Morimoto has been wrapped up in practicing for their sports festival so they only have two periods of class and the rest of the day is devoted to preparation. It’s been quite a thing to watch, especially their…gymnastics? Not sure what to call it actually. I was Skyping with my parents the other night, trying to explain it to them to no avail. Only pictures will do. Sometimes I’m sitting there watching and thinking, “Are you kidding me? You’re really making them do that?” Some of them look so hard! But it’s great when they manage to do it. Anyway, now that school has started, I will be at Naka Takeno on Tuesdays, Takeno Minami on Thursdays, and then Morimoto the rest of the weekdays. On Monday there was no English class so no work for me. Tuesday was my first day working at Naka Takeno. Naturally, I had to do another self-introduction. Once I finished addressing the entire school (less than 40 students), I watched them practice for their sports festival for a while. When they finished that, it was soon time for my first class with the first graders. One of them came into the staff room to fetch me. So cute!
My first class went like this: I made a picture board with photos of my family, our house, where Maryland is in the States, some monuments from D.C., my pets (Plecky and Axel), and my hobbies (drawing and playing Sonic. By the way, the amount of times the kids, of all ages, were whispering, “Sonic! Sonic!” and pointing it out to each other during my introduction was hilarious.) I also brought some American dollars and coins with me to show them how it was different from Japanese money. I wanted to learn about the kids too and wanted them to practice giving a self-introduction, so I had them write down their name, what thing they like, and what they’re good at doing. One by one they did a little presentation. Afterwards, they were free to ask any questions about me. They ranged from – what is your favorite Japanese food (katsudon is my standard answer), where do you live, do you like Takeno (yes!), how old is your grandmother, how old are you, etc. After that class was the combined 2nd and 3rd graders. I did the same thing with them but oh, how they loved the American money! Explaining the rough conversion was even funnier (I decided to just ignore the economy and go with a basic 1 dollar is about 100 yen conversion because they’re children and I hate math, so this was easier for everyone’s brains. And plus, if you round up, that’s almost correct, right? Right.). I made them do the same sort of self-introductions too. Their reward for introducing themselves was a University of Maryland sticker. I did this with all of the kids.
Before the next class, we had a short recess – yay! One of the fourth graders showed me the bunnies they have outside in a pen. I noticed – to my slight horror – that there was an absurd amount of dragonflies in the air. I have never, ever, seen so many dragonflies at one time. Of course, the kids were eagerly running around with nets, trying their hardest to catch them. One of my first graders who said he was good at catching bugs during class lived up to his word and had many dragonflies in a little planetarium alongside a massive grasshopper. I’m glad they didn’t take it out to show me. I probably would have screamed. Break was over and it was now on to the fourth grade. Same process of self-introduction, showing off American money and laughing at their reactions, and then it was question time. I can’t remember all their questions and I can’t even say I understood all their questions. When their curiosity seemed to be running out, I decided a game would best to pass the time instead of us looking at each other awkwardly. I thought of doing I Spy with the idea of looking at a specific thing but it soon turned into something else probably much easier for the kids to handle. I said I saw something pink and everyone ran around the room saying they found something pink. Realizing that’s how they thought the game was played, I decided to stick with that. I called out different colors and they dashed around the room to find things that matched what I said. It was funny when I got to brown because some of them started touching my arm and saying, “Brown, brown!” Then all of them were up at the front, touching my hands and arms. When they were looking for blue things, I noticed one of the boys had a blue Pokémon shirt and told him I liked Pokémon too. This got the greatest surprise. “You have Pokémon in America? You know it? Can you do wireless with foreign countries?” they all asked at once. I said I had Pokémon White (one of the newest games) and they all got very excited. We started discussing their names (how some are different and how some are kept the same from Japanese) and what level Pokémon we had, if I have seen the newest movie (not yet) and whatnot. I then started drawing one (Mew) without telling them what it was so they could guess. I wrote it in English for them so I could at least appear like I was still doing my job. It’s hard trying to do the “only speak in English” approach because unlike the junior high school kids who are learning it academically, everyone else is just getting early exposure. Only fifth and sixth grade have textbooks in the elementary schools. Anyway, even though I wasn’t exactly teaching much at the time, I felt like at least they were getting comfortable with me. Next time I see them, they won’t be as shy because they know I’m a cool person in their eyes XD. After that class was lunch time.
