Feeling Useful

The last few days have been a lot of fun. On Wednesday and Thursday, a group of international students came to our school. My 2^nd year junior high students gave presentations about Japanese culture-anime, pop, food, architecture etc. One group even gave a presentation about natural disasters. It all went smoothly and I felt useful for the first time in months. It was also fun to meet a bunch of new people from all over the world.

The most enjoyable aspect for me was to watch them being tortured by the invasive questions of my students. “Do you have boyfriend”, “Do you love me”, “Do you like x-senseii” etc. I got a mischievous thrill, watching my students torture them in the same way they used to torture me. In the end, I had to ban all boyfriend-related questions!

In fact, I feel like I’ve made some real breakthroughs with the students recently. I feel like they are finally beginning to feel comfortable around me and they are increasingly approaching me, rather than having to be harassed to speak English. Admittedly, a fair proportion of this attention is of the teenage girl “KAWAII!” type, but that’s part and parcel of being a male foreign language teacher in Japan I think. You can utilize it to a certain extent to chat to students who might otherwise be shy of you, even if those conversations do sometimes descend into giggles and an inability to speak.

I’m very excited about Yakushima, though the weather forecast is slightly worrying. Yakushima is known for its high levels of rainfall and next week looks as if it will be no exception. We’ve decided to rent a car, which means we will have a fair bit of flexibility and respite if it really does bucket down. But I drive so rarely that I’m a bit nervous behind the wheel. I do like the freedom it gives you though-driving around the hills of Shikoku and across the Seto-Island Bridge (with Hefner in the background) was a truly memorable experience.