February: Running, Spoons, and Awful Candy

February began with our school's annual Marathon Day.  For those who don't remember or didn't read my post on last year's event, the first and second year students have to run a 6km course in 50 minutes.  Those who can't complete it in time have to do it again on the day for absent students.  I asked my supervisor what happens to the kids who do it again and still can't complete it in time, but she didn't actually know.  Either way, it's not a good time.  For the kids.  I had a blast, but my job is to stand there for a couple hours (the boys and girls run separately, so I'm out there for two 50-minute circuits) and cheer them on.  No pressure for me!

Before this, back at the end of January (and something I forgot to write about, which happens often) the second year kids had another run that they had to complete.  I have no idea how long it was, or what time they had to do it in, but they got fed at the end.  I was invited along with some other teachers to help make the soup that the kids would get to help warm them up.  It was my first time making authentic Japanese food, so that was awesome.  We made tonjiru, which is a basic pork soup in miso broth.  I'll be honest, there were some things the other teachers were cutting up that I have absolutely no idea what they were, but all in all it made a pretty good soup!  (I was given a bowl to "test" before we served the students.)

So, yeah.  My school runs a lot.  So weird.

I can't remember if I mentioned this or not, but way back when we had the exchange students from Australia, I introduced the game SPOONS to my conversation students.  My family's played this before, and we really enjoyed, and I have a scar from a rather intense game with friends in high school (rules to live by: 1. Never play with rings on. 2. Never play with long nails. 3. Never use plastic spoons).  Anyway, so I taught them this game, using erasers instead of spoons because obviously we don't have a bunch of spoons laying about in a language lab, but I made my own decks of cards rather than using a traditional deck.  It would have been too easy for the students to collect numbered cards, plus they wouldn't be learning or practicing anything since the game doesn't require speaking, so instead I made decks that required them to collect four tenses of the same verb (write-writing-wrote-written).  They really enjoyed it, so when I was stuck for lesson plans for my first years, I decided to introduce the game to my first years as well.  However, as lovely as some of my first years are, most of them are really, really bad at English and the verb tense cards would have been too difficult for them.  Instead, I made cards with different sets of four words that either we learned this year or they would have learned in middle school (animals, school subjects, colours, etc).  They LOVED it.  One class in particular even requested that we play it again at the end of the year, so I brought it back as their exam review lesson.

I also had a Valentine's Day lesson this year, since I wasn't following any kind of textbook or specific content guide.  I decided to introduce my students to Sweethearts, those awful conversation candies for Valentine's that taste like chalk that no one actually enjoys.  They thought my description was hilarious.
Me: So, we have these candies for Valentine's Day that are very traditional, and are a popular gift, especially when you have to give candies to a large number of people, like a whole class.  But no one actually likes them.
Class:  Eeeeh?!
Me:  Yeah.  You know how conpeto (a Japanese candy) just kind of tastes like sugar and not much else?
Class: *all nodding*
Me: Okay, so imagine that taste, but the feeling of eating it is like eating a piece of chalk.
Class: EEEEEEH?!?!
Sadly, you can only get them at specialty stores in very few places (Ros did find some in Tokyo) and they'll be in tiny packages that cost way too much for what they are, so I couldn't actually inflict them upon my kids.  What I did instead was made pages with hearts on them with actual messages that you can find on the real candy.  For my first years, they got a paper with four easy ones, and had to write at least one sentence for each of the words or phrases.  For my conversation class, each page only had one heart with a word or phrase, but some of them were more difficult, and they had to write a five-line dialogue using that word or phrase.  I got some pretty creative ones!

One of the last things I did this school year, just with a couple classes who ended up with more lessons than the other classes, was a "pub quiz" style lesson.  I had three rounds with the themes 'Grammar and Sentences', 'Vocabulary', and 'Dictation', plus a bonus round with general knowledge, questions about me and Canada, stuff like that.  They really enjoyed that activity, too, but it's definitely only something that you can do at the end of the year, otherwise you wouldn't have enough material to work from.

That's all for February (that I can remember right now)!  Not sure how much there will be to tell about March.  March is the "I get paid to click around the internet" month because there's nothing for me to work on for classes until we get the new staff and class assignments after April 1st.  Yay.

January, AKA Why is it snowing? This is why I left Canada!

Look at me, attempting to get better about posting.  I feel so accomplished!  (That'll last about half a week.)

