Fish Jerky

This week we’ve been doing a phone conversation in my 2nd year class. It’s a classic conversation between Emi and Mike’s father about the possibility of Emi talking to Mike. “Sure”, Mike’s father replies, “Just a minute”. In the DVD version of the conversation, Mike is thankfully telepathic and appears on the telephone in mere seconds to talk to Emi. Even better are the extra conversations included on the DVD of Shin calling Mrs. Brown to talk to Judy, a creepy English guy calling Emi by mistake and an awkward conversation where Shin calls Judy. I’m waiting for the sequel to this wonderful textbook comes out where Mrs. Brown and the creepy English man hook up as a result of misdialing asking for “Mizzzzzzz Smith”.

A group of people from Sasayama’s sister city, Walla Walla, Washingon, have been visiting Sasayama this week. Today they came to an elementary school, so our BOE asked us to come and help out. Since none of them speak Japanese and no one sans a few anomalies in Sasayama speaks English, this was a good idea. The kids put together a dance, a tour of the school and a great play where the teachers translated a variety of innocent Japanese phrases to some colourful English. Luckily they did not have any of us read the script before we got there, otherwise one of might have felt guilty about all the bad words present in a children’s play. Then we all had the school lunch together. Usually school lunch really isn’t as bad as it was today. But today was this little dried fish that resembled fish jerky, a fish flake infused spinach salad, ring-shaped-ground-up fish stew and of course white rice. It was a strange feeling to have these people here. Even thought I’ve only been here two months, the Sas feels like home and it was like I gave them a quick tour of life in Sasayama for real. Since most of the week they stayed with people who didn’t speak English. The kids at the Elementary school today were extra excited to have all these foreigners here. They especially treated the ALTs like human jungle gyms and I always had at least one leech attached to my leg at all times. You have to really keep an eye on those kids, if I weren’t looking one would start petting my arms or attach themselves to my leg with no chance of letting go. Always a good time at the elementary schools.