Hello and welcome back to Lauren’s blog. Last time we heard about my Toyama and Nagoya adventures. This week, we’ll be looking into Tokyo, my medical exam and Winter’s fast approach.
So this past weekend, a mess of us ALTs went up to Tokyo to celebrate the birthday of one of our own. We left right after work on Friday and were in Tokyo by ten that night. Not letting the late hour stop us, we went out to this themed restaurant called Arabian Rock.
The first thing you noticed as you climbed the stairs, the restaurant was on the third floor, was the music. It was the music from Aladdin. Then, we opened the door and found out that the staff were dressed up in “Arabian” outfits. And by that I mean they looked like they’d stepped off the set of some weird harem movie.
So we sat down and ordered. The first thing to appear were the golden eggs. These are given to everyone. They’re just hardboiled eggs that have had their shells painted gold so really not that exciting. Actually most of the meal was pretty normal. The food was good and we were all wound because we were in Tokyo.
Then dessert came. Or rather, the birthday boy’s dessert came. They suddenly turned off the lights and then played some crazy song and we’re all wondering what’s going on when a guy dressed like a genie shows up. But not just any genie. Oh no. This is blatantly the genie from Aladdin. He came in with a piece of cake. None of us expected it and were all dying of laughter by the end. We got some awesome pictures out of it. I’d show you but this site has changed and I haven’t figured out how to put pictures up yet.
After that we went back to our hostel. Which was a capsule hotel, something I’ve always wanted to stay in. It wasn’t the normal kind of capsules, I was slightly disappointed, but more like wooden boxes stacked on top of each other. They were surprisingly comfy and the place was cheap so I have no complaints.
The next day we went to Harajuku. My group, we’d split up into several, started off at the shrine. I can’t remember what the name of it was. There we saw tons of kids dressed up in kimonos. There’s a custom in Japan where kids go to shrines on their 3rd, 5th, and 7th birthdays. And so there were tons of these adorable children running around all dressed up.
We also ended up watching a wedding procession at the shrine. We, and the other tourists Japanese and foreign alike, began snapping pictures. It was awesome. While we were at the shrine, I bought a charm. Mine’s for good luck. I might buy some for other people if I manage to make it to a shrine before I come home.
After the shrine, we went out into the main part of Harajuku. The first thing we saw was a guy who said he’d sing your national anthem. Emma was the first to put him to the test and got him to sing the Australian national anthem. Which he did. We were impressed. Deciding to see how good he was, Colin got him to sing the Irish national anthem. Which is in Irish. And he did. After much applauding, we moved on.
Harajuku is a shopping district. It’s also where you can see all the weird fashion trends. Sadly the crowds were too thick for me to get pictures of any of the outfits I saw.
I did have fun shopping though. I bought some Christmas presents and some sweet tights for myself. Yes, I’ve started wearing dresses and skirts a lot here. And tights and leggings. I now have a collection of weird and wonderful tights and leggings.
Eventually we headed back to the hostel to get changed. We all brought fancy outfits and got dressed up. I wore a dress and the new pair of star tights I bought. Then we headed to the New York bar in the Park Hyatt. If you’ve seen the movie Lost in Translation, you know what I’m talking about. The place has an amazing view of Tokyo. It’s also super expensive. Which is why I only bought the one drink. Still, my Bellini was good.
After that, we moved on to dinner at a Shabu Shabu place. Shabu Shabu is where you have a big pot of boiling water and you dump vegetables in it and swish thin strips of meat around until they’re cooked. It’s very tasty. We also did a 90 minute nomihodai (an all you can drink time period). That part might have been a mistake for me.
We went back to the hostel and changed again. This time into clubbing clothes. Then we were off to Womb, one of the most popular clubs in Tokyo. The cover was super expensive (about 40$) but it was an awesome place. While I was there, I had to leave a bit earlier than the others as I had drank more than was good for me, we watched what was basically a circus act. A woman in a leotard wound herself up and around a thing of cloth and would pose. This was done over the stage some 15-20 feet in the air. It was sweet!
So we all made it back and passed out. The next morning we got up and separated into our two cars for the journey back to Takayama. My car stopped first at a 7 floor book store. Yes, I found my own personal heaven here. Or it would be if I could read Japanese. Sadly only the seventh floor had English books and the selection wasn’t super great. But I did buy 2 novels. And some more French textbooks for my class.
After that, we stopped by this international grocery store. Tomoko kept laughing at me as I got excited over the things I hadn’t seen in a long time. I now have a giant jar of pickles and one of olives as well as a 10 pound box of oats among other things. That place was awesome!
When we finished, we packed the car up, we all bought too much, and came home. And that was Tokyo.
Tomorrow, I have my medical exam. All the ALTs have to do it. I started preparing for it yesterday when I had to poo on a stick. Yes, you read that right. I had to get poo on this stick, there are picture instructions on how much should be on there, and then seal it up. I have to do this again tomorrow morning. I also have to pee in a tube. So tomorrow morning I go to the Kuguno branch office and get checked out. My supervisor came over to my school today to help me fill out the forms. Because they are entirely in Japanese.
We had some fun trying to figure out what to write for some parts. Like one of the questions was asking if I’ve ever had an operation around my stomach area. So I had to say yes. Then you have to specify what part of the stomach area. Yeah. The forms were fun.
The last thing I shall regale you with is the approach of winter. It’s started getting cold here. Cold enough that I finally dug out my kerosene heaters. And then realized they had no kerosene in them. Something I’ll be rectifying today.
Because Japan pretty much doesn’t build anything with insulation, there are several things you have to do here that you wouldn’t do at home. As one of the ALTs has already had to do, you have to put some of your toiletries into the fridge. To keep them from freezing. I wish I was making this up.
I should have realized this was coming given there have been mornings where the fridge was slightly warmer than my apartment. Yeah, it gets that cold. One of the things I want to get when I’m home is an outlet timer like for Christmas lights. Then I can set it a half hour before I get up in the morning and plug my heater into it so I don’t have to freeze when I get out of bed in the mornings.
So that’s about all for now. I just realized I’ll be home in like 3 weeks. Which made me realize I haven’t finished Christmas shopping. So I’ll be busy doing that in the next little while. Until next time, bye!
Nov 30, 2010
Nov 24, 2010
Nagoya and Toyama adventures
Yeah I know. It’s been a while since my last post. I’ve been busy. But because I’ve been busy, I now have awesome stories to tell you!
First off, last weekend I was bored so I decided to go to Nagoya. I took the train down in the morning, after missing the train I wanted to get on because none of the bloody ATMs open until 9am, and I was there by noon.
After wandering around the train station for a while I managed to acquire an English map of the city. That was all I really needed. My basic plan for the day had been to somehow get myself to Nagoya castle. I bought myself an all day all subways and bus pass and went off.
I ended up walking most of the way. I couldn’t figure out which subway station I wanted. It worked out because I saw lots of cool stuff. Some park that was full of water fountains, city hall, the city archives, and a huge TV tower.
Eventually I did make it to the castle. When I got inside I noticed a crowd of people gathered around a roped off area. The area had a sign saying something was happening at 2pm. As that was ten minutes from when I got there, I decided to hang around and watch.
I’m not sure what you’d call a show like that. 5 people came out dressed in historical outfits. 3 of the people had huge spears. I got really excited. I though they were going to fight. Sadly, they didn’t. Instead they danced. Yep. You read that right. They danced. To some weird pop-y music. At one point I think they were talking about historical stuff. At least I recognized one of the names as being historical so I’m kind of assuming that. The Japanese was way too fast for me to catch it all.
The show didn’t last all that long so then I went wandering around. They had these displays of flowers everywhere. Then I went inside the castle. It’s 6 floors. They had stuff from the original castle as well as reconstructed stuff. At the top there were a bunch of windows so you could see all of Nagoya. It was pretty sweet.
So after my touristyness, I went shopping at the underground mall near the station. Nothing really that exciting to report there so I’ll skip that and move on to what happened on Tuesday.
Tuesday, AKA yesterday, a bunch of us ALTs went to Toyama to go see the new Harry Potter movie. It was a holiday so none of us had work. I was one of the drivers. My baby made it no problem. The theatre we went to was in the middle of this huge mall so we also did a bit of shopping. I ended up running into one of my English teachers there which was kind of weird for both of us.
The main reason we chose this theatre, and why we drove an hour and half, is because this theatre had the movie in English with Japanese subtitles. Not only did that mean we could watch it in English, it also meant the theatre wasn’t full of children because they can’t read all the kanji/ read the subtitles fast enough.
After the movie we went to a second-hand shop followed by Don Quixote which is this weird everything store. It’s where most ALTs get their onesies. I found some hilarious stuff for people as well as a delightfully warm hoodie for myself.
Well that’s pretty much it for now. On Friday a bunch of us are going to Tokyo for the weekend so I should have more to report after that.
First off, last weekend I was bored so I decided to go to Nagoya. I took the train down in the morning, after missing the train I wanted to get on because none of the bloody ATMs open until 9am, and I was there by noon.
After wandering around the train station for a while I managed to acquire an English map of the city. That was all I really needed. My basic plan for the day had been to somehow get myself to Nagoya castle. I bought myself an all day all subways and bus pass and went off.
I ended up walking most of the way. I couldn’t figure out which subway station I wanted. It worked out because I saw lots of cool stuff. Some park that was full of water fountains, city hall, the city archives, and a huge TV tower.
Eventually I did make it to the castle. When I got inside I noticed a crowd of people gathered around a roped off area. The area had a sign saying something was happening at 2pm. As that was ten minutes from when I got there, I decided to hang around and watch.
I’m not sure what you’d call a show like that. 5 people came out dressed in historical outfits. 3 of the people had huge spears. I got really excited. I though they were going to fight. Sadly, they didn’t. Instead they danced. Yep. You read that right. They danced. To some weird pop-y music. At one point I think they were talking about historical stuff. At least I recognized one of the names as being historical so I’m kind of assuming that. The Japanese was way too fast for me to catch it all.
The show didn’t last all that long so then I went wandering around. They had these displays of flowers everywhere. Then I went inside the castle. It’s 6 floors. They had stuff from the original castle as well as reconstructed stuff. At the top there were a bunch of windows so you could see all of Nagoya. It was pretty sweet.
So after my touristyness, I went shopping at the underground mall near the station. Nothing really that exciting to report there so I’ll skip that and move on to what happened on Tuesday.
Tuesday, AKA yesterday, a bunch of us ALTs went to Toyama to go see the new Harry Potter movie. It was a holiday so none of us had work. I was one of the drivers. My baby made it no problem. The theatre we went to was in the middle of this huge mall so we also did a bit of shopping. I ended up running into one of my English teachers there which was kind of weird for both of us.
The main reason we chose this theatre, and why we drove an hour and half, is because this theatre had the movie in English with Japanese subtitles. Not only did that mean we could watch it in English, it also meant the theatre wasn’t full of children because they can’t read all the kanji/ read the subtitles fast enough.
After the movie we went to a second-hand shop followed by Don Quixote which is this weird everything store. It’s where most ALTs get their onesies. I found some hilarious stuff for people as well as a delightfully warm hoodie for myself.
Well that’s pretty much it for now. On Friday a bunch of us are going to Tokyo for the weekend so I should have more to report after that.
Nov 4, 2010
Halloween and French
And here’s another post. Sorry for the lack of updates. I’ve been busy.
As for what I was busy with, I’m about to tell you. All of us Takayama ALTs have been planning and then executing a Halloween English Shower for elementary students. And it was a lot of fun.
We had about 120 kids registered and only a handful didn’t show up. And that’s not counting the unregistered younger siblings and parents who came as well. All the kids came in costume. I have to say there were a lot of witches. I think witch hats must have been one of the easiest things to find. We did have some originals. One kid had a sweet Peter Pan costume, a girl had a full Belle costume, and this one kid had a full pumpkin outfit.
Not to be outdone, us ALTs broke out our onesies. We had 2 Hello Kitties, one dressed as a tiger and the other a rabbit, one reindeer, one Pikachu, one other Pokemon, one actual tiger, one bloody bear, one Rilakkuma, and one Chopper (me).
This was the very first Halloween English Shower. Which is probably why we ended up with so many little snags. Groups got confused, kids ended up lost, no one knew where the next group was supposed to go, etc. It all worked out in the end though.
