As I approach month 11 in this crazy place called Japan, I find myself wondering "what am I doing here?" quite often. Like today, when I was riding my bike home, and a little old lady opened her front door to toss out the mop water and hit the front of my bike square on. I only got a few splashes myself, and was really too shocked to be the least bit angry. It was like a scene from a period drama from a previous century. Really, how many of you can say that has happened to you?
Or yesterday, when I was talking to the lovely Araki Junior High office lady, and she asked me if the steering wheels in American cars were set up differently from Japanese cars. Which side was the blinker on? What about the wiper control? I couldn't for the life of me remember. Yeah...I've been here that long.
Even if these moments happen a bit more often now that they did a few months ago, they are as always, tempered by entertaining moments, many of them involving my students (which is the best answer I can come up with at the moment to the above quandry.)
A few weeks ago, I taught 6th grade at an elementary school. I had taught these students before as 5th graders, and I asked if they remembered my name. They knew I wasn't Allison, and someone threw out "Johnathan" too before I wrote a "W" on the board followed by four blanks to jog their memories. Someone eventually remembered, but not before one kid shouted out "Wario!!" Yes, I am Wario. My go-kart is parked out front, and I shaved off the mustache before class.
At the same school, in a different class, I was giving out stickers to the students who volunteered their answers to a worksheet we did about the weather. At the end of class, a very persistant boy came up to me asking for more stickers in Japanese. I told him if he could say it in English, I would give him one. He couldn't figure it out, but he did call me beautiful, showed me that his eyebrows had been shaved off (?) and after a hint from a friend, said that I was "charming." Even my junior high boys haven't used that word yet! Alas, by this time there was a large crowd and I didn't want to give just him a sticker because then everyone else would want one too. I'm mean, I know.
Last week, I was as Tachiarai Junior High School, and the 8th graders were practicing the phrase "There is/There are" and simple prepositions (near, by, on, under etc) Their activity was to draw their ideal bedroom. Then they each picked one thing from their room to tell me, and I drew it on the board. There were some amazing things in the rooms to be sure...but the most unusual were a soundproof chamber, a 7-11, and a baseball stadium. Last Friday, I was scheduled at elementary school, and the lesson plan fax just said "Where is _____?" so I thought I would try and repeat the activity. In hindsight, it was rather ambitious of me, considering the 8th graders weren't even comfortable making the sentences. So after the first class, I dropped the sentence aspect and taught some furniture vocabulary and just let the 5th graders go for it. I liked their rooms even better than the 8th graders'. On the worksheet, I had drawn a rectangular room with one door and three windows. Most students stayed within these boundaries, but at least one added stairs to an upper and lower level, and a few added more windows. I was really impressed with the number who made toilets and shower rooms! I had sort of intended for those to be down the hall, but kudos for the kids being prepared. In my example, I drew an indoor pool and an ice cream stand in my ideal room, so there were many others with those features. I wasn't prepared for the dozens of room sized aquariums though, and the boats needed to get to from the door to the bed. Several girls drew large closets, one girl had a tree which grew every kind of fruit you could want, there was one bowling alley and a boy added a Shinkansen track. So much fun!
This week at junior high, my students lack of English knowledge actually came in handy. In 8th grade we filled a few minutes at the end of class with some Hangman. I had just won a round with the word "cloudy," and wrote up the blanks for the next word. Many times, the first three letters guessed are "s" "e" and "x" and if I am not paying attention, I will inadvertantly write "sex" on the board much to the delight of the boys in the class. Thankfully, this appears to be the only raunchy word they know, or at least know how to spell. My second word was "passport," straight out of the textbook, and after the normal first three letters were guessed, the next one was "a." Only the teacher and I seemed to notice what was on the board. It did seem to take an eternity for them to guess the other letters correctly though.
Today, I got to teach "vegetables" to 2nd grade elementary students. This is only the 3rd time since the beginning of the new school year in April that I've taught a class under 5th grade. I've missed the little ones!! While the lesson was pretty standard--introducing vocabulary, making them repeat, repeat, repeat and then playing some games; lunch was more memorable. First, I'd barely peeled the the seal off of my milk bottle when this crazy boy ran up to show me his empty bowls, and then proceeded to demonstrate how he ate so fast. Gross. The teeny boy I was sitting next to is a little behind the rest of the class, but soooooo adorable. He continually wanted to line up our milk bottles to see who had drunk more, and towards the end, insisted that we link arms and finish our lunches this way. I am not sure he would have suggested it had he been the one sitting on the left. Conveniently, his right arm was free to weild his chopsticks, while mine was now pulled down by his shorter height and trapped next to his body by his left arm. Luckily, I only had my rice left, and managed alright. If I had needed to eat my miso soup though, it would have been a disaster.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Monday, June 9, 2008
私はスポーツファンです。
I spent the weekend of May 31/June 1 braving the sun's harmful rays to support my favorite athletes--Keizo, my cute, professional rugby playing arm candy; and my cute, semi--uncoordinated Araki Junior High School students.
On Saturday, Jamie accompanied me on the trek to "Gurobaru Arina" to watch the Fukuoka Sanix Blues rugby team take on a team called the Liners. The train took an hour and a half, and the taxi to the arena took another 20 minutes and cost more than the train (at least one way.) How can the Blues have any fans when the stadium is so far out in the middle of nowhere, I wondered? The answer is, they don't really. The crowd consisted entirely of the players wives, their adorable children, aspiring junior high school rugby players, and two gaijin with nothing better to do than watch men in short shorts crash into each other on a glorious Saturday afternoon.
I had seen parts of a few rugby games in college, but can't say I ever really paid attention to what was going on. So before heading to the game, I watched Video Jug's (www.videojug.org) "The Armchair Fan's Guide to Rugby" to brush up, I mean learn for the first time, the basics of the game. Rugby is sort of like American football, with smaller players and way less padding. The scoring is pretty similar (5 points for a "touchdown," a chance to get 2 extra points after scoring, and 3 points for a "field goal" during regular play. The video said this is really hard to do, and after watching the game, it seems like being able to walk off the field at the end is somewhat of a miracle in and of itself.)
In action! The Blues were actually wearing yellow, since the other team had the same colors I guess. Keizo is the yellow person on the far right. He played very well, scoring the first points of the game!!
When all was said and done they lined up for their uber-Japanese bow. The Blues emerged victorious 56-24. Keizo has just spotted me in the stands and is sticking his tongue out above, but I don't know if you can see it--he's near the middle of the line.
Sunday's athletic event was of an entirely different nature. While the rugby game was a "short" (only when you are watching, I'm sure) 80 minutes long, Araki's "Sports Day" lasted close to 7 hours. The reader might recall a very early post about Kurume High School's Sports Day in September. Same idea, but a little different. In fact, when I mentioned how excited I was to see my first Araki Sports Day to my teachers, they asked if I had any idea what to expect. I told them about watching Kurume High School's, and they all kind of shook their heads, and told me not to expect too much from the junior high students. Everyone also wanted to know if we had "Sports Day" in the U.S. I had to say "no" and a few times tried to explain the number of lawsuits that would come about as the result of forced physical fitness in the hot sun.
The day began around 9 AM with a parade around the "field." The band lead the way, followed by the student council and each of the "blocks." At Araki, there are 4 classes in each of the 3 grades. For Sports Day and Culture Day, all the class 1's (7th, 8th and 9th grade) combine to form the yellow block, the class 2's form the blue block, class 3 is green and class 4 is red. On Sports Day in particular, it's a fight to the death to win events and points for your team. Four 9th grade boys are chosen by their peers to be "block leaders." They are popular, athletic and tend to be somewhat noisy in class. But it's nice to see them excell elsewhere, right?
The beautiful band girls (there are two, maybe three boys in there too.)
After the parade, the first event was the 7th grade relay. Here are the boys lined up for stage one: balancing a rugby ball on a platform while running around 1/4 of the track. Look how tiny the ones in the front are!! I've only taught two classes to each class, so most of their names are a huge mystery to me. I want to call the one second from the left Harry Potter though because he has glasses.
