At long last we’ve finally reached the first month of one of the best seasons of the year.
August was capped by some unusual rain—unusual because it hardly rained the entire month. (Okayama, being the prefecture with the fewest rainy days in all of Japan, makes rain even more unusual in any season.) Rain means cooler temperatures, so the last few days have felt like a trailer for fall.
Speaking of trailers, one of the movie trailers that’s been on TV a lot is the trailer for “Nihon Chinbotsu” (“Japan’s Submergence” would be a somewhat close, if uninteresting, translation). I went with Yujin, Yamasaki, and Makoch to see it last night. More often than not I didn’t understand the dialogue entirely (no subtitles, of course), but I understood enough to follow the movie. The general story is that through some weird chain of events the geological processes in the Japan trench get sped up immensely and Japan is slated to be 80% underwater within a year. (Yes, even Japan has those movies where you have to throw your sense of reason out the window for two and a half hours.) Ignoring the obvious problems with the science, as a movie “Nihon Chinbotsu” wasn’t all that great—(cue Adam Sessler voice) I’d give it a 3…out of 5.
Yesterday was also special in that September 1st was the second time for the special kindergarten class I picked up a month ago. A Japanese lady who teaches English to a class of about 10 kindergarteners called us several weeks ago to see if she could bring her class to the Family Center once a month to learn English and (more importantly) hear native pronunciation. A plan was worked out, so by now I’ve taught that class twice.
It’s a typical kids’ English class, really. The average student is a bit shy, and then there’s a couple of students at the extremes—the superstar and the super-shy. I can usually borrow activities from E-space to fill the 45-minute class time, so planning isn’t too bad. Actually, in many ways the students of this class are more cooperative and polite than my elementary students that I see every week, so that’s a plus.