It goes both ways

I shouldn't have learned to curse. Before I came to Japan, before I even took my intro Japanese course, I could already curse in Japanese. For who knows what reason, that's always the most enticing part of a language to learn at the outset. I arrived armed with a cavalry of curses, ready to fling them at any wayward Japanese person who might utter a please, thank you, or 1000 pardons (because, aside from the hoodlums, it doesn't get much worse than that). This vocabulary, however, proved to be a double-edged sword.

In most of my classes, the first 20 minutes or so are spent chatting about whatever's going on in my students' lives. Some students try to get away with saying "nothing special," but I won't tolerate it. If they have to make something up, so be it -- this is a conversation school. Sometimes I make them tell me stories.

This week, one of my students was talking about yuzu, a fruit my dictionary generously translates as... yuzu. Yuzu is a citrus fruit with, it seems, no western counterpart. It's something like a lemon, doesn't taste good on its own, and can be made into decent jam or tea. This student has a relative who has a yuzu tree. When she finished talking, I gave her mock homework, as I often do: she had to bring us all kuso the following week. Yuzu was a new word for me, kuso was not. I mistakenly asked her to bring us all "shit" next week. I burst out laughing, as did everyone else, and I was red for a good two minutes. Freakin' kuso.

My students do more than their share of fumbling, however. I have some very advanced students, some of whom are English teachers themselves (which often speaks poorly for Japanese English instruction). One of them, a woman of about 45, was telling the class about how a festival procession stopped in her yard. Her Ls and Rs are generally good, but Rs can take three positions: initial, medial, and final. Sadly, she still hasn't mastered medial Rs, and offered us the following commentary: "I was so excited, I crapped!"

I can laugh at my mistakes, but if I laugh at a student, I could very well be harangued with a "thank you."