Luckily, I Knew How to Gallop

I don't really have that much to write about today, but I'm trying to avoid studying so I'm going to post something anyways. I thought that I'd just kind of jump around and talk about random stuff that I haven't written much about yet. So if this is too random, my bad. I'm going to start with this past Saturday. Here we go.

Slight background info:  The youngest boy (Jion) and the middle girl (Aoi) of my host family attend the same pre-school (that's actually a part of the whole KGU system). On Saturday I went to their school event that is similar to Field Day in the States. The main difference between the Japanese "undoukai" and the US "Field Day" is... well, there are a lot of differences, actually. The main differences, though, are 1) the students spend a lot of time preparing for undoukai, and 2) tons of people come and watch. From now on I think I'm just going to call it field day, but keep those facts in mind.

I got up early on Saturday even though I was extremely tired because I really wanted to go and see the kids at their field day. Actually, I don't know if I've talked about this yet, but a couple weeks ago I went to some random field day at a school near where my host dad grew up. We ate lunch, I broke a folding chair, and Jion ran around like a maniac. It was fun. But I wanted to see Jion and Aoi at their own field day because they had been talking about it for quite a while, and I got the impression that Aoi wanted me to come. (I don't think Jion cared if I came or not, because he didn't really want to go himself.)

The whole thing was a lot of fun. One thing I didn't know was that a lot of the activities included the parents, which was really entertaining to watch. Notice that I said watch. 

Jion's "events" were pretty much all at the beginning. He had a mini race (which he won, though they really don't place emphasis on winning when the kids are this young), some marching, and some dancing to a song while waving pom-poms. I guess Jion especially hated the pom-pom song (I can't blame him, honestly) but he did his best because his mom was watching.

When Jion wasn't involved in one of the activities, he was always sitting in the teacher's lap. I guess he's quite the troublemaker at daycare, which surprises me because he's usually pretty well behaved -- for a 3 year old -- at home.

In contrast, Aoi, who can be quite the devil at home sometimes, seems to be one of the best behaved students in her class. She did all of her activites quite well, and she seemed like she was having a lot of fun. 

The oldest kid, Yuta, also came to the field day even though he was supposed to be at school. I still don't exactly understand, but I guess since his school's field day is coming up, they have school on Saturday. But he really wanted to go to see Jion and Aoi, so his mom called in and said that he was having problems with his asthma.

After all of Jion's events were done, he came and sat with me and my host mom while Aoi was doing her events. It was about this time when my host mom handed me a red scarf that I thought was Jion's, but it turns out it was for me. Yuta helped me tie it around my head, and I got to participate in one of the events. The event was really weird. They had a giant beach ball, and it was basically a relay race down to the end and back while holding the giant ball and galloping the whole way. Luckily, I knew how to gallop so I didn't make a complete fool of myself.

After the field day we went and had some really good food, then headed home.

Yesterday I spent the whole morning doing my crapload of homework, and in the afternoon I headed to the Osaka History Museum with my family. Side note, I'm super lucky that my family is so active. I mean, I know they're doing a lot of this stuff for me, but I get the feeling from the way the kids act and from all the places they say they've been that my family likes to be out-and-about. End side note. The museum was pretty interesting. 

I learned that somewhere around the year 750, Osaka was the capital of Japan. I guess a long time ago, the capital used to move a lot, so even though Osaka was the capital, it didn't stay the capital for very long, and therefore it's not widely known that it used to be the capital. There was also tons of other information on Osaka and an awesome traveling exhibit of treasures from the Ise Shrine. I'll try to explain the Ise Shrine a little, but everything I say probably won't be 100% correct, so I apologize. Basically, the Ise Shrine is related to the main god of Shintoism, Amaterasu. People go and visit the Shrine to pray to this god, and since she's the main god, it's a very important and famous shrine. I guess it's one of those "you should go once in a lifetime things." There also is the tradition that the emperor visits the Shrine once a year, if I'm not mistaken. Or at least it used to be a tradition.

After the museum, we took a boat ride around on the many rivers that run through Osaka. The city is beautiful. We took the boat ride during the sunset and there was also a full moon pretty low in the sky, so it was especially peaceful.

