Bingo with kids

Today we had a special work day. We had a large room of children of ages ranging from 2-13 it seemed. Some of the children were accompanied by their parents. The other 2 exchange students and I held a sort of English class with them. First, we played Bingo and we would call out the numbers in English. Everyone who won would get a prize. After that, we played hangman. The children really got into that game because they didn't want the man to die. Finally, we played a game where we put cards on the floor and when we call out a number, the kids had to run and grab the card and whoever had the most cards at the end of the game wins. They had a lot of fun with that game as well. It was a pretty fun work day.

Round 1

Last night we went to Round 1 with some friends. Round 1 is a pretty cool place. It's a building with 6 floors. The first two floors are arcades, the 3rd floor is a bowling alley and the last 3 floors are sports centers. They have some really cool games at the arcades and lots of crane games. They have some pretty unique crane games too so that was interesting. One of our friends works in the crane game area and so she taught us little tricks on how to win the games easier. I won a stuffed animal! The sports areas are really cool. You pay about $16 for 3 hours and you can go to any of the 3 floors within that time. They have tons of stuff you can do. They have batting cages, archery, soccer, tennis, mini golf, karaoke; they even have fishing! It's definitely a fun place to be and I'm sure anyone who comes here to study abroad will end up going here at least once.

New classmates

We had class with new classmates this past week. The two new Chinese exchange students were in our class. They seem to be really nice people. In class we introduced ourselves and taught the rest of the class how to introduce yourself in our native tongue. Introducing yourself in Chinese is pretty hard! The language is hard enough with all the tones and such, but introducing yourself is so long it's hard to remember. It took a while for me to be able to introduce myself in Chinese but I forgot how to say it almost immediately afterwards. It was a fun experience though.

New Semester

The new semester finally started this week! Although it started at the end of the week and thus I only went to one class. The semester has started nonetheless! I spent a good deal of the break studying kanji and my teacher seemed really happy about that, because she wants to start on a new kanji textbook this semester. Lucky for me I studied so much during the break that I learned all the kanji in the current book already so I think I'll be ready for the new book. This semester we have classes every day. That wouldn't be a problem, but we all worked every Friday cuz we did not have class that day. However now we have class on Friday and have to run to the tram stop as soon as class is over to make it to work just in time. And I mean seriously run, so that's kind of a bummer. I asked the school if they could change the time of our Friday class and they refused, so there isn't really anything we can do about it I guess. Time to cut back on meals again!

April Fools' Day

I've been pretty sick for the past few weeks and forgot about the blog, so I will input multiple entries to make up for the weeks I had missed. On April Fools' Day I had work and so I decided to talk to my class about April Fools' Day. The holiday is not really celebrated at all in Japan according to my students. Japanese people take everything in a serious manner and don't really like to pull pranks on people. I mentioned senior pranks since we were talking about pranks and they were surprised at the fact that something like that even existed. They told me they definitely don't do senior pranks. I guess that's just another culture difference. Japanese have a different sense of humor so if you're a prankster beware! Your pranks may not be seen as enjoyable here.