Now, let me tell you about school lunch if I haven’t already. I usually don’t remember to read the menu until it’s too late and it’s already lunch time, so I’m bit anxious whenever lunch time comes around. I was told that if I don’t have any major aversion to Japanese food, I should get school lunch. Because it’s cheap and delicious, so I was told. Well, yes, it’s pretty cheap and sometimes quite tasty. So far, I’ve only had to struggle a great deal once. Other times it may be the texture makes me feel weird so I don’t enjoy eating at as much but it doesn’t taste bad. And there are days like one Monday when I’m looking at three skinny small fish (with heads) on my plate. I’m thinking, “I eat fish. Not the head really, but I can do fish. Come at me, school lunch.” Then I opened the fish to find nothing but eggs. I do not really fancy fish eggs. There wasn’t really any meat. Just eggs. I ate them the best I could, paired with rice to nullify the somewhat bitter flavor. By the time I’m on my third one, picking out the eggs to eat, my vice principal is commenting on my eating. I don’t actually know what he’s saying, but he’s imitating my motion of tearing the fish apart. Tamura-sensei then kindly told me that I was supposed to eat the fish whole.
Oh. Is that so?
He kind of laughed, mentioning how it must be a bit scary to eat the head and I laughed too because I wasn’t sure what else to do. Then my inner turmoil began: “I can’t really eat the whole thing. But maybe if I eat enough of the body, they’ll forgive me. Why is this so bitter? I have to eat it. Do I have to eat it? Can I pull my G-smash card on this one? I don’t want to eat the vertebrae…can I even eat it? He said everything...” In the end, I left nothing but the heads and vertebrae. Also, the pickles and pickled bean sprout combination just made me feel worse. I felt bad for having to throw away any of it but I didn’t want to throw up either. *Sigh*
Despite this, school lunch, as I said can be delicious! I ate lunch with the sixth graders The three schools I teach at have the same school lunch, for the record. Going back to my first day at Naka Takeno, we had lunch and then another recess. I ended up with the fourth graders again – who decided to discover whether I was ticklish or not. Curses. I had to run away into the staff room where they couldn’t get me. Gotta love the safe zones. One of the girls pretended she lassoed me and started reeling me in. I started to struggle but I let myself be “dragged out” of the staff room, much to their delight. I heard a couple of them giggling, saying that I was funny. One of the boys found a humongous dragonfly and decided to present it to me. While I genuinely thought it was awesome, I didn’t want to touch it or be too close to it! I went outside with the fourth graders and we found a kitten! That was fun.
Then it was class with the fifth graders. It’s a very small class (five students) and they’re all pretty shy. Kometani-sensei, who teaches English with me, and I got through the class with ease and the kids seemed to have had a good time. Next was sixth grade, who were a much more lively bunch. One of them has mastered, “Oh my God!” which kind of makes me laugh because I want to know where he learned that (probably a movie or TV show, I imagine). Today, one of my sixth graders said, “no idea.” I like these guys. Once I was done with all my classes, I retreated back to the staff room and handed out more omiyage. They were very happy with what I brought for them (more key chains).
Alright, so that was Tuesday.
Wednesday was my first class with the third grade junior high students. For them and the rest of the junior high, I created a Power Point with pictures of America and things related to me. In one of my pictures was of a paper bag I brought back from Wicked and the JTE mentioned they had seen it! Awesome sauce. At the end of my presentation, I wanted them to interview each other and then present their partner to me. It went alright. They weren’t all to enthusiastic. I can’t blame them. The rest of the day was devoted to Sports Festival practice. When the day ended, Takamatsu-sensei took me to see one of the third grade girls who wanted to talk to me. So, together we went to the band room where she was with her friends. The girl then showed me her collection of Fullmetal Alchemist collection cards! Due to my enthusiasm for that series, I was very much excited and loved that she showed them to me. The girls asked me to draw a character so I decided to go with Edward, one of the main characters. The girls loved it, asked me to sign it, squealed when I did and they put it up on the whiteboard. One of the girls loved Wicked so much that she bought the soundtrack. She told me that she would let me borrow it. She was ready to let me borrow it the next day but I told her I wouldn’t be at Morimoto on Thursday so she said she’d bring it on Friday! *squee*
The next day at Takeno Minami was a good one. There was another opening ceremony for me and I did another self-introduction. I then met the student who was the head of the student body and he read me a message in English. I then received a tissue paper flower lei by another student. So cute! After the ceremony, it was time for them to practice for their sports festival! Now this time, I was really able to get into it. They were doing Soran Bushi – exactly the same song and almost the exact same dance that UMD’s Japanese American Student Association has performed several times. I readily agreed to practice with the kids – which left me exhausted and pain in my legs for days but totally worth it. I sort of bonded with the kid next to me and after we danced together, every time he saw me, he’d say something to me. I only taught sixth grade that day and that went without a hitch. At one point, some of the kids were practicing Soran Bushi again and a group of kids found me and urged me to come to the gym to practice again with them. My legs weren’t so willing but I knew I couldn’t say no to those little guys! I did it with a little less effort but it was just enough to keep my students happy. I ate lunch with the first graders who were more interested in looking at me than talking to me sometimes. They asked me how old I was and when I said I was 22, they said I was really young. One of them said his mom was really young too; I asked him how old his mom was and he admitted that he didn’t know. So funny. The same kid pointed out that I was dark and told him I was born this way (I decided it would be much easier to say this then try to explain – which I can’t – that I was a bit lighter as a child but I got more brown as I grew up). He looked at himself and told me he was born the way he was too.
