Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Kyoto, Day 2: Legends of the Golden Temple!
Kyoto, Day 2, started out with a trip to Kinkaku-ji, the picturesque garden and gold laced temple that arguably tops the list of most popular tourist attractions in Japan. A walk down the road to two other temple complexes lead to many beautiful moss covered gardens, duck ponds, tall pagodas, combed rock gardens, and cold wooden mansions of the Kyoto elite of old. Check out the pictures on Picassa, which look better than the ones on Facebook.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Kyoto, Day 1
Unexciting title, but descriptive.
No real trip could start without at least one morning where you wake up before six, drag yourself out in the cold, and 'catch' a series of trains and buses to your destination. That's what happened this morning when Sam (my traveling companion/JCF small group leader) and I woke up in his cold apartment and dragged ourselves outside to the bus stop. Though most of the winter weather I've experienced so far in Japan has been fairly pitiable compared to even Mid-Atlantic winters, the weather has been about freezing since Christmas Eve, when snow started to fall around various parts of southern Japan.
Luckily, after the bumpy bus ride through central Nagasaki, we boarded a very comfy JR express train to Fukuoka, the place where I studied abroad and the place where we'd meet Sam's friend Sayaka and board the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto.
Kyoto: not a city I am familiar with, nor a city that I had researched adequately before coming here. All of us had a 'let's figure it out when we get there' attitude, and although we got to see some cool stuff in our first day, we also spent a lot of time being lost and walking very long distances to places we thought were right around the corner. There was a probably times when it was my fault, but oh well. All of us know more about the layout of East Kyoto now.
No laundry listing here: go ahead and check out the facebook/picassa albums. The only cool part which didn't make the photo list was the interior of one temple that featured 1000 statues life-sized wooden statues of the Buddha surrounding a Giant metal buddha. Check out the wikipedia article for Sanjusangen.
No real trip could start without at least one morning where you wake up before six, drag yourself out in the cold, and 'catch' a series of trains and buses to your destination. That's what happened this morning when Sam (my traveling companion/JCF small group leader) and I woke up in his cold apartment and dragged ourselves outside to the bus stop. Though most of the winter weather I've experienced so far in Japan has been fairly pitiable compared to even Mid-Atlantic winters, the weather has been about freezing since Christmas Eve, when snow started to fall around various parts of southern Japan.
Luckily, after the bumpy bus ride through central Nagasaki, we boarded a very comfy JR express train to Fukuoka, the place where I studied abroad and the place where we'd meet Sam's friend Sayaka and board the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto.
Kyoto: not a city I am familiar with, nor a city that I had researched adequately before coming here. All of us had a 'let's figure it out when we get there' attitude, and although we got to see some cool stuff in our first day, we also spent a lot of time being lost and walking very long distances to places we thought were right around the corner. There was a probably times when it was my fault, but oh well. All of us know more about the layout of East Kyoto now.
No laundry listing here: go ahead and check out the facebook/picassa albums. The only cool part which didn't make the photo list was the interior of one temple that featured 1000 statues life-sized wooden statues of the Buddha surrounding a Giant metal buddha. Check out the wikipedia article for Sanjusangen.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Merry Christmas! Dec 23-25
久しぶり！御無沙汰！That means ‘long time no see.’ My deepest apologies for not updating this blog. Though the newness of my home in Japan has worn off, the adventures haven’t stopped. I’m picking this up again as I set out for my winter break vacation: Kyoto! I’ve bought a new camera to record my experiences (Sony Cybershot DSC-HX5V, king of digital still cameras), and I’m committed to showing pics and posting on my blog more often.
I’ll start by telling you how I spent my Christmas season in Amakusa. I apologize for some parts of it which sound very ‘list-y’ and not very narrative, but I have a lot to cover.
All this month, I’ve been teaching my 1st-4th grade elementary school students about Christmas, showing them pictures of home with the Christmas tree and snow, explaining how we bake cookies for Santa, describing how Santa fills the stockings (or shoes, in some countries) and the space under the tree with presents, and singing “We wish you a Merry Christmas” (most repetitive lyrics, so easiest to learn).
Even with the little bits of holiday cheer in class, I still wasn’t feeling the Christmas spirit without a Christmas tree, (really) cold weather outside, freshly-baked cookies, and time spent at home with family and friends. This much I anticipated, so I was set to make sure Christmas weekend was well spent doing Christmas related activities:
To start, on Thursday I had a day off (Emperor’s Birthday=public holiday) to make mochi with some neighbors, BBQ in the back yard, and drink warm sake out of a bamboo mug. Check ‘making mochi’ and ‘drinking before 11 AM’ off the bucket list... I’ll try to upload a video of the mochi-pounding process so that you can understand. Basically you use giant wooden hammers to mash up freshly cooked sticky rice, then use flour and mold the rice gluten into patties. You can put stuff inside if you want (sweet jam), put it in soup, or grill it and eat it with soy sauce and nori.
Friday was the last day of the second semester for all the schools, so my middle school had a long ceremony in the day where lots of speeches were made and awards were handed out. I only had one class that day, my second year class. While we did half a class of the standard textbook work, we spent the second half doing a Christmas cross word puzzle and listening to my America christmas music. Santa hats were worn and fun was had. After school, I skipped the 2 hour long teachers’ meeting (probably a faux pax, but they never talk about stuff relevant to me...) and went and worked out with my middle school baseball team. Afterwards, I ran over to 大江 Ooe, the village with all the Catholics, where my elementary school kids were dressed up in little christmas elf/santa claus outfits singing Christmas carols outside in the freezing cold. After the concert, there was a candle light procession up to the church for mass. It was the first time I had seen the church completely filled up, and the first time that there was a choir to lead the congregation in worship. A good deal of my middle school boys were up at the altar as altar servers, dressed up in white robes. After church, I found another one of my student’s parents that has pretty good English. So far, both of the mothers that I’ve met that speak English have very, very cute elementary school children. Connection?
Again, sorry for the list-y-ness. I could have chosen to describe very poetically the freezing march up to the church with our candles and the warm atmosphere of the church interior filled with little children, parents, grandparents, and even some high schoolers. But I have to plow through to Christmas Day:
Waking up on Christmas day, I saw snow falling outside my window! Already a present from Santa, and without a Christmas tree! Driving 3 hours to the city, I enjoyed ‘receiving’ more Christmas presents at Best Denki, the Best Buy of Japan, where I picked up a new Sony Cybershot DSC-HX5V (featuring 10x optical zoom, 20x digital zoom, instant sweep panorama shots, and built in GPS). This will be the tool which I will use to record many more Japan adventures, and I’ve already posted pictures from my trip to Nagasaki today. Go ahead and check them out on Picassa through the link at the top of the page!
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Fall Memories
The trees are finally starting to change color around Amakusa.
Today, while I was at my largest (and favorite?) elementary school, 大江 Ooe elementary, I got invited to go fishing after school with the 5th and 6th graders. When 2:30 rolled around, all the 5th and 6th grade boys busted out their tackle boxes and fishing rods and lined up for departure in the playground. We marched through town, saying 'Konnichiwa!' to everyone we met on our way (that's "Hello" for those of you who don't know).
It was a slightly windy and partly cloudy day. The rocky cliffs shined brilliantly in the late afternoon soon, and little splashes of fall color could be seen all throughout the forest covered hills. It was one of those days that I'm reminded of what I wonderful place I live in.
Standing on a jetty in the harbor and hooking shrimp and worms for bait, we cast (or dipped) our lines into the water. Within minutes, people were already catching fish. Nothing was bigger than my fore-arm, but the wish weren't exactly minnows either. Instead of cigarettes and beer, lollipops and warm, sweet canned coffee (which you can buy in the vending machines) were consumed by all.
When the number of bites started declining, we departed for a short adventure along the beach and up the hill to the light house overlooking the harbor. Snapping a shot of the view, we headed back down to build a 'house' with driftwood on the beach.
...yeah second childhood!
(I'd post pictures of my kids holding their 'catches of the day,' but I'm not allowed to in a public forum. Shoot me an email, though, and I'll send them to you!)
Today, while I was at my largest (and favorite?) elementary school, 大江 Ooe elementary, I got invited to go fishing after school with the 5th and 6th graders. When 2:30 rolled around, all the 5th and 6th grade boys busted out their tackle boxes and fishing rods and lined up for departure in the playground. We marched through town, saying 'Konnichiwa!' to everyone we met on our way (that's "Hello" for those of you who don't know).
Standing on a jetty in the harbor and hooking shrimp and worms for bait, we cast (or dipped) our lines into the water. Within minutes, people were already catching fish. Nothing was bigger than my fore-arm, but the wish weren't exactly minnows either. Instead of cigarettes and beer, lollipops and warm, sweet canned coffee (which you can buy in the vending machines) were consumed by all.
When the number of bites started declining, we departed for a short adventure along the beach and up the hill to the light house overlooking the harbor. Snapping a shot of the view, we headed back down to build a 'house' with driftwood on the beach.
...yeah second childhood!
(I'd post pictures of my kids holding their 'catches of the day,' but I'm not allowed to in a public forum. Shoot me an email, though, and I'll send them to you!)
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Things left to write about:
Yatsushiro fireworks competition
五足の靴 hiking day + onsen + Amakusa arts festival + delicious chicken
15 K hike with my middle school + 飲み会 afterwards
Don't let me forget to write about these things!
五足の靴 hiking day + onsen + Amakusa arts festival + delicious chicken
15 K hike with my middle school + 飲み会 afterwards
Don't let me forget to write about these things!
英語発表
Since week 2 of work until the middle of October, I staid after school everyday at my middle school to work with a group of six students (or at least six when they all come; usually it is only three or four) to prepare for the all Amakusa English recitation contest. It was a pretty significant event in my JET career, as I knew I would be judged slightly depending on how well we did in the competition.
An English Recitation contest, for those of you who are wondering, is a competition where middle school students perform dialogs/skits from their textbooks in front of hundreds of people. Many students have been practicing for about 2 months, practicing the same 3-5 minute dialog over and over. At the competition, everyone listens nervously to the other schools performances; many schools choose the same dialogs to perform, so it can be both painfully boring and painfully nerve-racking to see other students perform the same dialog you. Will the judges like their rendition better than yours? Is there really anything to differentiate the performances? Will they give us extra points for doing these gestures and pausing here instead of there?
Though practicing the same dialogs with my students day in and day out was sort of boring, we actually spent a lot of time just talking about whatever. It was my first chance to get to know some of my students outside the classroom. Even now those kids are my 'best friends' among the middle school students, and I feel I can talk with them without being awkward.
