Lets Dancing!

School has started again, and that means that I'm less likely to be bored, start reading someone elses blog, getting bent out of shape, and posting a politically charged rant on my own blog :)

Everybody cheers! :D

Anyway, school has started again. We started work Friday (You never really appreciate America and the "Well, the first starts on a Friday, we'll start on the 4th, then" Theory until you are no longer in America...). I returned to work to find that one of my students has placed within the top three in Kendo. The entire school is a-twitter about that (And I'm really proud of him, he's a particularly good Kendo-ka, good spirit!). Anyway, we all gather in the gym for a public presentation of the medal, and it was a really neat experience.

The rest of the day, I sat at my desk and drew a lot...

I'm certainly not complaining, it just feels funny... I'm getting paid to sit around and draw...

It's against my work ethic...

Anyway, before you all get into the "Hey! Enjoy it" phase, I actually spend a lot of my time sitting at my desk doing nothing of note. It's sorta the roll of the Junior High teacher... Unlike the middle schools, we don't make lesson plans, and many schools (mine included) don't really like to play games, so I don't have anything to prepare... So when I'm not in class, I sit at my desk and write or draw or womething cool.

After a while, it gets a little old.

Hopefully soon I'll get a computer that I can take to school with me... but that's another story.

So, this week is devoted to the ancient Japanese tradition of "Sports Day". This is a day devoted entirely to running each and every one of the students and teachers into the ground. The Sports Day itself is a great day of competition. Like the Olympics, except just for MySchool... But it's so important that we actually practice for Sports Day...

...Which means I sit at my desk all this week...

So I stock up on things that need doing, stories I'm working on, comics I'm drawing, etc. And I head to school.

I spend most of my morning doing these things, when Mr. Language Arts comes up to me and says: "Guy Sensei, Lets Dancing!" And he motions me to follow him.

At this moment, I'd like to point out something very interesting about languages. We all know that languages are different in words and grammer... but one thing that always shocks me is that there is also a difference in usage between languages...

And the "Lets ..." function is one of those glaring differences in our languages. The Japanese language actually has a congigation of the verb for "lets"... It's the mashoo/deshoo function (Mah-show, Deh show). Ikimasu= To Go, Ikimashoo=Lets go. It's not really that simple, but when those who are not fluent in English (As my dear friend Mr. Language Arts teacher) tries to translate directly "Dansu o Shimashoo" It comes out as "Lets Dance"... now he knows that you need to change the Verb tense in English too, and he's good at that! So he goes for the ...ing... and viola! you get "Lets Dancing!"

I hear the "Mashoo/Deshoo" function all the time in Japanese... they must "Lets Driving" and "lets eating" and "lets walking the dog!" all the time... it's very different than in English... the Japanese do everything together, they are all really close here, it makes sense... it's just interesting to note that even their language is close in this way.

So I lets Dancing!

I'll explain about the Dancing next :)


---Me.