One last adventure

When H, R and I realized that we were going to have one last weekend adventure together, we decided to plan to do something a little bit more epic than usual. We decided to aim for the islands Teuri and Yagishiri, off the coast of Haboro, Hokkaido.


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Friday night, I picked H up from the train station and we crashed at R’s house for the night.
We had a lot of fun laughing as the last of the preparations were made before bed.



Saturday morning it was raining, so we decided to take our time and not rush out to the islands.
Since we decided not to hurry, we thought we might try to see some famous wetlands in Uryu-cho. As we drove down the tiny, one lane, gravel road, we came upon a bear. It was a baby and we were in the car, so it wasn’t very scary, but it was quite exciting because we all had heard bear warnings, and kind of wanted to see one, though we didn’t want to get hurt.



When we got near the area for the wetlands, we discovered that we would have to hike in and none of us were dressed well for that, plus the people coming back were wearing bug nets. With H’s allergic reactions to mosquitoes, we decided it was a good idea not to go down the trail, but to just go see a small waterfall.




As we continued our drive for Haboro, R and I decided that we wanted to stop at every Michi-no-eki along the way. Michi-no-ekis are a cross between a rest stop and a town information center. Most of them have cool local products.

In Hokuryu, we found a michi-no-eki with sunflowers and dragons.



I ate the sunflower seed ice cream. It was pretty yummy.

Our next stop was in Obira, to get a photo of their welcome sign, complete with a dinosaur head. This stop also resulted in a new pair of kitty shoes.



Next was a stop at the oldest building in Hokkaido and it’s michi-no-eki.



H decided to have a lick of ice cream.



And was surprised when her tongue actually landed on the ice cream.



That night we decided with the rain that had been coming on and off, that it would be  good idea to stay in Haboro and head for the islands the next morning. We stayed in a nice Youth Hostel.

On Sunday, we got up fairly early for breakfast and our boat ride to Yagashiri.



On Yagashiri, we had a nice walk in the rain and a peek through the oldest building on the Island – it used to be a place to stay, a bank, a post office and a shop. Maybe the first shopping mall?

We also saw some sheep and upon finding out the population, decided there were likely more sheep than people, and thus deemed Yagishiri the New Zeland of Japan.



This post is turning out longer than I thought. So, I’ll continue our island adventures in the next post.

English Class today

Today I got to visit what is probably my favorite school, mostly because when I go, I get to spend the entire day at the school and really get to know the kids (which is incredible). The students are one sixth-grade boy, two third graders (girl and boy), three third graders (2 boys and one girl), two second grade girls, and two first-grade girls. They are an insanely fun group.

I was informed about the English lesson moments before going into the classroom. The teacher wanted me to pronounce the cards with the animals on them and then read the story. That got my brain going. If I was going to read this story, which the students weren’t likely to understand all the words to, how was I going to keep them engaged? (Keeping students engaged is always a big question for me, because it cuts down on management problems).

We got into the classroom and I asked, “How are you?”, “How’s the weather?”, “What’s the date today?” (the regular set of questions). As usual, most of the students do not know the month to be able to say the date. I have one third grader who seems to be particularly gifted in English who can almost always answer the question (maybe he studies at home?).

Then we pronounced the words, kids repeated (pretty standard way to start). After some questioning of students on the words, we moved on and played karuta. Karuta is a game I was introduced to in my high school Japanese class. The teacher calls a word and the first kid to slap the flash card wins it. The kid with the most cards at the end wins. We played a few rounds, with me being silly at the end and calling random non-animals (like carrot) when there was only one card left, to see if they were really listening.

After Karuta, came the story. It was about animal noises. To solve my earlier problem, I decided to pass out the cards with the animals. Each student was responsible to hold up her/his card when she/he heard the animal’s noise.

Please remember that as they were being asked to do this, most of the animal noises that we use in English are different than the ones that Japanese people use for animal noises. So as we went through the story, a few of the students held their animal up for every noise, until they got it right, and a few actually tried hard. They stayed engaged the whole time though. That was the best part; I didn’t lose any students while reading a story which most students didn’t understand.


My view a couple of mornings ago.