Being the Third Week

It’s the end of the week and Rui is out tonight with some girlfriend from college. I should be spending this time far more constructively. Instead, since I’ll be going fishing (yes, fishing) tomorrow, I thought I’d write up the blog entry for this week now otherwise might not get the chance. That’s right. It’s Saturday night in Japan and I’m sitting at my computer writing about my week. (New high!)

So we’re now at the end of week 3 and things have kind of settled into a routine. That’s about to get disrupted due to Golden Week next week. Kussunoki-sensei tells me that after Golden Week the kids all turn into little monsters and I hope that’s not true. For the most part my experience with the first years has been quite positive and I’m hoping that doesn’t change. I wondered before this semester started how things would go. When I came to Ichiko it was the middle of the year for the previous first year students and I imagine they were used to how the previous ALT, M.J., had been doing things. I gather that our styles are a little different and I think this made them somewhat reluctant to embrace me (that’s not the right word but it’ll have to do). This time around, without any preconceptions to hinder them, I felt as if I’d have the chance to really connect. So far things have been going really well.

For example, on Wednesday I went and had lunch in the canteen and three first year students came over and spoke with me. This is not in itself entirely unusual but what was different was that they were all male. Being the different looking foreigner at a Japanese high school means it’s pretty easy to get female attention. I’ve found that with the male students this isn’t so much the case. Especially since my Japanese is scratchy at best and the students realise it’s not as if we can have enthralling discussions about whatever it is 16–year-olds have enthralling discussions about these days. Still, that didn’t deter these three 1–A students who persisted in trying to explain things in broken English that I didn’t understand in Japanese long after most students would have given up. I was really pleased and they all seemed like really great guys (really happy and excited about life).

Certainly from that point of view things have been developing well. The other bit of good news this week was that the sports festival is going to be held in May. This is great for me because I was really looking forward to it last September but it was rained out (twice!). Although I’ve now probably built it up too much I’m still looking excited.

Apart from that things remain mostly unchanged. Looking forward to my two days of school next week!