I’ve realized that my memory isn’t good enough to write these blogs as rarely as I do and actually remember funny stories that I wanted to tell weeks or even months ago. However, from time to time, I get enough stories worth telling all at once and I can do what I can to write something semi-entertaining. Tonight was one of those times, and both of my funny situations came about in the same class from the same student. The first story doesn’t need much background info. The only important detail is that electronic Japanese-English dictionaries are owned by almost all of my students above high school level. While they’re really great for helping the students fill in the blanks in what they’re trying to say, sometimes their translation is …well, just not quite right. Tonight I have a student in her 60’s who’s father recently returned home from the hospital. He’s doing okay, but he has to be fed intravenously. She sets up his food drip for him twice a day, and she was telling me that the timing is actually pretty important. With a straight face, she said “If I feed him too fast, he’ll get…. (checking dictionary) the shits.” I had to explain to her that while it wasn’t quite wrong, it was inappropriate. Although, pretty funny.

The second story comes from the same woman. First off, in Japanese, there are a lot of words that come from English. A lot. Radio, cup, door, shower etc. Most of these words are basically the same pronunciation as english, just adapted to Japanese phonetics a little. For example “radio” sounds like “rahjioh” and “shower” sounds like”shawa.” Sometimes words which clearly come from English are pronounced as they’re written instead of based on the English pronunciation though. A few examples: “vinyl” goes to “bee-neel” (v is said like a b in Japanese), and “cook” goes to “cock” (hehe). This story has to do with the latter. My 60 something year old student went to the local movie theater this weekend for the first time. She told me the movie she saw was called 私と犬 (me and [my] dog). Trying to explain the movie’s plot to me, she said it is a collection of short stories. Again, with a totally straight face, she proclaimed proudly, “the first story is about dog cock.” At this point I couldn’t hold in my laughter, though I didn’t fully explain why. (What she meant to say was that it was about a dog COOK, meaning the family in the story hired a professional French cook to make gourmet meals for the dog.)

Anyway, just two more small stories with more lead-up than actual content, but hopefully enjoyable. Thanks for reading.

So since my last “funny quotes” post, there have been a few more things that I felt like sharing. Here’s a few that stuck out in my memory…

This isn’t so much of a funny quote as it is a funny story. One of my cutest students is a (just turned) 2 year old boy who not only doesn’t speak any English yet, but also speaks VERY minimal Japanese. He’s a bit shy, but a lot of fun. Recently, he went to Hawaii with his mom, who is also my student. When he got to the airport, he was terrified of all the foreigners, so to try and relax him, his mom told him they were all Scott. As she pointed to more and more people saying “look, it’s Scott!” he became more and more relaxed until he was totally okay. He came back to tell me (well, his mom told me) that he saw so many of me in Hawaii! He was so excited and it was adorable. Also, he’s finally started to at least understand some English, especially animal names. When we say “what does a gorilla do??” he responds by pounding his tiny little chest and going “ooooo.” Similarly, lions go “woaaarr,” dogs go “wanwan,” and owls say “whoooooooo.” Good times.

A similar cute story comes from my soon to be nephew, Michi. He is also 2 years old, but speaks plenty of Japanese and even a little English (hello, abc, 123, apple…). Maki’s sister was asking Michi “what is Maki’s fiance’s name??” and he thought about it for a second, then replied “ABC!” He was so proud, but his mom asked one more time. After thinking carefully, he confidently announced “apple!” I guess he figured I was foreign, so I must have some English name, and that was the only English he knows, so it seemed right to him! His brother Shin kindly corrected him “No, stupid- it’s Scott.” (In Japanese) but it was cute while it lasted.

Ok, so I guess this post was more about funny stories than funny quotes specifically, but whatever. There are plenty of other short funny stories that I can’t think of at the moment as well. I have inherited a class that loves trying to Kancho me (if you don’t know, google it), 5 year old girls who punch me in the ass every time I turn my back on them and little boys who will answer “poop” to almost any question as well as draw it anywhere they have space to draw.

