On Friday I was feeling a little bit better, and I was confident going into my classes. It was a rare day when I have all my classes with one teacher, but luckily it was Kuroda sensei. She is an easy teacher to teach with – very flexible and supportive. Teaching with her is the closest thing to actual team teaching that I do at my school.
Kuroda sensei really helped today by acting as my voice most of the time, and with her help I was able to get to the end of the day without too many problems. I was tired afterwards, though, and I spent the afternoon marking papers and staying warm in the staff room.
The big event at our school on Friday was the Karuta competition. It’s a little hard to explain, but I’ll try. Karuta is made up of 100 poems. The poems are several sentences long. 100 cards are spread out in front of the players (in our case today, six students) on a tatami mat. Each card has the last sentence written in easy Japanese. Then, a teacher would read (or sing) the poem. Good Karuta players have memorized many of the poems, and the person that can recognize the poem, find the card with the last part of the poem written on it, and slap their hand down on the correct one wins.
It was a serious competition, something like a spelling bee in the United States. I really enjoyed walking around and seeing the various levels of play. The top students would hear maybe only the first word or two, and then find the card and take it. It was a cool thing to see.
Kuniko was home late Friday night, so she ended up having to cook lasgna late into the night, but the results were worth it. I sampled a little bit of the sauce and it was really good. She’s really tired from working so hard, and she’s got to work both days this weekend for the entrance exam for her school.
Saturday night Tomo-chan and her husband Masaki came over to have dinner and visit. It was just what we needed. With the dinner already made we had more time to sit with them and talk. We talked about movies, travel, ate lots of food, and played plenty of Wii. Maski turned out to be a pretty good bowler, and Tomo-chan beat up Kuniko in boxing. We played until we were physically exhausted.
We sent some leftover lasagna home with them, and then walked them to the station to say goodbye. It was really nice to have them over – they were a great couple and fun to spend time with.
Now it’s Sunday afternoon. Kuniko went off to school early this morning, and I spent the morning relaxing, and straightening up a little bit after the party. There’s a chance that Kuniko will come home in the afternoon, but she is going to the Osaka airport tonight to see off one of her Japanese students who is going to homestay in Australia. She’ll be out late tonight, and I hope she has some energy left for work tomorrow.
