Bizarre Teaching Moment #7: The Secret to Perfect Health

~Japanese children are freakishly healthy. Remember the sports festival I blogged about a few weeks ago? For me, it was a fun, out-of-the-ordinary experience. For a Japanese student, it's an everyday occurrence. They exercise for at least an hour in school every day, and always start the school day with morning exercises. The school cafeterias serve rice, miso soup, and green tea. It's scary.

Anyway, on to the bizarre moment. Today I had my weekly private lesson with a girl who is the youngest of three sisters, in her first year of high school (which begins a year later than it does in America). While reading out of a textbook, we came across the word "unconscious", which she didn't know. I explained that I once had to have dental surgery done and was made unconscious for the operation; next, I asked her if she'd ever been unconscious.

Her answer was immediate: "No." Further questioning revealed that her health was near-perfect. Aside from never passing out, she'd never missed a day of school due to sickness. She couldn't recall ever taking medicine for anything.

I doubted that the regular exercise regimen of Japanese students could explain this unbelievably good health, so I asked her what the secret to her good health was. She considered it for a moment, then replied with these immortal words: "Eat everything, and sleep well."

"Eat everything"? Surely "everything" was a mistake? Perhaps, I suggested, you meant "Eat healthy foods", or, even, "eat anything"? But she was adamant in her definition: eat everything. In other words, if you see food, eat it!

To clarify, this girl is not fat. In fact, like most Japanese girls, she's thin as a rake from all that exercise. Yet despite her philosophy of devouring all food in sight, she's in perfect health. Overactive metabolism? Secret Japanese herbs? Health-conscious parents? I suspect a combination of all of the above. By the way, she defined "sleep well" as getting at least seven hours of sleep per night.

So, there's the secret to perfect health: eat everything*, and sleep well. Despite the fact that I get plenty of exercise running around the classroom with my younger students, I'm not about to take her advice. All the germs floating around the school seem to have gotten the better of me, and I'm feeling a bit debilitated at the moment. This is bad, because tomorrow is what may be my most difficult day yet. Wish me luck~

~Oyasumi!
[*I strongly recommend only eating substances you can identify as edible. This is not always easy in Japan.]