Working in a Japanese kindergarten

Monday, I started working at a Japanese kindergarten. Compliments of one of the Tsunashima teachers who had a side job, who's leaving back for Melbourne soon and so passed the job onto me. I went the week before to see what the job was like, and basically got hired there because they were desperate, not because I'm awesome. But I'm not denying...

Anyway, it was really cute. I teach 3 classes (3 yr olds, 4 yr olds and 5 yr olds) English with big picture cards, some songs (ABC song and Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes), etc. My friend's been teaching the 3 yr olds animals, and so I don't know whether they couldn't remember my name from last week or they were just being funny, but some of the 3 yr olds started calling me Tiger Sensei. I dunno what was up with that (could be something to do with them last week also saying "Kowaii!" as in scary. I'm not scary, am I?) but by the end of the class, I made sure they knew my name was Bryan Sensei; its very cool being called a sensei.

All the kids are mega cute, though one of the cutest and brightest kids is this 5 yr old called Miri-chan. I think you can use 'chan' for both boys and girls, but they made fun of me and told me to say 'kun' for guys, eg. Raimu-kun. Why is everything so darn cute here!?

Its a really cushy job; 2 hours of just having fun with the kids, and just making little changes to the program each week so it keeps the kids interested. On top of that, I have a helper who's actually supposed to be helping me, but since I'm new, he's kinda taken over...it's great.

I doubt I could ever get some photos of the kids, but if you saw them, some of you might just melt into happiness :). The only downside is that I have work right after it, so the Mondays are probably gonna be quite draining from now on. Ok, JAA!

The funniest thing

I had the funniest moment today in the voice room (free discussion).

About 7 or 8 of us were talking about Japanese history and the Edo period (I learnt: 1603-1867). And also how the Japanese emperor, along with some strong prefectures rallied the country against the Shogunate and the Shogun, who by the way, lived in Edo (now called Tokyo).

Anyway, I asked if there was an emperor now; there is, and he's approximately 70 years old. I then asked where the emperor lives now......

What I heard was Paris. My immediate response was, "Huh!? He lives in Paris?!" They said it a couple more times and I finally understood...He lives in the palace. When I told them what I had heard, we all burst out laughing because it was so ridiculous and yet, very hard to distinguish the two words. After that we went into a 5 minute workshop of how to say Paris and palace, and whether they could tell the difference between the two. In reality, there's hardly any difference, its usually understood through context. But this was one time where context didn't kick in at all. Well, kind of. But Japanese people find it hard to say r's and l's, so its completely understandable. A great moment. Made the day.