The switch to the public facility in Gotemba

Today, early in the morning I went to go greet the 9th graders on their trip to the Gotemba facility. I mean it was early since we had to wake up at 6:30am to prepare breakfast at Hakone, then have them get packed and ready because the 11th graders were going to go to Fujikyu Highland and Mr. Ka..da, the VP and me were going to the other trip. So there was a lot of hustle and bustle in the morning. It was interesting to see them go. I went on the bus with them first and had a little conversation before we parted ways. I had asked them to get me a souvenir from Fujikyu Highland, but only as a joke since I wasn’t going to be able to go there with them.

Their trip started pretty early and the work got going right away. The first thing that we were all doing was getting the students ready for the weekend and we ushered them to the big auditorium. I learned that there was a huge Marine Base called Camp Fuji across the street and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces shared an area of land of the location we were at. It felt like we were in a military camp actually. Everything was orderly and people there were strict. For example, on the bus ride from the school to Gotemba, no one was allowed to speak. Then when they arrived, they had teachers, like me, usher them to a huge auditorium to get lectured how they will spend the next few days and the living conditions. They would only get 15 minutes to shower, but with 35 people taking a shower at one time. Their meals are only to be eaten within one hour and a half for all the residents of the facility, so if you’re late, you don’t get food. The next day, they would have to cook for themselves and if they couldn’t they couldn’t eat. You know things of that nature.

So after the orientation meeting, they went to their rooms to get changed into their jersey uniforms. And then all the fun stuff would happen. Mr. Kda, VP, and me went to check out the conditions for a hike on Mt. Fuji since it was very cloudy and the visibility was very poor, there might be a possibility that we might have to cancel the hike altogether, so the VP needed to check to make sure that it was climbable. So we jumped into the car and took the path between the Marine base, Camp Fuji and the Japanese SDF up to the Gotemba trail. We started to drive to the Fujinomiya path, but then we couldn’t see anything. So we went back a little bit and made a turn. Once we made that turn everything was beginning to clear up. We made it up to the top where we were able to park and take a look around. We were about a quarter of the way up and the VP decided that it was climbable, so she called back down to the other teachers that we were still going to do the hike. So they went to lunch at the facility and the VP took us to a steak restaurant down the hill a little ways. The food wasn’t too bad, since it was steak, but it was Japanese style so it wasn’t the biggest food I’ve eaten. It was tasty though, so I was happy about that.

After lunch, we went back up to the place we just looked at to see if it was good enough to climb and the conditions near the bottom where we were changed from good to poor, but the conditions at the top were amazingly beautiful. It was great and one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen and I didn’t have my camera with me. I was beating myself up so much that I didn’t carry my camera with me. I mean a lot since I had brought it on the trip and knew that I was going to climb Mt. Fuji, but I left it back in the cabin in my luggage. So I was pissed off, but still enjoying the most amazing views I’ve ever seen. The buses of student arrived soon thereafter. Then we started to climb. Well more like hike, we actually climbed to a high altitude. I didn’t realize how high we would actually go. We took about 1.5 hours to go up. That’s a pretty long time to go up, and I was at the very end pushing all the lazy students to make the climb. At the first stop, there were about 5 students and a few teachers that had to go back. But after that everyone made it to the top of the 3rd highest point. It was soo cool that I was able to see and do that. I was ecstatic of the opportunity and everything, just pissed off I didn’t bring my camera. It would have been very nice to have it at this point.

The descent didn’t take long at all, only about 30 minutes and that’s because we had a few stragglers lag and they took forever to get back. We took many pictures at the base since the clouds cleared up and you could get an awesome view of Mt. Fuji. It was a surreal feeling. The teachers said that it was rare because usually for this trip it’s very cloudy and you can’t see anything. This is the first year in about 20 years that they were able to see Mt. Fuji, and it was very clear with no clouds. So that was a very special moment in my life. How lucky I am to be able to see that.

After that, we went back to the facility and then went to have dinner. After dinner it would be my turn to get the show on the road. The purpose for me attending the trip was also because I was in charge of the night time activity, a game session all done in English. So I had a list of about 8 games to play with about 125 students. I had each of the classes separate into 4 groups per class and there were 4 classes, and they would compete against each other.

The first game was Hunter, Woman, and Bear. It’s a rock, papers, and scissors game to get everyone warmed up on the dictation part. I taught some essential things that deal with the game and getting ready to act with vocal response. That was fun for about 10 minutes, then we moved to game two, which is make groups of… I was teaching them to listen to numbers. I was working at it to eliminate people and to award points for the winning team. It was pretty fun and I think the students enjoyed it. After that I had to skip a few things on my list because time was running out and things would get too difficult. So the next game we played was How many words do you know that start with… Since I had each class already arranged into groups, I would have them competing against each other running back and forth writing as many words they knew that started with a certain letter in the alphabet. They enjoyed it, but not as much as I enjoyed watching them run and write as fast as they could. It was interesting how interested they were into the game. This went on for some time. The final game was guessing the number between 0 and 100. At first it was 0 to one billion, but that would have been too difficult and time was running out. So I made it easier for them. Once that finished, we finished and that was it for me. It seemed like everyone enjoyed the games, which was great because the VP was watching me. The only complaint that she had was that the chalkboard wasn’t cleaned correctly, but that was it. All the teachers liked it and the students like and most important the VP liked it. So, that solidified it as a success. I was able to breathe much better after that.

Then the girls took their showers and I went to the log cabin to take my shower too. I had no responsibility for an hour after that and I was pretty much done for the evening. The next thing on the agenda was to have a teacher’s meeting at 9:30pm at the log cabin, which was where I already was at. So that was pretty easy. I was able to relax for a little bit and got cleaned up before the teacher’s meeting. The meeting was about the schedule for the next day and how things were going to change. I didn’t need to worry about it too much since I would always be with other teachers and I already had a run through of the schedule changes.

After the teacher’s meeting, I had a conversation with Mr. Ho.da. I went to his wedding in February and I’m good friends with his wife, but I haven’t had much of a conversation with him. So tonight was the first and best time to chat. We talked about what foods I’ve eaten in Japan that is also in America. We talked about other teachers that left and other variety of things. We also ate some of the food that was left from the teacher’s meeting. Dinner wasn’t enough tonight and I was barely fed today, which is a different contrast from before. After that, it was bedtime because we’d have to get up early tomorrow. I was told that I didn’t have to get up early, but I knew that I’d have to get up early anyways.