Kindergarten Sports Day

Kindergarten sports day started off with a mini festival. The kids played taiko drums and some pulled a small float which you can see. The whole day was really fun. We set with the dignitaries who were and watched the kids do all kind of adorable events.

They separated the kids in to red and white teams and competed with a bunch of crazy races and relies. They even got the parents and grand parents into the act. They had them help with some of the races. One event they had the dignitaries and us do an interesting race. You take a string from a box and tie it to something then the next person ties their string to yours and the team with the longest string at the end wins. It was fun to see the uptight looking town officials lesson up and do the race with the rest of us.
In the race above the kids had to run put on costumes and then race to the end. All the girls were Sailor Moon and all the boys were Ultraman. The race below was with the parents and they ran through the course wearing hats connected to the hats the kids wore.
The final game is one in which the kids through bean bags into the net. The team with the most wins. However, the white team played through the bean bags as high as they could and lost the round. The final winners of sports day where the kids on the white team but everyone got a medal.

Omagari Fire Works

These are pictures from Morioka and the Omagari fireworks festival. The top three pictures are from Morioka. I don't know the significance of the statue. I do wonder how they got it did an artist come to them and say I want to build a statue of a dog, but not just a dog a king dog, but not just a king dog a king dog in a scoop of ice cream. Oh yeah and all that will be in a coffee cup. Brilliant! The top fire work pictures are a tease Samantha is editing a video of the fireworks that she took. They had a type of fireworks that I have never heard of called day time fireworks. They were really smokey and would release parachutes that trailed colored smoke. Some of the parachutes like the one above said things. The one in the picture says Omagari fireworks. In Japanese fireworks is Hanabi or flower fire. So check back in the next few days for a video of the fireworks and a more detailed post about the fire works from Samantha.

Just got finished teaching Kindergarten. I was really nervous to teach my first class. All foreign English teachers taught together. Claire who has been here a year planned the lesson and we all helped. We taught them to say "I'm (your name)." Then we did a game where they would play rock, paper, scissors and then the winner would say, "hello how are you?" Then the loser would say how they were. The most popular answers were I'm happy and I'm hungry. Of course some kids got confused and said I'm and their name. They were a lot of fun we taught 6 and 3 years old. Claire used a mix of English and Japanese with kids and it worked really well. They were excited to meet us and try and learn English.