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"...do you like baseball?"
Today wasn't too bad. Just an average Thursday. I had 5 classes instead of 7, which made it a lot nicer than my last Thursday, that's for sure. And most of the classes went well. Maybe. Maybe the better I think they went, the worse they really went. Who knows.
Around 6:30pm, YK (12-year-old kid, his 9-year-old brother YT is in my Wednesday class) came in, super-early for his 7pm. So he started doing English homework at a table, except, being completely ADD (both of the brothers are, but YT moreso), ended up talking to me for a while.
"YK, what's your favorite baseball team?" I asked.
"I like Chunichi Dragons," he said.
"Really?" I asked.
"Hontou da," he replied.
"I like them too," I said. "Did you see my calendar?"
He came into my classroom and was like "Calendar? Oh. Kawakami Kenshin." Kenshin is April. Conveniently Morino is May so I was like "This is Morino, he is my favorite player."
Then we went through the other baseball crap in my room. He pointed to my poster of Ichiro like "This is Ichiro," then said "Ano hito dare?" ("Who's that guy?") pointing to Sasaki. I explained who he was, "he used to be on Yokohama Baystars ten years ago," then repeated in Japanese, and he said something in Japanese to the effect of "Oh, I don't care about old players." Hahaha. Looked at my Mariners little league poster like "Ichiro. Child?"
Showed him my Bobby signed baseball and my pictures of me with Hillman and Bobby, even let him pick up the baseball and hold it, and he was just like "kore sugoi!!" ("These are AWESOME!")
So okay, after all of this he looks at me, thinks for a minute to say something in English, and he says...
"Do you like baseball?"
"Yes," I replied, trying not to laugh, "I like baseball very much."
A bit later when he was back trying to do homework, I asked him why his brother hasn't been doing homework lately. He seemed genuinely surprised and said something to the effect of "I'll go tattle on him to my parents for you." Then he asked me to check his homework for him. It was pretty good. There was a sentence that said "This is Ichiro," not meaning the baseball player, and we had a good laugh over that one.
Anyway, aside from deep conversations with 12-year-olds, my day went pretty well. Most of my classes were fun, people had a lot of laughs, and students even gave me presents, which is always nice. One of them was here as part of a deal extended to NOVA students a while back, and today was her last day -- she got me a pair of those washcloth-like handkerchiefs from Ito Yokado. I don't know what I'll do with them, but the gesture was kind. I taught that class words for describing cooking today, and so they spent like half an hour writing out recipes for hamburger and curry rice and stuff. It's really entertaining trying to explain differences between things like "chop" and "slice" and "mince" and "shred" -- and getting EVERYONE in the room miming the actions.
I have a new student. She's moving to Seattle for a year in July, and just transferred up here from Saga. She'll be studying at the University of Washington for a year. I'm not making that up. She came to my Sprint 6 today but I have 5 weeks of private lessons with her on Saturdays -- I wonder if I'll end up teaching her more about Seattle than I will about English per se in that time, we'll see.
After work, I went to Kawaguchi and played a game of Pop'n -- and I discovered that they had freaking NORTH (yes, from IIDX 4th Style) on there! It's a secret song, not sure how I unlocked it exactly, but the Hyper is level 26 and fairly fun. Awesome.
Around 6:30pm, YK (12-year-old kid, his 9-year-old brother YT is in my Wednesday class) came in, super-early for his 7pm. So he started doing English homework at a table, except, being completely ADD (both of the brothers are, but YT moreso), ended up talking to me for a while.
"YK, what's your favorite baseball team?" I asked.
"I like Chunichi Dragons," he said.
"Really?" I asked.
"Hontou da," he replied.
"I like them too," I said. "Did you see my calendar?"
He came into my classroom and was like "Calendar? Oh. Kawakami Kenshin." Kenshin is April. Conveniently Morino is May so I was like "This is Morino, he is my favorite player."
Then we went through the other baseball crap in my room. He pointed to my poster of Ichiro like "This is Ichiro," then said "Ano hito dare?" ("Who's that guy?") pointing to Sasaki. I explained who he was, "he used to be on Yokohama Baystars ten years ago," then repeated in Japanese, and he said something in Japanese to the effect of "Oh, I don't care about old players." Hahaha. Looked at my Mariners little league poster like "Ichiro. Child?"
Showed him my Bobby signed baseball and my pictures of me with Hillman and Bobby, even let him pick up the baseball and hold it, and he was just like "kore sugoi!!" ("These are AWESOME!")
So okay, after all of this he looks at me, thinks for a minute to say something in English, and he says...
"Do you like baseball?"
"Yes," I replied, trying not to laugh, "I like baseball very much."
A bit later when he was back trying to do homework, I asked him why his brother hasn't been doing homework lately. He seemed genuinely surprised and said something to the effect of "I'll go tattle on him to my parents for you." Then he asked me to check his homework for him. It was pretty good. There was a sentence that said "This is Ichiro," not meaning the baseball player, and we had a good laugh over that one.
Anyway, aside from deep conversations with 12-year-olds, my day went pretty well. Most of my classes were fun, people had a lot of laughs, and students even gave me presents, which is always nice. One of them was here as part of a deal extended to NOVA students a while back, and today was her last day -- she got me a pair of those washcloth-like handkerchiefs from Ito Yokado. I don't know what I'll do with them, but the gesture was kind. I taught that class words for describing cooking today, and so they spent like half an hour writing out recipes for hamburger and curry rice and stuff. It's really entertaining trying to explain differences between things like "chop" and "slice" and "mince" and "shred" -- and getting EVERYONE in the room miming the actions.
I have a new student. She's moving to Seattle for a year in July, and just transferred up here from Saga. She'll be studying at the University of Washington for a year. I'm not making that up. She came to my Sprint 6 today but I have 5 weeks of private lessons with her on Saturdays -- I wonder if I'll end up teaching her more about Seattle than I will about English per se in that time, we'll see.
After work, I went to Kawaguchi and played a game of Pop'n -- and I discovered that they had freaking NORTH (yes, from IIDX 4th Style) on there! It's a secret song, not sure how I unlocked it exactly, but the Hyper is level 26 and fairly fun. Awesome.
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