Turtle School

I noticed a lack of comments on the last couple posts, but that's ok. They've been kind of short. I'm going to fulfill request number two from a while back soon, but it might be a few days. First, let's talk about my day at the Turtle School.

I am calling it the Turtle School because it has the Japanese word for turtle, or tortoise, really, in it. It's pretty sweet. The classes were small, so they were combined. Also, I didn't have to do anymore self-introduction, which is getting kind of boring. Today was mostly games, music, and free time. Also, school lunch featured some kind of crazy curry-tasting soup which was awesome.

First I had class with 1st and 2nd graders, which was interesting because the previous time I had gone to this school, the teacher wasn't there, so I just met her today, and she didn't come to me with a lesson plan until we actually started class. It was just teaching fruit, which is pretty standard. Japanese kids love fruit, so they will continue to yell out names of fruits, wanting me to translate them. It's sort of funny because they aren't old enough yet to realize that almost all of their words are borrowed from English, so, for example, painappuru is pineapple, and meron is melon. Actually, it is honeydew melon, but that's just one of those pronunciations you don't bother with. We played some fruitsbasket and sang the classic "Seven Steps," the words of which I will reproduce for those unfamiliar:

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven
One, two, three
One, two, three
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven

Then I had a bunch of free time. While I was working on Japanese stuff, the vice-principal asked me to help her translating some questions into English because the sixth graders are going to go to Hiroshima in the near future, and are supposed to interview the foreigners they find at the peace park. At first, I was just answering her questions, but then I asked if I could just write it for her because spelling is particularly impossible in English and I think especially confusing for Japanese people, who are blessed with the most logical spelling system of anyone excepting maybe Koreans.

So, I just wrote down the questions and whatnot in English, then Japanese, and wrote furigana above the English in katakana. Katakana is the script for foreign words, and it's not particularly hard. It's only around 50 characters, and it's about the second thing you learn in any Japanese class, but the people in the office all thought that was amazing. They kept talking about how amazing it was that I was able to write things in Japanese (with as much kanji as an elementary school kid, no less!) and English one after the other. I appreciate the adulation and whatnot, but it's actually very easy, so it's kind of embarrassing that people act like it is amazing.

So, enough of that thinly-veiled bragging. After lunch, I played baseball with some of the kids in front of the school, which was super fun. Then I had class with the fifth and sixth graders, which meant playing fruitsbasket with colors and some singing. Fortunately, the teacher had brought me a lesson plan in the morning, so I was ready for stuff. We sang "Do, Re, Mi." It was good that she told me what we were going to do because they wanted a translation of the words, so I spent my free time in the morning doing that, among other things, and was ready. They also gave me sheet music for the song, so I had to play it on the piano for them, and then also sing it a cappella so they could learn pronunciation better. I can't say my singing was the best, but the piano was simple enough to play.

Then I had class with the third and fourth graders, wherein we also sang "Do Re Mi." They seemed much happier to sing, and also were interested in the translation. We also sang a "Hello Song," to the tune of "Frere Jacques," which involved me having to learn the (admittedly simple) solo answer part. So, I'm getting good music practice here, if nothing else. Then the kids got to learn more complicated self-introduction stuff like nicknames, which are apparently the funniest thing in the world. One kid insisted that his nickname was just his name + kintama, which I will leave to the reader to translate.

After class, I had more free time, so I just stayed in the music room and messed around on the piano because I don't get to do that too often, not having one to play in my apartment, which is probably good because I would keep the little neighbor kids up. The first grade teacher and the vice-principal came up after a while and wanted to listen to me playing even though I was just making crap up, so I played "Imagine" for them, which the teacher recognized, and "Do Re Mi," which the vice-principal sang along with beautifully. So, now I'm supposed to play in some sort of talent show or something in February, I think accompanying the teacher on oboe and the office clerk on sax. So, that's cool.

After that, I went to the office basically to kill time by studying Japanese until I had to go home. So, one of the women who works there (in some capacity I'm unsure of) gave me a bag of already cooked rice for basically no reason whatsoever. People here are so sweet like that. I used the rice to make donburi, or bowl of rice with stuff on it. Here's a picture, since I didn't really have a chance to take any pictures are the school.



It's just more instant stuff, so don't think that I am doing any real cooking here. Also, it was on sale. A few minutes before the end of my work hours, a dude in what appeared to be a pink chef's uniform came into the office carrying a couple huge trays of various breads (sweet ones, not various kinds of actually healthy bread). The vice-principal asked me what kind of bread I like, so I told her that I had to go and all, so that I could politely refuse another gift, but she insisted and bought me a couple of things for the road, including one shaped like Anpanman's head. I'll do an update about Anpanman at a later date, but here's a picture of the other one that I ate earlier tonight.



I'm aware that pictures of food are less interesting than pictures of schoolkids and the details of what I eat are less interesting about what games I played with kids, but I can't just take pictures all the time at school and really I play fruitsbasket EVERY DAY and it never changes, so you'll have to live with my culinary exploits dominating the blog for now. Don't like it? Come to Japan and write a blog about it. I will even read it. Just don't expect me to get on facebook.