Lost in Ogawa

I got punched in the nuts today by a girl student!! And the adventure continues as an English teacher in Japan.

Just to let everybody know where I’m situated, I live in Ogawa-machi(town) within Saitama-Ken(prefecture). Just as we have “STATES” in the U.S., Japan has “PREFECTURES” or the word “Ken” in Japanese. For obvious geographical reasons, “Ken” are much smaller than “States” or “Province” for that matter but you get the idea right? If my Canadian cousins are reading, that one was for you =) So, Saitama-ken is directly north of Tokyo, my second home when the weekend comes around. Ogawa-machi is located in central-west Saitama and is only ONE 70 mins. train ride away from reaching the outskirt of Tokyo. Telling people Ogawa is 1 hour and 10 mins from Tokyo just seems longer than saying 70 minutes. Emphasizing one train ride is important because sometimes you need to transfer on to different trains, which is very common, just to get to your destination and that can definitely make getting there longer to get to and a bit annoying in my opinion.

So my job in Ogawa is an Assitant Language/English Teacher (ALT or AET) at Junior High Schools and Elementary Schools. Getting back to what I said earlier about getting punched in my jewels, I taught at an elementary school today. I had 5 classes back to back except lunch, which was between the 4th and 5th class. I had lunch with the first graders today because I taught their class right before it. First graders are amazingly adorable and cute and they’re about half of my height. They were so excited that I came to eat lunch with them today that they swarmed and climbed on me while I sat down on their tiny chair. Some of them started grabing my face and tugging on me so I decided to stand up so they can no longer reach muhahaha! One of the girls decided well, if she can’t reach my face, she’ll reach for something that is about her height so she took a jab right at my privates. It was good fun for her but it was a little unexpected surprise for me. I can’t get mad at them because they’re so small and so cute and I think to myself, the little girl probably doesnt know what she’s doing anyway so I give her the benefit of the doubt or does she? hmmmm…. Okay, I must sleep for now or else teaching the next day will be rough. Oyasumi (Good Night)!

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Friday, October 8th, 2004 at 2:58 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.