Crap My Students Write

My teachers are very amused every time I burst out laughing at my desk. Honestly, if you were me, you'd be unable to hold back as well. Some of the crap these students write...

In this case, the students were given a picture (of van Gogh, no less) and asked to write a few sentences of what he was thinking. Giving these students this kind of liberty can only bring bad things. Here's what I mean:

What's not shown is the giant red =( I wrote in the margin.

I'm impressed they know what "a whim" is. But still, NO.

I'm sure that would make anyone exciting.

I don't even...

"was"?

Anyways, I'll  be sure to post more crazy junk I see on stuff I'm supposed to grade. Stay tuned for the next post, which will be about what you probably care about most: FOOD!!

Speaking Cutely

Hi everyone!

The last few weeks have been relatively uneventful, so I apologize for not having anything interesting to post. Yesterday, however, something rather interesting happened.

On Monday night (during a long weekend), I boarded an overnight bus from Tokyo to Aomori after visiting Kristin in Komagane-shi in Nagano-ken. The bus left Tokyo at 8:30 pm and arrived in Aomori at 6:50 am the next day. As you can imagine, these bus rides are not the most comfortable methods of transportation in the world, so I didn't get much sleep. I also needed to be at Toyama Middle School at 8:20 am to teach, so I didn't have any time in between getting off the bus, going back home, taking a shower, and heading to school to have a nap. This was an extraordinarily tiring Tuesday.

I, however, have been having a much better time communicating with the students. All my choice napping spots were being used (like the judo mats in the gym), so I had no choice but to stay awake. In between classes and during breaks, I tried my best to have as much conversation time with the kids as possible, even if it had to be in Japanese. After I finished my only class for the day, the students were preparing to practice their performances for the upcoming school festival. I took this as an opportunity to sneak into the music room and have a nap on a makeshift bed of 4 lined up chairs.

I was, of course, caught 15 minutes into my slumber by the two piano playing girls who came up to work on their piece. I woke up as they tried to open one of the locked doors, and I went and opened it for them. They asked if I was sleeping, and I sheepishly said yes. Then I sat with them and watched as they practiced their piece, and then we had a fun episode when a bee (wasp?) and a grasshopper flew in through one of the open windows. I got the grasshopper out easily, but the bees here in Japan are humongous, so I was not quite as manly while trying to shoo that one away.

Anyways, after they were done, I left with them and headed back to where the other (less musically talented) students were working on their performance. The group of girls leading the performance (but who don't actually perform themselves) were idling about in the hallway while the rest of the kids did their thing in the main area. I started up a little conversation with 4 of them, and they noticed my name tag. The students here get a little confused by the way my name is spelled, so they want to call me RAI-AN (ライアン) even though my name is pronounced more like RAI-EN (ライエン), which is how I spell it in Japanese. The girls realized that they've been pronouncing my name wrong this whole time, and tried their best to get it right. They also noticed my last name RIN リン and asked me about it. I told them casually, "It's written like the Japanese [Hayashi]," or 「林と書くんだよ。」

The girls looked at each other blankly for a second and then burst out laughing. I wasn't sure why at first, but one of the girls turned to me with her thumbs up and exclaimed, "Very cute!" Then I remembered something. I talk like an anime character. Especially when I'm tired and easily suggestible, I tend to speak without thinking very much. This means that my Japanese language skills return to where they came from: anime.

For those on you who don't know me, I studied Japanese for 3 years in high school and less than 2 years in college. In high school, I hadn't ever heard Japanese spoken before, and I only decided to learn Japanese because foreign language was a requirement and the other options were less attractive. I also had very little motivation and enthusiasm. The teacher was pretty terrible, so I spent 3 years learning very little and speaking hardly anything. Honestly, I was horrible, and listening to my old cassette tapes of oral tests makes me cringe.

When I started college, I found out that my unwillingness to consume alcoholic beverages left me very bored and with a lot of free time. This is when I picked up a truckload of hobbies, one of which included watching anime. My first year in college, I watched a massive amount of anime in between learning martial arts and archery, teaching myself to become a mountain/road cyclist and inline/freeline skater, and of course, engineering.

