Well, Amy has taken off to Hawaii and I am stuck here at the kencho. Not exactly situations of equality, I would say. This kencho life is dragging me down. When I first got to Japan I just figured that kencho days were part of the experience and all was ok. Now, I feel that they are useless and stupid. But hey, I don't want to rampage down that trail right now. No use in thinking about it.

On Friday I had school and had my normal first period and then two group sessions. I can't remember if I mentioned these group sessions I have been doing for about two months now. My second grade junior high classes (8th grade for you) will be going to Australia in July. By then they will be third graders and I won't have them anymore, but anyway, I was asked back in January to take them on as small groups instead of one big class and to talk about Australia and get them ready for their trip.
Now, I have never been to Australia and I don't know much about the "land down under" but apparently that doesn't matter. To the Japanese much of the time it seems that they see the world in two catagories, Japanese and not-Japanese. So from that mathematical equation Americans and Australians are lumped into the same catagory so they must be basically the same and know everything about each other. This also reminds me of the time I was asked, "What's a billabong?" and to be honest, besides a clothing company that seems to specialize in surfwear I don't know what a billabong is. Well, I didn't then. I later asked a friend from New Zealand and found out it was a small stream of sorts. And you thought I was learning about only Japan.
So, these groups consist of a fourth of the class, about ten students per session, and have always been either boys or girls. As opposed to that third sex we have yet to define. Ok, just kidding. What I mean is that either I get ten boys or ten girls. They are never mixed. Since I am at this school once a week and because I get a fourth of class, it took me four weeks to get through an entire class. I would have two sessions a visit, one with a group from the first class and then a group from the second class. It was all quite easy but certain groups were definitely more "fun" than others.
There was the time a group of boys came down to the conference room and immediately cheered when entering the room seeing just me. This group then went on to ask me various questions in the lulls in our "Australia" conversation which consited of things like "Do you have adult video?" and "Do you have adult book?" As you can see, the subjects of their questions were not much varied. I did manage to slip in a few moments of proper Australia talk but this group was more interested in joking, laughing, and apparently the content of my conjectured library of adult products. Funny thing was that as we were coming to the end of our little session they told me, "Uh, Mr. Koshiishi (the English teacher for this class).....this room....don't tell." Obviously they knew that their behavior and line of questioning were a bit off the mark in terms of acceptable school behavior. One even told me in that I've-seen-many-American-movies way, "Hold your tongue," which I couldn't help but laugh at. Of course, as you can imagine, I didn't quite let them off that easy and told them, "You want me to hold my tongue....you bring me omiyage (gifts)." To which they all cheered and promised that they would. Of course, I have yet to see anything.
So this last Friday I had a group of girls come in and, like the boys described above, these girls were fun. Although they didn't ask me about my porn collection they did say they wanted me to kiss them. This, they said, they wanted as a prize for the winning group.
I had prepared a little bingo game based on Australia. It was easy stuff using all things Australia such as kangaroo, koala, vegemite, boomerang, etc. I had looked it all up on the net and put it together in hopes that I could teach them something about the country they will be visiting this summer. Of course, in the process I, too, had learned something. Did you know that Australia has 20 million people? Maybe...maybe not. But even more impresseive than that is that the country has 120 million sheep. No wonder all those jokes exist. "What jokes?" you say? Forget it.
Anyway, I was explaining to them how we'd run the game and putting them into groups of two (they are much less intimidated if they have a partner) when the girl to my right, who is, by the way, very UN-shy, asks me in a desperate voice, "Uh uh......prize...winner...what give?" which can be translated into good English as "Excuse me, most excellent teacher, but do you have any prizes for the winner of this exciting game? And if so what?" So I told her that I hadn't brought anything, but that didn't seem to matter to her and she asked again, "No no....want...prize!" At this point I wasn't sure what to do but was thinking, "These dumb girls. Why do insist on torturing me?" So I said, "What do you want?" thinking that maayyyybee, if I saw a pig flying later in the day, I would buy them some small chocolates and bring them next time. So I asked, "What do you want?" And it was here that the little spokeswoman for this harem said to me, "Oh oh, a kiss, a kiss!" and about three other girls laughed and said, "Yes yes, a kiss, a kiss!" I just rolled my eyes thinking of an early return home after a night in jail and an embarrasing confrontation with the Japanese authorities. Thanks, girls, but no thanks.
But we did have a good time and as it turned out in the end the winners wanted my autograph. Now that I can do.
So the groups are now over and their preparation for Australia is complete. But I can't help but think to myself, "Who's going to prepare Australia?"

Sumo has started again. Yesterday was day one.
Hakuho, that dumb butt, lost. And to someone he shouldn't have.
Asashoryu won, as usual.
Kokkai won.
Kaio won.
And then there are all the others.
Today Hakuho faces Kokkai. Interesting bout.

Ok, that's all for this lovely day. More kencho time to come which means more writing to come, so stay tuned.