Chugakkou!!

Saturday, March 22

Before I'd left for Tokyo, Yuko had invited me to join other ryuugakusei the Saturday after I returned from Tokyo and meet middle schoolers learning English and speak English with them. I said I'd go because it sounded like it could be fun!

 

Ken had taken the car to work, so I got on my bike and Miya sat in the back seat of Yuko's bike and we headed out. It turned out that this English group thing was taking place at a chugakkou (middle school) that Yuko reads English books at every month! It looked like all the schools look like in manga, haha. And the students all had cute sailor uniforms!

 

At the entrance of the school, we had to take off our shoes and put them in shoe lockers and then put on slippers. Miyabi had brought her school shoes with her so she wore those. It made me wonder why we don't have to take our shoes off at Nanzan?

We walked in and stood outside the classroom. There were so many students in there! Yuko saw I was getting kind of nervous and was all like, "Daijoubu, Keito?"

 

The hallway

Then one of the senseis showed up and told us we were actually supposed to be downstairs. We went down to the room he led us to and there were a bunch of other gaikokujin (foreigners) in there. There were four girls from Malaysia and a guy from Russia, with his host mother and host siblings (a little girl and three little boys. I was jealous he had so many siblings!). They were all younger than I was, and looked maybe middle school age (in Japan, that's 13-14) themselves.

The lady in there who I think was leading the class gave us all a cup of tea. But pretty quickly after that, it was time to go up to the class.

 

The class had about 25 students in it. They were some pretty cute kids!

First, we gaikokujin had to do jikoshoukai (introductions). I was the only one who could speak Japanese, so everyone else did their intro in their native language and then English. Then it was my turn. I started with "Ohayou gozaimasu" and all the Japanese kids were like "ohayou gozaimasu"! Omg! I didn't expect them to reply! Then I said all my introduction in Japanese and everyone was really impressed. Yuko was all like "jouzu!" And then I said it in English too. 

We played a bunch of games with them. The first game was Fruits Basket. Sasha, the Russiajin taught everyone the names of the fruits in Russian. It was a lot like musical chairs, in that in each round everyone rushed to get a chair and one person was always left standing.

Then we played a game where you had to form a group with the same number of people as the number called out. The numbers were called out in Malaysian, so it was really hard. I felt kind of boring, since my native language was English, and not something cool like the other gaikokujin. Whatevs.

At the beginning of this number game, we all had to join hands and Yuko and I laughed at how the whenever a girl was next to a boy the two of them got all shy and awkward when they had to hold hands, haha. Yuko asked me if it was the same in America.

I noticed that during this game, some of the girls took a liking to me and always wanted me to be in their group of whatever number the group had to be.

 

Then we all got cards with a phrase in English, Malaysian, or Russian on them. The English phrase was "Good Morning" and you had to find other people with the same phrase as yours. I got a Malaysian phrase. Then those people became our group for sharing time. I was in the same group as Sasha, so they put me in another group so that each group had a gaikokujin.

 

We all had to bring something we liked to talk about. I brought my pink goggles, so I could talk about my love of pink and swimming. So yeah. I talked about that. And all the little Japanese students in my group just stared at me with blank faces. Sigh. So I repeated it in Japanese and then they were like "ahhh" and nodded. That happened a lot. I'd ask them all a question and no one would answer until I asked it again in Japanese.

But two of the girls were fairly good at English and asked me a lot of questions in broken English. Some of them brought things they liked as well. One girl brought a whole bunch of PSP games, folders, and CDs from her favorite anime and asked me all about what anime I like and what anime is popular in America. I felt bad because I knew nothing about the various anime she was so obsessed with, but she told me all about the characters anyway.

The one guy in my group brought CDs of his favorite band. It's a Japanese band with an English name. He asked me if I knew it and I said I didn't. The name was pretty funny, I'm not sure he knew what it means in English lol. The name was Porno Graffitti. Haha.

Then one Japanese student in the group shared with the rest of the class what they'd learned from the gaikokujin and the gaikokujin also shared what he/she thought about the group.

The girl who'd asked me all about anime stood up and said that she liked talking to me about various manga and anime I liked! Aww. I shared that the group was interesting, everyone seemed to share a common interest in music (another girl said she liked karaoke, and one girl played the clarinet), and they were good at English and asked me a lot of questions.

