Mirrored with permission from Outpost Nine and Azrael
Showtime
At the School of Peace, near the end of the school year the then ichinensei (now ninensei) had to do skits based on random sentences from the textbook. They'd take something like "How many comic books do you have?" as a basis and then write a skit out of it. This was kind of an event, as other teachers from around the area came to take a look at the students English abilities.
I gotta say, skits are quite possibly my favorite aspect of the job. For a country that redefines thinking inside of the box, the kids sure are creative. I'd be tempted to wonder what happens to make them into the Borg-like drones they'll eventually become, but being a part of the assilimilation process myself I can see it clearly.
Anyway, here's some of what the kids came up with. Roughly one zillion times better than Japanese TV.
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This one was by far my favorite. It starts off with a King commissioning a knight called...Meatball. Yes, a Knight named Meatball. Meatball goes out into the countryside, and does the things that Knights named Meatball are prone to do. However, somewhere in the process he becomes drunk off his own power and has to be stopped. So then the King commissions another Knight (this one did not have a name, although I was kind of hoping for Pastrami or something else along the sandwich meat theme) to go and stop Meatball. They have a fight...which at first consists of the Second Knight throwing old dirty socks at Meatball, who dodges them in Matrix Bullet Time by leaning backwards and flailing his arms a bit. Meatball then picks up one of those music recorders, and uses it as a baseball bat to knock the dirty socks back to the Second Knight, defeating him. The Second Knight retreats back to the King.
Meatball learns of the King's treachery, and goes after the King. There is another brief fight with the Second Knight, and Meatball absolutely whallops him. Meatball then prepares to assassinate the King by throwing more dirty socks at him, but then a Third Knight jumps in front of the King, taking the dirty sock to the chest and dying. ...This was literally this boy's only role in the skit, to take a dirty sock for the King. Man, now that's devotion. If I ever become King of some country, I hope to find subjects loyal enough to take a dirty sock to the chest fo rme.
So then Meatball and the King get into a fist fight, and the King eventually beats Meatball, which just goes to show....well....I don't know what really. If it weren't for the intense action, I'd have no idea what the hell went on in this skit, despite it being in English.
Oh, and the textbook sentence this performance was based off of? "This is Ben. He's an old friend." ...I have no idea.
And the boy who played Meatball, yup...that's his nickname. I know his real name, knew it before, but now I look at him and "Meatball" is the first thing to come to mind. I'm not the only one, as sometimes some of the other kids call him Meatball as well. I've decided that ignorance is bliss on this one.
Incidentally, Meatball is Snuzzlebunnies younger brother.
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In another skit, Ultimate Sweetness plays Catherine, a young school girl. Catherine's father comes to wake her up for school, but Catherine blows him off to sleep in. Then as Catherine is catching her Extra Five Minutes, some bad funky shit starts to happen (as evidenced by the other two girls closing the windows in the performance hall and making storm noises). Something happens to Catherine, but we can't see it as Ultimate Sweetness has concealed herself underneath a blanket.
Catherine's father comes to wake her again, saying now her friend Alice (I don't know where they got the names from) has come to see why she's late for school. Catherine finally gets out of bed...to realize that in those five minutes of extra sleep, she has turned into a cockroach! Ultimate Sweetness lets out a little "Kyaa!" scream as she looks in the mirror...but since it is Ultimate Sweetness, it's just about the cutest thing you will ever hear.
Ultimate Sweetness could never be an actress in a horror movie, it just wouldn't work. The killer would be closing in on her, and then she'd scream, then the audience would let out a collective "Awww! That's so cute!" ...Any and all potential horror would be effectively obliterated. Even Jason would have to put down the chainsaw. "Aw fuck, I can't kill you. You're just too cuddly-wuddly!"
Catherine, now horrified to be a cockroach, tells Alice to go onto school without her, she feels sick. She then falls into a crying heap on the floor, sobbing over how horrible it is to now be a cockroach. She cries herself to sleep, and when she wakes up, she finds her father still yelling at her to get up for school. Catherine leaps out of bed, and finds that she's no longer a cockroach. Turns out it was all a bad nightmare! Relieved, Catherine gets dressed and goes to school.