Anyway, back to the competition. My first years tried as best as they could to make the skit "Hamburger Shop"' interesting, but since 80% of the skills were doing the same dialog for the first year skit, I was a little worried for them. The second years had armed themselves with some interesting gestures that really added new meaning to the interpretation of their story "The Magic Box" (OK, so maybe that description has a more gravitas than is deserved), and my third year student was a natural at performing the horrendously tragic "A Mother's Lullaby" story.
BTW: Mother's Lullaby: most awkward story to teach in the textbook. Hiroshima is bombed, little girl sings lullaby to dying boy who is crying for his mother, both little girl and boy die before the sun rises the next day. Why is this in the English textbook? This is not getting students in a happy mood to learn English.
After hours of hearing the same skits over and over, the time finally came for the presentation of awards. Everyone in the room waited with baited breath as they called out which schools received "excellence" awards for each school year. Kuratake, Shinwa, Ushibuka, Hondo…Amakusa Junior high school! Then the announcement of who got 1st and 2nd place… darn. On to the next school year. 2nd years …Ushibuka, Kawaura, Hondo Higashi…Amakusa ! It was a pretty doki doki moment (doki doki is the sound of your heart beating in Japanese), but we were very happy to receive excellence awards for all of our students. Overall we came in 4th place out of 27 schools. Sadly, because of changes in the program, they only gave out trophies to the top three schools instead of the top four (which they supposedly did last year). Oh well. We supposedly got fourth last year as well, so at least I can't be blamed for making our students worse.
Other good points of the day: a fun filled bus ride and the chance to introduce my students to my 'foreigner' friends. My students for some reason think that I just stay in my apartment and make lesson plans when I'm not work, so the idea that I go around Amakusa with other people and have fun was a big surprise to them...
Sunday, October 31, 2010
More of Jay's wedding.
Skipping important information about winning the Kumamoto custom contest dressed as a Tetris piece, here is a link to a blog that features pictures from my brother's wedding, if you are interested in seeing that kind of stuff.
http://blog.eikonphoto.com/
http://blog.eikonphoto.com/
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Good and Bad Points about being a small town JET
1.) Everything you share about yourself becomes public knowledge. Mentioning that you once did track in high school to one of your teachers at one of your elementary schools will mean that everyone in a 20 mile radius will know this small part of your personal history.
2.) Your whereabouts are also public knowledge. If one of your students saw you shopping at JUSCO for orange juice, everyone in your five villages will a.) know that you went to JUSCO on Saturday and b.) think that you probably like orange juice.
3.) If you are seen having a conversation with anyone of the opposite sex while out in public, everyone will immediately assume that that person is your significant other. It doesn't seem like Japanese people don't have too many platonic relationships with members of the opposite sex.
Good points:
1.) If you meet one of your students outside of school, you'll make that kid's day. Now that kid will have something to tell all of his friends (that he saw/met Erik-sensei at blah blah blah) when he gets back home. Also, the braver kids will approach you and tell you the results of the soccer/baseball game they played that day or show you their newest pokemon game. One kid even showed me his mom's car keys... I'm still not sure how to react most of the time.
2.) Parents driving with their kids in the car will honk at you and wave. Some students will even hangout the window to wave at you.
3.) People are generally very nice and always willing to help you out and talk with you.
Some of the above points are slightly exaggerated (but sometimes feels like they are true) and some are completely true. Honestly I really don't mind all of the attention, and since I rarely have anything to hide, the lack of privacy doesn't bother me at all.
2.) Your whereabouts are also public knowledge. If one of your students saw you shopping at JUSCO for orange juice, everyone in your five villages will a.) know that you went to JUSCO on Saturday and b.) think that you probably like orange juice.
3.) If you are seen having a conversation with anyone of the opposite sex while out in public, everyone will immediately assume that that person is your significant other. It doesn't seem like Japanese people don't have too many platonic relationships with members of the opposite sex.
Good points:
1.) If you meet one of your students outside of school, you'll make that kid's day. Now that kid will have something to tell all of his friends (that he saw/met Erik-sensei at blah blah blah) when he gets back home. Also, the braver kids will approach you and tell you the results of the soccer/baseball game they played that day or show you their newest pokemon game. One kid even showed me his mom's car keys... I'm still not sure how to react most of the time.
2.) Parents driving with their kids in the car will honk at you and wave. Some students will even hangout the window to wave at you.
3.) People are generally very nice and always willing to help you out and talk with you.
Some of the above points are slightly exaggerated (but sometimes feels like they are true) and some are completely true. Honestly I really don't mind all of the attention, and since I rarely have anything to hide, the lack of privacy doesn't bother me at all.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
End of World Fireworks
videos are posted on my Facebook profile. They are called this because a.) they are set to the tune of Mozart's Requiem Mass in D Minor, which is pretty sad and epic and b.) there are so many fiery explosions that it you can only think "AAAAAAAAGGGHHHH! The world is ending!"
Back to America
OK. First off the list of things to blog about is my return trip to America for my brother's wedding: a pretty big deal, no?
On September 28, I left work at 6 pm and headed straight for Kumamoto city. After a 1.5 hour car ride, a 1 hour train ride, one night in a hotel, a 1 hour bus ride, a 1.5 hour flight, and a 3 subway rides, I was in Tokyo Narita airport getting ready for the 12 hour plan ride to Detroit. If I were more adept at making travel arrangements from within Japan, I probably would have had an easier time getting home, but I ended up just using the modes of transportation that I used to come to Takahama in the first place, just now in reverse order. Maybe I should just abbreviate this as "I went home to America, and travel was a bitch."
...but it was so worth it! My brother and his girlfriend (now wife) Brooke picked a really cool place to have their wedding: Maryvale Castle, an old castle in northern Maryland that was given over to an all girls school but is now just used as a nice place to have weddings. Think Diney-Cinderella-Prince-Charming-fantasy fulfillment, with a touch of European-fancniess dream. There was probably a better way I could have strung those words together to form a complete, comprehensible English sentence, but... yeah I'm an English teacher...
The rehearsal for the ceremony done very quickly as the minister who was supposed to practice with us accidentally locked her keys in her car and couldn't come... That's a ticket straight to my "Flake Squad" list. Oh well. We finished so early that we got to the restaurant where we were having the rehearsal dinner more than a half hour early. This messed up the dinner preparations a little, which annoyed my mother because she was the one responsible for the rehearsal dinner. I blame all this on you, minister!
But who cares about the rehearsal, really, in light of the real deal. It felt weird spending most of the next day running around doing shopping errands for things I needed to bring with me back to Japan and not preparing for the wedding until around 3 pm or so. Since I was out of the States up until this point, no one had given me any responsibilities for the wedding preparations other than to show up an hour early. No problem with that.
If I take time to describe the decor and atmosphere of the wedding, I will end up taking up way too much space and sounding way too feminine, so I'll just have to say that Brooke (Jay's new wife) did a fantastic job working (sometimes) by herself and (mostly) with friends and family to hand-craft decorations for wedding. Brooke's mother works for Homestead Gardens, which helped a lot in obtaining the immense amount of red and white flowers for the occasion. Most of the decorations (flowers, invitations, bride's maids dresses, groomsmen outfits, dinning ware, cake, and even the drinks and candy) were either red or white.
It was six o'clock on a fine, crisp autumn day when the procession started with, who else, but me (and my mother). Escorting her to the small group of white wooden chairs arranged on the back lawn (there were 70 chairs total, but they looked few in number), I walked back to the procession group and tagged Brooke's little brother Chris so that he could escort his mother. Processing in with the bridesmaids and taking our places on the steps leading up to the terrace, we waited for the bride to enter...
... but she never appeared NO JUST KIDDING!!! Brooke looked great and the ceremony went very well. Flake squad minister gal didn't give the most spirited narration I've ever heard, but at least she didn't lock herself out of the car again. I didn't lose the wedding rings (yes!) and managed not to cry even when the bride and all of her bridesmaids started (I can't stand when I see other people crying). No one tripped or fainted, at least during the ceremony, and everyone was all smiles when the bride and groom finally kissed and led the entire group inside to get ready for dinner on the terrace.
Dinner was very tasty, Brooke's cousins from Chicago are very interesting, the cake was simple looking but incredibly delicious (tasted like it had a stick of butter in every slice), and people had a good time dancing afterwards. My speech, which I prepared in my head since coming to Japan but never got the chance to write it down until the car ride to the wedding, went well, though partially because I'm just used to speaking in public by now after being SCF emcee for so long.
There was a small bit about my mom tripping and falling and having to go to the hospital, but as God awful as it sounds, it hardly put a damper in the wedding fun (or at least I'm doing my best to believe that is the case). My mom was mortified, I'm sure, but she turned out to be OK and the wedding part went on.
Since rice-throwing is forbidden at this particular castle, we blew bubbles instead to say goodbye to the bride and groom. Honeymoon at a beach resort on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. ハッピーエンド！ (Happi endo!)
On September 28, I left work at 6 pm and headed straight for Kumamoto city. After a 1.5 hour car ride, a 1 hour train ride, one night in a hotel, a 1 hour bus ride, a 1.5 hour flight, and a 3 subway rides, I was in Tokyo Narita airport getting ready for the 12 hour plan ride to Detroit. If I were more adept at making travel arrangements from within Japan, I probably would have had an easier time getting home, but I ended up just using the modes of transportation that I used to come to Takahama in the first place, just now in reverse order. Maybe I should just abbreviate this as "I went home to America, and travel was a bitch."
...but it was so worth it! My brother and his girlfriend (now wife) Brooke picked a really cool place to have their wedding: Maryvale Castle, an old castle in northern Maryland that was given over to an all girls school but is now just used as a nice place to have weddings. Think Diney-Cinderella-Prince-Charming-fantasy fulfillment, with a touch of European-fancniess dream. There was probably a better way I could have strung those words together to form a complete, comprehensible English sentence, but... yeah I'm an English teacher...
The rehearsal for the ceremony done very quickly as the minister who was supposed to practice with us accidentally locked her keys in her car and couldn't come... That's a ticket straight to my "Flake Squad" list. Oh well. We finished so early that we got to the restaurant where we were having the rehearsal dinner more than a half hour early. This messed up the dinner preparations a little, which annoyed my mother because she was the one responsible for the rehearsal dinner. I blame all this on you, minister!
But who cares about the rehearsal, really, in light of the real deal. It felt weird spending most of the next day running around doing shopping errands for things I needed to bring with me back to Japan and not preparing for the wedding until around 3 pm or so. Since I was out of the States up until this point, no one had given me any responsibilities for the wedding preparations other than to show up an hour early. No problem with that.
