school yearbook

[annie]

American yearbooks are full of pictures of all the students with lots of room for autographs and messages.

Japanese yearbooks (junior high school, at least) have lots of essays written by students and teachers and maybe a page for each homeroom.

I was accosted by two students from the yearbook committee while sitting at my desk yesterday. They came in with a piece of Japanese essay paper (the kind with the vertical lines of boxes, where you write one character in each box) and very panicked expressions when they realized that they might need to speak some English.

The Japanese teacher who was in the office with me asked them if I could write it in English, and their reply was "It would be better if it was written in Japanese..." So, I have to write a 625 character essay in Japanese (that will then be published and kept for posterity by far too many people). And I have finish it by Friday morning. And have no idea what to write about. Anyone have any suggestions for a good topic?

[Bueller_007]

The Asian slave trade?
The rape of the oceans?
Japan's WWII war crimes?

[JohnCBriggs]

Buellerさん,
I hope you are just having an off day.

Annieさん,
At the risk of stating the obvious, why not write about your experiences of teaching in Japan, the surprises, the differences between your home country and Japan, the cultural gaffs.
ジョン

[seanolan]

How about an essay on the sick, twisted story they force every 中学生 to read in that awful New Horizons book, "A Mother's Lullaby"? I could go into 1000 characters easily on that nightmare inducing Weltschmertz milking piece of...

Well, I'll just suggest a commentary on the state of Jr. High School English texts.

Sean

[annie]

Buellerさん、
I could do those topics easily enough. I even have the Japanese WWII war crime essay written... but it's about 8 pages longer than I need. Though 従軍慰安婦 probably isn't an appropriate topic for this venue. Thanks, anyways.

JohnCBriggsさん、
Actually, since I wasn't really sure whether this was supposed to be a personal essay or something more inspirational, you're not stating the obvious at all.

seanolanさん、
Since I didn't start at the school till the end of September I was spared the hell of "A Mother's Lullaby." And, I was even lucky enough to convince the teachers to skip the story on the blind guy from Okinawa and just let me teach comparatives with the students.

Interesting idea though... which reminds me that I've been thinking a lot lately about how we teach foreign language differently in the States than they do in Japan. I think I might go with that, plus some of the basic this is why I came to Japan stuff.

Choosing a topic was always my downfall in English class. I could always turn out an A paper in a few hours (and always the night before it was due), but would have to spend days contemplating the topic.