Early on, I made friends with a little girl who was around 2 or 3. She high-fived me and I pretended to fall over. This was something of a mistake. Because for the rest of the day, she would periodically come and find me to high five me again. She was super adorable so I didn’t mind.
The last part of the event was the trick or treating simulation. One of the ALTs had gone home for her brother’s wedding so she’d bought all sorts of real Halloween candy. Each of us had our own table which we could decorate and the kids went from table to table saying trick or treat. I’d brought some extra candy and gave it out to the unregistered siblings. And yes, red dress got a piece. I made sure of it.
Afterwards, we were all going to head to a Halloween party. I’d driven in, so I had to take my car back to my apartment and then catch the train into Takayama. Except the train kept getting delayed. First a half-hour, then fifty-minutes, then seventy-minutes. After an hour I gave up and went home so sadly I have no drunken Halloween adventures to tell you about.
Now not only did we have the Halloween English Shower, but most of us ALTs also did Halloween lessons. I blatantly stole my ideas from two of the others. For the older kids, any kid from 4th grade up to 9th, we played a trick or treat game. The kids had to say trick or treat to me and then pick a slip of paper out of a hat. If it said treat, they got a Halloween sticker. If it said trick, they had to wear the ridiculous costume that the paper specified. I know I amused my coworkers during Halloween week when I spent the time I had between classes making fake mustaches and beards for the kids to wear.
In my junior high third year English conversation class, the game went over a little too well. One of the boys had just gotten the feather and fan mask set, something that always happened to the boys more than the girls through no plan of mine, and the whole class was laughing. One of the boys laughed so hard he fell out of his chair and hit his head. Which of course made everyone laugh even harder. He was fine though he admitted it did hurt when everyone had calmed down.
The other game I played with the younger kids was Halloween Basket. Which is just Fruits Basket with Halloween words substituted for fruit words. Kids bring their chairs and put them in a circle. I randomly distributed cards with pictures of the Halloween creatures I’d taught them. Then I’d call out one. All those kids have to change seats. One kid is always left out and then it’s their turn to call out a creature. And the kids love the game. Of course there’s always a couple of kids who fake falls and stuff so they can be in the middle but all in all, it’s a good game.
So right after Halloween, I had my special, shoot-me-in-the-face, watched lesson. This is where a whole mess of English teachers from Takayama came to watch me teach English in elementary school. Well me and the homeroom teacher. It went pretty well. I got the teachers involved in the game instead of just having them watch and loom over kids with their clipboards. I got some positive feedback on the game so at least I know I’m doing something halfway decent.
So the night after my watched lesson I got a phone call from my supervisor. I thought he was calling to talk to me about my lesson. Nope. He asks me if I speak French. I say I do, more or less, and he tells me they have a French language class at the Takayama cultural centre on Thursday nights. And that their French teacher just moved. If they couldn’t find a replacement, they’d have to cancel the course.
And that’s how I ended up having a meeting with the lady who runs that the next day at school. Since it’s only beginner French, and I don’t want them to have to cancel it, I’m the new French teacher. This is either going to be really great or it’s going to end horribly. We’ll have to see. I start next week.
So that’s about all for now. There are plans for trips to Toyama and Tokyo in the next month so stay tuned for details of those adventures. Until later, bye!
As for what I was busy with, I’m about to tell you. All of us Takayama ALTs have been planning and then executing a Halloween English Shower for elementary students. And it was a lot of fun.
We had about 120 kids registered and only a handful didn’t show up. And that’s not counting the unregistered younger siblings and parents who came as well. All the kids came in costume. I have to say there were a lot of witches. I think witch hats must have been one of the easiest things to find. We did have some originals. One kid had a sweet Peter Pan costume, a girl had a full Belle costume, and this one kid had a full pumpkin outfit.
Not to be outdone, us ALTs broke out our onesies. We had 2 Hello Kitties, one dressed as a tiger and the other a rabbit, one reindeer, one Pikachu, one other Pokemon, one actual tiger, one bloody bear, one Rilakkuma, and one Chopper (me).
This was the very first Halloween English Shower. Which is probably why we ended up with so many little snags. Groups got confused, kids ended up lost, no one knew where the next group was supposed to go, etc. It all worked out in the end though.
Early on, I made friends with a little girl who was around 2 or 3. She high-fived me and I pretended to fall over. This was something of a mistake. Because for the rest of the day, she would periodically come and find me to high five me again. She was super adorable so I didn’t mind.
The last part of the event was the trick or treating simulation. One of the ALTs had gone home for her brother’s wedding so she’d bought all sorts of real Halloween candy. Each of us had our own table which we could decorate and the kids went from table to table saying trick or treat. I’d brought some extra candy and gave it out to the unregistered siblings. And yes, red dress got a piece. I made sure of it.
Afterwards, we were all going to head to a Halloween party. I’d driven in, so I had to take my car back to my apartment and then catch the train into Takayama. Except the train kept getting delayed. First a half-hour, then fifty-minutes, then seventy-minutes. After an hour I gave up and went home so sadly I have no drunken Halloween adventures to tell you about.
Now not only did we have the Halloween English Shower, but most of us ALTs also did Halloween lessons. I blatantly stole my ideas from two of the others. For the older kids, any kid from 4th grade up to 9th, we played a trick or treat game. The kids had to say trick or treat to me and then pick a slip of paper out of a hat. If it said treat, they got a Halloween sticker. If it said trick, they had to wear the ridiculous costume that the paper specified. I know I amused my coworkers during Halloween week when I spent the time I had between classes making fake mustaches and beards for the kids to wear.
In my junior high third year English conversation class, the game went over a little too well. One of the boys had just gotten the feather and fan mask set, something that always happened to the boys more than the girls through no plan of mine, and the whole class was laughing. One of the boys laughed so hard he fell out of his chair and hit his head. Which of course made everyone laugh even harder. He was fine though he admitted it did hurt when everyone had calmed down.
The other game I played with the younger kids was Halloween Basket. Which is just Fruits Basket with Halloween words substituted for fruit words. Kids bring their chairs and put them in a circle. I randomly distributed cards with pictures of the Halloween creatures I’d taught them. Then I’d call out one. All those kids have to change seats. One kid is always left out and then it’s their turn to call out a creature. And the kids love the game. Of course there’s always a couple of kids who fake falls and stuff so they can be in the middle but all in all, it’s a good game.
So right after Halloween, I had my special, shoot-me-in-the-face, watched lesson. This is where a whole mess of English teachers from Takayama came to watch me teach English in elementary school. Well me and the homeroom teacher. It went pretty well. I got the teachers involved in the game instead of just having them watch and loom over kids with their clipboards. I got some positive feedback on the game so at least I know I’m doing something halfway decent.
So the night after my watched lesson I got a phone call from my supervisor. I thought he was calling to talk to me about my lesson. Nope. He asks me if I speak French. I say I do, more or less, and he tells me they have a French language class at the Takayama cultural centre on Thursday nights. And that their French teacher just moved. If they couldn’t find a replacement, they’d have to cancel the course.
And that’s how I ended up having a meeting with the lady who runs that the next day at school. Since it’s only beginner French, and I don’t want them to have to cancel it, I’m the new French teacher. This is either going to be really great or it’s going to end horribly. We’ll have to see. I start next week.
So that’s about all for now. There are plans for trips to Toyama and Tokyo in the next month so stay tuned for details of those adventures. Until later, bye!
Oct 19, 2010
Festivals, Sake, and Thanksgiving
Hello, hello! Yes it’s been a while since my last post. In my defense, I’ve been busy. The teachers at my schools actually get me to help them do stuff like marking so I’m rarely bored at work anymore.
But work is boring so let me tell you what I’ve been up to the last couple of weekends. The second weekend in October was the Takayama festival so a large group of us ALTs, several of who came in from cities throughout our prefecture, and three parents of ALTs went off to see the festival. Sadly, the floats weren’t running because it was pouring rain. But the matsuri portion, the little food and game tents, was still running so we checked that out. I got one of my favourite festival foods, crepes. They are super delicious.
So after wandering around for a bit we went to the Mexican restaurant where we’d reserved the back room. And yes, I know how odd going to a Mexican restaurant in Japan sounds. There we ordered plenty of delicious food and drinks. The drinks were, as always, our downfall. Carl had brought his breathalyzer with him and so we started a scorecard on who blew what throughout the night. Emma’s dad Phil ended up winning, much to the amusement of all.
Now due in part to the alcohol, and in part to the fact that we are never able to be quiet, one of the ALTs had taken it on herself to introduce herself to the rest of the restaurant because of how loud we were. Just so we didn’t get kicked out. Later on, two of the Japanese people she’d introduced herself to came and joined us. Keiko and Takuji especially like the breathalyzer and got right into use playing Bang Bang Clap. That’s right, we kidnapped and corrupted two unsuspecting Japanese people. Keiko even got into the sombrero wearing with me. We found said sombreros in the corner and being the mature people we are, had to wear them.
I ended the night earlier than the others, making sure Emma’s parents got back all right, and it was a good thing I did. I was drunk enough that I couldn’t tell the difference between a sen (1000) yen and a go sen (5000) yen. That would have been a recipe for disaster.
That was Saturday. On the Monday, a bunch of us locals headed down to Gero for Canadian Thanksgiving at Danielle’s. Nothing we had was really traditional Thanksgiving food. Danielle tried by cooking some Japanese pumpkin and baking the seeds. The rest ranged from curry chicken to marmite sandwiches to butter shrimp to mushroom salad. It was a lot of fun even if it did leave all of us exhausted for Tuesday morning and work.
Now this past weekend we went to Shirakawa which is a world heritage site. Though the reason we had less to do with the history and more to do with the fact there was a sake festival going on. We decided on Friday night to go and Saturday morning we met up.
I did run into a little snag. Apparently, there are no trains that go from my village into Takayama from 10am to 3pm on Saturdays. We were meeting at 12:30pm. This left me with a little bit of a dilemma. I bit the bullet and made the 10am train. I spent the next two hours shopping. I spent more than I probably should have but I ended up with all sorts of awesome stuff. Including my very own kimono. I can’t wait for an excuse to wear it!
I also picked up some baby clothes since I’m going to be a Belarusian aunt come November. Dziana’s having a little girl! I’m super excited!
Anyway back to the story of Saturday. We all met up in the Sega World parking lot and got into the two cars we were taking. Shirakawa is about forty minutes away from Takayama and most of that way is tunnels through mountains so there wasn’t all that much to see on the drive there.
The village itself is really cool. Most of the houses still have thatched roofs and people still live there. There were a lot of people there, mostly Japanese tourists with the odd group of foreigners thrown in for variety. After a bit of wandering and getting lost, we found the sake festival at the shrine we’d driven past on the way in. Hey, no one said we were good at finding things.
There were some food stands set up so I bought some grilled stick meat. Sadly they had no crepes as both me and Emma wanted some. We bought our little red sake cups, 400 yen, and got our first round of sake. This was the first time I had ever had sake. And it was lumpy. No, I am not making that up. There were actual chunks still in it. It was not tasty at all.
Then we sat down and waited for the real sake pouring to begin. What happens is everyone sits on these long tatami mats as people from the shrine come up and down with kettles and pour the sake into your cups. It’s an all you can drink deal after you buy the cup or it is until they run out of sake. Three cups was my limit. The others assured me this wasn’t good sake and I should try some of that before deciding I don’t like the stuff. One of the others said that this sake was what they’d been brewing in the back room and so it really wasn’t a good example of sake.
Now because this is a festival that is pretty much giving sake away for free, pretty much three quarters of the people there were old Japanese men. We ended up meeting two. One was a guy I imaginatively named Glasses due to his glasses. He came up to us before the sake pouring began, already drunk, and began talking to us. Then he insisted on pouring beer into all of our cups. After talking for about fifteen minutes to us he wandered off. But not for long.
Once the sake began flowing we saw Glasses again sitting across from us. And with him was his friend Sweater Vest. At one point Glasses was squeezing my toes. Eventually we understood that he was concerned because I was wearing flipflops and the tatami mats were laid over gravel. After assuring him repeatedly that I was fine, he let the subject drop.
Then it was Sweater Vest’s turn. For some unknown reason, he decided that me and Jason, one of the other ALTs, needed to get married. He spent a good ten to twenty minutes going on about it. It was actually pretty funny.
