A little vampire

This little vampire was created by one of my students who was a whiteboard whizz and crazy about manga and anime.

She created a few of these chibi over the three years I taught in the Middle East – at break or at the end of the day, crowded round by a group of younger girls, oohing and aahing their approval.

This little vampire stayed up for weeks and weeks as I was under strict instruction from my form not to erase it. One of my quietest students, always doodling during lessons herself, took it upon herself to personally guard our classroom chibi against any colouring in or scribbles, checking at the end of each day and carefully erasing any mischief-making.

Much later, after I’d left the school, I thought I’d give her something in return. I’d never drawn any manga and wouldn’t have known where to begin but I thought I’d have a go, using her characters to guide me, just for fun. So this is my attempt.

And I had such fun with it that weekend, my niece (who was nine at the time) and I sitting drawing characters for hours together. Who knew what a doodle would lead to?

(And, since all that doodling has lead to my whiteboard whizz studying multimedia design this year, I look forward to seeing what else it leads to...)

Art club

I joined the art club at one of the junior highs in Japan where I worked as an ALT (Assistant Language Teacher). I had met two girls in the club on my first day there who, when they found out I also loved art, drew me some manga and invited me to join them after school. It was a small group and we sat around laughing and talking as much as we did drawing and painting. But, as one of their English teachers, that was just what I’d wanted – a chance simply to chat (in English) outside the classroom.

When she introduced herself, Yuriya had told me she was half Japanese – her mom was from Singapore and I met her by chance as I left school one day. She had kindly invited me to visit their home and spend a day with them. Things hadn’t been easy for her – after returning to Japan with her husband she’d been widowed and had been bringing up Yuriya and her older brother on her own. Although they didn’t show it, I think things must have been difficult for the kids too – their mom worked very long hours at a factory and, although she spoke Japanese and had been living in Japan for years, she told me she still felt very much a gaijin, an outsider or “alien”. I wondered if Yuriya and her brother had sometimes felt a little like outsiders themselves. But amongst their friends at school they seemed happy and sociable.

This is the drawing that Yuriya gave me on my first day at school – the girl is in a yukata or summer kimono.

These two were drawn by Marina. She was keen to practise her English and I was trying to improve my very limited Japanese so we began mailing each other, switching easily enough between Japanese characters and the Roman alphabet by keitai or cell phone – a really good way to practise reading and writing Japanese, and a fun first for me at the time.

If you'd like to find out more about the JET Programme: http://www.jetprogramme.org/