When it comes time to janken for scraps and left-overs, I step up to duel with the eight year-olds at their urging, and, miraculously, come out on top of the confusing five-way exchange that follows. I try to play the diplomat, offering to share and feeling low for stealing food from the mouths of babes, but in a grammatical slip-up that is remarkably accurate, Tsukada informs me "no sharing. japanese law."
But I'm not long in my gluttonous guilt as the Yo-Nensei swoop in to save me from it. In an act completely contrary to the increasingly ravenous nature of the higher grades, the fourth graders gift their leftovers to the thirds. I pause in it, chalking up one more reason for why the fourth graders may just be my favourites.
And then it's back to the madness of ニコラス タイム, and the students clamour to tell me how they are, stringing together as many of the adjectives they know and, unwittingly, posing deep, metaphysical questions about whether someone can be at once hot and cold. One of them orders me to sit as she clambers onto my shoulders, braiding her fingers into my hair and reigning me towards the gym. There, Nojima Sensei and I are instructed that today teachers are Oni, as we always are, and the children put us through our paces as we're forced to chase them through the monstrous, echoing space.
Afterwards, sweaty and spent, I can hardly take a seat in the teacher's office before one of our Ichi-Nensei catches sight of me through the window, and her classmates' adorable calls of "HARO NIKORASU!" draw me outside to answer questions of "what is hana in English? what is boshi? what is sakura?". I comb the playground grass with them, searching intently for who knows what, and overcoming their shrieks to take my turn at braiding flowers into their hair.
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