School Days: Erasers That Clean Up

I'm sure you've seen that big happy face before, but do you know what this thing does? It sweeps up eraser bits. After you erase something there's usually some small dirty pieces leftover, right? What do you do with them? We used to brush them away. But where would they go? By the way, do we have a word for them in English? I'll call them "eraser bits".

Anyway, this thing can be rolled over the eraser bits, and it will sweep them up into a small bin. Can you see the little black wheels, the big yellow wheels, and the pink bristles? I guess we would call this an eraser sweeper.

The yellow bin can be opened to empty it. The yellow green thing is an eraser. It has a plastic cover to keep it clean. It's that thing with the yellow and green dots. It also has a roller that picks up eraser bits. They stick to the plastic roller and fall into a little bin under it. The roller can be taken off to empty the bin. The roller has its own cover, too. It swings up and down. I imagine these devices help keep the floor clean, and they reduce traffic to the trash can.

School Days in Japan: Erasers

Yes, these are erasers. As you can see some look like canned and bottled drinks and some look like cups of noodles. There is a plate of food and a yellow obentou or lunchbox full of food (rice with a dried plum, fried shrimp, lettuce, and hamburger.) There is an ice cream bar on a stick, a pink peach and a red pepper. There is a tea pot, tea cup, a carton of milk and a carton of coffee milk. And a panda. There is also a paper box with an eraser that looks like chewing gum. These are just some of the different kinds of erasers that are sold here. It is okay to take these kinds of erasers to Little Brother's school.




This is a basic eraser. These are commonly used at Little Brother's school. Note the cardboard cover. When the eraser is worn down, it can be pushed through the cardboard.

Pencils do not have erasers on them here. I wondered why and then noticed all my American pencils' erasers had gotten hard. They couldn't erase anymore. I think maybe it is too humid here for them.