Friday was ALL-DAY SPORTS FESTIVAL PRACTICE at Morimoto. The only way I was really participating was by playing the drum during the opening ceremony (which was to a song from the movie Kiki’s Delivery Service) and to join in the folk dance (to the song “Turkey in the Straw” – which, by the way, I never knew the name for it. I only remembered the tune from Animaniacs when Wakko sang all of the US states and their capitals…). After school, I joined the girls in the band to A) practice the opening song and B) to enjoy listening to the Wicked soundtrack in Japanese! On Wednesday, I told the girl with the Wicked soundtrack that I liked the song “Defying Gravity” and so on Friday, she played the song for me. And she printed out the English lyrics so we could sing along. Can I just tell you I was on Cloud Nine? So ecstatic! She had a cute voice too! If you do not know me very well, I love singing with my life. Many of my happiest moments are with my friends and/or family singing together. So, to have this moment with one of my students just made my day. I felt like I was slowly getting past the “new teacher barrier” into a more friendly zone. Afterwards, she let me borrow the CD and I told her I would bring it back the next day (since we had more sports festival practice). She insisted I keep it longer than that.
Saturday was practice from 9 to 12. A lot of running around setting up the school grounds for Sunday, the actual day of the festival. I spent more time with the girls from the band (ranking up my social links). I also discovered that one of the girls likes VOCALOIDs which is splendid, because I love VOCALOIDs. (I suggest you Google it for a more complete, comprehensible explanation but I’ll give a short shot: A VOCALOID is a human sampled voice synthesized with a computer. It is then represented by a character such as Hatsune Miku or Kagamine Rin and they have surprisingly good music. There have been concerts. Naturally, this is a Japanese product. Yeah, I love this country, by the way.) Once practice ended, I received more loot! One of the second grade girls let me borrow the complete set of the opening and ending theme songs of Fullmetal Alchemist. Oh snap! And it came complete with pictures of the singles and a DVD of all the animation sequences. It’s all so nice and pretty, I sort of want to buy it myself. But for now, I will enjoy it and give it back to her soon.
Sunday was the day we’ve all been waiting for! Starting at 9:00, I played the drum with the band and the kids marched. I introduced myself to the children’s families, the PTA, and anyone else who came for the sports festival. And then we just enjoyed ourselves watching the kids run around, sometimes with their parents, playing games and whatnot. It ended around 3:30 or so. I got home with just enough time to relax for a bit before sprucing myself back up for the enkai. An enkai is essentially a party and in this case, for employees to relax and unwind after a big event. Lucky me, the izekaya that we went to was on my street, so I only had to walk 15 minutes to get there. The evening was spent eating delicious Japanese food and enjoying the company of my co-workers, which included English pronunciation practice with Takamatsu-sensei and the principal teaching me an assortment of unusual but relatively useful Japanese phrases you wouldn’t find in a dictionary. The running joke soon became that I was expected to eat everything because it couldn’t go to waste! I told them I was saving myself for dessert and then they started talking about how there was always room for dessert, since there are different compartments in your stomach, you know. Compartments for main food and then a separate one for desserts – I’ve also heard that tea was another space from someone else. (Pam, was that you?)
So, instead of being able to sleep in on my compensated weekend day (since sports festival ate up our weekend, we were given Monday and Tuesday off from school), I had to rise and shine for the Internet installers to come! Oh, the glee I experienced! They installed it in less than an hour and then I was on the Internet…all day. So many shows to watch, so many people to talk to, so much email to read (Gmail is blocked on the city server…for some reason). I finally broke out of the apartment to enjoy some more Sushiro. Thank you Japan, for serving sushi on a conveyor belt for about 100 yen a plate, you have made me so happy.
P.S.
Wow! How have I forgotten about this before? PICTURES!
Arrival into Japan and an Assortment of Activities and Sights:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1871957398577.2099541.1230390045&l=fcaa82d6bf&type=1Random Good Times and Sights:
Morimoto Sports Festival:
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