My Month in Japan Day 3: Volunteering at an Elementary School

This blogpost is part of a continuing blog series called My Month in Japan. Read the last article here.

Note: We were not allowed to take photos of the elementary school. As such, I will be using photos from online of Japanese elementary schools.

Spoiler warning: I can decidedly say that this day was by far the cutest of our trip. 

We spent the whole evening of the previous day preparing for our Elementary School Visit, drafting an English lesson plan and preparing vocabulary. The next morning, we got up bright and early, 6 A.M. sharp,  and headed to the metro. And, after an hour of switching and riding trains, we arrived. 

It was a cute little building, much like the one depicted above, short and almost stocky, but quite long. We got an escort from the principal and a small group of teachers themselves, who took us first into a wooden locker room to take our shoes off, then through the school and towards the gym. 

The first thing I noticed about the whole school in general was that it was very warmly lit. Many of the rooms had hickory wood paneling that was clearly rigorously polished. Light streamed in from the tall windows onto the champagne walls and reflected off the flooring, casting the room in a soft orange glow. It’s safe to say all of us Americans were impressed – our public elementary schools wouldn’t look like that even if they were cleaned from this day out a million times over!

Soon enough, the stars of the show – the kids themselves – streamed into the gym. They were so cute. They were like little bouncy balls in their white cotton uniforms, buzzing with excitement as they gathered in rows along the gym floor. That was our cue to head up to the stage, where each of us would give a short introduction in Japanese – name, age, and where we were from – then take our group of kids to their class.

Our group was a class of first graders – roughly 15 to 20 kids. We had decided that we were going to teach them a lesson on animals through a game of Hangman. After we walked them up to their class, introduced ourselves, and began the lesson, though, we quickly realized that we had underestimated their capabilities in English. 5 quick, errorless rounds later, we decided to switch it up to Pictogram – something we hoped would be a bit more of a challenge. We called up kids to the board and had them draw whatever they wanted, so long as they knew the English word for it. It was really amazing – this group of 6 year old kids, having better English vocabulary than we did Japanese!

Once we were done with the game, the teacher told us that the class had a special surprise for us: a game of musical chairs. We all loved that game as kids and happily obliged. So, the class all gathered the chairs in a ring, turned up some music, and round n’ round we went. When the music finally stopped we all jumped into the seats as quickly as we could, leaving only one chair open for the taking…

…but the two kids who were left out of the circle were too polite to take the last chair! They kept offering it up to one another, and eventually had to do rock paper scissors to decide who got it. It was the cutest and sweetest thing ever. It quickly turned out that every round would be like that: the kids, too polite to take a chair, rock-paper-scissors’ed it out.

Anyway, we student-teachers all carefully and strategically lost a game of rock paper scissors to an elementary student after a few rounds. One by one, rock by paper, the numbers whittled down until it was two kids and one chair left in the circle. Finally, there was no rock-paper-scissoring around this time. The two kids lept for the sole chair, the hunger for victory shimmering in their young eyes. It was a real dogfight. In the end, there was only one kid able to stay glued to that chair – one last victor. Now that was the musical chairs I was used to.

After the game was done, it was finally time for my favorite part of the day: lunch. As the clock struck noon, a set of kids dutifully stepped out to find their little white apron and little white chef’s hats. At Japanese elementary schools, the students themselves serve the food to their classmates, and – as is the theme for this blogpost – it was so cute. After each of us student-teachers had gotten our helping, we sat down at a table with a group of other Japanese students and tried our best to answer their peppering of questions like What is American school like? and What’s your favorite food?

Now, for the all-important question: is Japanese school food as good as they say? Well, this is only part one of the answer, since – spoiler – we still have a high school visit coming up soon, but I’ll say: mostly, yes! It was certainly much tastier than American school food, and after six hours of riding trains and teaching students, I was grateful for a warm plate – especially one served by a group of 6-year-olds in chef hats! But of course, it is still school food, so keep that in mind if you ever get the chance to try it.

Finally, the time came for us to head out. We said our goodbyes and gave out our hugs. It was quite sad, but we were all happy to have gotten the chance to volunteer at all.  A few kids were allowed to tag along with us as a last escort back to the gym. They’d brought out the school band, who played a quick Thank You tune for us. Once that ended, we slipped back into the locker room, put on our shoes, and headed out. 

All in all, it was quite a bit of fun. We all got the chance to practice our Japanese in a real setting as well as learn about everyday life at a Japanese elementary school…on top of reliving childhood classics like Musical Chairs and Hangman! It was an unforgettable experience that reminded us of the universal joy found in simple games, shared meals, and genuine human connection.