Shougakkou visit

Yesterday was the long-awaited visit to the elementary school that's about a twenty minute walk from ICU's campus and this is the corresponding vaguely photograph-intensive entry. Before I go in-depth, I'd like to take a moment to talk about the school system in Japan. The schooling system here is a lot more set in it's breakdown; elementary school (shougaku) is for students in grades 1-6, middle school (chuugaku) is for students in grades 7-9, and high school (kougaku). Students in middle school spend a significant amount of time studying to get into a good high school; high schoolers work even harder to get into a good college. Students also almost all participate in some kind of extracurricular club, whether it be sports or art-related; in fact, the students that don't are considered to be the break from the norm. In contrast to schooling in America, college (daigaku) is actually the most low-key level of schooling, often considered the break before the young adults head out into the 'real world'. One other big difference between American schooling and Japanese is the level of quality of the college as associated with whether it is a state school or a private school; unlike in America, it is the prefecture schools that are considered to be better than the private schools. On top of that, the country organized schools are considered to be the absolute best, better than either the prefectural or private schools.

Just thought I'd throw all that out there as food for thought. Now on to the part that you're all ACTUALLY excited about. We got to the school at around 1:30, where I was able to fulfill one of my long awaited dreams: putting my shoes in a Japanese school shoe locker and wearing slippers through the school.

Once there we went on into the gym where the school principal gave a speech (in Japanese) and one of the kids welcomed us to the school (also in Japanese). Then we broke up into groups of two elementary school students and one or two SCJ students. Our leader hadn't known how many groups we were supposed to be in, so there was a lot of scrambling around to put us into groups. First he told us to get into pairs and he'd split us up that way, but then there turned out not to be enough of us. I was paired with no less than three different groups before we finally had enough groups of SCJ students with the elementary kids. Ironically, after they broke us up, the boy in my group went over to the boy in the group that I was first paired with and insisted on showing us around in the larger group; this meant I got to hang out with Andrea (the girl I was originally going to be paired with) and her kids as well as mine. We also snagged one of the assistants and she helped us with translation and communication throughout the afternoon.

The kids showed us around the school, wandering from the gym to the game room (which had all sorts of old-fashioned Japanese games) to their classroom and back to the gym. (I don't have pictures of this stuff because it was unclear whether or not we were allowed to be taking pictures during this time.)

Once back at the gym we played a little badminton and some basketball before we gathered back together and listened to the principal speak again. Then we took a big group picture (of which I do not yet have a copy but will upload as soon as I do) and then some smaller group pictures with our kids.

In the front row, the girl on the far left is Momoka, who was a sweetheart and seemed excited about interacting with us but was so soft spoken communication didn't go as well as I think either of us hoped. The girl next to her is Morie, who was also totally adorable but hardly said anything all day. The boy next to her is Atsuhiro, who seemed to be one of those kids that all the other boys want to be, but doesn't quite know why he's so popular. The boy on the far right is Sho, who is the classic ridiculously energetic little boy who's just a little too excited about everything but totally adorable in spite of it all. Standing in back with me, from the left, are Miho, the girl who helped us with communication, and Andrea, another SCJ student living in Global House with me.

That was pretty much the day; after that there was a short Q&A session with the principal (in which I learned basically nothing because he was either speaking in really rapid Japanese or it was stuff that I already knew) and then we headed back to ICU.

[For those that care, the evening was spent going out to dinner with Kim, James, and Patrick and studying for the test I took (and think I passed) this morning.]

You can see other photos from the day here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2030408&id=1186934580&l=a13412d48d

and I've imbedded a video tour of the school's gym below.

Transcript:

Here we have a tour of the gym of the... private school--middle school--primary school, that's the word I'm looking for. Here we have Andrea. And I'm just kinda going around the room now. There are the infamous jump-over-the-blocks. Anime for the win. More basketball. I think that's a song, up on the wall there. I don't actually know why it's there but it's pretty cool. And there's a mural of some, er, a picture of some sort, and the stage. The epic stage. And we're back to, we're not entirely sure what this is either, but it's, uh, it's a nice little poem or something on the wall. And there are the kids, say hi kids! Hi, yeah, pi-su! Momoka to Morie... Yosh.

That thing on the wall actually turned out to be the school song, for those of you that are interested.

Tonight is Kabuki, so you can expect another update in a few hours so I don't have to include the Kabuki rantings with the Akihabara/Karaoke ravings tomorrow night.

Take care!!

~ Anna