Eventually the sake ran dry and we slowly wandered back to the cars but not before buying more alcohol and snacks at the combini (convenience store). Though we had a couple of mishaps, Danielle left her sweater on a bench and Jason dropped his camera down a hill, we eventually made it back to Takayama. Since the night was young, we decided to take Purikura. These are little photo booths where you get your picture taken and when they’re printed, they’re stickers. We are forever cramming as many people as we can into those booths.
After the Purikura, we walked, though not straight, to the bowling alley. Sadly I had to leave early as the last train to Miya leaves at 9:30pm on Saturdays. I would normally have stayed longer and either taken a taxi or crashed at someone’s house but I had already drank way more than was good for me and the plan was to continue drinking after bowling.
So I got on the train. A nice girl showed me how to get off after I tried to exit the wrong doors, and I staggered back to my apartment and enjoyed my glorious bed.
And that’s about all that’s new and exciting in my life. Next month we’re planning trips to Toyama and Tokyo. At the end of this month is the Halloween event and this weekend we’re planning on heading to Gero again so I should have lots to report in my next post. Well, bye for now!
But work is boring so let me tell you what I’ve been up to the last couple of weekends. The second weekend in October was the Takayama festival so a large group of us ALTs, several of who came in from cities throughout our prefecture, and three parents of ALTs went off to see the festival. Sadly, the floats weren’t running because it was pouring rain. But the matsuri portion, the little food and game tents, was still running so we checked that out. I got one of my favourite festival foods, crepes. They are super delicious.
So after wandering around for a bit we went to the Mexican restaurant where we’d reserved the back room. And yes, I know how odd going to a Mexican restaurant in Japan sounds. There we ordered plenty of delicious food and drinks. The drinks were, as always, our downfall. Carl had brought his breathalyzer with him and so we started a scorecard on who blew what throughout the night. Emma’s dad Phil ended up winning, much to the amusement of all.
Now due in part to the alcohol, and in part to the fact that we are never able to be quiet, one of the ALTs had taken it on herself to introduce herself to the rest of the restaurant because of how loud we were. Just so we didn’t get kicked out. Later on, two of the Japanese people she’d introduced herself to came and joined us. Keiko and Takuji especially like the breathalyzer and got right into use playing Bang Bang Clap. That’s right, we kidnapped and corrupted two unsuspecting Japanese people. Keiko even got into the sombrero wearing with me. We found said sombreros in the corner and being the mature people we are, had to wear them.
I ended the night earlier than the others, making sure Emma’s parents got back all right, and it was a good thing I did. I was drunk enough that I couldn’t tell the difference between a sen (1000) yen and a go sen (5000) yen. That would have been a recipe for disaster.
That was Saturday. On the Monday, a bunch of us locals headed down to Gero for Canadian Thanksgiving at Danielle’s. Nothing we had was really traditional Thanksgiving food. Danielle tried by cooking some Japanese pumpkin and baking the seeds. The rest ranged from curry chicken to marmite sandwiches to butter shrimp to mushroom salad. It was a lot of fun even if it did leave all of us exhausted for Tuesday morning and work.
Now this past weekend we went to Shirakawa which is a world heritage site. Though the reason we had less to do with the history and more to do with the fact there was a sake festival going on. We decided on Friday night to go and Saturday morning we met up.
I did run into a little snag. Apparently, there are no trains that go from my village into Takayama from 10am to 3pm on Saturdays. We were meeting at 12:30pm. This left me with a little bit of a dilemma. I bit the bullet and made the 10am train. I spent the next two hours shopping. I spent more than I probably should have but I ended up with all sorts of awesome stuff. Including my very own kimono. I can’t wait for an excuse to wear it!
I also picked up some baby clothes since I’m going to be a Belarusian aunt come November. Dziana’s having a little girl! I’m super excited!
Anyway back to the story of Saturday. We all met up in the Sega World parking lot and got into the two cars we were taking. Shirakawa is about forty minutes away from Takayama and most of that way is tunnels through mountains so there wasn’t all that much to see on the drive there.
The village itself is really cool. Most of the houses still have thatched roofs and people still live there. There were a lot of people there, mostly Japanese tourists with the odd group of foreigners thrown in for variety. After a bit of wandering and getting lost, we found the sake festival at the shrine we’d driven past on the way in. Hey, no one said we were good at finding things.
There were some food stands set up so I bought some grilled stick meat. Sadly they had no crepes as both me and Emma wanted some. We bought our little red sake cups, 400 yen, and got our first round of sake. This was the first time I had ever had sake. And it was lumpy. No, I am not making that up. There were actual chunks still in it. It was not tasty at all.
Then we sat down and waited for the real sake pouring to begin. What happens is everyone sits on these long tatami mats as people from the shrine come up and down with kettles and pour the sake into your cups. It’s an all you can drink deal after you buy the cup or it is until they run out of sake. Three cups was my limit. The others assured me this wasn’t good sake and I should try some of that before deciding I don’t like the stuff. One of the others said that this sake was what they’d been brewing in the back room and so it really wasn’t a good example of sake.
Now because this is a festival that is pretty much giving sake away for free, pretty much three quarters of the people there were old Japanese men. We ended up meeting two. One was a guy I imaginatively named Glasses due to his glasses. He came up to us before the sake pouring began, already drunk, and began talking to us. Then he insisted on pouring beer into all of our cups. After talking for about fifteen minutes to us he wandered off. But not for long.
Once the sake began flowing we saw Glasses again sitting across from us. And with him was his friend Sweater Vest. At one point Glasses was squeezing my toes. Eventually we understood that he was concerned because I was wearing flipflops and the tatami mats were laid over gravel. After assuring him repeatedly that I was fine, he let the subject drop.
Then it was Sweater Vest’s turn. For some unknown reason, he decided that me and Jason, one of the other ALTs, needed to get married. He spent a good ten to twenty minutes going on about it. It was actually pretty funny.
Eventually the sake ran dry and we slowly wandered back to the cars but not before buying more alcohol and snacks at the combini (convenience store). Though we had a couple of mishaps, Danielle left her sweater on a bench and Jason dropped his camera down a hill, we eventually made it back to Takayama. Since the night was young, we decided to take Purikura. These are little photo booths where you get your picture taken and when they’re printed, they’re stickers. We are forever cramming as many people as we can into those booths.
After the Purikura, we walked, though not straight, to the bowling alley. Sadly I had to leave early as the last train to Miya leaves at 9:30pm on Saturdays. I would normally have stayed longer and either taken a taxi or crashed at someone’s house but I had already drank way more than was good for me and the plan was to continue drinking after bowling.
So I got on the train. A nice girl showed me how to get off after I tried to exit the wrong doors, and I staggered back to my apartment and enjoyed my glorious bed.
And that’s about all that’s new and exciting in my life. Next month we’re planning trips to Toyama and Tokyo. At the end of this month is the Halloween event and this weekend we’re planning on heading to Gero again so I should have lots to report in my next post. Well, bye for now!
Oct 4, 2010
School Lunches and Library Reading
Here we are, another post. I’m writing this now as I only taught two of the six periods today. Which is actually a nice change from teaching five of the six and being given a job to do during my free period. Mind you those two days went by super fast so it wasn’t all bad.
Do to popular demand, and by that I mean mom suggested it, here’s some info about school lunches. To start with, everyone eats these lunches. And I mean everyone. From elementary school until the end of junior high you have to eat them. And if you’re a teacher at an elementary or junior high school you have to eat them too. No opting out.
Now what we eat changes every day. Most days there’s rice and some kind of soup. Most of the soup is fine but one day I had some kind of dark soup with seaweed in it. Now I’ve eaten seaweed before. It’s not bad. But when it’s been boiled into an almost goo that you can’t really chew but you can’t swallow straight off, I can’t do it. I tried about three times but after the third time my gag reflex got triggered I gave up. Which meant I have to sneak what was rest back into the empty pot so that I didn’t get in trouble.
Because that’s another element of school lunches. You’re supposed to eat all of it. I had finished one day at Miya JHS when the teacher held up a plate and asked who’d left bits of salad all over the plate. It was me. She laughed and I got by again because I’m a foreigner but if it’d been a student they’d have gotten in trouble.
So I’m sure you’re now wondering if you have to eat everything how do you deal with food you honestly can’t eat. I’ve had this happen when they served shishamo. Shishamo, for those of you lucky enough to have never come across it, is a pregnant fish, compelte with bones and eyes, wrapped in some kind of batter and fried. I can’t eat it. Not after the first time when I thought it was a shrimp and bit the head right off. Never again!
Anyway, when you want to get rid of something you don’t like, all you have to do is find the kid in the room who likes it and give it to them. The other ALTs told me to do this. Then I saw one of the teachers, who also doesn’t like shishamo, foisting there’s off on the kids so I didn’t feel so bad. It’s win-win. I don’t have to eat anything I don’t like and the kids get more of what they do like.
Outside of school, this past Saturday I joined Krys and Tom at the Takayama public library for the monthly English reading hour there. Parents bring their kids to listen to English storybooks. This time was Halloween themed. The kids range in age from baby, the shiniest headed baby we’d ever seen, to one of Tom’s first graders. Most of these kids are only there because their parents want them exposed to English/have them improve their English.
Mind you, most of them seem to have a lot of fun. Especially when we get Head Shoulders Knees and Toes going. One kid just sat and watched and at the end began clapping. There was this one little girl who just bounced the entire time. Her and her older sister must have said goodbye to use twenty times. They kept waving and shouting goodbye then coming back and doing it again. They were really cute!
The other great thing about the library is that they’ll order in pretty much any English book an ALT requests. That’s because they’re trying to improve their English section but they don’t know what people like. So I don’t have to buy books. Not that that’s going to stop me. I still prefer owning books to borrowing them.
So that’s pretty much it. Nothing too exciting’s been happening. This weekend’s one of the huge Takayama festivals so I’ll be going to that with the other ALTs. Anyway, bye for now!
Do to popular demand, and by that I mean mom suggested it, here’s some info about school lunches. To start with, everyone eats these lunches. And I mean everyone. From elementary school until the end of junior high you have to eat them. And if you’re a teacher at an elementary or junior high school you have to eat them too. No opting out.
Now what we eat changes every day. Most days there’s rice and some kind of soup. Most of the soup is fine but one day I had some kind of dark soup with seaweed in it. Now I’ve eaten seaweed before. It’s not bad. But when it’s been boiled into an almost goo that you can’t really chew but you can’t swallow straight off, I can’t do it. I tried about three times but after the third time my gag reflex got triggered I gave up. Which meant I have to sneak what was rest back into the empty pot so that I didn’t get in trouble.
Because that’s another element of school lunches. You’re supposed to eat all of it. I had finished one day at Miya JHS when the teacher held up a plate and asked who’d left bits of salad all over the plate. It was me. She laughed and I got by again because I’m a foreigner but if it’d been a student they’d have gotten in trouble.
So I’m sure you’re now wondering if you have to eat everything how do you deal with food you honestly can’t eat. I’ve had this happen when they served shishamo. Shishamo, for those of you lucky enough to have never come across it, is a pregnant fish, compelte with bones and eyes, wrapped in some kind of batter and fried. I can’t eat it. Not after the first time when I thought it was a shrimp and bit the head right off. Never again!
Anyway, when you want to get rid of something you don’t like, all you have to do is find the kid in the room who likes it and give it to them. The other ALTs told me to do this. Then I saw one of the teachers, who also doesn’t like shishamo, foisting there’s off on the kids so I didn’t feel so bad. It’s win-win. I don’t have to eat anything I don’t like and the kids get more of what they do like.
Outside of school, this past Saturday I joined Krys and Tom at the Takayama public library for the monthly English reading hour there. Parents bring their kids to listen to English storybooks. This time was Halloween themed. The kids range in age from baby, the shiniest headed baby we’d ever seen, to one of Tom’s first graders. Most of these kids are only there because their parents want them exposed to English/have them improve their English.
Mind you, most of them seem to have a lot of fun. Especially when we get Head Shoulders Knees and Toes going. One kid just sat and watched and at the end began clapping. There was this one little girl who just bounced the entire time. Her and her older sister must have said goodbye to use twenty times. They kept waving and shouting goodbye then coming back and doing it again. They were really cute!
The other great thing about the library is that they’ll order in pretty much any English book an ALT requests. That’s because they’re trying to improve their English section but they don’t know what people like. So I don’t have to buy books. Not that that’s going to stop me. I still prefer owning books to borrowing them.
