Wednesday, January 25, 2017

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!

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