Saturday, June 2nd: Field day...the Japanese way.

So today was Field Day here at the school.  It's WAY better than I remember field day being when I was in elementary school.  Apparently, in Japan, Field Day is a big deal.  The dads lined up outside the gate to the school at like 4am (so we were told).  Minako told us she wouldn't let them in until 6am, so at 530am I woke up to take my shower.  A little before 6am I got back to the room, and soon afterwards I heard a stampede of Japanese father run through the gate.  I thought it was a little excessive, so I had to take a picture:

Crazy, crazy Japanese dads
spreading out their blankets!

A few hours later, Madelyn and I headed out to field day.  I read II Corinthians 13:11 for the first group and Madelyn read it for the second.  Thankfully, Dr. Shin Nishimura had mercy on us and allowed us to be his special guests instead of sitting with the crazy children and teachers who only speak Japanese.  So we got to sit in realy adult sized chairs!  And talk to Dr. Shin and his brother who both like to make corny jokes.  For example, instead of saying goodmorning "Ohayou" (pronounced Ohio), you should say Kentucky. Ha. Ha. Ha. It makes me smile and reminds me how my Grandpa Cohagan used to joke :)  

All the parents chilling, waiting
to watch their kids perform

And then everything got started with singing and dancing and such.  Next were the cheerleaders!

Cheerleaders!

Boy cheeleaders?

It kept going with the 3 year olds dancing to the Mickey Mouse club.  It was so funny to listen to because everything was in Japanese except "Mickey Mouse" and instead of spelling it out "M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E", it just repeated "Mickey Mouse" over and over again.  It cracked me up!

Mickey Mouse boy didn't wanna dance.

  

Nursery babies dancing :)

 What I loved about Japanese field day is the parental involvement in several events.  They only called for one parent and I thought it was interesting that most of the parental volunteers were the dads.  I feel like in America, it's usually the moms.  Hmmm not sure why.  Anyways, the event below was like hat style capture the flag where each kid has a hat with either a red tail or white tail.  The dads, or parents, would piggyback the kids around to see if the kids could grab a hat off another kid.  It was super entertaining :)

Daddy and little bear on back



All the daddies with their little kids

Then the little kiddies did tricks with the parachute.  So cool.

Parachute!

More activites with the parents:

Wheelbarrow the kids...

...then put on the animal hats and finish
the race moving like that animal!

That's all the pictures from the morning.  Then there was lunch which was interesting.  We had obento boxes of stuff (box sectioned off with different food in each section).  It was pretty and also pretty gross.  It had a few bites of super strange sushi, sweet peas which I didn't eat, dry nasty cooked salmon, and another weird fish thing.  Man, it was like my least favoritest meal yet.  Not to mention the fact that I haven't been feeling so good today either.  Anyways, that was an experience!
Afternoon's Mickey Mouse group :)

Left: Nono Chan (Majelyn's son)
Right: another adorable Mickey Mouse

Everybody wins at
the running event!

 A thing I wish would have been true when I was in elementary school doing field day.  I hated field day.
But I would have liked Japanese field day :)


Shuichi (Keiko Kohara's husband
slash Minako's brother-in-law)
 with his daughter, Uri Chan.
They're being penguins!



Pyramid!

 The day ended around 3:30.  Madelyn and I helped clean up from field day then went for a bike ride which was nice.  Today's weather was SO perfect!  It sprinkled a few times but that was fine considering it was probably not even 80 degrees out.  So good!  I only started to sweat after Madelyn and I helped out with some games.  Which I didn't blog about yet cuz I forgot until now.  Yeah, we helped by running around holding buckets and older siblings of the kindergarteners chased after us, attempting to throw bean bags at us.  So fun.  Anyways, after the bike ride Madelyn and I attempted to do some oragami.  Then we stopped to do laundry and make dinner:

Dinner!
Chicken.
Potatoes.
Curry.
Yum.

While eating dinner we found out you can't watch American tv shows online in Japan.  Sad day cuz now we don't know what to watch durring dinner since we finished Aladin.  Now I'm blogging, she's talking to boyfriend, the clothes in the dryer are not drying, and I still don't feel good.  It's like the sore throat, achey, chills feeling...although the chills are mostly gone now.  It was really bad this morning but I took drugs which helped some.  Sigh.  That's all for today.  Not as relaxing as I thought it would be, but very productive!

PLEASE PRAY FOR:
- me to feel better soon!
- us to find joy in being here instead of being so incredibly homesick
- us to be able to understand more of their expectations of us
- us to have patience with all of the confusion and chaos
- us to want to be here cuz in case you didn't get it before, I'm really homesick :/
Thanks :)

Friday, July 1: Miscommunications call for junk food. And lots of it.

Friday began with more blaring childrens music promptly at 8:15am as usual.  A little after 8:30am, Madelyn and I have to go sweep up nothing.  Its more for appearances sake so we can greet the children as they get off the bus.  At 9 we clock in and begin our day.  First up on our schedule was assisting with Kumon which is specialized lessons per kid in English, math, or Japanese.  It's crazy to see what those kids can do!  A 5 year old can add 72 + 13 etc.  And they're reading and pronouncing English at 3 years old.  Ah I was so impressed.  Anyways, we corrected their worksheet for an hour an a half and that was that.
Next, our tast was to teach the nursery kids (2 years and under) a song, but we didn't know how long our lesson had to be.  So we did the Itsy Bitsy Spider which on the CD we were given is the Eensy Weensy Spider so that was weird.  We thought we did well but then misinterpretted the main teachers motion to move to the next activity she had planned, and instead we pulled out a Teddy Bear book, read it, and taught the song that goes with it.  Following our long lesson we went and played with the nursery kids.


Madelyn making up a story to go
with the pictures in a Japanese book.



This picture doesn't do justice
to how cute this little girl
really is.  SO STINKIN' CUTE!

After nursery was lunch with no break in the day yet.  Sigh.  Long day.

Oops, caught this cutie with a mouth
full of "gohan" or rice.  This picture
was really taken to show the adorable
lunch set up some kids bring!

This girl loves me and today I finally
figured out her name (I think?) so I
took a picture to celebrate!
Everybody, meet "Mo-chan".

This adorable kid sat on my lap,
talking at me all through lunch.
That's his smile face.

More pictures! He loves the camera :)
I tried to read his name tag with my little
experience with Hiragana but all I could
get is: No-u-?-?-i-to chan.

 

Me trying to look Asian and failing.
(Photo credit: No-u-?-?-i-to chan)


After lunch was back to assisting Kumon for an hour and a half, followed by our own Kumon class.  The class today began awful with a gentle reprimand and a lot of corrections to how we teach and plan lessons.  It was so frustrating because it's SO hard to understand anybody.  I don't know what they expect and even when I think I know what Majelyn wants, when I go to teach the teachers always seem to be signalling something else.  Majelyn told us the break down of how she wants the lessons to go now, so hopefully we'll be better.  I just wish she had told those expectations BEFORE we taught.  Sigh.  Anyways, in our Kumon class we are learning Hiragana which are the symbols that phonetically spell out Japanese words.  In Kids Club today, there was a Japanese tranlastion of a book about the town making a giant jam sandwhich to trap a large swarm of bees.  Remember that book, family? Well I did and I wanted so badly to read it but it was all in Katakana which is like Hiragana except for Englsih words.
After school, Minako took us to the gorcery store to buy laundry soap and Madelyn and I also stocked up on some good ol', much needed Japanese junk food!
We made chicken and rice for dinner and finished Aladin.  Overall, a good evening to make up for a long exhausting day!