So that’s pretty much it. Nothing too exciting’s been happening. This weekend’s one of the huge Takayama festivals so I’ll be going to that with the other ALTs. Anyway, bye for now!
Sep 26, 2010
Birthdays, Fall and Christmas
Here you go mother, another blog post.
So for those of you who don’t know, AKA the two of you who aren’t related to me who read this, I’m officially coming home for Christmas. I bought my ticket and everything. My Visa’s still smoking a little from having that much put on it, but I’m still really excited. I’ll be home from the 23rd until the 5th of January. Parties and fun will abound.
And now back to Japan. It’s finally Fall. And a Fall I recognize. It went from over thirty degrees to ten in a matter of days. Honestly. I had to get one of the many extra blankets out of the cupboard so I don’t freeze at night. I am glad that I no longer feel like I’m going to die all the time which is what kept happening when it was that bloody hot. I feel a bit more at home now though I do fervently wish that my apartment was insulated. Or had heating beyond my two little kerosene heaters. And I’m not turning those suckers on until I absolutely have to. They scare me a little. I am planning on trying out my kotatsu tonight, provided it stays cool today and it’s not just a morning cold thing. So my next blog may feature my love of my kotatsu. We shall see.
As many of you know, I just had my birthday so I’m no longer the youngest ALT here. Well I still am but Emma’s 22 as well so it’s not as obvious anymore. Since Josh’s, another ALT, birthday is the 22nd, we combined mine and his birthday parties into one massive good time. And because everyone has just finished or are about to finish their Sports Festivals (Undokai) we decided to make it Night Sports Festival themed.
Night Sports Festivals occur at the enkais the teachers have after a school’s Sports Festivals. They involve a lot of ridiculous events that get progressively more hilarious as the teachers drink more. I only had one instance of a Night Sports Festival and it involved a hula hoop. And a lot of drunken catcalling from both teams. My team blatantly won. 3 times. But the other team kept saying it was just practice and didn’t count until they finally won one. Jerks.
So in this tradition, we, the ALTs, had the Poondokai. With events such as Dragon Boating, four team members use straws to drink alcohol out of a long container with the fastest team winning, and Pull the Cushions Out From Under the Person Jumping From the Seiza Position. That one involved a tiebreaker.
Danielle, one of my fellow Canucks, also taught the other non-Canadians how to shotgun a beer. I hadn’t realized until then that it was a Canadian thing.
It was a lot of fun. I couldn’t drink anything as I had to drive back to Miya, stupid trains stop running to Miya at like 9pm, but it was still fun to get involved with. We rented out the big room at the Karaoke place in Takayama so of course, at the end of the night we were all singing karaoke. It got hilarious.
All of us got super into both the Disney and the Spice Girls songs.
I apologize for not blogging earlier. I just discovered the joys of Japanese Amazon. It’s pretty much the same as Canadian or American Amazon but with one wonderful difference. You can pay for your orders at the Convenience Store. In cash. This makes me unbelievably happy. As does the fact that they sell English books on their site. I only bought 3 so far and one of them is sort of work related. The other two are the sequels to the book I bought 2 days before leaving. I spent all of yesterday reading the first one and I’ll spend the next two days, when not at work, finishing the other one. Don’t judge me.
Anyway that’s it for now. Bye!
So for those of you who don’t know, AKA the two of you who aren’t related to me who read this, I’m officially coming home for Christmas. I bought my ticket and everything. My Visa’s still smoking a little from having that much put on it, but I’m still really excited. I’ll be home from the 23rd until the 5th of January. Parties and fun will abound.
And now back to Japan. It’s finally Fall. And a Fall I recognize. It went from over thirty degrees to ten in a matter of days. Honestly. I had to get one of the many extra blankets out of the cupboard so I don’t freeze at night. I am glad that I no longer feel like I’m going to die all the time which is what kept happening when it was that bloody hot. I feel a bit more at home now though I do fervently wish that my apartment was insulated. Or had heating beyond my two little kerosene heaters. And I’m not turning those suckers on until I absolutely have to. They scare me a little. I am planning on trying out my kotatsu tonight, provided it stays cool today and it’s not just a morning cold thing. So my next blog may feature my love of my kotatsu. We shall see.
As many of you know, I just had my birthday so I’m no longer the youngest ALT here. Well I still am but Emma’s 22 as well so it’s not as obvious anymore. Since Josh’s, another ALT, birthday is the 22nd, we combined mine and his birthday parties into one massive good time. And because everyone has just finished or are about to finish their Sports Festivals (Undokai) we decided to make it Night Sports Festival themed.
Night Sports Festivals occur at the enkais the teachers have after a school’s Sports Festivals. They involve a lot of ridiculous events that get progressively more hilarious as the teachers drink more. I only had one instance of a Night Sports Festival and it involved a hula hoop. And a lot of drunken catcalling from both teams. My team blatantly won. 3 times. But the other team kept saying it was just practice and didn’t count until they finally won one. Jerks.
So in this tradition, we, the ALTs, had the Poondokai. With events such as Dragon Boating, four team members use straws to drink alcohol out of a long container with the fastest team winning, and Pull the Cushions Out From Under the Person Jumping From the Seiza Position. That one involved a tiebreaker.
Danielle, one of my fellow Canucks, also taught the other non-Canadians how to shotgun a beer. I hadn’t realized until then that it was a Canadian thing.
It was a lot of fun. I couldn’t drink anything as I had to drive back to Miya, stupid trains stop running to Miya at like 9pm, but it was still fun to get involved with. We rented out the big room at the Karaoke place in Takayama so of course, at the end of the night we were all singing karaoke. It got hilarious.
All of us got super into both the Disney and the Spice Girls songs.
I apologize for not blogging earlier. I just discovered the joys of Japanese Amazon. It’s pretty much the same as Canadian or American Amazon but with one wonderful difference. You can pay for your orders at the Convenience Store. In cash. This makes me unbelievably happy. As does the fact that they sell English books on their site. I only bought 3 so far and one of them is sort of work related. The other two are the sequels to the book I bought 2 days before leaving. I spent all of yesterday reading the first one and I’ll spend the next two days, when not at work, finishing the other one. Don’t judge me.
Anyway that’s it for now. Bye!
Sep 15, 2010
September Drinking and Teaching Fun
So here I am at Kuguno Elementary with nothing to do. Lucky you because that means I’m writing a blog post. Not too much has been going on. I’ve now been to all my school’s Sports Festivals. I had 3 in one day. It was a little nuts.
The September birthdays have already started. We had two last weekend. Next weekend we have none though it is a long weekend, and the following week we have three. That is going to be a week of permanent inebriation I’m sure.
I did just find out, and I mean in the last ten minutes, that on November 1st all the English teachers in Takayama are coming to Kuguno Elementary School. To watch me teach a lesson. I might cry. Especially after the three failed attempts to teach the second graders the game I wanted to play this morning. We had to switch to Fruits Basket. And even then the kids couldn’t remember what colour they were until I taped colour cards to their shirts. I hope they’re going to watch me teach the grade 5’s or 6’s. All of my lessons so far, knock on wood, with them have gone smoothly. I live in fear of it being the grade 1’s or 2’s. As one ALT put it at Orientation, those grades are pretty much retarded.
I have been adopted by several of the grade 1’s. They seem intent on leading me around the school and playground. Which is a nice change from the normal lunch recess activity of “Chase Lauren up and down the halls and then attack her”. That one I don’t mind so much. It’s the packs of little girls that corner you and then either grope you, yes that has happened to me, or keep doing something you tell them not to, trying to lift up my shirt in my case.
Now that’s not to say the kids are bad or anything. Far from it. I love them. They’re adorable most of the time. I just occasionally want to murder them. I think that’s just kids in general though. And they seem to like me. If they way they lie in wait for me or try and coax me out of the staff room is any indication. The staff room is the only place they won’t follow me so it’s where I hide when I’m tired. If I manage to escape that is.
Oh I had my first fail of a class. It was my English conversation class and in hindsight I should have realized it was a bad idea. See I decided, because it’s an elective class and I have a blank slate for it, to let the students pick what they want to learn. So that’s what we did the first class. The problem was it was probably boring for them, a whole lot of English as I tried to explain what everything was, and I talk too fast when I get excited.
But now that that’s done, I know what I’m doing with them until November. Which is nice. And I don’t care that my Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog unit only got 1 vote. We’re doing it anyways because I want to do it. And I think they’ll like it.
So that’s about all that’s been going on with me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I hear small children attempting English outside.
The September birthdays have already started. We had two last weekend. Next weekend we have none though it is a long weekend, and the following week we have three. That is going to be a week of permanent inebriation I’m sure.
I did just find out, and I mean in the last ten minutes, that on November 1st all the English teachers in Takayama are coming to Kuguno Elementary School. To watch me teach a lesson. I might cry. Especially after the three failed attempts to teach the second graders the game I wanted to play this morning. We had to switch to Fruits Basket. And even then the kids couldn’t remember what colour they were until I taped colour cards to their shirts. I hope they’re going to watch me teach the grade 5’s or 6’s. All of my lessons so far, knock on wood, with them have gone smoothly. I live in fear of it being the grade 1’s or 2’s. As one ALT put it at Orientation, those grades are pretty much retarded.
I have been adopted by several of the grade 1’s. They seem intent on leading me around the school and playground. Which is a nice change from the normal lunch recess activity of “Chase Lauren up and down the halls and then attack her”. That one I don’t mind so much. It’s the packs of little girls that corner you and then either grope you, yes that has happened to me, or keep doing something you tell them not to, trying to lift up my shirt in my case.
Now that’s not to say the kids are bad or anything. Far from it. I love them. They’re adorable most of the time. I just occasionally want to murder them. I think that’s just kids in general though. And they seem to like me. If they way they lie in wait for me or try and coax me out of the staff room is any indication. The staff room is the only place they won’t follow me so it’s where I hide when I’m tired. If I manage to escape that is.
Oh I had my first fail of a class. It was my English conversation class and in hindsight I should have realized it was a bad idea. See I decided, because it’s an elective class and I have a blank slate for it, to let the students pick what they want to learn. So that’s what we did the first class. The problem was it was probably boring for them, a whole lot of English as I tried to explain what everything was, and I talk too fast when I get excited.
But now that that’s done, I know what I’m doing with them until November. Which is nice. And I don’t care that my Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog unit only got 1 vote. We’re doing it anyways because I want to do it. And I think they’ll like it.
So that’s about all that’s been going on with me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I hear small children attempting English outside.
Sep 6, 2010
First Week of September
Okay so because mother is nagging me, I love you mom, here’s another post. If this one doesn’t make sense it’s due to the fact that I’m severely hung-over after my three day drink-a-thon. But I’m getting to that.
So Friday started in the most reassuring of manners. I spent a half-hour driving around Kuguno looking for my Junior High. Finally, after the second time I stumbled across it, I went up to my Elementary school and asked for directions. My principal, who’s sort of adopted me as I’m almost the same age as his daughter, drove in front and showed me where the school was. The sad part is I’d made it there by myself the week before.
So I was late for the first time. My English teacher, Omizou-sensei, found my story of getting lost hilarious and so I’m guessing no one found me being a few minutes late to be a huge deal. I introduced myself to some more classes. Questions I’m asked a lot include, What did you have for breakfast?, Do you like natto?, How old are you?, and of course Do you have a boyfriend?
Anyway I ended up leaving work early on Friday because I had to go to the Board of Education to meet the Superintendent. Luckily, one of my boxes of winter clothes was there so I was able to pick it up at the same time. I am a little concerned that it was only one box given that I sent two and I sent them at the same time, but there’s nothing much I can do but wait and see at this point.
Quick side note: We’ve had an increase of bear sighting in the Takayama area. One fisherman was attacked, he’s fine, but now everyone’s on hyper alert for them. Sometimes the teachers actually go check the paths/streets that the kids use to get home, if they’re near the forest, for bears. I just love the image of teachers doing a bear check before letting the kids go. And for those of you who are worried, there’s not been a single bear sighting in my village.
And back to Friday. After going to the Board of Education, I went home, got changed and then met up with Kuguno Elementary’s principal downstairs. We live in the same building though I live on the third floor and he lives on the first. Together we took a taxi to my first enkai.
