BT: Uh, why does the vice principal have a gun?
Japanese Teacher of English (JTE): Hmmm…?
BT: The vice principal, why does he have a gun?
JTE: Mmmm… because there are many Japanese gangsters in Iwaki.
BT: Seriously, why the gun?
JTE: All vice principals are issued one for protection.
BT: It’s not real though, right?
JTE: I don’t know.
BT: Why would you need a gun at school?
JTE: I think it’s for PE.
BT: Why would you need a gun for PE?
JTE: It might be the starter gun for the races.
BT: I’ve seen those. Those are special guns that don’t shoot anything. They don’t even have a barrel. The box says that that thing is a Glock 17.
JTE: You sure it’s not a starter gun?
BT: Yeah, it’s a Glock.
The gun turned out to be an air-gun, although I never found out as to why it was at school. I asked my JTE how to say “gun” in Japanese. After some discussion with another teacher, they settled upon “ju,” which is also the word for “ten.” I asked them how they would say “ten guns,” but this one stumped them for a while.
The Japanese language has different ‘counters’ for different items; that is, when counting items of different shape or size, they use different words. The word for the number one is, “ichi,” but when counting long slender objects, it becomes “ipon;” when counting small objects, it becomes, “ikko;” when counting people, it is “ichi-nin,” and so on. I’m not really sure how many different counters there are in the language, although my tutor said that she would bring me a list at our next session. I should mention that these translations are all off the top of my head and could very well be wrong, but in any case, I’m sure you get the idea as to how counting guns could be difficult; the teachers couldn’t decide on the correct counter for counting “ten guns.”
Both teachers agreed when I said that they don’t seem to talk about guns too much in Japan.
I didn’t get a photo of the gun, but I did get a photo a few months ago of a students shooting a rubber band with a gun made out of chopsticks. It was at the school festival at one of the many events held there. The photo above, with the girl in the Pikachu costume is also from the same day.
When I originally tried to find out how to say 'gun' in Japanese, the question earned me many confused looks and mistranslations. This is wierd because it's definitely 'teppou.' I looked in up in a dictionary, and it's been confirmed many times over in my years of anime watching. 'teppou' no doubt about it.
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