Day 31: Back on the job

Konichiwa,

So with it being Monday I am now back on the job and powering on full batteries for the morning at Toya Nursery. Which is a good thing because boy they can be a rowdy bunch. However first I must address the issue with the temperature of Toya.... It is freezing. I'm now into wearing my thick ski jacket and gloves and we're only in the early days of October! No more than a week ago was it nice and sunny with a lovely 15 - 20 Celsius temperature.

But anyway, we rode to the nursery in the cloudy and cold weather. I wanted to get inside quickly and warm up. I think you could see the exact moment my heart sank when I entered the door to yet another cold room. I had a strong suspicion it wouldn't be heated but I hated that I was right. To clarify, Japanese use mostly single room heaters and most buildings are very old with thin walls that don't allow for central heating.

However this does come with one huge advantage! For the rooms that do have a heater, they are the nicest rooms you can ever walk into and you'll never want to leave them. The hall was one such room and it has a big heater. I think I stood in front of that thing for at least 10 or 15 minutes before a stampede of children dragged me away from the warmth.

The heating here is an interesting concept, I would've expected a place known for being so cold to have a much more insulated structure with central heating but apparently not, no matter.  I'm not about to let a little cold ruin all my fun (I'll probably think different when buried under 2 meters of snow)Today we were inside for a lot more and we did the usual running around, chasing the children and playing with paper swords, planes and even this time body armour.

I asked whether or not we would be going on a walk today and was a little disappointed when they said we may not be due to the weather being pretty cloudy. However after an internal debate between staff members we finally went for a walk which was surprising considering the cold weather and the fact the children were so small and young. I'm now 99% sure they are naturally cold blooded!

We walked up through the town up a dirt road where we came across a familiar yet strange sight. A chestnut tree which was dropping conkers. However, while in England we also have conkers in a spiky green shell, here the shells are super spiky and super super sharp. I found out the hard way as I picked one up thinking it would be the same as England. Oh boy, big mistake and it's probably a good thing the children cannot understand English or the concept of swearing because the pain was bad. I was picking out the thorns for a good 10 minutes afterwards. I suppose the experience was very similar to giving a hedgehog a bear hug with your hand.

After that incident we began to collect the conkers and put them all into a big plastic bag which was pretty much full by the end of the thirty minutes we were there, On the way back we stopped off at a tree which was growing wild blackberries. Apparently they are safe to eat but I did stop and wonder if they actually belonged to the house we were outside, taking them from. Either way the teachers had me use my height to get the biggest bunches and pull them down from the tree. A few did splatter on my face and my hands were a sticky mess afterwards but it was really fun to see everyone enjoying themselves despite doing what may have possibly been illegal back in England ;)

Back at the nursery it was time for lunch, this time without the miso soup and it was pretty tasty though I am still trying to get the hang of forcing certain foods down that I just don't like. As I said before, leaving food here is a big no no so I always try my best to eat everything. I have to give it to the children, they can be very brave when it comes to eating food as they cannot leave the table until it's all gone. The only time I've seen waste food is usually by us foreigners.

After the morning at the nursery we returned to the Sogo center with not much to do except catch up on any planning work and browse the internet whilst studying a bit more Japanese. I'm slowly getting better with my Japanese in some regard. Speaking is still a shamble because everyone uses plain form and speaks casually (More so than I expected) but my reading and writing is getting a little better and I am starting to recognize more kanji. It's pretty much been a month now so I'll hopefully be posting a first impressions video on YouTube soon, as well as the Hokkaido video. Hopefully people enjoyed the Tokyo video. They'll be a lot more to come as I travel around.

That's all for today folks, so thanks for reading! Oyasuminai!