Jan. 10, 2012 - Where's the school again?

Today Greer got to sleep in.  Cooper, of course, said that was not fair.  She doesn't start classes until Wednesday.  I walked Cooper to the bus stop and then at 7:30 woke Greer up.  She had requested the wake-up so that maybe she could call a few of her friends.  After waking her up (and having a conversation with her), I went about my business.  Finally saw her when the phone rang a little before 9:00 (her counselor with the good news about band).  She'd gone back to sleep and didn't even remember talking to me.

Although she didn't have classes, there were swim team pictures today, for which she wanted to be there.  That meant she and I had to take the train to her school, unless we wanted to take the bus at 7:08 and hang out at school the entire day.  In retrospect, that may have been the better plan. 

She and I hung out at the apartment for the morning, playing Words with Friends against each other (and friends from the U.S.).  We had been told by somebody in Admissions who lives near us to allow an hour and 20 minutes to get there by train (as opposed to the 30+ minutes on the school bus).  School dismisses at 2:37, so Greer and I planned to leave the apartment at 12:30, after lunch.  Over 2 hours - should be plenty of time, right?  Not quite.

We left the apartment on time and walked to our station.  Took the subway to Shinjuku station, where we had to change to a rapid train.  Here is where we made our first mistake.  I thought I was pretty careful about which train we boarded, but I guess I wasn't careful enough.  I realized the possibility we were on the wrong train when I heard them call the station before ours.  Hmm, had we made enough stops up to that point?  But I couldn't be sure until the next stop, which was four stops after the one we had wanted.  Yep, we'd gotten on TOO rapid of a train.  Greer thought maybe we could walk back to the correct station.  (I gave her the short answer - No.)  We found the correct platform for the train to take us back to the station we wanted, but before we boarded, I asked various strangers if they spoke English so I could double-check.  Yes, we were in the right place.  Got off at the right station, exited that line, found the next line to take, boarded the right train, got off at the right place.  Here is where we made our second and more time-consuming mistake.  The map provided by the school tells you to cross the train tracks and turn left at a fruit stand.  In the process of exiting the station, we crossed the tracks.  As we exited, we saw a fruit stand in front of us, so we turned left and tried to follow the map.  Well, after walking about 10 minutes (it's supposed to be less than a 10-minute walk), we realized something was wrong.  Turns out that crossing the tracks while exiting the station was not the crossing the tracks that was meant on the map.  We were supposed to exit the station and then RE-cross the tracks.  There was another fruit stand at that point that was the one intended on the map.  I do not think this was solely the fault of the mapreaders.  I believe the mapmakers share some of the blame here.  Anyway, by way of asking various strangers where Tama Station was (they didn't speak English, so they didn't understand my question about American School in Japan, but they understood enough to point us in the direction of Tama station), and by Greer figuring out how to use the map on her iPhone, we eventually found the school, after turning a 10-minute walk into a 40-minute walk.  Greer made it to swim practice and pictures and I made it to Cooper's classroom, albeit somewhat breathlessly, just as it turned 2:37.  (I had been afraid he would forget I was coming and would get on the regular bus instead of waiting with us for the late bus.)  Hey, at least now we know the way!

I realized that the problems with Greer's schedule kept me from talking much about Cooper's first day.  So today I tried to get him to share some things to include in the blog.  First, he's made some friends: Harry, who's also new, Matthew, who rides our bus, and Sean.  Today was his first day of Japanese class (he'll have it every other day).  When I asked him about it, his answer was, "She said a lot of words I didn't understand."  Informative, isn't he?  For homework, he has to go to her website and listen to two songs (while reading the lyrics) several times; one song has various greetings and the other song is the months of the year.  His new school has more recess time than SWE, which he definitely liked.  He has a long recess after lunch and two other shorter recesses.


Cooper's picking the word of the day today, from his Japanese homework.
Japanese word of the day:  Ichigatsu  (click to hear pronunciation) means "January"