Yes, Deer.

They like English in Japan. They do. Really. English words are cool. Especially on signs and t-shirts. Hell, sometimes they even make sense. More often than not they don't though. Many a time I've seen some 'English', scratched my head and concluded: yahoo translator? google translator? random words randomly thrown together (in a random way)?

Case in point: 11-year female student, wearing a t-shirt with lots of English ramblings on it about a walk or the countryside or the summer or something. With the final sentence reading:

I am happy to have a good deer.

Suggestions for what this might mean are welcomed.

--------------------------------

Mums here are busy with housewifery, running the kids around, bentoing, etc, and sometimes they have to clean their kids schools - if there's going to be a festival on, etc. Dads work. Hard. Long hours. They don't have so much to do with the every dayness of their kids in many cases. UNLESS they are the dad of a kindy kid and then, well....

One of my students told me how whenever his kids have sports days at school (kindy) the dads all go to the school at 5a.m. and start queueing waiting for the teachers to open the gates at 7a.m. Dad can then rush to get the prime spot to watch Aya-chan or Kouki-kun doing whatever kindy kids do at sports days. Mum is probably at home making bentos while this is going on.

This would never happen in England. I'm not saying mum and dad don't give a shit, but a) sports day on a Saturday???? and b) queueing at 5a.m. on a Saturday for a kindy sports day???? and c) they just wouldn't. We always had sports days in the week and there were no parents competing for 'spots to watch from' races, as far as I remember.

Actually, primary school sports days were fun in England. Sack races, egg and spoon, obstacle courses.... Maybe I hated them, but the idea seems a lot of fun now.

-------------------------------

Strawberries and kahlua are a very good combination. Thought I'd share that with you!