After some long, complicated attempts at communication, they finally did arrive. My professor, a college student, a high school student, and a junior high school student with her mother.
Despite her email saying how good everyone was at Japanese, they could barely say anything and when they did, it was grating to the ears. Sensei, as she always does, distributed massive amounts of candy.
I had asked the teachers ahead of time if I could bring the guests to visit and I had a pretty good plan. I was a bit worried they might get bored of a whole day, but I wanted them to come to all the English classes, which were fairly spread out.
That they were staying a whole day was apparently a shock to the mother and maybe even Sensei. The mother was probably a bit annoyed; she said she wanted to see the aquarium or something. She eventually left for a walk or something. And Sensei went to go to a bank, going all the way into the city to do so.
The high schooler didn't have any interest in anything and was pretty boring. The little, blonde junior high school girl was the center of everyone's attention. The students basically forgot how to communicate even in their own language, and just began yelling "kawaii" over and over and over and over. Every student, every time they saw her. Some even asked if they could hug her. This rapidly annoyed the girl (not the hugging, the kawaii's). I tried to tell them to comment on her personality or at least stop saying the same damn thing over and over, but it didn't work.
The college student though, contributed a lot. He was having fun and talking to the students and telling jokes and things. The students often didn't understand the jokes and would eventually just say "American joke!" and everyone would pretend to understand and laugh. The college student loved this new phrase and began using it himself.
As far as what we were going to do, this became a bit of a fight. It is hard to talk to both teachers at once, and when I talk to one or the other, the plan gets revised, which can seem like a betrayal to the other. So when it was time to decide between doing something interesting, or doing the same thing four times, it became a bit scary for me. I managed to upset one of the teachers pretty visibly, and tried to make the other teacher explain why the plan had been changed, and in the end we reverted it back to doing the same thing four times - which was a three week-long travel agency activity.
I also walked around, trying to find classes we could visit. Since it was almost finals, no one had anything interesting. I was hoping we could go to a cooking class or a computer class or something, but they weren't meeting. Still I managed to find some classes.
The history teacher was doing a lesson on the American Civil War, which sounded great, but I managed to forget to go. Apparently, he had been telling the students I was going to arrive any second now. I was pretty disappointed I forgot.
We did manage to sneak into a geography class early in the morning. They were super happy to see us and invited us to lunch later. We also tried sitting in on a Japanese class, but it was super boring, so we left. I tried to use the opportunities to explain Japanese schools to them to keep them less bored at least. Like demonstrating how quiet they are or how test-oriented they are.
We also snuck into a math class. We tried to have them solve equations for a line. We realized how rusty we were at math, but had confidence anyway. When a student solved a problem incorrectly, we told them so. They spent a long time trying to figure it out. We also tried working it out again and seemed to have reached an answer when the teacher tried helping and thought the line was drawn between some numbers or something. When we told him it was in fact how it looked, he told us the first student was right, which was pretty funny.
For lunch, they all ordered bentous, but I recommended that they go out and get food as well. So they went and brought back Mos Burger. We joined the students that had invited us earlier and I gave my guests and a few students some ice cream I had stocked up on.
We also invaded some gym class. They were doing some kind of jumping thing. The college student and I tried our hands at it, but weren't particularly good or bad. The others just sat around boringly.
I often left halfway through the English lessons since the students were just working on their projects. My coworkers kindly covered for me.
The koto club was the only club I could get to come do something for us, and they gave us a small concert.
Afterwards, I joined Sensei and everyone to go eat kaitenzushi. Then I hung out with the high schooler and college student for a bit. We went to the Korean bar (at great cost to me), and the high schooler and I ordered milkshakes (which weren't on the menu, but I had taught my friend working there how to make one last time). Then we parted ways.
I can't say it was that fantastic of an experience for the kids, I hope it was at least fun. But the college student really enjoyed himself and is now thinking of applying for this job. So I think it turned out well.
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