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.