Last Friday Teaching

I went to two Japanese lessons today, which were so unexciting. We just did the usual lesson structure: kanji, listening exercises, and grammar points. We have done the entire chapter now, though, in two and a half lessons. We just have all the listening exercises and the video left to do on Monday. At the end of the afternoon’s lesson, we played a word game, in Japanese, where you use the last letter of the previous word to begin the next. One has to play “nouns-only” rules in Japanese, as most of the adjectives end in –i, and every verb ends in –ru.

I watched a couple of anime episodes when I got home, before going to teach for Noriko. It is the last time that I will see this set of kids – I think I will miss them. The first class, especially, is extremely cute. Rio and her little sister Tabasa made cherry blossom trees (out of Hello Kitty wrapping paper it seemed) and Rio gave me hers and Tabasa gave Noriko one. Noriko, though, seems to have ‘stolen’ both away, probably by accident. I do not even know if they were for me in the first place, but I would like one at least if they were! Anyway, the lesson mostly went well, before Tabasa broke down crying for no apparent reason. Well, it looked as if she had forgotten she had all ready covered one of the squares in bingo, and it was too much for her when she went to cover it again only to find a counter there. Bless her, though, she tried so hard. She just kept wiping her face with the bottom of her skirt, trying to stop the tears. She did not really stop crying by the end of the lesson either, and the last I saw of her was her walking out of the door with her skirt round her face. Bless her.

The second class was their usual noisy selves, but I have finally managed to pin down Takumi and Takuya. It is a bit late, though, as I will probably never see them again! Oh, well. I can name my photos correctly now at least. To spite Noriko for not giving me one of the trees, I intentionally forgot my apple juice that she had bought for me in her car. That will show her. However, to be fair, she had not even given it to me this week, as she normally tells me that it is for me.

I came back and ate alone in the canteen. Nobody else was around. Katherine phoned me to find out Cambridge House’s address, as she was in a police station after having had her purse stolen. Very lame, especially with only two weeks to go before coming home. She came back and Nami helped her cancel her bank card. I think she will be all right.