Karl cannot control his laughter in FCS496 because of the music Sato Sensei plays while he's speaking to the class.  You might think this one is from my silly imagination.  I am embarrassed to say, this comic strip is based on truth!

That's right, this one really happened.  The Japanese teacher of English I was working with at the time thought it would be so nice to play the song, Let It Be by the BEATLES, while I talk to the class about vocabulary words for success.  In my head, this sounded a bit cheezy and I was afraid the class would laugh at me.  If we were in the U.S., they definitely would have! But, since we were in a Japanese Middle School, I figured the students would be busy listening for the vocab words they recognized and not even notice the comedy.  Fortunately, I was right!  Unfortunately, I didn't expect to start laughing...

Not only did I laugh, I was the ONLY ONE LAUGHING!  Everyone, even my co-English teacher, could not understand why.  The sad sound of the music together with my attempt at motivational speaking was a hilarious contrast.  To me, at least. Several times I tried to get it together and finish but I just had to end it and apologize.  I was laughing so much, a few tears came out of my eyes. 

I felt bad for ruining the presentation for the students and my co-teacher but I had to think about it as just one humorous screw up.  My co-teacher was upset a little I think, it's hard to tell with Japanese people sometimes, but my cartoonist way of looking at the ...