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/
Sunday, October 31, 2010
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...
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