Parent week

So this week is parent's week. At any school in Wakayama Prefecture a parent can go visit his/her son or daughter. I usually don't get nervous when teaching, but I did a little when one parent was sitting in on a class today, and the class was nuts. It was 12 crazy 2nd graders. They ahve so much energy. When were doing opposites vocab, like short and long and slow and fast. So I did a paring memory game and then the final activity was for each team to place the word with the picture. I don't see how it would be fun, I thought that it would be something different, but the kids went nuts. They were punching, slapping, pushing, and head-butting me. They were trying to play they just wanted me to notice their answers. And the worse part is I don't know if they learned anything, well maybe a couple of students did. The learning activity became just an activty after awhile and they were trying to pair 'slow' but up-side down with a train going 'fast.' WTF. More than once did a kid try and put 'slow' up-side-down on the board. How does 'slow' up-side-down look right? More work to do. I saw the parent playing a bit too, so perhaps the game wasn't so bad.
And lunch was different. This time it was those little white fish that stare back at you mixed in with pinkish/reddish rice. The main course was a tempura piece of fish. A fish with many small bones that you had to chew to find and then spit out. Nothing tasted weird, it was just eating it was weird. I finished nearly everything except a piece of the fish because I got tired of spitting out tiny bones.
An older sister of one of the 6th graders also visted. She is in high school and didn't really speak English, or was too shy to, but she asked in Japanese for an English newspaper. She said she wanted to read it. Okay.....