Wed. Sept. 24 – Ping pongin' all day long

I hustled over to my junior high school bright and early on Wednesday morning, seeing as how I needed to catch my bus at 7 a.m. The first- and second-year students were going to compete in their respective sports club activities during the Shinjinsen Games. I believe kids from across the Adachi District are invited to play in this tournament, so I saw the students of my nearby ALT friends. (I was tempted to ask some of the Nihonmatsu girls the whereabouts of “Feather-sensei!” Kawaii).

Anyways, I strolled in at 6:50 a.m., thinking I had plenty of time to board the bus with the basketball teams. In fact, I was greeted by a disheveled-looking kyoto-sensei. With clipboard in hand, he ran over to me from across the parking lot and said “Gemma-sensei! Gemma-sensei!!” followed by something in Japanese. Basically, he was telling me that the basketball teams had left, as they had been scheduled to leave at 6:45 a.m. I was not surprised that I had been told the wrong time. It was sort of a blessing in disguise, though, because I got to meet the table tennis students.

The actual sport got a little monotous, but it was cool hanging out with the students. We took lots of pictures, since most of them didn’t get the chance to actually play. I think it was this day that I started coming down with a fever, sore throat and cold; so I ended up “resting my eyes” a lot that day.