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!

Boo! and Other Autumn Utterances

Apparently I forgot to do this again.  I start thinking about what I want to say about things as they happen, but then I forget to actually type it out in the "really" world.  Kind of like texting people back...

So Halloween and its associated events were fabulous.  My trip to Tokyo was amazing, starting with my usual foray to the Tokyo Disney Resort.  I decided to follow the incredibly popular trend here and do some Disney bounding.  It involved a couple trips to the thrift stores beforehand, but it was well worth it.

For Disneyland, I dressed like Rapunzel, and the Cast Members, especially in Fantasyland, thought I was adorable (and that's why I do it, really - so that complete strangers will tell me how cute I look :D).

I was also by myself this day, which was interesting.  It's the first time I've done a Tokyo park by myself, and the first time in 4 years to do any Disney park alone.  It was super dead, though, so I got to wander around taking pictures of all the Halloween decorations without getting in anyone's way, and ride pretty much everything.  I skipped the really lame rides (Tomorrowland Speedway), the rides that are awkward to do solo (Mad Tea Party), and Splash Mountain (the flowers in my braid were paper, so that would have ended badly).  I got to eat some fun seasonal foods, do some shopping, and just generally laze about the park, soaking up the atmosphere.

At Disney Sea, I had my trusty Ros by my side as we dressed in clothes inspired by The Little Mermaid, and had Ros's first experience with a character who can actually talk (we met Mickey and Minnie in Hong Kong 4 years ago, and that was her first character experience ever)!  Being a grown adult and not having done this in her childhood, she was completely thrown and couldn't entirely wrap her mind around it.  I fielded most of the Ariel conversation and then had a good laugh at Ros's expense afterwards, because I'm an awesome friend like that.  We did some new rides (new for us, not new for the park - and they were the kiddie rides in Mermaid Lagoon that we usually avoid for the obvious reason that we are not accompanied by a child [physically - my mental age doesn't count]), I got to see a show that I've only ever seen in passing before, and we ate at the fancy ship restaurant to celebrate Ros's birthday. 

We also got to see the Villains show on the lagoon, which was all kinds of awesome and full of fabulous costumes that I want in my closet and the phrase "tentacular spectacular" yelled out by Ursula, which had Ros and I cracking up for a good couple minutes.

The real reason I was in Tokyo, though, was because Ros found a concert for us to attend: The Music of Danny Elfman from the Films of Tim Burton.  Awesome!  She'd sent me a picture of the poster and was like, "Wanna go?"  To which I replied, "Um, obviously." 

I love Danny Elfman's music, especially the creepy Tim Burton stuff (Sleepy Hollow being my favourite, as much as I love The Nightmare Before Christmas).  So Ros got the tickets, we kind of vaguely looked at the website to try to figure out what to wear - on one hand, it's the Tokyo Philharmonic, and on the other, they were having a costume contest, so we weren't really sure - but that was it.  Didn't really look to closely.  Then, about a week or two before the event, Ros finds a blurb about it in an English Tokyo magazine that says actual Danny Elfman will actually be on the stage for the concert and actually singing The Nightmare Before Christmas songs like he does in the actual movie.  Needless to say, I flipped.  Mentally, not out loud, because I was at work when she texted me the picture of the blurb and that would have been really awkward to try to explain.  So off we went, amongst people dressed in some pretty freakin' cool costumes, and sat through an absolutely phenomenal concert.  There were so many times I had goosebumps!  The concert ended with the Nightmare set, and there he was, Danny Elfman, singing and rocking out to the music in a way that really reminded me of Elton John, to be honest.  But he was so cool!  He came out for an encore and performed Oogie Boogie's Song (for anyone wondering what it would sound like if Jack Skellington sang that song, the answer is "odd"), with the conductor playing the part of Santa, while wearing the hat.  So, so awesome.

