Pop Culture Passion: Crane Games

I’m addicting to a lot of Japanese pop culture.  Anime, tokusatsu, j-pop, and now crane games.  It makes sense, after all crane games combine the skill and precision of a video game with the instant payoff of a toy or stuffed animal.  I’ve become pretty good at them actually, and now I want to impart a few things I have learned the hard way, so maybe next time you visit Japan you won’t blow all your money trying to win that oversized matsuri circle cat.

Tip #1: Location, Location, Location

Where you play crane games can be every bit as important as how you play them.  Look for smaller arcades that are staffed by just a few people.  The reasons for this are many.  Smaller stores are more likely to offer you help with the machines, literally opening them up and resetting the toys in a better position.

They are also more likely to switch out prizes for you, not only moving the prizes around inside one machine, but trading out a prize from one machine for a similarly sized/priced toy from another.  The reason for all this help is simple: these stores want your business.  The ones located under a Tsutaya or Taiyo already get enough traffic by virtue of being near big name stores.  Furthermore, I believe the small number of pachinko machines they all seem to have toward the back sustain these smaller stores.

Tip #2: Only One Prize is Winnable

Hint: It's the Blue One

With precious few exceptions, there will only be one prize in the stuffed animal machines that you have even the slightest chance of winning.  Look for one near to or hanging over the goal.  Unlike American machines, you won’t be able to actually lift any of the prizes.  Instead, you should try to push them toward the goal.  Notice in the picture above how the right arm of the crane hangs down lower than the left.  It won't be able to pinch or lift anything.  Try to get the closer arm just to the other side of the prize rather than squaring up the claw in the hopes of grabbing it.

Tip #3: Know the Rules

There are a wide variety of crane games in Japan.  I’ve played ones where you have to get a pair of glasses to fall off a bar, get bouncing balls to fall into various containers, release marbles into a plinko-like board, and drop dice into a ceramic bowl.

The point here is that the goal of any given game may not be readily apparent, and the rules, while often written on the machine, are obviously in Japanese.  The one above explains that you have to get exactly two dice into the bowl and will get a prize based off the total number.  Any more than two and you should call over one of the workers to reset it.  Not knowing the rules can sometimes lead to wasted games, so it pays to watch a few people play before you try so you can see what they do.

Tip #4: Play For What You Can Win, Not What You Like

It may be tempting to throw a lot of money at the machines where you can win a PSP, DS, or MP3 player, but by and large those prizes are more expensive because the machines are much, much harder to win.  If you see something you like, you should give the machine a shot, but if you can tell the game is rigged or simply too difficult, stop and go somewhere else.  I’m not saying to play games with prizes you don’t want, just that it’s better to think in terms of if you can win, not whether or not you like the prize.

Presents!

Tip #5: Know When To Quit

As I’ve said, these games can get incredibly addictive.  Part of knowing how to play is knowing when to quit.  Set a cap for yourself or find some other way to limit the amount of money you spend.  I usually spend only 1000 yen per visit to any given shop, or about ten US dollars.  Still, I rarely walk out without having won something.  Hopefully, if you’re ever in Japan and can actually use this advice, you will find luck playing these games too.  And now, a cavalcade of prizes:

Cute Chopper

Nightmare Chopper

Probably My Favorite Prize Thus Far

FMA Tumbler

The Care-Bear Stitch Army

Quality Control? What's that?

Class Report: Japanese Culture

Third graders from Ms. Tsuruta’s class wrote up short reports in English about Japanese culture.

 
That’s about half of all my third graders, here are a few of my favorites:

Tsukasa wrote about Osaka Castle.  Naturally, even armed with an Japanese to English dictionary, there are a few grammar mistakes.  I didn’t correct these, and honestly I’m pleasantly surprised with how well they came out considering how far outside most of my kid’s comfort zones this type of writing falls.  Case in point, notice how Tsukasa, for the most part, succeeds in using the right tense when talking about the castle now and talking about Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s life.

 
Bushi and anime: two aspects of Japanese culture I imagine many living back in the states are familiar with.  I like the “very cool!” written up by the picture of Kenshin.  Plus, this student has taught me how to say professional killer, not that it’s a very useful phrase, but interesting nonetheless.

