We hadn’t visited Onsen Elementary School in a month, and it was a bit surprising when Erica told us what we’d be doing there – working with Jeremie! A man infinitely more qualified and experienced than us, but I’ll come to that in a second.
We headed there with Erica, and we chatted a little in the somewhat formal Office of the Principal – the Principal of Toya Elementary School is much more relaxed! But never mind that, Jeremie arrived and proved how much better he was by speaking in Japanese! We’d been told that we were going to do a lesson on Festivals in the West, but we didn’t know what it would entail exactly so in many ways we were going in blind.
The class were the fifth and sixth grades – about ten, divided over three tables. One of us sat with each of them and we worked with them on the games being run by the teacher – we began by going over the months in English, then when the festivals were in the year. We then went over a few English festivals, explaining a few things like Thanksgiving and Bonfire Night, and we played another game where we had to place the correct holidays in the correct places. Our team won 😉
Whenever I think of Thanksgiving, I always get very hungry for some reason 😉
We followed this up, rather oddly, by making candy. We were making milk candies, which are very popular over here. You mix icing sugar, coffee creamer, condensed milk and either cocoa powder or strawberry powder together to form a paste. Then, you roll it out until it takes a log shape. The mixture, at least, tasted amazing, so I hope the candy tastes good too!
Bidding sayonara to Onsen Elementary School again, we headed for the Sogo Centre and then to buy our usual Desk Lunch of fried chicken 😉 It always tastes good!
My blog comes up on the first page when you image search ‘Kara-age’! I actually used this picture a while back!
The afternoon’s desk work passed mostly without incident, although we were definitely struggling to plan the Mother Kid’s Club. Since the children there are so young with so little in the way of cognitive function, we are very limited in what we can do. What’s more, the job role is rather loosely defined so in many ways we haven’t a clue what we’re doing!
My Jacket also broke, so Erica took me down to the textiles shop. The man said he could replace it for me, and that it’d usually cost Â¥1600, but that he’d do it for free! What a guy! It was good of him to do so, although I’m without my beloved ski jacket until Monday!
At 2:30, we had to go to the After-School Club, but a rather odd thing happened there – the nutritionist from the Elementary School came and invited us all to the backyard of the Elementary School for some sweet potatoes! It was a school event – they were getting rid of the leaves in the cooking fire to cook the sweet potatoes they’d been growing for the year. It was a very ceremonious occasion – people gave speeches and there was a stage set up. Even better – the potatoes were great! They were heavily wrapped so they’d essentially been baked, and they were delicious. I also gave a brief rendition of ‘Tobe! Gundam!’ to some of the sixth graders 😉
The evening was taken up by Yosakoi. We’re both getting really into this now. We’ve pretty much got the first dance with only a few minor bumps to iron out, and we have until June to do that, so it’s going well! We’re also learning two other dances now – one which is in a large circle and a really awesome dramatic one which is very fast and exaggerated – our favourite one!
All in all, a pretty great day 🙂
NyanKeet - The Misadventures of a Yorkshireman in Japan! 