An enkai is a work drinking party. They often are all-you-can-eat and all-you-can-drink so they are deadly. This one I only had 2 beers and I was very much inebriated. I found out I speak better Japanese drunk than I do sober. This particular enkai involved drunken language lessons from me. I taught all my teachers “the only Spanish you need to know.” Dos cervesas por favor. Or two beers please. I translated it for them and they loved it.
So I got home around 11pm went to bed, and then had to go to Kuguno Junior High on Saturday morning for the Sports Festival. It was actually a lot of fun. For me at least. I just sat there, took pictures, and tried to get the kid with the broken leg beside me to talk.
Some of the events were intense. They had some of the usual, relay races, tug-of-wars, and three-legged races but some of the other events…Like the most violent one was probably the rope-grabbing race. They leave a bunch of short lengths of rope in the middle of the field and the girls on each team line up on opposite sides. When the pistol goes, they run grab the ropes and drop them on their side. Doesn’t sound so bad does it? But once you’ve dropped one you can go back and help your friends. Which means you can have like twenty girls all trying to get the same piece of rope and they’re hardcore fighting each other for it. It’s a lot of fun to watch.
Another of the more interesting ones was the back running race. They have one kid on each team, the lightest, and they have him climb onto their backs, they’re have bent over, and he runs across the field this way and back again. It looks like it’s fun to be the kid doing the running.
One of the other ones I liked was the team jump rope. They get like ten to twenty kids in a line and they all have to jump this huge rope. The aim is to have the highest number of consecutive jumps. The winning number was thirty-four. I have no idea how they do this.
Halfway through the day the kids do their cheers. This isn’t like “Go lions go” or anything like this. First off, the kids have painted their own mascots, big boards with something on it in their team’s colours. White team had a white tiger and the Red team had a picture of Napoleon on a horse for some reason. I still have no idea why. The cheering itself involves chanting, synchronized movements, and in the case of both teams, coloured flip boards. They flipped these over and back to reveal the different colours and created patterns with them. It was frigging cool.
The Red team added in a number involving fans. They spelled the word WIN in English which was sweet. The White team however, took it to another level. Not only did they have their flip boards but half-way through they switch the colours from green and white to green and yellow somehow. Then, in the second half, they opened and closed their black uniform coats to reveal their white t-shirts and formed patterns with them. While chanting. And in the end they made a massive (A V in Japan often stands for Victory) out of both their shirts and their bodies. It was super awesome. I was thoroughly impressed.
So after a day of sun and sweat, I went home to get clean, change and I was right back out for another enkai. This time, I met up with my Science teacher from Kuguno Junior High, he too lives in Miya, and we took the train into Takayama. We ended up at Kanki, which is a favourite restaurant with us ALTs as they do a very good Caesar salad.
There was no Caesar salad in evidence at the enkai. There were however, not one, but two fish heads. One raw, one cooked. The teachers had a lot of fun trying to make me eat the cooked one’s eye. No one else ate it so I assume they were just messing with me. This was like an extension of lunch time where I made the mistake of sitting in the gym where the students and their families were and not in the staff room. Several people seemed to decide my sandwich was not a good enough lunch and began the game of ‘Feed the Foreigner’. I tried to refuse but they wouldn’t let me. And then I couldn’t not eat it. I thought I was going to die. So much food!
So Saturday’s enkai also involved me drunkenly teaching languages to people. This time it was mostly English with a tiny bit of German and Danish thrown in. One of my teachers kept thinking I was Dutch for some reason. I had to explain, using my little chart that I’d drawn in my notebook, to explain what background I come from. They all found this fascinating. Which kind of makes sense since all of them are Japanese and all they’re ancestors are Japanese so the idea of having a mixed background is a novelty.
Again, I managed to keep my drinking within acceptable drunken levels and got home at around 10pm. I went to bed, got up early, made cheesecake dip and then took the train into Takayama and walked to the Valor where I was meeting the other ALTs. We did a bit of last minute grocery shopping and then piled into 4 cars to head to the river in Kamioka.
It was Aiko’s, a Japanese friend of us ALTs, birthday. So we went to the river, crossed it, and set up a barbecue. We spent the day there, swimming, jumping off the cliffs, and sliding down the mini-waterfalls. Well that is until we discovered that there were leeches around the waterfalls. Then we stayed off those rocks. Though they were only tiny little leeches no bigger than tiny bits of thread. They came right off.
We ended the day with several bouts of river sumo wrestling or Mizumo as we called it (Mizu being water and Mizumo being a combination of the words Mizu and Sumo). Aiko was the girl’s champion and Carl was the boy’s. Finally, with the sun going down, the river is between two mountains so it gets cold quickly, we made our way home, tired but content.
So that’s what I was up to this weekend. Stay tuned because there are like 5 ALT birthdays this month so we’re going to spend most of this month in a drunken haze. Until the next time I’m bored at work, Bye!
So Friday started in the most reassuring of manners. I spent a half-hour driving around Kuguno looking for my Junior High. Finally, after the second time I stumbled across it, I went up to my Elementary school and asked for directions. My principal, who’s sort of adopted me as I’m almost the same age as his daughter, drove in front and showed me where the school was. The sad part is I’d made it there by myself the week before.
So I was late for the first time. My English teacher, Omizou-sensei, found my story of getting lost hilarious and so I’m guessing no one found me being a few minutes late to be a huge deal. I introduced myself to some more classes. Questions I’m asked a lot include, What did you have for breakfast?, Do you like natto?, How old are you?, and of course Do you have a boyfriend?
Anyway I ended up leaving work early on Friday because I had to go to the Board of Education to meet the Superintendent. Luckily, one of my boxes of winter clothes was there so I was able to pick it up at the same time. I am a little concerned that it was only one box given that I sent two and I sent them at the same time, but there’s nothing much I can do but wait and see at this point.
Quick side note: We’ve had an increase of bear sighting in the Takayama area. One fisherman was attacked, he’s fine, but now everyone’s on hyper alert for them. Sometimes the teachers actually go check the paths/streets that the kids use to get home, if they’re near the forest, for bears. I just love the image of teachers doing a bear check before letting the kids go. And for those of you who are worried, there’s not been a single bear sighting in my village.
And back to Friday. After going to the Board of Education, I went home, got changed and then met up with Kuguno Elementary’s principal downstairs. We live in the same building though I live on the third floor and he lives on the first. Together we took a taxi to my first enkai.
An enkai is a work drinking party. They often are all-you-can-eat and all-you-can-drink so they are deadly. This one I only had 2 beers and I was very much inebriated. I found out I speak better Japanese drunk than I do sober. This particular enkai involved drunken language lessons from me. I taught all my teachers “the only Spanish you need to know.” Dos cervesas por favor. Or two beers please. I translated it for them and they loved it.
So I got home around 11pm went to bed, and then had to go to Kuguno Junior High on Saturday morning for the Sports Festival. It was actually a lot of fun. For me at least. I just sat there, took pictures, and tried to get the kid with the broken leg beside me to talk.
Some of the events were intense. They had some of the usual, relay races, tug-of-wars, and three-legged races but some of the other events…Like the most violent one was probably the rope-grabbing race. They leave a bunch of short lengths of rope in the middle of the field and the girls on each team line up on opposite sides. When the pistol goes, they run grab the ropes and drop them on their side. Doesn’t sound so bad does it? But once you’ve dropped one you can go back and help your friends. Which means you can have like twenty girls all trying to get the same piece of rope and they’re hardcore fighting each other for it. It’s a lot of fun to watch.
Another of the more interesting ones was the back running race. They have one kid on each team, the lightest, and they have him climb onto their backs, they’re have bent over, and he runs across the field this way and back again. It looks like it’s fun to be the kid doing the running.
One of the other ones I liked was the team jump rope. They get like ten to twenty kids in a line and they all have to jump this huge rope. The aim is to have the highest number of consecutive jumps. The winning number was thirty-four. I have no idea how they do this.
Halfway through the day the kids do their cheers. This isn’t like “Go lions go” or anything like this. First off, the kids have painted their own mascots, big boards with something on it in their team’s colours. White team had a white tiger and the Red team had a picture of Napoleon on a horse for some reason. I still have no idea why. The cheering itself involves chanting, synchronized movements, and in the case of both teams, coloured flip boards. They flipped these over and back to reveal the different colours and created patterns with them. It was frigging cool.
The Red team added in a number involving fans. They spelled the word WIN in English which was sweet. The White team however, took it to another level. Not only did they have their flip boards but half-way through they switch the colours from green and white to green and yellow somehow. Then, in the second half, they opened and closed their black uniform coats to reveal their white t-shirts and formed patterns with them. While chanting. And in the end they made a massive (A V in Japan often stands for Victory) out of both their shirts and their bodies. It was super awesome. I was thoroughly impressed.
So after a day of sun and sweat, I went home to get clean, change and I was right back out for another enkai. This time, I met up with my Science teacher from Kuguno Junior High, he too lives in Miya, and we took the train into Takayama. We ended up at Kanki, which is a favourite restaurant with us ALTs as they do a very good Caesar salad.
There was no Caesar salad in evidence at the enkai. There were however, not one, but two fish heads. One raw, one cooked. The teachers had a lot of fun trying to make me eat the cooked one’s eye. No one else ate it so I assume they were just messing with me. This was like an extension of lunch time where I made the mistake of sitting in the gym where the students and their families were and not in the staff room. Several people seemed to decide my sandwich was not a good enough lunch and began the game of ‘Feed the Foreigner’. I tried to refuse but they wouldn’t let me. And then I couldn’t not eat it. I thought I was going to die. So much food!
So Saturday’s enkai also involved me drunkenly teaching languages to people. This time it was mostly English with a tiny bit of German and Danish thrown in. One of my teachers kept thinking I was Dutch for some reason. I had to explain, using my little chart that I’d drawn in my notebook, to explain what background I come from. They all found this fascinating. Which kind of makes sense since all of them are Japanese and all they’re ancestors are Japanese so the idea of having a mixed background is a novelty.
Again, I managed to keep my drinking within acceptable drunken levels and got home at around 10pm. I went to bed, got up early, made cheesecake dip and then took the train into Takayama and walked to the Valor where I was meeting the other ALTs. We did a bit of last minute grocery shopping and then piled into 4 cars to head to the river in Kamioka.
It was Aiko’s, a Japanese friend of us ALTs, birthday. So we went to the river, crossed it, and set up a barbecue. We spent the day there, swimming, jumping off the cliffs, and sliding down the mini-waterfalls. Well that is until we discovered that there were leeches around the waterfalls. Then we stayed off those rocks. Though they were only tiny little leeches no bigger than tiny bits of thread. They came right off.
We ended the day with several bouts of river sumo wrestling or Mizumo as we called it (Mizu being water and Mizumo being a combination of the words Mizu and Sumo). Aiko was the girl’s champion and Carl was the boy’s. Finally, with the sun going down, the river is between two mountains so it gets cold quickly, we made our way home, tired but content.
So that’s what I was up to this weekend. Stay tuned because there are like 5 ALT birthdays this month so we’re going to spend most of this month in a drunken haze. Until the next time I’m bored at work, Bye!
Sep 2, 2010
Ceremonies, Festivals, and I'm a Real Teacher
I have to admit, I wondered about the wisdom of bringing it along, especially when I was overweight with my luggage. But I have to say, the Canadian umbrella hat was a good idea. Yes I have worn it. I wore it during all my opening ceremonies. It made the kids laugh.
Now initially I wasn’t going to wear it. I was going to wear the red and white maple lead top hat. But as we were walking to the gym, I was wearing the top hat at the time, the other teachers said the umbrella hat was better. So I wore that instead.
As I’m sure you can imagine, I was quite the impressive figure.
The Opening Ceremonies themselves are pretty boring. The principal gives a speech. Then the new teachers are introduced. Then the kids sing the school song. They’re really good at it! After that the students give speeches.
It wouldn’t have been so bad but as a teacher you’re required to stand and I hate standing. Mostly because I’m lazy. Oh well. It was neat to see all my students for the first time. The elementary school was the best. A bunch of kids noticed my hat first and then pointed it out to their friends and eventually I had half the students staring at me.
And during my introduction to the elementary kids I made the mistake of asking how old they thought I was. I forgot little kids believe anyone who doesn’t look like a student must therefore be their parents’ age. The guesses ranged from 27-45. They, like everyone else who finds out how old I am, went “Eeeeeh! Young!” Every time someone says this I feel that they’re refraining from patting me on the head.
