Coming to a zoo near you!

I teach at two elementary schools regularly, Miyajima and Hari. They are less than a mile from each other, but they are worlds away in terms of the students who study there. Miyajima is a friendly little countryside school with classes of between eight and 12, while Hari, on the other hand, feels like an inner-city comprehensive – cocky, unruly kids and classes average about 28. The children’s personalities stay with them after elementary school. I can look at my junior high 3rd grade class and 99% of the time I can guess which school they went to – the clever, pleasant ones went to Miyajima and the brats went to Hari. Why is this so? I’m not sure. Bigger classes? Maybe. Different teaching philosophies? Perhaps. I have spoken to three previous ALTs and they all had similar experiences of the two schools. So, when you have a sprog, think hard about what school you’re going to send them to. Anyway, that’s my elementary school self-therapy-through-blogging over.
Today, I’m at Hari. First, second and third grade all studied animals today. The little ones know the English for a surprising number of animals. They know the usual ones like dog, cat, rabbit, but also tiger, kangaroo, koala – the ones borrowed from English and katakana-ised. Panda is taken from Chinese, so that too is written in katakana – pa-n-da. If you say “panda” to a Japanese person (outside of an animal name lesson, that is), they will think you have spotted some bread – “pan da!” Literally, “it’s bread!” The Portuguese introduced bread to Japan, so they call it “pan” rather than “bured-o.”
Now, if the kids were not freaked out enough by English and how alien it sounds, then perhaps teaching them that animals abroad make different sounds is probably not a good idea. You see, in Japan, dogs go “wan-wan,” cats go “niyaa-niyaa,” birds go “piko-piko” and mice go “chuu-chuu.” While teaching the “English” sounds that animals make (and I’m at a loss as to why they need to know this in the first place), I showed remarkable restraint by not inventing sounds for goldfish and camels.
In class, instead of just telling the kids the name of a new animal, I always ask them if they know it first, because you never know what random stuff they actually know. For example, while reading a book called Fuzzy Little Duck to 1st grade, they saw a picture of a lizard and screamed “iguana!!” About halfway though the list we came to a picture of a sort of long-necked horse that completely stumped the kids, but the Japanese teacher wanted to have a guess:

“Suteeban Supirubergu mubie?”
No, not a clue where you’re going with this.
“Ano… big-u dinosaur-san…”
Oh, um, Jurassic Park??
“Ah, so, so, so - Giraffic Park-u!!”

Now that’s what I call lateral thinking.

Other news, the North Koreans have started to test their weapons in the Japan Sea. Apparently they are just doing it to “get attention.” Yep, they’ve got my attention all right… What about Buraiaa-san? Buushu-san? The news this evening seamlessly went from this as the headline story, to something about a circus school that is visiting the city – the video to accompany the story was a girl bouncing on a space hopper whilst playing the saxaphone. Channel 5, all is forgiven.

Ps. you know you’re an elementary school teacher in Japan when… you burst into an acapella rendition of “Twinkle, twinkle little star” when you’re alone in your flat cooking dinner. I really wish that were a joke…