 |
the eighty-four students and twenty-some teachers
of Mochigase Junior High School (R.I.P.) |
When
I first came to Japan,
I decided that I wasn’t going to worry about learning the language until I had
figured out my students’ names. Given the endless possibilities of the former
and finite latter (at present, I have about three hundred junior high school
students plus their younger elementary school siblings), I thought I was onto
something.
A
year and a half later, I have not only failed to remember all of my students’
names, I also do a bang-up job of confusing them or blanking completely when out of a classroom
context.
In my
defense:
I
have a Kaito and a Keita in the same class. To make matters worse, one’s last
name is Nakayama 中山 and the other is Nakamura 中村.
I
have three Ashikawa 芦川 brothers spread over
elementary and junior high school. Luckily, they are all extroverted baseball
boys who excel at English, so I know their first names, too. But I confuse
classmates Y. Otani 尾谷 and H. Ogura 小椋 despite both being active in English. Go
figure.
It's not encouraging that I find boys’ names easier to remember than girls’. This is
generally because the boys are more memorable, either because they are loud and
love English, loud and can’t stand English, or are falling asleep in English.
On the other hand, the girls – be they star students or completely confused –
tend to keep quiet, united by a (not unfounded) fear that if I learn their
name, I may call on them in class.
Case
in point: in one of my (now graduated) classes, I had a Rima and a Rina, an
Akane, an Ayane, and an Ayano. Three were pretty good at English, but all
except one were quiet in class. Guess who got coaxed into giving answers most
often?
This
year, my grade one girls include a Rena, a Runa, three Rinas, and a Riho. Even
if I do call on them correctly, the Rinas have the option of staring at the
floor while blushing furiously until I can produce a clarifying last name. I
rarely can.
That
said, not all of my girls are the stereotypically shy Japanese youths. Like
kids across the globe, some are downright cheeky. Miyu, Mayu, and Maho sit one
in front of the other, but have such different personalities that it’s no
problem to tell them apart. It also helps that Mayu and Miyu are usually
together and experimenting on me in a mixture of intermediate English
and inappropriate Japanese.
Hibiki
is a girl’s name. So are Haruka, Natsumi, and Ikumi. However, Haruki, Namiki,
and Itsuki are boys. May some Shinto-Buddhist god be with you if you
call a boy by a girl’s name (unless it’s Yuki, which is apparently unisex.) It will be
forgiven, but not forgotten.
I
also have a Yuna, a Yuka, a Yuri, a Yui, a Yuiko, and a Yurika. They are girls.
However, Yu, Yuta, Yuto, Yuya, and Yusuke are boys’ names. I wish I were making
this up.
Then
there are the names that are so similar (Hiroto and Hiroko, Tomoki and Tomoaki,
Miki and Miku) I sometimes get away with slurring "soandso~san" (the suffix used to indicate respect and politeness) to avoid unnecessary embarrassment.
And
don’t even get me started on the repetitious last names: Nishitani 西谷, Nishimura 西村, Nishida 西田. Yamamura 山村, Yamamoto 山本 (I have three in one class, and no, they’re not related). I've lost track of the Tanakas 田中, the Moritas 森田, and the Kobayashis 小林.
Mercifully,
a handful of my students have English-sounding names. Karen, Charlene-Ann
(Shara to her classmates), Sarina, Erisa, Arisa, Anna, Kenii, Jyouji (which,
despite its spelling, sounds a lot like “Georgie”.) These, of course, I
remember.
Next
week, it’ll be a new school year, and I’ll not only have more than seventy new
junior high school first grade students’ names to learn, but also a number of
new second and third graders, as Mochigase will combine with the neighbouring
village of Saji to form a new junior high school – Sendai Minami.
It's a losing battle.
*Although
my students are rarely brave/outspoken/assertive enough to correct me, I know
they think it.
