The Drill Sergeant in Yellow Sneakers

Yesterday, I was at elementary school again. Because it was only my third time going to that school, most of the kids there still didn't know me, so I had to dust off the old self-introduction and bring it out for several classes-ful of kids to "oo" and "ah" over. One kid, upon seeing me enter the room behind the Japanese teacher of English, actually said, "Sensei, did you just bring in some random stranger off the street?" (or the Japanese equivalent thereof).

At lunchtime I was with a class of unreasonably adorable second graders, one of whom I think I actually talked into believing that I was around eighty years old. One of the great things about kids this age is that their language is at a low enough level that I don't have too much difficulty understanding them. The other great thing is that at that age, they don't mind, and in fact often don't even notice, carrying on a more or less one-sided conversation. All it takes is a few well-placed "sou desu ka?"s and some vigorous nods of the head to satisfy them that I'm holding up my end of the deal.

For some reason they weren't having cleaning that day, so after lunch we all went straight to play time. I wandered out into the school yard behind the kids, hoping to find a nice, sedate game of jump rope or, barring that, some tag. I approached a likely-seeming group of 5th-grade girls, but they merely nodded politely and then scurried off, giggling. Eventually I came across a large group of kids playing some strange hybrid of dodge ball and red-rover that had, somehow, lost all of the violence native to those two games in the merger.

I had just begun to chat up a Peruvian girl in Spanish when all of a sudden I sensed a presence off to my left and about two feet down. I glanced around until at last my eyes lighted on a round, serious face glaring up at me, the two sharp eyes sizing me up and very possibly finding me wanting. The Peruvian girl took my distraction as an opportunity to escape back to her game and I suddenly found myself alone with this small, intense person. She began to speak to me very quickly and in such a thick Tochigi accent that I hadn't a clue what she was saying.

"Nani?" I tried. First mistake. I should've just gone for the smile and nod approach again.

She let out an exasperated sigh, adjusted the little cardigan stretched across her stomach (rendering it no less crooked, I might add) and then repeated everything she'd just told me just as rapidly and just as unintelligibly. This time, however, she tacked on the end, "Mitai?"..."You wanna see?"

I raised my eyebrows, cocked my head to the side in my best "Huh?" gesture, smiled and repeated, "Nani?"

Second mistake. I should've just said "Yes."

My small interlocutor's exasperation then ratcheted up a notch, and she shook her head, took a deep breath and then barked out in a shockingly spot-on interpretation of a drill sergeant, "Na! Ma! Chi! Mo! No!"

"Namachimono?" I repeated, slightly bewildered.

"Chiga-!" she yipped. "Kakikukeko no che! Na! Ma! Che! Mo! No!"

"Namachemono?" I corrected myself, realizing now that I had mis-heard her the first time.

"Chiga-!" she yelled. "Kakikukeko no ke! Na! Ma! Ke! Mo! No!"

"Oooooh," I said. Apparently I'd misheard her both times. "Namakemono?"

"Sou! Mitai?" she barked at me again, and then leaving nothing to chance this time, she took me firmly by the hand and began dragging me off to the other side of the school yard. I hadn't a clue what a "namakemono" was, but I was intrigued. Once there, she led me to the bars and proceeded to show me just how well she could hang upside down from them. I thought it best not to point out that she was showing her underwear to the entire student population of the school.

Her demonstration completed, she climbed back down, made a few closing comments, dusted off her hands and then launched into her next unintelligible speech. Having learned nothing from the first "conversation" with her, I once again attempted to have her repeat herself, and it wasn't long before I found myself being barked at again: "Shi! Ri! To! Ri!"

I thought it best to try the smile and nod approach, which elicited yet more exasperated sighs on her part (Looking this word up in the dictionary later, I discovered it was a sort of Japanese word game, which I surely would have failed at). Giving this latest suggestion up as a lost cause, she took me by the hand once more and began leading me over toward a small grassy mound on another edge of the school yard, maintaining the entire way her litany of strangely accented Japanese. I smiled, nodded, expressed concern, approval, agreement or sympathy as seemed appropriate and before long found myself being ordered to squeeze my nose shut and hold my breath as we summited the peak before us.

Once we'd safely made it down the opposing slope without passing out from oxygen deprivation (fortunately we never got TOO high above sea level), she gave me an approving pat on the back and then began leading me over to a nearby tree. She pointed at a sign on the tree that displayed the species name. I read it to her, but she seemed to find it necessary to correct my pronunciation in her own inimitable manner: "Ku! Mo! Ki!"

At this point I felt it appropriate to ask her her name, even though I could read it quite clearly on her name tag. She nodded sagely, confirming that I had indeed chosen the right thing to do and then said, "Chi! Ho! Ha! Chi! Sai!"

"Oh, I see, Chiho. So, you're hassai (eight years old)?"

"Hai! Tan! Jou! Bi! Wa! Ha! Chi! Gatsu! Ichi! Nichi!"

"Ah, so your birthday is Hachi-gatsu tsuitachi (August first)?"

"Hai!" And then she pointed to her shoes, which were an eye-opening shade of yellow and asked me if I wanted to race. I agreed, and then without further ceremony she began to run full-out across the school yard. I followed at a pace that I felt made it seem that I was trying but that wouldn't tax my abilities too hard. Inevitably she won.

She allowed herself a small smile to celebrate her victory and then once again pointed to her shoes.

"It's because of these," she asserted. I was beginning to be able to decipher her speech. "They're all 'pika! pika!' I like kiiro. In English kiiro is YELLOW! Can you say kiiro?"

