Kancho?

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

I gave them a nasty death stare. And then they proceeded to ask about my penis...
what have i gotten myself into?!

Welcome to Japan.

The best way I've found to deal with the "Jumbo biggu penisu?" question is to just go with "Of course. I'm a gaijin." (phrased in whatever Japanese you want/can do). The kids usually just laugh and let it go after that.
Thanks stereotypes!

[WinterFlea]

I guess I am the only one that had to deal with kancho in high school in the states? I guess not everyone went to a school where the bulk of the students were bored Korean guys. Once you get used to it it really just is a good laugh. Just don't bend over at the waist to pick up anything you drop.

[farstrider]

I gave them a nasty death stare. And then they proceeded to ask about my penis...
what have i gotten myself into?!

Welcome to Japan.

The best way I've found to deal with the "Jumbo biggu penisu?" question is to just go with "Of course. I'm a gaijin." (phrased in whatever Japanese you want/can do). The kids usually just laugh and let it go after that.
Thanks stereotypes!

I just threatened to beat them with it if they kept asking. If they know they can make you uncomfortable, for some kids it will be game on.

[misheruz]

tofuniku, I totally know how you feel. When it first happened to me, I was so embarrassed and didn't want it to happen again. It got to the point where I was a little stressed because of it and always wondering when the next kid would strike. I'm a girl and the kids love to do frontal kanchos as well…
I’m going on my third year and the kanchos have subsided. I still get a random kancho from time to time, but what worked for me was to lightly bat their hands away and then ignore it. A lot of times I would walk away and that seemed to get the message that if the kids want to play with me, they can’t kancho. Good luck!

[nicklar]

I can laugh about it and write humourous tales about it now but when it happened the first few times it was literally a pain in the ass. Why it is so endemic and continually 'allowed' by teachers always stumps me.

[DjinnWired]

I hear about it from other elementary ALTs often, but it's never been an issue for me. I play with the kids, piggy back them, play smacks junken etc but I was very clear from the beginning about my boundaries and the second anyone crosses them I stop playing and go have a coffee in the staff room. Since my attention is a sought after commodity the kid who went to far gets yelled at by the other kids, and it only takes one or two incidents for all the kids to understand what not to do. Heading into year four and never a kancho, only one boob incident.
A friend of mine has it pretty bad at one school though, the kids have devised a game called Oppai Hunter with scored for various oppai attacks and even an oppai finish. The teachers find the whole thing hilarious. Secretly, though... I also think it is hilarious.

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

I found a new anti-kancho trick today.

Over the summer break a few of the kids from one of my two main difficult kumi (these are shogakko 6nensei kids) evidently forgot that if you really want to push Grasshopper Sensei then he'll respond - by doing an impromptu punishment/humiliation game with you in a starring role, and so they spent a good 15 minutes playing Let's-Kancho-Grasshopper-Sensei instead of playing the planned Interview Game. I'm a big fan of irony/poetic justice, so that lead to the development of the "Kancho-ko Eigo Shitsumon Kancho Game" (Kancho-child English Question Kancho Game), whereby every student who kancho-ed Grasshopper Sensei got to stand in front of the blackboard and had 5 seconds to answer questions (asked by the rest of the class using the Target Language for the lesson) perfectly, or get kancho-ed by the rest of the kancho-kids. If there's just one kancho kid you can get everyone to have a go instead, but it's better not to do it yourself IMO. Since most of them hadn't spent the time practicing the target language what with trying to stick their fingers up my butt instead most of them couldn't do it - this time around there were five 'volunteers' so most of them got a good 8 kanchos or so before we ran out of time. One was getting most of the questions right by reading the right response off the board, so if I'd had more time I was going to start tossing in older grammar points like 'When is your birthday?' or even a few from 5nensei.

After the lesson finished I pointed out that every time I get kancho-ed in future, the kancho-er gets to play the Game. We'll see if I get kancho-ed again next week...

[Takoyaki]

i use kancho as one of my lesson warm up simon says commands, now my kids scream 'shiimonu shesu kancho' as they violate me v____v

[zerowolf87]

Just remember Japan is a much more hands on culture and you should be okay with that if you get in. That said I did get Kancho'd and although I wanted to rip the kids head off, I just laughed it off.