Cleaning time

So in Japanese schools rather than having the janitor clean, the students and staff are allowed the priviledge of cleaning the school every single day. This frees up time for the janitor so they can serve tea in the morning and dust the leaves of the plants and sit on the floor to clip their fingernails in the garbage. Each room has a broom locker which contains minature brooms and rags. The students proceed to sweep the floor and then run back and forth pushing rags along the floor (because mops would be too expensive). My room is the music room and though other ALTs don't clean I am not even aloud to help clean a different room.

Kamikawa BBQ

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Originally uploaded by jenelle_sedo.

Spent an enjoyable day in Kamikawa along a picturesque river. There was tons of good food and interesting people. It nice to get outside and toss a football around. Learned the Kentucky game corn hole and only played one game but Evan and I were victorious!

Sports Day

Well the students are busy practicing for sports day. What is sports day you ask? Well it is an event which every single school in Japan holds once a year. It begins with military marching, many long speeches and due ceremony. The students are divided into two teams...red and white. I, apparently, am cheering for the white team. Each team has a couple of songs and cheers that they have composed and they have a fairly long dance that they choreographed (junior high boys actually participate in this enthusiastically). That is about as far as I have seen thus far but I believe they then go on to participate in races and relay events. The thing about sports day is that a tremendous amount of class time is taken up practicing for the marching, drills, and dances. Ten of my classes have been cancelled this week alone for sports day practices and the students stay after school to practice even more and make banners and poster. I thought the teachers get to compete in a tug of war at the least but alas we relegated to the sidelines to watch for a FULL DAY!