I got to eat with the children I taught at school today and I ended up spontaneously playing a game with the kid next to me of trying to think of words in Japanese beginning with O. I did alright – You can`t live in any country for a period of time however long without learning some words. It started lke this.

Kid. O-hashi – Hashi means chopsticks (or bridge) The O is an honorific in grammatical terms. It elevates the word after it. These are often used for food so I replied with
Simon. O-sushi Oh yes. Speaking the lingo. Playing Japanese games. Oh yes.

This went on for a bit until I couldn`t think of anymore O-plus-food words in Japanese and so I had to think of proper words
Onsen, obento, onigiri.

This obviously became harder and harder as although I have been in Japan for a bit and learned as few words this wasn`t going to be enough to face up to an eleven year old`s Japanese.

Then I hit on a brainwave, My earlier post about Japanese names being great – Tera yama being temple mountain. Right I`ll have some of this and so:

Simon O-tera – temple. Oh yes.
Simon O-yama- mountain. Oh yes.
Ohta-san (another coordinator) and so Ohta. Oh yes!
I did a few more and ran out so I thought of the Japanese Hanshin Tigers baseball team. This didn`t go so well as temple mountain.
O-aka – red. No.
O hoshi – star (name akahoshi). Don`t think so.
O fuji – no chance
O moto -no.

And my attack was petering out until hallelujah the sound of Big Ben`s bells tolling in the end of meal time and unleashing the children onto the dusty playground of Dodgeball, football and basketball. I had lasted the twelve rounds. I felt like Rocky when he climbs those stairs and I thanked my blog first and foremost. Thank you blog.