The girls rounding out the last leg of the relay with a "mukare" (centipede) race. Their ankles are all tied together. Surprisingly no one fell over.
Why the radio-led stretching happened after the first races of the day, I am not sure. I was the only teacher not participating though. I spent the whole week prior to Sports Day at my other junior high school so I wasn't around to practice with them. Hopefully next year's schedule will work out better. Note the principal's nicely neutral white jogging outfit. Hehe. I also wore a white shirt and some jeans, trying not to be prejudiced to one block or another (although I was a little disappointed that the yellow block didn't do better.)
Next item on the agenda, bamboo climbing!!
Now it's the 9th graders turn for the relay. Mako, Akiko and Rika all lined up and ready to go. I don't remember who was representing the yellow block because Tsutsumi-sensei had an unfortunate habit of getting in front of a lot of my pictures.
And the boys' leg of the race, pulling each other on tires.
Pyramid building. I don't know what this portion of the event is called, but it involves only the boys, and it demonstrates their team spirit. Unfortunately, after stacking themselves all up, the yellow block dropped their banner in the unfurling process. You can see it on the ground below. You can't see the enraged block leader on top of the adjacent pyramid though...whoops.
More boys activities. Weird cordinated areobics.
The girls program--dancing!! Unfortunately my camera died mid-way. (I really need a new camera, mine has no battery life anymore and the right side of the screen is going black. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated :-P)
And finally, one of the last events of the day was the "demonstration relay" (for a lack of a better name.) All the students put on their club uniforms and lined up. Not surprisingly the track team won, but I thought the kendo team (far right) was unfairly burdened because they had to wear their full uniforms, including long, wide pants and heavy breastplate as well as use their kendo sticks as the baton. So not surprisingly, they came in last.
On Saturday, Jamie accompanied me on the trek to "Gurobaru Arina" to watch the Fukuoka Sanix Blues rugby team take on a team called the Liners. The train took an hour and a half, and the taxi to the arena took another 20 minutes and cost more than the train (at least one way.) How can the Blues have any fans when the stadium is so far out in the middle of nowhere, I wondered? The answer is, they don't really. The crowd consisted entirely of the players wives, their adorable children, aspiring junior high school rugby players, and two gaijin with nothing better to do than watch men in short shorts crash into each other on a glorious Saturday afternoon.
I had seen parts of a few rugby games in college, but can't say I ever really paid attention to what was going on. So before heading to the game, I watched Video Jug's (www.videojug.org) "The Armchair Fan's Guide to Rugby" to brush up, I mean learn for the first time, the basics of the game. Rugby is sort of like American football, with smaller players and way less padding. The scoring is pretty similar (5 points for a "touchdown," a chance to get 2 extra points after scoring, and 3 points for a "field goal" during regular play. The video said this is really hard to do, and after watching the game, it seems like being able to walk off the field at the end is somewhat of a miracle in and of itself.)
In action! The Blues were actually wearing yellow, since the other team had the same colors I guess. Keizo is the yellow person on the far right. He played very well, scoring the first points of the game!!
When all was said and done they lined up for their uber-Japanese bow. The Blues emerged victorious 56-24. Keizo has just spotted me in the stands and is sticking his tongue out above, but I don't know if you can see it--he's near the middle of the line.
Sunday's athletic event was of an entirely different nature. While the rugby game was a "short" (only when you are watching, I'm sure) 80 minutes long, Araki's "Sports Day" lasted close to 7 hours. The reader might recall a very early post about Kurume High School's Sports Day in September. Same idea, but a little different. In fact, when I mentioned how excited I was to see my first Araki Sports Day to my teachers, they asked if I had any idea what to expect. I told them about watching Kurume High School's, and they all kind of shook their heads, and told me not to expect too much from the junior high students. Everyone also wanted to know if we had "Sports Day" in the U.S. I had to say "no" and a few times tried to explain the number of lawsuits that would come about as the result of forced physical fitness in the hot sun.
