Wakai Sensei

A few days ago, I was wandering the hall at school during school cleaning time. I stopped to talk to a group of my new 1-nen-sei. In the group was an adorable girl named Yuki. She sits front row, center in her class and always smiles at me when she sees me. She's also tiny...still looks very much like a little kid, whereas some of the 1-nen-sei already look like teenagers.

Yuki asked me how old I was. And as I usually do, I made the students guess. This always takes some effort because I don't know how to say 'guess' in Japanese and they don't understand it in English. Eventually however, they start guessing. While most guesses begin in the upper 20's, one boy guesses 38! Eventually they work their way down from 26 to 22, at which point I say that they're correct. Yuki starts jumping up and down and clapping her hands with glee saying "Wakai! Wakai! Sugoi wakai! (wakai=young). She runs around a bit and tells a few other people my age, some of whom are also excited by having such a young teacher. Others are a bit more apathetic.

I look back at the boy who had guessed 38 and made acted like I was very upset. Little Yuki, standing not even as high as her classmate's shoulder, sees this and starts wailing on him and demanding he apologize. Eventually he turns to me and says sorry (in English!). But that wasn't quite enough for her. She continued demanding apologies for a bit longer till he says it again.

Nice to know little Yuki has my back.