This is probably only amusing to me because this particular student talks about Haruhi Suzumiya all the time.  He knows I’ve seen and enjoyed the anime and even used his knowledge to “cheat” during a game in which the students asked me if I had ever done something.  All that aside, however, this is a pretty good synopsis of the series and even mentions the different media it’s been adapted to.  Good use of punctuation too.  Most students place names of books, movies, etc. into quotes like this「」and capitalize the entire thing.

 
Kana not only wrote a lot, but I can tell she was trying to use some of the grammar they had recently learned, such as saying her mother’s tempura is “more delicious” than hers.  I also really like the line “Like a fried potato for Americans.”  It may be a fragment, but the fact that she used a simile is really impressive.  What’s more, it seems to be aimed at her audience (i.e. people who can read English) by using an example from America.

I hope you enjoyed some of the writings of my kids.  These are some of my strongest seniors and these papers in particular are some of the most creative and varied that I have seen.  Almost all of them have continued to come in for lessons over the break as well and I look forward to seeing what they are truly capable of once school starts up again.

Class Report: Body Parts

Just before summer vacation, I had one last class with my fifth graders.  This one was a bit different though.  My JTE didn't want to start the next chapter of the book right before vacation and risk the kids forgetting everything, so we did a mini lesson about body parts instead.  This is a fairly common topic for English lessons and can really go either way depending on how much the kids know and if they can understand somewhat difficult directions.

First, we taught the kids the song "Head, shoulders, knees, and toes" which most of them already knew.  We sang the song a few times, first with the CD, and then on their own so we could go a little faster.  We had the kids pair up and play rock paper scissors, with the winners forming one circle and the losers forming a larger one around it, just like we did for the introductions lesson.  This time, I would play the song and stop it at random, shouting out a body part.  The kids had to find their partner in the opposite circle and touch the body part I had called out.  The kids really enjoyed this game so we played quite a few times.

The last game, and definitely the hardest to explain, was Simon Says.  It is truly frustrating how difficult it can be to explain this game to kids and teachers who have never heard of it.  Fortunately, my homeroom teacher knew how to play and was able to translate so that the kids understood.  I think a few kids were still unsure about how to play, but once we started it didn't take long for them to catch on.  This is the other difficult thing about this game; kids get good at it really fast.  Playing the normal way with touching the body part you call out works well for about two or three games, then you have to get creative.

About the third game in, I told the kids that they had to listen to what I said and not what I did.  So if I touched my head and said "Simon says touch your knees" those who just mimicked me were going to be out.  Some ofthe kids were quite surprised by this new challenge, but everyone seemed willing to try.  Changing the rules this way also helps reinforce the English, I feel, because kids have to actually thing about what you say, rather than just listening for the "Simon says" and mirroring you.  I could actually see some of the kids thinking really hard at first about what part to touch, but after a few games they seemed to have an easier time with it.

Lastly, I invited my homeroom teacher to lead the class in a few games.  This was mostly so I could get a few pictures of the kids, but all in all I think it was good practice for her too.  She seemed really nervous to try and it was really nice of her to put herself out there like that.  She had to start slow at first, but soon she was calling out body parts just as quickly as I did.  We played one final game where we both alternated calling out body parts. I think it was the longest I have ever played the game, probably eight or nine rounds total, but it was great fun.  I think the kids really enjoyed it too.

With the start of school only a week away, I'm getting really excited about going back to teaching the elementary kids.  I worry about how much they've retained over summer break, but I imagine that is something all the teachers think about.  We've only covered a few chapters, so I will be happy if they remember how to start class in English.  The rest can be easily enforced by doing things like asking how many people they talked to or how many papers they need for a row of students.

Class Report: May I Ask?

For a change of pace, I thought I'd show what my middle school students have been up to. These pictures were taken back in June.  As you can see, the prompts at the beginning are typed up, but the rest was left to my kids' imaginations.

This one is the closest to the example out of the book, in which a student gets a letter from America but can't read it. I just like that the person in the prompt is going to hand over a car for free and thanks the other person for taking it off their hands.

This one is a bit more complex, with a bit of extra dialogue. I appreciate the effort and it was really well written. 

