Wow, I have just finished my first day at the elementary school; or rather I have finished all my classes. I had 4 classes on the trot with barely time to breath in between them, it was a lot of fun though, the kids are bursting with energy! All the lessons were very planned, with a different activity every ten minutes, and most of the activities had their own music too. I kicked off with the 2nd year class, they were probably the craziest and most energetic. After the greetings and good mornings I just spread all my pictures and flags and maps on the floor and had them gather round, the mostly got very exited about my house for some reason and they loved the world map as well, we spent quite a lot of time finding various countries, they were shocked and awed it seemed to find Japan on the map, go figure. You are part of the world Japan! Apparently a lot of them like chicken, or at least a lot of them came up to me proudly proclaimed so. One little girl kept saying ‘horse eat apple’ to me, very cute. Oh they also like the pictures of my dog. And as always I heard lots of Harry potters when they were looking at pics of Edinburgh. They also sang a song for me in Japanese, very loudly! At the end they had their fingers in their years and were shouting at the tops of their not so little voices, awesome. Next straight off to the kindergarten, here they had prepared a paper red carpet and little archway for me to walk along and under respectively. We did a dance which was cool and then I had shout out number while holding up flash cards, kinda boring, I tried to make it more fun by having them shout loudly but this is what the teacher had planned so. I left with much Hi-5’s and goodbyes, and kids climbing on me etc etc. I think they had just been waiting to let loose after the numbers game, one little group of boys followed me all the way back to the staff room, Hi-5ing with me all the way. So then a 2 mintues break, grab some ocha and then the 6th year class, these dudes were a bit more sedate, some of them a bit shy I guess, but it went well and they asked some good questions as the end, oh we played the murder game as well. They had all made nice name tags with British and Japanese flags, very nice. Then the 4th class, they were pretty much as genki as the 2nd years but they could also ask decent questions so that was an awesome class to, we played several games of murder and they went bonkers over all my pictures. For some reason on little boy was amazed that we kept goats at home, and when I told him we had 6 he was even more amazed and went off to discuss this at length with his friends. These kids were bouncing, when they saw they picture of the karate in Scotland they decide to have a go at that too. One boy then came back to the class after it was done and offered to carry all my pictures etc. for me, nice of him. That was my last class but the fun wasn’t over yet, oh no! I had lunch with the 2nd years in their class room, that was pretty crazy, I helped them clean up after, scrapping glue of the windows with a Stanley knife with a couple of kids, yep that’s right the kids here can use Stanley knifes unsupervised (well I guess I was there today). They had a free period after lunch so I got led (or rather pulled) by a bunch of girls (including ‘horse eat apple!’ girl) to the library, all very fine, and then they showed me a series of books on well sex, love and life in general. Ok so this was pretty surprising for me. These books are just sitting in the elementary school library for any kid to read, not on a high shelf or anything. I don’t think I have anything against it, maybe, but it’s definitely not what I am used to. The books were fully explicit, perhaps more than they needed to be. One picture which drew my attention was of a woman massaging some sort of foam into a mans back, he’s naked and she is in underwear, and in the doorway is what can only be described as a porn star type counting money and looking at the couple. The ‘porn star’ is wearing a Hawaiian shirt buttoned down, medallion on a hairy chest and sunglasses, and why is he counting money!! There were pictures of people actually having sex, pictures of little boys masturbating in bed, and watching porn. The books seemed to cover every area of sex and relationships. There is a picture of a yuppie in a flash sports car trying to get a girl into his car, pictures of young people gay and straight exploring their developing sexuality, pretty much everything from a young boy looking at a girl’s underwear to a picture of a woman giving birth, with the head poking out. These books seemed pretty comprehensive, I guess parents in Japan never had to give the birds and the bees talk, and kids here don’t ever ask question like ‘where do babies come from?’ I guess things are just different here, I mean I knew they were more open about sex here, but at elementary school, even the kindergarten kids could see these books! Well anyway, I then went off and played on the monkey bars with the kids, yeah I am a big kid myself. Oh then a group of kids, I think from the special needs class, gave me a card they had made for me, I was touched, I shall have to translate it later. The picture is of the card.