My Morning as a Giant

On Friday the JCMU students were sent to elementary schools. The trip was planned into the program, and at the usual time class started we lined up in the lobby according to the school we would go to. I went to Kawase, a school on the edge of the city. Our professors lined up and wished us luck. My feeling is that the trip was supposed to teach us that even second-graders know more Japanese than we do, which turned out to be the case. However, I took some consolation in the fact that for the morning I was a giant amongst Lilliputians.

We arrived at the school after a cramped taxi ride and changed our shoes for slippers. Every student here leaves their street shoes at the door and puts on school slippers. We were given the generic burnt orange slippers that seem to be everywhere and only fit half my foot. The principal and vice- principal met us at the door, and showed my group of five into the principal's office. Inside the office a secretary brought us green tea and the principal told us about the school. Kawase is going to be graduating the 119th class this year. On the office walls were black and white pictures of the principals dating back to the founding of the school.

Soon three second-grade girls arrived at the office to take the five of us to the gymnasium, where we were to play with the kids for a few hours. As we walked through the school the children in class would pause and point at us, with surprised looks on their faces. In the gym the 76 second-graders were lined up in neat rows on the floor while a teacher played the piano. We were ushered into five chairs up front while one of the girls read an introduction thanking us for visiting the school. Then the whole class sang a song in which they asked us to play with them, or something of that nature. By this point I had realized that I wouldn’t be able to understand anything the kids were saying except that we were Americans.

After the song we introduced ourselves. The first girl in my group was Katherine, and the Japanese loved to pronounce her name. As she moved around the room, the children would try to say her name as best they could. Grace, Jason and I have names that were soon forgotten. The last guy in my group was Michael. When the teacher asked the calls to repeat his name we heard a chorus of “Mikey,” come children muttered “Michael Jackson” and giggled a lot. Michael was not pleased but took it well.

Once we had finished introducing ourselves the students set up games around the gym. I went to a marble game, a ball on string game and then Othello. Grace and Katherine played at origami and bean-bag sacks with the girls. The children picked up on the fact that I had no idea how to play the marble game, and through gestures I was surprised that they were able to teach me. The children at Othello did pretty well, but I asserted by college-educated skills to only beat them by two pieces. Once the structured games were over the class was split into six teams and the teams lined up across the gym from each other in pairs. The other JCMU students and I were distributed through the groups. The game was a variant on rock-paper-scissors. Each team started at an orange cone, and the two contestants would run out to meet in the middle, then play rock-paper-scissors. The winner ran past the loser, trying to reach the opposition cone to score a point. I figured this out by watching, since the teachers threw us into the game.

The children in my group were more interested in my height than in the game. None of the children were taller than my waist, and they delighted in jumping to see if they could be as tall as me. One of the boys tied to jump on my back, so I picked him up and he yelled at his friends that he was now taller then the rest of the class. After that he pointed at my nose and called me Pinocchio.

After the games were over each of the JCMU students was given a bag with the origami that was made as a souvenir. The contrast in origami was hysterical. I’d watched the little girls make beautiful cranes and swans, while the boys had stuffed about twelve paper airplanes into my bag. A friend of mine even got three paper-airplanes taped together. The children all called out “bye-bye” in English as we left.

Back in the principal's office the secretary brought in delicious iced apple tea. The principal tried to entertain us until our taxi arrived, but a few of the students were more interested in talking to each-other. Michael and I talked with the older man, who sprinkled English in with Japanese. Apparently, the principal had visited Ann Arbor years ago as an exchange student. He had gone in the winter and said that the city was nice but too cold for him. Once the taxi arrived we were shown out with a lot of formal bows while the children waved at us from the windows.