Sailor'd
Today I had my reading class. This consists of 8 higher level girls who'd really much rather chat than do the standard "read the article, translate the article, answer the questions about the article." Tangents are the standard whenever the kids can sneak one past H-sensei.
Today's article was on a Japanese satellite sent to the moon a couple years ago. It also apparently carried messages from children to the moon. One boy's wish was "I want to play soccer with Martians on the moon." H-sensei asks them where Martians are from? The kids are stumped. So H-sensei says, "I'll give you a hint: Sailor..."
"Maa-zu!" shouts Maki.
Everyone laughs and H-sensei asks me if I have heard of Sailor Moon. I can't help laughing at this point as I say, "yes, Sailor Moon was very popular when I was in high school." High School?! the class exclaims. I have to then go into how the English version is very different fro the Japanese version and tell them the English names. And I mention the song is in English which they immediately ask me to sing. Aw shucks, I really don't remember the words, I lie lie lie.
Meanwhile, H-sensei decides this is a great time to teach/review the English names of the planets, so she writes them on the board and starts quizzing the class. Now my kids were in nursery school when Sailor Moon aired in Japan. They remember the inner senshi ok, but the everything past Jupiter is a big mystery. In the back corner, Ayumi-chan starts tapping her pencil in irritation. Ayumi is the girl who drew me the fantastic Fushigi Yuugi sketches a while back. She's incredibly shy and doesn't say a word in class if not forced. Even then, she'll sometimes refuse outright. But as people start arguing about which senshi had the long green hair, Ayumi can take no more.
"I know them," she snaps.
The class turns to look at her stunned. "Say them" They demand.
"Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto," Ayumi answers in hyper-speed.
This is met with a round of, "Sugooooooooooooi," and a discussion of which senshi everyone wanted to be as a child and Ayumi correcting their sorely lacking knowledge of plot and character design. I told them about how my sister once painted an entire wall of her bedroom in Sailor Moon and how my other sister's nickname in Japan was Usagi. I promise them to try to find the English them, and a half hour of class is successfully wasted. Way to go, my tangential tensai-tachi.
So after class, I quickly print out the lyrics and start whiting out words so we can do it as our listening activity on Thursday (I am a servant to my audience, ok...). Two of the girls from that class are also part of the cleaning crew for the staff room. Kyoto-sensei wasn't here today which means the cleaning crew slacks off and hell if I'm going to stop them. Kyoto-sensei is a Nazi. So after we've pushed brooms for a few minutes, I show them the lyric sheet and they try to puzzle out the words to the melody. Meanwhile, they ask S-kun if he knows Sailor Moon which he denies just a little too vehemently. "You have a sister! You must know it!" they demand, but no confession, so the girls return to puzzling out lyrics. The only part they really figure out is the "She is the one name Sailor MOON!" but they got that part down. Then they get to the "Sailor Mars! Sailor Venus!" section and S-kun falls over his broom laughing. "You knew!" the girls cry in victory. And it's a Sailor good time in the staff room that day.
Now as I said, Tangent Time is par for the course in Reading class. Last time, they argued for 10 minutes on whether pepper came from a tree or a plant... Sometimes if we've left a question unanswered, I'll print something off Wikipedia and bring it in the next time (pepper grows on a vine). Usually the kids have forgotten about it by the next time. Today as I was unlocking my bike, the window in front of bike parking flies open and one of the reading girls practically jumps out. "Sensei!!! Don't forget! Sailor Moon Song!"
Did I rip the theme off YouTube when I got home? Yes. Am I currently burning it to a CD? You bet. Also V1 sent me an episode so if I get a chance, I can show them a bit of the dub to highlight the changes. Zoisite is in this episode... bet Ayumi catches on to that particular change.
Moon Prism Power, everyone