Skool Dayz

Small update from school. Tomorrow is Bunkasai, or the school Cultural Festival. Kids have been making stuff for it for a few weeks now, and over the past few days the school has been in the grip of bunkasai fever, everyone staying late and practicing their songs, making banners, posters, selling tickets for food (the kids seem to have realised I will buy any ticket they try and sell me, so I have tickets for green tea, octopus balls, boiled fishcakey stuff, sweets, and a couple I dont know what they are... now when I see kids with a box of money and a book of tickets I sort of run away.) Should be pretty fun, I get to play piano 'fun quiz like music' during their quiz at the end of the day when they're picking the answers (I'm thinking the countdown theme) and hit them with a little 'Spain' after lunch, havent played that for ages so having a first practice yesterday was really fun. I'm kinda under the weather right now (my JTE looked at me as if I had aids, recoiling while saying "um... you don't look... fine... please don't work so hard...aaaaaaagh"), all bunged up and shivering so I hope that doesnt affect any of that stuff. I really like my kids so I'm looking forward to it and hoping they put on a good show. Woo!

Slightly funny thing: I had to fill in a JET questionnaire this week, basic stuff about job satisfaction, how I'm finding the whole experience etc. There was a question on sexual harassment (which in Japanese is given the much cuter term 'sekuhara'.) Now it wasn't merely "have you experienced any sexual harrassment so far?" as you might expect. Check out the level of detail you can go into about sexual harassment:

Have you ever experienced sexual harassment from any of the following while on the program? (mark all that apply)

1. Mayor/Governor etc.
2. Head of your section/school, principal/BOE supervisor etc
3. Your supervisor
4. A collegue/fellow teacher
5. A fellow JET
6. A student
7. Someone else I know
8. A stranger
9. I have never experienced sexual harassment on the programme

followed up by 2 follow up questions. Not saying sexual harassment is funny, but the sheer range of options they gave made me chuckle/die a little inside. Maybe my friend who got a note from one of her students saying "Hey there, I'm 15 years old. I'm on the baseball team. How about it?" can say she's been on the receiving end of sekuhara from a student.

Also a little funny is this excerpt from a textbook we teach from, it's Japanese stereotype number 2: they love robots. The chapter is 'Living with Robots'.

Receptionists will be replaced by robots. Robots will take care of children while parents are out. Children can play and study with robots. At night, robot guards will protect you and your house. If they find a suspicious person, they will threaten the person with light or smoke.
By living with various kinds of robots, our lives will become more comfortable. Robots will help us and support us as partners.

Beyond the home securital impotence of threatening an intruder with a light, Japanese robots are cool. Right under the 'partners' sentence is a picture of the slightly creepily almost good looking robot "Actroid", although she does seem to have the whole 'bluetooth headset knobber' look going on (there are actually none of those guys in Japan, for all the GPS and stuff in the phones, not that many seem to have bluetooth.) "I'd like to 'partner' her", etc.