 

 How can you not love the randomness of this entry? What's even better is, because the way it's written, I'm not sure if Toko loves the other person or herself.

This really represents the best of both effort and humor.  I have no idea where these kids learned "street cat" or if they just cobbled the two words together. There are naturally a few mistakes, but it's only because they are trying something so different. Probably my favorite out of this bunch.

Hope you enjoyed my students' writing.  I've got some from the middle school third graders as well about Japanese culture that I'll put up later this week.

Photo Um...It's Still Friday Where You're At Right?: Kabuto-mushi Slide

A beetle slide at one of Hondo's preschools.  I don't have the pleasure of teaching at anything below elementary, but I know some ALTs who do.

I only noticed this thing because the school happens to be near one of my favorite restaurants. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Girls Volleyball Practice

Sometimes Japan is weird by virtue of being like America. Case in point, I now expect all my kids to come to school every morning,despite being the middle of summer vacation.  Why wouldn't they? They stay until 7:30PM every day when school is in session doing club activities and even come in on the weekends.  Imagine my surprise, then, when I returned from my trip to America to find the school virtually empty, save for a few teachers and the tennis club. The reason, I discovered,was Bon, a holiday in which the Japanese return to their home town and clean the graves of their ancestors in veneration of the dead.  While not listed as an official holiday, people often take off of work during this time.

The tennis team, which had a game on Tuesday, was still practicing on Monday, but were given the rest of the week off.  I really wanted to go see their game, but I was told I'd have to take vacation time in order to go, so decided against it. As a result, when the kids returned to school today, I had no one to practice with.  Rather than do nothing, I decided to ask the girls volleyball team if it would be okay to exercise with them and watch their practice. An odd choice to be sure, seeing as we have a boys volleyball team, but I've had a lot more communication with the members of the girls team and so it was easier for me to talk with them.

I'd heard from another ALT that volleyball is usually where you find your most energetic girls and that the exercise was a bit more intense.  I don't know if I'd say that practicing with the volleyball team was harder, but it was most certainly different. The biggest change was the amount of time spent exercising, as opposed to practicing the sport.  Only in the last hour and a half did we even go into the gym.  The rest of the four hours was primarily spent jogging around the track.  I believe we finished about 13 laps, as opposed to the tennis standard of 5. What's more, the volleyball team ran at the outmost rim of the field.  It was quite exhausting, but not quite as fast as the tennis team tends to go and I think I hit my second wind about the 11th time around.

The rest of the exercises were actually fairly easy, focusing a lot on the legs with things such as leg swings and leg lifts.  Less attention was given tothe upper body and a number of the exercises were actually done while jogging, which was definitely different. Altogether, it was a somewhat difficult but very fun experience.

What really made my day, however, was talking with the kids. Saki asked how my trip to America had gone and was my primary helper when it came to explaining what exercises we were doing. She reminds me a lot of how Tsukasa was last year, as she'll actually start conversations with me and doesn't get nervous when we talk.  I asked Shoko and Kyoka if they've been listening to the CDs I made them for the upcoming English recitation contest.Kyoka said she had, but Shoko told me she couldn't find her CD player and could only listen to it in the car.  I also talked at length with Sayuri, who was too exhausted after exercising to actually practice and instead sat with me along the wall. Through a mix of English and Japanese, we were able to talk about summer vacation, her favorite subject, how she met Mizuki (one of Amanda's students), and our families.

I know there are a some ALTs over here who will only speak English to their kids.  There are others who never learn Japanese, or at least not enough to converse with anyone. Honestly, I try my hardest during class to refrain from using Japanese, but the most important thing, to me, is the ability to communicate with my students. I used quite a bit of Japanese today, always trying to supplement it with the corresponding English, I drew pictures and made gestures and the end result is that I got to learn a little more about my kids. I cannot adequately describe how satisfying these seemingly simple conversations are. It's truly amazing tobe able to communicate ideas across a language barrier.

In closing, I'd like to mentionthat one of my girls, Riru, was feeling very exhausted after practice, to the point where she needed help carrying her bag and even walking. I've already seen other students push themselves too hard (one even passed out during sports day) and I really hope both she and Sayuri are okay.