Now that I’m finally done with the in depth description of my grand three day adventure I can move onto everything else I’ve been up to. Since it has been a while you aren’t going to get the normal blow-by-blow description of each and every day. I’m sure you are all very disappointed. I’ll just hit you with some of the highlights of the past few weeks.
One thing I was very excited about was that I finally made it to church! It was a small little chapel and I still can’t understand most of the Japanese but it was very refreshing to finally go. Jesus in Japanese is イエス or iesu which is pronounced ee-eh-soo.
The week after the tour I went to the Tsukurimon Festival and visited a mini zoo in a park in Takaoka. The zoo had some good stuff and the animals didn’t seem too depressed despite being in cages. As for the festival, I have no idea what it was supposed to be about but it featured art made from vegetables so it was probably some sort of harvest festival. Some of the pieces were very elaborate and I wish I could have been there for the judging of the winning sculpture.
One of the crazier events was on Thursday Sept. 30. My Thursday and Friday schedules were swapped but this meant that I was at my elementary schools by myself on Thursday instead of with Tamaki who usually helps with translation between Japanese and English. Most of the day was fine, fun even since I was largely in charge of the lessons myself, but at the very end of my very last class a huge hornet flew in and stung a girl. She had to go to the hospital, so while the teacher was taking care of her I was left in the classroom with all the other riled up students. I managed to get them settled and distracted them with stickers and by getting them to teach me how to say things like “getting stung” and “hornet” in Japanese. However, that only worked for a little while and while I was talking to several of the girls two boys started fighting! I broke them up from where they were rolling around on the floor and I held back one boy while the other kids held back the other. I had no idea what to do. I just kept thinking that if this was America and one of them got hurt while I was separating them then I would probably be sued. Luckily Japan tends to be a lot less strict about things like that (I’ve seen teachers behave much more forcefully with misbehaving students than I was by just keeping the boys separated). Our combined efforts kept the boys apart until the teacher came back shortly thereafter. Since my class time was far past finished I was told I could go back to the staff room. While I was down there waiting for 4 o’clock to roll around the boys were sent do to apologize to me. I got a pretty formal apology and a deep bow and the principal thanked me for being around because who knows what would have happened if there hadn’t been anyone in the room at all. I’m still a little worried that it made me look bad that as soon as I was left alone with the kids they start misbehaving but no one has treated me any differently yet.
October 10 was the Kubo ES School Festival. The morning started with the 1st graders and ended with the 6th graders. For those of you familiar with the IHM Christmas Musical, it was similar to that but with no overarching theme (as far as I could tell). Each grade performed a skit or song and every student had a speaking or performing part in front of everyone. Also interesting was that the older students were in charge of the lighting and set changes. I really liked seeing my students perform but also neat was seeing the little kids who I don’t actually teach. Everyone was super cute!
One of my favorite performances was the 4th graders doing demonstrations of what they had been learning in PE. They started out with tumbling but quickly progressed to some stuff that I wish I had got to play with, such as stilts and unicycles. My 5th graders performed a play and my 6th graders played two songs with instruments. First was a song called Summer and next was La Bamba. According to the teacher that was filming the whole thing, he recorded me clapping along to La Bamba. Afterwards they gave me a sushi bento for lunch and then I got to walk around the classrooms and see the art and other works the students had made this year. I’m very impressed with how talented my cute (sometimes) little (most of them) students (when they feel like listening) are.
On Monday October 11(the Japanese national holiday known as Health and Sports Day) John planned a fun adventure in the next prefecture, Ishikawa, and Katie and I went with him. We drove on a beach, we went to a love temple (not as sketchy as it sounds), we went to several scenic outlooks, and we rode a boat in Ganmon. A very fun and tiring day.
Also since the three day trip I’ve had two enkais and I was able to watch the school festivals for both of my middle schools. For Seibu I volunteered to go and watch the rehearsal and for Jusan I was there on the actual day. Both were even more impressive than the Kubo one and at the Jusan one I even got to participate!
My Seibu kids were great singers even though there are only about 90 students in the whole school. I think they were actually louder than the Jusan kids. At both schools, students I had helped practice gave speeches in English that they had memorized. From where they started it was great to hear how much they had improved. Unfortunately, the rules about posting pictures of students is even stricter than I thought so I had to take down my previous post of Sports Day and I’m not going to include any photos from the School Festivals.
At Jusan the last song was performed by the whole school and the teachers got up and sang and danced (well more like swayed back and forth). I hadn’t heard anything about this but when kyotou sensei (vice-principal) saw me singing along during the last practice that morning, she invited me to come up too. Clearly being a teacher and living in a foreign country has completely changed my perspective on standing out in front of a large group of people because I was eager to jump up there and more offended that no one had thought to ask me earlier if I wanted to participate with the other teachers. Some of you might be interested to know the song was "sekai ni hitotsu dake no hana" (世界に一つだけの花) or "A Flower Unlike Any Other in the World" by SMAP and was the first Jpop song I was introduced to back in high school. Here is a link if you want to know what it sounds like
This was also my first chance for any real parent interaction, though really this was limited to one mother who used to work as an English teacher speaking to me in English. I was very appreciative of her coming up to me and I actually gave her my contact information if she wants to practice some more in the future. After the parents left and several closing speeches were given by the principal and student government president, but right before clean up time, there was what my JTE called a “folk dance.” As far as I could tell this was just all of the students and teachers line dancing…well circle dancing.
For the first one the girls were in a circle in the middle and boys were in a circle on the outside. We did a fairly simple (I mean, I was able to pick it up pretty quickly so it must have been easy) step for a few seconds and then everyone would run to the middle and then spread back out. It was fun! Even more fun was when they told guys and girls to pair up. Naturally, one of my shortest students was standing behind me. We just laughed and he told me I was too tall but we tried anyways. The dance consisted of just a few steps, the guys spin the girls, and then they move onto the next girl. So I danced with many of my students and one of my coworkers. My students had many different reactions when they got me (the funniest is when they blushed) but the most common was definitely to tell me I was tall, which also amused me to no end.
That evening was another enkai for all of the Jusan teachers. It was even more fun than the first one and I got invited to the second round when some of the people moved to a karaoke snack bar. I went and had a great time and amused everyone by singing English songs (though who knows if it was the songs or my singing ability) to go with the Japanese songs they were performing.
I think I'll end here and fill you in on Halloween in my next post.
P.S. What do you think of the new layout? Is it good? Is it too hard to read? Is the background distracting?
2 comments:
Dear Cynthiagiantteacherchu,
We would have loved to see(not hear) you singing and dancing with your students. Nice to find out your doing this somewhere besides in a bar! Your pictures are beautiful as usual. Keep having a good time.
Love, Dad
Hi Cynthia,
Love Meme and Papa
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