Tales of the Yabuchu

Various stories from Yabuchu as of late:

-The other day at lunch I was STUFFED from the hugest kyushoku ever, and was telling my JTE that my onaka was ippai. She asked me how to say it in English, which worried me a bit, seeing as how she is the 3nensei JTE and should know how to say “I’m full.” I told her, and she responded, “Oh, so you say, ‘my stomachache is fooru?” I was like “um, just ‘I’m full’ is okay.” Ummmmmmmmm……perhaps she should know the difference between stomach and stomachache. Sigh.

-I assumed that every school is like mine on special ceremony days, but apparently not, so I will share the tale of my ghetto-ass school. All students in Japan are required to have black hair. Well, or brown, if they are weird and have brown hair, hehe. Anyway, they aren’t allowed to dye it. However, a lot of the students do so here and get away with it for the most part, until we have a special event such as opening or closing ceremony, singing contest, graduation, etc. Apparently other schools just tell the kids to dye their hair back to black, and the kids listen to the teachers. Here at Yabu, however, the kids can’t be given such responsibility, so we grab them, drag them into the staffroom, and hold them down while we spray their hair black. The morning of every event, a teacher will bring a box of black hair spray into the staffroom in preparation.

Graduation was even more amusing than ever, as I witnessed two kids being forced to wash their hair in the staffroom sink (um, actually that wasn’t so amusing, because I get my water and tea from that sink, EWW. Thank god for the tea lady being bored and cleaning it like every five minutes). The funniest moment by far was when one of the 3nensei sluts (who somehow has gotten away with a nose piercing for like six months?! Hello, I was forced to take out my earring! Bastards!) was dragged in the staffroom, covered in newspapers, and held down while a teacher sprayed her hair. Her look of anger, combined with newspapers hanging from her shoulders was far too much. I SO wanted a picture of it, but decided she probably wouldn’t be very happy with me. Hehe.

-There is this one “bad boy” 3nensei who I literally saw maybe three or four times in the last six months of school. He never acted up when I saw him, but I could tell that I would have hated him when he was an 1 and 2nensei. Anyway, he apparently always skipped classes, as I really had no idea who he was or what class he was supposed to be in. He was at graduation along with a girl who I had NEVER seen, who apparently was a 3nensei, as she graduated too (more details on the fucked-up Japanese education system at Cindy’s blog). She looks like the female version of him, but I think they might be dating, which is VERY gross in my book. Anyway, I pretty much never saw them at school, but the DAY after graduation, they show up (in “cool” sweats, big surprise!) and hang out in the staffroom for like an hour! What the hell! If you didn’t ever come to school while you were a student, don’t come back and hang out after you graduate!

-Japanese kids love word finds more than anything in the world. If you ever want to get kids to focus on English, give them a word find and they won’t talk for an hour. I taught my worst 1nensei class today by myself, which would usually be a recipe for disaster, but they were quieter than they've ever been thanks to the word find. Ah, I rabu rabu me some word finds!