Lots of reverse psychology in some of the classes today.
To the kids who obviously don't want to study but want to natter away : STFU and sleep. So they sleep.
To the kids who bring unrelated books into class to read under the desk: Go ahead, read them, I don't care if you waste your time in this class. [This usually makes them study harder. It's weird.]
But on the whole, the classes are fun once I've neutralised the 'Kore Wa Nippon' contingency.
I decided to do a bit of research on the Computer Gaming Habits of the Japanese kids today.
In one class, 7 out of 10 students (it's the small jun. high class) played computer games on the weekends.
The average number of hours spent playing such games was 3 hours a day.
In the second year class, 10 out of 20 students were gamers, mostly the boys, with one kid spending 7 hours a day gaming, and the rest averaging 3 hours a day.
I asked them if their parents also played computer games.
The answer was yes for all the kids.
In another class, cos Disneyland came up, I told the kids that when I first moved to Japan, I lived on the outskirts of Tokyo, where Tokyo Disneyland was, but didn't know that Disney existed outside of the US at the time, so when I saw this 
from a distance, as I cycled alongside a river, I thought to myself, 'I wonder who the fck lives there', and even remember writing to my mother that night saying, 'I saw this really posh house today, it looked like Cinderella's castle'.
Big doh.
By the way, one of my junior high kids, who is 13, has been to Tokyo Disneyland 56 times!!!!!!!!!!!!!
7 comments:
Dire as it is to go there 56 times, it's an improvement on sitting on his/her arse playing video games. I'm beginning to understand why videos of you on the swings are child-free. They're all inside playing "Why Don't My Legs Work: 3".
Ha ha ha ha. That's so funny.
I'm gonna use that in class.
I've seen more feral cats in your blog than Japanese, except for old, squiffy Japanese men, whom you seem to favour, at least photographically.
What does that word 'squiffy' mean. I'd like to know before I start using it.
Drunk or pissed, but in a way that connotes charm and amusement rather than head-butting and projectile vomiting.
"I do say, old chap, I seem to have drunk myself squiffy!"
"Please, Bertie, avail yourself of the chesterfield, there's a good fellow."
Oh, I get it, a happy drunk.
Well, there's the idea that they aren't just happy being drunk, but also that the way they are being drunk is more amusing than annoying to other, perhaps less drunk, people around them.
It's the whole basis of the Dudley Moore "Arthur" movies, really, although I think they've dated pretty poorly and society's tolerance for "squiffiness" is currently quite low.
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