The Road Less Traveled

Kasahara Elementary English-Language Event

Saturday, February 7th, 2009 by Rintaun | Uncategorized

Well time is certainly flying by. I have just under two weeks until I leave for Asuke – a town about two hours away – for a homestay and “cultural experience” trip. That trip just about perfectly marks the halfway point of my stay here in Japan, so suffice it to say that I’ve been having some mixed feelings – you know, basic half empty/half full stuff. It’s nothing too big, though, so don’t worry too much.

In any case, I’ve started the work that I have to do for the trip – quite a bit of reading and three short papers. Starting on the 15th, I have to start keeping a daily journal of my thoughts regarding the trip – or something like that, anyway. So maybe I’ll share those entries with you all as well.

Okay, now that I’ve sidetracked myself for long enough, it’s time to get down to actual business. This past Tuesday, I went to the elementary school in Kasahara, a town in Tajimi City, which neighbors Kasugai City, in which I live. You may remember the name (though you probably don’t) from back in November, when I went to a similar “English-Language Event” at the junior high school in Kasahara, and did a homestay afterward. Ring a bell? Well, this time it was the elementary school, and there was no homestay, but it was still a lot of fun.

The day didn’t start too early… we had to be at the gate to the university at 8:50am so that we could be getting picked up by people from the school by 9:00am. That gave us plenty of time to get up, eat breakfast (which was Western-style, by the way, which made me happy), and get to the gate with plenty of time to spare.

This event was significantly smaller than the one at Kasahara Junior High. All told, the one there probably had about 60 or more foreigners. The one at Kasahara Elementary had 8 people, all from Chubu. Even if it seemed a lot smaller to us, though, it was the biggest group that they’d ever had at the school, so they were rather happy.

We were picked up at the university by two people from the school whose names or positions I never really caught – I didn’t really get a chance to talk to either of them at length. But they took us back to the school (it was about a 45 minute drive), where we were greeted by the principal and several of the teachers. They took us on a tour of the school, which was surprisingly large. It was three separate buildings (4 if you count the gym), each for two grades. There were three classes each of first through fifth grades, and four classes of sixth grade.

After the tour we went back to the meeting room to wait to be picked up by representatives from the classes we would be visiting. We were all in separate classes the entire day, so I can’t really say what anybody else did. I started by going to class 1-2 (That’s 1st grade, class 2). I briefly introduced myself, told where I was from, how old I was, and all those other trivial details they ask every time at these things. Basically every class started off this way. After that, the activities we did varied.

In the 1st grade class, the kids would make things out of clay and ask me “What’s this?” I was supposed to reply “It’s .” Most of the time I was able to somehow figure out what they were, but they’re first graders, so they aren’t world-class sculptors or anything. Mostly the girls made rabbits and cakes. The boys made more random things, like food from McDonald’s or snails. When I couldn’t figure it out they would give me a hint… usually I was able to figure out kinda what they were going for after a hint or two, but sometimes I couldn’t get it and had to cave and ask. This period went really slowly, and I don’t really remember a whole lot of it. Does that make me a bad person?

After the 1st grade class, I went to the other end of the spectrum to class 6-2. Again it started off with a self-introduction, but then each of the students in the class introduced themselves, in English, as well. We played Simon Says, which I sucked at, and Group Rock-Paper-Scissors – which I won, to my dismay, quite a few times. They also did a quiz about various different countries by showing me pictures of famous landmarks and telling me things. Keep in mind that this was all in English. I was able to get almost all of the answers right in that quiz.

I ate lunch with class 3-3. It was a rather small lunch – it was clearly portioned for an elementary school student – but it was decent. After lunch was recess, where we played dodge ball, which I sucked at, and after recess was cleaning time. This is one of the biggest departures, I think, between American and Japanese elementary schools. After lunch and recess there’s a 20 minute period alotted for the kids to clean the room, and they have to be thorough. I helped out because I’m a nice guy, which the teacher thought was funny.

After lunch I stuck around with class 3-3. Yet again we did the self-introduction thing, but it’s not hard and I’ve basically gotten used to having to do it at every turn since I’ve been in Japan. After that we played a game where they showed me a silhouette of a Japanese food which I had to guess. It a game centered around formulaic English phrases like “What’s this?” and “It’s “. Some of them were pretty difficult, but others I got without having to ask for any hints. After that we had a question time, where for like 20 minutes they got to ask me basically any question they wanted to. They were supposed to ask in English, but it was also okay to ask in Japanese if they got permission from the class (by asking for it in English). Of course, this meant that EVERY question started as “Japanese OK?” “OK!” and they asked in Japanese. Not one in English. I got asked everything from my height to whether or not I was single to what my favorite fruit was.

After class 3-3 the day was over. It was fun. Aaaaaaaand I don’t really have anything else to say about it.

Well, that was anticlimactic. I don’t know what I’m going to be writing about next, but stay tuned!

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