A Day in the Life of Yamada-san

Today, I shall wish to introduce you to a special individual; he is known by all in my Japanese class. Sadly, he leads a very tragic life, as he is a mere stick figure, drawn on the Smart Board. His name is Yamada-san.

But, our hero is often over-looked. His friend Tanaka-san, another stick figure, is very famous. Everyone in class says so, in Japanese, of course.

Tanaka-san has big house (which is usually in close proximity to a liquor store).  

He eats delicious things, only delicious things, during the course of the day. 

His house is filled with a plethora of strange objects (including magical books), and he plays tennis with his wife in the yard next to their home.

Yamada-san, on the other hand, lives a very dismal life. 

Rumor has it that he is an ugly and depressing geek.  

His house is empty, he doesn't go anywhere, he rarely eats breakfast, and when he is lucky enough to eat pizza for luch (which tastes terrible, like all the other meals he seldom eats) it costs him over fifty dollars. 

Little is known about the little life that he leads. But he does go to Tanaka-san's parties with another figure named Nakayama-san. Nakayama is even more ambiguous; the only known fact about him is that he parties...every evening... at the parties that Tanaka-san throws...every evening.

Yamada-san must live in a constant state of fear because there are different words used for the existence of living things  and inanimate objects.  In other words, one slip of the tongue could make his house a living thing, or turn him into a non-living object. 

Hence why Tanaka-san owns magical books.

To make matters worse, due a comedy of grammatical errors, Yamada-san is eaten by none other than Tanaka-san. Apparently he disappeared because he does not exist anywhere. No one goes to his parties.  Perhaps it is because his house is empty, but another theory is that he died on the morning that he was eaten by Tanaka-san. We used to cheer him up while practicing class room expressions, but now we are far to busy learning new types of foods, means transportation, or places of existence to remember. 

We frequently forget that for Tanaka-san, every day is a bad day. The only thing he has going for him now is that we usually remember to attach the honorific - "san".
So, as we fall asleep tonight, let us wish Yamada-san the best. We can only hope that he will not be eaten by Tanaka-san once more, disappear into nothingness, or have his nasty pizza come to life.