My mom thinks I'm a winner

Today I went to Ochidani elementary school. After just barely making the bus I had to catch, I arrived to find out that no... I didn't have to teach any lessons today. To fill my time I made hiragana and katakana flashcards, along with some kanji and huddled by the stove to keep my figers from freezing.

Happily, 5th period was some sort of parents/grandparents day event? I wasn't sure why, but there were no classes and instead the kids played a game called Karuta. It's a game where you have a set of cards with pictures and a hiragana on it, and then another set where someone reads a sentence that starts with a specific hiragana. The players have to slap the card first, and the person with the most cards in the end wins. If it was in English, you'd have the alphabet printed on cards on a table with pictures on it, and some one would say something like "Betty bee brings butter to Ben" and you'd have to be the first one to hit the B card which would have an illustration of a bee bringing butter.

I was put with the 1st and 2nd grade kids, and I didnt do as miserably as I feared. I could have done quite miserably though, especially when you take into consideration that they had the advantages of using their alphabet, and they understood the alliterative descriptions of what was on the card. In one game I was destroyed by a mom and a grandmother who were also playing with us (Grandmother: 20 cards!) with my measly 5 cards, but I was better than the kid to my right who only had 4. We played 2 more games and then I was just the loser, but with a few more cards every time. I'm learning the alphabet... I have poorer comprehension of it than a 2nd grader. ouch.