Back at school, we had our Halloween lessons!  The first years were forced into a Halloween tongue twister contest (Hoot owls hoot howls of horror in haunted Halloween houses), and got to do a word search.  Fun, but kind of bland.  Not my best lesson ever.  The conversation class, though.  That was a whole other kettle of fish.  For the first period of class, we played a game I found online called Bump, which they enjoyed even though they're really bad at actually listening to what the other teams say and miss out on what would otherwise be easy points.  The part I'm most proud of, though, was the second period.  I read them a simplified version of Hairy Toe, and the JTE gave a bit of a translation.  The students had to be paying attention, and making notes of the translation that was given for my reading, because then they had to work in groups to retell the story as a comic!  They had a lot of fun with this, and I got some really great comics!

I assigned a different comic-type activity for my first years, where they were practicing compliments by drawing different scenarios I'd given them.  What did I learn?  Some of my kids are cannibals:

And you should never look to this kid for compliments:

Term One, Part One

I've been remiss in my postings again.  You really shouldn't be surprised.  I'm kinda flaky like that.

So we're reaching mid-terms for the first term of school, and it's been a lot busier than last year!  With the lack of guidelines for my first year classes, it's taking a lot longer to plan things out than it used to when I was using the textbook, plus I have my two new double-period classes to contend with.  But so far it's been alright!

I decided that my first years are going to learn an English song each term, to help with pronunciation.  Hopefully the rhythm of the music will help to lure them away from the horrifically syllabic katakana English.  This term we're learning "We Are the Champions."  Most of the students seem to be enjoying it, but some days it's difficult to persuade them to actually SING after we learn a new section of the song.  Mostly that portion of the class is me standing at the front of the room, singing my heart out alongside Freddie Mercury while my students watch and smile.  Thanks, guys.  I feel the love.  Now how about we participate?!

Working with my second and third years is interesting.  I'm using the same textbook and materials for the two grade levels, but their skill levels are .... I don't want to say vastly different, but vastly different.  It's a nightmare sometimes, trying to come up with things that won't bore the hell out of my third years, but that the second years can actually grasp.  I nearly bashed my head off the table the first time I tried to play Pictionary with my second years (they've since figured it out and now enjoy it).

In the last week of April, I got a chance to explore a place just outside Kyoto called Arashiyama.  It's your typical mountain tourist village with a giant shrine (that is also a World Heritage Site, though I'm really not sure why as it didn't seem any more impressive or important than any other shrine I've been to), except that it's also home to a giant bamboo forest!

 Bamboo! So much bamboo!

 "Watch out, there are wild monkeys here!  Don't do anything with the monkeys.  Whatever you wanted to do with the monkey you find, just don't.  Don't even acknowledge the monkey.  No."

 Temple gardens!

At the beginning of May was a three-day holiday known as "Golden Week".  I persuaded Ros to come down to visit me, and together we travelled to the seaside to risk our lives in a field.  Not even kidding, though we didn't know at the time that it would be so potentially hazardous!  So here's what actually went down, before anyone starts to panic: We went to Hamamatsu for their festival (aptly named Hamamatsu Matsuri) on May 3rd, the first day of Golden Week.  There are many things that happen over the course of this festival, but the biggest part of it is kite-flying.  I know what you're thinking.  Lame, right?  It's totally okay to think that.  That's what I thought when Ros first suggested it.  "We're going to watch people fly kites all day?  And this is... fun?"  So I googled it.  Turns out, it's more like Battle Royale: Kite Edition.  Basically all the neighbourhood communities in Hamamatsu are flying their kites in the field and trying to take down the other kites.  And these kites are HUGE.  Like,  probably a good 7-10 feet squared?  With hundreds of meters of thick hemp rope for a string.  It takes teams of people wearing gloves to fly these things.  So the kite festival thing is actually massively epic.  Which is cool.  Except that you, as an observer, are walking around the same field as these people who are flying kites with the purpose of knocking other kites out of the air.  Ros and I were nearly brained with a giant kite three times, and nearly run over I don't even know how many times.  But it was great!  The kites were really cool to see, and we got in a nice walk along the beach, plus festival food.  I also got a sunburn, thanks to the lovely temperature and the clouds clearing in the afternoon.

