First Week of Shogakko and Yochien

From what we can tell, kids are doing just fine at school.  Then again, we can't really tell much... so that's a wild guess.  They are both very excited to go to school every morning, so we take that as a good sign.  And in the daily reports, the most common answer is "it was kind of fun, actually."  We did hear from the teacher (through another parent) that Ethan seemed very "nervous" at first, but now he's all smiles that he's found a friend.

FIRST GRADE:

In Ethan's first week, he was one of the lunch servers for his classroom.  How they chose the only child who can't speak Japanese for additional responsibilities during the first few days of school is a little perplexing, but alas.  Maybe it was a test to see if we would be able to wash and IRON the school server outfit and get it back to school correctly and on-time?  Hmmm .... I wonder if we passed?

Ethan in his stunning pink school lunch server uniform.  He had to wear a face mask too but we couldn't find one for the picture... tres chic!

 Ethan's favorite parts of the school day seem to be lunch (no surprise there) and his Japanese as a second language support class.  He says his Japanese class is "not really learning, it's mostly games."  Whatever works.

I give Kevin credit - he spent over an hour one night translating the school menu so we could answer Ethan everyday when he asks "what's for lunch today?"  He loves the Japanese school lunch food and reports that he eats 4 bowls everyday.  Apparently the kids can have additional helpings, and Ethan helps himself (which we encourage, because it's expensive to feed our bottomless pit kids in Japan).  It's mostly typical Japanese food - fish, rice, soup, yakisoba, udon, etc.  But, our translation of one of the menu items was "melon bread" and we haven't quite figured out what that is, even after Ethan ate it and described it to us.  The mystery remains ...

In preparation for school, we had coached Ethan to watch what the other kids were doing and follow their lead.  If they take out the blue book, you should probably take out the blue book and so forth.  Seems logical enough, right?  Ethan had a different idea.  On the second day of school, he told us that he was just sitting there because he didn't understand what the teacher said.  "What were the other kids doing?" I asked.  "They were writing in their school books, and everyone knows that you're not supposed to write in school books, so I definitely didn't do that."  What??%$#  Clearly, a little more coaching was required.

Playing at school after a THREE hour parent meeting

One thing I really like about Ethan's school is that each first-grader is assigned a 6th grader who, in Ethan's words, "will take care of me for a week or maybe a year."  Each morning, the 6th graders go into the first grade classrooms, talk to their assigned student, help them unpack their backpacks, etc.  It's quite sweet - or so it seems from where I sit.  And Ethan quite likes his 6th grade friends, so that's all that matters.

There is a little girl in Ethan's class who speaks Japanese, French, and English (her mother is Japanese and her father is French) and she has been a HUGE help to Ethan.  She is simply a great kid and her whole family has been so kind and so helpful to us and to Ethan.  There are also 2 other little girls from Ethan's class who live on our street, so we see them a lot and their moms too have been incredibly helpful.  One morning, I asked if anyone knew about judo classes and by that afternoon, one of the moms had looked on-line, found a class, printed out the information, translated it for me, and given me a map as to how to get there.  All from a casual question and within a matter of hours.  The kindness is phenomenal.

Weekend park playdate with friends from school,
one of the other dads was captain of this ship.

Kevin was the captain of this row boat.
This park is about a 5-10 minute walk from our house...

Walking home with the "blue" group
Ryan is always very excited to greet them.

The method of getting to and from school is quite different.  No buses, no parents dropping off by car, few parents at all, actually.  On the way to school, most kids walk by themselves.  There are designated routes the kids are supposed to walk - the street is quite busy and there are swarms of kids all walking along.  First-graders (ichinensei) all wear bright yellow hats.  Some of the first grade parents walk part-way with their children, but definitely not a majority.  Ethan has been begging us to let him walk by himself ..... so starting Monday, he'll be making the 1 km trek on his own.  For walking home, each child is assigned to a walking group.  Ethan is in the blue group and for the first month of school, each group of kids is escorted home by a teacher from the school.  After a few more weeks, the first graders will be on their own for the return trip too.

YOCHIEN:

When I picked Ryan up from yochien yesterday, the first words out of his mouth were "I understand the teacher a lot today."  Fabulous.  And HIS perception is everything, so we're going with it.  Side note: apparently he's losing his ability to speak English correctly very quickly - is that a good sign in terms of his speed at learning Japanese?  Not so sure.

At Gekkohara yochien

In Japan, yochien (translated as kindergarten, but really seems to mirror pre-school in the U.S.) is 2-3 years.  Private yochiens start with a 3 year old class and public yochiens start with a 4 year old class.  Our timing is perfect, as Ryan is at a public yochien in the 4 year old class, so all the other children are new to the school as well.  In fact, many of the children have never been to pre-school before, so Ryan actually has a leg- up in that he has several years of experience in daycare/pre-school under his belt.

The yochien takes it sweet time ramping up to the full 5 hours/day - up to now, it's only been 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 hours per day.  Just enough time for me to make it to part of a Japanese class a few days/week.  I'm looking forward to when they start the 9-2 schedule.

When the 4 year olds arrive at school, each child is escorted into the gate hand in hand by one of the children from the 5 year old class.  Quite cute actually.  Ryan's been busy making paper airplanes (kami no hikooki) at school as well as a fair amount of artwork.

In the morning, waiting for yochien to start...

Yep, that's how you write Ryan's name in Japanese!

 At pick-up time, the parents line up and the teacher gives a speech about what the kids did that day and any other announcements.  This is pretty much what I understand during the speech.  "They did something in the morning (asa).  Something was fun (tanoshii).  Something is happening next Tuesday morning (kayoobi asa). " And on and on. I catch a few words here and there.  The rest is all guesswork.  Luckily for me, there is a Japanese mom who is married to a Canadian who has been SOOO helpful as well.  I'm pretty clueless most of the time, and I can't even imagine how completely lost I would be without so many people willing to help.

After the update from the teacher, the parents stand in line next to their child and one-by-one, the sensei shakes each child's hand and says "sayonara."  Every day, Ryan takes this very seriously and asks me "do I say sayonara sensei? Is that right?"  With a confident voice and a confident handshake, Ryan says goodbye to his teacher and is on his merry way.

So, that's how our school year has started.  Oooo-la-la, our new life continues.