January 10th

It’s been a really long time since I wrote anything because my parents came, and I figured they were the primary readers so they already knew what was going on. Anyway, here are a few things that happened from the past couple of weeks.

Before vacation, I complained that we were going to have a test on the SATURDAY when we got back from break. This was terrible for several reasons, including the thought of having a test looming over the whole break, and the fact that there is no school on Sundays AND there was a national holiday that Monday. So, if we didn’t have the test, we wouldn’t have to worry about it until Tuesday.

Anyway this made our class crazy thinking about wasting our break, so right before we went off for winter vacation, a girl in my class asked the teacher to move the test to that Tuesday and gave all the reasons I listed above. Our teacher actually agreed. I couldn’t believe it. But then, right before class, the teacher tells us that we all must get 100% on the test because she was so nice to us by moving it. We all gather out things to leave and laugh off her ridiculous request “Hahaha. Yeah, merry Christmas, 100%, right. Sure thing. . .” If I was to get over a 90% on one of these stupid tests I’d be thrilled. I don’t think anyone in the class has ever gotten 100%, even the really good students.

So when I meet back on Saturday class following break, she reminds us we don’t have a test on that day because we were all going to get 100% on Tuesday. I remember turning to the student behind me and commenting how her joke wasn’t funny anymore. We honestly thought there was no way she could actually expect us to score 100% on one of her tests. Then about half way through class, the teacher goes “I’ve got it.” And we are all wondering what she’s talking about. Then she says “if you don’t get 100% on the test, you have to copy an entire reading section by hand for a lesson we haven’t done yet.” I was absolutely floored that she was serious. It would probably take close to an hour to copy something like that. Needless to say, I think all of us will be copying the book sometime next week. (I actually think this was my best test so far, we haven’t gotten it back yet, but I know I made a few mistakes. I’ll give an update when I get it back.)

On a completely unrelated note, this same teacher told us that our goal for speaking Japanese is to get rid of our foreign accents to the point where we could be spies like “James Bond”. She said this three times in one day, and it struck me as a very humorous statement. She said if we got good enough to be a spy, we could mingle with our targets and they’ll never have any clue we aren’t native speakers. What finally killed her idea was the kid from Belgium, who raised his hand and said “I’m a 6 foot tall, white guy with blond hair. I think Japanese people will know I’m not really Japanese.” As we’re all laughing, I’ll give the teacher credit for thinking of a response on the fly—“You could be a spy on the phone!”

This same teacher then told us about a week later, that while it’s good to speak with little or no accent, we should be careful. She says lots of times when students have very good pronunciation but aren’t yet fluent, the teachers expect these students to use the honorific language because they sound fluent, but because they don’t use it, the teachers just assume the students are being rude. That’s just lovely—if I speak without an accent people with think I’m a jackass because I haven’t mastered a polite way to say “I have a question. . .” So it looks like my choices are being James Bond, or not having the teacher’s think I’m rude. Japan is amazing.

(I just put the picture up of my class. you can see one student holding a beer. It was the last day of class before break so someone brought beer for everyone. It was cool.)