Shirogane Primary School - Day 3

Today was our third and final day at Shirogane Primary School. Once again the weather today was great, although very windy in the afternoon. (Our Japanese friends say that is good - the wind will have blown away all of the clouds, and the view from the Tokyo Skytree tomorrow should be clear. Hopefully we will be able to see Mt Fuji from the observation deck.)

Today it was the Year 3 class' turn to host us in Periods 1 and 2. They organised a shuuji (Japanese calligraphy with brush and ink) lesson. As for all of our other activities, we broke up into eight groups, and the students introduced themselves to each other in Japanese and English. Then it was time to get started. We began with some very simple kanji (Chinese characters), and our Year 3 "teachers" showed us how to set up the paper with a paper weight, hold the brush properly and the correct order of the strokes in each character. It's not as easy as it looks! The first few characters were practised on a pre-printed sheet to give us a guidelineas to where to start and finish each stroke, then when we were a bit more confident we moved to a blank piece of paper. In the second half of the lesson we tried some much more complicate dcharacters, with as many as thirteen separate strokes. We finished off by choosing our best piece of work and showing it to the class.

East Sakura Junior High School - Day 1

After lunch, we had to skip cleaning the school today (I'm sure the students were very disappointed about that!) and headed to East Sakura Junior High School. Junior High School in Japan is for students in Years 7, 8 and 9. Some of the studnts who came to All Saints' College from Sakura City last year, attend East Sakura Junior High School.

During Periods 5 and 6, we assisted the English teacher with a conversation class, and took part in a Phys Ed lesson. Once again, in the English class, our students had to introduce themselves in Japanese (they're getting very good at it now!), followed by English, and then the class broke up into small groups to interview our students about their favourite things, and to demonstrate some traditional Japanese toys that they had brought in from home.

The Phys Ed lesson that the boys attended was a gymnastics floor exercise practice, while the girls' class was working on the gymnastics beam. It was an interesting experience for us, as we don't usually do any gymnastics at school as part of our Phys Ed curriculum.

After school, we watched some classes rehearse for the Inter-class Choir Competition which is being held this Friday. Each class has a compulsory song and a free choice song to sing. The class choir is conducted by a student, and students also accompany on piano. The class teacher has no input at all - the students organise the songs, break them into parts (sometimes 4-part harmony), teach each other and run the practice sessions. The standard of the perormances is very high.

Next we moved to the gym for a kendo (Japanese bamboo sword fighting) lesson with the kendo club. It was good fun and involved lots of counting and yeling as you stamped your foot and swung your sword! Finally, we joined in with a tennis club practice session. The students were playing nanshiki tennis - it is similar to regular tennis, but played with a very soft ball and a lighter racquet.

After a day full of sport, it was a very tired group of students that headed home at 5.30pm.