Once again, about a dozen thoughtful youngsters made their cards for Joyce Teacher. This one is my favorite. This guy loves me with all of his heat.
Then sometimes it's just nice to see someone this self assured:
And my favorite girl student in the whole school made me this beautiful card. Today was her b-day. You can see that she thanks me for the present I gave her (assorted stickers dug with haste out of my sticker drawer and thrown into my carrot ziplock bag from lunch, 5 minutes before class started, when I remembered her b-day).
My favorite card of all was this one. It was made by a 17 year old boy for his best friend Yoshito, who sits directly beside him. Yoshito was busily making Ryo a love card as well. Watching them scribble away right there beside each other and then exchange cards made my day. Imagine how good you would feel if you got this card from your friend:
Ok, what's up with the Japanese kids drawing eyeballs on all their hearts? Has anyone else noticed this? And the scary chick at the bottom... like, is that what love looks like?
This is how much sense Japanese people make when they speak English. My whole day at school is just nonsense sentences strung together like this card, to which i answer oh reary! and bob my head enthusiastically. The weird thing is, these kids had the Japanese translation of all these sentences on the print out I gave them. It wasn't as if they didn't understand what they were writing. Is this how they talk in Japanese too? I may never know, since I lost all interest in learning the language about one month after I got here (I think I forgot to tell most of you that.)
For some, the card making process was more spiritual than anything else.
And then once again, there were those with imaginary pets as their only loved ones.
Some kids kept the message simple and to the point.
there were those who, in their gleeful haste, failed to remember that this was an exercise in the English Language.
The straightforward:
The wondrously cute and cuddly.
I know I show you the cool ones. At the end of the day, most of them just look like this:
4 comments:
so, how do we interpret "dear my class GOD" without simply calling it gibberish? maybe it is a prayer to the patron kami of education, whatever that might be? or perhaps something was accidentally omitted? a "y" on class to form an adjective? an ampersand between class and GOD? or maybe this was an extremely honorific title for you, joyce -- "class GOD" -- like "deity of the chalkboard" or "goddess of grades"...
p.s. the best part is ayano's self portrait. WUNDERBAR.
Lost interest in learning the language?!?! You totally never told us that! I'm super surprised.
Love the valentines. And Shoe guy, I think they were referring to Joyce as the Deity of the Chalkboard.
Shame you don't want to keep up with the language.
That card they forgot to write in English is actually pretty cute.
Seems to be a girl writing to a guy. Red color at the beginning seems to be a header or intro(?). Maybe she just ran out of ink:
"[red]I want to be with Ei-chan a lot. You gave a present, so now I'm [Mako's] giving one.
[black]Please accept [actually the please was dropped, kinda bossy].
You always listen to me coming to you, being selfish and I just want to say THANK YOU. (blushing)
From here on out, I may still say selfish things but... because I'm crazy about you let's be together, okay?
If you cheat I'll never forgive you. (cat meowing & crying)
I hope you can put up with me.
[keep your head up in dealing with me/Mako coming to you/Ishikawa?].
From your honey :D <- bald[?]"
Some of my questions in the thing are coz I don't know the people involved to figure out some of the context. Japanese is very much an implied language where they leave stuff off because it's "understood".
I'll be in Okinawa April 20th.
First time in 10 years.
Hoping to find some fun places to hang out. hehe
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