This week has been a little odd in that there have been two days off; Monday and Thursday. Monday was Respect for the Aged Day, and Thursday was Autumnal Equinox Day. As such, I've had some spare time to mess around, but have had to be at work on the days before and after.
I spent most of Monday at the mall with Kathy, Elizabeth and Nelson. We were actually there for both lunch and dinner. I enjoyed it, though. My purchases: a memory foam pillow and two blocks of cheese from Kaldi's. Kaldi's is the international food store, and possibly the only place in Kochi that sells real cheese. Another entertaining thing about my visit to the mall was that I ran into a group of my students from YJHS. I didn't recognize them, but Elizabeth noticed them staring at us. They verified that I was indeed their English ALT, but didn't actually say anything to me. They looked incredibly confused to see me there. I guess they probably never thought about the fact that their teachers have lives outside of school. I imagine it was also strange to see me in casual clothes and purple eyeshadow.
On Tuesday I ended up in the unusual situation of visiting an elementary school at the same time as one of my junior high school teachers. We team-taught a class of 5th graders. I had planned a lesson myself since I didn't know that we would be teaching together, but we ended up using her lesson instead. There wasn't really any need for me to be there, but I sort of inserted myself into the activity by making sure that the kids were using their English. The lesson went well enough.
Wednesday was a fairly normal elementary school visit. The school was far away and had a poor bus schedule, so I got to take a taxi. Even the taxi driver didn't know where it was. Of course, most customers probably don't ask to go to elementary schools. The highlights of that visit were the tank full of what looked like baby sea turtles, and the student who told me I looked like Milla Jovovich from Resident Evil.
Today I went on an excursion to two pet stores. Nelson is looking for a pet, and was thinking of a small turtle or some fish. I went with him to a very small pet store on Obiyamachi, but they mostly had birds. So we rode our bikes to one that Mitch had told Nelson about. It was fairly far away, but not a very difficult ride. This pet store had puppies, two kittens, fish, baby turtles, hamsters, rabbits, a cockatiel, two parakeets, ferrets, and something that looked like a type of squirrel. I couldn't figure out what it was, and it was sleeping curled up in a ball. The puppies were extremely expensive, most of them over $1,000. Purebred puppies are expensive in the U.S., but not THAT expensive. It would seem that rabbits are very popular because they comprised most of the pets in the small mammal room.
The baby turtles were adorable, but it turns out that they grow to be quite large and can live up to 30 years. That being the case, Nelson decided to get fish instead. After much deliberation, he selected a moderately large tank and started picking out the accessories. What seemed odd to me was that he picked the tank before he had decided what fish he wanted. In the end, this worked out fine because an employee told Nelson that he should buy the tank first, set it up, wait a week, and then buy the fish. I guess it makes sense to get everything ready and give the water purifier some time to work before putting the fish in. This particular employee spent a lot of time helping us, though we couldn't understand the better part of what he said. He was very persistent in trying to communicate with us. Once again, I am very impressed with how helpful Japanese store employees are.
While Nelson had been looking at the various fake plants, I noticed that they sold mini replicas of the Harimayabashi bridge to put in fish tanks. I thought it was extremely awesome, so I ended up getting one for Nelson as a late birthday present. He seemed to like it. After checking out, we split up the goods between our bike baskets. There was too much for Nelson to carry it all himself, but I was astonished to find that he could fit the aquarium comfortably in his basket. It's not a huge aquarium, but it wasn't that small, either. We rode home, and that was the end of the day. Since then I've been organizing tomorrow's materials.
Tomorrow I'll be visiting another elementary school. This time I'll be teaching one class of 5th graders, one class of 6th graders, and one special ed class that I believe is a combined class of 1st and 2nd graders. I'm hoping it will all go well. I've heard a few horror stories about kids trying to kill each other, but I've also heard that the special ed classes can be the most fun. I guess it all depends on what the students are like. We'll see how things work out.
The odd schedule continues into the weekend; on Sunday I'll be attending Sports Festival at TJHS. I was plenty satisfied with going to one Sports Festival, but my English teacher at TJHS really wanted me to be there, so I agreed to it. Since TJHS is a small school, they combine with the elementary school for Sports Festival. I'm hoping they won't make me do any events, but there's a good chance that they'll get me involved in something.
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