Thursday, May 25, 2006
Back To School
Kyoto was also our first proper encounter with Japanese school children. Hordes of them. We had noticed in Tokyo that there didn't seem to be a single day of the week when they weren't either at school or on some kind of field trip. Then we started to see increasing numbers of them on our Shinkansen journeys, and then when we arrived in Kyoto we established that it seemed to be school trip season. Not just individual class trips, but seemingly an entire school year would head down to the station together and then speed off to visit the great historical and cultural sights, which of course was exactly where we were headed.....We also soon discovered that they have another little 'side task' when they are out on the road, they have to randomly approach likely looking tourists and engage them in conversation in order to practice their English.
We'd barely stepped off the train in Kyoto, and we stood still for a just little too long reading the English sign in the tourist info. office before we were pounced upon by the first group. Fortunately you don't get mobbed by the whole school, they seem to split into groups of 4-6 kids, usually evenly split between boys and girls. It turns out that this is great fun and we got to quite enjoy it, not least because it's amazing how enthusiastic and grateful they are when you agree to help them, although after about the third group in a single afternoon it does get a little bit tiring to repeat many of the same answers.
Most of the groups we spoke to were around 13 or 14 years old, although some were as young as 11. They all have a set of fairly basic questions to ask you (what's your name, where are you from, etc.). The questions are written down phrasebook style although in many cases the older ones had embarrassingly good understanding when compared to our comical attempts at a few basic Japanese words! Then you'll sometimes get asked to write a message in their notebooks, which we assumed that they then took back to class and attempted to decipher. Our Hiroshima experiences served us well when answering the question "What is your favourite Japanese food?" and we got a few enthusiastic nods when we answered "Okonomiyaki", although this may well have been because we were the first people ever who hadn't said "Sushi".....
Their final request, for which they seem to get some kind of bonus marks back at school, is to have their photo taken with you. You will notice from the photos that, from a young age, it seems it is virtually impossible for the Japanese to have a camera pointed at them without them all instinctively breaking into two-fingered 'peace' signs. Very odd!
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