A play at school

There was a play in the gym during 5th and 6th period at junior high. It wasn't a school play; I guess actors just came to perform for the students. There were two men and one woman.

The title of the play was "Our Vanishing Point." I have a feeling that even without the language barrier it would have been difficult to understand. There was heavy use of props. One scene involved the cast doing tricks with yo-yos and tops. Another involved animals made of newspaper. They had a discussion on the origins and nature of money, and a skit about a man catching fish to sell for money to buy a bigger boat to catch more fish to sell for more money until he bought the biggest boat and the ocean ran out of fish. Most scenes were accompanied by music played by one of the actors on an electric keyboard.

After the play was over, one of the Japanese teachers asked me what I thought of it. I said it was "mysterious," and he agreed.

Here's a picture of me, Grace, and Silvia from yesterday's English class!

Some pictures were taken of the play, too. I'll see if I can get any of those sent to me.

Chinese exchange students

Today during my sixth grade class I was joined by two Chinese university students, Grace and Silvia. They're both doing studies in Sapporo and came up to Wassamu for four days for... some reason. Everyone only talked in Japanese, so I didn't catch all of the details.

Anyway, they both speak Japanese and a little English, so they came to an elementary school class. They were both pretty shy, and I did most of the talking. They still had a lot of fun playing games with the students and lowkey giggling at some truly bad voice acting from the textbook DVD materials. Outside of the class, Grace is more talkative and her Japanese is definitely better than mine.

After school was over, I was invited to a welcome party that was held for them. Some BoE staff were there, too. Seven people total. Drinking was involved.

It was a lot of fun!

Since they speak Chinese, Japanese, and English, we all had a interesting discussion about language. (Sorry, Lauren!) They talked about how Chinese and Japanese use some of the same characters, and how writings and meanings have changed. For example, the restructuring of Chinese writing from traditional to simplified never happened with Japanese, so a lot of Japanese characters that used to be the same are now more complicated than the Chinese characters in common use now.

We also talked about aspects of Japanese and English that are difficult for people to learn as a foreign language. In Japanese, since the subject of a sentence is often not directly stated, "to give" and "to receive" can cause difficulties. And apparently Japanese people have trouble with the difference between "take" and "bring" in English.

Since their four day stay here overlaps with the tamaire competition this Sunday, they were roped into forming a team and participating. They pulled me into it, too, to make up the numbers. Well, they've never played the game before, so at least we can all be bad at sports together. My tall isn't as helpful as one might think.

Tuesday tamaire

Today I finally got to meet the first and second graders. They're all so tiny and cute! They're also very excitable. The classes were mostly spent playing games and singing. These kids will laugh at pretty much anything. It was nice to just unreservedly perform actions and poses with everyone.

It's not all fun and games, though. During self-introductions one of the girls was so nervous she started crying. This is why the homeroom teachers for these grades are women.

After work, one of my co-workers invited me to the sports centre for tamaire practice. There were a lot of people there, tossing beanbags around. Some of my students were also there for tennis and kendo. They're always surprised to see me outside of school.

 The basic strategy is to stack the beanbags in a clump and toss them straight up close to the pole. This helps the clump stay together. If you toss from too far away, the bags all scatter.

Rumoi

Photos of Rumoi-shi, Hokkaido, courtesy of Carmen.

This last one is an O-bon festival. I think I missed the one in my town when I was in Sapporo.

Local sushi

I've been cooking my own meals for a while now, but today I decided to check out a local restaurant for dinner. There are only so many places to go in this town, so I'm sure I'll eventually try them all.

You gotta love the plastic food out front. And if you don't speak Japanese, you can just point to the plastic you like! The menu doesn't have a lot of pictures, so I didn't know what a lot of the items were.

 

I bought this chirashi for 1250 yen. Delicious sushi.

Oh, and check out this huge bug I found outside!

A small festival

Wassamu had a little Shinto festival today. It was pouring rain for most of the day, but luckily it stopped by the evening. Here are pictures around the shrine.

 A portable shrine! That's how you know it's a Japanese festival.

Here are the booths.

Takoyaki!

 Games of luck and skill!

 Oobanyaki! It's like taiyaki, but not fish-shaped.

 Andrea's favourite light bulb drinks! Also available in blood bags. Thanks, Donkey Kong.

 Oden!

 They even had the die-cutting game. This is my first time seeing it in real life.

 I stayed until it got dark and got some night pictures of the shrine lanterns.

 Ema! Make a wish!

