A day at JHS: laugh til ya cry

I don’t know what happened today. Maybe it’s just the mood that I’ve been in for the last few days. But today was the most hilarious day ever. There wasn’t much to do this morning. But when I got to school I found Crazy Pink Shirt (the gym teacher whose name I don’t know and even if I did, would still call him Crazy Pink Shirt) in a fluorescent (I kid you not) orange pants, a lighter orange sweatshirt and a bright yellow shirt underneath. So just for today, Crazy Pink Shirt was Crazy Orange Pants.

After lunch it all went downhill. I had class in 1.1 with Sawada-sensei. The students had to write their answers on the board. Now the spacing between words in Japanese is no different from the spacing between characters, so Japanese kids don’t get how important spacing is in English. So this boy walks up to the board and writes:
Whose penis this? –It’s mine.

I’m in the back choking, coughing, spluttering and all but dying in an attempt not to cackle.
Later on in class the same boy asks me if I went to Osaka last night and I am like (to myself) Are you a goat, Osaka is like 8 hours train ride from here (on a bullet train!). So I reply no, and he is like I saw you. Then I realise he meant Osaka the restaurant in my town and not Osaka prefecture, which I unfortunately said out loud and caused all my students to laugh at me.
Then it was off to 3.2 with Baba sensei. 3.2 is the form with the Nothing-kid. He does NOTHING! Well, occasionally he will make a dart board and play darts on the floor, and he is apparently in the band, but obviously neither of these things affect his grades. He seems like he’s pretty smart if he half-tries, but he doesn’t. He’s just the sort of person who ent doing it if he ent interested. Of course, that don’t fly by me and I go and stand over him and make him do the work while his friends giggle. Baba-sensei might let him get away with it, but on my watch he will at least pretend to work.

Anyhow Baba-sensei asks Mr. Nothing in Japanese (because if you’re going to ask him a question you might as well ask him the only question that requires no knowledge of Japanese).

“Kansetsu no hantai wa?”
English: What is the opposite of kansetsu?

He looks back at Baba-sensei and with a complete deadpan face, replies:
“Kansetsu ja nai.”
English: not kansetsu.

So it wasn’t just me. The whole class erupted. And Claire gagged, spluttered and choked her way through the rest of the day. Apart from all the laughs today was a good day. I did some studying and I managed to explain stuff to my kids in Japanese. But I did the head thing that bugs me about how they teach English here. I explained to the kids in Japanese before I tried them English. Will try to be a better foreigner next time.