The Washibe Worldwide Breakfast Show

Thursday, January 30, 2003

What I did today

Today, I...

Went to the kindergarten;
Went to Akizuki Elementary School;
Took the fourth Elementary English Class in Koyo Community Centre, where I looked at illnesses and began to look at positions and directions, but where everything took longer than it should have done because of people asking questions far beyond their level of knowledge (one person even asked whether 'headache' only referred to a non-cold-related headache, and whether there was another word for a headache stemming from a cold!);
Went to Romantei with Wendy;
Found out about the plan put forward by the Mayor of Okimi Town to invite an American military installation to an uninhabited island just off the town.


I went to the kindergarten this morning. We played 'Simon Says', and the children, as ever, were superbly cute. In some ways, they seem more advanced than the first-year elementary school children; this was my first visit of the year, but some of the older children remembered the actions we'd done last time, and even remembered the English for them!
The great thing about kindergarten is that you can do the same thing again and again, and the children won't get tired of it. We probably played 'Simon Says' ten times or so today, but I still had children pleading that they wanted to play some more! To be honest, though, the children are getting so good that it's almost pointless to play now; in fact, at the end of the final game two little boys were left, and it was obvious that we were going to be there for hours if I played until one of them made a mistake, so I gave in and declared them both the winner.
In an attempt to get some of the children out, I introduced a new command- 'freeze'. At this the children had to stop moving completely until I told them they could move again. One girl for some reason was convinced that 'freeze' was the same as 'wave', so she was out every time, but most of the children were excellent at 'freezing' in the way only kindergarteners could be. Even when I touched the children's noses, wiggled their ears or poked my tongue out at them to try to get them to move or laugh, most of them didn't react at all. As ever, a fun forty minutes or so.


After the kindergarten, I went back to the office for a while and then went off to Akizuki Elementary School. I had three lessons, and to be honest, although I never look forward to visits to this school, they went fairly well. In all three lessons we continued practicing 'The Glove', the English play the children are doing for the sixth-years' farewell party. The first- and-second years weren't bad- certainly, they were better than I'd expected- although when we decided on gestures to go with their lines, it quickly became apparent that both words and actions wasn't going to be a simple matter. If the children concentrated on their words, they forgot to do the actions, and vice-versa. This doesn't worry me too much, though, since it's something that the Japanese teachers can have the children practice. My major concern was getting rid of the 'katakana English' pronunciations; I think that most of these have been taken care of.
I had lunch with the fifth- and sixth-years- as unruly and disinterested as ever- and then sat around in the staffroom until the following lesson, rather than going for a wander round the playground with the children like I normally do. The lesson after lunch was with the third- and fourth-years, whose English wasn't bad (although they'd obviously not practiced as much as the first- and second-years), but whose gestures were, well, basically non-existent. One of the third-year girls steadfastly refused to even contemplate doing a gesture, and the fourth-years, although they did manage to decide upon a action, were nevertheless rather halfhearted. Again, though, that's something that I don't need to worry about.
The final lesson was with the fifth- and sixth-years, and it wasn't too bad (at least judging by the normal standard for this group). The children hadn't learned their lines, but their pronunciation wasn't bad at all, and we were able to decide (eventually) on the gestures (for a boar and a bear!). The biggest problem with this group, though, is that they are always more interested in talking to each other and generally messing around than they are in actually getting on with the lesson in hand. I really don't look forward to when the current fifth-years become the sixth-years in April.



Got a rather cryptic email from a friend who works in Okimi Town Office, complaining that 'dealing with it would be all he'd be doing tomorrow'. When I replied asking what exactly 'it' was, he sent another, slightly incredulous email asking whether I ever watched the news. Well, I do, but for various reasons, I hadn't today or yesterday. So I checked the Chugoku Shinbun on the internet, and found immediately what my friend was referring to. The Mayor of Okimi Town has announced his intention to let the American forces use Okurokamijima, an uninhabited island just off the main island, for Night Landing Practice (NLP). Well, as my friend commented, this doesn't look like it's going to go down well; the Governor of Hiroshima Prefecture has declared that he is against the idea; most of the (apparently not inconsiderable) opposition seems to be centering around the fact that the island is so close to Hiroshima, 'City of Peace'. (What I think about this whole 'City of Peace' epithet, we'll leave until another time, I think...) Anyway, interestingly there were no dissenting voices among the Town Councillors. I think perhaps they realise that this is a good way to ensure a stable source of income for the town.


J-List
Prefectures in Kanto
Ibaraki
Tochigi
Gunma
Saitama
Chiba
Tokyo
Kanagawa