Mary

I have Japanese language class three times per week. It is my favorite class, because I like studying new languages and because our textbook is pretty good. The grammar is explained in a logic and simple way, there are many examples and many practice tasks. 
Our Japanese textbook also uses many illustrations and pictures to support the teaching of dialogues and examples. In a country, where as many manga are sold like toilet paper, it is obvious to use illustrations. Do you remember your own textbooks from school, when you learnt English? Didn't they also have many illustrations and dialogues?
Every week we start a new chapter of our Japanese textbook. Accompanying each chapter, the reoccurring protagonist ist Mary Hart.

Week 1

Mary is American, studies Japanese in her second year, is 19, and comes from Arizona.

Week 2

Mary is a kind young girl.

Week 3 

We learnt how Mary asks for the time politely.

Week 4

We also learnt how Mary buys a watch at the flea market.

 

Week 5

We learnt how Mary says goodbye properly to her Japanese hostmother.

Week 6

So Mary is basically a busy girl, who plays tennis, meets friends, watches TV, etc.

  

So can you imagine our shock, when after watching Mary for 6 weeks we came about this?!

Saint Mary smokes?!

But shortly after recovering from the shock about Mary's questionable purity we had more to digest.

When we learnt the negative imperative form, we started out with:  

 

Please do not walk away.

Please do not take pictures.

Please do not watch.

Please do not talk in class. 

But:

 Please do not die?

Please, this textbook is so Japanese.

(^_^)