Well, today was the first day of training. All the new staff and some old met at the Maruyama Campus to learn about the curriculum and our job expectations. We got to watch several videos of a K4 classroom. The name is pretty self explanatory, but it was a class full of 4 year old Japanese kids! The video we watched was taped on their 11th day in the English classroom. I was completely amazed at what the kids had learned by that day! (The only language used in class is English so the kids have to pick it up quickly) At the beginning of the video their teacher instructed the boys to sit in the back row and the girls to sit in the front. A couple students went to the wrong row, and the other kids quickly told them "no! no! no!" Then, the teacher led the students in several songs using motions and read through short poems with pics. These help the children identify sounds and pictures, and they eventually learn those as a word.

After training, our recruiter challenged us all to a game of Japanese dodge ball....Now, I don't know if you've ever played Japanese dodge ball, but it is legit. I fell down twice bahaha and I just started improving as we ended our 6th game. Basically, the rules are to stay in bounds (think basketball court but smaller) and the people are divided into two teams. Each team is then required to stay on their half of the court. If you are hit you run and stand out of bounds behind the opposing team, and you can catch fly balls and hit the other team out. That's the gist....

I forgot to mention the other day that when we went downtown we went to a 100 yen store (about equivalent to a $1 store), and it was 10 stories high so I stocked up on things for my apt. We also visited a 3 Coin store (300 yen or around $3) and I'm obsessed with it! I bought some sweet organizers and cute accessories there...needless to say I can't go shopping again for a while.

Yesterday, I went grocery shopping for the first time, and man....that was an experience. There were fish just hanging out in ice water for you to pick up with pinchers? (can't think of the word haha) and crabs climbing out of their baskets on the loose. Did I mention that everything is in Japanese, too? Yeah, it's hard to buy when you're not sure what everything its...so you just have to guess sometimes. I will be making a video of my apt as soon as I can figure out how :) Love you guys!

oh and phrase of the day: kisu shite (means kiss me) so use it.