How I Learned the Meaning of the Word IRUKA (the Hard Way)
I had my last kindergarten visit on Monday, and before I gave my tried and tested self-introduction, Q&A session, "How many foods does Grace have?" triple whammy of a lesson, I spent a couple of hours playing with a bunch of 4 and 5 year-olds that kept jabbering away in incomprehensible kiddie Japanese. One student asked me to draw her a rabbit, which opened the floodgates for additional commissions. Most of the requests were easy enough: bears, hamsters, birds, whales, crayfish (the class had a pet crayfish) blah blah blah. Then one little girl asked me to draw her an iruka. I had no idea what that word meant, so I asked other students to describe an iruka for me, in hopes of figuring out just what kind of animal I was dealing with.
"It lives in the ocean."
"It eats fish."
"It's pretty."
Uhhhhhh, still not sure. Finally, one boy put in his two cents. "It's a small whale!" So, without really thinking, I literally drew this girl a "small whale" and when I presented her with the drawing, she took one look and ran away crying. Was my drawing really that bad? I didn't think so; I thought it was a pretty nice-looking whale myself. The "small whale" boy ended up showing me a picture book of marine creatures and pointed to a particular drawing. "THIS is an iruka!"
So that's how I learned that iurka is Japanese for dolphin. Oops.
On non-dolphin note, I realized that my internet is getting cut tonight at midnight. It seemed like a good idea a month ago when I called the YahooBB people about canceling my account, but the thought of 25 days without my high-speed cable escape from boring evenings in Kuwana doesn't seem so swell anymore. I thought having no internet would force me to be more productive, but I know that I'll just find different ways of wasting time. But we'll see. The optimist in me is still hopeful. I will keep you posted on my experiement in productivity.
Currently Reading: Lost Japan - Alex Kerr
Currently Playing: Crackerman - Stone Temple Pilots
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home