Jiko Shoukai

Hello everyone!

This week, I FINALLY finished introducing myself to all of my students. I've been doing this for about 3 weeks now, and I'm all but sick of students staring at me like I'm some sort of alien when I walk into a new classroom. I'm pretty tired of students giving me a double take when I say "Hello" instead of "konnichi wa" in the hallways. Thank god it's over...

For my introductions, I usually first had students get into groups for "question time", where they created a few questions to ask me, their mysterious new ALT. After question time ended, the students read me their questions and I wrote them all on the board. I made sure to tell them that any question is valid and acceptable, so I got a few strange, unrelated, rhetorical, or raunchy questions.

Lots of people wanted to know if I have a girlfriend. I think they were assuming that I don't have one, and they wanted to torment their new teacher's loneliness by prodding me with a sharp stick. Much to their surprise, I showed them a picture of my girlfriend, and they were astonished to see that she is both very cute and not Asian. My teachers warned me about students who ask about sex, but I was surprisingly only asked once. They formulated the question as "Do you play sex?" I answered by explaining that the verb "play" is generally used for things like games or sports. This diverted their attention enough for me to escape the question, but now they go around referring to sex as a sport.

After all the questions were written down on the board, I commenced my self introduction in the order I prepared. I showed them my family, my hometown, famous things in California, were I went to school, my previous job, my hobbies, my interests, and the food I like. For famous things in California, I showed pictures of Hollywood and Arnold Schwarzenegger in both "Terminator" and "Governator" modes. I also showed them some of my many hobbies. My favorite part was when I told them, "I like to cook," and then backtracked to the picture of kangaroos. I loved the way their facial expressions shifted from admiration to condemnation while I explained that kangaroos are actually edible and quite tasty.

The reactions of the classes varied wildly. Some of the classes were dead silent even when I asked them questions, while others erupted in chaos as the slightest cue. I actually had way more fun in the chaotic classes. The Japanese teachers hate these classes because the students like to misbehave and don't respect their teachers, but handling them is really not that difficult. One of the classes ended up rushing the chalkboard and sitting on the floor in the front of the chalkboard instead of staying back in their seats, but this actually made it a lot easier to show them pictures and keep their attention. Some of the students tried to mock me by repeating my words, but I encouraged them to continue and turned them into the "pronunciation leaders" because they would repeat key words without fail. The rest of the class had a blast, and the infamously misbehaving students who turned into class leaders came up to me after class desperately wanting handshakes (their ringleader wasn't satisfied with just one and wanted another). Their constant attempts at mockery made their pronunciation truly admirable, which I made sure the other students knew was something I respected.

After some of the more advanced classes (and by that, I mean less incompetent classes), the students wrote short summaries about me, and some even wrote me short self-introductions. Some of these were extremely entertaining, so give them a read below!

Nice try, but not good enough!

Well thanks...

After I showed the picture of my bus crash...

I think he's talking about my family.

That's all for now! Thanks for reading, and see you next time!