Many-legged races and heavy duty topics

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Well the excitement yesterday afternoon was an unexpected half an hour in the gym again, with all the classes lining up, split into girls/boys in their class groups (so about roughly 15 students in a line give or take), then they proceeded to tie their bandanas (generally used for wearing when we clean and for earthquake drills) around their legs in a three-legged race style, but with all fifteen or so kids tied together. No easy task I can tell you! After several attempts, lots of laughing and falling over, most of the groups managed to run up and down together. The Japanese sure do like their team building games.

This was all in preparation for the school festival the end of the month, where various sports, music parades and weird and wonderful activities like this take place. It's over two days and annoyingly my JET organisation has arranged a mandatory teacher’s conference on the first day. I don't think I'm the only one who's school festival falls on that day so I think quite a few of us are miffed, as the festival is one of the most important events in the school calendar. I'll be there for the second day though. On Saturday 17 September both my elementary schools have their sports festivals from 8.30 to 2.30pm, and I've been cordially invited to attend both! I'm either going to have to clone myself, or dash from one end of Takagi to the other. Not sure how I'm going to divide the day yet, but I'm sure I'll work something out.

So the teaching is going ok. This week I survived my first experience in the classroom without my JTE as he had to take two of the special needs kids out for the day. The first class was fine as we usually have two other teachers, who come along to support the kids, so I wasn't on my own, but the other class was just me - and it was the naughtiest class in the school, joy! It was ok - they were actually fairly well behaved and I kept them fairly quiet with a word search (which never fails to quieten a noisy class). The most exciting thing to happen was when a huge dragon fly (must have been at least 10 cm long) flew in through the open window and got stuck in the vortex of air created by a ceiling fan. Poor thing then dive bombed the kids before smashing into the windows a few times and finally making an escape. This also created a distraction for about 5 minutes. I may have to employ a tame dragonfly in the future for this purpose!!.

The topics we cover in the New Crown series are quite varied. With the 3rd graders we've just finished a piece on Hiroshima (which I guess is a pretty important part of their history and explains the drive they still have today for peace. We watched a short video about Sadako the girl who died of radiation related sickness when she was twelve, but who dedicated the final weeks of her life to creating paper cranes (a symbol of peace). People come from all over the country and the world to contribute to the paper cranes at her peace monument http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadako_Sasaki

There is also a section on child landmine victims coming up......pretty heavy duty stuff. As I am still an unknown quantity in the classroom I am mainly used as a pronunciation tool - which at the moment suits me fine until I find my feet. The only problem comes when the text book contains either Japanese references in English (Last week I had to get my tongue round "Okonomiyaki" - as in I like Okonomiyaki (a savoury pancake) and "Senbazuru" paper cranes, "Mukkuri" and "Irancarapte" - Ainu words for the section on preserving Ainu culture (This is the indigenous tribe that mainly lives in Hokkaido, but which was at one point persecuted in Japan). This week we had an "Eisa" dancer, not to mention names like Daichi (actually pronounced like Dych). The sad thing is, when the teachers use a tape recorder or DVD I feel a bit jealous as it makes my role a bit redundant!! I also hate the annoying American English they have on the recordings.

I occasionally get to mark papers and may favourite answers so far are:

What is your hobby? Answer: human observation.....(in a sea of baseball, soccer, music etc).
What will you do this weekend? Answer: I will not go to prison (Wonder what kid of family that kid comes from!).

I've managed to remember all my special needs group 1 student's names as there are only three! (Shiori, Motoke and Kosuke, all incredibly sweet kids), but with the main classes I'm struggling and only remember a handful. I asked both my Japanese teachers to provide me with seating charts and names but so far I only have two from Mrs Shimoda (and one of those has now changed) and one from Mr Nakajima. I need to pester them for the others but as they are always so busy I feel bad asking as they either need to translate the Kanji names to romanji or hiragana for me to stand a chance of understanding them.

Tonight was my fourth Karate lesson. I've ordered an outfit, which should come in a few weeks, so at least I will look the part even if I'm terrible! We've been working on the leg movements this evening, and my posture is causing me no end of problems. You have to centre yourself and I just constantly seem to lean forward or backwards. I’m still mixing up the arm movements although some are starting to click....hey, ho, I'll try my best. My outfit will be embroidered with my name in kanji. I'm really pleased with the characters I settled on for my name with the help of the really sweet teacher who sits next to me (She teaches Japanese, so who better to ask!). She's a fan of Marks and Spencer, so I gave her a nicely packaged box of M&S teabags to say thank you. In return she baked me some banana bread (it seems if you give a gift you often end up with something in return!). Anyway, my kanji name is:
美 (Bi- meaning beautiful - closest I can get to a Vi sound, which only exists in katakana)
久 (Ku - meaning eternal)
鳥 (Tori - meaning bird)
阿 (Ya - meaning turning)

So I'm an eternally turning beautiful bird 😊 Perhaps it will by some miracle instil me with some grace in the karate dojo!

Anyway, I'd best stop rambling - this blog is far too long as it is. I have elementary to survive tomorrow (only two intro lessons thank God!), then a DVD night at a friend's house and Saturday I head to a national park for a volleyball game and camping in tree-houses for the evening, so should be fun.

Sayonara x

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Comments

[TimTam]

Hey - I love the sound of all the team building exercises! Should try them with some of the classes I have :) mmmmm - I\'ve had some yummy Okonomiyaki!! And your Kanji name is fantastic! When I was over there they tried to write my name down in some local newspaper report for some cooking thing Eluned and I did with a group of ladies... and I think they said it came out similar to the word for cow! So really you\'re doing well as an eternally turning beautiful bird!! I\'m enjoying following your time there...