School Excursion: Tokushima Zoo

What looked to be a rainy day turned into a sunny day.
What looked to be too difficult a Scavenger Hunt turned into too easy a Scavenger Hunt.
What looked to be chaos turned into a fun day at the zoo for the UI students.

What do I say about a school field trip to the zoo?
There were children.
There were animals.
There were people dressed up as Japanese cartoon characters.
(Not our students or parents - it was a show put on at the zoo. Don’t ask me what it was about, because I didn’t understand).

It was pretty much everything one would expect from a school field trip, in Japan or anywhere!

Everyone had a great time, although almost everyone was finished with the scavenger hunt before lunch. As far as I can tell, no one was tripped up by the “Bird that sleeps during the day,” even though the duck was sleeping and the owl was awake. And many people were wearing striped shirts, so I waited for one them to turn themselves in as “An animal with stripes.” No one did.

On the other hand, I did not expect to sit down with a three-year old who sang “One little, two little, three little monkeys,” for me. He got tripped up at eleven, but heroically picked up again with fourteen and was up to nineteen before getting distracted by the people dressed up as Japanese cartoon characters. I really don’t know if he would have stopped at twenty or just kept going until I had to leave.

There were stickers and candy for the winners - which was everyone, not out of “fairness”, but because (as I mentioned) I needed to be tougher with my clues. Ah well. Next time.

Before beginning - explaining the rules and reviewing the English.

An animal from Japan. Check!

Lunch break - a game of tag and catching tadpoles.

The restaurant we ordered lunch from included an English word
game in the lunch boxes for us: Which word is different? 

Everyone received stickers because everyone
finished the scavenger hunt.

Handing out candy to one very smart three-year-old.