Catch up - Part Two

And then there was....the cultural festival. Saturday had the 'opening ceremony', where I, alongside two other English club members, shouted "Catch the Wave!" to announce the band to start playing. "Catch the Wave" was this year's festival title. I'm not sure if they meant 'ride' the wave or not, but I can't help but imagine someone with their arms spread open to try and 'catch' a wave and snigger a little. Each class had a few representatives come up and describe what they would be doing, since the cultural festival is essentially a fair put on by the students. Each class has an idea of what they wanna do, then they host it to the teachers and parents and community members who attend. Right fun what what!

Along with a few other teachers, I wandered around the school and checked out each class' activities. This is Sato-sensei, another English teacher who has helped me with my computer on numerous occassions, and is a real sweetheart. He and I found charicatures of ourselves drawn on the blackboard in one of the classrooms, so we decided to pose next to our likenesses. That's him in the cap. ;p


One class had prepared an underwater themed game and decorations, and they even had an awesome whale made out of balloons!




Another class had worked on mouse-trap style games and puzzles, one of which ended in a number of standies painted in teachers' likenesses falling over in a domino effect. I couldn't get a picture of the 'mouse trap' that did it but I did get a picture of the standies!

Some of classes, or perhaps it was the painting club I'm not sure, had set up displays of their artwork, and some of it was quite impessive. In particular I liked this painting, which was just really well put together.



Now, this is a bunch of artwork yes, but it was for a much...odder display. One of the teachers at my school is named Mr. Matsuda, and he's tall, long, and wears glasses. He's a math teacher who apparently had gone away for a little while. Well unbeknownst to him, one of the classes decided to do a 'Museum of Matsuda', and imposed his likeness on a number of different pop-culture images. Frankly it was hysterical and incredibly frightening. Behold, Sailor Matsuda and Cutie-Matsuda!!

Behold, Pirates of the Matsubbean! That's what it says I ain't makin' that up.





And finally, la piece de la resistance...the Matsuda-Lisa!
Which was just dang impressive.




There were often games to be played in the classrooms, and this was one of them. I'd heard of it before, but it was cute to see it in action. Balloons filled with water or set into a pool, and students have to try and fish them out but hooking a paperclip attached to a piece of wet tissue paper, to another paper clip on an elastic band attached to the balloon! Its pretty tricky actually, since the tissue paper is so fragile, but if you win you get to keep the balloon, and it becomes what they all called a 'yoyo'.

One class prepared a little 'restaurant', where you could order burgers. Of course when I arrived, they had written "BUGERS!!" all over the board. After I told them about the second 'r', they went to work correcting the countless 'bugers' written all over the place. *laughs* The bugers were quite tasty actually!

There is actually a 'tea ceremony' club at our school, where students learn this difficult and fine art. Much to my surprise, on the first floor there is an entire room set up in the tradition Japanese-style, just for this club. They were holding short demos for everyone that day, and I was actually asked to sit where I could have my tea specially made for me! The girl did a very nice job.

I sat Japanese style for about 1 minute, then shifted my legs out from under me. After getting some of the crumbs from the cookies they offered us all over myself, and almost scalding my mouth on the tea, I then sat there feeling like an uncultured lump. *laughs*


The room was big enough to host a lot of people, and a lot of students came to check it out. They were mostly just loud and laughing, but whatcha gonna do, they're teenagers.

Outside there were a few tents set up, selling various kinds of food. I ran into a few of the members of the Taiko club out there, after their performance. I tried to take pictures of it but they came out really terribly, so I'm not even going to both posting their blurry silhouettes on here. Aren't they cute in their uniforms though?!

I actually succumbed and did the peace sign in a picture, dun dun duuuuunn..