If I take time to describe the decor and atmosphere of the wedding, I will end up taking up way too much space and sounding way too feminine, so I'll just have to say that Brooke (Jay's new wife) did a fantastic job working (sometimes) by herself and (mostly) with friends and family to hand-craft decorations for wedding. Brooke's mother works for Homestead Gardens, which helped a lot in obtaining the immense amount of red and white flowers for the occasion. Most of the decorations (flowers, invitations, bride's maids dresses, groomsmen outfits, dinning ware, cake, and even the drinks and candy) were either red or white.
It was six o'clock on a fine, crisp autumn day when the procession started with, who else, but me (and my mother). Escorting her to the small group of white wooden chairs arranged on the back lawn (there were 70 chairs total, but they looked few in number), I walked back to the procession group and tagged Brooke's little brother Chris so that he could escort his mother. Processing in with the bridesmaids and taking our places on the steps leading up to the terrace, we waited for the bride to enter...
... but she never appeared NO JUST KIDDING!!! Brooke looked great and the ceremony went very well. Flake squad minister gal didn't give the most spirited narration I've ever heard, but at least she didn't lock herself out of the car again. I didn't lose the wedding rings (yes!) and managed not to cry even when the bride and all of her bridesmaids started (I can't stand when I see other people crying). No one tripped or fainted, at least during the ceremony, and everyone was all smiles when the bride and groom finally kissed and led the entire group inside to get ready for dinner on the terrace.
Dinner was very tasty, Brooke's cousins from Chicago are very interesting, the cake was simple looking but incredibly delicious (tasted like it had a stick of butter in every slice), and people had a good time dancing afterwards. My speech, which I prepared in my head since coming to Japan but never got the chance to write it down until the car ride to the wedding, went well, though partially because I'm just used to speaking in public by now after being SCF emcee for so long.
There was a small bit about my mom tripping and falling and having to go to the hospital, but as God awful as it sounds, it hardly put a damper in the wedding fun (or at least I'm doing my best to believe that is the case). My mom was mortified, I'm sure, but she turned out to be OK and the wedding part went on.
Since rice-throwing is forbidden at this particular castle, we blew bubbles instead to say goodbye to the bride and groom. Honeymoon at a beach resort on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. ハッピーエンド！ (Happi endo!)
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
A short post
Totally skipping over the big important things like my brother's wedding, the English recitation contest, my last sports festival and community drinking party, the mind-blowing fireworks festival in Yatsushiro, the all you can eat amazing indian food in Kumamoto, and the tiresome annual conference for Amakusa teachers of English, I'll share a small 2 second part of my day today at Ooe elementary.
Ooe, as you may or may not remember, is the village in my town with all of the Christians. They have a famous church and Christian museum, and many of the villagers are descended from Christian families from hundreds of years ago.
Today I taught my Halloween lesson to the 1st and 2nd graders, which included dressing up as a pirate (there happened to be two pirate costumes in my random box of Halloween costumes that my predecessors left me) and teaching the monster words (ghost, pirate, skeleton, witch, etc.) and the phrase "Are you a _____?" In the other schools, I had explained Halloween by relating it to Obon, the Japanese festival where the spirits of ancestors return for a few days before being sent off again by their families in little lantern boats.
"But Erik sensei," the first grade teacher butted in, "these kids don't know what Obon is very well. They're all Christian"
On cue, all of the 1st and 2nd graders who heard and understood the word "Christian" made the sign of the cross and but on their best angel faces. I love teaching at my 'Catholic' school!
Ooe, as you may or may not remember, is the village in my town with all of the Christians. They have a famous church and Christian museum, and many of the villagers are descended from Christian families from hundreds of years ago.
Today I taught my Halloween lesson to the 1st and 2nd graders, which included dressing up as a pirate (there happened to be two pirate costumes in my random box of Halloween costumes that my predecessors left me) and teaching the monster words (ghost, pirate, skeleton, witch, etc.) and the phrase "Are you a _____?" In the other schools, I had explained Halloween by relating it to Obon, the Japanese festival where the spirits of ancestors return for a few days before being sent off again by their families in little lantern boats.
"But Erik sensei," the first grade teacher butted in, "these kids don't know what Obon is very well. They're all Christian"
On cue, all of the 1st and 2nd graders who heard and understood the word "Christian" made the sign of the cross and but on their best angel faces. I love teaching at my 'Catholic' school!
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Oops
As you may have noticed, I have not been posting much to my blog lately. This does't mean my life has suddenly got boring. There are still more sports festivals to come, funny accounts from English speech contest practice, a night time faculty softball game, and my return to America for my brother's wedding. As soon as I get over JET lag, finish sports day practice, and go to my pottery class, I'll make some devoted time for blogging. Bleh. So tired... going to bed at 10...
Monday, September 20, 2010
Sports Festival Pics
I did take a handful of photos and videos from the sports festivals this weekend, but if you want to see them you'll have to ask me in email directly. Since the photos contain some pictures of my students, I can't post them publicly on the web.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Sports Festival #2 and #3
Here in Amakusa town and all around the Amakusa town, the majority of elementary schools are having their sports festivals. Having attended one sports festival already (and having had a great time at said sports festival), I couldn't wait to see what was in store for the ones this weekend.
Unfortunately for me, three of my elementary schools had sports festivals this weekend, meaning I had to choose which ones to go to and which ones not to go to. The decision made was to go to the one in my village of residence, Takahama, and the one in the neighboring village of Ooe (the third one, in Fukuregi, was a little too far away since my car is currently running low on gas, thanks to a disastrous detour on the 280 from Kawaura to Takahama, a path that leads straight through the mountains).
Takahama Elementary, as I might have mentioned before, is the one school that I still haven't quite figured out yet. The children there don't really seem to take an interest in me, are sort of rowdy, and end up coming off as sort of rude (by Japanese standards). This may be because they are just a little more afraid of me than some of the other elementary school kids and thus are less willing to ask me questions and such; I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here. Anyway, I try my best to hang out with them and make small talk when I can.
Notable events from the Takahama sports festival include 1.) the firefighter race and 2.) the soccer bounce relay. In the firefighter race, kids had to race to a bucket filled with water guns, stand and squirt a little red paper flame until it fell off of its tissue paper support, read a description of a person written on a card attached to the paper flame, and then throw a hula hoop over the corresponding person in the audience and drag them to the finish. Descriptions of those to be rescued included someone wearing glasses, someone wearing (color) shirt, a (number) year student, etc. I was eventually roped in as a person wearing white and dragged to the finish line. Yeah!
The soccer bounce relay was fun because I got to participate! Yes, my selfish side is showing again, but watching all of these kids play these fun games makes you want to get out there and have fun too. In this race, adults (in this case, my team of teachers) had to strap a milk crate to their backs, bounce a soccer ball against the ground, and then catch the ball in the crate on your back before it hits the ground a second time. It's not a skill that is used in many American sports, but luckily I only had a little bit of trouble getting my soccer balls into my crate and then running the half lap around the track. The teachers' team came in last, but it was totally NOT my fault. Really.
Before I left for Ooe, I watched one more game in which the kids had to potato sack race to the center of the field, grab a soccer ball, and then throw it at a cardboard cut out of some anime character before racing on foot to the finish line. Why can't they have these games in America, with little card board cut outs of Mickey Mouse or something?
At Ooe, I arrived just in time to see the taiko performance and enjoy lunch with the principal and a whole bunch of other old guys. Though I'm trying my best to have my teachers stop treating me like a guest and more like a coworker, I'm still often thrust into the company of the more respected (read 'old') guests where I have to endure at least an hour of Japanese that I can't understand while smiling and trying to keep good posture/look like I'm paying attention.
Back to fun time. After lunch, the Ooe kids performed their cheering dances to a team of judges (including me o_0) as part of the day's red-vs-white-team competition. Though the red team had a funny skit involving a 6th grade boy dressing up as Sailor Moon and rescuing a poor 1st grader, the most points were awarded to the white team for a.) dancing to one of my favorite J-pop songs b.) actually having a more impressive dance routine and c.) actually being more energetic than the other team. Sorry Sailor Moon.
I was impressed with the difference in atmosphere between the two schools' sports festivals. At Ooe, many more parents and siblings showed up to watch, including some of my middle schoolers (even dressed in their school gym uniforms, so I could recognize them). Among the many parents and grandparents that I ran into, I met one mother who actually speaks perfect English (she's from the Philippines, not a native Japanese) and happens to be the mother of one of my favorite Ooe elementary school students. And, her name is Cecelia! Woo-hoo English names that I can remember/ existence of people who can speak English!
Unfortunately for me, three of my elementary schools had sports festivals this weekend, meaning I had to choose which ones to go to and which ones not to go to. The decision made was to go to the one in my village of residence, Takahama, and the one in the neighboring village of Ooe (the third one, in Fukuregi, was a little too far away since my car is currently running low on gas, thanks to a disastrous detour on the 280 from Kawaura to Takahama, a path that leads straight through the mountains).
Takahama Elementary, as I might have mentioned before, is the one school that I still haven't quite figured out yet. The children there don't really seem to take an interest in me, are sort of rowdy, and end up coming off as sort of rude (by Japanese standards). This may be because they are just a little more afraid of me than some of the other elementary school kids and thus are less willing to ask me questions and such; I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here. Anyway, I try my best to hang out with them and make small talk when I can.
Notable events from the Takahama sports festival include 1.) the firefighter race and 2.) the soccer bounce relay. In the firefighter race, kids had to race to a bucket filled with water guns, stand and squirt a little red paper flame until it fell off of its tissue paper support, read a description of a person written on a card attached to the paper flame, and then throw a hula hoop over the corresponding person in the audience and drag them to the finish. Descriptions of those to be rescued included someone wearing glasses, someone wearing (color) shirt, a (number) year student, etc. I was eventually roped in as a person wearing white and dragged to the finish line. Yeah!
The soccer bounce relay was fun because I got to participate! Yes, my selfish side is showing again, but watching all of these kids play these fun games makes you want to get out there and have fun too. In this race, adults (in this case, my team of teachers) had to strap a milk crate to their backs, bounce a soccer ball against the ground, and then catch the ball in the crate on your back before it hits the ground a second time. It's not a skill that is used in many American sports, but luckily I only had a little bit of trouble getting my soccer balls into my crate and then running the half lap around the track. The teachers' team came in last, but it was totally NOT my fault. Really.
Before I left for Ooe, I watched one more game in which the kids had to potato sack race to the center of the field, grab a soccer ball, and then throw it at a cardboard cut out of some anime character before racing on foot to the finish line. Why can't they have these games in America, with little card board cut outs of Mickey Mouse or something?
At Ooe, I arrived just in time to see the taiko performance and enjoy lunch with the principal and a whole bunch of other old guys. Though I'm trying my best to have my teachers stop treating me like a guest and more like a coworker, I'm still often thrust into the company of the more respected (read 'old') guests where I have to endure at least an hour of Japanese that I can't understand while smiling and trying to keep good posture/look like I'm paying attention.
