During my trip to Japan in November I visited the Kinkaku-ji Temple in Kyoto, 3 hours west of Tokyo on the Shinkansen (bullet train). While keeping myself busy taking pictures of the beautiful scenerary I was approached by a middle-aged Japanese man and some school children. After some confused basic english, I established that they wanted to take a photo of me with the children. Afterwards one of the children asked me very slowly, and with kanji prompts from a sheet of paper, "Where ... are ... you ... from?". "I am from Australia", I replied. "Can you ... please ... write ... your address ... here?" she asked as she passed me some paper. How cute!
Six weeks later, back in Australia, I received the photos and a letter (in English) from the Principal of the Sohara Daiichi Elementary School in Gifu (get your maps out), and five letters in Japanese (mostly hiragana with a smattering of kanji) from the children. The main letter read:
Thank you so much for speaking and joining with our students on photos. Now, They write and enclose those pictures for you. But they don't learn how to write English at school. So, almost of the students used Japanese when they wrote letters. "Could you do me a favour ?" If You have a time, Please send some Post-card or small letter for my student each. I believe they feel sooooo happy when they receive and see it
Well, the gauntlet has been thrown down. Despite my initial lessons, the Japanese in the childrens' letters is beyond me. Looks like I'll have to call in the assistence of a few friends who have spent more than seven days in Japan.
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