Little kids and sign language.

Ok no picture this time, I’m lazy (also next post I will get the video of my "performance" up), Today was another hectic day, but one I have enjoyed immensely.

We started the day in the usual way, a 10 minute English lesson to the middle school children. This consists of me reading a page of English and getting them to chant it back in several different ways to improve their speaking ability. After the somewhat average lesson we headed off home to change clothes to visit the nursery for the first time.

The nursery is about a 30 minute walk from where we live, with it being such a sunny day we decided not to use the train but walk to make the most of the nice weather. We arrived at the nursery to a hail of “oh”, “he’s tall”, “wow” etc.

The kids were practicing for a sports day, now this is not a normal egg and spoon affair, oh no, this is full on Japanese human pyramid crazy gymnastics kinda sports day. We watched the practice and were amazed by the skill and coordination of children as young as 3!

After the practice we got to sit down with the kids and watch “Power puff girls” with the kids while lunch was being prepared, as soon as we sat down we were swarmed by children itching to sit on us. It was great fun. I tried to have some basic conversation with them in Japanese “do you like Disney?” “Do you like pokemon?” etc. they seemed to understand me which was nice.

We sat down at ridiculously small tables to eat our lunch, another chance to talk to the kids, it was just general chit chat, but I had a great time. That was our time over with the children so we returned to Junten.

This evening we were invited to a Japanese sign language class by Nishimura-san, one of our night class members. He is one of the teachers at the JSL club. I was apprehensive at first but this all disappeared when we were greeted by smiling faces as we entered the room.

Most Japanese are extremely shy with new people but these deaf people were so outgoing, it was great meeting with them and learning something from them. They all seemed amazed by how much we learnt in the one session, our name, age, family members, birthplace, times of day, numbers. You couldn’t wish to meet nicer people I am so glad I went and that we will see them again next week.