Today I went to the children's home again, which was a lot of fun and just what I needed. There were only two of us going today but it caused a fair amount of excitement anyway. With no game tournaments going on and the weather too rubbish for running around in the yard, we wandered the corridors to see what the kids were up to. The girls appeared to be eating a late lunch so we made our way to the boys' floor.
That's where I was first attacked by a 7 year old with an imaginary light sabre.
As I fell to the ground in slow motion, matrix style, another small child rushed at me with a large yellow bean bag and began swiping for my head. I stood up straight, realising only my height would save me and noticed I'd arrived at the main play room for the boys. The more boisterous boys got distracted by something further down the corridor, so I breathed a sigh of relief and looked at the others who were staring up at me inquisitively.
"It's a new person," one of them said in Japanese. Another one popped up from behind me and began tugging at my name card. I hadn't seen him before and figured he must have arrived fairly recently. He sounded out my name and asked where I had come from. "I'm from England," I replied.
"Not Japan?" His eyes widened.
"No, I came from England," I answered. I asked his name and he said it slowly before pointing to his name on the list in the corridor. Then he charged off to overpower another boy's dinosaur with what I think was a plastic gun (it more closely resembled a drill.)
I stuck my head into the playroom and asked if I could come in. The kids graciously granted me permission so I scurried in and sat down on the floor next to a very quiet little boy who was carefully arranging shogi (Japanese chess) pieces on a board. He didn't seem to mind me being there, but he wasn't interested in small talk.
Eventually the others burst back into the room in a storm of fake gun sounds, light sabre swishes, and what can only have been battle cries. I was dragged into the battle between the gun and the dinosaur - the rules changed every minute so I'm pretty sure I lost every round. Then I was whisked away to watch TV, play several rounds of tag, hide and seek, and be killed in battle a few more times. When we left I was pretty exhausted, but happy. Hanging out with the boys was a different experience to last time and reminded me of playing in the garden with my little brothers when we were younger. These boys even had a bag of 'slime' on the playroom table that they claimed to have collected from the garden. It all feels so familiar..
