Monday, March 3, 2003

What I did today Today, I... Went to Ozu Elementary School; Chaired a short (and mercifully trouble-free) meeting of the International Club; Went to Gokurakutombo with Todaka-san and Nakagochi-san.

The Superintendent of the Board of Education here announced this morning that he was retiring at the end of the month. It sounds like it was all very sudden. This gentleman has been in charge of the BOE for fifteen years now, and, on a personal note, he's been incredibly supportive during my five years here. I wish him the very best for the future.

I got a phone call today from one of the branch offices to ask me to change the folding of the International Newsletter. The newsletter I send out every month has expanded to four pages; in other words, it's a A3 sheet folded to make four pages of A4 size. Without thinking, I make it every month so that it opens from the right (i.e. so that the spine is on the left); however, in Japan the spine is normally on the right. I know this, of course- I get leaflets like this on my desk nearly every day, and books in Japanese follow this pattern too- but it had really never crossed my mind that one leaflet with the spine on the left would cause so many problems when put together with lots of other leaflets with the spine to the right! It really is the case that the little differences between cultures are the ones which can end up causing the most troubles.

I had my final visit of the academic year to Ozu Elementary School today. The second-, third- and fourth-years played games, and the fifth- and sixth-years finished off the explanations of various aspects of Japanese culture they'd started a full month ago. In the first lesson, I played 'Simon Says' with the lower years. As ever, Kazuya-kun, Takuya-kun and Shohei-kun carried the lesson, but they lost concentration half-way through every game, which meant that the girls won every time. The girls, on the other hand, were great; we played five times, and one girl won three times, and another girl twice. This, of course, though, meant that the boys got fed up, and about two-thirds of the way through the lesson, I swapped to 'Dwarves, Witches, Giants'. Well, all I can say is that I'm glad I didn't start with this game. I don't think I've ever seen it get such a bored response as it did from these children. They really didn't seem able to comprehend the fact that it was basically janken, and so each child basically tried to copy what their opposite did- which, of course, is bound to make janken impossible. In the end they did manage to grasp what most of the kindergarten children realise after three seconds or so, and so we were able to play properly, but even then the children didn't seem enthusiastic in the slightest. That two games, both with plenty of moving around, in the same lesson should elicit such a hugely different response is very surprising. In the upper years' lesson, the children finished off their emails to Dartmouth Primary School. As I told the teachers before the lesson, to be absolutely honest I don't expect that the teacher in Dartmouth will bother to reply, or to have her children reply, but still, composing emails like this is good practice for the children; they have to think about what part of Japanese life or culture to introduce, and how to explain it to someone who possibly has no knowledge whatsoever of Japan. All of the children made a good job in the end, and with some help from the Japanese teachers and me. It's a real shame (actually, it's disgusting) that Dartmouth Primary School can't be bothered to reply when the children are putting so much effort in, and (perhaps more to the point) that the school doesn't have the manners to let Ozu and me know what's going on. Today was my last lesson with the four members of the sixth-year. Three of them are going to junior high schools off the island, and only one to Kirikushi JHS. One of the three going to (presumably) private schools is Mina-chan, who plays taiko with Furutakadaiko, but I doubt whether I'll have chance to meet the others again after today, which is a shame.

Word of the week arabotoke This literally means 'new Buddha'; it refers, though, to someone who has died recently.