Tuesday

Woke up at 7:15am, had chocolate cereal for breakfast, and then drove to school. First up was 6-2 and we continued the alphabet tests (most of 6-2 has passed though, just a few stragglers left) and started the picture book making. I learnt that platypus is カモノハシ in Japanese today! The lesson passed by so fast, helping kids struggling with writing the alphabet, teaching kids the English for animal names and adjectives, and then before we knew it the period had ended. I’m definitely going to miss the 6th graders a lot. 6-1 up next in period 2 and they were also very good today. 6-1 has more people who are still on the alphabet writing tests, I don't know how to help them more since it’s just pure practice over and over again until they get it, and that’s up to them. A lot more kids moved onto starting the picture book, but a lot of them were struggling with drawing the pictures. One kid got me to draw his flamingo, and he was saying how he likes flamingos cause they’re really stylish with the way they stand on one leg haha. A lot of the kids were just spacing out and struggling with picking their animal for the picture book – it’s just like come on guys, any random animal will do! I left period 2 a bit early to go and drive my dad to the train station for his airport bus, and then was able to make it back in time for most of period 3 with 5-2. We went to the gym to rehearse, and there were a few kids who really used nice loud voices (practically shouting, but that’s needed in the gym since it’s so big and echo-y) but a lot of them were still pretty quiet. 5-2 is all goods with their lines though (they all have it memorised) so I’m not too worried. The 2nd graders will be sitting right in front of the 5th graders too, so hopefully they’ll hear them fine.

4th period free and I started organising up stuff and finally getting to work on a new English board. I haven’t been able to do much because of my wrist, but now that the bone has at least healed and I can use my right hand (still limited movement, but it’s enough!) I can finally do a lot more work! Lunch today with 6-1 again and we had Gunma prefecture's special wide udon, caramelised sweet potato (super yummy) and bread roll with chocolate spread (the chocolate spread was made out of soybeans!). Lunch was quite fun today as I asked the kids about junior high school (they said they’re looking forward to it because of the “newness” of everything), and one of the girls was reading a book called 日本人が知らない日本語 (Japanese that Japanese people don’t know) and it was very interesting, with lots of anecdotes written by foreigners (things they first saw in Japan, like beer vending machines, little kids taking the train by themselves, people riding bicycles whilst holding their umbrellas, etc.) and other cultural differences (e.g. how you count using your fingers) so that was cool. I’m going to look for a copy of that book in the bookstores, cause it’s illustrated really cutely and a good way to practice reading Japanese/Kanji! Cleaning time was a bit noisy again – the kids are just really hyper this week. Periods 5 and 6 free so I slowly cut some stuff for revision classes, and continued reading. Got off work at 16:10 and drove home and did some laundry.