I am now climbing apparatus

I have now been to two out of three of my Elementary schools: Nishi and Iwataki. Elementary school children - ages 6 to 11, thereabouts - are awsome. They speak to you in Japanese and don't care when you don't understand them. They speak to you in English and don't care when they don't get things right. They are also smelly, have sticky hands, like to use the new ALT as their own, personal jungle gym, and are impossibly adorable. They're also accomplished unicyle stunt artists.

On Wednesday I rode to Nishi Elementary on my bike in the pouring rain. As soon as I approached the building I was attacked by little beings wearing blue shorts and yellow hats and brandishing big, yellow umbrellas. I was made even more happy when a boy caming running up to my desk in the Teacher's Room looking for high-fives; he was one of the kids I worked with at the Norikura English workshop in August. I did intros for a 3rd year class and a 4th year class, and got to eat lunch (a small, hard lump of fish, vegetable salad in a rice vinegar dressing and 3 slices of white bread with a plastic package of what looked liked plum butter but tasted like a food product possibly related to chocolate) with a very loud class of 8 year olds. I handed out stickers and homemade namecards and was a hit. I rode back home in the pouring rain and promptly fell asleep for 3 hours.

Yesterday I was picked up in the parking lot of the local cinema (which is close to my apartment), and was driven 20 minutes north to Iwataki Elementary. It's a 3-story building with a pool, gardens and sprawling school yard high on top of a hill surrounded by rice paddies and mountains. It also has a total of 23 students. They manage to use the entire school, save the third floor, but even still it's rather eerie. There's dust in the corners and the library is only open on thursdays. My lessons on animals, sports and family went over well; they all know what moose and beavers are, as well as hockey and lacrosse. I brought Mr.Moose, an adorable stuffed moose who wears a plaid scarf and who is on loan from my friend Angela, and he was a huge hit. The kids - 6 1st graders, 5 2nd graders, 3 3rd graders, 6 4th graders, 2 5th graders and 1 lone 6th grader - were wonderful. They all wanted me to read the English on their shirts and shoes. And after lunch they all brushed their teeth to hypnotic, fairy-tale music. It's an interesting place, Iwataki. The Vice-Principal asked me if my parents would mind buying and shipping him a router saw table from Sears in Canada (he'd pay them back of course). I told him that it was very hard for them to get to a post-office. This was the same man who asked that I send him pictures of animals for him to print and laminate, and then called up and asked if I really needed the one of the elephant? When i started to insist that yes, I most certainly did, he informed me that he had guests in his office and he had to go. Indeed. Something tells me that his guests didn't speak English, but he wanted to make sure they knew that he did. ;-) And in the end, the elephant never got printed.

Anyways, here are some Nishi kids on their unicycles (in the pouring rain):