Sing a Rainbow

I am delighted to report a new discovery, smugly made at 12:10 this afternoon, which is: after intensive studying, I can now speak more Japanese than my five year old students can speak English. Whatever they say in English, I can say it in Japanese. Anything. Anything at all. Hello, good morning, yellow, green, my name is; you name it, I can say it.

In fact, it`s better than that. I can now have a relatively coherent lunch date with a four year old child in a language that is not my own and make some kind of sense; I can ask them what they`re eating, whether they like it, whether they like chips or eggs or fish, how old they are, what they think of Anpanman; I can talk briefly about the weather, ask them when their birthday is, and tell them that I`m hungry or I`m full or I have a headache (or get them mixed up and tell them that my tummy aches and my head is full, which is - sadly - not at all true). When they chat to me, if I scrunch my brain up hard enough I can just about make out roughly what they`re talking about, even if I`m not sure how to respond.

And it is magic. It is truly, truly worth every single minute of pouring over dull, difficult textbooks and then throwing them on the floor and swearing in a language that is definitely not Japanese. Because, suddenly, my children - and, for that hour, they are my children - make sense to me.

They meet me half way, of course: bless their little red Anpanman socks. At some stage - when they get overexcited and can`t repress curiosity about the foreigner any further - the dam breaks and they unleash a torrent of incomprehensible questions and statements and tokens of affection and demands to look at their pencil cases and erasers and chopsticks and tell me what I think of their new plants in the playground and whether I can eat lunch with them tomorrow too and who is my favourite? At which stage, with a chorus of thirty five simultaneous cries of "Holly Sensei! Holly Sensei!! MItte!!! Mitte!! (Look!)" - along with a firm prodding of my breasts (they have just discovered them, sadly, and are utterly fascinated) - I look distinctly stressed, and they abruptly stop and begin communicating in the only English they know.

"Holly Sensei," one will shout - "red!"
"Blue," another will add.
"Green, yellow, pink!!"
And then the rainbow - which is their way of telling me that they love me and they love English and they want to talk to me about something, even if it`s nothing - becomes our mutual meeting ground.
"Aka," I`ll say back. "Aoi. Midori, Shiro, Pinku!"
And then we all high five and start singing a rainbow (the rainbow I taught them).

I wish I had studied harder earlier on; I wish I had been able to communicate with my Yokohama children too. And I have a long, long way to go before their little chimes all make sense, or until I make my way to the dizzying level of Elementary School. But I am going to keep trying.

Because at some stage I am going to be able to speak to my children about anything, as well as singing them a rainbow.