So we're reaching mid-terms for the first term of school, and it's been a lot busier than last year! With the lack of guidelines for my first year classes, it's taking a lot longer to plan things out than it used to when I was using the textbook, plus I have my two new double-period classes to contend with. But so far it's been alright!
I decided that my first years are going to learn an English song each term, to help with pronunciation. Hopefully the rhythm of the music will help to lure them away from the horrifically syllabic katakana English. This term we're learning "We Are the Champions." Most of the students seem to be enjoying it, but some days it's difficult to persuade them to actually SING after we learn a new section of the song. Mostly that portion of the class is me standing at the front of the room, singing my heart out alongside Freddie Mercury while my students watch and smile. Thanks, guys. I feel the love. Now how about we participate?!
Working with my second and third years is interesting. I'm using the same textbook and materials for the two grade levels, but their skill levels are .... I don't want to say vastly different, but vastly different. It's a nightmare sometimes, trying to come up with things that won't bore the hell out of my third years, but that the second years can actually grasp. I nearly bashed my head off the table the first time I tried to play Pictionary with my second years (they've since figured it out and now enjoy it).
In the last week of April, I got a chance to explore a place just outside Kyoto called Arashiyama. It's your typical mountain tourist village with a giant shrine (that is also a World Heritage Site, though I'm really not sure why as it didn't seem any more impressive or important than any other shrine I've been to), except that it's also home to a giant bamboo forest!
Bamboo! So much bamboo!
"Watch out, there are wild monkeys here! Don't do anything with the monkeys. Whatever you wanted to do with the monkey you find, just don't. Don't even acknowledge the monkey. No."
Temple gardens!
At the beginning of May was a three-day holiday known as "Golden Week". I persuaded Ros to come down to visit me, and together we travelled to the seaside to risk our lives in a field. Not even kidding, though we didn't know at the time that it would be so potentially hazardous! So here's what actually went down, before anyone starts to panic: We went to Hamamatsu for their festival (aptly named Hamamatsu Matsuri) on May 3rd, the first day of Golden Week. There are many things that happen over the course of this festival, but the biggest part of it is kite-flying. I know what you're thinking. Lame, right? It's totally okay to think that. That's what I thought when Ros first suggested it. "We're going to watch people fly kites all day? And this is... fun?" So I googled it. Turns out, it's more like Battle Royale: Kite Edition. Basically all the neighbourhood communities in Hamamatsu are flying their kites in the field and trying to take down the other kites. And these kites are HUGE. Like, probably a good 7-10 feet squared? With hundreds of meters of thick hemp rope for a string. It takes teams of people wearing gloves to fly these things. So the kite festival thing is actually massively epic. Which is cool. Except that you, as an observer, are walking around the same field as these people who are flying kites with the purpose of knocking other kites out of the air. Ros and I were nearly brained with a giant kite three times, and nearly run over I don't even know how many times. But it was great! The kites were really cool to see, and we got in a nice walk along the beach, plus festival food. I also got a sunburn, thanks to the lovely temperature and the clouds clearing in the afternoon.
Kites! Kites everywhere!
One of the neighbourhood kite-flying teams cheering themselves on.
A kite, for scale. Please note that this kite is twice the height of that man holding it. And these were plummeting out of the sky towards us. Sometimes more than one at a time. Good times!
After we'd had enough of dodging lethal flying paper (and wood frames), we headed back towards the station for more food and laziness until it was time for the night parade. We wandered around for a ridiculously long time, only really knowing that we wanted something sweet, before deciding to chill at Baskin Robbins for a bit (pun intended). Then we found some kind of international food festival thing for dinner. I had a lovely steak and fries, and Ros got some meat on a stick and cheese buns. We hung out at one of the festival tables and listened to a brass band from one of the local middle schools, and then headed up to stake out spots for the parade. Essentially, each neighbourhood that had a kite flying during the day had a luminous float at night and they all marched in a really, really long line. There was a break in the parade at some point, so we decided to get a head start on our trip home.
On the Wednesday we were supremely lazy. We watched movies, ate nachos, and sat in the park with books so that we could be lazy and still enjoy the glorious weather. I got to introduce Ros to a bunch of rather odd movies that I nonetheless enjoy, including Repo: The Genetic Opera and Fantastic Mr. Fox. We had originally planned to hike the Nakasendo trail on this day, but that involved a lot of traveling that would begin before dawn, so we basically said, "Hell to the no," as soon as we found that out.
Thursday we decided to muck about in Nagoya, since Ros would have to leave for Tokyo from there anyway and she hadn't really been around the city since our first trip there in 2010. We wanted to find our favourite restaurant from that trip (which sadly no longer has our favourite item, their house-made ice cream, on the menu), using only our memories and my vague sense of direction (which should NEVER be followed, ever). I also wanted to show Ros the observation platform-type thing outside the Prefectural Arts Center that I'd seen when I was there the month prior for Jekyll & Hyde. We went up, it was awesome, I potentially got even more sunburned (even though I was actually wearing sunscreen that day).
Since then it's just been more of the same classes. I really think I'm used to most things now, and that's why I'm blogging less. I'm not seeing as many things where I think, "Whoa, I have to tell people about that!" This week was exam week, except Friday, so I have classes to teach tomorrow. But after that is the weekend, and I'm taking myself to USJ for my birthday. I'm going to Hogwarts!
