Chopper goes Volunteering

Last Friday I had the opportunity to go out and do some volunteering work with another veteran JET here in Sendai. The location we visited was a YWCA, which was hosting a sort of day camp thing for children in the area.

Cute sign!

The veteran JET I was with suggested that, since we would be working with children, we wear costumes for the visit. Not a bad idea at all, except for the fact that the only convincing costume I possess is that of a completely lost foreigner, and it sweats terribly. Luckily the Sendai Board of Education was able to provide me with a costume! They said they had a "Chopper" costume lying around that might fit me and, in no position to be picky I said I'd take it despite having no idea what "Chopper" was. I assumed it was some kind of scissor-monster, or perhaps a friendly helicopter. What I got was a little different. Chopper is a character from a Japanese comic book series who is a human/reindeer hyrbid that works as a doctor (I think). And he wears a funny hat.

Our work at the YWCA really just consisted of hanging out and interacting with the children (who are super adorable) while they participated in activities ranging from learning how to mime, stretching, listening to stories, making crushed ice, eating lunch, etc. Generally they were all elementary school-aged but there was one there who was only five years old. The other JET and I weren't in the spotlight until 1PM, at which point we led the class in an English lesson. The children and supervisors were all very interested in us, however, so we got a fair bit of attention before then anyway. The time allotted to us for the lesson was bumped up from 30 minutes to an hour at the last minute, leaving us to do a fair bit of improvisation with the lesson plan. We were teaching about the parts of the body and did a mixture of vocab repition and activities like Simon Says and Hokey Pokey. The rest of the time we more or less filled up with games, and do those kids ever tire you out. By the end I was ready for naptime (which never came). Technically speaking this was the first class I taught in Japan, and to say the least I never envisioned it featuring me jumping around and shouting "HEAD" in a reindeer costume, but it was a lot of fun nonetheless. 

Some people didn't get the memo regarding costumes.

By the end of the day the kids had mostly forgotten all the words, but in their defense I can't remember how to say "head" in French either. Or Japanese.