



Well, my student claimed to be afraid of butterflies more than any other animal. How can anyone be afraid of butterflies? Are Japanese butterflies more dangerous than other countries' butterflies?

Author's rendition of Japanese killer butterflyOn another topic, seems like the competing school in town is up to some dirty business. After 2 weeks of not getting the results we found out that they were in the possession of our competitors. The other school is in the same building and the deliveryman made a mistake and gave our schools test results to the neighboring school. The only problem was that the evil-doers decided to just keep the tests and not tell us they had gotten them. They finally brought them over after being confronted but couldn't come up with any response as to why they never brought them over. We did get some free sweets out of the deal and I was able to see true Japanese groveling and the lowest bows I have experienced yet.

As for my Japanese lessons, I still go but since they moved out the worst student in the class, I have become the class moron. I guess it helps that the others are all married to Japanese men or work for Japanese companies where they are expected to speak Japanese. Oh well, I guess I need to learn how to study again.

Strange Japan (rated R)

One thing that I am trying to avoid is learning swear words in Japanese. I know some in Czech and Korean (and actually use the Korean more than English), but really tried to stay away from it here.

I teach a lot of siblings that are in different classes, sometimes on the same day, sometimes different days. It seems that some of the parents try to take advantage of this by dumping their kids off at the school and having them sit around for a few hours waiting for their brother or sisters class to finish instead of driving 3 minutes to pick them up. Two mothers do this constantly, and both seem to not really care what their kids do.

On Tuesday, while waiting for his sister class to start, one boy (about 6 years old) was working on his kanji and at the say time softly kicking the wall. This wall was shared by the neighboring sushi restaurant and after awhile the owner came over and in a very friendly (he's a really nice guy, said he likes me better than the teacher I replaced!) way asked the boy to stop kicking the wall.

The boy's reaction was to scream that he was going to stab the sushi chef for this horrible act, and if need me stab his mother as well. What was his mother's response? She gave him a handkerchief to wipe away his tears. His screaming went on for an hour before he locked himself in the bathroom for another hour.

My boss tried to calm him down but all she got in return was a gouged hand and was called a cusobaba (shit grandmother). Ahhh.. my first Japanese swear. I was trying to teach a class while this was all going on right outside my door, needless to say not much was learned that class. As the mother and boy were finally leaving he was making stabbing motions into her gut.

Some more Japanese for your learning pleasure is pictured below. You will have to know Katikana and haragana, but they really aren't that hard to learn...really!!

Neighbors

I found out yesterday that my boss was going to have a meeting with the real estate agent, my upstairs neighbor and a city official on Friday. I guess a little back-story is necessary.

Since I moved into the apartment in March there have been huge banging sounds coming from the upstairs apartment. I let it go for a few weeks but then started to complain about it, but more often than not just letting it slide. Anyway, every time I complained to my boss (who was in charge of getting my apartment) faxed the information on to ERA (the rental company who has the most annoying theme song which plays on a loop just outside of my local train station).

At one point ERA did try and step in to resolve the issue (after the woman posted a strange note on my door saying something about smells from my apartment, more on that later) and it was quiet for about 2 days.

Who I thought was living upstairs.

At the meeting the old woman basically admitted (during an hour long tirade) that she made the noises on purpose and even looked to see if my bike was at home or not before she started. She also said that she smelled drugs coming from my place. When asked what drugs she smelled, the little old bag said it was marijuana. She had been doing research on the internet it seems.

My neighbor?

I do not know if you have any clues about drug laws in Japan, but it is safe to say they are on the severe side. It has been in the news recently that 3 Russian sumo wrestlers have been busted for marijuana and a couple admitted they bought the drug in Roppongi, the foreigner district of Tokyo. I think that the old hag made the connection that I am a foreigner, so that must mean I do drugs.

Lucky for me, she dug her own grave and will be out within a month. She doesn't know this yet though, she will find out on Monday. I am curious (and a little worried) about what her reaction will be.

On another note, the makers of My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away have had another huge success with Ponyo on the Cliffs by the Sea. The theme song is song by every one of my kid classes and now I have the privilege of hearing the local community band practice it at 8am on Saturday morning.

Sorry for the slow news, but no stories of getting caught looking up skirts or jumping out of moving trains today. I did start going to Japanese classes last week. It is offered by the community center and only costs $2 for a 2 hour lesson. I am the only beginner so I have a nice private lesson. I would charge about $60 for the same lesson if I was doing privates.

I am going to start attending other classes in other communities so I can get some more exposure. You'd think that being surrounded by Japanese it would be enough, but since 95% of the Japanese I come in contact with are paying me to speak English with them, I don't really get a chance to learn much. Learned half of the alphabet last week, starting the other half this week (not including kanji, which are all of the Chinese characters).


Here we are at our first lesson.

Les Kiriki acrobatesja
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