Field Trip!

So, while we were visiting some castles and temples in Kyoto and Osaka, we kept running into huge groups of school children. Our first stop was Nijo-jo, one of the oldest and biggest Shogun temples in Japan. We were walking to the entrance of the temple when three middle school girls came running up from behind us to ask "Excuse me, do you speak English?" And when we said yes, they were incredibly excited. They proceeded to tell us that for their English assignment, they needed to find people from other countries and ask them some questions. Their first question was "what do you like about Japan?" to which we answered "the food." There were many other things as well, but we decided to keep things simple. They stumbled a bit when trying to ask "what kind of Japanese food do you like?" but eventually we figured it out. Their last couple of quesitons were about where we were from and which city...and that was it--quick and very amusing.

Later that day, we made our way to sanjyusangendo, which is famous for housing 1001 nearly identical buddha statues. When walking to the area where we needed to take off our shoes, another group of middle school girls approached us and asked a very similar first question to the previous group of girls (something along the lines of "Excuse me, do you speak English?"). After we said "yes," they immediately started asking their questions, which were slightly different from the first interview we did. However, we were very puzzled with one of the questions: "How many seasons do you have?" We answered "four" very tentatively since we weren't sure if that was really what they were trying to ask, and judging by how confused they were when we gave them our answer, we were pretty sure that they weren't trying to ask about seasons, but probably something else. They also asked "do you like Japan?" and of course we had to say "yes," which was genuine, but really...was anyone really going to say "no" to them? When the interview was over, they took a picture with us, and in order for Nick to actually be in the picture, he needed to squat really, really low...it was amusing.

The next day, we made our way over to Osaka Castle, which is pretty much the only thing to see in Osaka. As we were exiting the castle, we decided to sit down on a nearby bench to read the travel guide and figure out if there really was nothing else noteworthy to see there. While looking through the Osaka section of the guide, a large group of elementary school children surrounded us while we were on the bench and in unison said "Excuse me, do you speak English?" (We were starting to wonder if this was the canonical introductory sentence to say to foreigners). They introduced themselves to us as students in the 3rd grade class of Osaka Elementary School. We knew that they taught English as part of the Japanese educational curriculum, but we were amazed that they started that early.

Anyway, they asked us many general questions about where we're from and our trip to Japan. At the end of the interview, they sang us a Japanese children's song...it was cute, and a bit long. We sort of smiled throughout the entire song 'cuz we couldn't understand the song, but that wasn't really the point of why they were singing. Then they asked us if we could sing a children's song from our country, so we sang "Itsy Bitsy Spider" (and by "we" I mean "I" since Nick apparently doesn't know his children's songs). Before they left, they gave us a sheet of paper with their names on it as well as an origami piece as a thank you gift. It was all incredibly sweet and they were so full of joy and happiness that it made the interview really fun.

...and after that group of children left, we were approached by a second group of children from the same 3rd grade class. We tried to explain to them that we already were interviewed by another group, but to no avail since they started to ask us the same questions. They sang a different children's song, so we sang "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (and once again, I was doing most of the singing...).

After we finished talking to them, we decided that we needed to leave the castle area because we knew we would be approached by another group of children, and sure enough, as we were leaving, another group came up to us and asked us the same questions. It was then that we realized that having to come up with children's songs on the spot is hard, especially if you haven't had any reason to sing them recently. We were struggling to think of a different song that I was quite tempted to sing "Happy Birthday to You," but we were able to sing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."

...and then we left as quickly as possible.

But all throughout our trips to Kyoto and Osaka, we kept running into groups of school children. An amazing number of buses came and went when we were visiting the various landmarks. Even as we were boarding the train to Tokyo at Kyoto station, we saw large numbers of school children who just arrived and downstairs at the loading area, we saw an equal number of school children in rows getting ready to board their train to return home.

Personally, I never had any field trips like that when I was in middle school...

Jerry Liu