ON MY THREE STALKERS
At my Base School, there are three first year boys who absolutely crack me up. They always say hello to me in incredibly loud voices. The other day after class, they came up to me as I was gathering my stuff and all stared nervously at each other. One of them (the tallest, and therefore, I think, the leader), said “se no” which is the Japanese equivalent of “okay, an three, two, one”, and then they all said in unison, “Jessica is cute.” I laughed and thanked them for their nice lie, and they all giggled a bit (I didn’t know boys could giggle, but I guess they can). Ever since then, whenever they see me, one of them says “se no” and they all say “Jessica is cute.” Talk about a daily ego boost. As an update, they just learned the word “beautiful.” Today, they came up to me and did their “se, no, Jessica is cute AND beautiful.” And people ask why I like Japan…

ON NATURE'S WARNING SIGNS
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I have a bad poker face. When I’m feeling particularly annoyed, overstressed, and generally ticked off, my eyelids start to twitch. I don’t think most people would notice it, but I do, and it annoys me even more. I can’t help but think that it twitches for a reason. Maybe it’s like one of nature’s warning signs: poisonous frogs are brightly colored, rattlesnakes have their rattle, that guy in the Farside cartoon has an inflatable floaty and a bazooka, and my eyelid twitches. It's natures way of telling people that what they are approaching is dangerous and under pressure, so everyone should stay away. I think I need to make the twitch more obvious so some of my more annoying acquaintances stay away...

ON MORE TRANSLATION FUN
I was in an adult conversation class the other day, and one of the men was talking to me about some topic or other (I’ve forgotten what it was about). We were chatting, and suddenly he said a word that didn’t fit. “He was being very impodent.” I asked him to repeat it, but it didn’t make any more sense the second time around. I had no idea what he was trying to say, but it sure sounded like “impotent” to me. Figuring that was the wrong word, I asked him to repeat it. Three more times of him saying “impotent” at me, and I was no closer to figuring out what he meant, though I was a lot closer to laughing. I tried to help him out by making some guesses. “Important? Impressive? Impersonation?” But he kept saying those words weren’t right, and repeating “impotent” like it would help me figure out what he was saying. Eventually he got out his dictionary and looked up the word he wanted. He turned his dictionary to me, and I read the word. Oh, impudent! Okay. That makes sense. He gave me a “duh, of course it makes sense look, then asked me what I thought he had said. I taught him a new phrase, “I plead the fifth.”

ON HOOKED ON KANJI
My students at one school were learning the phrase “Do you know…?” My English teacher for that class decided that the students should write some different kanji (Chinese characters) and ask me if I knew what they meant. Now, I was less than thrilled with this, as my kanji comprehension is at about the level of a Japanese infant. After being in Japan one year, you’d think I’d be getting some decent skills, but in truth, I’m a slacker. I haven’t been studying nearly as hard as I should have been, and this is becoming all too apparent to me as I’m about to enter my second year here. So the students were asking me about some kanji, most of them holding up just one character and asking me about it. I understood the easier ones they held up (river, mountain, forest, stomach ulcer), but then one student got up and held up what looked to be a diagram of Fort Knox, but what actually turned out to be ５ kanji strung together. He asked me, “Do you know what this kanji is?” I informed him that of course, I had no idea. I did recognize some of the kanji for the city of Tokyo, so I mentioned that to him. He then said, “That’s right!” (He was reading off the script the teacher prepared for him, so he wasn’t sure how to say “That’s half-right.”). “This kanji is Tokyotokkyokyokakyoku.” He explained it meant “Tokyo Patent Permission Office”, which was honestly, obviously going to be my next guess. He was impressed that I had at least managed the "Tokyo" part and declared my kanji skills to be "amazing." Again, another ego boost. I'm not sure I'll be able to make it back to America, as my big head is no doubt going to have trouble fitting on the plane.