hello sensei

The whole day today, one of my 4-year-old preschool kids, who I've now taught for almost 2 years, kept saying "Hello Sensei" to me. I just kept saying hello back, and he'd just continue talking.

Turns out, it's quite easy to maintain a conversation in Japanese with a preschooler, since it mainly involves a combination for the following:

a) repeating the verb they said with a rising intonation, making it sound like you're just getting confirmation about what they said.
b) hontou? "Really?"
c) sugoi!"That's awesome!"
d) a random English word, for when they may ask you what a Japanese word is in English (that you don't know in Japanese)

And, on the whole, you can get by sounding like you've totally understood what they say.

"I got a new toothbrush!"

"You got one? Really?"

"Yeah, it's blue and has Pikachu on it!"

"Really? That's awesome!"

"What's dinosaur in English?"

"um.... Cow. It's Cow."

It does only work though on the assumption that kids just talk about what they normally do. If they talk about something random or new, I'm a little screwed, since I've only got the same responses.

"I punched Kenta in the face today...."
"Punched? Really? That's awesome!"
"What's his name in English?
"Um... Cow. It's Cow."

Anyways, so after talking to this 4-year-old today, I was having my standard preschool conversation, but I couldn't help notice that the conversation seemed really weird. I had been talking to this kid for 10 minutes, and he'd still keep saying "Hello Sensei!", even though we had just greeted each other three or four times already. Up until that point, I was just chalking up him saying Hello multiple times to the fact that he was 4 years old, and so didn't think about it much and kept saying "Hello!" back, before going back to our regular conversation. After talking to him for a bit longer, he asked me "Does Hello Sensei speak Japanese?"

Then, it dawned on me. He's not greeting me. He thinks my name is Hello. He's been calling me Mr. Hello this whole time. I was kinda conflicted. Sure, it's ridiculously cute that a 4 year old thinks my name is Mr Hello and you can't help but laugh. But then, what the hell has he been thinking I've been doing for the last 2 years? Each time I come into the classroom to teach English and say "Hello!" the whole time, does he think that I've just been announcing my name, and getting everyone to practice saying it? And, just in our conversation, every time he's been trying to call me, I've been repeating back to him what he thinks is my name. Does he think I just like to randomly shout my name to people and smile and wave at the same time?