My First Day of School as a Teacher (or "How to Amaze the Crap out of Japanese Elementary School Children!)

Today was my first day of school as a teacher.

I went to my main elementary school. Throughout the day, I ended up teaching 5 classes (the two 4th grade classes, the one 5th grade class, and the two 6th grade classes. Perhaps teaching is not the right word... Basically, I gave my self-introduction five times. Each class was 45 minutes long and I talked about myself for about 25-30 minutes using my picture-heavy powerpoint and then played "JJ Bingo!" for the remainder of the classes. For "JJ Bingo!" I gave away American coins as prizes (and everyone got one), so they were super excited for that.  My first two classes I really struggled to juggle the time, but by the third one I had it down perfect! :D

Now I want to do a nice little segment I'm going to call...

How to Amaze the Crap out of Japanese Elementary School Children!
For starters, a cultural point is in order for all my friends and family back home.

Today's Cultural Point is: when Japanese people (generally any age) are amazed/stupefied/shocked/speechless/etc by something they yell "Ehhhhhhhh?????" Some people have this down to an art. The tone starts low and slowly rises; it can last anywhere from half a second to a long sustained one lasting 3-5 seconds. Japanese kids are great at it.

So now, let's get back to our new segment!

How to Amaze the Crap out of Japanese Elementary School Children! (or how to get a cacophony of "Ehhhh?????'s)

1. Tell your students that you like Totoro*
2. Tell your students that you like Sumo**
3. Tell your students you like Super Smash Brothers Brawl********
4. Tell your students your house has 5 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms**
5. Tell your students that your house has a movie theater above the garage******
6. Tell your students that you like Harry Potter***
7. Tell your students that you don't like/eat Tomatoes, Mushrooms, and EGGS**************
8. Tell your students that your Dad's dog weighs 40kg (~80lbs)****
9. Tell your students that California and Japan are about the same size******

*The more asterisks, the greater the chance that some children just can't handle such information and may start throwing chairs out the second story window (basically, intensified EHHHHH???????'s).

Hopefully you enjoyed that! haha.

School lunch was great. It was probably the first well balanced meal I've had since I've been here. We had curry, rice, jelly, and a pasta salad. The curry wasn't regular curry though, it was a kind of thick, paste-like curry, but it was insanely delicious. Between classes, I chatted a bit with my Taiko kids, checked out the schools library, and tried to get to know the teachers. 

Overall the kids were great. Every class was pretty well behaved and the 1 or 2 that quickly got distracted weren't too difficult to bring back around. It really helped that I knew some of the kids already from Taiko. They actually played the cops and told other kids to be quiet, so it was nice having my own little minions in pretty much every class :D

As I was leaving, just as I was about to turn the corner, three 3rd grade girls bolted after me yelling "Hey, JJ! HEY!" I ended up chatting with them for about 10 minutes. They had a bag full of all kinds of Japanese goodies, and luckily I had a can of Pringles in my bag, so we exchanged food. I tried a piece of dried squid that they gave me. It was actually quite good (kinda like beef jerky but fish flavored) despite its rather gnarly appearance. This little encounter was proof of two things: 1) my basic Japanese is getting better, and 2) I'm getting to be a pro at charades as I learn what does and doesn't come across to Japanese people through gestures.

So yeah, things went a LOT better than I had imagined they would. Hopefully it keeps up!

To bring the discussion back to Typhoon Talas real quick, I've learned that some parts of my town were flooded with water up to the knees... 0_0 I am insanely fortunate that nothing happened to my house. I guess most of the teachers prepared with sandbags and things, because everyone I spoke to said water did not get into their house. But my bank and a couple of the city offices were flooded. Seeing as how all this happened between 6am and 10am when I was fast asleep, I can only repeat that I am very fortunate. It would have been quite the shock to be woken up by water flooding my house.

Okay, that's all for now. I'm really tired after my first day, I just did two loads of laundry (as keeping up with it got lost in the Typhoon madness), and just a short while ago I had to go to the grocery store so I can eat things other than pancakes. Yay! Meat!

Okay! Thanks again!

Stay tuned!