 Kites!  Kites everywhere!

 One of the neighbourhood kite-flying teams cheering themselves on.

 A kite, for scale.  Please note that this kite is twice the height of that man holding it.  And these were plummeting out of the sky towards us.  Sometimes more than one at a time.  Good times!

After we'd had enough of dodging lethal flying paper (and wood frames), we headed back towards the station for more food and laziness until it was time for the night parade.  We wandered around for a ridiculously long time, only really knowing that we wanted something sweet, before deciding to chill at Baskin Robbins for a bit (pun intended).  Then we found some kind of international food festival thing for dinner.  I had a lovely steak and fries, and Ros got some meat on a stick and cheese buns.  We hung out at one of the festival tables and listened to a brass band from one of the local middle schools, and then headed up to stake out spots for the parade.  Essentially, each neighbourhood that had a kite flying during the day had a luminous float at night and they all marched in a really, really long line.  There was a break in the parade at some point, so we decided to get a head start on our trip home.

On the Wednesday we were supremely lazy.  We watched movies, ate nachos, and sat in the park with books so that we could be lazy and still enjoy the glorious weather.  I got to introduce Ros to a bunch of rather odd movies that I nonetheless enjoy, including Repo: The Genetic Opera and Fantastic Mr. Fox.  We had originally planned to hike the Nakasendo trail on this day, but that involved a lot of traveling that would begin before dawn, so we basically said, "Hell to the no," as soon as we found that out.

Thursday we decided to muck about in Nagoya, since Ros would have to leave for Tokyo from there anyway and she hadn't really been around the city since our first trip there in 2010.  We wanted to find our favourite restaurant from that trip (which sadly no longer has our favourite item, their house-made ice cream, on the menu), using only our memories and my vague sense of direction (which should NEVER be followed, ever).  I also wanted to show Ros the observation platform-type thing outside the Prefectural Arts Center that I'd seen when I was there the month prior for Jekyll & Hyde.  We went up, it was awesome, I potentially got even more sunburned (even though I was actually wearing sunscreen that day).

After that, we decided to go back and visit Nagoya castle again, because it's kind of really awesome.  They had opened up the part that had been under construction while we were there before, so we got to see some new stuff, too!  It was really cool, because it had all these paintings of tigers everywhere on gold-painted doors, and when we asked the employees, they told us that the restoration crew used the same paint-making methods and materials as the original construction.

We did, as you can tell from my earlier comment, manage to find the restaurant after that, mostly thanks to Ros' sense of direction.  We didn't eat there, though.  Instead we headed back to the train station and found a really great place that served us quite a bit of food for how reasonably it was priced!  We had to part ways after that, so I headed home to crash.

Since then it's just been more of the same classes.  I really think I'm used to most things now, and that's why I'm blogging less.  I'm not seeing as many things where I think, "Whoa, I have to tell people about that!"  This week was exam week, except Friday, so I have classes to teach tomorrow.  But after that is the weekend, and I'm taking myself to USJ for my birthday. I'm going to Hogwarts!

Pre-School (As in before school, not the building full of tiny terrors)

Once again, this is something I forgot that I do.  The following was written on April 11th.  I just... didn't post it.  Expect my write-up on the first couple weeks of class by next weekend!

The welcome/farewell party last night was certainly interesting for me.  It was a lot more formal than the year-end party (calendar year end, that is, not school year; technically this was the school year end party).  Mostly we ate while people were speaking.  The party was about two hours long, and an hour and a half of that was speeches.  I`m not exaggerating about that.  We had the opening speeches from the MC and the principal, and then there was a few minutes of socializing/eating.  Eating continued to happen throughout the night, because it was, like, a 6- or 8-course meal and we didn`t really have much of a choice if we wanted to actually eat anything.  After the social bit, our four teachers who were retiring came to the stage.  One of the current teachers gave a speech about each of them, after which each retiree gave their own speech.  And let me tell you, these people could talk.  I have no idea what they were saying, but they were saying quite a bit of whatever it was.  After those eight speeches were done, we had another few minutes to socialize while they rearranged the chairs onstage.  Then they called up the teachers who were transferring to other schools (there were 11, I think?) and each of them gave a speech.  More socializing while the stage configuration changed again, and then all of the new teachers were called up.  Thankfully, they only went through their names, and then one of them made a speech on behalf of the entire group.

