In one of last month's Saturday afternoon English classes we were talking about memory lapses and I happened to recall playing Monopoly as a child with my younger sister and my Great Nan.
Happy Childhood Memory of Monopoly with Great Nan
I was about ten at the time, and my sister was five and Great Nan in her eighties. She was a game old bird who agreed to play Monopoly with us. I was the banker and so when Great Nan's "Old Boot" counter passed Go I gave her £200.
"What's this for?" she asked.
"You get £200 when you pass Go," I told her.
Round we went again and when the Old Boot passed Go I gave Great Nan £200 again.
"Oh, what's for?" she asked.
"You get £200 when you pass go," I reminded her.
Round we went again, and again, when the Old Boot passed Go I gave Great Nan £200, and again she asked,
"What's this for?" and again, I told her, by now amused that she never seemed to remember.
Every time the Old Boot passed Go my sister and I eagerly waited for the moment when I'd give Great Nan the cash and she'd ask "What's this for?"
Now, when I think about that time, I suspect Great Nan was not as senile as she made out but was having a bit of fun on her own terms.
English Class Monopoly
To my surprise neither of the ladies I teach on two Saturday afternoons a month had heard of Monopoly, even though the Japanese "Tokyo" version is widely available. Game of Life is much better known than Monopoly in Japan.
So I googled "Monopoly" and showed them photos of the game and told them the basic idea of the game and they both said they'd like to play it.
And so, here we are, in the photo, in the middle of our first game of Monopoly; their first game ever, and my first game for about ten years.
I set up the board before they arrived so that we could quickly get stuck into the game once they'd shared their latest news. Rather than go through all the rules before getting started, I told them I would explain their options as we went - which provided a lot of English content, though in the excitement of the game they lapsed into Japanese quite a lot.
The most difficult thing was coaching them to negotiate with each other once we all had a bunch of different properties.
One student, the lady to my left in the photo, threw an incredible number of doubles and consequently ended up in jail several times during the game and conducted quite a lot of business from her jail cell, like a good gangster boss. She seemed to like the idea of being a gangster boss.
She was also able to get one of my favourite sets, the "orange" set on the approach to the Free Parking square, which in the English game consists of the London streets, Bow Street, Marlborough Street, and Vine Street.
However, the two hour class came to an end with no clear winner - we were all within a few dollars of each other when I totted up our assets. The game had not quite reached a critical point where it could turn decisively in someone's favour.
Afterwards they exchanged positive messages in our Line group about the fun time they'd had playing the game. Now they both want to by the Japanese version and definitely want to play it in class again sometime.
Not a bad way to earn a few yen on a Saturday afternoon, I suppose.
Cheers!
David Hurley
#InspiredFocus
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