Small Shrine Festival

Earlier this month, one of my smaller areas in town had their shrine festival. One of the teachers invited me to come and it was a lot of fun.

9月に神社祭へ行った。E先生は誘って、楽しかった。

The first night we just had a barbecue and hung out.

最初の夕方に焼肉した。

The second day, I went out in the afternoon after my classes had finished.

2日目に昼から。でも、私は授業が終わったら、行った。

I missed something in the early afternoon, but I arrived in time for floor curling. When I arrived, one of my students was telling me that his team was going to win . . .

着いた時に皆はフロアカーリングをしていた。生徒は「私のチームはぜひ勝つ」と言ったけど、

. . . I ended up on his team and we were either last or second to last.

私はその生徒のチームにいた。私たちは6番目か5番目にいた。

These three were the judges.

この3人は審判した。

After the afternoon of sports – floor curling and mini volleyball, there was a party in the community center.

スーポツの後にパティがあった。

I ended up sitting between one of my students’ very sleepy younger sisters and an empty chair. I was thankful when one of the super friendly moms came over and started talking to me.

生徒のとても眠い妹と空椅子の間に座ることになった。優しいお母さんは来て話したことうれしかった。

My kids played taiko. They are so good at it!

生徒はたいこした。とても上手だった！

They carried around the mikoshi (festival float). It was vegetables, quite fitting for this farm community.

みこしがあった。野菜のいいね！

After that, it was time for karaoke. E-sensei had a song and dance for us.

カラオケがあった。E先生は歌って踊った。

Lots of other people sang.

たくさん人は歌った。

This person sang a song that lots of people knew the dance to.

この人はたくさん人が踊る歌が歌った。

And of course, we played bingo. Paper products are Japan’s favorite bingo prize. Look at all that toilet paper.

もちろん、ビンゴした。紙製品は日本の大好きな賞だね。

It was a fun festival.

祭りが楽しかった。

Elementary school sports day.

On Saturday we had a sports festival at one of my tiny elementary schools.

土曜日とても小さい小学校で運動会があった。

I was very much surprised to find that there were as many events for the adults as there were for the kids.

Speeches were made at the beginning.

スーピチがたくさんあった。

There were lots of events. I ended up participating in a lot of them, so I didn’t get very many pictures.

たくさんエベントがあった。私たくさんしたから、写真をあまり撮らなかった。

The last event of the day was the relay.

最後のエベントはリーレ。

We won, but barely. Note the other runner has fallen over because his shoe fell off.

勝ちた！

Second place.

二番目。

After the sports day, we had a barbecue and hung out in the afternoon. It was a fun day.

運動会の後に焼肉した。その後に校長先生の家でパーティへ行った。楽しかった。

Dinner with friends

A couple of nights ago, I had some friends over for dinner. We had spaghetti.

水曜日に友達は晩ご飯を食べに来た。　スパゲッティを食べた。

This is my friend Y and her adorable little girl, R.

Yちゃｎとかわいい２歳Rちゃん。

We had a lot of fun hanging out, and in typical 2 year old fashion, R ate exactly what she liked – about 15 mini tomatoes.

とても楽しかった。そして、全部食べ物食べたくないから、１５個ぐらいミニトマトを食べた。

R gave me a beautiful bunch of flowers as a birthday present.

Rちゃんか誕生日のプレセント。　きれいね！

We had Hokkaido asparagus as a part of our dinner. It was yummy!

北海道のアスパラ！

New friends

Last night, I went to my friends M&Y’s house.

昨日友達の家へ行った。

It’s been a while since I’ve hung out with them, so it’s been a while since I’ve seen their little girl, R.

久しぶり会ったから、赤ちゃんも会った。今R-ちゃんは２さい。

We had a whole lot of fun playing together.

一緒に遊んだこととても楽しかった。

Two-year-olds are a whole lot of fun.

Searching for Gold

On Saturday, I was invited to go “gold mining” with people in town. This was translated by my JTE. It also included a bit of a historic tour of half of town (next year is the other half).

We started in the parking lot near our michi-no-eki. We did the greetings and heard a quick overview of what we’d be doing that day – most of which I didn’t understand at all, but I just smiled and nodded along, figuring that when we got to an important part of the day, someone would make sure I knew what I was supposed to do.
After the beginning intros, we headed inside and upstairs to the small town museum. I was surprised at how relaxed it was. My students who were along started picking up and touching stuff and they weren’t scolded and told to put things down. They were even allowed to take one of the things with us so that it could be used while we were out “gold mining” later that day.

This man was leading our tour, he used to be in my Eikaiwa class and is super friendly. I think he must be a pretty good teacher of all levels because all of my students seemed quite interested in the mini-history lesson he seemed to be giving about my town. In fact, they seemed to have longer attention spans than I did.
I knew that in the past, farming had been a major industry in town, because it still is. I also knew logging and woodworking had been because I had seen pictures. But I had no idea that gold mining had also been a major thing back in the day.

