I like school!

I love school! I even got here early today. EARLY! By a HALF AN HOUR! ME! Even my students know that Josh 先生is not an “early” person. But it was a lovely experience: I had a very relaxed, non-frantic bike-ride here and a nice sit-down cup of coffee when I arrived, and had plenty of “I’m here at school to work today” brain-change time before class started. Apparently it feels great not to arrive somewhere just-on-time. Who knew? I always thought it would be boring to arrive somewhere early. I wonder what it’s like to arrive early for a train, or not have to sprint to the bus stop. Just when you think you know everything about life, you learn something new. Will the wonders never cease?

And I’m already done with classes today, after three lovely periods with seventh and eighth graders. We did phonics games and had little conversations. Ahh, the easy life. They really treat me well at this school—they know that I can bring special things to their table and they encourage me to teach the students new and exciting things in new and different ways, and they don’t pretend like it’s my job to teach the students English (because it’s not—that’s their job). It’s a great life here.

And the students! Oh, I just love them here. They’re just great. Today I doled out special homework to one of my favorites, a great kid named Taiga, whom I call Tiger. Today Tiger came into the teachers office to say hello to me and when I said, “how are you today,” he answered “Josh, I’m very sleepy today.” So I asked him what time he went to bed last night and he said 2:30. Because he was studying! “Tiger,” I says, “I am giving you special homework tonight, to go to bed between 10:30 and 11:00, because even if you study all night, you still need sleep. In Japanese I added, 寝ることを忘れないで！勉強するも、寝るも、両方は大事なことですよ！もし２４時間勉強したら、０時間しか寝なかったら、次の日にテストをうけることがぜったいできません！生活することもできないね！今日、よく寝なさい！This all means, “don’t forget to sleep! Studying and sleeping are both important things. If you study for 24 hours and sleep for 0, you can’t take a test the next day. You can’t live your normal life either, with no sleep! Today, SLEEP A LOT!” The funny thing is, since I’m a teacher and the students are trained to do whatever the teachers tell them, when I give him “sleeping” as homework, he’s totally obligated to do it! And he knows it! “Tiger, your homework is to go to sleep between 10:30 and 11:00,” I say, and his face just lights up: “Ah, Josh, thank you!!” What a funny, wonderful place.