After finishing up my holidays at home, I headed back to Japan, which was something of a nightmare.  I had my window seat, as always, but next to me was a rather broad man who couldn't help but constantly encroach on my space.  For thirteen hours.  And the Air Canada movie choices kinda really sucked, so I didn't have much to do.  Joy.  My flight was scheduled to get in just after 5, so I'd have time to head into the city, grab food at the station, and then make my way home on the shinkansen.  For reasons I don't understand (since we took off on time) we were a half hour late getting into Tokyo, and then I had to wait almost an hour for my luggage.  Then after customs & immigration, it was another 20-ish minutes for me to ship one of my suitcases to my apartment.  Slow walkers in front of me meant that I reached the platform just in time for the doors of my train into the city to close in front of me.  I waited the four minutes for the next one, and headed to Shinagawa.  I had to wait in line while four trains I could have taken left without me, because apparently they don't actually believe in keeping the office fully staffed until the last train in Tokyo.  Three service desks closed up while I was in line, leaving only three open to service all of the people in front of me.  I got a ticket on the last train I could possibly have taken into Nagoya to make it back to my place in time, and had to hasten, Princess Diaries-style, for the platform to catch my train.

When I got into Nagoya, I could wait and take a series of trains that were the last ones for the night, meaning I would have to make all of my transfers perfectly, or I could pay more money and get a seat on the faster, fancier limited express trains.  Given how everything else had gone that evening, I elected to pay the extra for the reserved seat.  My one lucky break was that I found the bag of cookies my mom had given me to put in my carry-on that I'd forgotten about, so that kind of made up for not having time to get food?  I guess?  In any case, the sugar improved my mood slightly.  I got home at 11:45 at night, and then tried to wind down as fast as possible, since I had to go to work the next day.  Moral of the story?  Never fly back the evening before you have to work unless your flight actually flies into where you need to be.

The beginning of the next week was our annual ALT Skills Development Conference, which is exactly as boring as it sounds.  Probably 80% of it just involves me trying to stay awake.  Also, it decided to snow a lot, and was generally cold and miserable outside.  The cool part was that on the evening of the first conference day, our AJET group had planned a Pub Quiz, and I was invited to join a team.  The even cooler part is that we won, thus proving that we knew more useless information than everyone else in the room.  That's....something to be proud of, right?  We won Mie JET hoodies/shirts (whichever one we wanted; I chose hoodie) and a bottle of wine, which we shared with snacks in the park after the second conference day because that's legal in Japan and we're classy like that.

That Saturday, Mary and I celebrated her birthday by traipsing about Nagoya and eating all of the food.  Seriously.  So much food.  We also apparently did a lot of impulse shopping, since the phrase, "Oh yeah, I forgot I bought that..." was used more than once.  We got Turkish food for lunch, bought some small snack bags of some really great chocolate & orange flavoured popcorn, hummus (!!) at a Halal grocery store, English books (!!!!) at a rather large secondhand store, and then hit up an American-style sports bar for dinner.  The last part was especially awesome for me, because I'd been craving a quesedilla since 4:30AM, and they had that on the menu.  I will definitely be going back there.  We also stopped in at this super tiny and adorable Alice in Wonderland shop that I had no idea existed but was thoroughly awesome.  It's so tiny you have to wait in line because the store holds so few people at once!

I think the only other thing of interest this month was finally getting to play the Zombie Outbreak game that Ros and I designed in September.  Those of you who have played the game Mafia or Werewolf (I think it's got another name or two as well...) will recognize elements, as will anyone who's ever played Wink Murder.  It's like those, but also really not, and with learning objectives!  We spent an entire day developing this thing over text messages at work (I had no lessons, Ros was bored), and I'm pretty proud of the outcome.  (So many times I'd start typing out "official" rules, and then have to text, "Wait.  What if such and such situation happens?"  And then we'd have to redo part of the game again.)  The kids really seemed to enjoy it, though I think it needs a bit of tweaking, numbers-wise.  My initial instructions made for too many doctors and not enough zombies when we actually played.  For those interested, here's the initial instructions (numbers to be adjusted for different class sizes as necessary).  For those not interested, skip over the red text.

Zombie Outbreak!

There has been a virus outbreak!  Some people are only a little bit sick, but other people have been turned into zombies!

The goal is to quarantine (“out”) all of the zombies!

 

Each student is given a card.  There are 3 doctor cards and 3 zombie cards to start.  Everyone else has a symptom and a temperature on their card.  Everyone should look at their card secretly.

 

Doctors should sit at the back of the room (their “offices”). 

 

Other students will walk around the room and speak to each other.  After greeting each other with “Hello,” the pair will play “rock, paper, scissors.”  The loser must ask the winner, “How are you?” and the winner will answer.

-       If the winner is sick, they should say “I have          “. 

Ø  If there is a doctor available, the loser should answer, “You should see a doctor.” 

Ø  If the doctors are all busy, the loser should answer, “You should get some rest.” (If the loser is a zombie, they should always say this answer.)

-       If the winner is a zombie, they should say, “I’m a zombie!”

