June 23 – A Lesson in Directions!

Today was quite fun as we went to Jeremy’s school in Oisa just a train stop down. Here he teaches a wide range of kids from elementary school age through Junior High, and then also at the high school across town.

We arrived at the elementary school and it was nothing like we have ever seen before. We arrived at recess or something and when we walked in there were children running all over the building. We could hardly see any adults. The kids just ran wild up and down the floors, stairways, outside, all over the place. It looked like a great day to be a kid.

Then some little bell chimed and amazingly all the kids ran straight to their appropriate places. I don’t know how they get them to do that.

We observed Jeremy teaching two classes about “Directions”. He sang a little song and did a little dance on LEFT, RIGHT, FORWARD, BACK, etc. We also joined in the fun. We were part of a demonstration where we were given blow up swords and blindfolded. Put across the room from each other, Jen and I were given directions by the kids on which way to go and when to STRIKE. It was a little hard to make out the directions of dozens of screaming kids. Also Japanese do not end their words with consonants, only vowels. So by mistake they have a tendency to say RIGHT-O and LEFT-O.

Jeremy also warned us to guard our butts. One of the thing the little boys like to do is run up behind and stick their fingers in your butt. I forget the name for that, but I think we avoided it successfully. Jeremy got a couple though and had kids hanging on him most of the time.

After class we joined the kids for lunch. We brought our own lunch, but the kids actually serve each other. A group of them put on aprons, gloves, and chefs hats. They pushed little carts around that had the food and everyone got served and cleaned up after. We also sat down with the kids to interact with them. This was a little challenging as they only knew a few things in English. A typical conversation went like this:

ME: Hello.

KID: Harro!

ME: My name is Josh. What is your name?

KID: @#$@#$@#???

ME: Thank you very much.

Jen managed to strike up a conversation about baseball with her table. It is a very popular sport there.

And speaking of cleaning, that was next. There was a time called Soji where they CLEAN. Everyone there, 6-year olds up had some sort of cleaning task. They sweeped the floors, wiped down the stairs, and whatever else you can think of. Again it was quite amazing and I’m convinced that students in our schools are lazy and worthless.

We also stopped by the high school where we nearly put a standstill to the classes. As we walked by the classrooms that were in session you could see heads popping up in surprise by the unexpected white people in the building. When they had a break Jeremy tried to get them to practice their English with us. They were mostly very shy, but we had a little more involved conversations. When we mentioned that we were married they would all scream and freak out. It was pretty funny.

We regret not having many pictures from all this, but we would have felt a little weird taking pictures of the kids at school. For this one folks, you are going to have to use your imagination.

For Lunch 2, I stopped by McDonalds. Yes I know, why go to McDonalds, but they had a unique item I had to have. It was some sort of Mega Mac that had at least four burgers on it, bacon, and a fried egg on the top. It was pretty darn good.

For dinner that night we went back to Jeremy’s Ramen place for some more great noodles.