Not as late as Hosogai Kei 8D
I know it's March, two weeks past Singles Awareness Day now, and I've done a lot of different stuff since I last posted, but I think I'll make Valentine's Day my topic.
Because Valentine's Day is treated a little bit differently in America and Japan, I tried to do lessons on it in a lot of my classes. Turns out I actually don't get all that much freedom to pick the topics I teach when it comes to a lot of my teachers. For almost every age group at 3 out of 4 schools, there's one teacher who's really controlling and wants to plan everything for 2 grades worth of classes. It's kind of a relief in some ways, that I don't have to make lesson plans and prepare materials for those classes, but when I've got an awesome American cultural experience that I really want to share with the kids, it's rather annoying when I'm made to hold a conversation with a hand puppet instead. :/
My Valentine lesson was more about teaching the kids how to make pop-up heart cards than it was teaching them English. ^^; But I got to explain how in America, there's no such thing as White Day, presents go both ways between guys and girls, and kids often give Valentines to all of their family, friends, and classmates, then I made them make cards for "someone special". I did teach them important Valentine-y phrases in English, so they could write them in their cards, and I tried to give most of the instructions in English, so the lesson wasn't entirely unrelated to my subject. Different groups of kids took to it with more enthusiasm than others, but I made it as fun as I could. One of the 5th year girls actually gave me the card that she made in class! It's colored and has cute little drawings in it and English like "Best Teacher!!" and "I am HPPY?" written across it. XD
On the day of the 14th, I didn't really do anything special. My most Valentine-y activities happened the weekend before, when Paula and I went to Tokyo for 3 days. Friday was a holiday, which we mostly spent shopping and walking around in the snow, with a little bit of karaoke and a Tenimyu live viewing thrown in.
Saturday was MUCH more relevant to my topic. Paula and I met up with tokyo_heathen at a Valentine event, featuring Bancho, Ryuuko, and their 3rd wheel Shimizu Ryoutarou. Those boys are all from Tenimyu if you didn't already know. Paula has a more comprehensive report of the event (as well as the following Sunday's Baka Pair cosplay pictures) here, but for those of you who are too lazy to click links, I'll post a list of my favorite moments:
-The boys pretending to be a Korean pop band and dancing around so stupidly that Ryuuko broke his shoe
-Shimizu getting black stuff on his face from the mic and leaving the stage without warning, in order to fix it
-General ganging up on Bancho (including but certainly not limited to: making fun of his stupid hair, calling him a gorilla, forcefully stuffing a banana in his mouth, AND MORE!)
-Staff coming out to steal Ryuuko's broken shoe and fix it backstage
-Staff coming out to give Bancho some tissues (because there was banana mush on his face) and then waiting with palms open, for Bancho to give the dirty tissues back
-Ryuuko pretending to be Bancho's mom
-Ryuuko pretending to be a girl with a Valentine crush on Bancho
-Ryuuko pretending to be a voyeuristic tree
-Shimizu making weird faces and chatting with the audience while we waited our turns to take a picture with all the guys (just stuff like "Can you hear me?" "Are you bored yet?" "I'm funny, right? 8D"). He paid special attention to the side with foreigners~.
-Getting a hug from each of those semi-famous goofs and telling them "WEARE (We are) Happy Valentine's Day" (this will make more sense later)
-Watching Ryuuko do crotch shots in some of the girls' pictures and seeing Bancho trying to cover up the offending crotch with his hands.
-Getting an encore performance of the song they wrote together, WEARE, during which the audience got to sing along, the guys flubbed the lyrics, they started running through the aisles of the audience, and Paula and I (and some Japanese chick next to me, but she doesn't count) were the only people there to get high-fives, which came from Shimizu.
END
Sunday, Paula and I did Baka Pair (Yuuji and Koharu from TeniPuri) cosplay at the TFT Building in Odaiba and exchanged chocolates. I got poop shaped chocolate! :D And I'd talk more about it, but I don't have my pictures sorted and loaded online, so it doesn't feel worth it. Sorry. XD I'd rather talk about boys with crushes. ♥
Kef tells me that little boys wanting to marry you is a fact of being female and a teacher in elementary school. This has certainly proven true in my case. Between my 4 elementary schools, and just as many kindergarten/daycares, I can think of at least 7 boys ages 5 to 9 with adorable little crushes. Plus, there's a handful of older ones who like to be cheeky, little flirts.
One of the cutest offenders was just a kindergartner. All the other kids in his class were asking me question like my favorite color and favorite animal. This kid stood up and asked me, "好きな彼氏は誰ですか。 （Who's your favorite boyfriend?)" After laughing for about a minute, I told him that I don't have one, and he got hearts in his eyes. He was following me around and holding my hand for the rest of the day. It was so cute!!!
