The Wednesday Wonders

Wednesday is my longest day; about 6 hours of lessons and about 11 hours in school. Fortunately, Wednesday has some of my favourite classes.

First up we have The Housewife Cabal, a phalanx of five flirty 55 year-olds who treat the class as a kind of an unofficial WI meeting.

Nevertheless, they throw themselves into the exercises as if their lives depended on it, remember all the vocab I teach them and not only do their homework but the following week’s homework as well.

Next, we have the five year-olds, who are fantastic. They are excited, giggly, incredibly sharp and, best of all, well-behaved.

Finally, the rough-house that is the 8 year-olds. Full of energy, boisterous, loud and sometimes difficult to control, this class will do nothing but keep you alert.

Meet the stars of this class:

This is Yuseke (Use-Keh). He is a born comedian. Everything he does is funny. He could say: “Er” and it would be hilarious.

Here, we have from R-to-L, Yuseke, Yuki and Harafumi. Despite looking like a bulldog, Harafumi is the cleverest boy in the class. He’s so sweaty his Mum makes him wrap a towel round his neck.

He’s a lovely lad, but quite sensitive. Probably shouldn’t have implied he’s like a sweaty bulldog then, really. I take that back.

But yesterday I invented a game where everyone had a letter of the alphabet sellotaped to their back and when I called out, say, “k”, the class had to then try to rip it off the corresponding student’s back. Harafumi had protected his letter well and was the only one left in the game.

Now, he was facing the rest of the class with his back to the wall. For a moment, there was a pause before the entire class descended on him like a pack of wolves, ravaging him until they had levered over his large frame and torn the card from his back.

As he emerged from the melee he had a face like thunder. He mumbled something in Japanese, turned to face the wall and started sobbing into his forearm.

“Come on, mate. You won. Champion!” I said encouragingly, grabbing his hand and thrusting it in the air.

Nevertheless, he continued to bawl. Even Yuseke had a go at cheering him up, jabbering to him in Japanese. At least I hope he was cheering him up. He could have been saying: “Ha. You lost, you fat knacker”

After, I decided to take these photos and that cheered him up.