Today's Adventures

Today, I went out and bought a memory stick for my cell phone- from now on, we're picture-ready. There's a block of pictures below, but bear in mind they're in reverse chronological order. Start at the bottom, work back up.

Ready? Cool. So today was preparation for Culture Festival at school, which seemingly consists of song-and-dance numbers. My rockstar students are going to play- and I'm so very proud of them, for reasons you can see below (first picture!), as the rock-out horns continue to make an appearance. After that, there's a choral contest on Thursday, making this week another strenuous three-day-workweek (I only teach Monday, Tuesday, and Friday- life is rough).

Today's big after-work adventure: I crashed a buffet. They had no idea what was coming- there is perhaps a prophecy, but it was merely whispered among the elder kitchen staff. I went Godzilla on that thing. To quote Dennis Hopper (via the Gorillaz): "There were no screams. There was no time."

Tonight, two very nice people (who could speak no English) came by and presented me with my census sheet. They're coming back to pick it up on Monday. If Dockett has to fill one out too, I think the census data for "average height" might skew upwards a few points this year. The whole thing's in Kanji- so I understand perhaps ten percent of it- but my ever-helpful coordinator led me through the process. It's actually pretty cool- they're running an ad series over here trying to encourage census participation that shows the token Western-looking guy sitting traditional seiza style in a kimono, with the text "Everyone who lives in Japan is a part of our country's future." in English, and again in Japanese, printed across the bottom. Yay for inclusion.

Other than that, and the picture series below, I've got a whole lot of nothing today. The students are hilarious- I got flicked off for the first time today, and it was the most innocently confused situation in the world. Honestly, it went about like this: "Hi Andoryu-Sensei! Hi!" (prominent wave of a middle finger) "Hi!"

Try explaining that one to a thirteen year-old girl. Just try. When you're surrounded by twelve and thirteen year-old boys who are putting their feet up next to yours so see how much bigger you are, and constantly rubbing your arm hair and touching the hair on your head and pulling your face down to look you in the eye ("oooooo.... blue...."), and this girl rushes up brandishing her middle finger like she just found a silver dollar laying on the floor, try explaining that that's a magical bad finger and that we don't do that in America.

That's pretty much the only explanation I can give them. It's bad- we don't do that in America- please, just don't do it. This applies to all manner of things- I rue the day they decided to put MTV on satellite, as some of this vocabulary CERTAINLY didn't come from any source I provided.

I teach the adults real English, sometimes. I gently steer them away from the slang that sounds dated, bring them into the 20th century (they keep using "shall", for reasons I'll never understand), but the profanity's such a hard thing to use right that I just don't touch it. I wouldn't mind if they swore in context, but the creative ways they come up with to play with these words are GREAT- I'm just not allowed to laugh at it. If I laugh, it encourages them- and that means they'll use it more often- dangerous. Very dangerous.

Yipes.

Rock out.