I've got a couple other boys who really like to draw pictures with me and some who spend all their time before and after class talking to me about Kamen Rider. One wouldn't stop trying to tell me how white onions are wedding food and then just about pissed himself in joy when he got to shake my hand.
In the cheeky category, I had some interesting comments back when I was still doing my self-introductions. One kid tried to get all the other boys to stand up and asked me who was the most "icky." Then I had another boy ask me if I had a boyfriend. When I said no, he asked if I had a girlfriend. That was another one that had me laughing my ass off. When I again said no, he asked me what my "type" is. I said I like people above the age of 20, so he doesn't have a chance.
And then there's hot teacher, Kakegawa-sensei, in a category all his own, though he's been as flirty and awkward as some of my students, on the rare occasions I get to talk with him outside of class. The first time he saw me, I was tripping over my shoes at the entrance hall. I think he's embarrassed himself more than that since then, though. He sucks at English, but he tries really hard to use it with me. It could just be that he's nervous around me, but when he tried to explain that he wanted to talk about Wednesday's lesson on the following Tuesday, he messed up and said every day of the week except for Friday and Saturday. And then we talked about the weather.
What amuses me most is that he always tries to get his kids to flatter me by mistranslating their Japanese. Example: the way to say "Please come to my classroom," is evidently "You're very beautiful. Follow me." The girl he was trying to convince of that didn't believe him, so I said, "It's okay. He's a crazy teacher," and told her the right words to say.
Last week, he got out this sticker sheet of weird Japanese gnome things and asked me if I knew what they were. I told him that I'd seen them around but didn't understand them, so he explained to me where all the different ugly gnomes live and then offered one of the stickers to me. I put it on my pencil case. The kids in class noticed it (of course, the nosy little brats ♥), so he happily informed them all that I really like gnomes.
I think the kids are catching on to the flirting a little bit. When I offered the winner of Simon says a Valentine sticker, they all pointed at him and started yelling things like, "Oooohh~~ Bet you want that~!" They don't approve of the match, though, because they still yell at him to stand back, if he ever gets too close to me. It's a shame I'm too rational to easily fall for one of my coworkers in Kanra, though I wouldn't say no if he asked me out for coffee~.
Got about 2 and a half weeks left until the end of the term. Before joining JET I never thought I'd say it, but I miss middle school, and I look forward to going back! Teaching at the elementary school is cuteness everyday, but also a lot of work. Those kids wear me out~.
Because Valentine's Day is treated a little bit differently in America and Japan, I tried to do lessons on it in a lot of my classes. Turns out I actually don't get all that much freedom to pick the topics I teach when it comes to a lot of my teachers. For almost every age group at 3 out of 4 schools, there's one teacher who's really controlling and wants to plan everything for 2 grades worth of classes. It's kind of a relief in some ways, that I don't have to make lesson plans and prepare materials for those classes, but when I've got an awesome American cultural experience that I really want to share with the kids, it's rather annoying when I'm made to hold a conversation with a hand puppet instead. :/
My Valentine lesson was more about teaching the kids how to make pop-up heart cards than it was teaching them English. ^^; But I got to explain how in America, there's no such thing as White Day, presents go both ways between guys and girls, and kids often give Valentines to all of their family, friends, and classmates, then I made them make cards for "someone special". I did teach them important Valentine-y phrases in English, so they could write them in their cards, and I tried to give most of the instructions in English, so the lesson wasn't entirely unrelated to my subject. Different groups of kids took to it with more enthusiasm than others, but I made it as fun as I could. One of the 5th year girls actually gave me the card that she made in class! It's colored and has cute little drawings in it and English like "Best Teacher!!" and "I am HPPY?" written across it. XD
On the day of the 14th, I didn't really do anything special. My most Valentine-y activities happened the weekend before, when Paula and I went to Tokyo for 3 days. Friday was a holiday, which we mostly spent shopping and walking around in the snow, with a little bit of karaoke and a Tenimyu live viewing thrown in.
Saturday was MUCH more relevant to my topic. Paula and I met up with tokyo_heathen at a Valentine event, featuring Bancho, Ryuuko, and their 3rd wheel Shimizu Ryoutarou. Those boys are all from Tenimyu if you didn't already know. Paula has a more comprehensive report of the event (as well as the following Sunday's Baka Pair cosplay pictures) here, but for those of you who are too lazy to click links, I'll post a list of my favorite moments:
-The boys pretending to be a Korean pop band and dancing around so stupidly that Ryuuko broke his shoe
-Shimizu getting black stuff on his face from the mic and leaving the stage without warning, in order to fix it
-General ganging up on Bancho (including but certainly not limited to: making fun of his stupid hair, calling him a gorilla, forcefully stuffing a banana in his mouth, AND MORE!)