Ø  The loser should bring the zombie to the Check Point (ALT).

²  The pair will be given a pop quiz from the ALT.  If the zombie gets more points, the other student is given a zombie card (unless they are “immune”) and both are released.  If the other student wins, the zombie is quarantined (out of the game), and the other student goes back to the game.

Ø  If the loser is also a zombie, they can say “Me too!” and end the conversation.  A zombie should not bring another zombie to the Check Point.

-       If the winner has been cured by a doctor already, they should say, “I’m fine, thanks.”

*******The conversation should only go one way.  Students should NOT use “And you?” or ask how the other person is feeling. ********

If a student goes to see the doctor, they have this conversation:

Doctor: What’s the matter?

Student: I have             .

Doctor: I see.  What’s your temperature now?

Student:         .

Doctor: OK, I’ll give you a prescription.

After this conversation, the doctor will hold out a set of cards (“prescription”) to the student.  The student will choose one and look at it.  The card will either say “Medicine” (not sick anymore) or “Immunity” (not sick anymore AND can’t be turned into a zombie even if they lose at the Check Point).  The student gives their illness card to the doctor and keeps the new card.

The game ends when either all the zombies are caught (the remaining students win) or there are three more zombies left in the game than students (zombies win).

Pop Quiz!

-       ALT will point to a body part.

-       Student has 5 seconds to say the name of that part.

Ø  If they get it right, they get a point.

Ø  If they get it wrong, or don’t answer in time, they don’t get a point.

-       Each student will be asked three questions.

-       In case of a tie, each student should cut a deck of cards.  The higher cut wins.

Obviously this was something we were doing at the end of their unit on injury and illness.  It was a bit chaotic, but like I said, they seemed to enjoy it, and it was a good way to incorporate all the parts of the unit.  I still feel indebted to the Australian teachers who were here with the exchange group back in September/October, because I coerced them into reading the instructions to make sure they made sense to people other than Ros and I.

And that's about it.  It's still snowing at least once a week, which I thoroughly do NOT enjoy.  I'll have a post about some February stuff soon (ish).

Two Months, One Post

Hisashiburi.  (That means 'long time, no see' in Japanese.) 

So, once again I've neglected this thing in favor of reading and Netflix (but I'm really enjoying NPH in A Series of Unfortunate Events!).  Where were we?  November?  November.

I can remember three things that happened in November, so that's what I'm going to blather on about.  First was Ros' mom coming to visit.  She was here for a couple weeks, bopping around the country with Ros, and I was able to meet up with them for a day in Arashiyama (the place with the bamboo forest near Kyoto that I went to back in April).  The weather was gorgeous, so we got to walk around without being rained on or getting super gross and sweaty (I'm Canadian; it happens here even in November).  We saw the bamboo forest, did some shopping along the streets, and had some pretty good food.  In the evening, we took the scenic train ride around some of the mountain area, which was illuminated at night so that we could view the fall leaves.

Yeah, fall leaf viewing.  That's a thing.  See, Japan has a lot of trees that stay green and keep their leaves year-round, and not just conifers like at home.  We've got palm trees over here.  Not many in my area, but they do exist.  So the leaves changing colour is a thing of beauty that people actually take time to go see in specific places that have large quantities of Japanese maples.  This blew my mind when I found out that it was a thing.  My supervisor was like, "Mel, where do you view the fall leaves in Canada?"  And I'm like, "....Uh....my front lawn?"  I had to explain that the majority of our leaves change colour and fall to the ground in Canada, and that no one really cares except the people who have to rake them or children who want to jump in large piles of them.

The second thing I remember was one of my lessons.  At the end of November, I taught what I refer to as my "Princess Bride" lesson.

 

For exactly the reason you see in that image.  There are a lot of loan words that are used incorrectly in Japanese, for a number of reasons.  So I decided to do a lesson on it, just to show my kids some of my confusion in Japan as an English-speaking foreigner (and also loan words was a section in their textbook; I wasn't just pulling this out of nowhere). 

 

First we went through the activity in the textbook, where they had to match the actual English with a picture of the loan word and the Japanese-written loan word.  So they matched "super" with "supermarket," and "key holder" with "key ring" (which I explained we also call "key chain").  But after that, I got into the really crazy ones.  Some of my favorites:



Consent - In Japan, this is the word they use for a power outlet.  Apparently it comes from "concentric plug," a phrase I have never before heard in my life.
Mansion - In Japan, probably the vast majority of people live in apartments.  Many of those apartments are in small buildings, like mine.  "Mansion" in Japan refers to the huge apartment complexes.
Stove - In Japan, it's a large gas space heater.  So a foreigner might complain about how cold their apartment is, and a Japanese person might respond, "Don't you have a stove?"  And we're all thinking about a cooking range, so that would get really confusing.
And my all-time favorite:
Viking - So, we all know what a Viking really is.  Big dude, horns on helmet, likes Thor (stereotypes, I has them).  In Japan, "viking" means "all-you-can-eat buffet."  ....I can just feel the looks you're giving that sentence.  Right?!  Research tells me that this is because the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo was the first to offer this kind of dining, and they called it a "viking smorgasbord" after the Kirk Douglas movie "The Vikings".  And it just kind of snowballed from there.