I’ll post some more stories and quotes when they come to mind, but hope this is mildly entertaining for the time being.

So far, in my opinion, my updates have lacked anything mildly entertaining to anyone besides myself. I have, however, had lots of opportunities to write about funny or interesting things that have happened (of which there have been LOTS) and I simply forgot to write or forgot what the exact stories were before I could write them. Well, finally, I’ve put together a few recent quotes from friends and students that might be enjoyable to more people than just me. Most of these people are Hello School students/staff ranging from 7 years old to 50ish. Tano, however, is Maki’s (and now my) friend who’s English is extremely limited, but her personality is uniquely bubbly and funny regardless of what language she speaks (or tries to speak). Takeshi is a 32 year old advanced (private lesson) English student who has, what I think, is one of the funniest personality of all my students. Anyway, here we go:

Tano: Hisashiburi wa..? (Asking how to say it in English)
Me: “It’s been a while!”
Tano: izbunawolo! (huge proud smile on her face)

Tano: GOOD NIGHT!! NICE DREAM!!! NICE DREAM LOOK!! (We tell her ‘look’ is wrong) LOOK LOOK!!

Me: What time do you work tomorrow?
Takeshi: 8 AM
Me: Oh man, let’s see.. I have to work at… 4:40 PM
Takeshi: PM??! How can I say this.. uh… ‘fuck you’?

(playing Guess Who)
Muku: Do you have… a… black face?
Masao: Yes!
Muku: AH!

(A cold night, sitting outside of Starbucks)
Tano: Oh no! Nose water! (snot, directly translated from Japanese)

(I came in halfway through this conversation… I think.)
Shoko: Etsuko has 64 balls.
Me: What???
Shoko: You know hachikin? (Famed Kochi local woman are called ‘eight balls’ because they’re as strong as 4 men, especially when it comes to drinking) Well etsuko has 64 testicles. If you fight her, you need 32 men!
Me: …weirdest work conversation ever.
(a little while later)
Etsuko: I don’t have 64 balls, I’m a nice woman!
Me: Anything you say! Please don’t hurt me!
(a little later again)
Shoko: Scott, Etsuko has 64, but I have 100 BALLS. (Keep in mind this conversation is in the middle of the work office, in front of students of all ages and English understanding levels.) You need 50 men to fight me.
Luke: What if some men only have one ball?
Shoko: Or 3!
Luke: Yeah, how does that work?
Shoko: Wait, do you know anyone with 3 testicles?
Me and Luke: uh…. no?
Shoko: Well, it doesn’t matter, I have 100 balls!

(Kanae is 7 years old. If anything, in my forgetfulness, I might have dumbed down her English here. She’s quite the fun student.)
Kanae: My aunt went to Russia!
Me: Really? Did you go with her?
Kanae: Noooo.
Me: Do you want to visit Russia some day?
Kanae: NO WAY. Russian people are big, scary and dangerous. I’d be killed in the first day!

(I was having a somewhat normal conversation with a few Chuo High School students, when another punk boy came to ‘join us.’)
Punk Kid: Hello.
Me: Hey, what’s up?
Punk Kid: Uh… uhh… (turning to girl next to him, speaking Japanese) how do you say ‘first time’?
Me: (understanding his Japanese and thinking he is talking about having seen me and one of the new Hello School teachers, for the first time, the previous weekend at the mall.) “First time.”
Punk Kid: Ya! First… uh, first time- no no… You. First time sex. When?
Me: Oh, of course that’s what you’d ask. I’m not answering that.
Punk Kid: OHHH (in Japanese) he has lots of sex! (Again, he turns to the girl next to him, and in Japanese asks) how do you say ‘how many times’?
Me: here we go…
Punk Kid: ONE WEEK, how many times sex?
Me: You know, I’m your teacher! You’re a student! We can’t talk about this.
Punk Kid: NO NO. Friends, friends. One week, how many sex?
Me: No.
Punk Kid: EVERY DAY! TEACHER SEX EVERY DAY! PLAYBOYYY!
Me: This is my official notice on giving up teaching these students anything.