Back to fun time. After lunch, the Ooe kids performed their cheering dances to a team of judges (including me o_0) as part of the day's red-vs-white-team competition. Though the red team had a funny skit involving a 6th grade boy dressing up as Sailor Moon and rescuing a poor 1st grader, the most points were awarded to the white team for a.) dancing to one of my favorite J-pop songs b.) actually having a more impressive dance routine and c.) actually being more energetic than the other team. Sorry Sailor Moon.
I was impressed with the difference in atmosphere between the two schools' sports festivals. At Ooe, many more parents and siblings showed up to watch, including some of my middle schoolers (even dressed in their school gym uniforms, so I could recognize them). Among the many parents and grandparents that I ran into, I met one mother who actually speaks perfect English (she's from the Philippines, not a native Japanese) and happens to be the mother of one of my favorite Ooe elementary school students. And, her name is Cecelia! Woo-hoo English names that I can remember/ existence of people who can speak English!
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Sports Festival #1
Sorry for not actually getting around for posting about my first sports festival. The work week started and a lost time/energy.
So last Sunday, I attended North Shimoda Elementary School's Sports Festival. Now a 'sports' festival in Japan may not be like the sports days or field days you had in your elementary schools. Scratch that; they are most definitely different.
First of all, elementary school kids practice for weeks leading up to the sports festival. Everyone has to learn how to march, where to march, when to go where, how to do the stretching dance, how to do the cheering dance, when and how to do celebration cheers, how to run to the podium to give a speech.... Several students will be flag bearers, team leaders, and may even give short speeches or presentations in front of the whole school/community, so there are a lot of ceremonial technicalities that have to be hammered out, memorized, and practiced.
In almost every case, students are split into two teams, red and white. Students where little baseball caps (with string straps) of the corresponding color, which are invertible so they can be used for either team.
With much ceremony, students march into the field area, lead by flag bearers, listen to speeches from the first graders, the school president, and other important people. After that, the games begin! Since Shimoda North is a small school (24 kids?), people from the community also participate, wearing little colored scarves to indicate which section of the village they are from. My second host family, the Kikai family, were gracious enough to adopt me into their team, the blue team "Yu no Moto" 湯の本 (Origin of Hot Water (remember Shimoda North is a hot spring town)). This meant that I got to participate in more events too!
Now every sports festival will be different depending on the school, but at the one I attended last week, these are some of the events which the students and neighbors enjoyed: various races (relay, individual), giant ball race (push a giant, 5 foot tall rubber ball around the track), giant pants race (see video, don giant pair of pants with your partner, grab a cookie with your teeth, then pop a balloon between your bodies), tug of war, eating race (just small snack food, like a cream filled bun; I did this one too, but no one wants to see a video of me cramming cream filled bun into my mouth), among others.
I had a great time helping out with one race (running alongside two sixth graders and my principal), the eating race, and the giant pants race. Sadly, during lunch, there was a deluge of rain that forced us to get soaking wet as we close down all of the tents, move everything inside, and end the festival early.
What event could possibly be fitting to end the day's festivities? A rock-paper-scissors tournament! Japanese people LOVE LOVE LOVE rock-paper-scissors (called jan-ken in Japan). Many important decisions are made by janken, and the Japanese have even figured out a way to have more than two people play janken at once and still have a decisive winner by the end of it. Many games that are suggested in JET program teaching handbooks involve janken and chanting various English phrases, as everyone knows it will get your kids riled up REALLY fast.
I, of course, lost in the very first round, so I did not get a prize. Prizes for the top winners included small barbecues, chairs, food goods, and the grand prize (drum roll please): two giant bags of rice! Yum! To be fair, rice is an expensive commodity, so to a Japanese person two free bags of rice is quite the grand prize.
Sadly, most of the other sports day festivals I will visit in the future will not be ones I can participate in. Only North and South Shimoda and Fukuregi have sports festivals that include events for adults too. Not that watching the festivals isn't fun enough, it's just that it is even MORE fun when I get to participate as if I'm part of the community too. Yeah?
I've been lucky enough to get a sneak peak of most of my students' team cheer dances, since the whole school practices during school hours. The red team at Ooe includes a Sailor Moon skit at the end, and the red and white teams at South Shimoda have unicycles as part of their dances.
Note: For some reason, all of the elementary schools here have unicycles, and all of the kids know how to ride them. Weird. I wish I could.
Also note: Map of my town down at the bottom of the blog page. If you are reading this in google reader, try visiting the website.
So last Sunday, I attended North Shimoda Elementary School's Sports Festival. Now a 'sports' festival in Japan may not be like the sports days or field days you had in your elementary schools. Scratch that; they are most definitely different.
First of all, elementary school kids practice for weeks leading up to the sports festival. Everyone has to learn how to march, where to march, when to go where, how to do the stretching dance, how to do the cheering dance, when and how to do celebration cheers, how to run to the podium to give a speech.... Several students will be flag bearers, team leaders, and may even give short speeches or presentations in front of the whole school/community, so there are a lot of ceremonial technicalities that have to be hammered out, memorized, and practiced.
In almost every case, students are split into two teams, red and white. Students where little baseball caps (with string straps) of the corresponding color, which are invertible so they can be used for either team.
With much ceremony, students march into the field area, lead by flag bearers, listen to speeches from the first graders, the school president, and other important people. After that, the games begin! Since Shimoda North is a small school (24 kids?), people from the community also participate, wearing little colored scarves to indicate which section of the village they are from. My second host family, the Kikai family, were gracious enough to adopt me into their team, the blue team "Yu no Moto" 湯の本 (Origin of Hot Water (remember Shimoda North is a hot spring town)). This meant that I got to participate in more events too!
Now every sports festival will be different depending on the school, but at the one I attended last week, these are some of the events which the students and neighbors enjoyed: various races (relay, individual), giant ball race (push a giant, 5 foot tall rubber ball around the track), giant pants race (see video, don giant pair of pants with your partner, grab a cookie with your teeth, then pop a balloon between your bodies), tug of war, eating race (just small snack food, like a cream filled bun; I did this one too, but no one wants to see a video of me cramming cream filled bun into my mouth), among others.
I had a great time helping out with one race (running alongside two sixth graders and my principal), the eating race, and the giant pants race. Sadly, during lunch, there was a deluge of rain that forced us to get soaking wet as we close down all of the tents, move everything inside, and end the festival early.
What event could possibly be fitting to end the day's festivities? A rock-paper-scissors tournament! Japanese people LOVE LOVE LOVE rock-paper-scissors (called jan-ken in Japan). Many important decisions are made by janken, and the Japanese have even figured out a way to have more than two people play janken at once and still have a decisive winner by the end of it. Many games that are suggested in JET program teaching handbooks involve janken and chanting various English phrases, as everyone knows it will get your kids riled up REALLY fast.
I, of course, lost in the very first round, so I did not get a prize. Prizes for the top winners included small barbecues, chairs, food goods, and the grand prize (drum roll please): two giant bags of rice! Yum! To be fair, rice is an expensive commodity, so to a Japanese person two free bags of rice is quite the grand prize.
Sadly, most of the other sports day festivals I will visit in the future will not be ones I can participate in. Only North and South Shimoda and Fukuregi have sports festivals that include events for adults too. Not that watching the festivals isn't fun enough, it's just that it is even MORE fun when I get to participate as if I'm part of the community too. Yeah?
I've been lucky enough to get a sneak peak of most of my students' team cheer dances, since the whole school practices during school hours. The red team at Ooe includes a Sailor Moon skit at the end, and the red and white teams at South Shimoda have unicycles as part of their dances.
Note: For some reason, all of the elementary schools here have unicycles, and all of the kids know how to ride them. Weird. I wish I could.
Also note: Map of my town down at the bottom of the blog page. If you are reading this in google reader, try visiting the website.
Monday, September 13, 2010
My Debut on a Japanese Gameshow...
...or what felt like one. Check out my first two videos of fun events from the 'sports' day I attended yesterday at one of my elementary schools. They can be found on Facebook for now, but I'll try to upload them to this blog too. More videos, and a detailed description of all of the day's antics, when I get home from school.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
A lot more Shougakkou
To try and avoid needlessly detailed accounts of each of my days of teaching this last week, I thought I'd compile as many as possible into one blog entry. Since this was my first time visiting most of these elementary schools, there were still a.) more ceremonies for me to attend to b.) self-introduction speeches for me to give and c.) little kids bombarding me with questions and petting the sun-bleached blonde hair on my arms.
My second day at the middle school was the first in which I got to help teach all three grade levels. By now, however, I was starting to get a taste for what middle school English was really like. I was definitely doing my best to add humor to the class by inserting as much hyperbolic emotion into my readings of the various texts and pronunciations of the various words. I hope that I'll soon start developing a relationship with my JTE that will allow me to put more of my own ideas in class. For now, though, the kids will have to deal with boring worksheets and rote memorization readings...
Tuesday I went to Shimoda-kita (North Shimoda) Elementary School, which though not as small as its southern version still rivals most of the schools in how small its student population is. It turned out that because of special scheduling of Sports Day practice/rehearsal, I was only going to teach one class that day. Fine with me. In the mean time, I got to help the kids clean up the track area (i.e. I do the cleaning jobs which the kids are supposed to be doing while they bombard me with endless questions) and help one of the other teachers demonstrate one of the sports day events. To my understanding, in this particular event you and your partner must 1.) run from opposite ends of the field to the center where 2.) you don a GIANT pair of pants (each person in one leg) and then proceed to 3.) hop together towards a suspended rope where balloons hang so that you can 4.) jump up and grab said balloons with your teeth before finally 5.) blowing up your balloon and popping it by placing it between your body and your partners body and hugging each other. I'm going to this sports festival tomorrow. Can't wait!
Note: The Shimoda-kita kids definitely get the gold star for being the most inquisitive.
Wednesday I went to the elementary school right down the street from my apartment, Takahama Elementary school. This school is fairly new and comparatively large. By sheer chance the school population is lopsided with more boys than girls, resulting in girls that are much meeker compared to their counterparts at other schools and guys who are much rowdier/ ruder (rude?! I didn't think I'd have to use that word to describe my students... it could just be how they act in a group). While my 4th grade class went well, I accidentally slipped into my 4th grade lesson when teaching the 2/3rd graders (same lesson, different level of difficulty), which sorta ended up badly. My 5th and 6th grade joint class, being comparatively large and dominated by males, was much harder to teach since I didn't even have a working blackboard in the room I was teaching (the library, since the classrooms were too small for both the 5th and 6th grade classes together). Oh well. I'm giving myself a break this week because it's my first time. I'll just have to take this into consideration next time.
