My time at the Tenkimura project. (Kusatsu, Shiga)

Tenkimura is an amazing project, I'm coming up the end of my 2 month placement here and I am honestly so sad to be leaving. The project here is a daycare for young children and also for children with learning disabilities.

I'll admit my favourite part of the project was working with the nursery aged children in the 'Konpeitō club'. They were all so adorable and our Japanese language skills were on a pretty similar level too! (lol)
The day would start at 9am and I would go to the club just before the children started to arrive. I would then look after them and join in their games until around 10.30am when we would head to the bus to go on an 'adventure'. It was really wonderful, we would go to the woods or to farms and the children would play for a while before we all sat down for a picnic.
I'll admit, part of the reason I loved it so much was because a lot of them had taken a liking to me. There were honestly small arguments over who got to sit next to me on the bus and who sat next to me for lunch or who got to hold my hand while we were walking.

I know that when working with children you shouldn't have 'favourites' but I did. There was-

• Yuri, who was 3 and was utterly adorable, out of all of the children she was the one that took the biggest liking to me, she would come arrive in the morning and run over to me with an 'Okayo Franny-sensei!', which was made even cuter by the mispronunciation of 'ohayo' (good morning), sit on my lap and then draw pictures while I made origami shurikens, hearts or butterflies for the other children until it was time to get on the bus.
• Rui, who was also 3. His father was from Spain originally so he would often be telling me both the Japanese and the Spanish for certain things, like fox, apple etc. He also enjoyed looking at the badges on my bag
• Riku, who was 2, and really that should tell you everything you need to know about him. He was trouble with a capital T, but he was also adorable. Especially when he was playing with the toy cars in a Princess Anna dress.

As well as the Konpeitō club in the mornings, there was also the Soramame club, which is for children with mental handicaps, in the afternoon/evenings. The first day I arrived I went with on the bus to pick up the children from school which was a really nice way to meet them, they were all very sweet and one of them spent nearly the whole trip back to Tenkimura stoking my hair.
I would usually start at around 3pm so that I could see which child I had been paired with for the day before they all started to arrive. Once they had arrived they would first do their homework and then an excersise from one of the books at the club, usually a puzzle book or a handwriting aide. Afterwards they were able to play with various toys at the club, draw pictures or read a book.
On Saturdays we would usually go out for the day for an adventure of some sort.

Like with the Konpeitō club, I did also have my favourites in this club too. I know I shouldn't have, but really some of these kids were hard not to get attached to.

• Hayato (Haya-chan) really was such a little sweetheart, he often wandered around the playroom holding the hand of whichever his preferred teacher of the day was, or he would sit and draw pictures and ask us to draw a house (ie *sign) or a train (just a sign for that one). He couldn't really speak, he could only say a few words such as "Hai (yes), Ie (house) *followed by the sign for house in JSL, Acchi or possibly Ashi (place or leg/foot) and Applepen (Source as to why for that last one). The rest of the time he tended to make noises reminiscent of Anne from Little Britain, or if he couldn't get the attention of the teacher he wanted or didn't like something, then he would occasionally hiss.
• Moe was a lovely girl, she was deaf which made communication even more difficult when I was paired with her, but they have a book on Japanese sign language at the project so I sat for a while with the book trying to have a small conversation, she seemed genuinely pleased by this and spent a lot of time helping me go through the book and how to sign correctly. I couldn't have much of a conversation with her but it seemed enough that I tried. I have also learned some JSL so that's pretty cool. Most of the time though she tends to draw pictures and write notes to one of the other deaf children, they have a lot of fun stealing paper off each other to write up questionnaire charts.

In conclusion, I've really enjoyed my time here at Tenkimura, I do hope I can come back here again sometime, the work they do here at this project is honestly so amazing and I've loved every minute I've been here, even if it has been a little tiring on some days, I really couldn't wait to see what the next day would bring.
I really am so sad to be leaving, I've grown far too attached to the children in such a short period of time. Over the past 2 months I have received an awful lot of hugs, held a lot of hands, had more than a couple of children fall asleep on me, changed a few nappies, had snot wiped on my shirt and struggled to read several baby level books. And honestly? I wouldn't have changed any of it for the world.

Look I actually updated!

So this update is pretty late. I've had trouble thinking what to write and honestly my 'winter blues' had hit and I had trouble finding the motivation.
A lot has happened since my last update I didn't really know where to start, but I suppose we'll go from the beginning and try to get everything in without making this entry too long. This is going to be seriously abridged but unfortunately I lost (decent) wi-fi at Maltoen so I was unable to update before.

(UK Dates DD.MM.YY)

2.12.16 - We'd had a lot of complaints about our rooster being too noisy, we'd tried putting him in a coop with thicker walls to reduce the noise he made at night, however, he still crowed at all hours (including the highly unsociable ones) so unfortunately we had to get rid of him.

