Lost in Ogawa

Remember back in the day when we were Junior High, High School or even College students, anything that associated with embarrassing bodily function made us giggle and chuckle? You know what I’m talking about! May it be farting, constipation or diarrhea, once you hear about it, you’re either embarrassed about it and tend to shy away from talking about it or if you’re less mature, you go right ahead and have a good laugh about it. Now that I’ve mentioned it, how does everybody feel right now? Anybody’s face turned red yet? =) Anyway, the reason I brought this up was because I recently had an experience at school where these topics more or less came up in class. I was once told that the Japanese were generally pretty open talking about their bowel movements or their unusual bodily functions in a mature and serious manner. For the first time, I was an eyewitness to this phenomenon.

It was at one of the Junior High Schools in Ogawa with the 3rd year students. The lesson of the day was going to the doctors and learning how to say common English phrases that described what’s wrong with you if you’re sick. Things like, “I have a cold,” “I have a headache,” “I have a sore throat,” and so forth. Usually, the teacher would have me read over the sentences for the students to hear my pronunciation and then the students would repeat after me. Well for the first time ever, I had a troop of students repeating after me when I said nice and loud, “I am CONSTIPATED!” When I said it, I couldn’t help smirking and chuckling inside but when I looked at my students, they were all very serious. You would guess that maybe no students were giggling away because they didn’t know what they were repeating but actually, the teacher had already translated “I am constipated” in Japanese on their worksheet so they knew exactly what they were repeating. If repeating wasn’t enough, the teacher had voluntary share her constipation story with her students. Apparently she had gone to Thailand once and became constipated. She claimed that the hot weather outside and the overly cold
air-conditioned indoor caused her constipation. I didn’t really buy that but whatever she wants to believe! At that time, the teacher did not know how to say in English and it bothered her that she couldn’t communicate her problem to the doctor. Therefore, she thought all her students should know how to say it. For a man of science, I know there’s nothing wrong or funny for that matter about constipation but maybe it’s the kid in me or I am STILL a kid that when I say “I’m constipated” to a class of about 30, I still can’t help the fact that I have a big smile on my face when I’m chuckling away inside. Following “I am constipated,” it was “I have diarrhea!” I’ve already said this to 3 classes about 90 students in total. I still got two more classes and approx. 60 more students to notify that “I am Constipated” and “I have Diarrhea!” =)

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Friday, February 4th, 2005 at 12:45 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.