Note on Sports Day Festivals (we also had Sports Day Practice at Takahama that day): The kids are divided up into two teams, red and white, and where little hats with their teams color. If you invert they hats, they become the other color. Also features a fashionable strap that goes behind your ears and under your chin. That was sarcasm on the 'fashionable' part of that last sentence... though the kids are adorable when they where their little sports day hats.
Note on Takahama Shougakkou: Struggling to find its one, positive characteristic.
My second day at the middle school was the first in which I got to help teach all three grade levels. By now, however, I was starting to get a taste for what middle school English was really like. I was definitely doing my best to add humor to the class by inserting as much hyperbolic emotion into my readings of the various texts and pronunciations of the various words. I hope that I'll soon start developing a relationship with my JTE that will allow me to put more of my own ideas in class. For now, though, the kids will have to deal with boring worksheets and rote memorization readings...
Tuesday I went to Shimoda-kita (North Shimoda) Elementary School, which though not as small as its southern version still rivals most of the schools in how small its student population is. It turned out that because of special scheduling of Sports Day practice/rehearsal, I was only going to teach one class that day. Fine with me. In the mean time, I got to help the kids clean up the track area (i.e. I do the cleaning jobs which the kids are supposed to be doing while they bombard me with endless questions) and help one of the other teachers demonstrate one of the sports day events. To my understanding, in this particular event you and your partner must 1.) run from opposite ends of the field to the center where 2.) you don a GIANT pair of pants (each person in one leg) and then proceed to 3.) hop together towards a suspended rope where balloons hang so that you can 4.) jump up and grab said balloons with your teeth before finally 5.) blowing up your balloon and popping it by placing it between your body and your partners body and hugging each other. I'm going to this sports festival tomorrow. Can't wait!
Note: The Shimoda-kita kids definitely get the gold star for being the most inquisitive.
Wednesday I went to the elementary school right down the street from my apartment, Takahama Elementary school. This school is fairly new and comparatively large. By sheer chance the school population is lopsided with more boys than girls, resulting in girls that are much meeker compared to their counterparts at other schools and guys who are much rowdier/ ruder (rude?! I didn't think I'd have to use that word to describe my students... it could just be how they act in a group). While my 4th grade class went well, I accidentally slipped into my 4th grade lesson when teaching the 2/3rd graders (same lesson, different level of difficulty), which sorta ended up badly. My 5th and 6th grade joint class, being comparatively large and dominated by males, was much harder to teach since I didn't even have a working blackboard in the room I was teaching (the library, since the classrooms were too small for both the 5th and 6th grade classes together). Oh well. I'm giving myself a break this week because it's my first time. I'll just have to take this into consideration next time.
Note on Sports Day Festivals (we also had Sports Day Practice at Takahama that day): The kids are divided up into two teams, red and white, and where little hats with their teams color. If you invert they hats, they become the other color. Also features a fashionable strap that goes behind your ears and under your chin. That was sarcasm on the 'fashionable' part of that last sentence... though the kids are adorable when they where their little sports day hats.
Note on Takahama Shougakkou: Struggling to find its one, positive characteristic.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
ABCs of Alcohol
A month ago, while I was still just working in the town office, I came across a pamphlet titled "The ABCs of Alcohol." Intrigued at the idea that a.) one could think up of something to say about alcohol using every letter of the alphabet and b.) that there might be some funny Engrish inside, I took it home with me and typed out each of the key sentences. Surprisingly, most of them are pretty clever and use correct English. This isn't a real blog post about the going-ons in my life, but I thought you might enjoy seeing it anyway. Not all of them are funny, but some of them, like the entry for H, W, Y, and Z, warrant a chuckle at least...
ABCs of Alcohol (お酒と健康:ABC辞典）
Alcohol is a lifelong friend of man.
As alcohol concentration in blood increases, your response to stimuli decreases markedly.
Healthy people eliminate alcohol at a constant rate.
Physical reactions to alcohol are different from person to person.
Enjoy good beer, and feel like a king.
Gulping liquor in a fluster is dangerous.
Good drinkers do not drink more than the stomach can handle.
Hangover spoil your morning.
Eat while you are drinking. The ingestion of food can slow down the absorption of alcohol.
The "J curve" shows the right amount of alcoholic intake.
A key to good health is to enjoy the right amount of alcohol.
Drinking moderately gives you a happy life
Misunderstandings hamper alcoholics form controlling their drinking.
If you are a nonstop drinker, you are one hundred percent alcoholic.
Alcoholism can be cured by correcting obsolete, incorrect information.
Pregnant women should realize their pre-born children are also underaged.
Qualm and worry trigger alcoholism in women.
Solitude after retirement triggers alcoholism.
Good drinkers know hot to eliminate stress.
Drinking alcohol is a taboo in some countries.
Underage drinking is prohibited because it dose harm to youngsters' growth.
Drunken driving leaves a lot of victims in its wake.
Man and alcohol have created a wonderful beverage culture.
Wine and cheese are indispensable for Xmas dinner.
"Yum Yum" describes dishes prepared with love.
Euphoria reaches a zenith as alcohol reduces tension and enhances relaxation.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Beach Party
After a successful first week (or rather three days) of teaching, it was time to celebrate! Lucky again for me, when JETs decide to go do something fun together, they usually end up coming to a place near where I am, e.g. the awesome beach in my town. In this case, most of the JETs from Amakusa and Kami-Amaksua (about eight people total?) came to the beach and then came over to my apartment. Note: Kami-amakusa is the city just north of us that bridges the gap between the mainland of Kyushu and the Amakusa islands.
With summer vacation time past, the beach was pretty deserted: no jet skis, no wake boarders, no 'surfers,' no ice cream stand, no yakisoba stand...no free yakisoba and beer from strange old men. OK. Just fine. We still managed to make a BBQ and chill on the beach, throw a frisbee around, watch the sunset, and float in the warm waters a bit and talk about our first weeks. A funny threesome of college-age students showed us how to light the fire for our BBQ (coals for BBQs are very different in Japan, and you have to buy these little pellet/wafer things to help you get the fire going), and afterwards they attempted to talk to us in English. I love how much easier it is to talk to strangers in Japan: you always have a reason to start a conversation, like "I'm a foreigner. I am different. Let's talk about that," or "I can speak English. You want to try practicing English. Let's do that."
After the sunset, we headed back to my apartment for some games and food, including bilingual Apples-to-Apples, Nertz, Taboo, and a weird pictionary like game where you alternate between drawing pictures and guessing what the previous person drew. This pictionary game ended up being the most hilarious; I did fall on the floor laughing at the point when I presented the sequence of pictures that started with the word "Beachball," followed by a drawing of a beach ball, beach, and person playing with a beach ball, then proceeded by a guess of "I'm on fire" (the person who guessed this argued that the beach ball looked too much like the fiery eye of Sauron), followed by a picture of someone on fire with a strange thought bubble, ending with the guess "I'm a super-saian you don't know." Another funny sequence started with "snowboard" followed by a picture of a snowboard, which someone guessed was actually a picture of "superman falling out of a black hole" (that's a scarf, not a cape...).
Shougakkou #2: Shimoda South
Last Friday (sorry about being behind on the posts), I visited the smallest of my schools, Shimoda South Elementary. Between six grade levels, there are only 12 kids. No first graders. One second grader. Three third graders.... On the one hand, it is really cool how much attention these kids get, how smart they all are, how close they all are, and how laid back the atmosphere is at school. On the other hand, it is really said that such a beautiful (relatively new) school will probably be closed soon because it has so few students. The classrooms are not really rooms but little nooks coming off of a larger atrium where the whole school can gather for lunch and group activities. I should probably just take pictures and show you later...
Anyway, since this was my first day teaching at this school, there was naturally a little ceremony to welcome me in which I had to give my self-introduction speech. By then, I was pretty good at knowing where to stand and what not, so things went smoothly. To my surprise, not only did every student give their self introduction in English, they also sang a song to me (with live piano accompaniment)! Yeah more celebrity treatment!
So far, this was also my busiest day of teaching: three whole classes! Yeah, it doesn't sound like much, especially considering how few students I had to teach (each class was only 4), but I enjoyed being on my feet and active all day rather than sitting in the teachers' room more than half of the day. Though I used mostly the same material for my 2/3 grade and 4 grade classes (giving directions using "Go {up/right/left/down};" I totally had everyone do a dance like Space Channel 5; they loved it, of course) it was still a good exercise for my teaching brain as I had to adapt the plans I had to accommodate the small class sizes and the varying level of ability.
Note: Apparently, 5 & 6 grade English classes start with everyone saying "OK. Let's learn English. YEAH!"
I made yet another 'little friend' at this grade school. The only 2nd grader, who is in fact the loudest human being in the school, is obsessed with airplanes and would ask me constantly if I knew what such and such plane was or if I had ever seen such and such plane in America. He would also demand that I watch basically everything that he did, and he also requested that I pick him up and, not only give him a ride on my shoulders, but throw (i.e. place) him in the trashcan head first, as my predecessor apparently once did.
Anyway, since this was my first day teaching at this school, there was naturally a little ceremony to welcome me in which I had to give my self-introduction speech. By then, I was pretty good at knowing where to stand and what not, so things went smoothly. To my surprise, not only did every student give their self introduction in English, they also sang a song to me (with live piano accompaniment)! Yeah more celebrity treatment!
So far, this was also my busiest day of teaching: three whole classes! Yeah, it doesn't sound like much, especially considering how few students I had to teach (each class was only 4), but I enjoyed being on my feet and active all day rather than sitting in the teachers' room more than half of the day. Though I used mostly the same material for my 2/3 grade and 4 grade classes (giving directions using "Go {up/right/left/down};" I totally had everyone do a dance like Space Channel 5; they loved it, of course) it was still a good exercise for my teaching brain as I had to adapt the plans I had to accommodate the small class sizes and the varying level of ability.
Note: Apparently, 5 & 6 grade English classes start with everyone saying "OK. Let's learn English. YEAH!"
I made yet another 'little friend' at this grade school. The only 2nd grader, who is in fact the loudest human being in the school, is obsessed with airplanes and would ask me constantly if I knew what such and such plane was or if I had ever seen such and such plane in America. He would also demand that I watch basically everything that he did, and he also requested that I pick him up and, not only give him a ride on my shoulders, but throw (i.e. place) him in the trashcan head first, as my predecessor apparently once did.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
大江小学校, My first Shougakkou visit
First day of teaching job: middle school with (pre-)pubescent, slightly apathetic preteens who have to learn English according to strict textbook guidelines. Little room for creativity on my part; no adorable children.