Because I watched so much anime, I decided to re-learn Japanese in my second college year. I took the classes for fun, and the teachers were so much better than in high school. In 3 months, we learned the same amount I was taught for 3 years in high school, and we learned it better. What I noticed this time is that I practically breathed in the language. I went to every class and participated heavily in every lesson, but I never studied. Even so, I was still one of the top students in the class and definitely the most natural sounding speaker. Why? Anime. Not only had I heard the language enough to replicate the sounds almost perfectly, I was now motivated to use what I heard from anime in class and learn more about it.

Over the year and two-thirds I studied Japanese in college, I honed my colloquial Japanese into a more proper form of the language. However, when I'm trying to produce language quickly and naturally, I still return to where I originally learned certain words and phrases. This unfortunately means that I talk like an anime character. Even worse, I tend to talk like an anime GIRL.

In anime, the characters speak Japanese, and Japanese has a masculine and feminine way of speaking (besides the standard unisex talking style). Anime Japanese is entirely sensible and understandable, but much of it is not used in real life. For example, anime girls like to add cute feminine endings to their sentences, like NANO なの, N ん, or WA わ, or extend the sentence with a long SUUU す～. They also tend to use long matter-of-fact or affirmation endings like DAYO だよ～ or DAYONE だよね～ much more than boys. Meanwhile, anime boys tend to speak very standard normal Japanese, even though the more masculine boys will end sentences with ZE ぜ or cut short the more polite DESU ending into a SSU っす.

Since anime tends to be rather female-heavy, I am more used to hearing the way girls talk in anime instead of boys. The unfortunate side effect of this is that I have also started talking like an anime girl. When I've got nothing else to go by, I like to use lexical phrases I learned in the way that I've heard, so they come straight out of lines in an anime. Lots of times, it's standard Japanese. Sometimes, it comes out masculine, which is perfectly normal since I'm a boy. A lot more times than is socially normal, it comes out feminine.

The girls I was talking to found my way of speaking hilarious because that's not the way a male would usually talk. If anything, I used 2 feminine modifications consecutively, so they almost thought that I misspoke before they put 2 and 2 together. When they realized that I in fact said what I did, the overall cuteness of it was too much for them to handle.

Even if I wanted, there isn't much I can do to fix my problem, since it lies at the very root of where I learned the language. I supposed I will just need to continue living my life speaking cutely, which I am perfectly fine with.

Japan and Schizophrenia

I'm sure many people have told you that Japanese people are all very kind, friendly, or submissive. Well you can take that notion and wipe it completely out of your mind.

There is no doubt that when you come to Japan, you'll probably be treated very nicely by nearly all the people around you, especially if you're Caucasian or some other race that is not Japanese-looking. Even if you are Japanese or look Japanese (which has caused me a lot of trouble so far), just being a stranger entitles you to be treated kindly and politely. The whole idea is that being some sort of outsider, whether you are a guest in someone's house, someone's neighborhood, or the country of Japan, entitles you to special treatment. The social protocol is to treat guests with an elaborate amount of politeness and respect.

Just because Japanese people have to ability to be indescribably kind doesn't mean they can be described as "nice people". Obviously many people in Japan are naturally very nice people, but that's no different than the citizenry of any other country. And, like the citizenry of any other country, some Japanese people have the ability to be absurdly mean. The difference is that, in Japan, the nice people and the mean people tend to be one and the same.

This is because much of Japan is schizophrenic.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that the entire population has a psychological disorder. It's more that the social status quo has trained all people to act in a very bipolar manner. This is evident in the language structure itself. Those of you who speak or understand Japanese (and some other languages, like Korean) know that there is a tiered system for polite speech. At the very bottom is casual (plain) speech, followed by the standard "polite speech" (teineigo). Above that, there are two categories called "humble speech" (kenjougo, which is used to describe action performed by one's self in a very humble manner) and "respectful speech" (sonkeigo, which is used to describe action performed by others in an exalted manner). Essentially, the language system has a different way to say the exact same things in various situations. I, along with many other people from different backgrounds, have lots of trouble developing a situational awareness to use the different types of speech. I often inadvertently switch back and forth between plain, polite, and humble/respectful speech in the span of a conversation (and sometimes in the span of a sentence) just because I naturally jump to the form that I've heard used the most. Japanese people, however, are excellent at knowing when to use a certain type of speech, and they can turn on politeness like a light switch.

