Bonding with the Kids

So now that I have been here long enough to have met many of the kids repeatedly, I think they are more comfortable talking to me, even if I don’t know what they are saying, lol. At the festival in town a few weeks ago a few of my junior high students were there and they came running up to me and tried talking to me, but it ended up being short because we all didn’t really know how to say anything other than the simple things that they learn in class. And I guess as you get older it gets harder to just talk to someone even if they don’t understand, which is what a lot of the elementary students do with me all the time. Not to say that I don’t understand anything of what they are saying, I understand a lot more these days, but still. Anyway, while I was at the elementary school closest to my house the other day, I was visiting the 1st graders, and they pulled me outside to play with them between classes. We played a game called Daruma-san ga koronda (Daruma-san fell down), which luckily I already knew how to play. The game that is most like it in America is Red Light Green Light, except I have to say, the Japanese version is a little more fun with its variations. Then we went inside and I did my next class, and then they all converged on me with their notebooks and all wanted me to sign their stuff and were shoving hands in my face to sign there as well, lol. Then they just wanted me to write random words in English , like America, and Happy Birthday, and stuff. When I was about to leave, a little boy ran up to me and handed me a little ripped paper and was like, it’s a letter to you! And then ran off. So I put it in my bag and left, and then when I got back to the office I read it. It essentially said his name, Kakeru Nakao, and that it was ok if I wanted to go to his house, and that I should also come again to his school. Lol. It was the nicest thing ever. There are a lot of students at that school and I always end up going away with something like some stationary, a phone charm, some origami, or something, but this was by far the best (not that I didn’t wholly appreciate the others). Anyway, at my junior high this past Wednesday, in one of my classes they had to come up and do a conversation with me and I had to ask what certain people were doing in this one picture, and the three times that this one girl, Karin, came up, I asked about the same person every time. “Emi is buying an ice cream.” Lol. So when she said it the third time, I looked up and realized, and I mentioned something about it, and we both laughed. I guess she was excited about our little moment because she told the teacher about it after class and he mentioned it to me that she said “Buri-chan (what they call me) and I laughed together.” And I had a conversation about what boys this one group of girls liked, “nice, cool, etc” and then they did this weird thing where they all sat on each other and wanted me to be the person sitting on top of all of them, lol. I don’t know why. Today I went to the 6th grade at the local elementary school and taught about Christmas in America. Then we played a bunch of games with Christmas related themes. After which a few girls stayed after and were talking to me, asking questions, and one girl kept trying to tickle me so a small war broke out. And on my way out of the school a little 1st or 2nd grader (I don’t remember what grade she actually was in) saw me, put her hand up to her mouth in surprise, and ran all excitedly toward me to give me a high five. And once she slapped my hand she just kept running, lol. Little weirdo, lol. Anyway, those are my stories of my small bonding times with some of my students. I hope more come, and that I’m not too foreign or intimidating for more students to talk to me. Gotta love it.

eNgLiSh

There are a few things that are kind of weird that I’ve seen since being here, the most recent of which happened to be something written on a shirt I saw at school the other day. I was in an elementary school, watching Candice teach when I saw a jacket that a little girl wearing. On the back it said, “Playboy makes me happy” and had the playboy bunny next to it. What is that about? I’ve read some pretty crazy things on people’s shirts, with weird English that doesn’t make sense, and sometimes even swear words written all over the shirts. I wonder if they even bother to get the things proof read by someone who speaks English at all before sending it to be printed for all the world to read on the back on some small child. I admit that the grammatically incorrect attempts at English are sometimes highly amusing, but in terms of swear words, since there aren’t really swear words in Japanese, I understand that it might be harder for them to grasp what is actually being conveyed, but still, find someone to look at it who would understand first.

Pictures of stuff from the past month

Discovered this display of scarecrows when we went to go get some delicious and oddly flavored ice cream (seaweed, salt, black sesame, chesnut, etc).

This is another time we went to go get ice cream.

These next ones are of the park that Marisa and I took a look at in town.  

That huge slide is a slide of death.  It has rollers that you slide down and by the time you reach the end there your bum is burning.

Ya, they have little go-karts for the kiddies, lol.

These next are of the TV station and from the time Marisa and I were interviewed there.

Then there was Halloween in Kochi.  We went to a couple parties, but I didn’t want to carry my phone around so I didn’t get many pictures.

And although it’s blurry, this is when we went to the onsen.  It was hidden in this remote part of the mountains. 

And this is my office and then my desk.  And last is the picture that was put in the town pamphlet that I just got today advertising my dance class that starts on the 20th.

