Monday, February 3, 2003

What I did today Today, I... Got a shuccho for the first time in ages, when a letter about a conference concerning International Education (to be held in Hiroshima on Friday) arrived in the office, and Shinbe-san decided I should go, even going so far as to phone Etajima Elementary School for me to cancel the sixth-years' music lesson I was supposed to be attending on Friday; Went to Bebe with Nagareda-kun for lunch; Went to Ozu Elementary School; Spent rather a while wondering why I need to take my taiko uniform tomorrow, when we were being interviewed for radio; Chaired another meeting of the International Club (these are becoming weekly), where we made progress on the arrangements for the visit of the International Club from Kubokawa-cho, and for the Ogiri event; Went with Todaka-san, Okamoto-san, and Koseki-san to Hibiki for dinner; Put the photos from yesterday's Umaimon-Matsuri on the web.

In the afternoon, I paid a visit to Ozu elementary school. With the second-, third- and fourth-years I decided to play 'cat, cat, dog'... but this lasted all of ten minutes or so, after which it became apparent that the children (or, perhaps more correctly, a fair proportion of the children) weren't enjoying it. I suppose there was too much English in it for them. The kindergarten children have no problem with the English in this game (after all, it is only two words), but the lower years in Ozu simply cannot pronounce English words. This problem was exacerbated when I suggested that we change the words, and one girl suggested we use 'rabbit' and 'elephant' instead of 'cat' and 'dog'. Well, the first time someone got as far as the 'dog' stage (i.e., tagging someone and running away), the 'elephant' honestly sounded like 'telephone'. Of course, the boys had a whale of a time racing round the circle when they were picked, but because they were fast nobody would pick them, so they got bored as well. So, deciding to cut my losses, I changed the game to 'red light, green light', and this went well, although I have to point out that only four children were actually in a position where they had to use the English phrases, and none of these children were from the 'pronunciationally challenged' group. Nevertheless, everyone seemed to have fun, and some of the boys who had been messing around at the beginning of the game (moving when they were supposed to be frozen) realised after a while that if they played properly they'd be able to win, so they buckled down and took part properly, which was gratifying. In this class, there are three boys and three girls who really carry the whole group, and they made it fun for everyone. With the fifth- and sixth-years, we wrote- or at least started to write- some emails to send to Dartmouth Primary School, with which Ozu has (at least in theory) a link. There were only six children, and they decided each to describe a different part of Japanese life or culture (although, of course, deciding what each of them would write about took ages). They made a start on their chosen topics- mochitsuki, setsubun, graduation, the 'Momotaro' story, taiko, and New Year- although none of them seemed to get very far. I think that the main problem is really that they don't know how to explain things- no matter how many times I tell them that they have to explain everything from the most fundamental facts, this doesn't seem to sink in. They really don't have enough experience to be able to think about what might need to be explained, what should be obvious, and what would be the most appropriate order in which to explain things. My attempts to get them to think about the problem from the opposite direction- 'What would you want to know if someone from an English school came along?'- almost always meet with silence. Japanese children seem to have trouble thinking about things of which they have no direct experience, and this seems so far out of their range of experiences that they have no idea even where to start. I'm not blaming the children; rather I think that more attention ought to be paid to this aspect of education. In the end I told them to start from the most general level of information (for example, 'In Japan, we have graduation ceremonies at school'), and then gradually get more specific, finishing up by talking about the situation in Ozu specifically; I think this might have gone some way to clearing things up in their minds. There is no doubt that Japanese education serves the children better in some ways than does British education, but the skills related to being able to think creatively and present facts clearly, analytically, and in a logical order, seem to be lacking somewhat.

Today was Setsubun. Needless to say, I didn't throw roasted beans around, nor did I eat 28 of them. I did have two little pieces of chocolate, though, when I went to Ozu Elementary School (not sure why I didn't get another 26 pieces, though!). I also got to say as a joke, 'Oni wa soto!', to the boy at Ozu who'd played the devil in the English play the children performed a copule of weeks back.

Photographs Although I was playing yesterday, Mina-chan, an elementary school student who plays taiko with her father in our group, took some photographs with my digital camera. I put the best of these photographs on the web; they're here. Looking at these photos, it strikes me just how much the blue sky belies the bitter wind that was blowing while we were playing...

Word of the week daidokoro-jijo Literally means 'kitchen circumstances', but comes to refer to money matters. If your kitchen circumstances are strict ('daidokoro-jijo ga kibishii'), then you are in financial straits.