Sasha brought strings for everyone in his group so they could play string games like I play with Miyabi! That was a good idea! And he amazed everyone by doing Jacob's Ladder. I can do that too

>:(

 

 

Me with the girl who really liked anime and asked me a ton questions haha

Then this girl and her friend who was also in my group told me how they love kendo and play kendo with the school and invited me to come watch their practice after this!
Then another girl and her friend who I hadn't really talked to, came over and gave me a purikura of them!! They told me something that Yuko translated for me. It's a Japanese expression that means "Please treasure this gift." O.m.g. SO CUTE!!
Then the girl pictured above saw them give me a gift and proceeded to give me this keychain of her favorite character from her favorite anime, Kuroko no Basket.

Gosh, they were adorable!

 

Then, while the students cleaned up the classroom, the gaikokujin and host families walked over to the gym to see the kendo practice. It was cool! The students all paired up and bowed to their partner and then started fighting. I'm not sure why the girls liked it so much. It seemed kind of rough to me.

 

Then that one girl who was obsessed with anime and gave me the keychain and her kendo friends ran in. They brought out a kendo uniform and taught us about the different parts of it. They also showed us the sword and different fighting poses.
Then the sensei asked if anyone wanted to try on the uniform. The other gaikokujin looked all shy and unsure, but I shouted "YES!! I want to!" haha. The girls were all really excited and took me to the locker room. A second later, there was a knock on the door and two of the girls from Malaysia joined us. Guess they changed their minds.
The girls dressed us and showed us how everything was tied together. It was a bit hard for them because they've only ever put the clothes on themselves, but they figured it out!
Then we got to take a sword too!

The kanji on my outfit is the name of the anime-obsessed girl's friend, who's uniform I'm wearing

Then the sensei picked me to tell the kendo players "arigatou gozaimasu." I did and then she told me to tell them in English what I thought, seeing them practice. So I just said thank you for letting us watch, it was really interesting and I liked being able to wear the kendo outfit. Haha. I'm so bad at speaking on the spot.

Us gaikokjin with the Japanese kendo players

Yuko got a close up of me!

The three brave gaikokjin who tried on the kendo clothes

And then I had to change out of my outfit because Sasha decided he wanted to wear it too. But then practice finished so he got to wear the guys' version, with a blue shirt.

Sasha with his host brothers and me with Miyabi

After that, it was time to go home.
When we got back, I played with Miyabi a bit and then we had spaghetti for lunch. After lunch, I wrote blogs while Miya and Yuko went to the store and then took Maple on a walk.
When they got home, Yuko made dinner and I made origami with Miyabi.

Her cute mini origami paper (called chiyogami)

Miya taught me how to make a ribbon and we both used half of the pink paper to make itty bitty ribbons.

 

Ken came home and we had dinner. It was this stuff they called chan chan? Idk. It had hunks of salmon and vegetables in it and was grilled. It was good!

After dinner, I said I had a surprised and Miya got all excited. Then I went to my room and got the Tokyo banana omiyage I'd bought.

When I opened it, I was kind of disappointed, because I thought they'd be soft like the Tokyo banana Minju gave me.

But they turned out to be hard cookies with hard banana flavored cream in the middle. I guess I really did get the cheap ones. But they were still delicious! I really like banana. The banana flavored Laffy Taffies were always my favorite.

 

We each ate two, one white and one brown. That left me with four of each left, so I can share them with my actual family back in America!

 

 

P.S. So I did some stalking. Since I didn't know the name of the middle school, I looked on Google Maps around our house and I remembered crossing train tracks, so I looked on the other side of the subway tracks and found the school! And then I searched the name of the school on Google and found the website! And I looked under the news for 3/22, and boom. Pictures of me galore!

Here we go:

 

Actually, I can't copy them and I'm on the computer at school, so I don't have my snipping tool, so I'll just post the link:

Click here to see pix of me on a Japanese website!

You have to scroll down a bit to see me. My favorite is the last pic of us with all the students in their classroom. I didn't realize they were all doing peace signs or I would have too!

 

 

Also, I finally got the purikura from Tokyo (the night we went host clubbing)! Sayaka's sister has a purikura account, so she helped Sayaka get all the pictures! Yay!