Toya Day 73: Back to the Junior High

I really like Toya Junior High School. It’s kind of hard to describe – it just seems like a ‘perfect’ school – the students are fantastically behaved and motivated, the staff are warm and friendly, and some of the ways in which the school is run are brilliant in both concept and execution. But I’m waffling.

We arrived in the Junior High on time at 9:00AM and we were informed that Nishita-sensei would be coming in late, so we got to reading through our lesson plans and then reading the books we’d brought with us. For me, it was Around the World in 80 Days – one of my favourite books and a really great travel and adventure story.

When Nishita-sensei arrived, we departed for the first class. We did ‘Which is this, whose is that?’ which was actually fairly simple to teach. It boiled down to pointing at random objects and asking who it belonged to. The lesson wasn’t so much about the sentence structure or the vocabulary, it was more about which words to replace when forming sentences, and in that regard it was successful.

For the second class, we covered hopes and dreams for the future, for which Brendan and I had each written a paragraph about our own. In mine, I basically told the truth – I want to be an English teacher here in Japan, and I’m essentially after Nishita-sensei’s job! Junior High level the place I think I’d most like to work, too – the reason being that it offers a great compromise between the serious nature of the High School and the free-spiritedness of the Elementary School.

After that, it was lunchtime, and it was amazing to see how the Junior High was served – once again – actual, edible food designed for human consumption! The food in the High School, with all of Kamada’s jibes at it, is at best bland and at worst unedible. But the food in the Junior High isn’t only edible – it’s actually tasty! We had cream stew and a bread roll, and it was genuinely enjoyable.

Mmmmmmm, cream stew 🙂

The third class was on shopping, and we did a similar lesson to the one with the High School class a while ago – we did a shopping roleplay and skit, and then had students emulate it. They were also impressed, I think, with some of the stuff we’d brought in. One spent a good ten minutes just flicking through my British PlayStation magazine!

A bonus for our Junior High work was that my voice had, at least, started posting its luggage home. It was much better than the day before, at least, and it meant that I was actually able to do the work that Nishita-sensei wanted us to do. Thank god for that!

Well, Junior High work over, it was time for a momentous event which I’ve been badgered into over several weeks of Skype-nagging 😉

It was time for a haircut.

Japan: The only place where this hair is possible.

Erica had translated our requests for what we wanted, and so we headed down to the same salon she uses (she always has great hair, so we felt we could trust it). The lady in there was really nice, and she did a great job of both our hair. We had a chat – a chat actually mostly in Japanese! – and she runs a lovely establishment. It cost ¥3700, but you can’t put a price on looking fabulous!

A strange thing then happened. There was an old lady on the pavement which I’d crossed to. By this point, Brendan had headed home already so I was on my own. As soon as I said my customary ‘Konnichiwa’ to this old lady, she immediately moved off the pavement and walked down the middle of the road! I asked if she was alright, but I was met with silence. Somewhat creeped out, I went into the Mizu no Eki for a bit to wait for her to pass.

It was odd.

Not quite this creepy, but still…

The evening brought with it Kendo and we continued to work on the Kotei strike – this time with Taka’s help – and by the end we had somewhat worked out the technique. The difficult part is succeeding it with a Men strike in quick-time. Still, we had made progress on it by the end.

It was then time for our usual Thursday Onsen session – and although we were surprised by the lack of Matsubara (the guy is big into Onsenning) it was a nice soak after what had been a long day and, for me at least, a long week!