The cultural schizophrenia is easily visible when monitoring behavior between classes of the established social hierarchy. The service class - which includes people like clerks, bus drivers, or anyone who interacts with customers - does a lot of talking. They almost always use humble and respectful speech when they talk to customers, and are usually the only ones talking at all. Customers generally walk around being served without saying anything at all. At the supermarket, the clerk greets you, tells you the price of everything, tells you the total price, announces how much you paid, tells you how much change you get, and thanks you for coming. The customer is not expected to say anything. The vast majority of the time I've seen it, the customers have just walked in, thrown down their groceries and cash, and walked away without a word. This goes for people on the bus as well. The passengers deposit their ticket, pay their fares, and leave without a single word of thanks or appreciation to the driver for getting them to their destination safely. As a former bus driver, this particularly gets on my nerves.

The craziness continues into the educational system and workplace as well. For example, I work at several schools, and I get to see teacher-teacher and teacher-student interaction every day. I've never felt unwelcome at any of my schools, and I have also never seen a teacher be treated badly by another teacher. They don't criticize each other, and they definitely don't belittle each other. Most interactions are friendly small talk or notification of some important matter. Many of the teachers are docile and keep to themselves most of the time. Whenever teachers talk to the head teacher, they are always respectful and compliant.

However, I've seen these same teachers, who were always calm and respectful, turn into ferocious monsters. Some of these teachers yell at their students. And they don't just raise their voices; they scream and holler at their kids like they've done something atrocious and unforgivable. In fact, one of the teachers is letting loose the Guns of the Navarone on a student in the hallway as I'm typing this. Why? The times I've seen it, it's because the students weren't standing or sitting straight enough, or because they were talking softly during some sort of gathering. Things like this would seem trivial to most people, especially in the US, but somehow they are things to get worked up over in this country. Let me remind you that these teachers are the ones that have always treated me kindly, always smile at me and other teachers, and just generally seem like nice people.

It's not just the teachers who are schizophrenic. The students display many signs of this "cultural disorder" as well. During school assemblies and ceremonies, they are silent and steady soldiers. They walk in straight lines, sit or stand bolt upright for half an hour or more, and follow directions to a T. However, this only applies for those certain occasions. When the same kids are in a classroom, especially during break time or even during lessons (if the teacher is particularly weak), they can be uncontrollable gremlins. I've seen teachers nearly break into tears because their classes were so misbehaved.

All this schizophrenia has penetrated so far into their minds that it seems to have affected their taste buds as well. Those of you who know me know that I love food that has multiple stages. This is why I like Warheads and caramel apple candies so much. Japanese people share the same sentiment as me, but for a different reason. According to them, "the Warheads were so sour, but then got sweeter. I love this candy that is sophisticated and has many faces." They like candies that have the ability to delight you and smack you around a little bit at the same time. Basically, they like candies that act like Japanese people.

I don't really know why Japanese society finds it necessary to display one's self in a different way for every situation, but I have a long time to figure that out. Honestly, I'm sure there are many Japanese people who display their genuine emotions at all times, so I don't want to give you the false impression that all Japanese people have deceptive personalities. I just would rather not find out what the Japanese people I enjoy being around are really like when they're not around me.

Anyways, that's all for today! This post displays some disappointment and frustration, but I assure you that I'm still having a good time and a great experience. For now, Ryan out!

Messing with the Students

Being a bit of a prankster, I like to mess around with my students once in a while. It's especially funny because they don't understand much English, and I can get away with a lot of stuff.

Self-introductions can get very fun in this way. During question time, some of the students have asked me things like, "What did you do yesterday?" or, "What did you do last night?" for lack of better questions or to use their newly learned past tense. I take these opportunities to tell them things like "I'm afraid I can't say it in front of children," or proclaim loudly, "None of your business!" Since the kids generally don't understand English at this level, it's mostly the JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) that laughs his/her ass off alone in the back of the room.

