The weather lately has been nice and cool, with an occasional rain shower. That has made it very easy to sleep, and it makes it a little harder to get up in the morning. We’ve got a pretty low stress morning routine, and we’re out the door and on the train with a few minutes to spare.
At school I had two morning classes with Kuroda sensei. I was teaching the second year students, and Kuroda sensei insists that for my classes we should just play games and have a great time. I’m not sure how much English we learned, but we had fun today. I did a couple of activities, and the most popular was playing pictionary in groups. I made it a little tough, though, with words to draw like “friend”, “difficult”, and “delicious”.
In the afternoon I taught with Harada sensei, and had a serious round of questions from her students. There were a couple of really tough questions – like what my views are on discrimination in America, and what are some the big differences between American culture and Japanese culture.
I was out of there right on time, and walked to the train station with my umbrella in the rain. Three first year students going home in the same direction called my name and chased me down, but soon found out that there wasn’t much to talk about once they caught up with me. I switched to just a bit of Japanese, and that helped a little bit.
Tonight Kuniko is due in late, so I’m just kicking around the house. I did some cleaning and now I’m doing my best to understand what people are saying on TV. Now they have some poor Japanese woman trying to read very difficult kanji to other Japanese people. I can’t read the simple kanji, let alone the difficult ones, but it’s nice to see a Japanese person struggling with kanji.
This week is flying by – Friday I’m going out with my old teachers and also my successor at Takasago Minami. I’m looking forward to hearing all the gossip and stories from my old school.
