Look out!!

Japanese people have a terrible sense of spatial awareness. There, I've said it. Political correctness be damned - they do not looked where they're bloody going. I'm not exactly a small guy, but the number of times I've been walking behind someone and just as I've moved to overtake them they've swerved into my lane.....well, it's a lot. Perhaps the most infuriating is on the train - Japanese folk don't seem to filter down into the carriages, they just get on and stand in the entrance. It seems to be accepted that if you want to get past someone, you just gently push in a way that would get you a sharp dig in the ribs back in Blighty. Which is fair enough, but there should be signs or something for us gaijin. Actually, the other day I got on and the guy on front of stopped RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE DOOR so I couldn't even get on. So I shoved his rucksack out of the way and pushed past him, grumpy style. He lost his balance a bit, but that's what you get for existing at 9am on a Saturday - I'm not a morning person.

My classes were good today - I had one very young kid who has the class to himself first, and normally he's very energetic especially if we get to do stuff about animals. But today he seemed a little out of sorts and uncooperative. I don't think there's many things more humiliating in life than yelling out "wave your arms" and gooning about like a prize plonker while a 2 year old looks pityingly at you. He actually threw a proper temper tantrum at one point and was inexplicably shouting "rain!" in Japanese - I later found out that the word for rain "ame" is the same as the word for "candy" or "sweets". Me and his Mum managed to talk him down and get him to do some stuff but most of the lesson was spent cheering him up. I found out afterwards that before coming to class...he'd had diarrhea!! So, I'm torn between feeling sympathy for the little guy and thinking maybe some kind of warning label was in order.
Second class was really fun - the kids are really bright and cheerful so teaching them is lots of fun. There is a small classroom management issue though that two of them vie for the top spot, and if either of them lose a game they get proper stroppy. I tried making it so in the end "everyone's a winner yay!" but then they all just look witheringly at me, so now I just fix it so they win one each. We'd tried to play snap today actually which you think would be simple to explain, but they could not get that you turn over the top card of your pile blind and have to shout snap if it's the same as the card face up - everytime I turned over my card they just hunted through their decks for the same card, threw it on top and shouted snap. And everytime I tried to explain to one of them "no, look, turn this card over...." the other three would hunt through their decks for the same card, throw it on top, and shout snap.　　So I abandoned that fairly rapidly.

I think it's also worth mentioning that my private lesson student - who's a really nice guy - told me during our discussion that he wouldn't be happy if his daughter wanted to marry a foreigner. Um....you know I'm a foreigner right? He doesn't actually have a daughter anyway so it's all hypotheticals.