Word in the nursery

Every now and then I'm asked to go and spend a day at the nursery playing some games and letting the small kids dip their toe into the warm and beautiful sea that is English. 

Whilst this sounds awe-inducing, it is not so easy planning a lesson for 3-5 year olds who are only just getting to grips with their native language, let along this bizarre completely-unintelligible new language that this 'alien' is speaking! I have immense respect for nursery teachers and infant teachers to sustain levels of energy day after day! (20 minutes with 3 year olds seemed like a whole day!) 

But despite the planning it was great fun, and as you'd expect, kids are the same no matter which country you're in. After learning a bit of English with them, we ate dinner together. The kids would ask me such brilliant questions like 

'What is soo-paa mario burusaa-s in English?' (A lot of Japanese computer games use English titles with Japanese pronunciation ...)

'Well, it's Super Mario Brothers!'

'What is pokemon in English?

'Well, it's Pokemon!'

The kids put their hands together before the meal for the customary 'itadakimasu' (Thanks for the meal!)

Now my Japanese is pretty good now, and I go to nursery school thinking - 'Ha! It'll be so easy to understand the little kids because I'll have a better grasp of Japanese than they do!'. This is of course wrong. The nursery kids are the ones I have the hardest time understanding, because of course they're still learning their own language. But it's so lovely to see their little faces trying to make sense of why I can't understand them when they ask me one particular question.

In other news: Japanese kids love dinosaurs and building things, and the girls love drawing and writing letters (I got a few little letters in the playtime between dinner and afternoon session!). The most popular thing to play with, was these kind of old-fashioned looking spinning tops. There is a cartoon from Japan I believe, called 'Beyblade', which is about spinning tops fighting other spinning tops (I generalize quite severely!) - well these spinning tops are kind of on that same theme.

Showing off their super spinning top gadgets!

They're made of wood with a think piece of string wrapped around them which you wrap around the top, and then flick the top on to the ground and pull on the string to make it whizz around really fast. It's not terribly interesting, but a lot of people's ideas of Japan are a very technologically advanced society. Yes, they might have phones that can make coffee and transform into an electric scooter, but sometimes no matter where you are the simplest things are the best.

This is snakes and ladders! Japanese style! To be honest not quite sure how it works. There are like some circular spinning spots which can put you back on the line before if you do something...not sure what!