Elementary School Field Trip

Yesterday, I went on another school field trip, but this one was with my elementary school. Having been given a choice, I decided to travel with the 4th, 5th and 6th grade half of the school on a trip to Tokushima’s newspaper and Shikoku’s broadcasting companies. Before visiting both media outlets, we stopped at Naruto Park for some fun and lunch. I decided to spend my time at the park with the some of the 6th graders as they began setting up for baseball with a plastic bat and rubber ball. Similar to wiffle-ball, which I played growing up, I showed the kids how I used to do it back-in-the-day by changing the direction of the field. When playing this sort of baseball, it’s absolutely necessary to find some form of a homerun boundary to hit towards. Growing up, I used to play wiffle-ball in the streets hitting towards my house as the homerun fence. The rules were simple, usually consisting of no bases and ghost-runners. Anything on the roof and back was a double, hits over the house were homeruns. Our field at Naruto Park was a bit different than in the streets growing up, but the rules we applied were the same and as fun. We found a wall that was perfect for hitting over and our high scoring homerun derby style game began. Teaching English in Japan is a rewarding experience, but if I can also teach the importance of having a homerun fence in a game of wiffle-ball to kids in Japan, well…. that just makes it all the better.