Oh, Mistakes…!

These past 3 days I had English Camp for the English Course students in their 1st year at Ihara High School. High school here in Japan is 3 years, so these kids are the equivalent of 10th graders back in the states. Two JTEs, Sarah and I and 8 other ALTs from other schools all hopped on a bus with the 36 kids and headed for Lake Saiko on the north side of Mt. Fuji. It was really an awesome time! Were split up into 10 groups, and I had 3 of the kids in my group for most of the activities. My students’ names in my group were Misaki, Kanami and Toru. Two girls and a boy. It was an important camp for the kids especially as well because they mostly met each other only 6 months ago when their school year began. These 36 kids will all stay in the same class together for the next 2 ½ years. In Japanese high schools the students have the same class with the same kids all day and the teachers change rooms to teach the different subjects. So the kids had an opportunity to spend a lot of casual time together, meals, sleeping in a hotel room, etc., to get to be better friends before second term starts. All the kids are really great and excited and hard-workers. Truly a genki class! It taught me a lot about being more genki too. It reminded me a LOT of Camp Omega and having a group of kids there 3 years ago. I do really miss those times- I absolutely loved the interaction with the kids at camp. Now it is obviously different because I couldn’t/can’t communicate with them on the level I could with native English speaking kids. I often would forget during the 3 days that the kids couldn’t understand everything I was saying. But, I tried to just speak a little more slowly and use a more simplified vocabulary. If they didn’t understand I tried using different words or explaining it using a different example or different hand motions. Some of the ALTs I have noticed will not use complete sentences or will use really odd sounding inflection when speaking to Japanese people. I don’t think this is doing anyone a service because it is not a correct model of authentic English usage.

Sarah put together the curriculum and schedule for the entire 3 days and did a wonderful job. The activities got the students creating a lot of sentences and asking a lot of questions. One of the activities was to write and perform a skit for the end of the last day. Our group got together with Jessie’s (another 1st year ALT living in Fujieda) for the skit. Her student’s names were Yorika, Asuka and Shuma, also two girls and a boy. Right away two of the girls wanted to do magic tricks, and the other 4 really didn’t know what to do, so the first hour or so of our time we had to write was kind of wasted. I was hoping they would jump on it and come up with some ideas, but it was tough for them to work together not knowing each other so much and being 1st year students and being boys and girls together and having to write the skit in English! Jessie had some good ideas from the beginning choosing these robot masks from the prop box and saying we should do something where everyone turns into a robot. For our second writing/practice session Toru and Shuma weren’t really getting on top of things so I sat down with them and Toru said to me, “Luther, this is really hard.” So it wasn’t a lack of trying that was getting them nowhere, it was just a matter of being overwhelmed and not knowing where to start. So I wrote a few lines of dialogue for them to try and get the ball rolling. Once we had a general idea of the plot it was time to move on to a new activity, but later Toru came to me and said he had some great ideas for the skit, so the next session had Toru writing his own dialogue until the script was complete. I was really happy to see all 6 of them excited over their skit and I was also very impressed by the extent of their English knowledge already.

In our skit Jessie and I were the MCs for a talent show. Asuka and Misaki did a magic show doing a card trick and the “pulling the rope through the neck” trick that I had taught them early on in the camp. “How does she do it?” Yorika and Kanami did a baton act where they balanced them and tossed them to each other with Kanami purposefully dropping it and hurting Yorika. “Ouch!”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Ok, Ok, Ok.”
Next was a dance by Shuma. He came up with it all by himself and involved him wearing Minnie mouse ears while holding a Japanese fan and singing an Okame type song while doing what looked like a traditional Japanese dance. It was completely hilarious!
“I am the dancing Shuma.”
“I will perform a dance for you.”
“I worked VEry HArd.”
“Please enjoy.”
Toru was introduced as Evil Toru (foreshadowing?) and did a pretend experiment where he created a potion. We all tried some (except for Shuma) and turned into robots. I loved Toru’s evil laugh! Shuma said to change us back, so Toru said that if Shuma beat him at a game of poker he would make an antidote, but if Toru won, Shuma would have to drink the potion. He agreed. Shuma got a royal flush but Toru refused to change us back and told us to “Get Shuma!” Shuma took out a sword and said:
“I am the dancing Shuma! Go to Heaven, or go to Hell!” Which was a line Toru wrote and was hysterical. Then he killed us all and got the recipe for the antidote and the skit was over. Our group won the award for most original skit.

Again, all the kids were great fun. Many of them were super pumped to be giving high fives all the time, because this is an “American gesture.” At one time I had raised my shoulders and turned up the palms of my hands to mean “I don’t know” and the kids jumped right on that one too – “Ah! American gesture!” I don’t know in Japanese is putting your hand up at face level and turning your wrist back and forth. Other things we did too were lighting off fireworks or hanabi down by the lake and skipping stones. Megumi was quite good at skipping them.

I got to know the other ALTs better too and enjoyed a couple of nights of relaxing onsen across the street. Like any good Japanese bus ours was equipped with karaoke – 2 tv screens and a microphone that could be plugged into the ceiling – so we sang songs during our 90 min. ride back to Kambara. Friday night 7 of us ALTs and the two JTEs, Yamaguchi sensei and Junko sensei, went out to a really nice tabehodai/nomihodai place in Shizuoka City. It was 4000 yen for all you could eat and drink for 2 hours. The food was phenomenal and the beer came in giant frosted mugs. It was a lot of fun. I got to relate my Friday afternoon story to the other ALTs…

So after the bus stopped at the high school to let some of us off I decided to spend some time in the teachers room before I had to get back home to get ready for the enkai (party) that evening. Ueda sensei was there and had something for me on my desk. Ueda sensei has been helping me the most over the past several weeks getting me to the bank, shopping for a washing machine, taking me shopping for household goods, taking me to the post office, getting my gaijin card, interpreting my mail, talking on the phone to sign me up for internet and translating the whole time. I literally wouldn’t have been able to get settled in here without all of her help. I had given her the boxes of macaroni and cheese on Tuesday and the note she had for me on my desk basically was thanking me for that with the gift. I said the gift was completely unnecessary, but she wanted me to open it so I did (it was just a plastic bag) and inside were 2 sweat towels. Now this isn’t automatically an ominous gift because practically everyone here uses sweat towels to dry themselves out throughout the day (in public) since it is so damn humid all the time. I even had bought some towels at the store and had been using one at school and on the train myself so it is completely normal and very practical to receive one as a gift. But the interesting part comes in the explanation she gave with the gift…
“Luther, you have been using a kitchen towel as a sweat towel.”
“Really? Does everyone know that?”
“Yes, everyone in the office is always saying ‘Why is the new ALT always using a kitchen towel to dry off the sweat?’ Everyone notice. And the towel is pink.”
We laughed and laughed. The towel she gave me had pictures of pigs on it going “boo boo boo” because according to the Japanese that is the sound a pig makes. This was also an inside joke between us. I am so sad that Ueda sensei will be leaving in one week. She was a long term substitute teacher at Ihara, and will be transferring to Fuji City Sep. 1st. I will miss her at school a lot.