Porn Mags, Bunkasai and Letters

The other day I refrained from calling a student by her name, and it turned out I got lucky.  In the next class over, same grade even, is a girl who looks JUST like her.  Very little differences, although I think one has a smaller head. I would have gotten the name wrong if I had tried.  There are a couple of kids in one of my middle schools who I swear have twins, either in different grades or just different classes and I can't tell some of them apart unless I see them with their friends.  It's a little scary sometimes.  I've been trying hard to remember as many students' names as I can, but there are so many and I don't get to see them every day.  If I'm lucky I've got around 3% of all my students' names down.

My teacher had her 7th graders play a game the other day where they had to ask me questions and elicit either "yes" or "no" as the answer.  One team would be the "no" team and the other would be the "yes" team.  The standout annoying kid in the class asked two questions.  One was "Do you want our English teacher?" At first I looked at the Japanese teacher, expecting her to tell the student to change the question, but instead she just looked at me said "Say no, no, no."  Ok then!  The next question he asked was "Do you read porn magazines?"  Again I looked at the Japanese teacher to see if she would have the student change the question.  She just looked at me like "How's he going to answer?"  Teachers are also able to touch their students a lot more than in the states, and it's completely normal.  There are two girls who try to pinch me on the side of my abdomen.  When I can't escape and they succeed it's really awkward, because I don't want to try and grab them back in the same place because it's weird, but I also don't really want to discourage them because they are so personable with me now, compared to before.  Strange times man.

My schools had a culture festival the other day, and it was awesome.  They put on some plays in the gym and displayed art and crafts in their classrooms.  They also displayed posters describing various things about their culture, such as words in their dialect and stuff about the major earthquake that happened on 3.11.

Brass Band Club Woot!

One of the performances put on by the band club.  After this, one of the girls went to the mic and thanked the 3rd years for their time in the club.  She started crying as she thanked them.  The camaraderie between students is much tighter in Japanese schools than it is in American schools.  The Japanese education system might not be so great, but I would choose them over the states' schools just due to how close all the students are.

I'd upload more pictures but I still can't get my stupid internet to work even though it came last week.  So in the meantime I'm still using my phone tether and that one picture took like 10 minutes to upload for some reason.

One of my students who writes me letters is so cute.  Her favorite foreign movies include "Herry Potter" and "X-Man."  Her favorite food [sic] are piza and cheezeburger, and so on.  Her favorite singer is Hanna Montana, and so on.  She puts the date on her letters.  It was just a few days ago, but it's humbling to look at it and realize that in a few years I'll find this letter again, read it, and think "dang, that was a long time ago."

文化祭【ぶんかさい】 (bunkasai)  (n) culture festival; arts festival