The day began around 9 AM with a parade around the "field." The band lead the way, followed by the student council and each of the "blocks." At Araki, there are 4 classes in each of the 3 grades. For Sports Day and Culture Day, all the class 1's (7th, 8th and 9th grade) combine to form the yellow block, the class 2's form the blue block, class 3 is green and class 4 is red. On Sports Day in particular, it's a fight to the death to win events and points for your team. Four 9th grade boys are chosen by their peers to be "block leaders." They are popular, athletic and tend to be somewhat noisy in class. But it's nice to see them excell elsewhere, right?
The beautiful band girls (there are two, maybe three boys in there too.)
After the parade, the first event was the 7th grade relay. Here are the boys lined up for stage one: balancing a rugby ball on a platform while running around 1/4 of the track. Look how tiny the ones in the front are!! I've only taught two classes to each class, so most of their names are a huge mystery to me. I want to call the one second from the left Harry Potter though because he has glasses.
The girls rounding out the last leg of the relay with a "mukare" (centipede) race. Their ankles are all tied together. Surprisingly no one fell over.
Why the radio-led stretching happened after the first races of the day, I am not sure. I was the only teacher not participating though. I spent the whole week prior to Sports Day at my other junior high school so I wasn't around to practice with them. Hopefully next year's schedule will work out better. Note the principal's nicely neutral white jogging outfit. Hehe. I also wore a white shirt and some jeans, trying not to be prejudiced to one block or another (although I was a little disappointed that the yellow block didn't do better.)
Next item on the agenda, bamboo climbing!!
Now it's the 9th graders turn for the relay. Mako, Akiko and Rika all lined up and ready to go. I don't remember who was representing the yellow block because Tsutsumi-sensei had an unfortunate habit of getting in front of a lot of my pictures.
And the boys' leg of the race, pulling each other on tires.
Pyramid building. I don't know what this portion of the event is called, but it involves only the boys, and it demonstrates their team spirit. Unfortunately, after stacking themselves all up, the yellow block dropped their banner in the unfurling process. You can see it on the ground below. You can't see the enraged block leader on top of the adjacent pyramid though...whoops.
More boys activities. Weird cordinated areobics.
The girls program--dancing!! Unfortunately my camera died mid-way. (I really need a new camera, mine has no battery life anymore and the right side of the screen is going black. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated :-P)
And finally, one of the last events of the day was the "demonstration relay" (for a lack of a better name.) All the students put on their club uniforms and lined up. Not surprisingly the track team won, but I thought the kendo team (far right) was unfairly burdened because they had to wear their full uniforms, including long, wide pants and heavy breastplate as well as use their kendo sticks as the baton. So not surprisingly, they came in last. 
In the end, the green block won. We then put away all the supplies and took down the shade tents. I went home and took a much needed shower before meeting the triumphant teachers for an enkai. The enkai was shorter than usual though because they were all exhausted from the weeks of practice. They also had Monday and Tuesday off for all their hard work, but yours truly had to go to work.
Yay for スポーツ！！！
Case of the Mondays
My alarm didn't go off this morning.
I got stuck behind slow old ladies at both the train ticket machine and the grocery store, making me almost late for two trains.
I bought the wrong ticket, then thought I lost it in transit.
I have blister on the bottom of my right big toe from playing a rather sweaty, thirty minute game of soccer with the 5th graders today.
Discovered a complete lack of decent snacks in my apartment.
Thankfully, none of these things are really the end of the world. I made both trains, playing soccer was a lot of fun, and I have to go to the grocery store later anyway if I plan on eating anything for dinner.
Speaking of food...I found this in one of the annoying free magazines that get shoved into my mailbox:
Of course the Japanese have the perfect (albeit inverted) food pyramid. For a while I have been saying that the USDA food pyramid should have a moat around it symbolizing all the water you are supposed to drink. Not only have the Japanese added a large glass of water on top, they have also incorporated the exercise component of a heathly lifestyle with a running person on top of their "Nutrition Cone" (which you may notice has no "Oils/Fats/Sweets" section...sneaky). I am not sure a country with so much soft cream and caffinated small children should be allowed to exclude that section on the food pyramid, but then again, Japan is all about appearances.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