-Staff coming out to steal Ryuuko's broken shoe and fix it backstage
-Staff coming out to give Bancho some tissues (because there was banana mush on his face) and then waiting with palms open, for Bancho to give the dirty tissues back
-Ryuuko pretending to be Bancho's mom
-Ryuuko pretending to be a girl with a Valentine crush on Bancho
-Ryuuko pretending to be a voyeuristic tree
-Shimizu making weird faces and chatting with the audience while we waited our turns to take a picture with all the guys (just stuff like "Can you hear me?" "Are you bored yet?" "I'm funny, right? 8D"). He paid special attention to the side with foreigners~.
-Getting a hug from each of those semi-famous goofs and telling them "WEARE (We are) Happy Valentine's Day" (this will make more sense later)
-Watching Ryuuko do crotch shots in some of the girls' pictures and seeing Bancho trying to cover up the offending crotch with his hands.
-Getting an encore performance of the song they wrote together, WEARE, during which the audience got to sing along, the guys flubbed the lyrics, they started running through the aisles of the audience, and Paula and I (and some Japanese chick next to me, but she doesn't count) were the only people there to get high-fives, which came from Shimizu.
END
Sunday, Paula and I did Baka Pair (Yuuji and Koharu from TeniPuri) cosplay at the TFT Building in Odaiba and exchanged chocolates. I got poop shaped chocolate! :D And I'd talk more about it, but I don't have my pictures sorted and loaded online, so it doesn't feel worth it. Sorry. XD I'd rather talk about boys with crushes. ♥
Kef tells me that little boys wanting to marry you is a fact of being female and a teacher in elementary school. This has certainly proven true in my case. Between my 4 elementary schools, and just as many kindergarten/daycares, I can think of at least 7 boys ages 5 to 9 with adorable little crushes. Plus, there's a handful of older ones who like to be cheeky, little flirts.
One of the cutest offenders was just a kindergartner. All the other kids in his class were asking me question like my favorite color and favorite animal. This kid stood up and asked me, "好きな彼氏は誰ですか。 （Who's your favorite boyfriend?)" After laughing for about a minute, I told him that I don't have one, and he got hearts in his eyes. He was following me around and holding my hand for the rest of the day. It was so cute!!!
I've got a couple other boys who really like to draw pictures with me and some who spend all their time before and after class talking to me about Kamen Rider. One wouldn't stop trying to tell me how white onions are wedding food and then just about pissed himself in joy when he got to shake my hand.
In the cheeky category, I had some interesting comments back when I was still doing my self-introductions. One kid tried to get all the other boys to stand up and asked me who was the most "icky." Then I had another boy ask me if I had a boyfriend. When I said no, he asked if I had a girlfriend. That was another one that had me laughing my ass off. When I again said no, he asked me what my "type" is. I said I like people above the age of 20, so he doesn't have a chance.
And then there's hot teacher, Kakegawa-sensei, in a category all his own, though he's been as flirty and awkward as some of my students, on the rare occasions I get to talk with him outside of class. The first time he saw me, I was tripping over my shoes at the entrance hall. I think he's embarrassed himself more than that since then, though. He sucks at English, but he tries really hard to use it with me. It could just be that he's nervous around me, but when he tried to explain that he wanted to talk about Wednesday's lesson on the following Tuesday, he messed up and said every day of the week except for Friday and Saturday. And then we talked about the weather.
What amuses me most is that he always tries to get his kids to flatter me by mistranslating their Japanese. Example: the way to say "Please come to my classroom," is evidently "You're very beautiful. Follow me." The girl he was trying to convince of that didn't believe him, so I said, "It's okay. He's a crazy teacher," and told her the right words to say.
Last week, he got out this sticker sheet of weird Japanese gnome things and asked me if I knew what they were. I told him that I'd seen them around but didn't understand them, so he explained to me where all the different ugly gnomes live and then offered one of the stickers to me. I put it on my pencil case. The kids in class noticed it (of course, the nosy little brats ♥), so he happily informed them all that I really like gnomes.
I think the kids are catching on to the flirting a little bit. When I offered the winner of Simon says a Valentine sticker, they all pointed at him and started yelling things like, "Oooohh~~ Bet you want that~!" They don't approve of the match, though, because they still yell at him to stand back, if he ever gets too close to me. It's a shame I'm too rational to easily fall for one of my coworkers in Kanra, though I wouldn't say no if he asked me out for coffee~.
Got about 2 and a half weeks left until the end of the term. Before joining JET I never thought I'd say it, but I miss middle school, and I look forward to going back! Teaching at the elementary school is cuteness everyday, but also a lot of work. Those kids wear me out~.