Tormented by pink Nova bunnies in the night ‐ ピンクのNOVAウサギに悩まされた夜－

I am grateful for getting an uninterrupted night’s sleep.  My son had a fever for three days and kept waking up in the middle of the night and demanding attention.  At last his fever broke and he slept through the night.  After several exhausted days, so did I. 

But I had a long dream about working at Nova.  In the dream I hadn’t prepared any lesson plan and had to make it all up as I went along, confusing both myself and the students.  In other words, it was very much like a real Nova lesson. 

Teaching at Nova was my first job in Japan, which I did for about a year and a half.  I worked in a very busy branch and we usually had to teach seven or eight lessons a day.  I had only 10 minutes to prepare between lessons.  I was just out of university, with no previous experience, and with only three days of training to fall back on. 

So inevitably I would sometimes go into lessons without any idea of what to do.  The best trick I learned was to give the students a task for the first five minutes and to try to come up with a lesson plan while they were talking to each other. 

“Talk to each other about a book you have read.  You have five minutes.  Start.” 

But sometimes, like in my dream, I couldn’t come up with a plan at all and just started babbling, confusing myself and the students. 

“Well today’s lesson seems to be about the word ‘have’... So, uh, do you guys have anything?  No, that’s too simple.  What do you have and what don’t you have?  I mean like, I don’t have a refrigerator but I do have a headache.  Uh, Miki?  [45 minutes later]  Well, I think we all learned something about the word ‘have’ today.  Have a nice day.” 

The resulting embarrassment seems to have left some deep mental scars, since I am dreaming about it more than ten years later.  When a pink Nova bunny gets into your head, it’s hard to get it out again. 

And yet I did have my fans amongst the students.  I really did start babbling and tell the class that I didn’t have a fridge.  And the next week one of the students offered to give me a fridge.  I accepted and my beers were cold thereafter. 

Naturally, after that I started mentioning lots of other things that I didn’t have during the lessons.  I got that fridge, a tv, and two girlfriends out of that “What don’t you have?” lesson. 

So Nova did give me some useful things too.  Not just pink bunnies in the night.

 

Vocabulary:

to torment – to cause pain and suffering

for a fever to break – for a fever to end, and the high temperature to drop

to fall back on – of a plan, basic knowledge or training etc., to rely upon as a reserve option after the main plan etc. hasn’t worked or helped

to babble – to make meaningless noises or speak without expressing clear meaning

a refrigerator/ a fridge – a kitchen appliance used to keep food, drinks etc. cold