I know this is a bit (a lot) late, but I have been very busy with homework and activities... I still am, but I thought I should write one more blog post. So, on this day, we did not have class, but I still was rather busy because this was the day that I visited a high school. The high school was called Inage High School ( http://www.inage-h.ed.jp/english/ ) You can also see the uniforms on the website under "about". It is a public high school with about 1,000 students. As public schools go, it seems to be well known and rather prestigious and is known for its English programs. It was about a 30 minute train ride away in central Chiba prefecture.
So I met Ishikawa-san (the person that helps us from IES) at the Inagekaigan Station. We then took a taxi (not advised in Japan unless you have no other way or are in a rush due to price). Ishikawa-san took me to the main entrance to the school, then gave me a bento (a homemade boxed lunch), some information for a visit to an elementary school on Friday and info on karaoke for the same day after the school visit. We arrived at the school at 11, so quite a few hours into the day. She then put me in the care of the vice-principle of the school. I switched into some loaned indoor slippers (no shoes allowed in school). I was also asked to wear a mask because apparently about a fourth to a fifth of the school was out with the flu sadly, so a few of the classes were not full and a few even canceled. The VP introduced me to the principal of the school before anything else. He walked me around the school a bit giving me a tour, then took me to four English classes. In most of them, I just sat in the back and the teacher ignored me for the most part, but for one of the English classes, the teacher asked me to come to the front of the room and do a self introduction. This typically involves bowing, saying nice to meet you all, a bit about myself, please take care of me, then Q&A time. There were only a few questions (it seems like everyone was very quiet and shy towards me so they were too timid to talk much to me, which was true across the board). I found it shocking that a room full of 30 or so 17 year-olds can be almost dead silent during group work and make almost no noise even when answering questions in class. There were four classes that I sat in on, two were the same level and two were unique. Apparently all classes that are same grade level and same subject study the exact same thing at the exact same time. Two classes were discussing why obesity is a problem in the US (in English), one class was talking about history and what sounded a bit like Darwinism (also in English), and the last English class was people preparing for a comparative presentation between two products (everything from Disney to places to visit to contact lenses). In this last class, I was walking around trying to talk to people and possibly help them with their presentations which also had to be in English. People's responses were pretty bland and stilted though (just because I am a random white guy (and stranger) in their class who might or might not speak any Japanese), this was rather unfortunate. I then had lunch with Ishikawa-san's son who also attends this school. I ate with the whole class in their room, but while many people seemed quite interested in me, none had the nerve to come up and talk to me and the few people I tried talking to did not talk much at all. There was, however, lots of staring (both outright staring and the classic repeated glancing) and a few girls who never talked to me, but waved from across the room very briefly then acted as if they had not (haha). After lunch I visited Calligraphy which was an incredibly small class (about 10 people) and mostly girls with one random foreigner mixed in for good measure. The calligraphy was amazing and makes me want to practice that more. I then went to a middle school Japanese class. They were talking about TV programs. Interesting thing I noticed was that the middle schoolers wear name tags and the high schoolers do not. In this class, we came in part way through the lecture and left just before it ended. There was this adorable little girl that glanced back at the random foreigner with the VP observing the class, but this one girl glanced, glanced again, got really wide eyed, wispered briefly to her friends, and glanced again before talking very quickly to her friends. It was rather funny.
After this, I visited a geography class. That day, they were just starting to talk about the economy and populations of the major east and southeast countries in Asia. This was the only class really where someone made a decent effort to reach out to me. In this case, the girl that was sitting next to me asked if I wanted to share her book so I could follow the lesson and chat a little bit. This was the only class where I stayed for the full period. For all of the rest of the class, the VP and I would stay for about half of a class, then move on to another one. After this class, I met up with Ishikawa-san's son again and we walked back to the strain station together.
I guess I should also note that the VP was my guide the whole day, never really leaving my side except during lunch. He was extremely nice, but did not really speak much English (which was fine as I was speaking in Japanese the whole time anyways). Also, everyone was super quiet except one class where people got really excited when I walked into the room for some odd reason. Though every class paused and looked whenever the VP and I walked in.
Sorry, but I did not really take any pictures here, I felt that would be too out there (it is a school after all). The best pictures that I have are just on the school website.
After school, I returned to Shin-urayasu to catch the last 30 minutes of Karaoke that I missed to visit the school. I did not sing anything into the mike, but I sang (to myself more or less) and enjoyed myself. It was almost worse than actually missing it fully though because then I knew what I was missing. I felt pretty cool walking into it with my face mask though.