You`ll all be shocked to find that I actually did some socializing during the socializing times.  You`ll be even more shocked when I tell you that only some of it was in English.  I wasn`t lucky enough to end up at a table with an English teacher, so I had a halting conversation with the (biology? math?) teacher beside me, mostly about food and mostly in Japanese.  Then one of the PE teachers came over to visit him, and ended up conversing with me as well (also in Japanese), asking where I had been in Japan, and where I wanted to visit next.  During one of the breaks I went to speak with the English teacher who transferred out, the bio teacher I used to chat with who also transferred out, and the new English teacher who transferred in.  I got a bit of a surprise when I was approached out of the blue by our new math teacher.  She`s studying English on her own, apparently, and wanted to say hi and ask if she could come and speak with me sometimes.  Uh, obviously! 

The rest of the week was pretty standard.  I continued to mostly not do work, except for the brief meeting I had to discuss my conversation classes with the two JTEs I`ll be working with (I still haven`t really had a meeting with my first year teachers, but that`s par for the course, really; I think I`m just used to it now). 

On Friday, though, we had our first day of school, which meant an assembly for the returning students in the morning, and the entrance ceremony for the incoming first years in the afternoon (it`s a big deal, apparently; everybody`s parents were there).  It threw my JTEs for a loop when they asked me about entering high school in Canada. 
"You don`t have anything like this in Canada?" 
"...No.  On our first day of school, we just.... kinda show up?  And our homeroom is posted on the wall, and we go there?"
"But the new students who are there for the first time?"
"Yep.  We still just show up."

Saturday was awesome.  I went into Nagoya to see Jekyll & Hyde at the Aichi Prefectural Art Museum Theater and it was amazing.  I knew all the songs and the basic plot already, being the utter nerd that I am, and I`m not terribly concerned with the nuances.  The performers were great, especially the guy playing Jekyll and Hyde and the woman playing Lucy.  The costumes were standard period musical fare; nice, but nothing crazy spectacular.  The set and the lighting, though...  I was floored.  And they just kept doing new things with it.  Every time I thought I had a handle on what they could do, they pulled something new.  My favourite was the first time we saw Jekyll`s lab.  Until this point, we`d seen him writing in his journal in his drawing room, so I expected we`d eventually see that desk covered in his potion equipment, but no.  As he`s singing This is the Moment, he moves up to the second level of the set (because safety), his drawing room glides offstage, and from behind a scrim comes  the lab.  It`s this hulking split-level piece, with a worktable covered in potions at the bottom, and big mechanical...thing with two levers up the small staircase.  On the back, mounted above all that, is a circular vent with a fan that is easily about 12 feet high.  Then, still singing, he dismounts the main set stairs onto the lab set, goes up to the mechanical things and yanks on the levers.  The desk lights up as though the liquids in the bottles and test tubes are luminescent themselves (like a particularly well-lit bar shelf), and the fan starts turning.  Like I said, I was floored.

My first year teachers (two out of three, anyway) came up to me today and basically said, "We`ll have a meeting when we can, but we want to have fun communicating in English, so you`re in charge and we`ll just do what you say."  O...kay.  Wow.  Like, no pressure or anything, right?  My first class in on Thursday, so we`ll see how things go.  I`m just going to do my self-introduction stuff, though, which I`ve done before so at least it`s familiar material.