Lately the students have been preparing for their Sports Festivals. My first day at Miya Elementary and I found out there were no classes. So instead, I spent the day watching the kids practice. The grade ones and twos do this adorable little cheer/dance with pompoms. I nearly had a cuteness overload watching them do it. Especially since some of them take this super seriously. The grade threes and fours do my favourite cheer. It’s like have gymnastics. They do various stackings of children on top of other children, kids kneeling in pyramids and lifting each other right off the ground. They do this in a specific order and I have no idea how they remember it all. I couldn’t. The last group is the grade fives and sixes. They have a whole dance routine, which has some gymnastics of its own, to do to a song. I’m sure there are militaries who can’t pull of drills like these kids can.
Speaking of elementary schools, I had my first day of elementary teaching at Kuguno. The kids there were super enthusiastic. They, like the junior high kids, love the hot potato game I make them play. And the fact they have to wear one of three ridiculous hats when they ask me a question/introduce themselves (which depends on what grade they’re in).
Another crowd pleaser is my altered version of Stella Ella Ola. The kids got super into it. It only takes about 5 minutes for even the youngest kids to get how to play it and it’s easily prepared as all it requires is them to sit in a circle.
And this Tuesday I get a day off because of Kuguno JHS’s Sports Festival. I’m using that day to finally send money home. The bloody bank closes at 4pm and that’s when I get off work. It has been unbelievably frustrating.
On a happier note, for those of you who’re related to me AKA everyone who reads this, from everything everyone’s said so far on the matter I’ll likely be home for Christmas. They normally only say no when you’re missing a lot of Elementary school because you’re the only real English teacher there but only one of the days I want to take off is an Elementary day. And it’s Kuguno Elementary. The principal there loves me. I still have to talk to all of my principals and teachers and to my supervisor but given that Christmas time is review time for exams, there’s not much for me to do anyway and I should be allowed to come back. Fingers crossed.
So that’s about all for now. I’ll write another post next time I have time to kill at work. Bye!
Now initially I wasn’t going to wear it. I was going to wear the red and white maple lead top hat. But as we were walking to the gym, I was wearing the top hat at the time, the other teachers said the umbrella hat was better. So I wore that instead.
As I’m sure you can imagine, I was quite the impressive figure.
The Opening Ceremonies themselves are pretty boring. The principal gives a speech. Then the new teachers are introduced. Then the kids sing the school song. They’re really good at it! After that the students give speeches.
It wouldn’t have been so bad but as a teacher you’re required to stand and I hate standing. Mostly because I’m lazy. Oh well. It was neat to see all my students for the first time. The elementary school was the best. A bunch of kids noticed my hat first and then pointed it out to their friends and eventually I had half the students staring at me.
And during my introduction to the elementary kids I made the mistake of asking how old they thought I was. I forgot little kids believe anyone who doesn’t look like a student must therefore be their parents’ age. The guesses ranged from 27-45. They, like everyone else who finds out how old I am, went “Eeeeeh! Young!” Every time someone says this I feel that they’re refraining from patting me on the head.
Lately the students have been preparing for their Sports Festivals. My first day at Miya Elementary and I found out there were no classes. So instead, I spent the day watching the kids practice. The grade ones and twos do this adorable little cheer/dance with pompoms. I nearly had a cuteness overload watching them do it. Especially since some of them take this super seriously. The grade threes and fours do my favourite cheer. It’s like have gymnastics. They do various stackings of children on top of other children, kids kneeling in pyramids and lifting each other right off the ground. They do this in a specific order and I have no idea how they remember it all. I couldn’t. The last group is the grade fives and sixes. They have a whole dance routine, which has some gymnastics of its own, to do to a song. I’m sure there are militaries who can’t pull of drills like these kids can.
Speaking of elementary schools, I had my first day of elementary teaching at Kuguno. The kids there were super enthusiastic. They, like the junior high kids, love the hot potato game I make them play. And the fact they have to wear one of three ridiculous hats when they ask me a question/introduce themselves (which depends on what grade they’re in).
Another crowd pleaser is my altered version of Stella Ella Ola. The kids got super into it. It only takes about 5 minutes for even the youngest kids to get how to play it and it’s easily prepared as all it requires is them to sit in a circle.
And this Tuesday I get a day off because of Kuguno JHS’s Sports Festival. I’m using that day to finally send money home. The bloody bank closes at 4pm and that’s when I get off work. It has been unbelievably frustrating.
On a happier note, for those of you who’re related to me AKA everyone who reads this, from everything everyone’s said so far on the matter I’ll likely be home for Christmas. They normally only say no when you’re missing a lot of Elementary school because you’re the only real English teacher there but only one of the days I want to take off is an Elementary day. And it’s Kuguno Elementary. The principal there loves me. I still have to talk to all of my principals and teachers and to my supervisor but given that Christmas time is review time for exams, there’s not much for me to do anyway and I should be allowed to come back. Fingers crossed.
So that’s about all for now. I’ll write another post next time I have time to kill at work. Bye!
Aug 24, 2010
Garbage, Gas, and the Other 100 Things I’ve Had to Learn While Being Here
Sorry about the lack of updates. Settling in here has taken more time than I thought. That and I always seem to be doing something.
As I write this I’m sitting in the staff room of Miya Junior High School while the rest of the teachers are in a meeting. The meeting is held entirely in Japanese so the Vice Principal told me to just stay here. You might think that I should be doing some kind of work rather than writing a blog entry. And I agree with you.
However, I have nothing to do. No work. No responsibility. I got my first pay check and I honestly got paid for sitting around, reading novels off my computer, and making the odd lesson plan.
No I don’t spend all day reading but it keeps me occupied. I can only make so many lesson plans in a day. Add in the fact that I still haven’t been in a classroom, exploring the school doesn’t count, and you can see why I’m hesitant to make too many lesson plans. For all I know I’m going to have to scrap the lot of them. Or they’re going to blow up in my face.
Thankfully school starts at the end of the week so I’ll finally have something to do. So now that you know what my work life is like, I’ll start describing my home life.
First off, I love my apartment! Honestly it’s perfect. Well almost perfect. It having air conditioning would have made it perfect. As it is I have a fan. As is one single electric fan. The weather has been in the high thirties, almost forties for a large portion of my time here so far. And that’s the temperature when you don’t count the humidity. And it is humid! I have never sweat so much in my life. Luckily, I have a bathtub in my apartment. Cold baths are awesome!
Since I’ve been here, I’ve come to appreciate how awesome Jen, my predecessor, is. She left me instructions on how to do pretty much everything. Which is good. Because I’d have never figured out the garbage otherwise.
Yes, garbage is in no way the same as it is in Canada. Oh no. You have to sort it. And this isn’t just recycling sorting. The categories are Burnable, Non-Burnable, Plastic, PET (AKA plastic drink bottles), Metal, Glass, Paper, and Milk Cartons. Each day a different thing is picked up. So you have this massive complicated calendar of pick-ups you have to remember.
Sorting this stuff is stressful enough. What makes it worse is that if you don’t sort it right they bring it back. That’s right. Like a child, if you screw it up they bring it back and make you fix it. Now being more or less told by the garbage people you’re an idiot is bad enough, but what’s the worst is that sometimes, especially if you have old, retired neighbours, they will go through your garbage to see if you’ve sorted it right. Oh my yes. Random old people will can be judging you based on your garbage sorting skills. And they can, and often will, bring your garbage back to you if you haven’t done it properly. Now I’m lucky as this hasn’t happened to me. Yet.
Another unexpected difference I found was when I went and got gas for my car for the first time. With Japanese gas pumps you have to pay before you pump. No matter how you intend to pay. And you have to choose between a set number of litres going into your car, a set amount of money, or pumping the car until it’s full. Thankfully, one of the super nice gas attendants walked me through the process. That and the pump has an English button.
One thing that I’ve finally gotten at least slightly comfortable with is driving. Given that the first time I got in the car, I was driving it off the lot, I nearly got hit by a truck, I didn’t have the most confidence for a while (I looked the wrong way when trying to get into the left hand lane. I was at least trying to get into the lane on the correct side of the road). I know I’ve gotten more comfortable because I’ve started yelling at other drivers again. From my car of course. With the windows rolled up. In English. So I have no worries about getting into trouble. Unless of course the cops pull me over.
Yeah that’s another thing that was stressed to us over and over again in our orientations. Do Not Break the Law! Not just because we’re supposed to be representing our countries and all that jazz but because you will get caught. There is very little crime in Japan and because of that, the police are really really bored. Seriously. They sometimes pull foreigners over so that they have something to do. God help you if you don’t have your Gaijin card. The Gaijin card, which is what we ALTs call the Alien Registration card, has your address and place of employment on it and is pretty much your life here. I still haven’t gotten mine in the mail yet. None of us new JETs have. I lie in fear of getting pulled over.
Mind you, Japan being so safe and all has its advantages. People will totally leave their cars running while they go into the combini (convenience store). And no one takes them! When I left my wallet at the 100 yen store, basically the Japanese equivalence to a dollar store in Canada, it was turned almost immediately in to the cashiers. When I finally came back for it, yes I am an idiot, all my money was there and the cashiers were very nice about it. Though I’m pretty sure they were laughing at the stupid foreigner.
Here’s another fun thing that frustrates us JETs to no end. The ATMs here have hours. Yes, after a certain time they are closed. My banks ATM in Miya closes at like 3pm on Saturdays and 6pm on weekdays. The ones in Takayama stay open until 9pm. Now this might suck more if things actually stayed open late but everything shuts down about 6pm every night in Takayama. Miya tends to close a bit earlier than that. The only things that stay open later are bars, karaoke places, combinis, and arcades. Oh and the bowling alley too.
Well that’s about all for now. I’ll do another post once I’ve actually started teaching. Bye!
As I write this I’m sitting in the staff room of Miya Junior High School while the rest of the teachers are in a meeting. The meeting is held entirely in Japanese so the Vice Principal told me to just stay here. You might think that I should be doing some kind of work rather than writing a blog entry. And I agree with you.
However, I have nothing to do. No work. No responsibility. I got my first pay check and I honestly got paid for sitting around, reading novels off my computer, and making the odd lesson plan.
No I don’t spend all day reading but it keeps me occupied. I can only make so many lesson plans in a day. Add in the fact that I still haven’t been in a classroom, exploring the school doesn’t count, and you can see why I’m hesitant to make too many lesson plans. For all I know I’m going to have to scrap the lot of them. Or they’re going to blow up in my face.
Thankfully school starts at the end of the week so I’ll finally have something to do. So now that you know what my work life is like, I’ll start describing my home life.
First off, I love my apartment! Honestly it’s perfect. Well almost perfect. It having air conditioning would have made it perfect. As it is I have a fan. As is one single electric fan. The weather has been in the high thirties, almost forties for a large portion of my time here so far. And that’s the temperature when you don’t count the humidity. And it is humid! I have never sweat so much in my life. Luckily, I have a bathtub in my apartment. Cold baths are awesome!
Since I’ve been here, I’ve come to appreciate how awesome Jen, my predecessor, is. She left me instructions on how to do pretty much everything. Which is good. Because I’d have never figured out the garbage otherwise.
Yes, garbage is in no way the same as it is in Canada. Oh no. You have to sort it. And this isn’t just recycling sorting. The categories are Burnable, Non-Burnable, Plastic, PET (AKA plastic drink bottles), Metal, Glass, Paper, and Milk Cartons. Each day a different thing is picked up. So you have this massive complicated calendar of pick-ups you have to remember.
Sorting this stuff is stressful enough. What makes it worse is that if you don’t sort it right they bring it back. That’s right. Like a child, if you screw it up they bring it back and make you fix it. Now being more or less told by the garbage people you’re an idiot is bad enough, but what’s the worst is that sometimes, especially if you have old, retired neighbours, they will go through your garbage to see if you’ve sorted it right. Oh my yes. Random old people will can be judging you based on your garbage sorting skills. And they can, and often will, bring your garbage back to you if you haven’t done it properly. Now I’m lucky as this hasn’t happened to me. Yet.
Another unexpected difference I found was when I went and got gas for my car for the first time. With Japanese gas pumps you have to pay before you pump. No matter how you intend to pay. And you have to choose between a set number of litres going into your car, a set amount of money, or pumping the car until it’s full. Thankfully, one of the super nice gas attendants walked me through the process. That and the pump has an English button.
