During one of my classes on Friday morning a large bee came swooping in one of the windows and all hell broke loose. I’m used to this – nothing disrupts a class like a bee coming in the window. The students run away from the bee like it is hunting them down, and the teachers generally just try to keep everybody calm until the bee leaves the way it came in.
Today the bee (and I say bee because it is the best way to describe it – it’s quite a bit bigger than any bee from California) flew around freaking the kids out for a few minutes, and then found a place on the roof and just sat there hanging out until the end of class.
The students kept looking behind them as they studied English, and when the bell finally rang they jumped up and ran to the broom closet, and picked someone to try to get it out the window again. The kid chickened out, though, and Matsunaga sensei hinted that maybe I should take care of it.
The students gathered around me and one of them handed me the broom, and so I pulled up a chair near where the bee was sitting around, and then swung the broom hard in a sweeping motion towards the window. The bee was sent across the room and smacked into the closed part of the window, and by the time he recovered we had slid the window around the bee, and it was erratically flying away.
The students were impressed. They were singing my praises the rest of the day, and rarely have heroes been so exalted. I gave everyone high fives, and then finally made it out of the classroom. Bryan, the Bee-slayer.
At lunchtime the teacher in charge of the broadcasting club asked me if I could bring in some music that I like for the club to play. They are working on a segment for the lunch radio broadcast at school called “About Bryan”, and they want to play some of my favorite music. I had told them a few songs before, and they went out to the record store to buy the CDs, but (not surprisingly) they couldn’t find the music I like.
After school ended I changed my clothes into something more casual, and then headed to the station to meet Kuniko and Antoine. On my way out the door all the students commented on my casual dress – it was their first time seeing me in shorts.
Antoine was running late due to some problems with his website, so Kuniko and I did a sneak preview of the Nishinomiya matsuri. As it turned out, today was the kid’s matsuri. I had never seen one before – it was really cute. They parades little mini-mikoshi shrines that they built through part of the city, starting and ending at the Nishinomiya shrine.
The parade was led by my students. There was the baton club, and also the brass band. There were some people carrying a full sized mikoshi at the front of the parade and another at the tail end.
When Kuniko and I arrived, we got a chance to see many of my students lining up. I also got to introduce her to Matsunaga sensei and Higuchi sensei. They were there to support the baton club. We also met my school’s principal, and he said lots of funny things to Kuniko and had her laughing.
Finally, after everyone took off on the parade we walked back to the station and soon met up with Antoine. Together we made our way back just in time for the end of the parade of kids.
While we were there we bumped into a whole squad of my students, and they crowded around us and wanted to know what the story was with Kuniko and Antoine. I introduced Kuniko and everybody yelled out her name. Kuniko was trying to hide behind me, Antoine was just smiling at everyone and probably wondering if there was something more interesting he could be doing on a Friday night.
Some of my girl students were talking to Kuniko, trying to get tips on how to marry a foreign guy. Finally, we were able to extract ourselves, but it was so much fun talking to all the students. They were very cool.
We made our way to a yakiniku restaurant in the station and had some beers and relaxed over all-you-can-eat meat. The food was pretty good, and we had a lot to catch up on. After talking and eating I think we decided that we’re going to have a movie party at our house in the near future with Antoine and Miwako. Hopefully we can pull it off soon.
Kuniko and I said goodbye to Antoine and headed home from the station. Kuniko has sports day at her school on Saturday, so she has to go into school and sit around in the hot sun all day. Luckily she gets Monday off for compensation.
Pictures from today are here!