A funny aspect of the boat ride was the overhead commentary. The recorded commentary played in both Japanese and English, but there was a definite Lost in Translation feel to it. By that, I mean that the announcer would speak in Japanese for like 5 minutes, then the English announcer would come on and say like two sentences. But they weren't saying the same thing, either. At one point, the Japanese announcer talked about a festival in the city and then described all of the different types of trees that people came to see bloom in the Spring. The English translation commented on the festival, butsaid not one word about the trees. I felt like they assumed that people who speak English didn't care about that type of stuff. Which doesn't surprise me, because I think a lot of Japanese people are aware that Japan is one of the only countries in the world so deeply interested in viewing the blooming of sakura. I felt slighted. Luckily, I could make a little of what they were saying in Japanese.

After the boat ride, we went out to dinner, then headed home.

Today I've just been hanging around doing nothing, pretty much. I mean, I'm doing homework, but it's all in English, so I'm not super excited about it. I've been trying to help out a little more because starting this morning, my host dad left for the week. My host mom is already crazy busy with the three kids when the dad's there helping out, so I can't imagine what this week is going to be like for her. We'll see.

On a random note, I think this is interesting entertaining so I'm going to post about it.

The other day I was telling my host familiy about how much I dislike writing mini-compositions in Japanese. It's a lot of work for me even though I can't say very much, and I always make a ton of grammatical errors if I try to say something other than "I like food" or the like. My host mom cheered me up a little by showing me one of Yuta's (the oldest, 4th grader) composition homework sheets. Apparently, they signed Yuta up for an extra composition class because he isn't very good at writing (which surprises me because he loves to read). Anyways, the sheet had a section where it told you to imagine that you were going swimming. A sentence read (my host mom translated it for me) "Your feelings as you are about to get into the pool." After that, there was a little blank where you could fit two or three sentences. Yuta had written "Doki doki". That's all. No punctuation or anything. (Doki doki is a onomatopoeia for excitement. I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be the sound of your heart fluttering.) Later, there was a similar-sized blank after a sentence that said "Your feelings as you get out of the pool." Yuta wrote "Tanoshii". Which simply means fun. In present tense. Like getting out of the pool is fun. My host mom found this extremely entertaining (she was laughing the whole time). I also thought it was pretty hilarious. She explained, though, that Yuta had only written like that because he was still mad at them for making him take the class. But in all honesty, my compositions probably aren't much better.

My host parents comment a lot on how much trouble they have getting Yuta to study. He definitely does not like to study, but really, what 4th grader does? But in Japan, entrance exams into middle school and high school are very important, and if you don't study, you won't be able to get into the good schools. This is especially important for Yuta, because he wants to get into the private middle school. The private middle school allows students to wear what they want and become more individually-minded, while the public school is traditional Japanese schooling, complete with strict uniforms. Yuta is quite independent, and he doesn't like being forced to be like everyone else, so he wants to go to the private school. But he hates studying. Kind of a conundrum.

All in all, though I think Yuta is actually really smart, it's just a parent's job in Japan to talk down your child. Well, not really talk down, but to encourage them to keep working -- don't let them get a big head. My host parents showed me Yuta's report card from his cram school the other day and he was ranked top (#1) out of the 48 students in his grade in at least 5 or so of the subjects listed. His parents said they were proud, but that Yuta shouldn't stop working hard because the cram school he goes to isn't one of the best in the area, so he wasn't really doing as well as it seemed. It all seems a little cut-throat for 4th grade to me, but I understand how serious this is for all the younger kids in Japan.

And to end my post, picture time! First, here's a picture (from my iPhone, so it's not the best quality) of the view from my walk to and home from school. It was cloudy that day so you can't see the tops of the mountains, but you get the idea.

Second, a piture of the  traveling shrine  that they carried around in the festival I went to downtown a week or so ago. We were in a park at the time, so as an added bonus you also get to see an extremely rare photo of a Japanese swingset, complete with random child swinging. Lucky you.

Alright, that's all for today!