Tip of the Iceberg

Had a student this week who simply refused to do the 'application' stage of the lesson. I had two students in the class, both women, and one simply refused to create a story using the limited info that was given. She started after a few minutes of hesistation with "My friend...", continued to hesistate for a few minutes more and then simply said "Finished."
The lesson was focusing on the use of 'them', 'he', 'she', 'they', 'it' etc and be able to identify who/what each term was referring to.

I simply had to get the other student to do it, and then had the refusing one to report back on what the story from the 2nd student was. Oddly enough, she reported back fine. I'm guessing that isn't going to be the worst student I'll ever have, and she wasn't even truly bad. Just didn't have an imagination, methinks.

I've had that stutterer for who we all simply had to wait for to finish each of his sentences (or single words). That was a long lesson... was short for time at the end because of it too.
Had a 'lesson' where the lady simply wanted me to proof-read some papers (which was an english story-line summary of the anime Spirited Away) and so I did.

I met the 'Crazy Lady' in Voice too. (Also known as the 'Crazy Dog Lady', because I'm told she used to bring her dog in, but doesn't anymore.)
There were about 5 people in the Voice room when I walked in. I asked how everyone was and she was the first to respond. BANG! And she was in charge simply because no one else could get a word in. She told us all about her hair salon that sounded like it'd gone bust; all about her imminent divorce with her husband because he wants to return to live in the country and she wants to stay in Kobe; about the primary school students who used to call her 'Oba-chan' (and she'd repeated Oba-chan 5-6 times if ever she felt like saying it at least once); about a pregnant customer she once had in her hair salon and had multi-layered colouring in her long hair and wanted just the roots to be redone.

So yeah... exciting stuff.
Everyone else in the room basically sat back and tried to deceifer her bad english that was constantly puntuated with a string of Japanese that she'd want translated.

Anyways... Voice is usually pretty good and can just sit back and chat about anything.


I had a class a week or two back where, as I left the classroom, the two (young) women in there burst out with a loud and drawn out 'kawaii' (literally 'cute'). The 3rd student was an older guy had a good laugh. I try not to let it go to my head, of course. I admit it was a great lesson though, lots of laughing and fun throughout it.

My landland let out a surprised 'wakai' (literally 'young') when I was filling out some paperwork and she saw my birthdate. On that line of thought, I got the same reaction from a few workmates when they asked how old I was and had guessed 26-27. Gives me the shits... but I've had a few decent compliments come of it. But still...

On the train on the way home from the football last weekend there was a group of 3 boys. One of who decided to tell us, in Japanese, that Duncan has a big penis and he himself had a small one. Strange kid... Wes and Hiro tuned in and most of what they said went over my head, but I caught the general gist of it.

Dunno if I'll ever get used to people, especially kids, just staring at me. Above the age of about 10 they usually avert their look, but any younger and they just keep staring back at you. I've a primary school right next door here at Takarazuka and, since I leave around 3:30pm, I pass them all on my way to work. Having 20-30 kids walk past you and every one of them stare at you is extremely unnerving. I had one kid one day give me a 'Hello' and then let out a hysterical laugh when I replied as he ran off.

That's just the tip of the iceberg .

Supposed to be a typhoon coming tonight, but we'll see how accurate that is or what the Japanese definition of typhoon is. The suns died behind clouds a few hours ago and the wind's started to pick up. So I'll see soon enough.

Thursday's getting closer.