The moral of the story? Make sure to go to bed early, so you can get up early for school. Or else you might wake up as a cockroach. ...No really, that was the actual closing of the story, "Wake up early, or you might wake up as a cockroach."
Damn, if this was true, I'd be one magnificent cockroach by now.
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This skit starts off in a bank, with one boy as a teller and another as a customer. A third boy walks in.
Boy 3: This is a robbery! Put your hands up!
Boy 1, 2: Oh no! (they fall over anime-style, complete with their legs sticking up in the air)
Boy 3: No, that's legs!
Boy 3: (Takes Boy 2 hostage) Give me all your money! Or he dies!
Boy 1: That's okay. I don't really like him.
Boy 2: You're terrible!
Took the words right outta my mouth.
Boy 1: You can kill him if you want to, I don't care. But you can't have the money. I will protect it!
Boy 3: Your funeral.
Boy 1: You can't kill me! I am Mr. Incredible! (here, he puts on a "Mr. Incredible" eye mask made out of paper).
Boy 3: Let's fight.
Boy 1: Okay.
Wow. I like how civil that was. "Shall we battle to the death?" "Why certainly!" You really can't beat Japanese hospitality I suppose.
They have a short fight. Boy 1, aka Mr. Incredible gets his ass whupped.
Boy 2: Oh no! Now I'm done!
Boy 3: You are not Mr. Incredible. I will kill him now. (goes to shoot his gun) Oh no! I forgot my bullet!
All three: Oh no!
...I'm almost certain I read something just like this on Yahoo's Odd News page at some point.
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Three girls went to an ice cream shop. The first two girls ordered a single scoop, but the third girl (who is, incidentally, Porn Star's little sister) orders a triple scoop.
Girl 2: Triple scoop?! What about your diet?
Girl 3: I skip my diet today.
The girls then get their ice cream...for props, they'd made ice cream cones out of paper. They talk a bit while "eating", and after a while the first two girls fold down the scoop of ice cream to simulate having eaten it. Girl 3 doesn't say anything during this part, simply smiles while eating her ice cream. After a while, she folds down all three of her scoops.
Girl 1: (noticing Girl 3) Wow! Did you eat your ice cream!
Girl 3: Yes! It was really delicious!
Girl 2: All three scoops?!
Girl 3: I couldn't stop.
Girl 1: ...Be careful. Don't be a fat pig.
...Goddayum. Remind me to never eat a triple-scoop ice cream cone in front of Japanese girls.
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Velma Jr. and her friend go shopping in a ritzy New York designer clothes shop. They're being attended to by two store clerks, who are plenty helpful and recommending all sorts of nice fashions to them. For props, the girls simply removed their uniform blazers to use as the clothes they were looking at.
At some point, I guess one of the store clerks gets pissed off with Velma Jr. and her friend's pickiness. She takes one of the uniform blazers and, literally out of nowhere, goes "Well, how about THIS ONE!" and absolutely CHUCKS the blazer at Velma Jr. No, I don't mean she tossed it to her, no. I mean Randy Johnson fastball hurled that shit. As you might imagine, Velma Jr. gets absolutely owned by this now lethal piece of schoolwear. The other store clerk then says "Maybe you like it in BLACK!" and hurls another uniform blazer at Velma Jr.'s friend. The friend though, having been prepared by seeing Velma Jr. get clocked, catches the blazer. She then gets a huffy/pissed off look on her face, stomps her feet really hard, and absolutely FLINGS the blazer across the room, shouting "Well, I never! I don't never want to shop here again!" ...I was trying to make sense of that double-negative, but decided this was something I didn't really want to get in the middle of, lest I get taken out by flying school uniforms.
I don't know why, but watching 12-year old Japanese girls flinging their school uniforms at each other was wildly entertaining. ...And not in that way. Although I'm sure there's a porn director somewhere drafting up a script of this as we speak, if it doesn't already exist. Watching the rehearsals was even more fun though, as they more or less forgot about the entire first part of the skit, and spent 30 minutes just screaming and hurling their uniform blazers at each other.
At some point in my life though, I would like to use "I don't never want to shop here again!" while flinging some article of clothing across a store. That's officially going on my checklist of "Things I'd Like To Do Before I Die".
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