保育園と野球 (nursery school and baseball)

I have had busy two weeks and a lot has happened. A couple of my friends came to visit Fukuoka and Kyushu from Finland. With them I got to visit Fukuoka Tower during the day time and I have to say that the view is really nice also when you can see the sea properly from there. We also went together to the Robosquare which one of the famous attractions in Fukuoka but which I had not visited before even though it has a free entry. All the moving robots from a dog and a seal to Transformers-looking robots were nice to watch. They even could do some cool tricks.

Of course I guided my friends also to good restaurants and Canal City and Tenjin Core shopping malls. They wanted to go for yakiniku where the customers can grill their own food on a small grill on the table. We had tabehodai means one can order as much food as possible within the time limit. Oh boy, it was so good and we ate so much! One floor below the restaurant there happened to be a gaming hall so we decided to check that too. So many coin machines to try to catch something nice from figures and toys to baguettes. And so many gaming machines from speed games to fighting games and different anime games. Otaku's favourite place and we saw some otakus who for sure come there many times a week to practice those games! And during the last evening my visitors were here, it was necessary to go for Japanese karaoke. That is just so much fun!

I had interesting experiences also after my friends visited me. I had promised to give a presentation about Finland last week Saturday. My audience was mostly formed by nursery school children and elementary school children and their parents. Me and one man from Peru gave a short presentation about our home countries and then we read picture books in our own languages. Since I had an opportunity, it was a clear choice that I would read a Moomin book because Japanese people seem to love the Moomins. I also taught them two of the games I used to play a lot at that age: "Viimeinen pari uunista ulos" and "Värikuningas". I taught them to say some names of the colours in Finnish as well. It all worked out surprisingly well even though I had been a little bit worried how I would manage to do it all in Japanese. But besides of one question asked by a parent, I didn't feel uncomfortable using only Japanese. (Well, I also had some help if needed from the Japanese who worked together with me.)

I also got a great contact during that Saturday. One of the organizers was a nursery school teacher. Since I had wished to visit a day care center here in Japan, I asked if it was possible to go and see her working place. She contacted the principal of the nursery school and I was offered to go and visit on the next Tuesday. I had to accept the offer even though I knew the night before it would be tough. Our locking group didn't practice at the usual time on Monday. Instead of dancing 19-21 at school we had a long night training in a further place so that I needed to take a subway and a train to go there. But the toughest thing was that the training was hold 00-05. I cannot understand why to train the whole night through and especially in the beginning of the school week and not on the weekend. But I wouldn't even have had a choice if I want to keep dancing. My exchange student friend who joined the circle with me had told our group leader that she cannot join these two Monday night trainings we have because her Tuesday school day starts early and is long. She only got an answer that then it is better for her to quit. Wow, I thought our circle is not so strict but looks like I was wrong. Well... I take this also as an experience. I get to see more of the Japanese student life since this seems to be quite common here.

Our training session was fun and I was not even tired there. We finished around 4:30 but some of us had to stay for one hour extra because the first train in the morning leaves at 5:30. I got back to the dormitory around 6:30, had a shower and breakfast and a nap of 20 minutes. And then heading to the nursery school. I was a bit tired sitting in the metro but after arriving all the exhaustiveness was gone. The principal was really nice and guided me around all the groups from the babies until 5-year-olds without hurry and answered to all my questions about Japanese education system. (Again I could be happy that I had learned enough of Japanese because the principal said he would not be able to have good conversations in English.) It was very interesting with some similarities and some differences compared to the Finnish day care centers I have seen. It would be a story of its own to describe it all... One of the most memorable moments was when the principal said to the 4-year-olds that I would be their new English teacher. (Yes, they do start learning English at that age.) After that the children asked in English what my name was, though they didn't remember how to answer that question themselves. And then everyone started to call me Ei-go no sensei (English teacher). Oh, it was so funny!

Each age group had different color hats.

They had a real melon as a model for their drawings.

They were actually learning do-re-mi-fa..

I got a lunch at the nursery school. All the children had the same kind of Japanese dish.

My day was not over yet when I got back to the dormitory early afternoon. After a few hours I needed to take a subway again because I happened to have tickets for a baseball game. I had got those for free on the volunteer Japanese class. (I am so happy I ever started to go to those!) I asked one of the new Korean students on our class to join me and she was so happy. Like many other Koreans, she loves baseball and this was her first time to ever see it on live. For me this was the second time because we went to see the university's baseball team's match last autumn. But it was the first time for me too to see professional baseball and Soft Bank Hawks, the team of Fukuoka. And it was the first time I went to the huge Yafuoku Dome. What an atmosphere it had! If the game got boring, it was fun to watch also the audience. When Soft Bank Hawks were about to start their 7th round, all the audience blew balloons and let them free. It was to wish some extra luck because the number 7 is a lucky number in Japan. Quite interesting how different even a sports game can be here!