Here are some of the things they used to do in town. 

Could you imagine Snowshoeing or even having to go for long walks in the snow in shoes like these?



An old-fashioned Japanese type writer, because there are so many characters, they had to pick out the ones they wanted and then put them in the thing in the back that
picked them up. No wonder type writers and computers took so long to pick up here, if you had to do that every time you wanted to write a simple note, it’d be so much easier to just grab a pen and start writing.

And, of course, an old English book! So glad I wasn’t an ALT in those days. Though, I do think they might have done a better job of teaching kids simple words before they start to move on to tougher ones.

After our walk around the museum, we set off!



Apparently we have a suspension bridge in town. It was fun to walk across it with my students. It made me laugh a lot that they all came in red hats. They were three of my first graders. It was fun to talk with some of them in a non-school setting though.

I was glad to have not gone by myself though, between the red signs with a line and the signs declaring “danger,” on my own I would have guessed the bridge wasn’t safe for walking on and that it wasn’t ok to go on it. Instead, we had a good laugh at the kids adventuresome spirits and the moms being scared of how much it moved.

After a bit more driving and showing us a few more historic places (often from the bus), we headed out to start gold mining. My friend from eikaiwa showed us how to do it and we got to work. My students were so excited to try their hand at finding gold.

The adults, of course got to try too. I’m not sure any gold was found, but we all managed to get our fingers pretty cold in the November waters. By the time we finished, my fingers were like ice and one mom passed out hand warmers to all the kids. One of my students shared one with me and then proceeded to show me how to get it to warm up so it would keep my hands warm.

On the way home 3 of my students, one mom and I played shiritori. Shiritori is a word game where the word you say has to start with the last letter of the person before you’s word. I realized as we played that, while I have a lot of Japanese words in my head, I don’t have them connected by first letter, so some letters were incredibly hard to think of words for. It was an interesting realization as a Japanese learner.

I don’t think anyone went home that day with any gold, but it was a fun way to spend a Saturday morning.

Some lunch time fun.

At one of my schools, the students have started playing janken (rock, paper, scissors) at the end of lunch. If a student loses, they have to take something from the other student's tray during clean up.

Today I was invited to play by one of my first graders whose birthday it was today. Usually I'm not included in this madness, but today I was and anytime my students include me in things like this, I gladly join.

The first round, he played rock, I played paper. I gave him the stack of bowls I had been taking from other kids (when you stick one in the stack, you might as well stick 5, it's no more work).

Second round, he played rock, I played paper, again. And, again, I won. He got my milk carton.

Third round, I thought he'd catch on and realize I was playing paper. He played rock, I played scissors . . . and lost. I not only got my own milk carton back, but the other three that he had on his tray.

Then the bell rang.

Luckily I don't mind rinsing milk cartons and tearing them down.

My winnings from the day

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.

Confessions of a Janken player

“You’re a strong Janken player” is what one of my students said about me (as translated by the English teacher). The funny thing is I have learned how to win or lose at Janken in Japan on purpose.

Janken, for those of you not in Japan, is Rock, Paper Scissors. Japanese people have an incredible chant that goes with it, I don’t completely have it down and I’m pretty sure I’m mis-pronouncing the words when I do say them.

Different from home though, is the fact that EVERYTHING can be decided by Janken here. Which team are you on for a sports game? Janken. Who just won the card in the game we’re playing as a class? Janken. I’ve even heard rumors that it’s used in Japanese business meetings (obviously I’m not present, so I’m not so sure).

Anyways, I figured out that I can decide whether to win or lose when I was first playing with students shortly after arriving. It was about a week after school started and all the elementary students from my four small schools came together at Shimokanayama Elementary, for a grand total of 29 students.

On this day, we had a big tournament where each time you won, people hooked onto your back and you kept going with this train of people behind you. Well the first few times I didn’t really have the chant down and I didn’t know when to show my symbol. So somehow, I ended up with paper. Then I realized I was winning each time. My elementary students were always playing rock first.

I thought, there’s no way, someone has to play something different. But can I win the whole thing only playing paper? Sure enough, who was the winner? Me. So in a battle against teachers and students, the foreigner who was playing for the first time in Japan won. Awesome!

Today, we played a game that used it as well. It was a game where we had flash cards laid out and the two teams were starting at either end of the line, when they met they had to say “Dom!” then Janken (used as a verb here). The loser went back, their team started from the beginning, and the other team continued. The goal was to get to the other end.

I based what I played on where we were in the line. If I was less than half way through, I would play paper and win, if more than that, I would play scissors and lose, giving the students who aren’t native English speakers a fair chance. Most of the time this theory worked. My team never did get to the other end, but I did find a few students who played something else and won or lost when I wasn’t expecting to.

At the end of class, students share their impressions. One girl commented that I am a “strong Janken player.” I had to laugh on the inside because she must have just met me each time when I was “winning” rather than “losing.”