More JET Journal Fodder

There’s nothing quite like the process of re-adhering to a schedule after two weeks of vacation during which you cross the international date line twice, use the resulting jet lag as your primary excuse for initiating and terminating sleep whenever you want, and trade in your cultural mine-field-laden, “adult” life in a foreign country for getting waited on hand and foot (yeah, they’re that happy to see you after a year and a half abroad) at home with your parents. When my keitai alarm went off this morning, I actually had to pretend that I was still in my parent’s panoramic-view-of-Nanaimo-across-the-water house in Canada, going through the sequence of “morning routine” actions I developed over there, just so that I wouldn’t be so depressed about returning to the “morning routine, J-version” that I retreated fifty folds into my futon, never to emerge again.

It was as I was working through a bowl of granola in a catatonic fashion (a lot of sitting and staring, not a lot of chewing) that one of those revelations of the daily-minutiae sort suddenly struck. Here I was thinking it would take something big and earth-shattering like a quake to get me moving (ground preferably tilted in the direction of my school, so that I could roll rather than mount the hated bike), when really it was just something I happened to overhear on J-TV.

Now that I’m pretty much on the quarter-century mark, there are not a lot of things I can remember precisely about grade one, but one of the things I do remember precisely is that we had a unit on Japan. A poster of Fuji went up on the bulletin board, and a Japanese woman visited our class to help us work through a workbook. We learned the names of a few fruits and vegetables, puzzled over the cartoon of a Japanese child scrubbing himself before he got into the tub, and made sure we at least knew TO-KYO and KYO-TO. Most importantly of all (to my mind, anyway), the Japanese woman led us through a wonderful little Japanese song, complete with actions. I remember thinking it was such a crime that she only showed it once, because I was determined to remember it, even though I was only seven years old and couldn’t understand a single word of Japanese. In other words, for the past eighteen years, I’ve been carrying around this nub of a memory of a Japanese children’s song and a few corresponding syllables, not quite sure whether it’s the real thing or a figment of my childhood imagination.

… UNTIL I HEARD IT THIS MORNING ON J-TV. Dropping my granola, I raced over to the television just in time to catch an animated Kitty-chan miming actions over the hiragana lyrics written across the bottom of the screen:

て　を　たたきましょう (te wo tatakimasho)

たんたんたん、たんたんたん (tan-tan-tan, tan-tan-tan)

あしぶみ　しましょう (ashibumi shimasho)

たんたんたんたんたんたんたん (tan-tan-tan-tan-tan-tan-tan)

わらいましょう (waraimasho)

あっはっは (ah-ha-ha)

わらいましょう (waraimasho)

あっはっは (ah-ha-ha)

あっはっは、あっはっは (ah-ha-ha, ah-ha-ha)

ああ、おもしろい (aa, omoshiroi)

Creepy, because not only had I correctly remembered the melody, but the syllables I’d managed to remember were also in the right places. Developmental psychology is correct. Children are freaking sponges.

If only I could go back and reassure my grade one self not to worry, because one day I’d learn Japanese and go to Japan and hear the song again on television, only this time I’d understand all of the words, so I could memorize it in a matter of seconds. Or tell my grade one self, Dude, see that Japanese woman up there? One day you will (technically) be capable of teaching a classroom full of first graders exactly what she’s teaching, Japanese song and all.

Actually, forget technicalities, I’m already doing what she did, just in the opposite situation. If even one of my Japanese grade one students goes on to suffer from an ear worm for eighteen years before going on an exchange to Canada, turning on the TV and shouting “ATARI!” when they hear the familiar strains of “Skinnamarink” on some children’s show, I’ll consider my JET Programme experience a success.