Japan really does have nice people; funny kids; and creative high school students

It wasn't this particular Family Mart that I was at, but this is the convenience store that I went to when....oh..you'll see..keep reading :-D

So I teach all age ranges at my wonderful school of Tottori Amity, but there is one class that is pretty unique. It's not necessarily my favorite, but it does make me laugh. I teach three 3-year-olds for 45 minutes every Thursday (mokuyobi). All three of them are unique in their own way. We have one boy, named Atsuki (AHH-T-SOO-KEE) who loves loves loves the Bullet Train, or the Shinkansen (same thing). And he is by far the smartest one in the class. However, at times, if he decides he's just done learning for the day he starts rotating his arms like a train wheel and starts making *chckk chckk chckk* sounds while walking around the room.

Then we have Tomonori (TOH-MOH-NOH-REE) who likes to jump on me and bite my shirt. Yesterday he was actually running really fast and jumping into me as I was trying to sit on the floor and teach the children "Big dog! Little dog! Big fish! Little fish! Yellow duck!" He was more interested in smiling really wide, laughing loudly and running around.

Then we have Ayumi (AH-YOU-ME he's a boy). This kid literally has pulled out a menu from some sort of restaurant and has gotten both of the other boys to be more interested in that, than my lesson. So yesterday I was trying to teach "That". So I grabbed his menu and threw it across the room and yelled "That!" and they said "THAT!". So it's all fun.

But the funniest part of the lesson is asking them, "How are you?" Because they have learned, from my Mario Emotion Faces that Amy made for me my first week of training, "Surprised, Happy, and Angry." And it's so funny, if one of them says they are "Angry" the other one picks "Surprised" and the other one picks "Happy" And they do the motions with the emotions as well.

For example, I asked Ayumi "How are you?" and he says "AAAHHHNNGGREEE!!" and I aksed Atsuke "How are you?" and he put up his hands and made his mouth into an "O" and said "SURPRISED!" and I asked Tomonori, "How are you?" and he smiled and said "HAHPEEE!!" I love those kids, it's too bad they aren't signing up for the new school year. I'm going to miss Atsuki's fo-hawk.

Ok so I figured something out. Japanese people are as nice as I heard they were. A few days ago I went to the convenience store on my lunch break and got some food and some coffee to keep me awake and energized for the rest of the day with my kids. As I walk in, a 60 something year old man (rokujuu) stops me and says "Why are you in Tottori?" I could tell that's NOT what he wanted to ask me, but I answered his question anyway. I showed him my Amity nametag and said "I work at Amity, I teach English." His face looked as if that's not what he wanted to know, but it was still an interesting fact. So I then told him, "I'm from America" and he said "OHHHH AMERICA!" And then I told him I don't live far from where we were at and that I'm staying in Tottori (just to re-iterate one more time). And he looked at me and nodded his head. Well I got my stuff and walked out. As I was headed to my bike he stopped me and said, "Do you like wine?" and I was so shocked by the question that I had no idea how to answer. Not because I didn't know if I liked wine or not but I didn't want this guy to think we were about to go drink wine RIGHT then...I was on my lunch break!!! And then he saw me stammer so he tried to rephrase; he said "Whiskey?" and I decided I'd just answer truthfully, even though I had never had whiskey I understood what he was asking and I said, "Yes, yes I do." And I really wanted to ask "Why?" But before I could even decide if I was going to ask that he handed me a plastic bag with two canned wine coolers in them and said, "Gift! GIFT!" and I was just blown away. I quickly said, "Oh! ARIGATO GOZAIMASU!!" Which is "Thank you very much (not the Oh, that was just me saying "Oh"). And then he walked back into the store. He didn't work there, he didn't know me from before, he just gave me a gift and went on about his business.

I laughed all the way back to Amity and was amazed at what had just happened. I told my co-workers when I got back and even they were a little puzzled. One of them said, "Yes, we do give gifts in Japan...but we give gifts to people we KNOW." I said to her, "Yeah, that's what I figured, I couldn't believe a stranger gave me a gift let alone ALCOHOL!" Hilarity.

And finally, one more funny story from the ever so growing list. I have a class with High school students who are 15 and 16. One of our activities was to look at four different pictures. One had a lady who had a paint bucket on her head, one had a man who was scared, another had a little girl crying next to a bus stop, and another one had a man hanging from a window sill. The point of the activity was to get them to make up reasons for what was going on in the picture. Well...when we got to the man hanging from a window sill, I was not expecting to hear what they had to say. The entire class is girls save one boy. So there are 5 students total. I had given the other three pictures to three individual students and as to not leave anyone out I let these two girls Akiha and Kei (AH-KEE-HA and KAY) talk to each other and try to figure out why this man was hanging from this window sill. They spoke mostly in Japanese when explaining to each other and then tried to tell me in English. Well it was difficult for them so one girl, at the coaxing of her peers, drew a picture on the board of a man and woman in love, and then another girl OUTSIDE of the heart. If you are confused I will explain.

Basically they were trying to tell me that the husband was hanging out with his girlfriend (or doing other things with her...) and his wife walked in on them and so his wife pushed him out of the window and that's why he was hanging there. That made my day, I thought it was hilarious. Aren't my kids creative?

Ok, well that is all for now. I hope you all enjoyed these stories, post comments if you want!!

Like I told a friend of mine yesterday (JESSICA!!!), I feel like someone took all the essence of me, consideration, love, respect, joy, happiness, smiling, kindness, politeness...and made it into a country. Then Jessica told me, "Have fun in JERpan!" I love it!!

I'm loving JERpan!! hahaha!! yay! SAGOY (great).

-Jeremy aka Jerpan