Hi, again,

       Yes, I'm still making fun of the way earnest hard-working school kids speak English. First, everyone knows that Japanese speakers sometimes have difficulty with R's and L's; sometimes this even makes its way into writing. One of the other ALTs in town told me about an essay one student had written in his application to her high school. It was about his introduction to classical music. He hadn't expected to like it, but he found himself moved: "After the concert, I crapped and crapped." Japanese can also have trouble pronouncing the syllable "si," which doesn't exist in Japanese. The closest equivalent is "shi." I somehow kept my composure when, in a skit performed in front of the glass, one girl asked her friend, "May I shit next to you on the bench?" (mental reply: "I'd rather you didn't.")

Peter