I got to see a bunch of my students there, too. Most of them seemed surprised to see me, as if teachers stop existing outside of school. They waved and said "hello," and giggled when I did the same.

Friday classes

Reading things in English is easy. Asking junior high school students questions in English is hard. It's going to take some time to figure out how long to wait for a response. Wait-time is important to allow students to process the question and formulate an answer in their heads. Wait-time needs to be longer in foreign language classes because of the additional internal processing students need to translate in their heads. There's also the cultural difference that leads Japanese students to be hesitant to speak out in class. Giving a wrong answer is shameful, but giving a correct one can be seen as boastful. Japanese culture values the group rather than the individual, and many times students would prefer to discuss their answers with one another before giving them. How long do I wait? Should I ask follow-up questions? It's all very awkward. Oh, well. I'll get better.

In contrast, elementary students are great. They love shouting out answers and beg to be called on. They wave and say hello to me in the hallway. And the class activities are more fun.

School lunch!

For dinner I decided to try using my fish grill for its stated purpose. 

Sardines are high in omega-3s. Three ounces of sardine contains more calcium than a glass of milk. And since they're low on the food chain, they contain very little accumulated mercury. Too bad they smell so bad! 

To be honest, I prefer smelt. Those guys are small enough that you don't have to pull out the bones.

Thursday classes

Elementary school students do a lot of singing. Today I sang an alphabet song, a colour song, a "what time is it?" song, an "I like/I don't like" song, and a sports song.

Music is a great way to remember things. I still remember some of the French songs I sang in elementary school.

Due to a scheduling error, I was put in a non-English class for one period. The students went to the computer lab to do research on local history or wildlife to write reports on later. Even though it wasn't an English class, I managed to be of use with my computer skills. I helped students with inserting images and printing. It seems this Japanese teacher isn't good with computers.

Here's school lunch again.

The kids' summer vacation projects were on display. Some of them were really cute!

I also found this arithmetic textbook in my desk. 

I won't be using it, of course, but I flipped through it.

 The mascots are these cute little nut bois.

NUT

Wednesday classes

Today I participated in a gym class at the junior high school. The kids were playing basketball. I joined them for warm-up and shooting practice, but stayed out of the actual games.

The girls split into two teams and played while the boys watched, then the boys did the same. After that, they gave each other advice based on what they saw, and they each played another game. That was an interesting change from the gym classes I remember from school.

Junior high school students are at that age when some of them are developing faster than others. The first-year class has some big bois that look like they're several years older than the others. That leads to some inherent inequality in basketball, but they were all very good about passing the ball to give everyone a chance to play.

I also got to lead a discussion in one of the English classes. The students were hesitant to answer the questions I asked, even though I kept them simple. That's understandable, of course.

School lunch was soup, salad, and a small omelette.

This time, I ate with the first-years. They did a lot of trading. I saw omelettes change hands, salads picked apart, and soup vegetables fished out.

One of the boys asked me the English word for momiage (sideburns). I suppose mine are quite distinctive.

For dinner I made a stew.

The easiest meals are the ones I can boil in a pot and then serve over rice.

Two things I've learned about cooking so far: 

1. The rice cooker takes longer to finish than what I'm used to. 

Probably because of the lower voltage here.

2. An important difference between a gas and electric stove is that when you have uncooked spaghetti sticking out of a pot, it can catch fire if the flame is too high.🔥

Tuesday classes

Today I went to the elementary school and sat in on two classes, one for 5th graders and one for 6th graders. The kids are shy about speaking English, but they're very energetic otherwise.

The 5th graders are learning the lowercase letters. They played a game where they're each given a card with a lowercase letter on it, and they run up to the board to match it with its uppercase counterpart. They had a lot of fun running around.

The 6th grade students watched videos and had to answer questions about them. The videos were all child actors reading lines with very stilted delivery. They made me cringe a little, but I guess the Japanese students can't really tell the difference.

The elementary students all wear their own clothes instead of uniforms. The teachers were mostly dressed casually, too. I felt a little overdressed in my suit.

School lunch was curry. On Tuesdays and Fridays we have to bring our own cooked rice from home.

After classes I observed some of the clubs. There were students drawing, sewing, woodworking, and playing tamaire.

I played tamaire with some of them for a few rounds. It's a sport that involves teams throwing beanbags into baskets on top of tall poles. There's going to be a sports festival in October with a big tamaire competition.

I was surprised to see elementary school children using saws to cut wood. I guess a small club allows for more supervision than a whole class.

I hope to join in on home ec club activities later when they switch from sewing to cooking.