I
forgot to include the answer to the quiz question last time, so I will give you
two answers here. Genki is a word that that technically means healthy, but when
applied to students it means a little bit more. Basically, if students are
Genki, they are outgoing and energetic in class, which is usually a good thing,
because Japanese students have a tendency to be very quiet and reserved.
It
looks like no one was able to correctly guess the answer for the last quiz, so
I will give you another chance to guess the two types of candy in the local supermarket.
I will tell you that so far, Hershey’s Kisses, Hershey’s Bar and Reese’s Peanut
Butter Cups have been guessed.
When I was picked up at Yashiro I
had been approached by a teacher from Kaibarra Senior high school and asked if
I would participate in an English camp they were putting on at their school. I
had agreed, and so I was scheduled to be at Kaibarra the 12th and 13th
of Aug. Now as many of you have probably heard, there was a problem with my
International Driver’s Permit that I discovered about this time. I’ll give you
the whole story in case you missed it.
Since I knew that I was going to
have to drive in Japan I had gone to AAA to get my International Driver’s
Permit (IDP). Now as the name suggests, an IDP is not a license. If you drive
in another country you need both your regular license, and your IDP. Japan is
particularly strict about driving regulations, and driving without a license or
IDP will probably result in a fine and imprisonment, and possibly deportation.
So anyways, I told the people at AAA to set the active date of the permit as
August 7th or 8th so that I could drive when I got to
Japan. Unfortunately they decided to put August 31st on the Permit,
a mistake that I did not notice, until I was already in Japan. So in the end I
had to wait until August 31st to get a car and drive, and when I
tried to contact AAA to have them send a replacement they simply told me that I
should be able to drive with the one I had, which as I have already told you is
a very bad idea, and when I tried to tell them that, they just ignored me. (Hold
on a second, I need to get my paper bag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . okay, I’m calm now). The lack of a car was
very inconvenient as I was supposed to be driving places, but fortunately my
school was very kind and helped me out, although I felt bad putting an extra
burden on them. Okay, back to the English Camp.
On Monday morning the Kyoto-sensei
(vice principal) drove me to Kaibarra. English camp was a lot of fun. We had
about 25 students, a mix of Senior high school and junior high school students.
For the most part they were very responsive and ready to participate. The first
day we played quite a few games. I think that my favorite was the game where
the ALTs were given a picture, for example a camel, and we had to describe it
in English, and the students had to guess what it was. Besides myself there
were Dana Warren, and Howard Tobochinik. I had met Dana on Facebook before I
went to Japan, and I had met Howard on the train ride from Tokyo. The second
day we helped different groups of students plan out and memorize lines for an
English skit, but that wasn’t very exciting, so I’ll skip to the end of the day.
After the conclusion of the English camp Dana drove Howard and me to several
stores and then we went out to a sushi bar with a bunch of other ALTs from the
area. If you have never been to a sushi bar you should try it sometime; it’s
quite exciting! You sit at your table and a conveyor belt brings little plates
of food past you. You can take whichever ones you want and eat them! After a
fun time at the sushi bar we went to a festival in Kaibarra. We saw many people
dancing while a Japanese band played traditional instruments. I got to try a
yummy Japanese treat called shredded ice. After an exciting night I headed home
to prepare for a trip to Yashiro the following day.
Tune in soon for the next episode of
the Adventures of Howard and Peter. Join our heroes as they journey to the far
off land of Yashiro, there to become English teaching masters. But will they be
able to survive against the evil forces arrayed against them? Find out soon in The Adventures of Howard and Peter!
Quiz: The Japanese like their mascots,
and it seems like most things have a mascot. The mascot of Hyogo prefecture is
called Habatan. Can you guess what he creature he is? I will give you two guesses since I think that it is pretty tough.
Respond
to this question and the candy question via email or Facebook. If you have any
other questions to ask me, feel free to post them in the comments section.
