百人一首

I'm updating a bit earlier than usual! I arrived in Tokyo this morning and wanted to get something out because I don't think I'll have time to update again until I get back to Kokura on Wednesday and hopefully I'll have lots of exciting Tokyo stuff to talk about then. So I'm updating now to let you know about my week at Shinozaki before it gets totally overshadowed by my Tokyo adventures.

Last week I was working at Shinozaki and there weren't many classes. There were high school entrance exams as well as regular end-of-the-year exams and the 7th and 8th graders had something called 百人一首 (hyakunin isshu, 100 people one poem). The students have been practicing all month for this competition by memorizing 100 short poems. The poems are two lines long and the second line is written on a card. All 100 second-line cards are placed on a mat and students sit around it. The teachers read the poems and the students had to find the second line of that poem and slap it first to get the card and the student with the most cards the end wins. The teachers read the whole poem, but the idea is that if students memorize the poems they can find and slap the second line before the teacher reads it, thus increasing their chances of slapping it first.

I missed the 7th graders' game because of a meeting at the Board of Education, but I was able to go for the 8th grader competition the next day. It was really cool listening to all the teachers read the poems, they're kind of chanted and each one has a certain melody that goes with it. I even learned three of them and they let me read them as part of the game. I wasn't perfect, but everyone really enjoyed it, especially the students! I had a ton of fun!

On Friday we also had a half day at school and elementary students came in the afternoon. The students will be joining Shinozaki in April for the new school year. We did a short English lesson for them. We did alphabet drills and taught them how to use an English dictionary. I think they really enjoyed it and I definitely had fun. On Friday night Caol and Megan came over for dinner. We watched some movies and had a great time!

This morning (Saturday, February 7th) I headed out for Tokyo! I caught the shinkansen at 9:20 AM and got into Tokyo a little after 2:00 PM. I have a JET conference on Monday and Tuesday, but I'll be exploring Tokyo a bit during the weekend. I went to a pizza place for lunch and had some really weird pizza. I had a slice of beef and pickle pizza and a slice of squid ink pizza! For dessert there was chocolate banana pizza and apple walnut pizza. Despite the weird toppings, everything was really good! I even liked the squid ink pizza! After lunch I stopped by the new Pokemon Center Mega Tokyo that launched two months ago. I have a lot more stuff planned for my trip and I'll update you at the end of the week!