Second day of teaching, first day at a grade school: ERIK-SENSEI, ERIK-SENSEI COME PLAY WITH US HURRYYYYYYYY!!!!
...basically sums it up.
I was lucky enough to be able to visit Ooe Elementary school a few days before to talk with the 5/6 grade English teacher and talk about how the lessons would be planned out, so I wasn't too scared about teaching , even though it would be my first time leading a class (mostly) by myself. Where as I have little to no freedom at the middle school, I've found out that I'm quite free in teaching 5/6 grade English (as long as I go over the material in their "textbooks" somewhat; which activities/games I use to cover that material is up to me) and completely free in teaching every other grade. This was quite a shock for me, and I sorta was unprepared since I didn't know what they had already studied or what expectations there were of me, but after one made-up-on-the-spot 3/4 grade English lesson, I think I got the hang out it. Now I have much better not-made-up-on-the-spot lessons for 2-4 grade English that seems to be working out well so far.
Anyway, before I even stepped foot inside a classroom, my first interaction with the students (besides them coming down the hall and going 'EHHHH??!!!' as they look into the teachers' room, running back to their classrooms, bringing back 5 more students who then proceed to react in a similar fashion before running away) was at the school's end-of-summer swim meet. Seeing this as a perfect interaction to introduce useful English ("GO _(person's name)" ) , I made poster cards with 'G,' 'O,' 'S,' 'W,' 'I,' 'M' etc. on them and handed them out to some of the students. Before I knew it, even the adults were saying GOGOGOGOGOGO. Point!
Terrifying part of swim meet: rather than having swimming races, the first and second graders had competitions to see who could hold their breath the longest. This involved do the dead-man's float until only one person remained and the rest had given up and come up for air. I wonder if this ever has gone badly at a Japanese elementary school swim meet...
Awesome part: making another (little) friend. It's happened at every elementary school I've gone to so far (which is only two, but it happened at the pre-school too): there will always be the one little boy who is super 元気 energetic, falls in love with you instantly, and begins to pull you around by the arm everywhere, wanting to show you everything, asking you about everything, etc. The one at the pre-school was memorable because, after we played 'bowling' together with some play bricks and a ball, he lead me by the hand to the sink (right before lunch) and said (in Amakusa-dialect) "Erik you should wash your hands." This was more endearing to me since it was the first time I understood someone use that specific grammar in Amakusa-dialect. After standing next to me during lunch (which meant he was eye level with me when I was sitting), he lead me by the hand again and said "Erik you should say 'It was delicious' to the cook," and then he slid open the door to the kitchen. This 元気 kid at Ooe just kept following me around, talking to me, and trying to do pull ups on my arm.
After the swim meet, I once again had a 'welcoming ceremony' in front of the entire school, where I once again gave my self-introduction 自己紹介 while wearing a business suite. This one went a little better since I knew what to expect, knew where to stand, knew when to stand, etc. Afterwards, while I was trying to change back into normal clothes, it seemed like half the school was banging on the door of the room where I was changing saying 'ERIK-SENSEI hurry up! Play time is almost over! You have to come play with us!' Coming out of the teachers' locker room I was dragged by about twelve pairs of tiny hands to the school yard where I ran around with them for a little while before the next period started.
Note about school lunch time: the kids who are assigned to bring the school lunches to the classrooms dress up in little white aprons, white hair-nets, and white face masks (is that what you call those things that doctors/dentists wear? my I should just say white scrubs...). Very adorable and creepy at the same time.
Note about how I go to class: I never have to go to the classroom by myself at the appointed time. Whenever I have to teach a class, one or two kids will come to the teachers' room and then escort me to the classroom, usually carrying whatever items/luggage/teaching materials I have with me at the time. Being treated like royalty? I could get used to this :)
Second day of teaching, first day at a grade school: ERIK-SENSEI, ERIK-SENSEI COME PLAY WITH US HURRYYYYYYYY!!!!
...basically sums it up.
I was lucky enough to be able to visit Ooe Elementary school a few days before to talk with the 5/6 grade English teacher and talk about how the lessons would be planned out, so I wasn't too scared about teaching , even though it would be my first time leading a class (mostly) by myself. Where as I have little to no freedom at the middle school, I've found out that I'm quite free in teaching 5/6 grade English (as long as I go over the material in their "textbooks" somewhat; which activities/games I use to cover that material is up to me) and completely free in teaching every other grade. This was quite a shock for me, and I sorta was unprepared since I didn't know what they had already studied or what expectations there were of me, but after one made-up-on-the-spot 3/4 grade English lesson, I think I got the hang out it. Now I have much better not-made-up-on-the-spot lessons for 2-4 grade English that seems to be working out well so far.
Anyway, before I even stepped foot inside a classroom, my first interaction with the students (besides them coming down the hall and going 'EHHHH??!!!' as they look into the teachers' room, running back to their classrooms, bringing back 5 more students who then proceed to react in a similar fashion before running away) was at the school's end-of-summer swim meet. Seeing this as a perfect interaction to introduce useful English ("GO _(person's name)" ) , I made poster cards with 'G,' 'O,' 'S,' 'W,' 'I,' 'M' etc. on them and handed them out to some of the students. Before I knew it, even the adults were saying GOGOGOGOGOGO. Point!
Terrifying part of swim meet: rather than having swimming races, the first and second graders had competitions to see who could hold their breath the longest. This involved do the dead-man's float until only one person remained and the rest had given up and come up for air. I wonder if this ever has gone badly at a Japanese elementary school swim meet...
Awesome part: making another (little) friend. It's happened at every elementary school I've gone to so far (which is only two, but it happened at the pre-school too): there will always be the one little boy who is super 元気 energetic, falls in love with you instantly, and begins to pull you around by the arm everywhere, wanting to show you everything, asking you about everything, etc. The one at the pre-school was memorable because, after we played 'bowling' together with some play bricks and a ball, he lead me by the hand to the sink (right before lunch) and said (in Amakusa-dialect) "Erik you should wash your hands." This was more endearing to me since it was the first time I understood someone use that specific grammar in Amakusa-dialect. After standing next to me during lunch (which meant he was eye level with me when I was sitting), he lead me by the hand again and said "Erik you should say 'It was delicious' to the cook," and then he slid open the door to the kitchen. This 元気 kid at Ooe just kept following me around, talking to me, and trying to do pull ups on my arm.
After the swim meet, I once again had a 'welcoming ceremony' in front of the entire school, where I once again gave my self-introduction 自己紹介 while wearing a business suite. This one went a little better since I knew what to expect, knew where to stand, knew when to stand, etc. Afterwards, while I was trying to change back into normal clothes, it seemed like half the school was banging on the door of the room where I was changing saying 'ERIK-SENSEI hurry up! Play time is almost over! You have to come play with us!' Coming out of the teachers' locker room I was dragged by about twelve pairs of tiny hands to the school yard where I ran around with them for a little while before the next period started.
Note about school lunch time: the kids who are assigned to bring the school lunches to the classrooms dress up in little white aprons, white hair-nets, and white face masks (is that what you call those things that doctors/dentists wear? my I should just say white scrubs...). Very adorable and creepy at the same time.
Note about how I go to class: I never have to go to the classroom by myself at the appointed time. Whenever I have to teach a class, one or two kids will come to the teachers' room and then escort me to the classroom, usually carrying whatever items/luggage/teaching materials I have with me at the time. Being treated like royalty? I could get used to this :)
Thursday, September 2, 2010
First day of school
Finally. I get to start my real job! This past month I haven't been doing much except sitting at my desk, looking over lesson plans, filling out forms, and following my supervisor around doing various errands. As nice as it was to have a laid back first month in Japan, I'm glad I finally get to leave my desk, stand up, and interact with students.
My first day of school was at the middle school in my town, a quick 5 minute bike ride from my apartment.
Arriving super early so that I wouldn't be late, I settled in to my new desk (which I will unfortunately spend more time sitting in when I am not in class) and met some of the teachers (for a second time).
There was a short meeting at the beginning where the teachers reviewed the day's schedule, I gave my self-introduciton (again), and the principal and head teacher gave a few encouraging words. In Japanese schools, the principal (校長 head of school) doesn't actually do very much outside of ceremonial speeches and things like that. The head teacher (教頭) does most of the work in leading the faculty and student body, but I don't think he has a specific class he teaches.
Anyway, the day started with 'cleaning time,' when everyone in the school, including teachers, stops what they are doing, busts out some vacuums, brooms, mops, clothes, etc. and cleans every inch of the school. Really. They did this at the town office where I worked this past month too. They even sweep up leaves and debris outside, even if that means picking out leaves and twigs from the grass and bushes. I swept the entire teacher's room, and two students + the head teacher got on their hands and knees and wiped the floor with little clothes. I would love to see an American school try to do this. I'm not sure which would be harder: getting the students to cooperate in cleaning the entire school, or getting the teachers to do it too.
Soon after cleaning was over, they had the 2nd semester opening ceremony (remember: Japanese school years start in April), which included my 'welcoming' ceremony. This was it. The big one. Of all the self-introductions, this one was supposed to be the most important. Here I was in my suit and tie, facing all of the students and teachers I would be working with for the entire year (excluding all of the grade schools, where technically I'll be spending more time), holding two little pieces of paper with my most formal introduction written on it.
Luckily, my speech went very well. No problems there. The parts surrounding it? Mmmm, not so much. There were a few botches like when I went up to the podium to early (cutting off the principal from introducing me first), almost left the stage too early (didn't know there was going to be anything afterwards!), and sort of sat awkwardly rather than standing during the student greeting, in which a single student came up to the stage and stood in front of me and welcomed me to the school. WOOPS. Oh well. Fortunately the school is very small, so I didn't feel too embarrassed about making a fool of myself when I didn't know what was coming next.
Lunch time: Japanese schools have a very calculated, nutritionally balanced meal system that everyone, including the teachers, partake in (yet another thing that would never happen in American schools). An odd little tradition that I didn't know about until today is that the principal, head teacher, and some other important guy will eat the school lunch first, before any other students and teachers, to test and see if it is suitable. Probably a tradition left over from the days when there was often problems with food being fresh and edible and whatnot. Very interesting. Also, these planned lunches 給食 have like half of your daily calorie intake; in the past it was even higher, because it wasn't assumed that the kids coming to school had any other meals in a day except the school lunch.
