Heart attack in the classroom

So I have a shogakko visit (elementary school) as one of my regular things here in Shiogama. I play games with the kids, teach them about the UK, generally hang out with them, answer their questions and, I guess, get them used to being around a foreigner. Today I played the Harry Potter game with them (make ten of the kids Voldemorts, give them wands, and set them loose on the other kids...see the link for more details), let the kids wear my mortar board, showed them some UK currency and so on.

Now, I normally eat school lunch with the kids before I leave in the afternoon to go back to the office. There's two extremes with your average shogakusei, they either sit there in complete silence or they ask you so many questions that you literally don't have time to shovel the food into your mouth. The food, incidentally, is not half bad - today it was a rather ecletic mix of Chinese seafood noodle salad, soup, and a hot dog. Anyway, this bunch, Tamagawa Shogakko 3-1, are as lively as you like and don't stop asking questions all lunchtime. At the end, one of the kids gets up and says he has something to give to me.

So, he stands up in front of the class, and proffers this folded piece of paper, with some writing in Japanese and English on it. It says something like "Dried Scorpion, from Taiwan, Souvenir" or something similar. Now before I take it, he tells me very deliberately in Japanese that I have to be extremely careful with this, because, he says, if I touch it, it'll come back to life. He then gives it to me and tells me to open it. So, expecting to see a dried scorpion or something, I open it up, and suddenly there's a loud buzzing and the packet vibrates! I immediately drop it like a hot potato, to the immense amusement of the entire class, who are all in on the joke. The kid picks up the package and shows me the mechanism - it's a rubber band, paper clip and coke tab rigged up to rattle when you open the paper up. I'll happily admit it scared the bejeezus out of me. As soon as I realised what had happened though, I laughed my ass off. Good on the little bugger, something original, daring, and, dare I say it, hilariously funny - and I fell for it, hook, line and sinker. Shatters the image of the shy J-kid terrified of the gaijin, anyway...the kids loved it. They all queued up to get my autograph afterwards as well - they go nuts when you sign your name for them. I guess primary school kids in the UK or elsewhere would love it if I wrote my name in kanji or something similar.

Anyway, I thought merited recording. Not much else to report, just getting the documents together for my interview on Friday.