Back to School

As usual, I am at least a week behind, but this time I have a good excuse. School started up on September 3rd and has being sucking up all my time and energy since then.

I spent the whole week at Araki Jr High where I gave my self introduction at least 12 times to some of the 400 or so students there. There are still a few classes I haven't been to yet, so I will still be doing the same thing for part of next week (This is a picture of Arizona...Arizona is a desert...It is very hot... There are not very many trees...Arizona is famous for the Grand Canyon...blah blah blah.) In the 2nd and 3rd year classes, they break into groups following my presentation and I ask them questions to see if they were really listening, and in general, they do very well. Some tricky words that escape them are saguaro (too close to the Japanese word for cactus, saboten) and roadrunner. One kid thought the green stuff on my favorite sandwich was wasabi instead of avocado. Another guessed that my younger brother was 54 years old. All in all, its been a very entertaining week!

Japanese school is quite interesting in itself. At Araki, there are 3 grades (equivalent to 7th thru 9th in the States I believe) and each grade is split into 4 classes. These classes each have an assigned classroom they stay in for the whole day while the teachers go in and out to teach the various subjects. I pity the kids stuck on the 3rd floor...none of the classrooms have A/C which is pretty brutal, but the 3rd floor has no moving air what so ever. I felt like I was in a sauna when I went up there. It amazes me the kids are not passed out on the floor, and I wonder if these kids have worse test scores than their compatriots on the 2nd floor, where there is somewhat of a breeze coming through. The kids also eat lunch (unsupervised!) in these homerooms. But Japan is known for its group society, and overall, the kids are rather disciplined, especially when it comes to their after school clubs. Each club has an advisor, but whether or not they are present at practice does not really seem to matter. I spent Wednesday with the badminton club,* which had both advisers present, but across the gym, the four person volleyball club was on their own, and running a very regimented practice. Later, I walked outside as the baseball club was finishing up for the day, and they were raking the field and putting everything away in its proper place without any supervision. The track team was also stretching in unison before heading home.

*I would just like to note that the the badminton club had roughly 50 members while the volleyball club had 4 (we're not at Horizon High School anymore Toto) yet they were allotted the same amount of gym space. Hmmmmmm. There are also 2 dozen boys in the badminton club...the practice was nicely segregated; the boys performed specific drills while the girls rallied the whole time. Not sure how I feel about that....