Weirdo

I think I have a stalker, and no, it's not Ebi-chan.

The week before London, I get a phone call from a Japanese guy who wanted to come observe my classroom. He came by on a Thursday and introduced himself as Nobu, a 50ish year old English cram school teacher in northern Okinawa. His English was near perfect. He use to work as a high school English teacher and spent several years in America getting his Master's in linguistics. He has also visited 47 states.

Having taught English at various levels, he had never seen an elementary school class. So I invited him to sit in on my 3rd/4th grade class. Everything went as normal, and I had a moment of amusement when he asked the kids what they like to do. One of the kids said, 'I like karate!', the American way. Nobu went, 'Huh?' and after the kid did a little demonstration, he goes, 'Oh, karate!, in the Japanese way.

American pronunciation - 'kuh-RAH-tee'
Japanese pronunciation - 'KAH-rah-teh

After the class, he said he was interested in seeing a 5th/6th grade class, but he wasn't able to stay today, could he come to see me tomorrow?

The next day was when it got weird. The walk to the classroom takes you by a small rock garden. As we were walking to class, he stopped and made the following reflection:

"I like nature. I have a secret place in the middle of the woods where I hide from my wife. It has a rock garden like this."

I nodded and then went ahead with my class. Afterward, he wanted to talk with me for about 20 minutes. I thought it would be about English education and the like, but it turned out to just be a casual conversation where we talked about where he studied, his thoughts on America, etc. I soon realized he just wanted to talk to me and wasn't interested in my English class at all. Finally, he asked me, 'Would you like to come visit my rock garden today?'

I politely decline because I told him I had to pack for London. 'Well, I'll contact you when you get back.'

And that's exactly what he did. I got a call from him last week. He wanted to know how to spell 'ribbit', and did I know 'ribbit' in Japanese was gero gero? Ha ha ha. We hung up, and then he called back 5 minutes later telling me he couldn't find 'ribbit' in his Japanese-English dictionary. Did I spell it right? I told him to Google it and that I had to go.

Haven't heard from him for the past two weeks though. I think I'm in the clear.