I had one my my crazier experiences when I went to teach at Elementary school this past week. By "teach" I guess I should say more like "trying to control hoardes of psycho kids". I was actually really nervous about this, I didn't feel like I had prepared at all, it was a different school with different teachers, and I had never done anything like it before. In fact I had to wake up extra early and make some extra printouts, without the help of one of my regular English teachers, Moriki Sensei, I might really have been in trouble. First off, I had an assembly in the gym, in front of the old school. For about a minute I was just stammering, surely boring the kids to tears, then I remembered "audience participation" and that got them into it some more. It was still kind of a sloppy presentation, but not a total disaster.
Now I said the kids were psycho, but actually the school was full of really adorable kids. They just have a little too much energy at times is all. My first class, was the first graders. They already knew the alphabet song, so I tried to make some games and songs out of that. They went crazy for a game where they had to circle correct letters on the board. Then I stopped by the kindergarden class which was in a different building. Wouldn't you know it, these were the best-behaved kids I had all day. Very well behaved, asked lots of questions. Next, the second graders, where I played the "color touch" game- I say a color, for example red, and the students would have to touch something red like a backpack. Oh, there was a fight in the class too, between a boy and a girl. Fun. That was my last class at the elementary, and I headed back to the middle school, pretty tired.
In other recent news, Chizuo Matsimoto, (aka Shoko Asahara), leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult that perpetrated the 1995 Tokyo Subway sarin gas attacks, lost his final appeal and will receive the death penalty. A part of me is glad that he will die, that some vengeance will be served. Simply put, the man is basically a monster who used the promise of religion to extort, manipulate, and murder. On the other hand, how much does the execution solve? It may provide closure to some, but the damage caused will remain, and of course it won't bring back those who were lost. But I suppose these are the standard arguments any time there is a death penalty.
Finally, a big typhoon is heading this way... should hit around here sometime tomorrow, probably in the afternoon. Now both my middle schools have their sports festivals scheduled for tomorrow morning, so hopefully they can get them done in time. Of course, typhoons are tough to predict, so who knows really. I'm stocking up on non-perishables and stuff like that anyway, just in case.