I've come to realize I like the countryside. I never thought I liked big cities of course, but since living in Japan I've found oh so many reluctantly calming things out in the inaka. Yesterday, I went to an elementary school with a total of 35 students in 1st-6th grade. There's so few kids in each grade that they have combined classes. I was meeting with the 2nd-3rd grade class's teacher in the morning so of course he'd left the kids (all 11 of them) to do their own work. We didn't get very far into our conversation before bright lights started dancing around the room and flashing in our eyes. When we looked up his only 2 3rd graders, 1 a girl and the other a boy were standing outside the window with the mirrors he'd given them to do science research and laughing their little heads off. When I looked at their faces I didn't see the malicious laughter of a child who's given one to his teacher, or even the silly giggle of a trickster who knows she's doing something bad. Instead it was all joy and wonder and "look what we can do! Isn't it fun?" Only in a tiny mountain town do 8yr olds with hearts like that still exist.

Today I went to a preschool with about the same amount of kids split between 3 clasess by age. They had four pets, a black rabbit, a big shy turtle, a little river crab, and a pure white chicken. As soon as I was introduced to the kids 6 or 7 of them dragged me over to see the animals. They were all so proud it was their turn to feed them, and talked on and on about their good points. Then, one little girl handed me the chicken, which she'd been cradling in her arms and said in her best grown up voice, "Hold it carefully, ok?" Her concern was genuine even though I was the adult there, because she obviously loved the animals. And then the damn thing shit on my sweatshirt. I thought I was done with that kind of thing when I left Florida! But oh well, you win some, you lose some. Back in the classroom the kids were asking me questions about different foreign things and I was reminded of why I've always thought the youngest ones were the smartest. One little girl shyly raised her hand about halfway through the question time and spoke softly so her teachers could barely understand her, but after getting her to repeat her question it turned out to be this: "Why are we the same kind of human, but we speak different languages?" And once again the scholars of the world are put to shame by a four year old. She thought of that all on her own.