One thing that I’ve finally gotten at least slightly comfortable with is driving. Given that the first time I got in the car, I was driving it off the lot, I nearly got hit by a truck, I didn’t have the most confidence for a while (I looked the wrong way when trying to get into the left hand lane. I was at least trying to get into the lane on the correct side of the road). I know I’ve gotten more comfortable because I’ve started yelling at other drivers again. From my car of course. With the windows rolled up. In English. So I have no worries about getting into trouble. Unless of course the cops pull me over.
Yeah that’s another thing that was stressed to us over and over again in our orientations. Do Not Break the Law! Not just because we’re supposed to be representing our countries and all that jazz but because you will get caught. There is very little crime in Japan and because of that, the police are really really bored. Seriously. They sometimes pull foreigners over so that they have something to do. God help you if you don’t have your Gaijin card. The Gaijin card, which is what we ALTs call the Alien Registration card, has your address and place of employment on it and is pretty much your life here. I still haven’t gotten mine in the mail yet. None of us new JETs have. I lie in fear of getting pulled over.
Mind you, Japan being so safe and all has its advantages. People will totally leave their cars running while they go into the combini (convenience store). And no one takes them! When I left my wallet at the 100 yen store, basically the Japanese equivalence to a dollar store in Canada, it was turned almost immediately in to the cashiers. When I finally came back for it, yes I am an idiot, all my money was there and the cashiers were very nice about it. Though I’m pretty sure they were laughing at the stupid foreigner.
Here’s another fun thing that frustrates us JETs to no end. The ATMs here have hours. Yes, after a certain time they are closed. My banks ATM in Miya closes at like 3pm on Saturdays and 6pm on weekdays. The ones in Takayama stay open until 9pm. Now this might suck more if things actually stayed open late but everything shuts down about 6pm every night in Takayama. Miya tends to close a bit earlier than that. The only things that stay open later are bars, karaoke places, combinis, and arcades. Oh and the bowling alley too.
Well that’s about all for now. I’ll do another post once I’ve actually started teaching. Bye!
Aug 13, 2010
In Japan!
So here it is, my first post from Japan. I arrived at Narita Airport in the middle of the afternoon. Walking into the place felt like walking into a sauna, the humidity and heat were intense. Then, we JETs were subjected to the never ending line. Seriously. It took us nearly two hours to get through Immigration. Not Customs, Immigration.
From there we picked up our baggage and went through customs which as actually relatively painless. Then, the helpful people in the JET t-shirts pointed us in the right direction which is good, because I’d never have found my way otherwise. I specialize in getting lost.
Eventually we were sent out to the buses that would take us to our hotel in Tokyo. Stepping outside in Japan for the first time I was struck by something. The wave of intense heat and humidity that is the bane of Japanese summers. Seriously, I though the airport was bad but this was like walking into a broiling hot, soaking wet towel. Thank god the bus had air conditioning.
The ride to the hotel didn’t take too long but I think that was mostly due to the fact every so often one of us would look at the other and say “Guess what? We’re in Japan!” This would then set the rest of us off. It was fun seeing all the different variations of the “I’m in Japan! Woohoo!” dance.
Our first night in Tokyo was ours to do what we liked with it. I wandered around and got lost for about a half hour (I wasn’t kidding about my superhuman ability to get lost). However, I did manage to feed myself along the way.
The next two days were filled with orientations and workshops. For the most part, these were unbelievably boring. People were actually sleeping through them. After the first few that were useless, I bailed. I mean come on, who’s going to sit through boring lectures about how you need to be polite and not hurl sharp objects at children’s head when you’re in Tokyo?
The answer is most people. Only a few of us slipped off to go exploring. Now when I say skipped I don’t mean I didn’t go to anything. I just didn’t go to the optional workshops where you had to choose them from a list, mainly due to the fact that none of them interested me.
So I went off into the city one afternoon so that I could find an Internet Café so that I could contact my family. I’m still not sure where I wandered off to. I know I ended up in both an above and under ground mall and I found a station somewhere along the way but I really don’t know where I was in Tokyo. It took me an hour to get back to the hotel. I’m not sure how I got back because I definitely came from a different direction, but I suppose it’s not really important.
When I got back to the hotel I found out we could get internet in our rooms. No, of course this didn’t make me feel like an idiot.
Two days later and I was on the train to Gifu, the capital of Gifu prefecture. It was fun watching Japan whiz by. I took a ridiculous amount of pictures as I have a tendency to do.
Once we arrived in Gifu it was another two days of orientation, this time they were a lot more fun, and then I was off to my new home in Ichinomiya, a village just outside of Takayama city,
I’ll describe my first few days in my new home in my next post. Until then, bye!
From there we picked up our baggage and went through customs which as actually relatively painless. Then, the helpful people in the JET t-shirts pointed us in the right direction which is good, because I’d never have found my way otherwise. I specialize in getting lost.
Eventually we were sent out to the buses that would take us to our hotel in Tokyo. Stepping outside in Japan for the first time I was struck by something. The wave of intense heat and humidity that is the bane of Japanese summers. Seriously, I though the airport was bad but this was like walking into a broiling hot, soaking wet towel. Thank god the bus had air conditioning.
The ride to the hotel didn’t take too long but I think that was mostly due to the fact every so often one of us would look at the other and say “Guess what? We’re in Japan!” This would then set the rest of us off. It was fun seeing all the different variations of the “I’m in Japan! Woohoo!” dance.
Our first night in Tokyo was ours to do what we liked with it. I wandered around and got lost for about a half hour (I wasn’t kidding about my superhuman ability to get lost). However, I did manage to feed myself along the way.
The next two days were filled with orientations and workshops. For the most part, these were unbelievably boring. People were actually sleeping through them. After the first few that were useless, I bailed. I mean come on, who’s going to sit through boring lectures about how you need to be polite and not hurl sharp objects at children’s head when you’re in Tokyo?
The answer is most people. Only a few of us slipped off to go exploring. Now when I say skipped I don’t mean I didn’t go to anything. I just didn’t go to the optional workshops where you had to choose them from a list, mainly due to the fact that none of them interested me.
So I went off into the city one afternoon so that I could find an Internet Café so that I could contact my family. I’m still not sure where I wandered off to. I know I ended up in both an above and under ground mall and I found a station somewhere along the way but I really don’t know where I was in Tokyo. It took me an hour to get back to the hotel. I’m not sure how I got back because I definitely came from a different direction, but I suppose it’s not really important.
When I got back to the hotel I found out we could get internet in our rooms. No, of course this didn’t make me feel like an idiot.
Two days later and I was on the train to Gifu, the capital of Gifu prefecture. It was fun watching Japan whiz by. I took a ridiculous amount of pictures as I have a tendency to do.
Once we arrived in Gifu it was another two days of orientation, this time they were a lot more fun, and then I was off to my new home in Ichinomiya, a village just outside of Takayama city,
I’ll describe my first few days in my new home in my next post. Until then, bye!
Jun 3, 2010
A little more on Takayama
So not too much to write about. I did just get my information package from Takayama. I really lucked out in my placement. My apartment is paid for by the schools o I only have to pay utilities. The rest was just the do and dont's sort of stuff along with some minor specifics like holidays and sick leave.
I sent an e-mail to my supervisor as the letter in my package said to. I was rather formal in the e-mail, after the 15 minutes it took me to write the 3-4 sentence long e-mail, as I was unsure of what kind of person my supervisor was and really I'd rather err on the side of caution and be overly polite. I needn't have worried. My supervisor, a man by the name of Hidekazu Itou, sounds like an awesome guy. Not only did his reply include little smiley eyes like ^^ this more than once, but he told me to call him Tom. Because all the other ALTs call him that though he doesn't know why. I laughed.
Anyway that's all for now. More to come once I get talking to my predecessor.
I sent an e-mail to my supervisor as the letter in my package said to. I was rather formal in the e-mail, after the 15 minutes it took me to write the 3-4 sentence long e-mail, as I was unsure of what kind of person my supervisor was and really I'd rather err on the side of caution and be overly polite. I needn't have worried. My supervisor, a man by the name of Hidekazu Itou, sounds like an awesome guy. Not only did his reply include little smiley eyes like ^^ this more than once, but he told me to call him Tom. Because all the other ALTs call him that though he doesn't know why. I laughed.
Anyway that's all for now. More to come once I get talking to my predecessor.
May 13, 2010
Placement!
I just found out my placement! I'm going to Takayama city in Gifu prefecture. It looks awesome! I'll be in the middle of mountains and I'm only a few hours away from Tokyo, Kyoto, Nagoya, and Osaka.
Takayama is known for its festivals and for its preserved buildings. The city's about 95,000 people and I'll be there just in time for a bunch of their festivals. I'm super excited! And because I've been hired by the city, I'll be teaching either Junior High or Elementary students. People start getting details around May 27th so I should know precisely what grades I'm teaching around then.
And so I'll leave you now as I continue my obsessive research into my new city which will likely continue for weeks. So until I get further details, bye!
Takayama is known for its festivals and for its preserved buildings. The city's about 95,000 people and I'll be there just in time for a bunch of their festivals. I'm super excited! And because I've been hired by the city, I'll be teaching either Junior High or Elementary students. People start getting details around May 27th so I should know precisely what grades I'm teaching around then.
And so I'll leave you now as I continue my obsessive research into my new city which will likely continue for weeks. So until I get further details, bye!
May 3, 2010
Waiting Again
Honestly, the JET program is a lesson in patience. One I am sadly failing. I know that I likely won't find out my placement until the end of the month and possibly not until June but I can't help hoping. I really want to know where I'm going. And what grades I'm teaching. There's only so much planning of things I can do before I get concrete information.
For example, choosing what DVDs to bring. I intend to bring a few that I could possibly show classes. But the difference between movies elementary school children would like and ones that high school students would enjoy is not small by any means. Also the lessons I've already begun planning and the prizes/stickers/things about Canada I get are all going to be tailored depending on the ages of my students. Of course some of them I'll be picking up regardless, like the map of Canada place-mat I found at Walmart, but some will depend solely on my students.
I apologize for yet another post of me complaining about waiting to hear back from JET. JET has pretty much taken over my life at the moment. I'm just ridiculously excited. Every so often I remember I'm going to Japan, not that I forget but that it becomes real for me again, and then I grin and/or giggle for a minute before going back to normal. Well my next post should be my placement. Unless I don't hear until June in which case you may end up with another rant about waiting which I will do my best to refrain from. So I guess I'll say goodbye for now.
For example, choosing what DVDs to bring. I intend to bring a few that I could possibly show classes. But the difference between movies elementary school children would like and ones that high school students would enjoy is not small by any means. Also the lessons I've already begun planning and the prizes/stickers/things about Canada I get are all going to be tailored depending on the ages of my students. Of course some of them I'll be picking up regardless, like the map of Canada place-mat I found at Walmart, but some will depend solely on my students.
I apologize for yet another post of me complaining about waiting to hear back from JET. JET has pretty much taken over my life at the moment. I'm just ridiculously excited. Every so often I remember I'm going to Japan, not that I forget but that it becomes real for me again, and then I grin and/or giggle for a minute before going back to normal. Well my next post should be my placement. Unless I don't hear until June in which case you may end up with another rant about waiting which I will do my best to refrain from. So I guess I'll say goodbye for now.
Apr 16, 2010
Forms and Placement
So I just sent off my JET reply package indicating that yes, I do want to go. It took all my willpower to keep from adding stars and exclamation marks all around the yes. Now I just have to wait until May to find out my placement.
What went into the reply package? Well first was the reply form. Which just involved me ticking off yes I want to go, no I'm not married nor do I have children, and I want to leave from Montreal. Then I had to put on 2 passport sized photos. The JET program requires your photo plastered on nearly everything you send to them. On the plus side at least they'll know you on sight.
The second thing I had to put in was a photocopy of my passport. Luckily I already had it scanned into my computer so I didn't have to move my giant pile of papers off my printer so I could use the scanner.
The last thing in the package, and the one that took the most work to deal with, was my medical form. Even then it only took me 2 days to fill out. First I made an appointment with Health Services on campus. So in I went and the doctor started compiling my entire history right there. This was not necessary for the form, I checked, but I'm guessing because it was my first visit that she decided she wanted it for her records. She started off with do I have any conditions, have I had any surgeries, and then have I had any other injuries. I answered that last question chronologically. She was shaking her head by the end of it.