While I introduce my hobbies, I have pictures of me throwing people in Hapkido. All of the kids recognize this as Judo, and stare wide-eyed at the pictures of a familiar practice in an unfamiliar culture. I have some rowdier students who are somewhat disruptive and take a lot of energy to deal with, so I take this opportunity to vent by singling them out and saying, "See? I can kill you!" Usually, their lack of understanding elicits no reaction, and the class continues as normal. However, one of my classes (a particularly rowdy one) fell dead silent right after I said it. I was terrified that maybe the students understood what I said, so I freaked out for a few seconds. In the end, it turned out that they just shut up because they were confused, and that's all. 

Another one of my favorite practices is pretending I don't speak Japanese. When I meet a class for the first time, I usually speak exclusively English to the kids, whether we are in class or not. This makes a lot of them think I can't speak Japanese. Then, in the middle of class, while I'm walking around helping with their question making activity, I participate with some of the groups. When I arrive, they usually look at each other nervously and chatter in Japanese about my presence. Sometimes, when they are being particularly chatty, I respond to one of the student's comments in Japanese, and then leave right as the group turns toward me in astonishment. (By the way, although my Japanese level is only about high intermediate in grammar and vocabulary, I don't have an accent. I look and sound entirely Japanese. Most Japanese people and even some of the other JETs mistaken me for a Japanese person.)

During question time, I almost always get the question: "Do you speak Japanese?" When I get back to the question, I always say, "Okay, let's see what the next question is. So, can I speak Japanese? Hmm... no, I can't understand or speak any Japanese, I only understand English, alright?" And, of course, I do this entirely in Japanese. You'd think that it would be obvious to the students that I'm lying, but you'd be wrong. Most of the students get it right and make an uproar, saying, "You're speaking Japanese, dammit!" However, I've had other kids who, in their written response to my introduction, state that I don't speak any Japanese. I'm not sure if they're just really thick, or maybe they just took my word for it because they thought that I actually don't understand very much and only memorized a few lines of (perfectly fluent) Japanese.

Then, there is this one 2nd grader at Toyama Middle School that I particularly like to mess with. I was wandering around after school, and I found a few students hanging around the back of the building with a little taiko drum. I said hi to them, and they were all pretty confused because they hadn't met me yet. I turned around, and there was a rather large second year boy staring at me suspiciously. I said hi, and he kept giving me that suspicious look. In Japanese, I asked him if everything was okay, and he said no. I asked why. He asked me who I was, so I showed him my name tag and I told him I was the new English ALT. He looked at my name tag and found out I wasn't Japanese. I then asked what they were doing with the drum, and they told me that they were the "cheering leaders" that head group chants and cheers during the sports competitions. I told him I'd go teach in his class the next day and said goodbye.

The following day, I went to his class, and he started trying to say something to me in Japanese. I shrugged, shook my head, and said in the worst American accent of Japanese ever, "I DON'T UNDERSTAND." He gave me a surprised look, and then turned to try to explain to his friends, who I supposed were expecting something and were now all persecuting him. He stuttered, "But... yesterday... yesterday he was talking to me and... wait, speak Japanese!" I shrugged again and gave him the same answer. He had the most desperately pleading and confused look on his face. I chuckled to myself and started the English lesson.

I later bumped into him in the hall with his friends. He called to me and tried to make me speak Japanese again, but I still felt playful and wanted to mess with him more. He looked at me desperately and asked, "Why wont you speak Japanese?" I gave him a smile and walked away, leaving him stunned and his friends laughing. Poor guy...

Finally, the last event is the one I'm most proud of. I was at Toyama Nishi Elementary teaching the sixth grade classes, and I walked into my next class during break time. One of the kids was comfortably proclaiming "自由、自由！" (or "jiyuu jiyuu") while stretching his arms upwards. I laughed as I walked past him, and I asked him if he knew how to say that in English. When he told me he didn't know, I raised my hands and yelled, "FREEDOM!!" He copied me, and I had successfully started a trend. The students next to him copied him, and it spread like wildfire. By the time I had finished the lesson and lunch break started, most of the boys were expressing their free time by raising their arms and shouting, "FREEEEEDOM!!" Now I have a sixth grade class filled with little Bravehearts! I'm so proud...

