| Tuesday, September 05, 2006 |
11:16 am
This weekend is my school's sports festival. In Japan, that's a pretty big thing. In this country a lot of emphasis is placed on social activities. It's all about team building! The students are all given jobs to do in the weeks, sometimes months, leading up to an event. Then they practice and practice and practice so that when the day comes, no one has a even a chance to f**k up. They know the routines so well, they could do them backwards in their sleep.
When I first moved here I thought that Japanese people had this miraculous built in ability to know exactly what was going on in every situation without anyone ever actually saying anything. It certainly seemed so. Things run by clockwork here and there's never a coiffeured hair out of place. It's amazing to watch! Anyway, after living and working here for two years the mystery is sadly gone. The truth of the matter is that they drill every move of every event into them. I can't deny that it's effective, but it kinda takes the excitement and anticipation out of it I feel.
Anyhoo, sports day is one of the biggest events in the school year and actually one of the most fun! It's certainly nothing like the school sports days I remember. I'll try and upload some pictures after the event. It has to be seen to be believed! The students have been here all through the school holidays, practicing in the suffocating heat of the Japanese summer. You've got to take your hats off to them, these kids are dedicated! Even the sporting events are practiced to perfection. And they're STILL practicing! Hence why I'm SO BORED!!!!
With the sports festival taking obvious precendence to actually doing any academic work, I have got very few classes until the big day. I've spent all morning marking papers. My other option is to watch the students practice, and there are only so many times I can watch them cycle up and down the play ground on their unicycles. Yes, I said unicycles. Pretty cool huh! For some reason every child in Japan is taught to ride a unicycle at elementary school. It's quite something... the first time you see it. Then after many hours have passed and no-one is falling off anymore, it kinda loses it's appeal. So anyway, here I am blethering away to you lot instead. Nae luck!
Leading on from the marking papers thingy, I actually have some good advice to impart to any teachers real or pretend (I class myself in the pretend bracket): Get down to the stationary shop and treat yourself to an ERASABLE PEN! I never knew it was possible, but yet another perk of living in this truly unique country is erasable pens. They're truly magic. As any teacher (real or not) knows, marking papers is not exactly the greatest part of the job. You may come across the odd gem, like when one of my students wrote "it's dangerous to ride a dike without a helmet", but generally it's pretty mind numbing. The majority of the students have either copied their answers from the text book or a friend and it doesn't make for very interesting reading. The result... sleep marking. I often nod off mid sentence with the red pen in my hand, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Very dangerous and it doesn't look very professional when the poor kids paper is returned to them covered with tipex (white-out).
Enter the erasable pen! You drop off, you wake up to find red scribbles over your students homework and instead of turning to the tipex, you turn over your pen and simply rub it out. It's PURE GENIUS! All hail the erasable pen! A truly magnificent and highly practical invention.
Whoever invented the erasable pen - I LOVE YOU!!!!
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