Shaking Things Up

Well, we`re gearing up for a new school year (finally).  April 1st was officially the start of the new year, so all of the new teachers started that day.  There were a bunch of meetings, all of which were in Japanese, that I wasn`t expected to attend, so I spent the entire day in the teachers` room, virtually alone.  The exciting part of the day came at lunch time, when all of the teachers were in the room (thankfully).  The new teacher who sits across from me had introduced herself (and I already forget her name), and was settling in with some of the other teachers, when all of a sudden a bunch of people`s cell phones start beeping and whirring like mad.  Some of the phones continue to scream bloody murder, while others start with a "5...4...3...2...1...0."  The new teacher and I are looking around, and then we look at each other with confused expressions and shrug at each other like, "What the heck?!"  ...And then we look up and realize that all the cables on the ceiling are swinging, and the ground seems to kind of be moving under our feet, and we went, "Oooooh.  Gotcha."  And thus was my first earthquake experience in Japan!

In Japan, or at least at my school and I assume the rest of Japan, the teachers move grades with the students.  So all of the teachers who taught first year are now teaching second year, the second year teachers are teaching third year, and the third year teachers are with the new first years, with some exceptions.  My supervisor taught all third year classes last year, but we`ll be teaching second and third year conversation classes together.  I don`t teach standard second year English, but there was enough interest for two conversation classes, so the second of those will be taught with my favourite of my first year teachers from last year.  The bulk of my teaching, the first year classes, will be with one former third year teacher, one new teacher, and my least favourite of my teachers from last year (not that she`s a bad teacher, because she`s not, but she`s fairly rigid, and seems to have expectations of me that she doesn`t actually tell me about until I failed to meet them).  The former third year teacher, Shimozu-sensei, approached me Monday morning, and the following conversation happened:

S: So Mel, I`d like to know what your team teaching lessons are like.  Like, what kind of textbook you would like to use.
M:  Okay, sure!  *gets last year`s textbook*  I used the same textbook as the JTEs for their grammar lessons.  So in my lessons, we would start with the more difficult vocabulary for that part, and read the passage, either together or in pairs, depending on the level of the class.  Then we would go over the two sets of comprehension questions, and then I would plan an activity based on the material for that lesson.
S: So you like using the same textbook.
M: I think so, yes.  It makes it easier to judge the level the students are supposed to be at, and I can see what grammar they`re learning and are expected to already know.
S: So you don`t want to use another textbook?
M: I could, but it might make things more difficult.
S: But what about other activities?
M: Well, like I said, I plan my own activites based on the textbook, plus I do activities without the textbook for special occasions like Halloween, Christmas, etc.
S: So, we`re going to discuss this and we will let you know.  We will probably ask you to do things you don`t want to do, so please be kind to us.

....So this conversation, combined with the facial expressions I was reading, was basically, "I`m asking you for the sake of politeness, but we don`t want to do what you want to do, so we`re just going to take your opinion and toss it."  Which I`m fine with, really, so long as they actually communicate what they want from me.  Honestly.  The lack of communication is the thing that bothers me most anywhere, but especially here.  So many of the world`s problems could be solved with proper communication! (Or tea.  Or duct tape.  One of the three, depending on the problem at hand.)

On a happier note, the new teacher who sits across from me speaks some English!  Her grammar needs some work, and she doesn`t have a ton of vocabulary, but she`s still easy enough to understand.  And she wants to improve, so I told her she`s welcome to talk with me anytime.  She seems super nice, so that`s a plus too.  I was sad when the previous teacher left, because even though we didn`t talk much, we had kind of a comraderie since she also attended our ladies` lunch days, but I`m pleased with this new person.  Even if I can`t remember her name.  (I`ll get it eventually.)

Today Shimozu-sensei came up to me again, and told me the teachers talked about their lessons with me.  They want the students to feel comfortable with English, and to see English as a fun thing, and as a useable tool rather than something strictly in the textbook (I completely agree).  So apparently they want my lessons to be maybe a few textbook things, but mostly games and songs.  I am... totally okay with this.  This requires so much less work on my part.  It`s often difficult to figure out the timing of textbook lessons, because you don`t know how quickly or slowly students will be able to complete a given exercise.  I would sit at my desk for 10 minutes sometimes, just trying to figure out how much time each section of a lesson would take, so that I had time to go through everything they needed to be taught.  Games are so much easier to time! 

