Gorilla Man

I had one of those grand moments of sudden deep thought yesterday as I was teaching a lessonto a seven year old kid. I was going through the normal routine that im supposed to follow and all of a sudden he starts to grunt and make pig faces. These grunts werent normal they sounded as if they were coming from the very depths of his bowels, quite frankly they were the best grunting noises id ever heard. I was feeling very tired and weary after a 13 day work stretch and rather suddenly and impulsivielyI thought "sod this," threw my work materials away and started making gorialla noises and beating my chest. I started to get really into it, running around the classroom, trying to stick pencils up my nose and waving my hands like id just seen the messiah. For about ten minutes this continued, running into pure frenzy as he tried to out grunt me and I tried to out ape him. Then as the lesson bell rang to finish, I stopped and thought thought" Im sitting here in Japan thousands away from home pretending to be a gorilla.

"What the f**k is going on?!"

I think probably a lot of people out here have had similiar experiences as to be honest as teaching kids is largely a question of being a monkey or entertainer (and a lot of real monkeys could do better jobs at it). Most kids syllabuses in the "big" eikaiwa schools are patronising and dont do much but treat them like parrots. "You are a banana, you are a banana, You are a banana" What are you???

"I am a banana, I am a banana, I am a banana."

The worst is when you have to teach them a story of several sentences in sequence,. They dont understand the vocab, the grammar or the story all they know is to replicate and repeat. You could equally bring in a story from penthouse or playboy for them to repeat. Its all about teaching them bleeeeeeeh. The mothers eagerly watch through the windows hoping that they can impress there friends with their kids at their next soiree by regurgitating phrases "I like bananas" or "Do you know where Ougadougou is?" . And heaven knows how ashamed they would feel if their kid said its rainy so im tired because one is always grumpy when its rainy according to the syullabus and there is no deviation WHATSOEVER. YOU WILL LISTEN AND REPEAT!

On a similair note i was watching a hello kitty cartoon the other day, not that i usually do but i was at a friends house who has a kid. The story was all about vegetables. Kitty was in a state of crisis as every dinner mother cooked up some nice greens but poor kitty could not even look at them. She goes to have consultation with her friend and part time therapist moley the mole. He remedies the problem by suggesting that she should repeat the phrase "Vegetables are tasty, I love vegetables" over and over again. So kitty repeats it over and over again and when she come into conflict with an ominous looking gherkin she repeats it again and eats the gherkin. She had eaten a vegetable! Kitty dances around the garden the sun smiles, the birds sing, "harmony" is restored.

A a cute and endearing parable tale of psycological brainwashing. If Japan wants to become militarised again they should make every 3 year old watch this video. Hello kitty could potentially trigger off the rise of fascism.