Play-by-Play: Part I

Let’s talk about my week so far.

Day One:

I went to Kanano, my agricultural high school. I had one class, during which we played a relative pronoun Jeopardy game I had created for another school (recycling lessons, for the win). I learned that at Kanano, they just expect me to have activities prepared to do, before I know what classes I will have, how many, what levels, and if I have had that class before. I had had my schedule for about ten minutes when my JTE came up and said, “We have class together today. What activities do you have?”

But it’s okay. Now I know that’s how that school operates. The students’ level of English is across the board the lowest out of all my schools, but I always love going to Kanano. So I had the one sannensei class, and I ate a dried persimmon (kaki, in Japanese). I left early that day because my base school needed me to come and coach a girl for her college English interview this Saturday. Apparently, my taking nenkyu last Friday threw off their preparation schedule (oh, well – it was approved, I was sick, and I don’t feel bad about that), so my supervisor wanted me to come in and coach Yuki. I’ve been working with her English essays for a while now. So we talked, and I went home and watched Twin Peaks.

Day Two:

Because I had left early the day before, one of my Monday classes got moved to Tuesday, which means I taught five out of the six class periods. That’s a lot, even by Japanese teacher standards, because they rarely teach more than four in a day, most of the time three. Four of these five were self-introduction lessons, the lesson which I could do in my sleep because I have done it at least fifty times since school started back up in September. I literally never want to do it again.

First period, ichinenseis. I had second period off. Third period I had 2L. I have had this class before, so we did Jeopardy again, and they were awesome. “An animal that is often kept as a pet, is bigger than a mouse, and doesn’t like cats” was met with shouts of Tiger, Lion, Cheetah, Capybara (a word which every Japanese teenager seems to know), Marmot, Hamster, and Rabbit. The answer we are looking for is Dog, kids. Dog. Which they finally did figure out, after I stopped laughing hysterically at the names of Safari animals being shouted at me. They also guessed Zebra as the Oregon State animal. Wrong continent, guys, but good guess.

After we finished all my questions, they demanded Round 2 (which does not exist), so I gave them the task of figuring out what my middle name was. I gave them the first letter, “M,” and their first guess was Michael, followed by Mark, and Matthew. We finally got around to Mary, which they pronounce like Marie, so I let them have it. A group of boys in front were the closest to the correct answer, so I gave them fifty bonus points, and then another ten after they said, “Jessie-Sensei so beautiful, so beautiful” very emphatically and about thirty times. I can be swayed by flattery.

Two more self-introduction lessons.

Cue 2B Class. Last period of the day. Self-intro lesson. Okay, so generally there are a lot of boys at this school, and generally they tend to talk a lot. The extroverted kind of boy. Almost half of every class is on the baseball team or the rugby team. My time in Japanese schools has taught me to make friends with the baseball team, because again generally they have the most hilarious things to say in their broken English. I walk into class, hear rumblings of my name sweeping through the aisles of desks, along with “beautiful,” and “cue-to, cue-to.” I still haven’t quite figured out why they say everything twice.

So I do my little speech about myself and where I’m from, show pictures, etc. There were these five boys sitting kind of in the middle of the classroom, and every so often one of them would throw out some hilarious phrase in English. For example, I said I had been in Japan for about three and a half months and it was my first time here, and one of the boys smiled and yelled Welcome! at me. Later, I said that I spent one semester of university in England, and another boy sighed and said, A wonderful life. And the whole time I’m thinking, I love this class, and these kids will be my friends. I found out one of the girls in that class (who didn’t look overly Japanese and was wearing what I would deem to be hipster glasses) lives right next to me, and the girl sitting behind her told me that since I didn’t have a boyfriend, all of the boys in the class wanted me, so I could have them if I wanted. There were fourteen boys. I told her that would be a lot of boyfriends to keep track of. The class also thought I was psychic because I picked out all the baseball players by sight (secret: the baseball players cut their hair very, very short, shorter than the rugby teams does. That's how you can tell).

Then I got a tour of the farm. When I say this is an agricultural high school, I don’t mean that it is located in the middle of nowhere. What I mean is that the students are studying agriculture. It’s like a specialty they pick when they enroll. The letters after their year number indicate which track they are on. So on campus there is a working farm that the students run themselves. The ichinenseis every year plant rice in the rice paddy behind the school. There are orchards, vegetables, greenhouses full of flowers, a hen house (they sell eggs at the school office), pigs, and two cows. I fed a cow, and the English club told me about how the farm works and what they have growing there. It was really beautiful – everything about that school is alive. The students spend their time learning how things grow and move (my 2B class told me their previous period had been a lesson in fruit), and that has a definite effect on the atmosphere of classes, students, and teachers. Everyone is very kind there, and the students very young and lively. It really is lovely.

And then I went home and watched Twin Peaks. I only have about seven episodes left. The plot’s getting’ crazy.