This post is pretty much just procrastination on my part, as my apartment needs cleaning and I hate cleaning. Anyway, everyone at my school loves “Sutichi”, or Stitch from the movie Lilo & Stitch.
I don’t know why he is so popular now, seeing as how the movie came out in 2002, but everyone seems to love him. Kids have all kinds of Stitch stuff, like pencil cases and things like that, and teachers give out Stitch stamps as rewards. No one cares about Lilo at all.
Today at Okuganaya I got to spend a period with the Kindergarten class in their separate building. One of the teachers there told me that the students were 3 and 4 years old, but I don’t really understand how that can be, seeing as how there are grades 1-12 and grade 12 students graduate at 18 years old. Regardless, they were super small (the tallest one was shorter than my waist). I decided rock, paper, scissors would probably be the best idea. I suppose it ended up being successful, but they definitely didn’t catch on quickly like the other classes did. Then the teachers added some train game to it, so basically there was a train of super short Japanese kids with their hands on each other’s shoulders, and then me. The train thing was actually super awkward, because I had to hold a kid’s shoulders with like two fingers, and this little girl behind me (several feet too short to reach my shoulders) had to hang onto my back pockets. The teachers found it pretty amusing, cause she had to reach up even to hang onto my pockets, but I thought it was weird, and it was hard to walk around like that. At the end I gave them all stickers (including the teachers), and they all seemed pretty happy. I thought the teachers were either joking about the stickers or would give them to the kids, but they just put them in their pockets like the rest of the kids. I guess when you see an opportunity for a Canada sticker you take it.
Today I had to play a game with the first years, so I decided “the line game” was probably the easiest and would take up the most time for a big class. Basically the class has to stand, I ask a question, then whoever gets the question right gets to sit down, along with everyone who wasn’t in that person’s row. It’s sorta the opposite of other games, because there is no winner, just losers, but it still seems fun for the kids.
Anyway, I started off with questions I thought would be fine for the kids, but quickly realized I was overestimating their comprehension. Questions like “what is the date today?” didn’t work because they hadn’t learned the months yet. So I decided to go really easy, and immediately found myself in the role of Alec Trebek in Celebrity Jeopardy. I asked “what is my name?”, and even though they had said “good morning Drew sensei” at the beginning of every class I had with them, no one knew. Some of the other questions went like this:
“How old are you?” -> “I’m happy”
“What time is lunch?” -> “I like rice”
“What town are we in?” -> “You live in Quebec”
These kids were at least willing to answer, even though the answers were often way off. It got to the point where I was asking things like “Are you happy?” and “Do you like baseball?” so the game would move faster, and then the kids seemed to really start having fun.
This weekend I went to Kyoto with Myrie and some of the other ALTs she knows. Surprisingly enough, Kyoto is amazing. I feel like we barely got to see any of it, but what we did see was great. There are tons of temples in and around the city, as well as a really nice downtown area. The people I travelled with were a lot of fun too, so I had a really good time.
We got to the city on Saturday afternoon, and met up with the other ALTs who were already there. Then we dropped our stuff off at our hostel (much different than any I have been at before), and then went to the huge park nearby. We thought there would be more to see in the park, but it was pretty much just grass and trees. We went to Gion district that night, and saw some Geishas in training, which was pretty cool. Then we had dinner and spent the rest of the night at a few different bars.
The next day we saw one of the more famous temples, which was pretty huge and made the other temple I have seen seem sorta like nothing. While we were there we approached by a group of students from Tokyo who wanted to speak to us for an assignment. They were very excited about it (the girl I talked to actually jumped up and down clapping as she left) so it was pretty fun. After the temple it started to rain, so we wandered around the downtown area for awhile before going to dinner. We ended up eating at an Irish pub that served the best food I’ve had in awhile, and had live Irish music (played by Japanese people). After that we were tired so we went back to the hostel.
On our final day we headed to Arashiyama to see the bamboo forest and another temple or shrine (I don’t really know what it was). This was my favorite part of the trip, mostly because of the bamboo forest. There isn’t a whole lot to it, but I had really wanted to see one and I thought it looked really nice, and much different than anything we have in Canada.
So Kyoto is a really nice place, and its only about 3 hours away so I have a feeling I’ll be back there again.
Here are some pictures:
Today I went to Okuganaya for my first actual classes with the kids. I had three classes: grades 1, 2 and 3, then grades 4 and 5, then grade 6. When I got there the teacher who I think has basically been put in charge of telling me things (even though she doesn’t speak English), told me one of the games I planned would probably be too hard, so I should just do rock, paper, scissors with them instead. I thought this would get boring really fast, but it didn’t. I started off by asking who liked “janken” (rock, paper, scissors in Japanese), and then kids freaked out and started playing it. Then I told them the words in English, and the whole class played against me for like 20min. They also asked me to play more in the hall, and during lunch.
Today the students also made a significant discovery: I have much hairier arms than a Japanese person. This of course led to much touching of my arms, which I was not completely comfortable with, but it was pretty clear I couldn’t stop it. They never said anything about it, they just stared and then touched, or just stood beside me, looked straight ahead and then reached to the side to touch my arm as though I wouldn’t notice.
Lunch was pretty gross. When I got to school Takahashi sensei said that for lunch we were having “saba (mackerel) with miso paste on it”. It was about as gross as it sounds, just a hunk of fish covered in some goo. The kid beside me took care of it.
