May 7, 2008
Yoko Mizui

ASAHIKAWA, Hokkaido--Laughter filled a classroom of second-year students at Asahikawa Kita High School as students wrote their homework assignment on the blackboard at the beginning of an English lesson by Tetsuro Matsui on April 24.

The assignment was to write "words of love that you want to text or e-mail to someone" on the condition that it uses the subjunctive mood and does not contain direct expressions, such as "I love you" or "I like you."

Among the examples, the sentence that evoked the most laughter was "If you were a cactus, I would hug you," written by a girl. When Matsui read the sentence aloud, students seemed puzzled and so did Matsui. Thinking for a while, Matsui revised the sentence to read: "Even if you were a cactus, I would hug you."

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