This post is part of The Lost Chronicles, a series of entries exploring my previous journeys to the land of the rising sun.
A few days after my graduation, I went with a few volunteers to put on 3-4 short classes to teach English to kids of various ages. We had met a few times to plan what types of things we should do (games, music, etc.). Since I am mostly a child, I was largely in charge of thinking of things. We decided to do Old McDonald to teach them animal sounds, Bingo because they already know the Japanese version, and then to do English nametags and make cootie catchers (surprisingly the only origami Japanese people don’t know). One of the JCMU teachers was nice enough to drive us there. Since I was the only guy, they just told me to get shotgun, so I headed straight for the driver’s seat (cars are backwards (left to right, the steering wheel isn’t in the back, don’t be stupid). The number of times I’ve seen babies on the left side and briefly thought “they can’t drive!” is probably too many. We set up our stuff in the room, including maps of America and Michigan, and supplies for the various activities. One of the Japanese Shiga students and I went to recruit kids for the classes (each class was aimed at different age groups from Pre-K to middle school, but we just let people come whenever). He kept encouraging me to invite parents with kids (in Japanese), so he gave me some phrase to repeatedly attempt to say to everyone. If they asked any questions, however, I just looked at him (this is a good trick if anyone asks you a question in another language). We started off with the music, which happened to be a little too fast (for me, not just the students). So I basically had to pause for each verse, and ask what noises the animals made in Japanese, then tell them what sounds they made in English (e.g. Dog goes wanwan, cat goes nya. Bird goes pipi, and mouse goes chu. Cow goes mo, frog goes gerogero, and the elephant goes paōn. Also the fox says konkon. (this song hasn’t been created yet, I’m just psychic)). For the cootie catchers, the English speakers would tell the Japanese guy the instructions that he could repeat to the students (how to fold it, choose a color, a number, and fortunes). During the last class, we had a kid around 10 or so come in, pick up a cootie catcher and unfold it a little. He then reverse-engineered it and folded his own perfectly. It was pretty impressive. We still had to explain how to use it to predict the future. As usual, they seemed to like predictions that involved them being rich or famous. There were some that said they’d marry an actor/actress, which they found hilarious. Now, saying “this is when I decided to do the JET program and become a teacher” would be a nice moment, but it wasn’t even on my mind.