Kid Charades! Charades went awesome today! In 3rd through 6th grade, I split the class up into two teams, then had one player pick from the pile of sports on flash cards to find a sport to charade, while their team guessed. In all cases except rugby, they guessed within seconds. In later classes, when we reviewed the Genki English "What Sports Do You Play" song at the beginning, I pretended to ram into people, American football style, when we sung the "I play rugby!" verse to give them an idea of what to do, since the picture was misleading. I disqualified them for guessing in Japanese, though only two of my sports had a different word in Japanese. (It's amazing how many have the same word: Soccer, Basketball, Volleyball, Rugby, Tennis, even Badminton) I also keep having to keep myself from saying ping pong instead of table tennis. Anyway, it was very fun.

Miscommunication Since next week is my last class for the elementary this school year, I was really specific about asking whether it would be a special class. She said no, that it should be a normal class. Then today, right at the end of the day (after I had already prepared for next week) she said it would be a special day! After apologizing for not telling me earlier, she asked if I wanted to do all the classes together and I was like, there's no way I am staying late to think of something new to do because you forgot to tell me. It turned out that it was okay, though. I can do my regular classes, just that the schedule will be shifted and that Parents will be watching one class! Hers, incidentally. I don't mind this at all, having been a veteran of Inspected Classes, though she seemed to think I wouldn't want to do a class where people were watching. She seemed very pleased that I would do the class. The only bummer is that I have a class first period next week. I've been so, so spoiled having the first hour and a half at my desk, sipping tea, waking up and getting myself prepared.

Snow Some flurries fell! Looks like the weather was just kidding about it being spring, not that I believed it.

Schedule I was talking to the principal about my new schedule and how I'd be going to Miyoshi starting next term. She was really surprised when I told her that elementary would be moving to Thursdays since she had not been told at all! I was confused since I thought that they moved it to Thursdays per their request but, when I looked at the schedule again when I got home, I realized that ALL the elementary schools were listed on Thursday, so it probably doesn't matter. I guess I'll find out in April.

Funny Eraser English Because Tomomi was at a Brush-up conference in Higashi-Hiroshima (apparently his last?) I leisurely tried to think up activities. At one point, I couldn't find my eraser, so I went to the supply room. It wasn't until I was sitting at my desk, kinda staring into space, trying to think that I noticed the English on the eraser:

It took me awhile to realize that the phrase was an acronym of Y.E.S. and was advertising that the eraser company (logo: a green leaf with YES written in it) was environmentally safe. Or something. That did not stop them from also having "Hi-Polymer" written on the eraser as well, though. (And yes, the random CAPS and the adjectival use of a noun are their mistakes. I love Engrish.) Okay, embarrassing note: I thought they had spelled stationery wrong too, but, no, I spelled it wrong. Sometimes the Japanese use the dictionary and I don't.

Letters! I got an email from my mom that said that I would be receiving letters in the mail from 3rd graders at my hometown elementary school. What a pleasant surprise! I've been trying to get in touch with the Jr. High teachers there too (who are coincidentally my age) but we've all been too busy.

Kanji All right, I'm getting obsessed. I MUST LEARN KANJI. I have 280 days left until the next Japanese Level Proficiency Test. If I learn three kanji a day, I should have more than enough to pass Level 2. (Assuming I, um, learn all the necessary grammar, too.) Only I keep forgetting to do three kanji a day. I tried to make up for it this morning.

More Birthdays I keep timing it really well and coming to the nursery school during special birthday celebrations. After the kids whose birthday it was got up front (one really nervous and upset) we all sat down and watched a cheap and bizarre 1/2 hour version of Alice in Wonderland that mostly focused on her repeatedly getting big and small - really, you would have think she learned by the third time not to eat random things sitting on isolated tables. The Japanese kept up the cheapness by hiring only two dubbers - one to do Alice and one to be the narrator, who did everyone else's voice (which did not work so well since many characters' mouth were often moving to silence.) Well, I guess it was short and maybe that is why they didn't do the Disney version like they did for Peter Pan. Anyway, I had brought these number cards because I was reading my predecessor's old emails and she said she used to bring stuff to the nursery school. Surprisingly they noticed and mentioned it to the teacher and we spent a lot of their class gathering time not only doing the numbers and naming the animals and such on the cards, but then doing the days of the week in English! (My 7th graders were learning this the other week.) I was amazed how much the teacher was getting into English. Cool!

Melissa's Question Corner I received the funniest question ever in my box today. It said, "Do you believe in aliens?" It was on the same paper as a question asking if I've eaten something called a "hachiguri." They were both in Japanese. Is there a relationship between these two questions? I gave honest answers. Mainly "Yes, but I think they live so far away, we'll never meet them" and "What the hell is hachiguri?" Okay, no I didn't say that, but I sure wondered. No one could explain exactly what is was to me (though I gathered that it is some kind of shellfish) and it wasn't in any of my dictionaries, even my good one.

