IrishOboe

Proving that I have nothing better to do, or that I have better things to do and I don’t want to do them, I sat down tonight to write out a few Japanese words and phrases that I’m afraid I’ll forget when I leave Japan. I hope to keep my Japanese up, but knowing how my Italian faded into oblivion, I want to at least remember some of those key phrases I’m come to love. Well, after writing non-stop and avoiding those words that are easy to look up (days of the week, colors, etc.) I came up with about 150 words and phrases and I’ve only touched on a few topics not many nouns. (More)

One of the activities that the Hippo family club supports is homestays across the globe. In this spirit Alex and I were invited to spend the day with a Hippo family club family. We did this last Saturday and it was a wonderful time! (More)

The last day of the school festival was just as entertaining as the first two. Once again, the ichinensei weren’t allowed full participation, but the ni and sannensei were allowed to transform their classrooms into whatever theme they wanted. Many chose to make haunted houses, and some made carnivals or fortune telling centers. Other clubs also had stations set up and tea ceremony club served tea all day, but I get ahead of myself.

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The second day of the school festival was just as much fun for me as the first day, but in a different way. The first day was great because I got to see the creativity and hard work of the students, and the second day was great because I could participate in a more direct way. Despite ominous predictions the rain held off until the closing ceremony, so the fun wasn’t spoiled by going inside to watch a movie.

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I had been taking afternoons off quite often because of all the vacation I have left so I was hardly aware of all the preparations the students were doing for the school festival. If I were to be here another year I would certainly have gotten as involved as I could, but with all the planning and work at home I had to do I didn’t feel that I could stay long hours after school. Part of me wishes I had since there’s nothing like experiencing something from the inside, but I enjoyed the school festival very much none the less. I had a vague idea of what it might be like, but nothing prepared me for what actually went on! The three day festival was one of the most interesting glimpses into Japanese modern life and thinking that I’ve had so far. I hardly think I’ll be able to do it justice in writing about it now. I suspect small tidbits will come at random times in my life as things remind me of how different things are in Japan. For now, I’ll do my best to describe day 1 of the gakuensai (school festival), which includes the opening ceremony, performances by the rock groups and stage performances by every class of the school with talented student act in between.

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It’s only been a week since I last wrote and I can’t remember what I did! Class were a bit less than fun when I had 40 kids, once again I got left alone for a day (though thankfully not with 40 kids). It wasn’t too bad, and some classes did good work anyway.

I think I can’t remember much because I blocked it out of my mind. I spent a lot of time trying to deal with emails and planning my trip home, which proved to be complicated even when I made my decision about where and went to go.

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It’s been a quiet week, if you don’t count panic trying to plan my arrival home and future life. I led the last mixed Sunday night Bible study June 4^th. We’re returning to Monday night English Bible study next week. It was slightly more of a pain to bike to the Brown’s and back, but it’s still worth it even though the whole ordeal takes four or five hours of my day. (More)

Sorry I didn’t have time to sift this into separate posts. Gambate (fight)!

I haven’t gone into Tokyo often, but I’ve made up for it in the past two weekends. After going to the Kodo concert on Saturday I got an email from Fred inviting me to Costco (in Tokyo) the next day. I couldn’t refuse and though I was sad that we got back unexpectedly too late for me to go to Bible study, I was happy to have a last run at Costco. Of course I love Japanese food, but having real dark bread, bagels, baked beans, cereal, granola bars is such a lovely luxury!

It’s been busy at school for the past two weeks mainly for two reasons. First, the first exam period was May 24-26 and though I did all my oral exams for OCI in class the week before, I had to type up the grades and take care of stragglers, which is often stressful because it means dealing with the students who don’t care so much and will skip out on appointments and generally make life difficult. Also the mid-point goals for the projects for the third years were due and it was my first taste of what they really meant by their project proposals. (More)