Friday

Woke up at 7:10am, rice for breakfast, threw out the rubbish, and then drove to school. Today was all 6th grade and all back to back double lessons. First up was 6-1 in period 1 and 2. We did a little warm up game of paper scissors rock (I don’t think I’ll ever get used to saying rock scissors paper!) to change things up a bit, and then they grouped into their cleaning groups for play practice. Today we just focused on making their own original plays (e.g. swapping out characters, changing a few lines here and there, nothing too hard). Some interesting stories popped up with appearances by minions and Doraemon. One group completely changed up the story and made Urashima Taro (another traditional Japanese character from another story) appear and defeat all the ogres on the island before Momotaro gets there! Loved the twist in that story – looking forward to that group’s play because it’s the one where the minions will appear too. It’s going to be hilarious if they act it out right! I think the kids had quite a bit of fun changing up the stories too. Even the kids who normally mess around were enthusiastically writing their plays and practicing the lines.

6-2 in period 3 and 4 and they were a bit more organized than 6-1 in terms of writing down their original plays and deciding roles and the like. They progressed much further with practicing their lines, with some groups even running through the whole (changed up) script twice! Most notable were groups that had Harry Potter, Darth Vadar, Pikotaro (the singer of PPAP) and Doraemon appear. The Doraemon group even changed up the original kibidango that Momotaro has to Doraemon’s tools (the yellow wearable helicopter thing and the magic door he uses to go everywhere), which the kids found hilarious, because I had to translated Doraemon’s タケコプター to helicopter, so they were having a lot of fun saying “A HELICOPTER, HERE YOU ARE” to each other. One other group was also going crazy changing the original ogres to death gods (死神) then to Godzilla, then to Sadako, and then finally to vampires. I’m going to try have a prop making lesson, because all these plays are sounding great!

Lunch today was chicken curry, my favourite cheese and cucumber + other pickled vegetables salad, and a slice of orange. There were some teachers away today so there was a lot of rice and curry leftover, so I was super full by the end. Cleaning time was super smooth, one kid finished super early so he decided he was going to clean his little section 5 times. Gave them the puffy smiley stickers as rewards today. Had the last two periods free so I printed and laminated the Olaf game sheet, and prepped for Grade 3’s lesson on Monday. Got off work promptly at 16:00 so that I could go to the post office to help a friend send a parcel.