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned!

A Visit from Honeybunny & Lessons Learned

This weekend, my girlfriend came to visit me. She's stationed in a city called Komagane in the southern part of a prefecture called Nagano. You may have heard of Nagano City from when the winter Olympics were held back in 1998, but Komagane is actually a few hours bus ride south of Nagano City.  Anyways, we've been planning this trip for a while, and all the plans were made. We were hoping the trip would go without a hitch, but alas we were not so lucky.

It is impossible to get straight from Komagane to Aomori. Komagane is locked in a valley between two mountain ranges, and the nearest airport is hours away in Matsumoto. Even if you got to the airport, there is no direct flight to Aomori. You would instead need to fly to Tokyo and transfer to another domestic flight. Flying is also very expensive in Japan, costing an equivalent of about $400 for what would be an equivalent to a flight from L.A. to San Francisco.

The best option is to take the bus or the train, but once again, there is no direct route from Nagano prefecture to Aomori. You still need to use Tokyo as the main transfer point to get anywhere, which is rather annoying. The only feasible option to get to Tokyo is the highway bus, which take a few hours. From Tokyo, you can take the bullet train, limited express trains, or an overnight bus to Aomori. The overnight bus is much cheaper than the trains (costing less than half), so we vouched for that option. However, these require online reservations, so we needed to do that.

All the tickets had been purchased and printed, and Honeybunny left Komagane on the highway bus, making sure to leave about an hour and a half of leeway between arrival in Tokyo (Shinjuku) and departure from Tokyo (Ueno, about a 20 min subway ride away). Unfortunately, the highway bus from Komagane was morbidly late, and by the time she arrived in Shinjuku, the bus to Aomori had already departed. You may have some preconceptions that everything is Japan is always efficient, reliable, and on time. This is definitely true for the train system, which runs by the second and is reliable beyond belief (when it's not snowing). Buses, on the other hand, are not nearly as reliable. For the city buses in Aomori, there is a chart describing what stops there are and how long it takes to get from one stop to another. I've had buses take twice as long as promised to get to the destination. The highway bus Honeybunny took was late by 2 whole hours!

Furthermore, since she had a problem with her passport and legal paperwork, she didn't have a cell phone. So, it was past 9 pm, and she was stuck in Tokyo with no cell phone, no way to get to Aomori, and no place to stay for the night. She desperately called me on a payphone for help, and I had to ask an ALT friend for help booking an emergency room at a hotel (which were packed because of the 3-day weekend) and telling her how to get there on the labyrinth of trains which is the Tokyo Metropolitan Public Transport System. I managed to give her direction right as she ran out of coins and the payphone cut off.

She arrived at her hotel at around 11:30 pm, but there was trouble actually getting her room. The hotel clerks didn't speak English, and Honeybunny's Japanese isn't sparkling either. I got a phone call from the hotel asking me for the reservation information, so I gave him all I could. It wasn't enough. This hotel was kind of stuck in the last century, so they didn't have a working computer or printer. I ended up forwarding the email confirmation to Honeybunny, and she used her (inactive) iPhone and hotel wifi to download it. I had already paid by credit card, but the clerk wanted paper proof (by fax!) that I had paid already. Being unable to give him any, we had to pay for the room in cash and ask for a refund on the credit card later. All that mattered to me was that she had a safe place to stay and get a good night's rest.

The next day, she headed back to Tokyo Station to try to catch the earliest bullet train to Aomori. At this point, we had already lost the 4500 yen (or about $55+) for the bus reservation. She had used up too much of her cash paying for the hotel room (which was 5880 yen (or about $70+), so she didn't have enough to pay for the train (which is about 17,000 yen, or about $200+). She needed to go to the nearest post office (and subsequently, bank) to withdraw money, and I had to help her find one. A few payphone calls and ATM malfunctions later, she finally had cash in hand and boarded the bullet train to Aomori. Thank god the fiasco is over...

