Summer drawing to a close, playground work

Hello!

Summer is starting to draw to a close in Japan. I have noticed it is a bit cooler lately and there are definitely leaves falling from the trees.

The championship game for Koshien happened on Monday. I was at my visit school that day and the game played on the staff room TV. A team from Sendai (Sendai Ikuei) ended up winning the championship 8-1 over Shimonoseki Kokusai.

Outside of watching baseball, I have found it tough to do much else in Japan's summer heat. It seemed too risky and uncomfortable to do any hiking, so I am looking forward to getting back to that in September. The intense summer heat started in July and seems to have lasted through the latter parts of August.

Students returned to school on Friday for a half day, but I was at a junior high in the morning doing English activities with another teacher's students. So I missed out on seeing my regular students.

During the activity at the junior high, teachers from various countries (America, the Philippines, South Africa, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, the UK, among others) presented about food, sports and landmarks within their countries.

These types of activities happen throughout the school year - English teachers at a particular school will host other English teachers to work with their kids, do activities or talk about their culture to the students.

On the Tuesday and Wednesday prior to the junior high activity, we had teacher training - various teachers gave presentations on an array of topics.

On Thursday, I was back at my main school and it was the first day that all of the teachers were back.

But, when I arrived in the staff room that morning, there was no one there - all of the teachers were out on the playground with shovels digging holes.

Buried an inch or two under the playground is some plastic lining that I think helps form the basis of the "school track" used for sports day and other activities. It seemed like the teachers were digging this up, presumably to replace it. I am not sure if this is something they do every year or this was just a special project.

Once we pulled up most of the nails and plastic lining, the teachers then had meetings for the rest of the day. The teachers here do a lot of physical work around the school, like fixing up the playground but also the swimming and Sports Day activities earlier this year.

In COVID news, Japan announced some major changes to its policy - in September, if you are triple vaccinated and returning to Japan from abroad, you will no longer need to submit a negative PCR test to enter Japan. This is good news as it will make international travel much easier.

I also read that Japan will soon allow individual tourists into Japan, but those tourists will still have to travel on tour agency arranged schedules with a set itinerary. Previously, as I probably mentioned, Japan allowed group tourism this summer, but only through certain approved travel providers.

Overall, it seems that Japan is starting to move into a more "normal" phase of living with COVID. Although almost 100% of people wear masks in public despite a lack of government mandate to do so.

Until next time,

​

​