Trips to Japan

Day 14 – back to school

Evan went back to the local elementary school today for one last time. The kids couldn’t wait to see us, and they didn’t want us to leave. Evan couldn’t wait to get out of there toward the end of the day. Talk about the contrast. It’s a good thing those kids couldn’t understand Evan when she was asking me when we’re going home.

While we were there, they held special curriculum for Evan and the class. They started out by the whole class making origami for Evan. Some kids handed her individual origami pieces. Other kids put their works on a piece of poster board, and made large pictures with those. I’m sorry kids, we can only take home with us the works that you put on the poster boards.

By the time they got done, it was the end of 2nd period. They have a 20-minute recess between 2nd and 3rd period – the kids took advantage of that and took Evan to their library. Of course, there’re no books that Evan can read, so it wasn’t too fun for Evan…

During the 3rd period, they played a game called Fruits Basket. ((Rules – you put chairs in the circle, one for every players, minus one. Everyone are assigned name of a fruit, using 4, 5, or 6 kinds of fruits total. Today, we used cherry, strawberry, grape, orange, and peach. So everyone are either one of those five fruits. One person is “it” at all time, standing at the center of the circle. The person calls out a name of the fruit. All players of that fruit must stand up, find and find a new seat. The person who called the name of fruit also finds a seat. Whoever couldn’t find the seat (since there’s once less seat than players) becomes the next person to call the name of a fruit again. The person in the center can also call “Fruits Basket”, which prompts everyone playing to find a new seat. It’s not fair to just take the next seat, so that should not be allowed, but there was no such rule today. There’s no end to this game. You just play until you had enough fun.)) Before they started the game, the kids listed 5 fruits in Japanese. The teacher asked Evan to pronounce the English words of those fruits for the class. It’s their version of simple English class. Once they finished practicing saying those words, they played the game. They had to call out all fruits in English. Good lord, these kids can make some NOISE.

During the 4th period, they had to take a quiz. Evan took a bit different quiz than the rest of the class, but the teacher gave her something to do. After the quiz, we came home after eating lunch with the kids. See the photos to see more of the craziness that these kids made for us.

In the afternoon, my dad, Shuhei, made a surprise visit to Kasugai. Evan got to see her other grandfather for the first time ever in her life. I hadn’t seen him in at least 12-13 years. It felt like he has changed quite a bit. He’s quite thinner than I remembered. (That makes me the chubbiest member of the family…. Ayiiiieee) We couldn’t stay home, so we talked at a local McDonald’s. We didn’t talk about our lives or anything… we ended up talking music, mostly about classical music. That’s my dad.

We thought Manaho (the girl who came along with us to 2005 Expo Memorial Park) might come visit us before we went out to the dinner, but that didn’t work out. That made our hectic day less chaotic. That was a brief period of peace.

At 5PM, we went out for dinner. At 6:30, we headed to the family’s old church, which was not being used tonight. We finally had our family concert. Manaho joined us toward the end (after I finished all of my playing) with her mother. We visited each other one last time.

Looking back, it really felt like I had no time to rest. I never stayed home all day. Every days were special. Two weeks flew by extremely fast. And I think Evan had a lot to gain during this trip. I swear that I will come back as soon as I can manage again. Evan really needs more of these trips.

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