Indian Celebrity Poker I am so taking advantage of my newfound knowledge of current Japanese celebrities (thanks to that site I found.) I printed a bunch of Japanese celebrities in color and glued them onto white cardboard. Then I played a variation of Indian Poker with my Eikaiwa class - everyone picked card then, without looking at it, held it over their head. Together, and in English, we asked questions and gave hints until everyone figured out who they were. (Since I made the cards, I was pretty quickly able to deduce from "Big" and "in Japan" that I had chosen Koizumi.) It worked awesome! We played twice and everyone knew all the celebrities no question. At Eikaiwa, I saw Tomoko for the first time in awhile. (She used to come over to my house Thursday nights to practice English but has not since the holidays.) Turns out she is looking for a job since she got let go. Sad, sad. I wonder how many people in Sakugi are job-hunting now.

Walking I was walking home afterward in the pitch black dark (I always forget how dark the Sakugi streets get after dark) when I was picked up by a woman and her grandson, who is one of my 7th graders. I was impressed that they stopped to pick me up (that they even saw me, in fact). It was really nice. They asked what was wrong with my car when I got in and I had to explain that I was trying to exercise but that it was not so dark when I was walking TO the bunka center. I don't know if they understood. The old woman was playing hard rock music in the car -- was that her choice or the 7th grader's I wonder? Anyway, it was good to have some outside-of-classes contact with people, even if they thought I was off my rocker.

Shirtless Boy Zone For some reason, I lingered in the classroom after class was over. Suddenly, all the boys started changing their clothes for the volleyball tournament. I guess I had not realized that the two other girls had left the classroom. When a shirtless boy approached Tomomi to ask him a question, the rest of the kids suddenly seemed to realize that I was still in the room. I heard my name several times. I covered my eyes really dramatically and left. It was rather funny. (On one hand, I can't imagine changing clothes in a classroom but on the other hand, it's the warmest place to do it other than the staff room.)

Volleyball Today, during the last two periods of school, the kids did not have any classes. Instead, they got to play volleyball for two hours. Fun! I don't remember ever doing this when I was in Junior High. The purpose was to 'make memories' with the 9th graders, who would be graduating to high school in less than a month. Someone from each grade was on every team and they played matches tournament-style until one team emerged a victor. I watched for awhile and was amazed how good everyone was. I mean, they were not as good as the adults I played with before of course, but I don't remember understanding the whole bump-set-spike concept until I was actually on a team and there's no actual volleyball team here as far as I know. The teachers wandered around, watching and taking pictures, but that's about it. (Matsubara-sensei was all bundled up and walking back and forth since it was so cold in the gym.) It was funny, though. The kids did all the refereeing and scoring, which meant that things like kicking the ball over the net when unable to bump it became a legal volley. I guess that's what happens when your school's main sport is soccer.

Going Big I was insane. Since everyone suddenly disappeared from the staff room (I really wish SOMEONE would tell me before they all just go since I think they expect me to answer the phone and I need to mentally prepare for the prospect of answering the phone) and I didn't have anything to do, I randomly decided to write every single Joyo kanji down. I only got to the 10-stroke ones, though, before everyone finally came back from their meeting or whatever. After I got home, I narrowed my inbox from 304 to 62. That took most of the evening. I'm doing big stuff tonight!

Bugs Three! After months of nearly zip, suddenly, tonight, I saw three bugs: two in the shower and one in the living room. They were those autumn stinkers. They kind of looked like war veterans, dead on their feet, having both survived the freezing winter and my war upon them. But where did they come from?? They were nowhere near each other. Are they coming through the heater again? That is EVIL.

The News at Lunch It was just before noon and one of the teachers was standing near my desk pointing something to the ceiling above me. It took me a moment to remember that there is a TV in the staff room and it is right above my desk. (Hey, from directly underneath, it doesn't LOOK like a TV.) What was so important that they turned on the TV for the first time ever during normal work hours? They wanted to find out what the judge would sentence the bearded Japanese man who had killed 27 people by poison to. Nosohara-sensei (who had to explain to me what was going on) thought it would be the death penalty. I was kind of surprised they have the death penalty in Japan. I thought America was the only civilized country to still have that. Then again, despite that there are less murders here, I think there are three different words for suicide in Japanese. (Editor's Note: There are actually about seven.)

Where Is My Little Sheet of Paper? Usually, when something happens at work worthy of journaling (like, um just about any random thing) I write it on a piece of scratch paper at work and write the day of the week on it. I'm sure something else happened today, but I can't find my piece of paper that says "Fri" on it with the interesting thing. So I devoted this entry to me being forgetful.

A Berry Yummy Breakfast I slept amazingly well and had a great breakfast. Last night, we went berry crazy and bought all sorts of strawberries and blueberries at the supermarket so this morning, we made ourselves a lovely jubilee of toast, currant jam, whipped cream (hey, they have whipping cream in Japan! who knew) and berries galore. I hogged the strawberries. It was very, very yummy. Afterwards, we did a book exchange and she borrowed a bunch of mine and I borrowed a bunch of hers and drooled over her Labyrinth movie book.

Elf Action! Finally, finally, finally, I saw Return of the King! I did not quite believe it until we were actually sitting in a theatre (which was luckily not too crowded since I had momentarily forgotten that the Japanese have not figured out the concept of stadium seating yet.) About two minutes before it started I had a sudden attack of "sniff, this is the last lord of the rings movie" but then, after some previews, MOVIE TIME! Yay! After that, we had some yakiniku (I love meat that you can cook in front of you!) and we hung out at her house, watched the first Water Boys episode, then I headed home. Yay for a fun weekend!