Tuesdays

My job is amazing. Tuesdays are my favorite. I teach at an elementary school. The teachers literally do all the work. They plan the lesson, show me when I walk in the door and I just go nuts. The more shamelessly foolish I act, the more the kids enjoy it. Today, we were teaching "shopping". The vocabulary was things like "Fried Chicken", "Apple Pie", "Orange Juice" and "French Fries". As I stood in front of the students, their eyes wide, trying to take in the strange looking american man, their preconceptions about foreigners is still a tofu like consistency. They haven't quite decided foreigners are awesome yet, or like their grandparents might have decided, a menace to the beautiful Japanese culture. I am the American people at this moment, I represent the whole.... So what do I do?

Act like an idiot of course. For each word on the board, I quickly thought of a ridiculous gesture. Like tiny robots that will someday take over Japan, the kids mirrored me exactly, stupid gesture and all. Most of the gestures didn't make sense but it definitely helped them remember the word. I found out later that most ALTs do this. We all have a reservoir of idiot gestures to help the elementary school kids remember the english word. Hysterical laughing would not do their reaction justice.

I walked into the elementary school one tuesday, camera in hand. These girls were showing me where to go, well as soon as I raised my camera the took off running as fast as they could.


The boys were slightly more warm to the camera. This kid is REALLY good at dodgeball.


Finally they all warmed up and were all ready for a few pictures. I kept telling that kid to be careful in japanese. He didn't listen. Luckily he didn't fall.


They started enjoying being photographed.


Then when I squatted to take this pic, they all did the same!


The kid all the way to right is Kento, he is so incredible at dodgeball. I'm pretty sure he can throw harder than me... And he comes up to my knee.


On one of the first days I worked at an elementary school, they had an assembly teaching the kids to march. It was basically a military sort of march. This is obviously in preparation to fight the impending robot war.


After that, I "teach" class, which means play games in english. This is a slap game, they class says "What fruit do you like?!" and i said "I LIKE (some fruit)!!!" and they have to slap it. The cheers were deafening from these tiny people.


Another brick biter lives school. They are so cute in their little hats.


At the end of the day, I sat in the office and sipped tea. I was reviewing the pictures I had taken that day on my camera when I heard muffled laughter, stifled in the way a "sneaky" child tries to do. I turned around and saw this:


Most of the Japanese male teachers I work with have a different idea of masculinity that the american ideal. They can safely act "feminine" to get a laugh or to help prove a point. No one would call them gay or girly. I think the japanese idea of masculinity is refreshingly lacking in macho idiot. At least as far as I can tell. This sort of generality is difficult to make.