Takeshi: I went to China last week, sorry I was absent.
Me: How was it?
Takeshi: HORRIBLE! China is just terrible. Bad smell, bad food, bad people, dirty. China was terrible.
—-
(another conversation)
Me: I think you’re a very modest person.
Takeshi: What is ‘modest’?
Me: Uhm, do you know ‘conceited’?
Takeshi: No.. uhm…. (looks up conceited in an English/Japanese dictionary. He immediately has an epiphany.) OH! Chinese people!

Hope you enjoyed this. I’ll be trying to post more like it soon!

I have a few more small stories from this week at work, so I thought I’d write them now before I forget about them. Actually this is entirely about today, not “my week.” Whatever…

Saturdays for me mean waking up much earlier than the rest of the week (7:30) and driving about 20 minutes from my house to teach some elementary students in a nearby town (my normal work place is a 2 minute bicycle ride from my apartment and start time is no earlier than 11, unless I go to a local high school/junior high school). Although early and more out of the way than a normal work day, these three classes are some of my best. The students range from 6 years old to 12, but in almost all cases they are some of the hardest studying students out of all Hello School’s students. To top this off, they all have personalities that make the classes go by just as quickly and easily as their willingness to work does. They always do their best to have not just correct answers, but interesting ones; they aim for perfect pronunciation; they never take the easy way out of any challenge and they clearly appreciate any effort that I put into making the class funny or interesting for them. I’m pretty sure a teacher could ask for almost nothing more.

These classes do, however, sometimes manage to get me smiling even more than my simple enjoyment of 3 classes that run almost on autopilot. For starters, my “Japanese mom,” Etsuko always joins me in these classes and my small conversation time with her in between classes and during workbook time always puts me in a good mood. The students always give me little confidence boosters as well, such as “My teacher is Scott, I like him a lot, he’s fun!” in a speech to hundreds of students and parents. They’ve also given me lots of presents for my birthday, halloween, christmas and valentines day. Three separate students have even had to switch from Mama (the town these classes are in) to Hello Shcool private lessons, and have BEGGED their parents to find a time in their family’s schedule when they could come to Hello School so that they could be fit into my schedule instead of changing teachers. My last Mama class of the day is two 6 year old girls who I’m convinced are the #1 and #2 cutest little girls in all of Japan. Every week when they come to class they climb on me and ask me to play tag or some other game with them. Today, one of the girls who had been absent for the past few weeks returned to class, and when seeing me, RAN and JUMPED up on me and hugged me for at least 15 seconds. I’m a little bit curious if she has no father figure in her life and if that might have something to do with her liking of me, but she seems like a happy girl so I’m not too concerned, and it makes me feel like a successful teacher since she likes me so much. She did the same thing when I saw her at the movie theater a couple of months ago, which got me a lot of weird looks from old Japanese men.

Finishing up my day at Hello School is a class of 3 girls and one boy. The boy is a bit silly but he has fun and is a generally good kid. The three girls are really smart but as shy as anyone I’ve ever seen. Yet, at the same time, they’re the opposite of shy in many ways. It’s really hard to explain other than they seem to be conditionally, irrationally, off and on shy. Even when being shy though, I can tell they’re enjoying my class, I’ve seen solid improvement in their English and they have become more comfortable than before at least. This class includes the girl who had to pretend to tie her shoe to get the courage to give me a Valentine’s present after class (from my last post).

Anyway, long story short: my Saturday classes are some of the best classes I could have asked for and they leave me with a great feeling and sense of accomplishment going into the weekend. I thought maybe 1 or 2 people who would read this would appreciate it- especially anyone who has tried teaching and actually cares what the students think about them or what kind of effect you might have on them, personally and educationally.

After typing this, as usual, I feel it’s incredibly boring. So, sorry. I typed it already, I’m posting it.