back to primary school for a day

if you were ever wondering what japanese 9 year olds eat every day at school, just look at the picture. the tray consists of a bowl of red beans/bean paste, a bowl of udon noodles mixed with veges, a small croissant and a small carton of milk (the milk here is really weird - smells like eggs but tastes ok). it was quite tasty. i couldn't believe how much this guys eat though, i was full after one bowl (and i didn't eat breakfast), but after 3+ bowls full, they were still going up for more!

anyway, today was good, it sure as hell beats doing exams all day. met nikorai, poncho (the chilean dude), and isabel (german lass) at the station today and we caught the bus to the primary school. just as stupid foreigners are supposed to do, we managed to take about 5 minutes to figure out how to pay for our bus fare, meanwhile the traffic behind the stopped bus was pulled to an annoyed halt.

we were greeted at the school with open arms, and were immediately put to work, cleaning one of the classrooms (?). after that, we watched some little kids make some pottery for a while. one of them kept coming up to us with a lump of clay and taking bites out of it. i hope he's ok.. then we went to our freshly cleaned classroom and did some basic self-introductions. afterwards, the little people asked us some questions. there is something really, really embarrassing about being in a class full of 9 year olds who can speak the language 10 times better than you (is that exaggerating?).

lunch went for about 20 minutes, and then we came to the highlight of the day - play time. i had 2 groups of kids nagging me to join their game, the soccer game and the tag game. i didn't know what to choose, so after a quick game of jan-ken-pon (paper-scissors-rock - every difficult decision is solved by this age-old game), i was put into the tag game. it was fun. reminded me of primary school in cairns, way back in the old days. then it was time to go, the students gathered outside the front door, and we shook everyone's hand. the goodbye 'ceremony' ended up taking about half an hour. some of the kids were crying too, how cute.

after that, i went with nikorai back to kamakura, and he wanted to buy a samurai sword. so we went to this little hard-to-find shop, and after he found out it would cost 1,000,000 yen (yes, one million), he changed his mind.

so we dyed our hair grey instead. actually, it didn't turn out grey, mine went a lighter brown, and nikorai's went a lighter, lighter brown. so tomorrow i'm going to nikorai's house and we are going to do it again.