fifth period sekuhara!

Today I woke up feeling awful. But for some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to drag myself to school to attend my one class. Mostly out of solidarity with my JTE, who was left to teach the 9th grade class alone. These kids are great fun, but they can be a bit of a handful. The other JTE that usually teaches half of the class is chaperoning a couple of other students who are in Nagano-ken competing in a national ski jump championship. Which sounds like it would be great – you should have heard the JTE bellyaching about having to go. He whines about how he will have to go to Canada this summer too. Tough life…

Anyways. No classes today until last period of the day. I focused on not passing out, and worked on a translation for the big report on the Canadian exchange program. (I just can’t believe I offered to help.)

Class was fun – we played an easy review game and then the students got worksheets to practice various grammar points. Thankfully it wasn’t too taxing. Thinking up easy English questions damn near killed me. During the worksheet portion of the class, I was wandering around checking answers when a student called me over, telling me she had a present for me.

And what a present…

She gave me a pair of what looked like cufflinks, made of paper and tape.

“These are for you. For nipp…”, she said, gesturing (in)appropriately towards her chest.

" ... "

"You should wear them now!"

" ... "

"Put them here!"




That's right. One of my female, Grade 9 students gave me a set of fake nipples. Made out of paper. I actually thought it was hilarious, but you just can't tell a 15 year old that the fake nipples she's made for you are the funniest thing you've ever seen. All I could think to say was "セクハラ!" "sekuhara!". Which just made it funnier.

Futher reasons Japan is a very different place from home.