The Sweet Potato Party

Momoishi kindergarten is simultaneously one of my favorite places to teach and one of my least favorite. The kids are always full of energy, happy to see me and ready to try whatever activity I have planned for the day. However, the school is also the worst when it comes to scheduling-and believe me when I say that there's some stiff competition. Perhaps the best example of this is the time that I was scheduled to teach two half-hour long classes to small groups of 5 year olds but arrived to find out that I would be teaching a one hour lesson to a large group of 3 year olds instead. Anyone who's worked with children this young knows that there's a huge difference in maturity and capability between 3 and 5 year olds. I spent that hour watching futilely as kids threw crayons at each other instead of drawing and vowed to never believe the kindergarten schedule again.

Well, there are rare instances in which the kindergarten's insistence on keeping me ill-informed regarding schedule changes provides a pleasant surprise. When I walked into the school today (prepared, of course, to teach a group of any size, age, shape or color) I was told that there would be no lesson today as there was going to be a school-wide "Yakimo Party". The word yakimo refers to the Japanese sweet potato when it is grilled; an act that traditionally takes place in the fall, when the potatoes are harvested.

Upon my arrival, I was summoned to the woods behind the kindergarten where many of the children were already hard at work building a giant pile of leaves. After this task was finished, the teachers produced a few boxes full of sweet potatoes, which had been wrapped in tin foil. The children then buried these in the pile after which it was ignited aflame. After the pile had burned completely, the teachers carefully removed the potatoes from the smoldering ashes with tongs and then distributed them to the children. So we all sat around in the woods, eating freshly grilled sweet potatoes and drinking refreshing mugicha (barley tea). When a swarm of dragonflies descended upon our gathering, I was instructed by one of my young companions on how to rid myself of them. Rather than moving around or even trying to swat them away, if you simply tap the appendage on which they rest, they will sense the vibration and fly away. This is what they're paying me for, folks.