I Am Dango

A rare view of Ontake-san and green hills.

So, it's been a while since I last posted, and in the meantime I've been collecting all this material which has, in that meantime, gotten either forgotten or irrelevant. In any event, in response to recent encouragement, I hereby give you

"Why I Like My Job "

1. Last week, while the Yet-to-Be-Named-School 3nensei and some teachers, including the English teacher, were in Tokyo for their school trip, I got to teach one of the 1nensei classes on my own. I prepped them to play the English version of Quien Soy? - where one person thinks of a famous person, and the class asks yes or no questions until they can figure out who it is. It was so cute for several reasons:

• "Ugly" is a fun term to learn anyway, but they insisted on saying it "Oguri," which is a last name, and, incidently, one of their teachers' names.
  
• When I made up a little chant (Gambaaaatte kudasa-i!) to encourage the next players in our practice game of "Swat!", the kids copied me and clapped and chanted along.
• They totally got into the game, and were not afraid to get up and think of a person or character.
• After the class was over, they kept playing amongst each other - in English!

3. I love checking notebooks!

Heart with Abbey

My favorite notebook.


I'll let you find the treasure yourself...

4. Yesterday at my Genki Country School, we did an activity with the 1nensei where they had to draw a tricky picture and ask "What is this?" so their partners could guess what it was. Copying my example, that looked like this...



...one of the boys drew the same thing, but using my name!!!

On the manga wall at my Yet-To-Be-Named School
May I remind you that these are 7-9th graders.

I'm still waiting for mine to blossom. I think they're coming...

More from the manga wall:
Renji and Gin

5. Today at GSC we taught the kids to say "Whattaya gonna do __?" and "I'm gonna ___."
And they loved it!

Flowers from the YTBN School vestibule.

A post-mortem image of some daisies we dumped on Monday.

A close-up of manjamonja, the local name for a tree whose real name I know not.

6. At the end of one of said classes, a student asked the teacher if I could have lunch with them.

7. During lunch, the eager student asked me a few questions:

Him: Are you Makudonarudo? (McDonald's)
Me: Yes, I like McDonald's.
Him (with help from the kid next to him): Do you know Chicken McNuggets?
Me: Yes, I do?
Him (still with help): Which do you like better, mustard sauce or barbecue sauce?
Me: Honey sauce!
Him: Are you dango?
Me (making the shape of a dango around my body): No, I'm not!
Him (with help): Do you like dango?
Me: Yes, I do!

Dango

Yes, I work here.
Manjamonja at YTBN School

8. I love to check notebooks!

In response to my letter saying that I'm not a good soccer player, but I love to play!

First line of my response, and I quote:
"Ummm... Yuki... Golden Week was three weeks ago!"

9. As it was raining, I did indoor souji with the Asunaro (Special Ed.) class today. Hiroshige, my favorite student this year, and a whiz at English, brought his dry-erase board over with a picture on it.
Him: It's a question.
Me: Ok.
Him (showing me the picture, and trying to contain himself): Do you know this?
Me: Yes, I do!
Him: Say this in English!
Me: It's poop!

At which point he laughed the cutest, sincere, tickled laugh, which made me laugh, which made him laugh, which made me laugh even harder. Especially since we were talking about poop, which is not only a funny topic, but a funny word! Oh, Hiroshige, you are a gem! That chuckle stayed in my oven all afternoon, causing me outbursts later at school... and at the bookstore...

While visiting a local manjamonja tree famous for being old, I enjoyed the surrounding scenery, including this rice field surrounded by wildflowers.

9. Grow Mushrooms. If you've never seen Ouran, I can't explain why it pleased me so that the students found this phrase amusing.

This is so going to school tomorrow. The 1nensei will be so happy they can read English!
That said, Zebra may want to revisit the hiring of their marketing department.

10. That's enough for today - it's my bedtime!