San Nen Sei hiking
Originally uploaded by Jason In Japan.
My Jr High has an annual event each April - the entire school hikes up the coast from Taisha toward Hinomisaki and each grade camps out and BBQs for the day.
Last year it was windy as hell, but this year the weather was slightly better - not great but at least it didn't rain the whole day.
The kids all bike down to the local beach and then we all set out by grade up the coast road to a "beach" (really just a rocky place with lots of trash) where the kids break out all kinds of pots and pans and wood and make fires and cook yakiniku, yakisoba, okonomiyaki and other tasty Japanese foods.
It's a fun day and it's also good exercise.
My kids are always more open to chatting with me in these relaxed situations and it gives me a good opportunity to hang out with them outside of the normal school routine and rules.
This year my desk in the staff room is with the 8th grade teachers, so I'm assigned to them when we do group activities like this. My 8th graders this year are a good group overall - and the 8th grade class is slightly smaller than the 7th and 9th grade classes with only 4 homerooms whereas the other two grades each have 5 homerooms.
Marching home after the BBQ I was teaching some of the kids to chant, kinda like when you march in the military. Silly stuff like "We are Taisha Chu - yes we are! We're gonna walk cuz we can't run far! Sound Off! 1-2. Sound Off! 3-4" that kinda thing.
So they asked me to get up at the end of the day and lead the whole class in the chant - so I just had them say the numbers and clap. It was funny and the head teacher for the whole grade was really happy they all did something together. So it'll be interesting to see if they invite me to go on the 8th grade school field trip to Osaka and Kyoto this year.
Anyway - click on this pic and you can see all 23 pics from that day on my Flickr site.
-Jason
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