Come on baby, America!

Month two has come to a close and I certainly have a lot of interesting experiences and cultural discoveries to talk about! Instead of doing that, though, I thought I would share a bizarre story about America's reach overseas and influence and... OK it's a story about how funny the elementary schoolers are.

So there's this song... I highly recommend checking this out with English subtitles. It's hilarious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr--GVIoluU

The song responsible, 91 million views and all

I came to Japan expecting to be preceded by countless expectations, stereotypes, and terrible news cycles about my *official* home country, America (the use of the word official here is a whole story in itself, but for later). To an extent this has been true, but dramatically less so than in New Zealand, where my classmates would ask why I wasn't fat and if I could locate the United States on a map without missing a beat. In my experience so far, the Japanese tend to be much more apathetic about world politics and the nuances of America's behaviors. Nowhere is this more true than in elementary school. 

Now to set the stage, I have to give a short 自己紹介 (jikoshoukai/self-introduction) to every class where I explain my background and answer some questions. One of my favorite parts of getting to know new classes is having them guess things about my identity. Why?

モーガン先生、何歳ですか？何歳と思いますか？ええ…65歳？

Morgan-sensei, how old are you? How old do you think I am? Hmm... 65?

And so on. I've had students guess I was from Africa, ask if I was married to their homeroom teacher, think I spoke only German, ask what my job was... seriously, what do you think I'm doing right now? Even funnier is what they extrapolate from the information I give.

ああ、22歳！お母さんは24歳！子供が何人がいる？

Oh, 22! My mom is 24! How many children do you have? 

I guess there really isn't much to do in this town... Anyway, the thing that confused me most was that the first thing every first, second, and third-grade class did when I said "America" was burst out into a co-ordinated chant and throw their thumbs behind their heads. Without fail. They would also periodically remember I said America later in the class and get started all over again. This is made even more funny by the "U-S-A" chant at the beginning of the song which invariably comes up when teaching the alphabet. It's inescapable. What's more, this funny song has completely replaced any other information these kids have about the United States. 

In most countries I've been to, kids have at least a vague idea about what kind of things happen in America and what things in their country are from America. In Japan, however, me claiming hot dogs, burgers, and pizza are popular in America was met with disbelief and laughter. No American celebrity names could ring a bell. Even using my best Japanese to ask questions doesn't extract any information out of the younger students.

Is there a deeper meaning to all of this? Probably not–they thought I was 65, after all.