The last 'first' of the day: my first class. Was everybody going to be super excited to listen to me and bask in the educational splendor of my instruction? Well....not quite. As was told to us before, our middle school teaching experiences will be quite limited because the Japanese Teacher of English, or JTE, plans almost everything, including what you do. Of course, you can work with them to build lesson plans, and I did suggest something that we did do in class, but for the most part JETs can sometimes end up being walking tape recorders and not much else in middle school classes. Given that my JTE accepted my one idea about how to do my question and answer session, I was satisfied that I found out my JTE will listen to me and consider my ideas (and sometimes accept them). After my Q&A session (of course I was asked if I have a girlfriend or not), my JTE went over a test they took before summer and handed out review sheets. All I did was walk up and down the aisles and help kids with their worksheets. OK, OK. Not exhilarating, but I did help some students, and it was good to figure out who was good at English so I can use them later...hehehehehe.
How I wish I had time to share about my first day teaching at ELEMENTARY school. Let me just say it was 10 x as much fun as teaching at middle school because a.) I got to do what every I wanted and b.) the kids were 10x more adorable than the middle schoolers (actually, most of the pre-pubscent middle schoolers do not qualify as 'adorable;' sadness). They also had a swim meet in school, which was amazing. Guess you'll just have to check my blog tomorrow....
My first day of school was at the middle school in my town, a quick 5 minute bike ride from my apartment.
Arriving super early so that I wouldn't be late, I settled in to my new desk (which I will unfortunately spend more time sitting in when I am not in class) and met some of the teachers (for a second time).
There was a short meeting at the beginning where the teachers reviewed the day's schedule, I gave my self-introduciton (again), and the principal and head teacher gave a few encouraging words. In Japanese schools, the principal (校長 head of school) doesn't actually do very much outside of ceremonial speeches and things like that. The head teacher (教頭) does most of the work in leading the faculty and student body, but I don't think he has a specific class he teaches.
Anyway, the day started with 'cleaning time,' when everyone in the school, including teachers, stops what they are doing, busts out some vacuums, brooms, mops, clothes, etc. and cleans every inch of the school. Really. They did this at the town office where I worked this past month too. They even sweep up leaves and debris outside, even if that means picking out leaves and twigs from the grass and bushes. I swept the entire teacher's room, and two students + the head teacher got on their hands and knees and wiped the floor with little clothes. I would love to see an American school try to do this. I'm not sure which would be harder: getting the students to cooperate in cleaning the entire school, or getting the teachers to do it too.
Soon after cleaning was over, they had the 2nd semester opening ceremony (remember: Japanese school years start in April), which included my 'welcoming' ceremony. This was it. The big one. Of all the self-introductions, this one was supposed to be the most important. Here I was in my suit and tie, facing all of the students and teachers I would be working with for the entire year (excluding all of the grade schools, where technically I'll be spending more time), holding two little pieces of paper with my most formal introduction written on it.
Luckily, my speech went very well. No problems there. The parts surrounding it? Mmmm, not so much. There were a few botches like when I went up to the podium to early (cutting off the principal from introducing me first), almost left the stage too early (didn't know there was going to be anything afterwards!), and sort of sat awkwardly rather than standing during the student greeting, in which a single student came up to the stage and stood in front of me and welcomed me to the school. WOOPS. Oh well. Fortunately the school is very small, so I didn't feel too embarrassed about making a fool of myself when I didn't know what was coming next.
Lunch time: Japanese schools have a very calculated, nutritionally balanced meal system that everyone, including the teachers, partake in (yet another thing that would never happen in American schools). An odd little tradition that I didn't know about until today is that the principal, head teacher, and some other important guy will eat the school lunch first, before any other students and teachers, to test and see if it is suitable. Probably a tradition left over from the days when there was often problems with food being fresh and edible and whatnot. Very interesting. Also, these planned lunches 給食 have like half of your daily calorie intake; in the past it was even higher, because it wasn't assumed that the kids coming to school had any other meals in a day except the school lunch.
The last 'first' of the day: my first class. Was everybody going to be super excited to listen to me and bask in the educational splendor of my instruction? Well....not quite. As was told to us before, our middle school teaching experiences will be quite limited because the Japanese Teacher of English, or JTE, plans almost everything, including what you do. Of course, you can work with them to build lesson plans, and I did suggest something that we did do in class, but for the most part JETs can sometimes end up being walking tape recorders and not much else in middle school classes. Given that my JTE accepted my one idea about how to do my question and answer session, I was satisfied that I found out my JTE will listen to me and consider my ideas (and sometimes accept them). After my Q&A session (of course I was asked if I have a girlfriend or not), my JTE went over a test they took before summer and handed out review sheets. All I did was walk up and down the aisles and help kids with their worksheets. OK, OK. Not exhilarating, but I did help some students, and it was good to figure out who was good at English so I can use them later...hehehehehe.
How I wish I had time to share about my first day teaching at ELEMENTARY school. Let me just say it was 10 x as much fun as teaching at middle school because a.) I got to do what every I wanted and b.) the kids were 10x more adorable than the middle schoolers (actually, most of the pre-pubscent middle schoolers do not qualify as 'adorable;' sadness). They also had a swim meet in school, which was amazing. Guess you'll just have to check my blog tomorrow....
Monday, August 30, 2010
Note to self
This is a note to myself and a note to you to remind me to write about the following before I get swamped with school stuff starting Wednesday:
1.) My first welcome not-a-barbecue party.
2.) First time going to Kumamoto with the other Amakusa JETs (by car)
3.) First time going to Kumamoto without the other Amakusa JETs... (by car + train)
4.) Meeting the mayor of Amakusa city and the other Amaksua JETs that I hadn't met before
5.) Going bowling with the people in the branch office where my BOE (board of education) is located.
6.) Going to my first 二次会 at a 'snack bar' (warning: not anything like snack bar at Sharples)
To me, some of these events feel significant, yet are hard to make sound exciting. I will/have to find a way to write about them before I start writing new entries about what is happening right now!
Oh, and here are a few photos I took after a rain storm on sunday in the near by park. Bad idea, as a second rain storm soon followed and I got caught in it while going down a mountain to the neighboring village. It was probably one of the worst storms I've ever encountered in terms of ferocity of rain and thunder.
1.) My first welcome not-a-barbecue party.
2.) First time going to Kumamoto with the other Amakusa JETs (by car)
3.) First time going to Kumamoto without the other Amakusa JETs... (by car + train)
4.) Meeting the mayor of Amakusa city and the other Amaksua JETs that I hadn't met before
5.) Going bowling with the people in the branch office where my BOE (board of education) is located.
6.) Going to my first 二次会 at a 'snack bar' (warning: not anything like snack bar at Sharples)
To me, some of these events feel significant, yet are hard to make sound exciting. I will/have to find a way to write about them before I start writing new entries about what is happening right now!
Oh, and here are a few photos I took after a rain storm on sunday in the near by park. Bad idea, as a second rain storm soon followed and I got caught in it while going down a mountain to the neighboring village. It was probably one of the worst storms I've ever encountered in terms of ferocity of rain and thunder.
 |
| I think I saw scuba divers on that beach down there. |
 |
| This rock is famous. Don't ask me why. |
 |
| That tiny rock on the right is the famous younger sibling of the other famous rock. |
Sunday, August 29, 2010
成人式 Coming of Age
Instead of reporting for work at the city office today, Horiguchi-san and I got up early to travel all the way to Ushibuka (牛深, the second largest town on Amakusa) for the town’s annual Coming of Age Ceremony “Seijinshiki” 成人式. When Japanese youngsters turn 20 (why am I calling them youngsters if they are only 2 years older than me? Probably because I can’t take them very seriously because most of them sport really outrageous hairstyles. Come on, guys; if you have to wake up before your female friends to do your hair in the morning, you know there’s a problem...), they return to their hometowns and have a little ceremony where a lot of educational officials, past teachers, and some of the students themselves give speeches, pass on words of encouragement, or reminisce about old times. My only job was to sit their, look important, and pass out information packets to all of the youngsters who were attending the ceremony.
While my Japanese, and my attention span, were not good enough for me to follow all of the speeches in the ceremony, I could tell from the general reaction of the audience that I was not missing too much. Luckily, the ceremony ended with a Haiya dance performance, Amakusa's famous traditional dance to celebrate each year's good fishing season. (see video clip on facebook)
For the first time in a while, I also got to hang out with other JETs and enjoy, guess what, another fire works festival. This would be number 3. Though I think I've had my fill of fireworks festivals by now, it was a nice experience to have English speaking people around to enjoy it with, to be surprised by having live entertainment before the show (just a single piano player/singer who performed for 30 minutes straight before the fireworks; not bad) and to be able to go out to a bar afterwards and enjoy some snacks. The pizza was even pretty good, which is always a surprise in Japan where they don't really understand 'cheese' and 'crust' concepts very well.
Downer almost-ending: since my driver did indulge in alcohol that evening, we had to stay the night at George's apartment in Ushibuka, the ALT stationed there, and wake up early the next morning to drive me back to Takahama.
Artificial better-ending: next year in April we Amakusa JETs get to be in the haiya dancing festival...:)
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Day 2 of Freedom and Obon
Day 2 of my first weekend on my own was a little quieter, but not without adventure. Today, August 15th, is the day that most of Japan celebrates Obon, the festival commemorating the souls of one’s ancestors (at least to my understanding). From August 13th, one’s entire extended family gathers together, like a big summer family reunion, to celebrate the return of the spirits of one’s ancestors. Lots of food is eaten, lots of fireworks are set off, and finally, on August 15th, each family carries a small parade float laden with lanterns from one’s family gravesite to the site of the Obon festival. In Takahama, this is at the boat docks near the beach. After a Buddhist priest reads off the names of the recently deceased, some of the lanterns are loaded onto boats and taken around the bay. In the past, all of the lanterns would be set afloat in little boats and allowed to drift out to sea, but since those lanterns eventually turn into trash, that part of the festival is no longer practiced.
I didn’t actually know that any of this was happening until I went to the store around lunch time and one of the store clerks who I had met before told me about it. At the festival, I ran into more people who recognized me, heard of me, or who are related to someone who knows me, etc. I wasn’t sure if, by attending this more sober natured event, that I was intruding somehow, but sure enough a random person who I can’t remember exactly knew me sorta stuck by my side and told me what was going on at different parts. Everyone kept asking if there was something like Obon in America, but the only thing I could come up with that was similar was All Souls’ Day.
Anyway, before all of this happened, I took a trip by bike to the neighboring village of Ooe, where my first host family, the Horiguchis, reside. To get there, you have to climb a fairly large hill, go through a tunnel, and then down another hill once you reach the other size. These road tunnels are fairly new, and before they were built you had to take some fairly twist roads along the shore to get from town to town. The mountains that separate the villages from each other caused such isolation that there is a dialect for each village in my town.