In one of the tents you could pay 150 yen to eat something called 'somen', which is really thin noodles. You got a little cup full of a thin brown sauce (which I almost mistook for tea and drank), and a pair of chopsticks. Then you were off to fend for yourself! Two halves of a piece of big bamboo were propped up and had water running down them into a pool. Someone at the top sent the somen down the chute, and by sticking your chopsticks into the noodles' path you scooped 'em up, dipped them into the sauce, and slurped 'em down. It was pretty delicious!! Not particularly filling, but there was plenty else to eat.


This picture is pretty frivolous, but I just wanted to show the girl on the very right. SHE'S TEENY TINY!! She's 18, being in third year, and I have seen her a number of times aren't the school. I'm not kidding, she MAYBE comes up to my bust. She's so kewt!! ...okay I'll stop now.

After this point I had to get to the Audio-Visual room, to get ready for the slide-show that would showcase..me. Here is Goto-sensei, the teacher who runs the English club, who is completely awesome and dresses in trousers and a tie every day. She's a great lady.

The club leader is quite shy, and decided that making a mask to cover her face would e a good idea. Why she chose to make a 'Kate-mask' I'll never know, but frankly I was creeped right out. She didn't end up needing to use it, as about 6 people came to our event. *laughs*

So basically that was the festival. Afterwards there was a staff-wide party at a fancy restaurant close by, with a few parents thrown in to boot. The tables were set close to the floor, with comfy cushions that you could sit on. I of course broke out of the tradition Japanese way of sitting after about...thirty seconds, but nobody cared and actually reccomended that I do it, they know its tough! In this picture you can see Ms. (or Mrs. I'm not sure) Yamamoto, the office's 'secretary' of sorts, who is a really nice lady and likes to chat, despite knowing no English.

Here is some of the spread we got at the party, it was all muy deliciouso. I also got to try sake for the first time that night! It reminded me of tequila actually, but it was much smoother and less face-wrenching. I also had a bit of Japanese beer, which I actually like better than Canadian beer (I think I'm a fan of 'dry' beers), but didn't have much of that, I have no taste for it. A few of the men there got drunk, but mostly people were eating too much, it was a fun night! ...that lasted for 2 hours. Apparently Japanese parties have a time limit.

Aaaand finally, here I am with Fukada-sensei, who was leaving the school and got a bit of a 'farewell' party that night, and, that's right, MR. MATSUDA!! He came over to chat, as did a number of teachers that night. I met Kando-sensei, who has almost no neck, incredibly broad shoulders and a huge boxy upper body. He's a geologist, and completely adorable. He's trying to learn more English so he likes to chat, but he's actually quite shy! I found that that night, many of the teachers I had seen but had ignored me approached me, and we got to chat, it was very nice!

Since then I've just been relaxing at school, not doing too much, but I actually did make a lesson for next week!! Apparently Brendan didn't really use the textbook very much, which meant he made all of his own lessons. This is all well and good, but they want me to use the textbook a bit more. So this week I'm conducting a lesson straight out of it, which the kids find a little boring but not 'gonna sleep now'. When I was in Tokyo I bought a book called "Team Taught Pizza", which is a book full of ideas for lessons for mostly upper grades. Its actually pretty awesome and quite handy. With it I was able to make a lesson tying into the textbook, but about stress and intonation in conversation. One thing I've noticed is that the kids sound completely flat when they speak English, and it makes for pretty ugly sounding English. I have also noticed that when I add intonation when I'm reading something aloud, a dialogue or what have you, they mimic me. I think its partly to make fun, and partly to learn it, either way I don't mind because its good for them to hear it.

What I want them to get used to is the notion that an English speaker will occasionally misunderstand or simple not understand if the inflection in a sentence is off, or the wrong word is stressed. Speaking so flatly all the time not only makes it hard for us to listen, but its a crucial part in mastering the language. So I want them to get used to hearing English coming out of their mouths, and manipulating the sounds in a way that fits the language better. They get enough grammer lessons from their Japanese teachers, my job is to teach them listening and speaking skills. So I'm gonna do just that, as best as I can.

Frankly, my brain hurts.

Thanks for stopping by to read, bye for now!