Disclaimer: I’m not 100% sure what’s happening at the moment
(read: I have absolutely no idea what’s going on).
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| River In Kisakata - near the base of Chokai |
Over the past week or so teachers, members of the board of
education and various other seemingly important people have been visiting
schools to observe lessons.
I have now had this sprung on me two or three times. The
first case was a simple 5 minute pop in. a couple of people hovered for 5
minutes and then once we made sure they were out of ear shot – the class went
back to normal.
On Friday (21st October) however, an all staff
meeting was called in the library – this included teachers from the primary
school and myself as well as it turns out. The meeting was a simple introduction
and run down (from what I could understand) and after 15 minutes everyone was
pottering back to the staffroom. However on my return I was informed that
H-Sensei was looking for me. As it turns out we were presenting a full 50
minute class for all 37 of the first graders (normally the class are split in
half) in front of about 10 observers, for which I had 5 minutes to mentally
prepare myself.
In my humble opinion, the class went well. However we
(myself, H-sensei and S-sensei) then had to sit through a meeting, the point of
which was for the observers to dissect the lesson and rip it to shreds, or so
it seemed. After having to sit through that I can understand why the teachers
had been so nervous about it. I had heard that the ALTs from Honjo had the
chance to visit each other’s schools with their JTE’s to watch each other’s
lessons, so I’m now just praying that I won’t have to deal with one of the
Honjo lads sniggering at the back of one of my classes.
The Interrogation…sorry review
went on for an hour and a half, the last 30 minutes of which consisted of
the main/important looking observer talking…a lot….
This meeting was entirely in Japanese so my the end of it my
eyes were taking a while to uncross themselves after each blink, which were
gradually getting longer and longer.
It had been a prompt 6am start so that I could call both
Nana and Nany to wish them a happy birthday before I got ready for school (even
now that NZ is in daylight savings with a 4 hour time difference it’s reassuringly
easy to catch up with people back home) so I was very much ready for a
fat-pants and cup of tea kind of an evening.
Saturday (22nd October)
With All Hallows Eve drawing near, I had finally decided
what I was going to dress up as for the ALT’s Halloween party. Unfortunately
the brilliant epiphany meant a trip to Daiso followed by hours spent stitching
fake leaves and multiple stab wounds.
Issue no.2 arose when I realised just how seasonal Japanese
attire really is. Trying to find a tshirt in October? Good luck buddy. It’s
autumn. Nobody shows there arms anymore. Failing to find a plain green tshirt
or dress that didn’t have ‘Engrish’ all over it, I scrounged a dress that had a
green lining, which meant I could cut out the outer layer to decrease the poofyness,
turn it inside out so that the green lining was on the outside, and proceed to
sew the mountain of fake autumn leaves for my ‘autumn colours’ dress… maybe cat
ears and whiskers would have been easier.
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| View from Chokai |
After scrounging the shops I met up with Liam who introduced
me to his local coffee shop. It had been months since I’d sat down somewhere
that wasn’t my own flat to have a coffee, so the fact that we had a stunning
view of Chokai while doing so was a very welcome change.
Full of caffeine we headed south to Kisakata to check out the
autumn colours around Mt. Chokai. The first stop was a walk along a stream,
followed by following random roads up Chokai until the sun started setting and I
realised that shorts season was definitely over (I had been rather optimistic –
read stubborn, that morning). Google informed us that we had somehow got
ourselves an hour away from Konoura, this was not overly concerning until we
were driving down a dark mountain road and Liam’s phone suddenly chimed in with
‘GPS signal lost’.
Without further incident we made it into Akita city for
drinks and to watch the All Blacks maul the Wallabies.
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| Braving the landslide |
The next day Liam and I drove down into Yamagata prefecture
to check out the 12 falls in Sakata. The river tumbles down a rock face, where
it pools in several places before continuing down, creating 12 falls. Now that
I am researching into the area I have found a website that states that the area
is closed due to a land slide as of March 2016…Needless to say we were
completely unaware of this.
We arrived at the carpark to find the road blocked off,
being the good law abiding gaijin that we are, we promptly shuffled around the ‘danger
do not enter’ sign. A few metres down the road it became quite apparent as to
why it had been cordoned off. Half the bloody hill side had completely covered
the road. This was no problem for those on foot…
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| The 12 falls |
The track grew more and more overgrown (this makes sense now
I know that it hasn’t been used for 7 months) and there were various mentions
of how it resembled the landscape of a zombie apocalypse…
Descending the worn steps into the valley to a suspension
bridge where we were met with the second roped off section of the day (may I
remind everyone that I survived to tell the tale). This took us to the other
side of the river which hadn’t fared well in the weather, the third barrier
jump (or shimmy between the bars in my case) was due to a small land slide that
had taken a tree out.
When we finally got far enough up the path (if you could
call it that), covered in biddy-bits and spider webs – the view was well worth
it.
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| The roped off bridge |
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| A Temple in Sakata, the vertical staircase was ever so slightly daunting |
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