Kibasen

Kibasen, or kiba-sen, either way its one of the craziest games I've been educated on recently. A couple of days ago I was talking to a student about their sports festival (we probably just call it a sports day). During this day, he played kibasen, naturally I asked what it is. Here goes:

Kiba means "on horseback", sen means "to fight", so kibasen is like a mock calvary battle. Three people make some sort of platform with their arms, and a fourth person rides up the top (the rider). The student I was talking to made up one of the three down bottom. Now there were about 150 kids, two teams of 75 doing this. So they had about 18 groups of these "horses" on one team. The aim of the game is to push the rider off their platform. So basically, all 36 groups run into the field and try to push each other off. The bottom three are also allowed to kick and shove with their shoulders, since their hands are preoccupied. Its crazy, its actually a pretty violent-sounding sport. UNTIL... it was cleared up. This game/sport is very popular in Japan among elementary and highschool kids. The non-violent one has the rider wearing a hat, and the aim is to knock off the other team's hats, rather than push them off. Even girls play the non-violent one. Very cool.

Another student mentioned something named esosa, or esasa, which to me sounded like some kind of Man Power thing for highschool kids. When I tried to describe it to some other students to see if they recognised it, they kinda did, and referred to it as a muscle dance. All very suspect... Boys in trunks on stage flexing their muscles. That's basically it.

Two good comments from recent times...
Me: How long does it take to get to school from home?
Student: 3 years.
(followed by some quick correction)

Me: So you don't have to look after the dog anymore? That's good!
Student: It's very happy for me.

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The past few days have been fairly uneventful, so not much blogging needed. Except I did have a couple of funny stories from class. And I will share them with you.

There are some things that I suppose might only be funny when you hear someone say them with difficulty (i.e. they are learning the language). So you have to try and imagine that they actually take a while to say these sentences, rather than reading them as fluently spoken.

So I was teaching a lesson about asking for help.
S1: Can you...look...after my...........baggage for 20 minute?
S2: I'm sorry, I broke...my ... arms.

That was so ridiculously funny that I ALMOST burst out laughing right in the class, where there were two others practicing a similar conversation!

Another class I taught earlier in the day, we were talking about living abroad. So basically, where you want to live, where you DON'T want to live, why, and what you would miss back home. One of the model sentences for missing things was "I can't live without my (family)", family being the word you can change.

I asked one of the students where she wouldn't want to live. She responded "Iraq". That was already mildly amusing. Then I asked why. She said "I can't...live without....etoo......my life." Inside I was thinking HUH!? I didn't laugh at the time because the joke wasn't caught on by the other students, but it was a sure classic! She knew she couldn't come up with anything better so she kinda just threw it out there. Absolutely ridiculous!

Anyway, I taught another student who's one of the highest levels (Level 2, can speak pretty fluently with very few grammar errors). I had been teaching her for a while and gotten to know her quite well so she was one of the students I really liked (and could communicate with her quite well). She's also pregnant with her first child, so she told me that today (Saturday) would be her last day at Nova. I was sad because it was almost like a free lesson when I had to teach her, because she can speak so well already). So I took a photo with her just to remember.