A pack of candies from Nikko. faces made of gumballs

Very cute.

I took a conversational Japanese class and the text we used was Japanese For Busy People

One of the target dialogues involved に and います/あります using Nikko as the setting.

We go through the dialogue, talk about います vs あります and then our instructor stops, and gets this glint in her eye.

"You guys see this waterfall?" she says drawing a crooked smile.
We all nod
"Very famous." she said in her accented way (She was a native speaker who only really learned English as adult)
"Very beautiful, however, also very strong"
we all nod again
"People jump into the water and kill themselves!"
at this point my fellow classmates are raising eyebrows.

Somebody asked
"Wait, you mean, in to the water and not like from the top?"
"Oh yes!" she replied, "the hummm" she snapped her fingers looking for the word
"force? yes force! Force of the water fall is so strong, the body can't escape!" she finished with wide eyes. You could tell she was really enjoying informing us of this.

"You see this part, this part up here?" she pointed to the top of the waterfall in the picture.

"Up here they have some kind of machine that stops the water. Once a year, they stop the water and pull bodies out that have been trapped under the water"

She then goes on to tell us about ghosts and mediums on TV documentaries that claim to be able to speak to the spirits, and so forth. Our usually very reserved, formal instructor is really cutting loose with animated gesticulations and lots of finger snapping trying to find the right English.

She wrapped up the story with a glowing endorsement of Nikko for tourists and said the waterfall was a "Must-see".

Later in the class, we go over more dialogue, her calling on us to make up sentence with に and います/あります and the guy next to me (who had taken some Japanese before, or at least had watched a bunch of Anime) says (going Romanji plz forgive, and also forgive not remember anything about that class except for this story)

"Nikko ni yokai ga imasu" attempting to make a joke about her story,

and with out missing a beat nor, looking up from her notes, she fires back with

"Nikko ni yurei ga imasu" she corects him. "They are alive ...mostly, NEXT!"

:3

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