After she got here, I didn't even really care about what just happened the day before, nor the fact that we just lost more than 25,000 yen. She made it over safely, and being together again was worth much more than the money spent to get her here. We didn't go around too much while she was here, but we spent most of our time hanging out together either at the beach park or at home. We also went to the grocery store and bought lots of seafood, since her prefecture is landlocked and sadly lacking in fresh fish. We made lots of home-cooked meals, and it was cute when she started salivating uncontrollably from the nostalgic taste of my cooking. We took some pictures in the living room for memories:

I also gave her an early birthday present, which was a hand-sketched portrait of the both of us before we left for Japan:

It was sad when she needed to leave the next night, but it was nice to be reminded of each others' presence before another long separation. Next time, it's my turn to make the journey, and I hope the trip turns out much smoother than hers did.

My Middle Schools

Hello again!

Now let's talk about my middle schools. I have 2 of them: Higashi 東 and Toyama 戸山. Higashi middle school is my "base school", so it's where I go if I'm done with my elementary schools and the workday is still not yet over. Out of all the schools I visit, I go to Higashi the most often and for the longest amount of time. It's not a particularly large school, but they are constructing a new larger building to comply with new earthquake code in the midst of the Great Eastern Japanese Earthquake. Toyama middle school is in the southern part of Aomori and feels larger than Higashi middle school, just because there are a lot of extra rooms they don't use.

Middle schools here in Japan feel very different from middle schools in America. First of all, the teacher/student operations are opposite of those in the US. Here, the teachers all rotate among the classrooms while the students stay together in the same classroom with the same classmates. When the kids get older, the classes still stay together (usually along with the same homeroom teacher) for their entire stay at the school, so the students and homeroom teacher are all very familiar with each other by the time they're finished. 

Also, the middle schools have 3 grades instead of 2, and the high schools also have 3 years instead of 4. However, remember that education is only mandatory until the end of middle school, so high school is entirely optional (although the vast majority of student do continue to high school). The 3 year middle school system feels very strange compared to the US. Before, middle school was the awkward transitional period between being a child and being an adolescent. In Japan, since the age gap is larger, there is a huge spectrum of behaviors all contained within a single school.

On the one hand, the 7th graders all feel like children. They are physically tiny, sometimes loud and rowdy, and are very likely to participate in more physical-type activities. They are also more prone to react openly and truthfully, which can sometimes be rude. Many of them are still unafraid to stare at something strange and unfamiliar, which in this case is me.

On the other hand, the 9th graders feel like young adults already. They are able to read the atmosphere of the situation and hide their curiosity as best they can. I still get stared at quite a bit (which I confirm with my excellent peripheral vision), but they turn away and pretend like they weren't looking when I make eye contact. They are mostly shy when they are alone, but gather great courage in large numbers. They can get easily embarrassed or excited when put on the spot.

That being said, I have to admit that I like the 3rd graders the most. They first graders don't know much English and can be rowdy and rude at times. They're the most energetic, so they're the hardest to keep up with on a slow day. The 3rd graders have the best English ability and are the most willing to interact with me outside of the classroom as well. They want to get along, and the smaller age gap lets them treat me like more of a peer instead of an authority figure. Most of the guys are pretty tall and better behaved at this point, and the girls are more mature and open to interaction.

And did I mention the third year girls are cute? If I didn't, damn they are cute! Especially the sports girls! I went to the gym one day during lunch break at Toyoma Middle School, and a few of the girls were playing volleyball. While they were knocking it around, it rolled over to me, so I picked it up and knocked it back. They took this as a cue to start playing volleyball with me. Some of the other girls who were walking around the hallways saw, and they came running over to join in. Pretty soon, we had a good 8 person circle knocking around a volleyball. The one girl in the volleyball club (named Reina) taught me how to hit a volleyball correctly, and then refused to pass the ball to anyone but me. We all had fun, and they were particularly impressed with my ability to stop a stray ball with my legs (Thank you Hapkido! Head kicks forever!).

At the end, they all crowded around me and bombarded me with rapid fire self-introductions. I staggered backwards overwhelmed, and the girls giggled happily at each other. One of them asked me, "Are you happy?" I couldn't contain myself and said, "Yes, I am happy. Very happy." Then she said, "Then give us candy!" All the girls chimed in, "Yeah! Give us candy! Candy!" and giggled away once more.

Oh, I love my life...

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!