  So here I sit at the computer with a Mitsuya Cider after a long day. I just finished up an English class I have with four friends. It's always a lot of fun for some reason. There's a really good student-teacher chemistry on top of our friendships. They study really hard during class and a couple even study by themselves. It's great!
I love being able to teach to people who want to learn what I'm teaching. (Here's where you say, "Oh, yeah, Chris works at a public school. He's not used to that. ) Today was my school's 体育祭 (taiikusai). That pretty much translates to P.E. Festival, Sports Festival or Field Day.
It was good fun. The kids did all sorts of things like 6-Legged Races, Relays, Tug of War, Bean Bag Tossing... the works. I spent most of the time wandering around talking to students. Now that the end of my time at Nanko is getting close, I am slowing revealing the extent of my Japanese ability. When I first got there, I decided to keep my skills secret; I wanted the students to speak English and for time with me to be "educational. " Now that I will be leaving soon, my selfishness sets in a bit.
:) I want to have as much fun with these kids as I can before I leave. To do that, I have to whip out the Japanese and show them that they can talk to me like their friends (minus some of that new-fangled slang that older people can never keep up with). This is usually met with lots of ooh!-s and aaah!-s. It's good fun in itself. I love it when it takes them a little while to figure out what's happening and after like 5 or 10 minutes of talking, one suddenly blurts out, "You're speaking Japanese! " I talked to a mother of one of my students who was there cheering for her son and she asked if I had lived in Osaka because of my accent/dialect.
I was very pleased. :) 
