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Broadcasting to an audience of three (and a goldfish)...
Comment, ramblings and musings... life through the eyes of a Japanologist...
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Tuesday, November 26, 2002 |
 Aaagh! I'm kaze-gimi- coming down with a cold. Or perhaps it's just a sore throat. In any case, I don't feel too well...
The office has the heating on now, whereas at the elementary schools, it's not a question of whether the heating is on or off; there's no heating in the first place to be on or off! Therefore, going from the office to the school, there's a huge difference in temperature, and I think it's this, more than anything, that's led to my feeling under the weather. I'm going to go to bed and get plenty of sleep.
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After a superb meal of bacon and eggs, what could be better than a snug, cozy kotatsu and a great bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau? Actually, even without the bacon and eggs, what could be better than Beaujolais and a kotatsu? Especially when the Beaujolais is a glorious, luminescent maroon, bordering on an almost imperial purple, and as fruity- lip-smackingly fruity- as a heady French summer.
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My goodness, I'd forgotten how good bacon and eggs tasted until last night. What an excellent meal for a winter evening! The bacon didn't quite come up to the British standard, but even so, it was damn good. Another fine meal to add to my repertoire...
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Went to Koyo Elementary School for three lessons today. All three lessons were fundamentally the same; having made Nigerian banana fritters during my previous visit, this time I gave a quiz on Nigeria, talked about the answers and took any questions the children had, and then we played a Nigerian game called 'Snake'. Well, the quiz went fairly well- I didn't intend that the children would know the answers (there'd be no point in giving the quiz if it didn't lead to their learning something new)- but I was surprised by the number of children, even in the third- and fourth-years, who knew the colours of the Nigerian flag, until of the children mentioned that the team had been in the World Cup. I suppose this shows the power of television... I was also struck- as ever- by the children's lack of ability to think logically about a problem. I don't think that this is necessarily the children's fault, but rather a by-product of the style of Japanese education, which seems to favour memorisation of facts over creative thinking.
However, if the quiz went well, the game was an absolute roaring success!
In the 'snake' game, one person is the snake's head, and this person has to try and catch someone. When someone is caught, they become the snake's tail, and hold hands with the head. These two people then have to try and catch someone else, but they have to keep holding hands. If the 'tail' touches someone, then the person touches joins the snake as the new tail, and if the 'head' touches someone, then that person becomes the new head. The three people then have to try and catch a fourth person, who becomes part of the snake, and so on until there's only one person left. Only the head and the tail- the people at the two ends of the 'snake'- can touch people, though; the people in the middle of the line can only try to make sure that nobody escapes before the head or the tail touches them. When only one person is left, this person is the winner, and becomes the snake head for the next game.
Well, I think this has to be the best game I've ever played with the children in five years of elementary school visits. It was absolutely hilarious! It was, in fact, carnage: there were children flying off the ends of the 'snake'- bodies everywhere!- and we had one nose bleed, one mouth bleed (!), and one boy who thought he'd broken his fingers (but hadn't, thankfully). But it was fun carnage. The children- even those who got hurt- had a whale of a time, and the teachers all thought it was an excellent game. It just goes to show that you don't need expensive toys to have a huge amount of fun. I'll certainly be using this game again!
I had lunch with the fifth-years, who are rapidly becoming my favourite class in the school. Afterwards, I played football with some of the fifth-year boys, which was extremely enjoyable. One boy- Hanatani-kun- is very good at football indeed, but his messing around- trying to get the ball into the net by kicking it over his head (and falling over in the process), and so on- was hilarious. Hanatani-kun and I also have a running joke about his having a Japan football shirt and one for the Italian team, but no England shirt, so there was a good deal of banter between us. For example, when he told me he was a member of the 'Etajima Kickers' football team, I purposely misheard this as 'Yochienji Kickers', because I'd been teasing him about being about as good at football as a kindergarten child ('yochienji' means 'kindergarten children'). Just before the fifth-years' lesson, too, some of the other children told me to call him 'Hanatare-kun' ('tare' means 'sauce'), at which he made a show of grimacing, but I'm pretty sure that in actual fact, he enjoyed the banter during the lesson and the kickabout. I certainly did!
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Made the decision to resurrect the 'Etajima International News', at least partly as a way of publicising the International Club's events. To avoid problems with getting it distributed, though, I'm going to make it 'the CIR's monthly newsletter', rather than an International Club newsletter. The International Club is officially a private group unconnected with the Town, and so getting an International Club newsletter distributed would be difficult, if not impossible.
Anyway, the first issue of the new series is going to contain details of the International Club's Christmas Party, a report of the last event (the Indian Day), and a short English article by Wendy. Having set my mind to it, I made the whole newsletter in about an hour and a half. Now all I have to do is get official permission to send it out...
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© Copyright 2003 Nathan Duckworth.
Updated: 8/1/03; 8:57:19 pm.
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