lots of updates!

The past few days have been really busy, but pretty incredibly wonderful. I will be posting the past few days in a couple of entries, mostly just for me.


Tuesday:
Tour of the castle in Aizuwakamatsu. So many people here are really proud of their history, and this place plays a pretty big role in that. We also met with the mayor and had lunch in an incredibly good restaurant in town. I decided I couldn't be around people for a while, and so went for run and grabbed food from the grocery down the street. Ran into a friend and crashed in their room for a while.

Wednesday:
Elementary school visit. This was kind of bizarre - kids were pretty freaked out that we were there and kept asking us to sign pieces of paper, their hands, anything. It was fun to be in an elementary school setting and see kids with so much energy.

The school was an open design, and while the kids have really long school days (grades 3-6 are there until at least 4 with required club activities) there was a huge amount of break/down time built into the day. They started out the day with an assembly (it looked like it was a daily thing) and I got to try caligraphy (very badly, i might add) When the kids couldn't figure out how to say something, they just grabbed my hand and dragged me to where they wanted me to be. Lunch was done in the classrooms, and the kids ran it like clockwork. Classes were large, but there didn't seem to be many problems with behavior, and there was a lot of multiple intelligences stuff going on. It was interesting - the image I've had of asian educaiton huge classes of students sitting in rows and listening. Not the case at all in the elementary school.

The school has a JET teacher (who had stayed past his commitment), so I got to see several examples of his English class, which was awesome. He used a LOT of Japanese in addition to English (he had been there for 5 years).

During club time, I got to try to play the koto (pictures will follow), a traditional Japanese instrument. The little girl who was teaching me was pretty pleased that I could follow directions, which was not the case of the teacher on her right.

running and dinner. plum wine and soda=tasty. Dinner is usually... interesting. I have no idea what anything on the menu says, so I'm limited to what the pictures look like things might be. Adventures in dining.