People setting off fireworks near family graves: http://hp.amakusa-web.jp/a0591/Oshirase/Pub/Shosai.aspx?AUNo=5049&Pg=1&St=0&OsNo=67
The photo gallery at the bottom of this page has some more photos of Obon:http://hp.amakusa-web.jp/a0591/MyHp/Pub/Default.aspx
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
My First 24 Hours on my own O_o
A lot of JETs talk about how tough it is when you first move into your apartment and realize you’re all alone. Some, while still unpacking their suitcases, burst into tears and collapse on the floor. Others manage to make it to the supermarket after unpacking, but then proceed to fall apart into a sobbing mess in the condiment section when they realize there is no peanut butter or jelly. Whether because of culture shock or the idea of being on your own in a foreign country, miles and miles from your friends, a lot of people have a ‘breakdown’ moment.
Me? Well, as much as I think that I’m the type who tends to cry at the drop of a hat, I managed to survive my first 24 hours of independent living in Japan (i.e. no host family or orientation at a hotel) pretty well. Trying to sleep on the tatami mat floor, I’ll admit, was tougher than I thought since a.) my air conditioning drips (really bad since water can cause horrible mold in tatami), b.) my predecessor doesn’t have a lot of sheets to go along with the many futons I inherited, c.) the tatami room kinda smells, and d.) I was still expecting a giant mugade 百足 (hundred legs a.k.a centipede) to come crawling across the floor and sting me at any moment.
My first day out on the town was definitely a lot more exciting than I expected. I had planned to do some chores, put on some athletic clothes, and then bike around town a little to get the gist of where things were, when things were open, and to go see the beach and take some pictures. I succeeded in doing all of those things, but when I was returning along the beach path to grab some yakisoba for lunch (think lo mein), two middle-aged Japanese guys who saw me before invited me to sit down and have a beer. Before I could say “Uh....,” I was plopped down on the bench next to one of the guys and a beer was opened and placed before me. Even after a few polite refusals, they had me not only drinking their beer but also eating yakisoba on their tab. Oosada and Hama-chan (a joke way to address a middle-aged guy as ‘-chan’ is a suffix used only for little kids or cute little ol’ grandpas and grandmas) talked with me about the typical things, like where I was from, where they were from, what they did, what I was doing here, etc. According to Hama-chan, we were now, from this point, tomodachi 友達 (friends).
Next thing I know, Hama-chan’s relatives, what looked like his nieces and nephews or perhaps sons and daughters, arrived and convinced me to go with them on a banana boat ride off the shore. In case you are wondering, a banana boat is a large, yellow, cylindrical raft with two runners along the side to make the bottom flat. Sitting on the raft with your hands gripping rope handles and resting your feet on the runners, a jet ski pulls you along and tries to throw you off by taking tight turns and going over waves. Think of going tubing except with multiple people at once. Right away, the jet ski pilot pulled a sharp turn and all four of us, not knowing that we had to lean on the turns to avoid tipping over, hit the water hard. The water was super salty, but really warm. I’ve never swam in an ocean that warm before. Actually, except for a small backyard pool in Virginia, I had never swam in a body of water that warm before. This what it must be like to go to the beach in Hawaii...
After two more spills and 15 minutes of gripping on for dear life, we finally had enough and were pulled back to shore. After saying goodbye to everyone (which took longer, since Hama-chan made me drink another beer) I finally left for my apartment to cook dinner.
Right now the sun is setting, and in the graveyards that climb up from the streets into the mountains, I can see smoke and hear fireworks from families who are celebrating Obon at their ancestors’ grave sites. I wonder if all Japanese summer days are this fun...
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Barcode Haircut
After two grueling days of orientation and fun-filled nights in Kumamoto city, we finally checked out of our hotels and dragged ourselves to the Kokusai center for the last day of seminars. This last day was completely devoted to Japanese language classes, and for the 10 of us JETs who had placed into the top level Japanese class, this meant we got spend a whole day playing games like 2 truths and a lie, studying slang words and the local dialect, and learning more complicated business phrases associated with answering the phone at work and exchanging business cards. Since all of us already knew enough Japanese to get around and fulfill our basic needs, and since there weren’t any grades or tests associated with the classes, it was a pretty laid-back affair. Learning dialect phrases was a lot of fun, though. An easy example of Kumamoto-ben is what one says to express surprise: most Japanese say “eeeeeehhhhh!?” with raising intonation whenever they are shocked or surprised at something (go ahead, trying finding a Japanese TV show that doesn’t feature everyone on-screen going “ehhh!?” at some point during the program) , but when Kumamoto people are surprised or maybe slightly disgusted at something, they just say “BA!” in a very explosive way.
Even though we were the top class, we still practiced giving our self introductions 自己紹介 at the beginning. Self introductions are strangely important in Japanese society. Most times in America it suffices to say “Hi! I’m (first name). Nice to meet you!” and then give supplementary information like where you’re from, your hobbies, etc. later in the conversation, or bit by bit in the following days. Not so in Japan, apparently. Depending on the situation, your self-introduction might feel more like a speech than a formal greeting. Anyway, since all of us had already practiced 自己紹介 exhaustively, we mixed it up by including two truths and a lie with our self introductions . Almost everybody’s two truths and lie were related to experiences or skills that they had. Mine were the following. Can you guess which one is the lie?
1.) My brother and I, in certain seasons, involuntarily sneeze when we step outside into the sunlight.
2.) I like to nap on the kitchen counter.
3.) Seeing shaving cream makes me feel uncomfortable, as does whipped cream.
The person who identifies the lie first and posts a comment on this blog might get a special prize mailed to them ....
Quick break:. 100 Yen stores (100 Yen is approximately a dollar, usually a little more). I was lucky enough to have time to go to when while in Kumamoto city to get my own personal chopsticks + case, cleaning materials for my tatami mat room, and dehumidifiers for my apartment (prevent mold), among other things. Anyone who has been to Japan will rave about 100 yen shops; everything is so mind-blowingly cheap and there are so many different things you can buy. Pots, pans, kitchen knives, notebooks, umbrellas, socks, ties, shirts, shoes.... Sometimes I think that I might want to come back to Japan in the future just to shop at the 100 yen stores. I could rave for an entire blog about how amazing 100 yen shops are. You can watch a virtual tour of a 100 yen store at this youtube link (the narrator has an Australian accent?):
Returning to Hondo/Amakusa laden with crap that I bought at the 100 Yen store and at Don Quixote (a store that sorta defies category), I was felt that I was finally ready to spend a weekend by myself (or at least a day by myself), sorting through all of the things I had accumulated from multiple orientations, trips to various department stores, and cleaning out/disposing of things left over by my predecessor. Was I finally out of the spotlight? Of course not. Rather than let me cook ramen or curry at home by myself, Horiguchi-san offered to take me to his place to eat the left overs from dinner at his family reunion for Obon (a festival where your entire family returns to your hometown and visits the graves of your ancestors). First imagine the typical, summer-time family reunion with aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and scores of little kids running every which way, lighting fireworks and bringing gigantic beetles into the house. Now make sure everyone in your mental picture is Japanese, and then throw me into the picture. Yes, once again I had to introduce myself to many people, be complimented on my Japanese and chopstick using skills, and answer peoples questions delivered in butchered English (they really are trying; it is not always the case that they don’t think I can understand their Japanese, but sometimes they want to try to speak English, if not just for good laughs). What can I say: I’ve only being doing this for a week and a half, so it hasn’t gotten that old yet. Being at Japanese family reunion was a lot of fun, and for some reason or another I spent a lot of time with the branch of the family that had moved to Kyoto and didn’t understand Horiguchi-san’s colloquialisms and dialect. I guess I liked them because we shared that point in common.
I tried asking how to say ‘family reunion’ in Japanese, but since these types of gatherings are so uniqsue to the holidays that they are associated with, it doesn’t really seem like their is a word itself for ‘family reunion.’ There is, however, a word in Japanese for a comb-over (that I learned today): a barcode haircut.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Chill Cafe
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| Kumamoto Castle |
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| View from the top of the castle keep. |
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| Some of the fancier looking rooms inside the castle. |
I was surprised at how much I wanted to go back to Amakusa during the first day of orientation in Kumamoto, but after figuring out how to navigate the maze of shopping arcades and packed streets around our hotel in down town Kumamoto, I grew to become really envious of the JETs that lived within reasonable traveling distance of the city. For me, Kumamoto is more than enough ‘city experience’ for me to get excited and wide-eyed. What makes Kumamoto even cooler is when you realize you can see the castle’s soaring keep from all different parts of the city at unexpected times, like when you just happen to pass by a tiny road that aims toward the castle.
The second day of orientation consisted of four seminars that felt a little too long (1.5 hours), especially for the seminars on topics which you already heard a lot about, but since there was more specific information on various topics, like what type of lessons and games to play with your different grade levels, what to look for when food shopping, and how to dispose of the giant, vicious, aggressive, poisonous centipedes that sometimes invade your house and hang out in your shoes until you decide to put them on in the morning and either squish them into a blue gooey mess or get bitten and have to go to the hospital.
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| Yes. This is a pizza with tortilla chips on top. |
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| This is the entirety of Chill Cafe. It's that small. |
Awful story: so after lunch I went with one of the other JETs to the Best Denki (電気）store (think Best Buy) to look at the Mac Store, and we were surprised to find that the Mac Books there were $100+ dollars cheaper than they are in America and on the Apple Japanese website. However, I thought we had to get back at 1:10 instead of 1:30, so we ended up walking/running a few blocks back to the International Center only to find that we were a.) 20 minutes early and b.) made ourselves hot and sweaty for no good reason. Oops. One extra person dislikes me in this world.
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| Rice and lamb in a perfectly spherical serving. |
Happier story: After orientation for the day, our gun 群 (pronounced ‘goon’) leader, the group leader of JETs local to Amakusa and nearby islands, took us out to a tiny cafe that his friend owned in Kumamoto. By tiny, I mean that the entire place, seating area + kitchen, was about the size of a short bus. This place definitely fits into the ‘whole-in-the-wall’ category. Run by a tall white guy with the thick, black rimed glasses that are in style (with the hipsters) and tattoos all over his arms and his Japanese wife, the place serves a strange amalgam of Mediterranean/Greek foods and other random things, like a dish of rice, feta, and lamb, a pizza with tortilla chips and BBQ chicken on top, strange soy milk sauce pestos, and all sorts of drinks and smoothies. Finding this place was like being told where there is a secret gold mine or buried treasure. The food was outstanding, the music very hip(ster?), and the atmosphere of being crammed into a tiny place with only 8/9 seats with mostly gaijin and one or two hip young locals who are loyal patrons was definitely something to remember. Also, and I may be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure the owner is addressed as Blue.
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| The outdoor shopping streets of Kumamoto. This is at night when everything has already shut down, so there aren't many people out and about. |
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