Communication Failure

“Your request could not be processed due to its content categorization: ‘communication’ ‘instant messenger’ and ‘email.’”

Eyes. Narrow. Vision. Cloudy. All. Red.

The computers in the staff room are not awesome. And one by one they seem to be failing me when it comes to the things I use the Internet for: mainly communication with sane, rational people. Only one computer can handle such obviously ridiculous, frivolous tasks like sending emails and communicating with the outside world. And someone has mysteriously absconded with it. It’s like the staff room is isolating itself into its own little Japanese ‘Bubble.’ “We will make her one of us. We will make her one of us,” they monotonously chant to themselves over and over whilst bowing over and over.

This error message could be used whenever trying to get something done in Japan: “Your request could not be processed due to its content categorization: ‘successful communication.’” The computer then nods, giggles nervously, smiles insincerely and looks down at its feet, praying that you will give up and go away.

I had my first lesson all alone today (well, with the JTE but it was all up to me, so essentially, alone). It could have been worse. But it also could have been a lot better. There’s something kind of scary when you say “Please… stand… up” and the kids can’t even handle that and need it translated for them. I was obviously spoiled at the two English camps that I attended where the kids had an obvious interest in learning English. I have a strong suspicion that most of these kids… well, don’t. I can’t blame them. What an atrociously difficult, worthless, foolish language. She says to herself as she dives into her wonderful sea of illuminating, rich literature.

There were about forty kids in the class, mostly girls. The right side of the room had about 2 rows of boys and the remaining 4 rows were full of girls. Now, it would be slightly difficult to tell which were boys and which were girls if the girls hadn’t been wearing skirts. All the boys shave their eyebrows and then pluck the begeezus out of them. Fashion. Style. At its finest. However, this perplexes me as Asian people generally speaking don’t HAVE much in the way of eyebrows anyway. In fact, most of the women DRAW or tattoo them on so that they don’t look like Capt’n Crunch if you took off his hat.

I had them play the telephone/whispers game with a bunch of incredibly simple sentences concerning myself. Then they had to determine which were true and which were false. Trying to get the simple word either “true” or “false” out of these kids was only as painful as having a root canal done sans Novocain whilst having a pack of wild, ravenous hyenas gnawing away at ones legs.

I had a series of photos blown up and proceeded to work my way through them, bounding around the classroom attempting to get at least a bit of interaction going on. But it’s massively difficult to keep everyone’s attention when you’re forced to maintain an incredible amount of patience with the quivering girl in front of you who has balked in terror when asked, “do… you… have…. a …. dog?”

One girl even literally fell off her chair today. Granted I threw a bear at her, but still, it’s not like she didn’t see it coming. These students are rowdy and being studious and quiet isn’t going to get far. Yes. I’ve already taken to chucking objects at them to get them to pay attention and participate.

I had another student introduction game planned afterwards that involved them throwing other things (yes like monkeys in a zoo)– but since they are rowdy as it is, I didn’t think that would be the wisest idea and so had to change it last minute to something slightly more dull.

A kid that I had in my group at my first English camp happened to be in the class. We did not get along in camp as he was a notorious slacker. However, his English is much better than the other kids back at his own high school and he wasn’t shy about talking and answering me this time around. When asked for two adjectives to describe himself he responded, “strange.” He’s honest. And yes, I do realize he only gave me one.

After collecting the papers with the students’ answer on them I filed through them. A very popular response to the adjective inquiry was, “enjoy.” Whoever it was that started bastardizing English and put ‘enjoy’ on every other t-shirt EVER made in Japan ought to be taken out back and shot. That has to be the most over-used English word in Japan.

“Let’s enjoy!” it shouts on T-shirts. “Let’s enjoy!” it shouts on gift bags. “Let’s enjoy!” shouts the dish-washing detergent at the supermarket. “Let’s enjoy!” shouts the hemorrhoid cream at the drug store.

Which leads me to the conspicuous observation that whenever a teacher says, “Let’s enjoy!” to the students, they obviously don’t have the wee bit of a clue what in heavens name the teacher is talking about.

Then on the way down the stairs I had one of the male students with shaved eyebrows bark at me. All in a days work.

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Published:
9.4.06 / 5pm
Category:
classroom antics, what i call life