And that was my lesson.  I really enjoyed the reactions to some of these.  You could just see it in their faces.  "Why the heck do we use this word for this?!?!"  Of course, after that I had to throw in one of the reverse.  I showed them what English-speakers who don't know about Japan think "futon" means.  Because for most of the people I know, a futon is this:

But really, "futon" just refers to the mattress part of it.  A traditional futon actually looks like this:

The last thing that happened in November was that once again I ran in the teachers' relay at the end of the month.  This year, though, my high school was the one to approach me first, so I ran with them.  That was a lot more intimidating to me, because we were only running the longer course, and I'm at a sports-centric school where 5/7 of the relay team is comprised of gym teachers.  And they gave me the anchor position, because it was the shortest run (700m).  Oh god.  On top of that, there were no English-speaking teachers on the team, and I was getting a ride with one of the gym teachers who lives near me, so I had to really rely on my (practically non-existent) Japanese skills.  It went fine, though.  I actually felt really good when the winning team's anchor crossed the finish line before the sixth runner from our team had even come back to me.  All the pressure was off, and I just had to focus on not being last (which we weren't; we were in the top half of the competitors).  One of the Home Ec teachers had come to observe, and brought steamed pork buns and pork miso soup for us all to eat after the race, so we got to enjoy some hot food in the park before heading home.

At the beginning of December, I got loaned out to another special needs school that's about 45 minutes' walk away from where I live.  I'm still not completely sure why, but whatever.  It was really interesting to me, because it's so different from my regular special needs school.  My regular school is kind of an interim school for kids receiving treatment in the hospital next door (and is also responsible for the inpatient kids at the university hospital in the city centre), so while they're attending lessons with me at this particular school, they're still considered students of whatever school they've taken the exams for and been admitted to.  The one I went to in December is for permanent special needs kids, and it's more of what we would think of in Western countries as special needs.  A lot of these kids are wheelchair-bound, non-verbal, or things like that.  There's a huge number of staff there, basically no more than two students to one teacher, and those teachers will accompany those students through their lessons, regardless of whether or not it's their lesson.  I'm not sure I explained that right, but it's the best I can do.  Anyway, it was really interesting to see the kinds of support these kids get versus what they would get back home.

Then Mary and I ran around USJ, because I wanted to get some shopping done there, and also because I wanted to see the magical Harry Potter Christmas tree (which was actually kind of disappointing in real life).  I made us scarves for our houses, which I'm super proud of, especially because I finished mine on the train ride there.  (Why yes, I am a procrastinator, why do you ask?)  I've talked about USJ before, so I'll just add that the Christmas stuff that we could see (some of it sadly had technical difficulties that day) was really cool, and the seasonal food was delicious.  Some of the Christmas music choices were a bit odd, though.  I still hate Michael Buble.

After exams I had one round of lessons left with the first year kids, and one conversation class out of my three (the other two ended up being scheduled for when I was lent out to the other school).  So I started out doing the same thing with all of them: teaching them The Twelve Days of Christmas.  Dear lord, there are a lot of birds in that song!  It's ridiculous.  And one of the teachers kept trying to take it seriously and I had to be like, "Dude.  No one gets these presents for real.  It's not a thing.  And I can't tell you the meaning behind it because no one knows for sure."  But the kids enjoyed it, probably because I had pictures on the board for each of the lines, and the last verses of the song had me running around the front like a madwoman.  Since my conversation class is a double period, I used the second period to introduce them to A Charlie Brown Christmas.  Snoopy and Woodstock are really popular here because they're cute, and the Peanuts characters exist at USJ, but the students don't really get that there's actually a source material for this.  They actually come from somewhere.  The characters in the cartoon talk kind of fast sometimes, so I made a small sheet with fairly basic questions about things that they could see, or that were very clearly said, like:
How much does it cost for Lucy's help?
What three animals does Lucy ask Snoopy to be in the play?
What colour tree is Charlie Brown told to get?
And so on.  The students really seemed to enjoy it, so that made me happy.  Plus I got to watch Charlie Brown. 

I can't really recall anything else of interest that happened before I left to spend the holidays back in Canada, so I'll end there.  Happy New Year, everyone!