Monday, February 28, 2005

Composure and Bukkake

Bukkakeru is a legitimate vocabulary word in Japanese and doesn't automatically have the pornographic connotations it has acquired in English. The word was brought up in class today with innocuous intentions and then reacted to by other people in the room. And of course there was one student who had no idea what it meant and who was good naturedly insisting that since I'm the teacher I ought to provide the definition. All I could do was shake my head in refusal and laugh my ass off. I believe I also turned beet red somewhere along the way once I started considering how the hell I would offer up that definition in a classroom appropriate fashion. Thank god the other students in class convinced the one who wasn't in the know to wait until after class for that particular bit of knowledge. I think I'm a fairly open and approachable teacher, but there are some topics I'm just not going to touch upon. It was certainly one of the funnier classroom moments I've had in a while.

3 comments:

YouWho said...

Well jeez, you could at least provide a link to a definition for those of us who are clueless not only to its pr0n meaning but its legitimate meaning as well...

Pam said...

Ok, I added a link to the wikipedia definition of the term. Not like you couldn't have just googled it or anything... ;)

Don Weiss said...

Found your site through another blog of another foreigner in Japan -- bluejewel.com

I never had quite such a wild request, though I did have an interesting series of private lessons with a very attractive young woman student who happens to be an IVF technician. She's the one who, well, makes babies in test tubes. She wanted to be able to explain the process thoroughly to non-Japanese-speaking clients. That was a challenge, since first of all I had to look up all sorts of medical English and then figure out how to explain it in plain English. Occasionally a bit awkward, since I'm a guy, right?