しかおいようちえんはっぴょうかい

I had a wonderful time watching Shikaoi Kindergarten's Happyokai. The ages of the kids were between three and five. It was a bit of a comedy of errors, as was to be expected, but I was surprised at the level of focus the kids showed. Some skits and song routines were very long but they were performed, for the most part, very smoothly. But it's the errors and foibles that make it so fun (and funny) to watch! But we had lots of those too. I have included, on the side, an image of such a crash. The kids started the dialogue fine, but slowly became confused, until finaly they stopped. The image shows them either looking blankly into the audience or off stage to the teachers for direction. So cute. Later in the same skit, two kids started to fight; someone was shoved, it escalated, hitting occurred on stage, leading the smaller one to run off stage crying. Don't fret though, she reappeared, much soothed, to finish the skit. There was also a fair amount of hats falling off, things dropped, kids tripping, loud off key singing, kids waving to their parents from the stage, kids waving to me from the stage, kids walking off the stage in the middle of the song.

One thing that separates a Christmas concert in Canada and this sort of event is that both the parent/teacher association (oddly called a PTA here too) and the teachers each did a song with "actions". I have included a picture of the teacher's effort below. The Mushi (bug) on the left is my friend Yumei (Fukiko Sakaguchi's son), who helped introduced me to the yochien. Sorry it's such a bad pic and you can't see his face, I think it shows a lot of good action though.


The length, time wise, was another point of difference between Canada and Japan. The whole thing was over three and a half hours, which is a bit long, for adults that is - if you ask me. Watching the kids is exhausting. The attitude here seems to be; why have one and a half hours when you can do three and a half hours? I should make clear that the kids seemed to have more than enough energy, although I predict they will sleep soundly and deeply tonight. I hope they get anything they want for dinner, they deserve it. My students did an excellent job and I was glad to see the fruits of their hard work and practice. They were cute enough to melt even Mr. Burn's heart (to the more mature crowd that reads my bog; he's from the Simpson's). Children's laughter is quickly becoming my favorite sound. It's always instilled and defined wholly by joy - completely filled with life. It makes me feel - I don't know - younger, or more alive, or more happy, or something... And while I abhor a cliche, their singing really does sound like angels'. There was one traditional Japanese song that was a perfect example of this. The kids knew it by heart and it was very simple; the kids sang it with great emotion and I found it very moving. A big grin was on my face all morning, as if my face didn't know whether to start laughing or start crying with joy. It nice to know that for a while, the whole World is not going to sin. This job - being around kids - is giving me many insights into what I thought I knew about the World, none of which I like feel like sharing today in detail. I also so many many student's from Shikaoi Elementery School.