Ichi Ni San Hi Go

A young colleague and I sat with a parent in the library this afternoon waiting for a meeting to begin. The family was military and had recently moved back from Japan. We were there to be sure that the student was receiving the appropriate services after two years away from our district, but the meeting before ours was running late, and so we chatted with the mom about this and that. At one point, the subject of Japanese numbers came up, and my colleague quite capably counted to five. "I don't even know how I learned that," she told us humbly.

I did a quick calculation. "Maybe from watching Pokemon on TV?" I suggested.

She looked at me in exasperation. "That was a little after my time!" she said. But then her brow furrowed. "Well, maybe I did hear it when I was babysitting," she admitted.