Hi friendz.
Recently I've been working an insane amount. Which is kind of ironic seeing as i'm here on a WORKING HOLIDAY but I seem to be doing more working than anything else.
Today's post will have a few pics for the visually starved and me writing a load of bollocks.
So I teach at a few different places.
At one particular place most of the lessons are with adults and man to man, sometimes a small group.
I really enjoy working there, the environment is great and the school staff are awesome.
The students are pro as well, have all sorts there. I'm pretty popular with the students because although the other teachers are nice guys im the stupid funny one.
At the end of a recent lesson, one student asked me if they could ask me a personal question.
I said "of course" and what followed was love actuallyesque.
....
Moving on..
One of the other schools I work at is an english cram school (塾).
I teach english to groups of kids, with ages ranging from like 6/7 - 18.
As it's summer they've been organising some trips on the weekends with the kids, which is pretty win.
For these trips I have to leave my house at 5am and make my way to the school. Then we go by coach/bus to a swimming pool, where some other gaijin and myself play with the kids in the water (YES, I KNOW HOW IT SOUNDS). We throw beach balls at them, pick them up and dunk them underwater and generally just act childish and have fun.
After that we head to the yacht centre which is like those school retreat places we have in England, but situated right on the sea and is actually nice. After lunch we go out on row boats which the kids love.
That's actually pretty fun, I just sit back shouting "ONE, TWO, ONE , TWO" while the kids row. It feels empowering for someone of my ethnic heritage to be the one shouting out the stroke order and not the one rowing. Brought a tear to my eye.
One thing that happened on the last trip is that I picked up a nickname. Foreign names are a bit weird for kids, they can't always say it properly, and sometimes they just say a word which sounds kind of similar. For the most part my name isn't too hard but one girl once said "Baby" instead of "Jamie". Everyone laughed at her but then they all started calling me baby.
This got out of hand to such an extent that when we were rowing it ended up being "BA BY BA BY BA BY " instead of ONE TWO.
I was protesting a lot, so the kids thought about it and then said "Super Baby?". It was so funny that I had to let it go, so that's my new nickname. Eventually I convinced some girls to convert it to SUPER JAMIE.
We had a bonfire in the evening, I took this pic which is a pretty spectacular sunset and not bad considering it comes from my camera.
On the coach home we sang a song I made, which is basically just repeatedly saying "SUPER JAMIE".
One girl had CANNABIS on her hat, with a big leaf. She was totally oblivious to what it was. This is quite typical of Japan.
Every day I see tshirts which are kind of wrong. Like how in the UK we have little kids with PORNSTAR on their chest. In Japan it's the same. The difference is they don't even know what it means. Yesterday i had a student of about 7 wearing a strappy top which said "I hope you like it" on the front.
WRONG. .....?
********************************
*********************************
********************************
*********************************
I know most of you are aware of "kancho" (Someone sticking their fingers up your bum as a joke). It was made famous by black brother mentioning it on his blog. It does exist but it's more common in schools, where the kids are more relaxed. At cram schools kids are there to study, they can't mess about as much, so it doesnt happen.
Having said that... on Monday a really cute 6 year old girl stuck her fingers up my bum.
I really didn't know who was in the wrong, was it her, for doing it, or me, for enjoying it? In the UK if an adult was caught with a child, with said child inserting fingers up aforementioned adults bum, it would be an express ticket to the sex offenders register (soon to be renamed as I-C roster).
In Japan? Everyone just chuckles.