First Day of School!

Yesterday was the first day of school for me!

Here I am, doing my jikoshoukai (self-introduction) lesson for the Grade 8 class. I covered all of the exciting stuff like: where I come from, what my hobbies are, what Japanese food I like to eat, family members... Yes, you are all famous in Kamikawa.

This is of course, for English classes at the Junior High School, but I was also there for the opening ceremony of the school. That means I had to do an introduction in Japanese too! Luckily, lots of other people are in the same boat, so I got away with borrowing an introduction from the internet. Hooray for technology!

The teachers are very good. Both of the English teachers speak really good English, and were very open to trying some of the games I suggested. The kids were pretty good too! I taught the Grade 9's today, and they were much quieter. I think a lot of that is because it is the first few days of school, and everyone is still on summer holiday time. Myself included!

After school, the teachers went out for the enkai (party). Nice dinner, speeches, drinking, and games. I won the "best" prize at bingo -- the electric bug zapper!

But of course, in Japan, no enkai would be complete without the ni-ji kai (second party). More drinking and karaoke! I left when that wrapped up around 11:30pm, but there was still a group headed for the next venue for the san-ji kai... I'm glad I went home though -- I was tired enough today as it was!