Tonight is our welcome/leaving party in honour of all the teachers who have changed for this coming year.  Should be lots of fun!  Except for the part where it`s random seating again (like the holiday party), and there are still very few English-speaking teachers.  I just have to hope I get lucky enough to sit with one of them again!  But the food will be beyond fabulous again, I know, because it`s at the same place, so at the very least I have that to look forward to!

Mostly Deer

Monday was my first day back to regular classes at my high school.  I was kind of dreading it, because I had this (completely justified, I swear) fear that I`d forgotten everything about teaching and I was going to screw up, or my lesson was horrible and wouldn`t work with the students...  This is why I just shouldn`t have breaks, ever.  Objectively, I knew I would be fine, but there was still that panic in the forefront of my mind going, "You`re gonna crash and burn so bad."

I was fine.  I asked for feedback from the teacher after my first lesson, and he was really enthusiastic about it.  "I think it was much better than the lessons before!"  Ouch, dude.  Way to trample on my professional feelings.  I know I have no idea what I`m doing, and I`ve been making this up as I go since I got here, but I didn`t think I was doing that badly.  I mean, I`ve always thought my first year lessons sucked in comparison to my third year lessons, because I get to do the crazy stuff with my third years, but they don`t have that comparison to make.  On their own, I thought my lessons last term were okay.  Ah, well.  Maybe this will teach them to actually communicate what they want with the ALT.  (But probably not.)

With my crazy schedule this month, I`ll be teaching my Monday and Wednesday classes Part 2 of this lesson before my Thursday and Friday classes have gotten Part 1, so I`m all over the place with my lesson plans.  Since I did a Canadian World Heritage Site lesson for Part 1, I`m thinking Part 2 will be a reading comprehension exercise.  I`ll write a short travel journal entry, but out of order.  The students will have to put the sentences in the correct order, and then practice reading it.  Man, this is not an easy lesson to make materials for.  I mean, the Sphinx?!  Who, in their right mind, thinks something so far removed from their daily lives is a good lesson topic for students who have to be reminded that there`s an `h` in `where`?  And then.  THEN.  We`re doing the comprehension quiz (true and false), and the first statement is, "The head of the Sphinx will fall off in a century if nothing is done."  This is true, but none of the students know this because the word century is not in their vocabulary and wasn`t used anywhere in the passage.  The passage they`re being tested on says "one hundred years."  Ridiculous.  I heard a rumour that we`re using different textbooks next year.  I can only hope they`re more relevant than this.  Except then I`ll have to remake all of my lessons so that I have relevant activities.

Monday night and Tuesday night were horrible.  Out of nowhere, the weather decided to get super cold and ugly.  The wind was blowing so hard that my windows rattled, and every little thing the wind picked up got flung against them, so I didn`t really get much sleep.  At least Tuesday was a Junior High day at my special needs school, and that doesn`t really involve much thinking on my part, because the teacher there plans the lessons out so well.  You`d think the Elementary lessons would be the easiest, but the teacher for those classes has less English, so it`s harder for me to figure out what she actually wants me to do.  Wednesday morning I woke up to snow.  SNOW.  And it snowed pretty much all day, blasting around in ridiculously high winds.  I was less than pleased.

Thursday and Friday were team-teaching conferences for JTEs and ALTs together.  They were... interesting.  And some were definitely more helpful than others.  It was definitely fascinating to hear from other ALTs and JTEs about the activities and work they do in their classroom, and their students` skill levels.  Many of my students are definitely below par.

