First Day of School!

So, this week I finally got around to what I came to Japan to do: teaching! I visited two junior high schools, one on Thursday and one on Friday, to do my introductory lesson. Each class of students was a little different. Some were very quiet. Others were...not. But the basic format of my lesson was the same.

I did my self-introduction. This involved a lot of big, laminated pictures including a map of Florida, a photo of Disney World, and a family picture, to name a few. Basically I'd just talk about myself for a good fifteen minutes. A highlight was when I'd show them this picture:

of a specialty Florida dish and tried to get them to guess what it was. When they threw out a couple wrong answers (or just stared at me silently in some cases) I flipped over the picture to show them:
And they all got a kick out of the fact that you can eat fried gator in Florida. (Sort of like this Floridian gets a kick out of eating fish heads in Japan.)

So after my presentation I'd open up the floor to questions, and if they were completely silent I made them take out paper and write down three questions. Some common questions were whether I had a boyfriend and how tall I was (which I really should've looked up in centimeters, since they don't use feet and inches over here [or practically anywhere outside America, for that matter]).

Then the students did quick introductions in English. "My name is ____. I like ____."

And finally we played a game. I had them break up into groups of 5, and I put a postcard in the middle of their desks. Then I'd pick a keyword from my pictures (Ex: Florida) and they'd have to listen for me to say it. The first person to smack the card after I said it won. We would play for several rounds, and some classes got more into it than others. (At one point I had a student rolling around on the floor in laughter.)

And that's the gist of it. I'm going to be doing this same lesson for quite a while, since I've only visited 2 out of my 4 schools, and I haven't seen all the classes in the schools I have visited yet. But I'm having a lot of fun! The kids seem really glad to have me (lots of shouted "hello"s when they pass me in the hall) and I'm looking forward to getting past the introductions and getting to know them better.

And now, since I haven't posted any Japan-related pictures yet, have some of the castle I visited: