English Outing

At my college, the only dormitory is reserved for all the first year students in the English department, and living here is a requirement for the program. Some second year English students also choose to do another year in the dorm, but it's mostly to improve their English, and they don't get a grade for the tasks and activities that are required of the first years. In past years, there have typically been something like 60-65 first year students living at the dorm, with a handful of second years. Due to the low birth rate currently plaguing Japan and some economic factors, the dorm is now at just over half capacity with 43 first years and only four second years.

Anyway.

One of the events put on for the dorm is called English Outing, and it's a day trip allowing everyone to get to know each other. All the foreign teachers go, plus the English department secretaries (Japanese), and the one Japanese teacher who is quite the shutterbug shows up to take pictures. The second year students can choose to go if they want--three of them went this time around. Typically I think this thing happens in April, closer to the beginning of the school year (April 1), but for some reason it was set for May 12, by which time most of the students were all reasonably well acquainted with each other. In any case, though, it was a fun day out and a chance for the teachers to get to know the students, too.

The site the students have been taken to the last few years is called Fukiage Seaside Park, about an hour away from the school. It's apparently the only park in the area that has a beach and also not-beachy, parky things to do. The students sign up beforehand for one of three activities--a walk on the beach, rollerblading, or cycling--and we spent a couple hours doing those activities before lunch.

Since apparently every activity in Japan is a photo opp, I had to pose in about forty or fifty photos in the entrance area of the park while we waited for the last teacher to arrive in his car. Here are the few I managed to get with my own camera.

Then my group, the beach group, posed for some photos once we got to the beach.

At which point most people went off wading in the ocean. Except for a couple girls who stayed on the beach with all our stuff, one of whom kept closely examining her sneaker for like five minutes. I later found out she'd lost her cell phone and was looking everywhere for it.

I wished I'd gotten a closer shot of these other two, who for some reason did not dress for the beach. One of them looks like a homeless person. She was wearing jeans, thick high-top sneakers, a long-sleeved jacket, and a hoodie, and found a walking stick and an empty jug and was carrying them around. 

Truth be told, almost none of the girls dressed for the beach. We weren't planning on going swimming (although I really wanted to), but most of them either didn't wear shorts, or they did, and in typical Japanese style also wore leggings or thick tights underneath them. Huhhrrr. So they had to roll up their pantlegs and fold up their leggings to be able to go in the water. All of them, even the Hobo, were fashion victims.

Anyway, we didn't get to spend much time at the beach, only about an hour, because the walk to the building where we'd have lunch and spend the rest of the afternoon was like a forty minute walk away. It was a hot walk, too.

Here are some shots of what that building looks like and the grounds:

Lunch was this: obligatory white rice, plus soba noodles, fried chicken, edamame beans, a tiny bit of corn on the cob (which I'd already eaten by the time I thought to take the picture. It's the yellow thing), some kind of salad, something else in that bowl that I don't remember, and a wedge of orange. I've learned that Japanese people hardly ever eat fruit, and when they do, it's like a bite. I don't understand how they get their vitamins.

After lunch we went to the building's gym and relaxed a bit before the afternoon group games would start. Some of the girls ate a bunch of snacks. I tried some. Japanese food will get its own entry later. There is much to say.

Anyway, here's the Hobo having some fun with her dormmates.

While this was happening, the teachers were all getting ready for group games, which involved English-based (sort of) games doing things like miming a word to teammates, making a representation of a word out of clay for the teammates to guess, etc. The final game, though, was a kind of relay obstacle course that had nothing to do with English. Each team member was placed at a station on the course and had to complete a difficult task when it was her turn. The turns started when the team members were able to transfer a rubber band from a Pocky stick held in the mouth of one person to a Pocky stick held in the mouth of another person, without using their hands. For those familiar with my Alia in Korea blog, Pocky is Ppaeppaero (aka Pepero). Here's a picture of both:














We chose to use the nude version for the game, to make it easier. One of the other food items used in the course is called Ramune, and it's a crazy drink--it's carbonated, and there's a little ball in the bottle that floats up the the top when you try to drink it, covering the opening. The girls had to race to drink a whole bottle. It's very difficult. Opening Ramune is also quite something, and I found an image with directions.
 


After the games were over, we awarded prizes to the teams, in order of points achieved in all the games, and got ready to go home. Cleaning is a big thing in Japan apparently, another subject I'll be talking more about, so all the girls had to clean the gym before we left. In past English Outing trips, they had trouble with the owners of the facilities being too picky about this, despite the girls cleaning everything spotless, so they changed to the current venue.


After cleaning was done, we got on the bus and took the hour-long ride home. Everyone was very tired. The End.