26 October - Umegasaki Junior High

Haarrooo!!


Hey everyone, here I am again *yay* *cheer*. It’s been another very exciting week and I must say this week has gone extremely fast as well. As I sit here with a nice warm sun shining into the living room (it’s about 26 degrees today I think – so cooler but still warm; there’s a nice breeze) I have just realized it’s weekend already! Time is really speeding by at the moment with all the things I’m doing. Not just school, but I seem to be going places almost everyday. Yesterday we went to Umegasaki Junior Highschool. This little outing was organized by the uni and I think they do this every year but it was still fun.

Takano-sensei (sensei = teacher) our co-ordinator had given us a program of the day last week and it all seemed very intensive and so I wasn’t really looking forward to it. There was a lot of self-introduction and speaking in front of a group in Japanese and stuff. In class it’s all right, but not in front of a mean group of teenage Japanese kids haha. In the end it wasn’t that bad luckily. When we arrived Seio-sensei, a teacher at Umegasaki told us the whole program had changed and we were all very relieved to see they had scrapped the self-introductions and we were going straight to the introduction to Japanese culture and sports. Yay. After a quick cup of tea, meeting a British guy who worked at the school (he’s from Leeds) and a hello to the vice-principal we were escorted to one of the gymnasiums by some very shy students. Then it was our turn to be shy, because as we entered the gym there was a whole group of students clapping for us and they had placed 9 chairs for us smack in the middle of the gym for us to sit on so we could see everything perfectly. We were truly the centre of attention. Rob (the British guy) had told us we would feel like rockstars that day. Now I know what he meant! The whole day was about us, which was a very weird feeling, as we aren’t really anything special. The only thing we’ve done is to be foreign, which is not really an achievement of any sort.


Anyway, in the gym various students gave short demonstrations of typical Japanese sports and games and stuff, which was a interesting to see. It was a bit of a shame that it was all really short. For the sports like Kendo and Aikido they would show a few moves and then that was it, and it wasn’t really anything particularly spectacular either, but it was fun nonetheless! After all that we got to try out everything ourselves. Well, the sports like Kendo meant you could wear part of the outfit, have your picture taken and the move on, but hey, good enough! There were all sorts of things like kiddy games and calligraphy to more grown up games like (i)go (Japanese chess) and displays of Japanese kites and poems and you could do some origami for example. Everywhere I went I was accompanied (or rather followed) by three Japanese girls, Mai, Mai and Yui (they just so happened to have the same name, the two Mai’s. How easy is that!? :P ) who were very shy at first but started chatting after a while.

Yui wrote my name in katakana at the calligraphy table (I hung it up in my room, it’s very pretty!) and one of the Mai’s was actually really helpful! She would talk in Japanese, but whenever I didn’t understand something she was really good at explaining it to me in Japanese, by using other words and by using examples and stuff. That was really clever, not a lot of Japanese people get that they can explain stuff like that, they usually tend to just panic. After this ‘ communication time’ we were given a tour (very brief) of the school and then we were divided into groups and went to one of three classrooms of the 3rd year students (who had given the demonstrations and stuff). It was time for Japanese talking!
In my class we played a game where you had to use the last syllable of the word said by the previous person to form a new word. For example: ashi (foot/leg) -> shigoto (work). It should have been good for my Japanese vocab except the group was so big I only got 3 turns haha.

By this time we were all really starting to get hungry and it was finally time for lunch! So everyone got up, put little mouth caps and aprons on and walked out of the classroom leaving me totally baffled as to what to do next. Luckly Mai took me along to where we were all to wash our hands and she said that I could just go back to the classroom. Several people in masks and aprons then brought the food into the class room where everyone got a little tray and could then go to the ‘ buffet’ and get their lunch! On the menu was sweet potato stew, salad and a roll. Apparently this was how they did it every day, eat lunch all together in the classroom. Iiinteresting!

After lunch was sports and games time. We went to a different gym where first there was some free time to do basketball or play football outside, and then it was time for the fun to begin! Once again we were in three groups, because the third year consists of 3-1, 3-2 and 3-3 you see, I was in 3-2. It was a little competition between the classes and we had to play 4 games: Eye of the Typhoon, gestures, janken and dodgebee. I think this might need a little explanation :P Eye of the typhoon was the first game, and each group got this long pole that 5 people had to hold on to and the run towards the first point and then turn. The person on the inside thus had to just turn, while this person all the way on the outside had to run like crazy. So you get a sort of eye of the typhoon idea. Get it? Anyway, there was a course you had to run and it was a relay system so everyone had a go. I was near the inside haha, lots of fun. Gestures was just gestures as we know it, and extremely funny to see people totally screw up. A group stood in a row and then the first person got to see what he or she was supposed to act out, and then 5 or 6 people had to take it in turns to act it for the next person and then the last person had to give the answer, but some people just did not get it. VERY funny.
Janken is the Japanese name for papers scissors rock, so that sort of explains itself. The last game was dodgebee. So called because the aim of the game is like DODGEball, except we used frisBEEs. Not plastic ones though, so don’t worry, we are all still in one piece and everything (well my toe got caught in the door the other day so I have a sore toe but that has nothing to do with the games at the school).
I have no idea which group won in the end because straight after the last dodgebee game the whole group of Japanese students sung us a song, then made this path of arches for us to pass under and then we were shooed off home. Not before Rob told us about some fun up and coming activities with live music and stuff though. Yay Rob!

All in all it was very very fun but also very very tiring, and we couldn’t just go home and flop down, nooo we had to write a presentation about our experiences that day for class today (Friday) so that’s what we had to do when we got home. We snuck out for a quick drink and a chat after we were done though :P We saw all these people doing roadworks, all the tram rails were dug up and stuff, and then this morning when we walked to the uni it looked like nothing had happened. Amazing this country, truly. So for now sayounara, it’s weekend so even though this was a really long post I won’t bother you again until Monday, when I will tell you all about the International Festival I’m going to on Sunday.

Baai baiii!!!

X Jenn

ps: Pictures are uploaded under ' umegasaki 26 okt' ; films will follow