"Kiiro," I said.

"Good," she admitted, and I glowed with pride. Chiho didn't seem the sort who gave out praise lightly. And then the bell rang signaling that play time was over, and just like that Chiho was giving me a brisk wave and a curt nod good-bye before dashing off toward her classroom.

As soon as I was back at the table in the staff room, I pulled out my phone and used its dictionary function to figure out just what the heck a "namakemono" was. A moment's search discovered that it meant "sloth," as in the animal that likes to hang from tree branches all day without moving a muscle. Apparently Chiho had simply wanted to demonstrate for me the proper way to imitate a sloth. Good thing, too. Not sure I would've been able to continue as an ALT without that knowledge...

二本

My special needs students are awesome. As my co-worker Adam put it today at work, "The special needs class are easily the coolest kids in the entire school." They're the most fun to teach and also the most fun to just hang out with. I've taken to crashing their midday break time a couple of times a week.

I don't know which one makes me laugh the most, the Kendama Whiz who often lets out an exasperated "Sensei!" at my attempts to imitate her skills, the Tickle Torture Queen, or the Secret Genius, who speaks three languages and is a truly gifted artist. There's no question of who my favorite is, though. She was the first student I ever met at my middle school. When I showed up on my first day of work, she was sitting in the principal's office, a new arrival like me, waiting to go before the entire staff room to make her self-introduction. We chatted for a while, and I asked her her name. When she told it to me, I repeated it back. However, my pronunciation was apparently dis-satisfactory, for she made me repeat it several times before she gave her approval.

Since then, she's become well-integrated into the student community, being one of the friendliest and most outgoing people I've ever met. She always greets me with the brightest smile and a cheery "Hello!" when we pass in the hallways at school. I always make sure to emphasize the part of her name that I originally mispronounced, just because this always makes her laugh.

This morning, however, my favorite barely looked up when I waved and greeted her on the way to class. Something had her down today. I made a mental note to check in with her after lunch to find out what was up. When the after-lunch break rolled around, though, she was nowhere to be found. It turned out that the second and third-year students were having a meeting in the gymnasium, so I hung out with the first-years, getting them to teach me how to write the characters in their names.

At last the other students appeared, having finished their meeting (one of them tried to explain what it had been about, but she used too many big words. :_( The student I had been waiting for shuffled in slightly behind the others, sliding over to her desk without looking up from the floor. I tried to call her over to show me how to write her name, but she just shook her head, mumbled something and then slid over to the other side of the room to fiddle with her book bag.

"She's in a hurry," one of the other students explained.

"She seems a little down today," I ventured. The girl I was speaking to nodded and then turned to our friend across the room. "Hey! Are you all right?" she asked. The other girl nodded and then quickly left the room.

I wanted to follow her and ask her what was up, but the other students were crowding around, showering Adam and me with questions, and besides, she apparently had something to get done quickly.

Then, a few minutes later, I looked up and realized that she was standing right next to me, clutching a piece of paper, which from the looks of it was homework. I gave her a smile, wrapped up the conversation I had been having, and then turned to her and asked, "Did you need help with that?" She nodded and then spread the paper out before me. It was an English worksheet. She pointed at one section and said, "I don't understand this at all."

With a sigh of relief, I set about explaining the activity and then helping her complete it. English was a problem I was definitely well-equipped to deal with. Finally, we got to the last question. It was a fill-in-the-blank exercise, and the last sentence was "There are ____ ____ in the box." I looked at the picture that we were using for reference. The box in question contained a volleyball and a beach ball.

"All right," I said, "so what's in the box?"

She looked at the picture. "Booru?" she replied, using the Japanese pronunciation of the word.

"Right, I said. But how many are there?"

Her eyes lit up and she filled in the first blank with the word "two." Then she shifted her pencil over to the second blank, poised it to write and then frowned. I waited for her to ask for help, but she just kept staring at the blank. After a minute, she tentatively wrote "b."

"Good," I congratulated her. And then, just to be helpful, I enunciated carefully, "balls." And then I started giggling, because deep down inside I'm no better than the middle school kids that I teach. Fortunately, she didn't notice my inappropriate laughter, instead opting to continue her attempt to spell the intractable word. "Bour," she wrote and then gave me a hopeful look. I shook my head. She erased the last three letters and then waited.

"A," I suggested. She wrote "a." Then I made a beautifully rendered L-sound (which, in Japan, is really just showing off), hoping that she would be able to guess the appropriate letter just from the sound. No such luck. "R," she wrote.

"No, 'L,'" I said. She added a second "r" after the first one. "'L,'" I repeated, turning and writing it on the chalkboard behind me. I added an "r" next to it and then demonstrated the sounds each letter made a few times until she seemed to grasp the distinction. She erased the "r"s and then proudly inscribed a single "L" on the page.

"There are two of them," I said in English, holding up two fingers to demonstrate. She frowned, cocking her head to one side. "Two 'l's," I repeated. She looked down at her paper and then back up at me. I cast about in my brain, looking for the language that could communicate what I was trying to tell her. Then inspiration struck.

"二本エルがある," I said.

"Ohhhhh!" she said, inscribing another "l" after the first.

"And 's,'" I added. And at last her paper read "two balls," perfectly spelled and everything. And then I giggled.

Is "本" even the proper counting word for "l"s? IS there a proper counting word for English letters? I have no answers to these questions. All I know is that "二本エル" got my point across, and that's good enough for me.