On Saturday I went to see a mountain on fire!  No, seriously.  Mountain.  On fire.  On purpose.  It`s called Yamayaki Matsuri, and it`s a festival that occurs every year on the fourth Saturday of January in Nara.  This means I got to see the deer again!  I haven`t been to Nara in about two and a half years, so I was definitely excited to be going.  And I dragged my friend Mary with me, so I wasn`t babbling at the adorable baby deer by myself.  It was COLD, though.  Really cold.  But we didn`t really care.  We had an enjoyable, relaxing day.  It`s about an hour and a half trip for me to Nara (Mary was already on the train, because it`s something like another forty minutes to an hour for her to get to me), so we sat on the nice, warm train and caught up, because we hadn`t seen each other pretty much since we met in August.  I found the greatest train snacks EVER (Kinako Ritz Bits Sandwiches)!

Our chat somehow came around to pizza (likely my fault), so we decided to search out pizza once we got to Nara.  Turns out there`s a Pizza Hut about a five minute walk from the station!  Huzzah!  Once we got there, though, we discovered it was strictly a take-out location, so we had to order our pizza and then head back out into the cold to find a bench somewhere to eat it.  The problem: it`s not really a thing to just eat in public in Japan, so things like park benches are really only found at bus stops, and something like wide, sit-able planters are few and far between.  Finally we found a bench in the area outside another train station, so we could stop and enjoy pizza-y goodness.  

The street leading up to the park and temple was peppered with festival food stalls, and despite being utterly stuffed from our pizza, we just had to get these chocolate-coated bananas.  Because reasons.

After that we strolled through the park, just chatting and bothering random deer.  I also heard the deer for the first time.  So, for anyone back home, the white-tailed deer that you see while camping or in your backyard sound a lot like sheep.  They bleat, okay?  Not so much the Shika deer (which is somewhat redundant.  The Shika is the only kind of deer in Japan, so the Japanese word for "deer" is "shika", but technically that word still only applies to the specific type of deer...).  The Shika deer squeak.  Not like short, high-pitched mouse squeak, though.  This is a long, drawn-out squeak like a dog`s squeaky toy being slowly squeezed.  Basically they sound like Wheezy from the Toy Story movies.  

So anyway, we chilled out in the park for a while, until we got to the point where we couldn`t really feel our hands or faces anymore, and decided to go warm up a bit.  It was still a little early for dinner, plus we were planning to grab festival food from a stall and that really wouldn`t help with the warming up, so we found a cafe that wasn`t packed and grabbed some hot beverages.  Then we dragged our rears out back into the cold for dinner (yaki udon, so basically hot noodles and cabbage with sauce), and found a spot for the fireworks and mountain-burning that would be starting shortly.  Around this time is when it started raining.  Partway through the fireworks, it started raining harder (and colder, I swear, and the rain was already pretty cold), so I stopped taking pictures and pulled out my umbrella since I could barely feel my fingers enough to operate my phone properly anyway.

  The fireworks were pretty spectacular, but the mountain on fire was kind of anti-climactic.  All of the pictures we`d seen for the festival showed honest-to-god mountain on fire.  So we went there expecting the monks to come with a few torches and for the mountain to kind of go "fwoosh".  It did not.  The monks all stood on the mountainside (which seems really unsafe when you`re about to ignite the thing) with their torches of sacred fire, and the mountain was ritually lit up using some sort of system that was impossible to determine from where we were standing. 

Many people were heading out, so we went and got Mary a baked potato (it`s a thing here, baked potato as a street food in the winter), and then came back to see if the mountain was more spectacularly on fire yet.  It wasn`t.  Given the rate at which it seemed to be burning, it wasn`t likely to be burning well until probably at least 9 or 10 at night, and there was no way we were staying that late in the cold and wet, plus we would miss our trains.  So we called it a night, and headed back to our homes.  Overall, I would only recommend this festival if you`re actually staying overnight in Nara, so that you can actually witness mountain on fire. 

NOTE: This was posted two weeks after I wrote it, because I got, like, the plague.  Nothing interesting has happened since then, though, so you haven't missed anything.