So I met Ishikawa-san (the person that helps us from IES) at the Inagekaigan Station. We then took a taxi (not advised in Japan unless you have no other way or are in a rush due to price). Ishikawa-san took me to the main entrance to the school, then gave me a bento (a homemade boxed lunch), some information for a visit to an elementary school on Friday and info on karaoke for the same day after the school visit. We arrived at the school at 11, so quite a few hours into the day. She then put me in the care of the vice-principle of the school. I switched into some loaned indoor slippers (no shoes allowed in school). I was also asked to wear a mask because apparently about a fourth to a fifth of the school was out with the flu sadly, so a few of the classes were not full and a few even canceled. The VP introduced me to the principal of the school before anything else. He walked me around the school a bit giving me a tour, then took me to four English classes. In most of them, I just sat in the back and the teacher ignored me for the most part, but for one of the English classes, the teacher asked me to come to the front of the room and do a self introduction. This typically involves bowing, saying nice to meet you all, a bit about myself, please take care of me, then Q&A time. There were only a few questions (it seems like everyone was very quiet and shy towards me so they were too timid to talk much to me, which was true across the board). I found it shocking that a room full of 30 or so 17 year-olds can be almost dead silent during group work and make almost no noise even when answering questions in class. There were four classes that I sat in on, two were the same level and two were unique. Apparently all classes that are same grade level and same subject study the exact same thing at the exact same time. Two classes were discussing why obesity is a problem in the US (in English), one class was talking about history and what sounded a bit like Darwinism (also in English), and the last English class was people preparing for a comparative presentation between two products (everything from Disney to places to visit to contact lenses). In this last class, I was walking around trying to talk to people and possibly help them with their presentations which also had to be in English. People's responses were pretty bland and stilted though (just because I am a random white guy (and stranger) in their class who might or might not speak any Japanese), this was rather unfortunate. I then had lunch with Ishikawa-san's son who also attends this school. I ate with the whole class in their room, but while many people seemed quite interested in me, none had the nerve to come up and talk to me and the few people I tried talking to did not talk much at all. There was, however, lots of staring (both outright staring and the classic repeated glancing) and a few girls who never talked to me, but waved from across the room very briefly then acted as if they had not (haha). After lunch I visited Calligraphy which was an incredibly small class (about 10 people) and mostly girls with one random foreigner mixed in for good measure. The calligraphy was amazing and makes me want to practice that more. I then went to a middle school Japanese class. They were talking about TV programs. Interesting thing I noticed was that the middle schoolers wear name tags and the high schoolers do not. In this class, we came in part way through the lecture and left just before it ended. There was this adorable little girl that glanced back at the random foreigner with the VP observing the class, but this one girl glanced, glanced again, got really wide eyed, wispered briefly to her friends, and glanced again before talking very quickly to her friends. It was rather funny.
After this, I visited a geography class. That day, they were just starting to talk about the economy and populations of the major east and southeast countries in Asia. This was the only class really where someone made a decent effort to reach out to me. In this case, the girl that was sitting next to me asked if I wanted to share her book so I could follow the lesson and chat a little bit. This was the only class where I stayed for the full period. For all of the rest of the class, the VP and I would stay for about half of a class, then move on to another one. After this class, I met up with Ishikawa-san's son again and we walked back to the strain station together.
I guess I should also note that the VP was my guide the whole day, never really leaving my side except during lunch. He was extremely nice, but did not really speak much English (which was fine as I was speaking in Japanese the whole time anyways). Also, everyone was super quiet except one class where people got really excited when I walked into the room for some odd reason. Though every class paused and looked whenever the VP and I walked in.
Sorry, but I did not really take any pictures here, I felt that would be too out there (it is a school after all). The best pictures that I have are just on the school website.
After school, I returned to Shin-urayasu to catch the last 30 minutes of Karaoke that I missed to visit the school. I did not sing anything into the mike, but I sang (to myself more or less) and enjoyed myself. It was almost worse than actually missing it fully though because then I knew what I was missing. I felt pretty cool walking into it with my face mask though.
I then did a cultural observation in the main Urayasu library. I returned to my dorm, had dinner, then left once more for a cultural observation in a park (sadly it was raining and there was no shelter, so my notebook got rather moist).
I kinda wanna send a thank you letter to the school now, which I can also use to give them a card so I keep some sort of connection. I also sort of want to go again and just stick with one class the whole day