Adventures in Japan: Week 79: Wait, is that Spring I see?

Hey! It's March!

So, that means a few things.

1) it's no longer February. WOO!
2) It's getting warmer! WOO!
3) I have two weeks of school left. EEK!

This is actually a really good thing, because I've hit the end of the lessons about perfectly for my schools. Not to mention, the last part of the book is always "how much can I stretch this out, because there is NO WAY it will go for the 4 weeks they say it should."

The students are getting ready for their Spring break, their move up to the next grade, and the 6th grade graduation. In my Thursday school, my 5th graders and 6th graders have been working on a multi-week project. The 5th graders did a parody of "have you seen my cat?" By Eric Carle. And the 6th graders have been doing a culmination project with a "my storybook" using sentences from different lessons they learned, such as "my name is, my birthday is on, I want to be a, etc."

And on Thursday they got to show them to each other! The 5th graders and the 6th graders took turns and showed each other their projects. It was really fun, because I got to sit in the back (and not teach!) and think "yeah, I taught you how to say that sentence, but you just lost it due to stage fright. It's ok, I know you can do it, and the audience didn't notice."

they're so nervous!

The BEST part was when my co-teacher from last year had me go and watch her special students do a presentation they were practicing!

turtle and crane!

They told a simple Japanese story about Turtle and Crane, and then they sang a parody of "pen pineapple pineapple pen" with turtle crane and did a little dance! IT WAS SO CUTE! Best part of the day, easy.

Though it had competition, because the 6th graders had a "6th grade festival" basically celebrating their time in the school. For this the parents came to watch them perform competitions.

Like...

arm wrestling!

Competitive leap frog! (first team there and back)

that one ridiculous confidence course you always have to have.

And they had some competitive stuff I never thought of before! Like competitive dominoes!

Yeah, I was confused as to how they could make that a competition too.

First you give them a bucket of dominoes. Then they get like, a minute to spread it out properly.

this confused me so much.

Then the bell rings and they have 3 minutes to set up as long a line as they can!

Gotta get the spacing just right.

This is great because not only is it spacing and balance and all that fun stuff, but they gotta figure out how not to get into each other's way! One team misjudged and had a gap of about 6 inches in the middle of their line, so they had to go back and fix that!

and heaven forbid you start the collapse early!

After 3 minutes, they inspect the lines. Then each group pushes the first domino. The group with the longest complete collapse wins! It was so fun!

They also had math relay. On one side of the gym, they had large papers with a bunch of equations with missing values in them and the students had to run over and fill in one value.

Each class had an answer checker from another class.

And after 3 minutes, the one with the most answered wins! :D It was fun.

After that, they had a "this was your 6th grade year!" slide show, and as per school tradition, they shared onigiri! See, for a few weeks coming up to the end of the year, the 1-5th graders are to bring in a small handful of uncooked rice. (in a baggie) This handful is their gift to the departing 6th graders. The day of the festival, the 6th grade mothers come in and made onigiri for the 6th graders with the rice, so they can enjoy the well wishes of the school they're leaving behind.

there were a LOT of rice balls.

And they gave me one too!

The one on the left is a plum. The right is...I'm not sure what that was. Tasty though.

And they sat and chatted and ate and watched another slideshow with pictures from ALL their time at the school.

Then they sang a song to all their parents.

their singing abilities never cease to amaze.

And then I went back to the teacher's room and put on my coat because I had spent 2 hours in an unheated gym in early March. BRR. Just because it is warmER does not mean it is WARM.

Let's see. I was tired a lot of this week. Some of the teachers noticed and mentioned that everyone's a bit tired because of allergies, and the pollen being strong this week. And I was like "yes. Completely. Totally the pollen and not me staying up, reading in bed."

By Friday, I decided to take it easy Saturday. Stay in and rest. Well, the weather was nicer. Maybe I would go to a park. But WHICH park? Well, my friend hasn't seen the tower of the sun yet....

So much for resting.

The tower of the sun is such a perfect example of Japan. Because it's impressive, artistic and really weird.

BEHOLD THE GIANT CHICKEN

We have named it "The giant chicken with three faces". One of my friends says it's a sun dial, but I don't think it actually is.

Anyhow, it's in a lovely park, and we wandered around it for a while, enjoying the beautiful day.

plum blossoms again!

I want one for my future garden.

it SMELLED like spring!

bamboo!

the giant chicken watches over us ALL.

It's the "expo" park, so there are expostions there a lot. Like this time, I heard about a bicycling group, but we also ran into an "outdoors" type thing.