Next she poked and prodded me to make sure I had no pain anywhere then she took my blood pressure. Then I had to pee in a cup. Oh the fun of peeing in cups. The test was fine, everything was great, until she came to the section of the form that said I had to get a lung X-ray. She pulled out a sheet, drew me a map, and told me to head into Sherbrooke.
So I did. Of course I waited until the next day because I had other things to do. I got on the bus, got off at the wrong stop, backtracked, walked up a giant hill of death, and then found the Radiology Clinic. I was in and out of there in under 40 minutes. 10-20 of those minutes was me and the receptionist trying to figure out if I had to pay or not. I did. After that, I waited about 10 minutes in the waiting area and then got called in. The X-rays themselves took about 3 minutes. After that I came home. My form was finished later that day, yesterday, and today I got my passport pictures done and sent it off!
I was really worried it would take a really long time. The JET office has to receive the form by April 30th so I was panicking a little. But it all worked out in the end.
My next post, which should be sometime in May, will be about where I've been placed. I have my fingers crossed for somewhere in Hokkaido. Until then, bye!
What went into the reply package? Well first was the reply form. Which just involved me ticking off yes I want to go, no I'm not married nor do I have children, and I want to leave from Montreal. Then I had to put on 2 passport sized photos. The JET program requires your photo plastered on nearly everything you send to them. On the plus side at least they'll know you on sight.
The second thing I had to put in was a photocopy of my passport. Luckily I already had it scanned into my computer so I didn't have to move my giant pile of papers off my printer so I could use the scanner.
The last thing in the package, and the one that took the most work to deal with, was my medical form. Even then it only took me 2 days to fill out. First I made an appointment with Health Services on campus. So in I went and the doctor started compiling my entire history right there. This was not necessary for the form, I checked, but I'm guessing because it was my first visit that she decided she wanted it for her records. She started off with do I have any conditions, have I had any surgeries, and then have I had any other injuries. I answered that last question chronologically. She was shaking her head by the end of it.
Next she poked and prodded me to make sure I had no pain anywhere then she took my blood pressure. Then I had to pee in a cup. Oh the fun of peeing in cups. The test was fine, everything was great, until she came to the section of the form that said I had to get a lung X-ray. She pulled out a sheet, drew me a map, and told me to head into Sherbrooke.
So I did. Of course I waited until the next day because I had other things to do. I got on the bus, got off at the wrong stop, backtracked, walked up a giant hill of death, and then found the Radiology Clinic. I was in and out of there in under 40 minutes. 10-20 of those minutes was me and the receptionist trying to figure out if I had to pay or not. I did. After that, I waited about 10 minutes in the waiting area and then got called in. The X-rays themselves took about 3 minutes. After that I came home. My form was finished later that day, yesterday, and today I got my passport pictures done and sent it off!
I was really worried it would take a really long time. The JET office has to receive the form by April 30th so I was panicking a little. But it all worked out in the end.
My next post, which should be sometime in May, will be about where I've been placed. I have my fingers crossed for somewhere in Hokkaido. Until then, bye!
Apr 9, 2010
Result!
I'm going to Japan!!!!! Eheeheeheehee!!! I can't stop grinning. Just got the e-mail. They only e-mail short list candidates. I was on the forums and I created a topic about the Montreal JET results and someone posted how they'd gotten an e-mail at 6:30pm. So I thought I didn't get in because I hadn't gotten an e-mail but then I checked my spam folder and there it was!
I'm giggling like crazy as I write this. So excited. I can't keep still. Ehee! I'm off to start collecting more websites about what to bring and sample lessons. Wheee!!!!
I'm giggling like crazy as I write this. So excited. I can't keep still. Ehee! I'm off to start collecting more websites about what to bring and sample lessons. Wheee!!!!
Apr 8, 2010
Stupid Winnipeg
So as April 12th approaches, I've become even more obsessive about haunting the JET forums. And yesterday I cam across several posts about people who interviewed in Winnipeg have already heard back. Via e-mail.
I am more than a little jealous. Not only do I not find out until next week but I have to wait for a physical letter. One that will first have to go through my mother then to me. But this is all because I am impatient and am sick of waiting to find out if I got in or not. It affects all my plans for the summer and the future.
So yeah, I'm on pins and needles.
I am more than a little jealous. Not only do I not find out until next week but I have to wait for a physical letter. One that will first have to go through my mother then to me. But this is all because I am impatient and am sick of waiting to find out if I got in or not. It affects all my plans for the summer and the future.
So yeah, I'm on pins and needles.
Mar 23, 2010
The Waiting Game
So I'm writing this mostly because I'm bored. I have about 3 more weeks to wait for news from JET so I'm doing my best to distract myself. So that I don't succumb to insanity. As it is I've been pretty much freaking out since the interview. And replaying said interview in my head. Mostly the last part. Where I made the elephant noise. Even now I have no explanation as to why I thought the elephant noise would be a good addition to my mock lesson. I think I just panicked. Oh well, too late now.
So nothing much to talk about. I'm just waiting. Very impatiently and with mounting anxiety, but still waiting. My next update should be about whether or not I've been accepted. Until then, bye!
So nothing much to talk about. I'm just waiting. Very impatiently and with mounting anxiety, but still waiting. My next update should be about whether or not I've been accepted. Until then, bye!
Feb 17, 2010
The Interview
So I just got back from my interview in Montreal. It was...not what I expected. I went in expecting a war crimes tribunal (something some JETs have described their interviews as) and found the people to be super nice.
I kind of lucked out and before my interview the seats in the reception area were full so I had to sit outside. Out of earshot and eye line of the receptionists who I knew for a fact were spying on us. Later I actually watched them hand interviewers sheets they'd been writing on. So I got some time to chat with the people going at the same time as me without worry of being overheard.
Eventually we moved inside and continued our conversation but now it involved asking the receptionists (both ex-JETs) questions about their experiences. On that part I felt I did fairly well. I was leading the conversation for most of the time and asked questions about being a JET that I think (read: I hope) were intelligent and showed I'd been researching the position.
I watched as one by one the other interviewers were called in. Today was the last day of interviews in Montreal and as luck would have it I was the last one called. A half-hour after the time I was supposed to be interviewed. They apologized for the lateness and I told them I didn't mind.
So I'm then led into a tiny closet of a room which only has enough room for the interviewers 3 chairs a table between me and them and my chair. I shook hands and introduced myself. I was going to bow but there was no room and I would have fallen and smashed my face into the table. I'm that kind of klutz.
I was facing two Japanese people, both with fairly strong accents, and one woman I presumed was an ex-JET. They took turns asking me questions. I would write what I was asked but they had a sign saying you're not supposed to release information about the interview so I can't tell you. I will describe my mock lesson though if only to explain why I made the elephant noise during my interview.
I was asked to do a mock lesson for Junior High students as if I'd been left alone with the students. I was told I had carte blanche and that I needed to do a lesson on animals. They then told me that one of the interviewers was going to be a shy person who didn't like English and the other was going to be a disruptive student. Yay me. I started with a few rounds of Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes to explain body parts. I then proceeded to do my best to explain describe an elephant. I chose elephant because it was the first animal I could remember the Japanese word for. Don't ask why elephant was what I remembered. So I started by explaining it has a long nose. Then I drew an elephant on my imaginary chalkboard. I continued saying elephants are big using a mix of Japanese and English. I then ended with the elephant noise. At which point my interviewers all started laughing and told me I could stop. Then they told me my interview was over.
It only took 15-20 minutes. Which is short. I have yet to decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing. At least my elephant noise made an impression. I have a feeling I didn't make that great of an impression during the rest of it. Oh well. It's done now. I won't hear from them until the week of April 12th. Either way, they let you know, So fingers crossed, it'll be good news in April. Until then, bye!
I kind of lucked out and before my interview the seats in the reception area were full so I had to sit outside. Out of earshot and eye line of the receptionists who I knew for a fact were spying on us. Later I actually watched them hand interviewers sheets they'd been writing on. So I got some time to chat with the people going at the same time as me without worry of being overheard.
Eventually we moved inside and continued our conversation but now it involved asking the receptionists (both ex-JETs) questions about their experiences. On that part I felt I did fairly well. I was leading the conversation for most of the time and asked questions about being a JET that I think (read: I hope) were intelligent and showed I'd been researching the position.
I watched as one by one the other interviewers were called in. Today was the last day of interviews in Montreal and as luck would have it I was the last one called. A half-hour after the time I was supposed to be interviewed. They apologized for the lateness and I told them I didn't mind.
So I'm then led into a tiny closet of a room which only has enough room for the interviewers 3 chairs a table between me and them and my chair. I shook hands and introduced myself. I was going to bow but there was no room and I would have fallen and smashed my face into the table. I'm that kind of klutz.
I was facing two Japanese people, both with fairly strong accents, and one woman I presumed was an ex-JET. They took turns asking me questions. I would write what I was asked but they had a sign saying you're not supposed to release information about the interview so I can't tell you. I will describe my mock lesson though if only to explain why I made the elephant noise during my interview.
I was asked to do a mock lesson for Junior High students as if I'd been left alone with the students. I was told I had carte blanche and that I needed to do a lesson on animals. They then told me that one of the interviewers was going to be a shy person who didn't like English and the other was going to be a disruptive student. Yay me. I started with a few rounds of Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes to explain body parts. I then proceeded to do my best to explain describe an elephant. I chose elephant because it was the first animal I could remember the Japanese word for. Don't ask why elephant was what I remembered. So I started by explaining it has a long nose. Then I drew an elephant on my imaginary chalkboard. I continued saying elephants are big using a mix of Japanese and English. I then ended with the elephant noise. At which point my interviewers all started laughing and told me I could stop. Then they told me my interview was over.
It only took 15-20 minutes. Which is short. I have yet to decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing. At least my elephant noise made an impression. I have a feeling I didn't make that great of an impression during the rest of it. Oh well. It's done now. I won't hear from them until the week of April 12th. Either way, they let you know, So fingers crossed, it'll be good news in April. Until then, bye!
Feb 8, 2010
Interview Preparation
So I have my date and time for my JET interview. February 17th at 2:30pm. I'm pretty much vibrating at this point. I've copied down every question I can find on the internet that someone was asked in their interview and I've been answering them. That's 11 word document pages of questions. I'm a little obsessive. Well my next post will be my interview experience, so until then, bye!
Jan 16, 2010
JET
So I'm resurrecting this blog. Mostly due to the fact that, fingers crossed, I'll be heading to Japan come August. So for those of you who don't know, I've applied to the JET program. The JET program is set up so that you can go be a teaching assistant in English in Japan. There's also a position where you can work while speaking Japanese. I chose to work as the teaching assistant.
I sent my application off in November and on Tuesday of this week, January 12th, I found out I've been selected for an interview. I still haven't been contacted on where or when my interview will be, but I passed the first stage of selection.
Today I went out and bought my first suit for the interview. I look like corporate barbie in the thing but at least I'll look somewhat professional. I've also begun doing practice interview questions that I found on the internet and I've been haunting the JET discussion boards. From what I've been able to gather these interviews range from pleasant to, as one JET interviewee described, a war crimes tribunal. The interviews are apparently meant to be terrifying. They like to see how you handle pressure. Which'll make an interview that I'm already freaking out about, all the more fun. Though at least I'll have a story to tell if I fail.
So yeah that's about it. I'm preparing for the interview for the next little while. I'll post when I find out when my interview will be and where in Montreal it'll be held.
Bye for now
I sent my application off in November and on Tuesday of this week, January 12th, I found out I've been selected for an interview. I still haven't been contacted on where or when my interview will be, but I passed the first stage of selection.
Today I went out and bought my first suit for the interview. I look like corporate barbie in the thing but at least I'll look somewhat professional. I've also begun doing practice interview questions that I found on the internet and I've been haunting the JET discussion boards. From what I've been able to gather these interviews range from pleasant to, as one JET interviewee described, a war crimes tribunal. The interviews are apparently meant to be terrifying. They like to see how you handle pressure. Which'll make an interview that I'm already freaking out about, all the more fun. Though at least I'll have a story to tell if I fail.
So yeah that's about it. I'm preparing for the interview for the next little while. I'll post when I find out when my interview will be and where in Montreal it'll be held.
Bye for now
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