It's Silver Week, and I think I forgot to mention that. That means that Monday was Respect for Elders Day (no work!), and Friday is the Autumn Equinox (no work!). It's a three day work week. What could go wrong during a three day work week?? :)
I mentioned the typhoon blowing through in the last blog. We feel fairly safe from typhoons here. However, yesterday morning we were rudely awoken. My alarm went off at 8:20 AM, and I was just laying in bed. I think I've mentioned the PA box that's in our house. Our town occasionally makes announcements through it, and it goes to everyone's house. Even if we didn't have it, we would still be able to hear our neighbor's or the big projector ones that they have throughout town. Yesterday morning around 8:30 AM, it let out this horrible siren sound similar to a tornado siren in the States following by an announcement that we had no idea what was. You know that generally when the sirens goes off in the States, it's time to get somewhere safe in a hurry. While tornadoes wouldn't reach us here in the mountains, if there were tornado-like winds, our house would be on the ground. No question. We don't even have an interior room to go to in case of strong winds. It was a scary moment for us. We jumped out of bed and raced to the windows to see if there was any mass panic outside and/or to see if anyone was doing anything. Nothing happened, and we assumed that if something bad was about to happen, some kind and considerate Japanese person would come knock on our door and tell us to run. ;) Ian got online and did a little research to find out that we were under a wind, rain, and flood watch.
I had to go to the BOE yesterday morning, and I asked my supervisor if I needed to make preparations for the typhoon. I felt like they were kind of giggling at me, like "Look at the foreigner! She's worried about a little typhoon. hahaha." She told me that it would just be rain. And that it did. It seriously rained ALL. DAY. LONG. It was a hard, driving rain. At the end of school yesterday, the principal called all of the teachers into the teacher's room and said.....something. Nothing like that has happened before, so after the announcement, I asked my English teacher what he said. She said that after school club activities had been cancelled and that possibly morning classes would be cancelled. I was really confused now. My supervisor told me it was just a little rain, but my junior high school would potentially cancel classes. I really wasn't sure what to expect.
One thing that really bothered me yesterday is the indirectness of the Japanese. My English teacher gave me a task: create a game for class. There were no further instructions. The concept we were going over was "does." For example, "Does she play soccer?" "Yes, she does." I typed up a little worksheet with three columns. In the first column was a list of questions, the second column a happy or sad face, and the third column blank to be filled in. For example:
Does Melissa-sensei read kanji? :( No, she doesn't. (What should be put in the blank space.)
Does Meg like Canada? :) Yes, she does. (What should be put in the blank space.)
The students would walk around and ask each other the questions. The first three people finished are the winners. I printed it and showed it. My English teacher said, "Maybe we could play memory game." (Ugh. Anytime a Japanese person says "maybe" it means that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. The Japanese don't really say no. It's very impolite to flat out say "no" to someone, so they beat around the bush A LOT.) I wasn't sure how that connected, but he told me to print out pictures of the phrases used. For example, in the last example, I would print out a picture of Canada, and we could play memory. So, I found six little images, copied and pasted, and asked him if they were okay. My English teacher said to make them bigger. I asked if the bigger images were okay. My English teacher said to now put the name and verb on the same page. For example, I would have "Melissa-sensei/read kanji" so that students could form the question "Does Melissa-sensei read kanji?" I added the noun and verb, printed, and asked if it was okay. My English teacher told me to now glue the paper to construction paper so that it would stand out better. This whole situation consumed about an 1-1.5 hours of my life. I get so frustrated with the back and forth. I miss American directness of this-is-what-I-want and this-is-how-I-want-it. ;)
Last night, we ate dinner at a friend's house. On the way there, we couldn't believe how high the rivers were! I've never seen them so high! We all pitched in and made a wonderful and delicious feast of spaghetti, garlic bread, salad, and dessert. Ian made the best sauce. Even in Japan, you can still have good spaghetti sauce. :) We joked that it was a hurricane party. Someone from the New Orleans area told us a few weeks ago that pre-Katrina, hurricanes were a joke. Instead of worrying about them, everyone had "hurricane parties" in which you would bring a lot of booze and have a party at someone's house. We had a fine hurricane party last night....minus the massive amounts of booze.
Today was my elementary school day. I'm still not completely sure what I'm doing over there, but I found a schedule on my desk. Yay! At least now I know where to go and when. The kids are seriously the best. I love them! Today, I definitely had the "cool American" factor. Classes were better, and lunch/recess was the BEST! I ate lunch w/the fourth graders, and they were so amazed with everything I did. It was great. :) When I first got there, they hounded me wanting to talk to me. Kids were showing me their homework, hats, cards, and artwork. I went back downstairs to get my iphone for it's camera purpose, and the fact that I had an iphone increased my cool factor by at least 100 points. :) All of the students were asking for me to take their picture, take their picture with so-and-so, take another picture of so-and-so with who-and-who. It was adorable. Lunch itself was also a hoot. Easily the most fun I've had at lunch. The boys kept trying to play tricks on me, but I would catch them in the act, lol. Something that made me laugh out loud was the boy that sat next to me. At one point in time during lunch, he stood up, went over to the door leading to the hallway, bent over pointing his butt toward the hallway, farted, and returned like nothing had happened. How can you NOT laugh at that?
After lunch, the cool American got to sign autographs. That's right. All the kids brought their hats, folders, pencils cases, or whatever over to me to sign. I don't know how many times I signed my name today! When it was time for recess, a couple of girls hung on me, wanting me to go to recess with them. I had to go change my clothes, so they followed me to the teacher's room to get my clothes, then to the locker room to change, and then outside. It was adorable how they tried to teach me how to play games. They were so animate in describing the games, but I had no idea what they were saying. At the end of the instructions, they would ask, "okay?" as in "do you understand?" Even if I said no, how would I have learned other than attempt to play? We played tag, hide-and-seek, and another game that was like red light/green light. For some reason, we only played one round of each game. I don't know what you all did during recess way back when, but I remember playing tag, hide-and-seek, or red light/green light for the entire recess time. I got bored switching games, so I started climbing on the jungle gym. I hung upside down by my knees, and they were amazed. :) Recess time has and always will be my favorite time of the school day, lol.
Tomorrow night we have another enkai, which is a drinking party. I've heard a lot of other people say that they also have enkais tomorrow, so I think it's something about the fact that no one has to work on Friday. :) I don't care. It means that my Thursday night class is canceled, so that makes me super excited!
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