Festival Dancing

ひさしぶり皆さん、ごめんなさい！ It’s been a while everyone, Sorry! This past weekend on both Saturday and Sunday there was a festival in town. It was pretty fun. I had signed up to dance in it with the Town Hall’s team. I had the 3 nights in a row at 45 mins each before Saturday to learn the dance. Apparently they had done this same dance for the past 3 years so most people already knew it, lol. It was broken up into 3 or 4 parts and the first part was done to the song “We Will Rock You” by Queen. Except it was some of the guys from town performing it and I guess they were asking Marisa how to pronounce some of the words in it. Lol. Good stuff. Anyway, I finally got the dance down, and then when the festival started, I discovered that it was actually a competition with other groups that had formed in the town. There were a couple elementary schools and some other groups that put stuff together.     At the end, this one elementary school, which I go to teach at, won first and my team won second. When they presented the prize they had us three foreigners go up and claim it and the man that was waving the flag gave me the flag to take up there with me, lol. So it was pretty cool. Oh, and they had the camera people out there filming again so the camera was in my face a lot while dancing I’m guessing because I am the foreigner that stands out the most, and then again when they presented the award, and then again they tried interviewing us after the dancing and awards were given. All I said was it was fun, lol. I’m going to try and catch it on TV with my webcamera so we’ll see how that goes.    It’ll be on TV from the 12^th to the 19^th. Then I tried my hand at the fish game again, but I lost. I had the fish in my little paper hoop, but it broke. The guy gave me 2 fish anyway, which I still have. I wonder when they will die. Not that I am hoping they will by any means. But they are probably the lamest fish in existence, sitting at the bottom of the bowl all day long so I wonder if something is wrong with them. I have to tap the bowl to get them to swim around and see if they are alive still. I hesitate to name them because these fish won at games usually only last a day or 2 at the most before dying because of their traumatic lives. Also, these fish had it especially bad because they were being man-handled in the bag by a little 1 year old who seemed fascinated by them, and then had a rather bumpy journey back on my bike, as well as going through the trauma of getting swished around and caught before even encountering me.    Anyway, I visited a bunch of stalls set up and bought too much food that I couldn’t finish, and helped out at Marisa’s Hawaii booth for the international club where I was told, as I have been told many times before, that I have a small face. Still don’t know whether it’s a compliment, observation, or what. Also, for some reason, a bunch of people think I’m Russian. They think Russians are petit with blonde hair, which does not seem to be the case in my mind, but oh well. Nordic I would think more than Russian. Oh, and I was also told I was like a fairy, and some older guy came to the booth a little drunk and bought the rest of the phone charms, and then started asking how much it was for me. Don’t know whether I should have been insulted or not, as I don’t think he meant it in a demeaning way, lol, but he put down a little pile of money which I think was around the equivalent of 30-40 dollars, lol. Overall it was lots of fun.

The Dangerous Harry Potter Game

The last time I went to the Kindergarten, we did a huge Halloween party. We explained the origin of Halloween and the Jack-o-lantern (I even told part of the story in Japanese from memory – yay for me!) and what Americans did on Halloween and then the kids said trick or treat and got some candy, and we made paper jack-o-lanterns. It was a success. Here are some pictures of that.

Today however, I went to the Kindergarten alone since Marisa is at a conference in Tokyo. All yesterday I had planned out doing this Harry Potter game. It was going to be awesome. First I would have about 14 cards with pictures of different animals on them, and would teach the kids the name of the animals in English. Then we would play charades (what they call the Gesture Game) with the different animals so the kids could get familiar with acting like the different animals because they would need to do that for the Harry Potter game which would be next. So then, the kids would have rolled up newspaper wands and 1/3 of them would be Voldemorts (sorry for mentioning his name), and the other 2/3 would be Harry Potters. The Harry Potters would get 10 seconds to run away, and then the Voldemorts would chase them down. If a Voldemort caught a Harry Potter, then they would wave their wand and say an animal at the Harry Potter who would then have to act like that animal. The only way that Harry Potter could be human again would be if another human Harry Potter came around and waved their wand at them and said the animal that they were acting like to break the spell. And then game would go on. What actually happened at the kindergarten was craziness. The first two parts of teaching the names of the animals and charades was fine, although the kids kept shouting Harry Potter and waving their wands sporadically. When it came to playing the game, because it was raining we had to keep it inside, which meant cramped space with 40 kindergarteners running around shouting and brandishing newspaper wands. The English names were forgotten almost instantly as kids just tried to run as fast as they could and hit as many other people as possible with their wands, lol. As the game went on, they got the idea more and you could see more and more kids acting like certain animals (gorillas, snakes, rabbits, frogs, etc), but they were using the Japanese names for the animals instead of the English. That’s ok though. They are only Kindergarteners. It’s mostly just supposed to be fun for them anyway. So in all the chaos, lots of things happened. Kids were slamming into each other, being thrown onto the floor, tripping over each other, knocking heads, etc. I even saw them corner an adult with a baby in the corner of the room and start attacking her with their wands shouting animals. At one point a kid ran up to me in the middle with a bloody hand raised. He started shouting at me asking if there was really blood on his face and if I could see it. He had a little stream of blood coming down and when he showed me his head I could see a little hole there where it looks like he was somehow punctured. Luckily he seemed in control of himself and wasn’t crying but more in shock. So I led him out of the fray and one of the teachers took him aside. Apparently he had been hiding under the piano and when he went to get out he stood up too early and hit his head on the corner of it. So then he sat in the corner with his wand and a towel held to his head. Poor kid. Anyway, the kids had a lot of fun and other than the bloody kid and one that hit his head on someone else and started crying, there were no other injuries. Anyway, then I went and played with the kids for a half hour and had lunch with them and played this playground game that I kind of got the idea of after having played it outside with the kids last month. One kid is sitting with their head down and the others hold hands and circle him singing some song. Then they stop and start pushing the kid on the floor around and ask him a question at which time the kid answers saying they are going home. Everyone asks why and he says its dinner time and they ask what he’s having, and he answers with something like curry and everyone says “thank goodness” (except in Japanese of course) and starts again. But if the kid answers with “snake,” then everyone runs away and the kid has to catch someone. (or something like that). So we played that game after which the kids saw fit to climb all over me like monkeys and have me drag them around. Then I returned to the office where I am now. Pretty crazy.