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.