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Will's Tour Diary - updated daily (ish)!

Will's tour diary - What? Why? When? Where? - Shows - Seminars


Fri1/12

Nakagawa Primary was 5 minutes from Chez Mizunuma. We strutted our stuff in three lively performances. The last group contained Seiha Mizunuma - 11 year old son of the Mizunumas and veteran of countless wrestling matches with me. Mrs Mizunuma is a teacher at the nearby Deaf School, but she took time out to come and have a look at Genki English. Now she knows what I have been doing for two months! Lots of parents too.

After lunch we had a Q&A session with the year 6 students. Given the prospect of a whole 45 session of back and forth questions can tend towards boredom we used the first half of the session to teach "How are you?". As with Akanma it went down a treat. Then we fielded questions. We suspected a few of the questions had been "suggested" eg "Can you use chopsticks", "What is the hardest part about learning Japanese". When I hang out with kids in the playground or in class they NEVER ask me questions like that - they always ask "Do you have a girlfriend?" "Do you like [insert female pop-star name]" "Can you ride a unicycle?". I know the teachers mean well, and think they are helping, but by feeding students their own pre-conceptions about people from other countries they are perpetuating stereotypes, not furthering understanding.

Richard headed off to Fukuoka - he is the Kyushu advance party. I stayed behind to enjoy another evening of Mizunuma hospitality with some teacher friends from Mikame. I told the Mizunumas the Junko-telephone-snowboard story and they posed several theories -
"Maybe she has a boyfriend" (she does)
"Maybe she is married!" (hadn't thought of that one)
As I reiterated the tale I became decidedly annoyed. I borrowed someone's mobile phone and rang Junko. Bingo - answering machine! I left a message saying "I want my snowboard back!". I wonder what will happen?



Will

email: will@genkienglish.net


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Opinions expressed in this diary are personal views of Will Jasprizza. They do  not necessarily represent those of Genki English, especially where he is  making jokes which sounded better at the time!!! Please be understanding!

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