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Will's Tour Diary - updated daily (ish)!
Will's tour diary - What? Why? When? Where? - Shows - Seminars
Mon27th November 2000
Drove to Hiruma Primary. Daylight revealed
what we had suspected the previous evening
- we were in an enormous valley.
Had an amusing chat with the Principal. He
listened to what we had to say about teaching
English, and then said "but we're not
going to do it here".
We pressed on: "Why?"
"Well we don't have any teachers who
speak English"
"But you have an ALT"
"Yes, yes. But we're not going to do
English...."
The schedule was interesting - we were to
do a show for each year except the 3rd years.
When we asked why we were told "Oh,
the 3rd year homeroom teacher doesn't want
the children learning English"
Despite these ominous circumstances the shows
went well. The 1st/2nd years were OK, the
4th graders fantastic, the 5th/6th graders
didn't sing at window shattering volumes,
but they made for an attentive audience for
our speeches. When discussing Australian
animals one kid called out "What about
pandas?"
"Err...ask a Chinese person!" I
suggested. They roared with laughter. Our
humour is not sophisticated, but it works.
School lunch was surprisingly good - curry
rice - but somewhat lacking in atmosphere.
Normally we eat with the students and chat
as we chow down. In the relaxed setting of
classroom school lunch it is easy to bond
with the kids and talk about any manner of
subjects (food, sport and whether one is
married or not) but today Richard,
Ginevra, John from the neighbouring mountain
village and I ate segregated in the Principal's
office. Afterwards the 1st and 2nd graders
invaded and presented us with information
sheets to fill out. Questions included:
-special talents
-desires
-our 3 sizes (bust, waist, hip)
The homeroom teachers also joined us, giving
us the opportunity to explain that whereas
in Japan people use rock/scissors/paper to
make important decisions, for example, who
will head up the LDP, in the west we use
heads or tails.
Later in the afternoon we had ourselves a
surreal experience. The day before we
had received a call from Crystal, a JET in
neighbouring Iikawa-cho, asking us to visit.
We rocked up to the school and met Crystal
- a widely grinning American. (This is not
the surreal bit - read on) We were slated
for just the 1st graders, but we implored
the Vice Principal to let us teach the whole
school. He pondered this for a moment, quickly
consulted with the home room teachers and
said "Sure, no problem". We went
to set up.
It was. The sound system was atrocious, but
it mattered not a whit - the kids sang with
a vengeance. We did the more difficult 5th/6th
year set, but even the 1st/2nd graders belted
out the songs lustily. We didn't need the
confidence speech - the kids were screaming
out "One more time!!!!!" from the
start. We had an absolute ball.
Onsen. Then we took off for Ehime. We went
to Nikki Lindsay's place in Saijo. Nikki
decided the occasion warranted the opening
of two bottles of Australian red, and even
stretched to cooking nachos for us.
We live a charmed life.
Will
email: will@genkienglish.net
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Opinions expressed in this diary are personal
views of Will Jasprizza. They do not
necessarily represent those of Genki English,
especially where he is making jokes which sounded better at the
time!!! Please be understanding!
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