Month 7 Update

October came and went too quickly. The month began with delightful weather and suddenly it was COLD. The days at work were filled with preparations for the second Kids and Parent’s Day in the middle of October. This time, parents, grandparents, and siblings observed stations, English, playtime, and Japanese class. My class put on a little play called “The Spider’s Web” and surprisingly, none of them came down with stage-fright. It’s funny because last Kids and Parent’s Day was on Father’s Day and this Kid’s and Parent’s Day was on my dad’s birthday! The best part about this event is the meal that follows. One of my supervisors was a chef in his prior years and he made the best chili I have ever tasted (Mom, if you’re reading this, yours is better). There was also hot dogs, salmon, pasta salad, green salad, and oh, I almost forgot to mention the PUMPKIN PIE! It was actually my job to cut the pies the following day when we helped the other campus with their Kids and Parent’s Day. There were over 15 pies and I cut each one into 16 pieces… if you do the math, that’s a lot of slicing. I learned this cool trick from my baking-star mom that cold baked goods are easier to cut with a warm knife. Thanks mom. I later found out that they gave this job to me because nobody else enjoyed it lol. I kinda liked it. Guess who will be cutting the pies next year?

My amazing teaching partner’s birthday was also in the middle of October, so we celebrated her with a trip to the Iwate prefecture for some flying dango! What? So dango is basically balls of mochi on a stick slathered in some sort of paste or glaze. There’s this place in the Iwate prefecture (I don’t know exactly what it’s called) that sends dango to you in a basket suspended over a rocky valley. Pretty cool and totally worth the 500yen. Our dango toppings were black sesame, anko (red bean paste), and a sweet soy sauce. My favorite was the anko of course. After we filled our bellies with glutinous rice paste, we headed to the Geibeki gorge for a boat tour through the canyon. Our boat was very wide and flat, controlled by one slender Japanese man. There were about 25 people on our boat and the man across from us was kind enough to share his fish food with our group. There were many small fish in the water but I was totally shocked to see humongous koi swimming alongside our boat. When we got to the end, we were let off the boat to stretch our legs and walk around for a few minutes before heading back to the original dock. Our guide filled the gorge with notes from a traditional Japanese song as he rowed us back. What a beautiful experience!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can’t think of a specific word to describe it.

10/19
In America, kindergarten classes take trips to the pumpkin patches. My class went to a potato garden instead for the annual “Potato Dig”. Dressed in blue smocks, rubber boots, and yellow caps, my students got their hands dirty as they dug up as many sweet potatoes as possible. We also greeted many bugs along the way. When we got back to school, the potatoes were sorted, put into bags, and sent home with the students! The next day, some students told me about the potatoes they ate with dinner and some students had potato in their bentos from home!

Someone very special visited me at the end of October, but I made a separate post for that 😉

10/31
Happy Halloween! No costumes or trick-or-treaters for me this year. Halloween isn’t a super big deal in Japan as it is in America. Some people do put on costumes and go out at night, but I didn’t do anything crazy to celebrate. Instead, we did a Potato Roast at school! It’s kind of tied to the Potato Dig we did a couple weeks before, but we didn’t use potatoes from that garden. As the students arrived at school, I helped them wrap a potato in damp newspaper and two layers of aluminum foil. We packed up and headed to the other campus for the roast. Some very brave helpers started a great big fire and we gathered around with our potatoes in hand. Class by class, we threw our potatoes into the coals. And that was it. A bit anticlimactic, but most of the work was done by the people tending to the fire and retrieving the potatoes from the ashes. We ate lunch together outside while we waited for the potatoes to be ready. Handkerchiefs are a necessary pocket accessory in Japan and each kid held out his or her personal handkerchief to receive a potato. So cute. We ate our potatoes together, took a class photo, and headed back to our campus smelling like campfire. Goodbye October.