It turned out that the farm we took him to was also an ICYE project that had hosted a volunteer from the UK, a volunteer I actually knew. It was nice to hear about how he got on for the 6 months he stayed at that particular project and how the host family felt about him.

3.12.16 & 4.12.16 - It was sad that we lost our rooster but the egg that our brown hen had been incubating started pipping on the 3rd. By the 4th we had an adorable baby chick chirping away. I called it Chris in my head, short for 'Christopher Eggleston' if it was a boy or 'Eggitha Christie' if it was a girl (the puns are awful I know).

5.12.16 - 11.12.16 - I went to Hagi city for a home stay, I was a little worried about it at first but I actually really enjoyed my time there. I was helping out on a flower farm and honestly I found it really fun as I spent a lot of time talking to Ayako-san while we worked.

In the evenings we ate dinner together and talked, I just wish my Japanese had been a little better so I could have spoken more with Dai-chan and Yukimi. However, even with the language barrier, Yukimi and I still had fun trading pokemon to each other.

I was honestly quite sad to leave on the last day, I would have loved to stay with them for a little bit longer.

After I met up with Hikari and her mother again we stayed in Hagi a little longer, they were going to see a film so I went and did a spot of sightseeing. Hagi is a very historical city with lots of really interesting places to visit, however, I only had time to go to the local museum. The museum itself was  very good, it was quite cheap at ¥510 (about £3.60) for a ticket, and I was was given a folder that had the exhibition descriptions translated into English. So far this is one of the only museums I've visited that had this, bar the Edo-Tokyo museum in Tokyo.

28.12.16 - Hikari and I were invited to a local event where we learned to make soba. Making the dough for the noodles was relatively straight forward though the 'cat claws' action was a little tough to get the hang of, however, cutting them was a lot harder! Soba noodles are supposed to be thin but mine ended up being quite thick and looking more like udon (oops). They tasted nice though so there were no worries.
Afterwards we all ate dinner together as an early welcome to the new year, it was really nice as I was able to chat with the local people there.

29.12.16 - 03.1.17 - Simon, the other ICYE volunteer from Denmark came to stay for New Year. It was really great seeing him again after 4 months and having a catch up.

The New Year celebration was loads of fun:

1. I was able to wear a Kimono again (Which was amazing!) 
2. Simon and I also helped with making the "osechi ryori" (Traditional Japanese New Years Food).
3. We joined in the festival held by Hikari's fathers church.

Unfortunately, the second of January wasn't quite as enjoyable. We had returned to Maltoen that day and while we were working, separating sesame seeds, we heard a commotion from the chickens coop. I went to investigate and I unfortunately found that our little chick was dead. It had fallen into the water bowl and drowned.

12.01.17 - Tragedy once again struck, I went out to feed the chickens that morning only to discover that an animal of some kind had gotten into the coop and eaten them. It wasn't a very pretty find I can tell you that.
When Hikari and Bingo-san arrived later that day we dug graves for the two of them a buried them beside the baby.

Later that day Kurose-san from ICYE came to stay at Maltoen in order to talk about the other volunteer program CIEE that would be hosted in Yamaguchi in the Summer.
She also spoke to me about how I was getting on at Maltoen and told me the dates for the Mid-term evaluation camp.
We spoke a little and I said that I was quite lonely at Maltoen during the winter as there wasn't all that much to do. There was also no wi-fi making it hard for me to keep in contact with my family and friends.

It was later arranged for me to go to another project in the Shiga prefecture for just under 2 months. I was really excited to go but at the same time I was quite upset that I would be missing the February event at the Akiyoshi Plateau. Still, I asked Hikari if she could take some photo's to show me.

Final few weeks of January - It was arranged for me to go over for dinner with one of the local families. I found it really enjoyable, I was a little unsure at first because of the language barrier but with the use of the little Japanese I know, the English they knew and lots of looking translations up in dictionaries, it worked. We talked about quite a lot of things, politics, music, family, and hometowns; to name a few.
Though honestly, the best thing about it in my eyes was the 4 year old little girl of the family. She and I would play together and also read together (in this skill we were very much on the same level.) Communication was hard but if I seemed confused she's often ask me if I understood which was nice. The speaking thing really doesn't seem as hard when you're talking to children instead of adults. I suppose it's because they tend to talk slower and generally use more simplified sentences than their grown up counterparts.

---------------

I'm sorry that this is rushed and a little messy, I'm also aware I probably missed a bunch of stuff out but..... Writing isn't my strong point, I write how I think, which is all over the place.
Still, I managed to type it up sooooo...

---------------

Some of my favourite photo's: