Magic tricks and bedtime stories

Tonight's English lesson with Heartful was really fantastic! This is a prime example of the things that mean the most to me here in Japan that I will miss terribly. Heartful is actually in a bit of a transition now because one of our teachers moved away. James (the guy from Kenya), decided to move to a more exciting place than Koga and take a new ALT job. It was a bit of a sudden decision, so Heartful is still trying to find a replacement teacher. This is good news for me though because until they find a replacement, I get to take over James' classes and see them more often!

Tonight was especially fun because Boom Chan told us about a class that she teaches on Tuesdays at a university in Tokyo. Boom Chan is a bit of an expert at entertaining children. She writes children's books, and knows magic tricks and does puppetry, etc. So the class she teaches is an early education class for people who want to own and teach at day cares and kindergartens. Today she taught her class a magic lesson they can use for wow-ing large groups of kids. So we coaxed her to show us some of her tricks tonight for fun.

The tricks she showed us tonight were mostly things with rope and knots. She even taught us all how to do a couple of them! The first was to make a mosquito, Cat's Cradle style, and then clap our hands and all the knots would fall out. Next we made a Bunny Foo Foo with our hand and went through a hide and seek sequence until all the knots we made fell out. It was so much fun to watch everyone in the group try to learn the trick and then practice until it was perfected! Boom Chan has written a book about magic tricks and a few different children's stories.

Hiromi has two grandchildren and she bought one of Boom Chan's books for them. She pulled it out to show me and it turned into story time. Each person would translate one page of the book into English for me and then pass the book on to the next person. When it got around to me, I would read the Japanese out loud and then translate it myself. The story was about a little ninja whose father asked him to deliver a letter to his grandpa. The little ninja was afraid to go alone, so he used his ninjitsu magic to help him multiply into three little ninjas. So the ninja starts on his journey. Along the road there is a big snake, so the little ninja multiplies to 6 ninjas and then 100 ninjas. All the ninjas run very quickly around the snake to make him very dizzy. And then the snake falls down. The little ninja finally makes it to his grandfather's house to deliver the letter!

Boom Chan reminds me so much of a really great teacher of mine from middle school. She has a ton of energy, great sense of humor, and works so well with kids. In fact, I think I will go write Lauren a letter right now! So many wonderful Lauren's in my life!!!! :)