Shou-gakusei Antics

Now, it’s time for a short story describing some lunch-time student antics at Oya Higashi Elementary School.

If you’ve kept on this blog, you might remember that I eat lunch with the students at school, with a different class every day. (If you don’t remember, I don’t blame you – I haven’t been good about updating.)

Last week, the Kyoto-sensei (Vice Principal) came to visit the class I ate with on Wednesday, Class 4 of Grade 4. The Kyoto-sensei is the tough guy who takes care of a lot of the disciplining of students when the teachers can’t handle certain students, but he’s also the guy who gets to take a little more time to visit classes and play with students since the Kocho-sensei (Principal) is usually too busy.

The Kyoto-sensei likes to tease the students whenever possible. He entered the room and talked with various lunch groups for a few minutes. In one group, he noticed that a boy had a roll of toilet paper sitting on his desk, and he started teasing the kid about it. The kid said in loud English, “Toilet paper!” The class laughed, and the Kyoto-sensei asked me how the boy’s pronunciation was. He looked back at the boy and said, in English, “Once more, please.” The boy lifted his hands up and gestured at the roll dramatically, saying, “It’s toilet paper!” It was hilarious. The Kyoto-sensei congratulated the boy on his great English, then told everyone that in Japanese, it’s ‘unko’ paper (poop paper).

A few more minutes of group-hopping passed before the Kyoto-sensei went up to the front of the classroom and opened the portable organ. Raising his arms for attention, he took on a serious expression. He pulled his sleeves up and shook his arms loosely to ready himself. As the students watched in excitement, he stepped to the side of the organ and pulled it a few centimeters to the right. Once he’d done this, he said, “Organ wo hitta.” (I have to interrupt this to add a few notes. First, the Japanese word for ‘to play’ is hiku, and the word for ‘to pull’ is also hiku. Second, their past tense forms are the same - hitta.  Last, but most important, Japanese love word-play.) All the kids went silent for a moment, then all made sounds of protestation. “What?! So annoying! Lame! You didn’t play, you pulled! Etc.” When the Kyoto-sensei whined about getting no applause, they all laughed and grudgingly applauded. A few started yelling “Encore! Encore!”, so the Kyoto-sensei pulled the organ again just for them.

Yeah, it was an entertaining lunch time!

Today’s lunch time was a bit insane. The class’ usual teacher was absent, and when the substitute hesitated trying to figure out where I should sit, the whole class went into an uproar. Every group wanted me to sit with them. One boy kept banging his hands on his chest like a gorilla after they found a place for me and it wasn’t his group. Third graders can be crazy, and the substitute couldn’t deal with all of those that decide to act out a little. They were all excited to give me high-fives when I left though, and one kid (the gorilla one from earlier, incidentally) kept holding up his arms like a body-builder and shrieking “Macho! Macho!!” I think that might be his favorite English word or something….