Jealous much?

This is what made the menu today for school lunch....



…two pretty big, pretty chewy grilled fishies. Since it’s a cardinal sin to chew gum for Japanese children, the government issued lunches instead have “chewy chewy days”, where the menu has something (usually a fish) that has the texture of a tire. The idea is that chewing produces saliva, which naturally strengthens the teeth, leading to less teeth nastiness. This is something every dentist knows, hence the sugarless gum at the dentist’s office. Since dentistry is likened to witch doctory in this country of “yaeba”, chewy fish jerky issued by the local government will have to do. In my experience with these dried out carcasses, I chew less and try to finish it as quick as possible. The kids usually play with them. Pass out some doublemint and spare us our taste buds.

The past few weeks, student teachers have been visiting, observing and studying classes and this week they are teaching their own planned lesson. From what I observe, I think the custom is for university students studying to be a teacher to return to their hometowns (preferably to a school they graduated from) and do their student teacher routine their. Most university students live at home anyway, so this isn’t such a big deal. But the poor creatures are usually frightened to death because they only have about two weeks to understand what is going on and then to teach the whole lesson for the third. I’ve been to Japanese university and know that it’s a big joke, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this is their only experience with teaching or really learning how to teach. Needless to say, they are all pretty nervous and are quite obvious about it. The student teacher for the English classes had the deer in headlights look for half of the class. Since this sounds almost the same as the amount of (in)experience I had before teaching, I can understand. The only thing that grinds my gears is that it took me almost seven months to get a name tag, whereas they get one on their first day….of a three week programme!!!

Some highlights of the day besides the fish jerky:

• The kids all misheard “believe” as “briefs” as in men’s underwear. So the sentence became “Do you brief that?”
• The educational video that came with the English textbook taught us that people on Easter Island eat banana fish soup.
• An answer on the worksheet was “Yes, we can.” So all of the kids went all out trying to do their best Obama impressions.