"Do you play sex?" and other Jr High tales

This post is dedicated to Hannah, who probably doesn't even need to read it because she's heard all of the stories already.

I've spent six days at my junior high school in the last two weeks, which is the same number of days I spent there for the whole month of October. As opposed to the two weeks I spent there in September, in these last two weeks the students, especially the 8th grade boys, have really started to open up to me, which has led to many questions like the one above. While I can hardly get them to tell me their favorite color or what they ate for breakfast in class, the sentences they come up with outside of class tell me that they are not just learning English at school.

The "Do you play sex?" question came last month from one of the 7th graders, which is unusual, because I can't even get some of them to say hello to me in the hall. The conversation started out with him asking me the question "Do you play baseball?" and I said no. The he got this mischevious grin and asked "Do you play sex?" It caught me a bit off guard, but it didn't matter what my response was, because the questioner and his friends were laughing and no longer listening. It was just a preview of what was to come.

The following is a sampling of this week's questions:

"Will you kiss me?" and when that didn't work, "May I kiss you?"

"What's 'nudo'?"

"What cup?"

The "what's 'nudo'?" question came in the middle of class, and I answered that it meant "no clothes." Once that sunk in, another kid said rather loudly, "I want to be 'nudo'!" The classroom teacher, who is one of my favorite people to teach with, didn't miss a beat. She merely looked him in the eye and said "dozo" which is like "go ahead." He shut up rather quickly.

On Wednesday, the kids had a reading test, so English class ran over. The next class was PE, and in Japan, the boys and girls change together in their homeroom classroom. [This would cause quite the scandal in America, but I guess here they are used it? Or it's more likely that this is the way it has always been done, and it can't be changed now?] So I hadn't left the room yet, when Kosei, the first boy to ask me if I would kiss him called my name. I looked up, and there he was in the back of the room with his shirt unbuttoned pounding his chest like Tarzan, saying something like, "Body! Nice body!" Kosei is 14, but could probably pass for 10.

Wonderous things must happen in between the 8th and 9th grades. The 9th grade boys are more serious and have yet to ask me suggestive questions. Today I helped five of them practice for an English interview test they are all taking this Sunday. They are given a short passage that goes along with a picture, and have 20 seconds to read it to themselves and look at the picture before they must read it out loud and answer the questions I ask them. They did surprisingly well on the one about baseball (surprise, surprise) but choked on the passage about snow festivals. They were all trying really hard though; it was very endearing. One kid didn't really understand the questions and kept saying "Pardon? Pardon?" and two others were very careful to thank me before leaving the room. So polite!

The students at my junior high are fun and very involved. Almost everyone belongs to a school club, whether it be sports, art or band. At the end of October was "Culture Day," an annual event which is comprised mostly of singing, an art show, a small science fair, a play and band performance. While having young adolescents going through puberty sing is perhaps not the brightest idea out there, they did a pretty good job, and I was very impressed with their focus. They worked really hard in the weeks leading up to it, practicing before and during school.

Here's a video of one of the 9th grade classes:

So multiply that by several hours. It was a long day. Every homeroom class had their own pianist to accompany them, which I thought was incredible until it was later explained to me that when the teachers sit down to make the class rosters, they usually start with the list of the kids who can play the piano, and then split them up accordingly. Sneaky.

I'll end with a picture of the brass band. I think there is only one boy in the whole band, and I think he plays the tuba. The band is very friendly when I stop by their practices and they play nice, genki songs, like medelies from American Graffiti and Pirates of the Caribbean. The drummer, Mai, is a huge Beatles and Queen fan, which I think is pretty funny.