Dodge-ball and School Trip

I’d like to let everyone know that I’ve had squid twice in the last week. It was school lunch at Samukawa last Friday, then at Ooya Higashi on Wednesday. Squid and asparagus cooked in chili sauce, with vegetable soup and rice.

I also played outside during hiru-yasumi (afternoon break) twice this week. I was with a different class each time, but both times we played dodgeball. Dodgeball here is a bit more complicated that how I remember playing it in gym as a child. It starts out simple enough. The kids use their feet to draw a line in the dirt. If you’re hit by the ball, you go back behind the other team, just like I remember playing. However! Those that are “out” can still throw the ball at the other team from any side of the opposing team’s area. You have to watch out from all sides! This gets especially crazy when they decide to play “Double” and bring in another ball.

not all the lines are drawn when the
kids play, but here's a visual
that hopefully makes sense

I bought myself a watch at Roble! It's nifty. Not only is it colorful happiness, but the band is this really soft rubber that feel so comfy. Totally worth it!

The 6^th-years went on a school trip this last week. They went to a place called Hakone, a famous spot for hot springs and its view of Mt. Fuji. In Hakone, the spent the night at a hotel, and the next day they went to Kamakura to see the Daibutsu (Great Buddha) and other cultural treasures there. The principal got me “Hangetsu” o-miyage (candy or snack souvenirs). It's a tasty snack from Hakone. The outsie cookie part kind of tastes like a fortune cookie, and between the two cookie parts is a very thin layer of cream. I was very pleasantly surprised when he handed me the box. (The only sad part was finding out that the last two in the box have Green Tea in the cream. Maybe I'll give those to my neighbors.)

cute box

cute packaging

cute cookie

A few random side-notes for the week:

I never noticed how weird of a word soccer is until I had to spell it for class a few days ago. The students were practicing writing the lowercase alphabet letters, and they chose words they wanted to try spelling, the listend and wrote as I spelled. "S-O-C-C-E-R". Weird.

Everything is so green here right now, and there are such a variety of plants. Here are a few pictures.

flowers on a hedge

flowers on a tree