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.
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