Japanina

Watashi wa gakusei desu!

My word, learning Japanese is a lot of work! This week, I’ve learned how to count in Japanese, how to write all hiragana and most katakana kana, how to introduce myself to someone in Japanese, how to order food... three hours a day is a lot of work! And it takes at least another two hours every day to review what I’ve learned and practice writing. Suddenly, I sympathise a lot more with my language school students when I’m trying to cram “This is an apple!” into their tiny little heads and they stare back with blank faces.

I’ve also started work at Linden Hall elementary school this week. I’m working on Monday and Friday, and this week it’s been really quite fun. The school is beautiful and we are allowed and encouraged to use their art room material and gym. On Friday, we played “shops” and the kids thought it was the best thing ever. Granted, it did end up with Dom and me on the tills shouting for security and police and little hands grabbing for the money, but that just added a touch of historical re-enactment, what with the London “riots” and all.

I have also started teaching at a small English school, and the owner as well as the kids are wonderful people. She wants to take me and four other students who teach there on a trip, so that should be nice. I taught a six year old girl who found it hilarious that an upside down 6 becomes a 9, and a group of children who were very cute and very very noisy.

On Thursday, we went to a festival in Hakozaki. The festival was held at the Hakozaki-gu, the shinto shrine in Hakazaki. The shrine and the ceremony that was being held inside were very beautiful, although I can’t say I understand how shinto works just yet. A long road leading away from the temple was busy with people queuing for the many food stalls. I had some octopus balls––balls filled with bits of octopus, rather than the octopus’ balls, as I keep reiterating––and it was actually quite nice. I also had some frozen pineapple on a stick and a hot mochi-like thing filled with red bean paste (that stuff is just unavoidable). Laurie somehow won a turtle when playing one of the fishing games. It made us all very sad, how the little thing was trapped in the tiny tank and struggling to keep its head out of the water, so he returned it and got some pens instead. Slightly frightening to know that that’s the value of a turtle.

Another day of this week was wasted on a slightly more boring undertaking. We popped into the local Fukuoka Bank branch to finally get a bank account, and after we had wasted the entire morning trying to get rid of our cash, we were told that the manager thought it best to wait for our gaijin cards. By that, of course, he meant that we should get the hell out of there and only come back with official documents. The gaijin card is taking its sweet time, though, and without the card and the bank account, we can’t get a phone. This leads to all sorts of problems; today (Saturday), I went into Tenjin to meet a student, but we missed each other. This almost ruined my day––it’s still really hot and a journey to Tenjin still comes with buckets full of sweat––but I found an entire floor of vintage clothes in the Tenjin Core mall (I hope you read this, Bloomy), which cheered me up a great deal. I bought some amazing stuff, including a yellow dress that I can only describe as a sailormoon outfit, and a really quite wonderful little rucksack. I feel suitably Japanese now. You might also be pleased to read that I have now finally tried all the options that the public toilets offer. I can only recommend the “bidet” function.