I came back to work today to find my desk covered in piles of homework assignments. Even though I was gone for three days last week, my students were still turning in their assignments diligently.
The history teacher confirmed for me that somebody was killed on the train tracks in Okubo last night. He said that it was a woman in her forties, and she was standing on the tracks. I’m not sure if he got his numbers correct, but he said that every year 30,000 people commit suicide in Japan. He said car accidents only kill about 10,000 people. Wow – scary.
I had four classes today, and between those and marking papers I was plenty busy. The day flew by. I was pretty tired – I started out pretty energetic in the morning, but by my last class in the afternoon I was ready to conk out. The last class was taught by the student teacher, and Mr. Hayashi and I were in the back of the class struggling to remain conscious. She did pretty well with the students, and even had a drawing of an Eskimo to show the students. You could tell that she put a lot of effort into the lesson.
After school I was working with the ESS students – we are getting ready for our culture festival, and the project is underway. I am trying to stay out of their way as much as possible – it’s their club after all. They were very eager to get to work, and I printed up a bunch of photos for them to use, as well as a paragraph about life in the United States. They are going to write a contrasting paragraph about life in Japan, and then translate everything to Japanese for other students to read later on.
I left them hard at work around 5:15, and got home dead on my feet. The heat and humidity are kicking in, and it’s tough walking around in it. I opened up the house and it’s only now just cooling down.
Dinner tonight was a beef bowl with rice and green onions. Not a rice bowl – I think there was more beef than rice, actually. I marinated the beef in a strange marinade that I randomly (and I mean randomly) pulled off the shelf of the local grocery store. The marinade worked pretty well, but I added a little Tabasco and some sesame seeds, and then stir-fried the whole thing up with the green onions. It was lots of food – I’m stuffed.
After dinner I worked on some plans for tomorrow’s classes. I hope that tomorrow I have more free time. I haven’t had much time to study lately.
