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.

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:

Visitors From Abroad

Alrighty!  So the last week of September saw the arrival of our exchange students from Australia and two of their teachers.  They were here for two weeks and it was awesome.  It was a small group, only six students this year (last year they sent eleven, and I think that was too many).  They were an absolute blast.  A couple of the girls (we had four girls and two boys) were fairly reserved in the beginning, but they got over that fast enough.  One of the boys, though, was a character from day one.  He definitely got the most out of this trip, I think.  He was enthusiastic about everything they were doing, and he had a sense of humour that was by turns ridiculous and smart-ass (but never in a mean-spirited way).  The best thing about this kid, though, is that he got my kids to talk.

You know I’ve bemoaned my conversation classes before.  The third years are noisy and like to talk to each other all the time in Japanese but won’t talk much in English, my second year class with Morita-sensei has a couple loud-mouths and about twenty kids who stare blankly at me and wait for Morita-sensei to translate my instructions into Japanese because they can’t be bothered to even try to understand my basic English, and my conversation class with Tanimura-sensei is so quiet you could hear a pin drop.  And that classroom has carpeting.  So when the exchange kids come, we set up their schedules so that they all come to our conversation classes, and then we set them up in groups and have them rotate around to the different groups and each time they rotate they’re given a different conversation topic and a time limit.  Last year this went well, but last year I only had one conversation class, and they were a lot… I don’t want to say better, but… they were better.  So I was worried.  And there were still a couple (mostly one in particular in Tanimura-sensei’s class and I don’t even know why she’s taking the class in the first place, and for the first couple months I would have sworn she was actually mute) that didn’t say much and it was like pulling teeth, but for the most part my kids were excited and eager to talk to the Australian kids.  The teachers came to my third year class as well, and the kids loved that.  Trying to run a legit class with them was a whole other story, because Morita-sensei kept throwing things into the mix (sometimes by interrupting while I was trying to do what my lesson plan said), but even that went off fairly well.  But anyway.  Yeah, the class where they just had to talk to each other was awesome.  

We had the farewell party for them on Friday after school, and there were a lot of tears from the students (even the ones who were still going to see them later because they were hosting the kids and they weren’t actually leaving until the next day).  One of the girls came up to me, thanked me, and basically told me I was so pretty and so awesome and that she basically wants to be me when she’s older.  That was possibly the biggest ego boost I’ve ever gotten in my life.  She was so sweet. 

So yeah, basically the last two weeks have just been a series of awesome experiences.  I got along well with the teachers, too, and we had some good laughs.  I was also invited (read: Morita-sensei said, “Mel, you should come to this!  Please come!”) along with them to check out the kyudo (Japanese archery) club.  Things you need to know:

1. I took a 10-week archery class when I was in Grade 6.

2. While I’m not the most awful person to hold a bow ever, I’m really not good.

     2b. I hit three bullseyes during that 10-week class.  On the target next to the one I was aiming for.            Two of those were in the same night.
3. An unbent Japanese bow is more than two meters tall.  I am decidedly not tall enough to properly draw this bow.

All of these things worked together to ensure I was probably the worst archer to ever step foot inside that club.  If the objective was to hit the lawn, I performed admirably.  The objective was not to hit the lawn.

After they left, I got to meet up with a friend of mine who’s visiting Japan with a couple of her friends.  This was especially exciting for me because it was our first time meeting in person (I started editing her Kingdom Hearts fan fiction nine years ago, back in university, because we’re nerds).  There was squealing and hugging and excited fast-talking, and then we headed out to explore Osaka! 

I’ve been to Osaka before (my first time there was with last year’s exchange kids, when I was asked to accompany their field trip), but I haven’t really seen a whole lot.  Mostly I go there because there’s a wax salon run by a lady who was trained in England, so I don’t have to worry about things being miscommunicated.  And I went to USJ for my birthday, you may recall.  But I’ve never really done Osaka before, so this was a new experience for me, too!  We started out by heading over to Expo City (leftover from the 1970 Osaka Expo) to hit up the Pokemon Expo Gym.  I figured it would just be me wandering while they looked at all of the things since I'm not super into Pokemon, but I actually picked up this really cute tin that had coffee cookies in it (that will later house my loose teabags, because I always seem to have some of those lying around).  We checked out the mall at Expo City, and then headed back into the city center to check out Osaka Castle.  I’ve been through that park before (it’s a nice walk, and there’s a Domino’s Pizza nearby), but didn’t go inside the castle.  We decided to bypass the ridiculous line for the elevator and hike up to the 8^th floor lookout via the stairs.  That…was a lot of stairs, but it was worth it.  It was gorgeous afternoon weather, and the lookout area is actually outdoors, so that was fantastic.  There was a craft beer festival with some food tents in the park right by the station, so we stopped there for some grub and the guys got some craft beer.  I'm not actually sure what Katy and I ate.  It was meat from an undetermined part of a cow in some kind of tomato sauce and served over a white puree that we have absolutely zero idea what it was.  I'm going with beans.  Pureed kidney beans.  The last part of our day involved going up in the HEP Five ferris wheel near Osaka station for another great view of the city (but pictures taken from inside don't turn out well).  I headed back to their hotel to pick up the bags of Reese's Katy was kind enough to bring over for me (I'm aware that I have a peanut butter problem; I like to think it gives me character), before catching the train back home.

Now I'm back to work for the last week before midterms.  But because it's the last week of classes before midterms, all of my first year classes have been cancelled so that the teachers can make sure everyone's learned all of the necessary grammar.  And my conversation classes have their in-class midterm.  So I'm sitting here, typing this.  But I took off the actual exam week to go back to Disneyland like the uber-nerd I am, and also to hear the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra with Ros.  So excited!!!!

Culture Festival, Year Two

It's that time of year again!  You may recall my post last year about the school culture festival.  Well, we started off this year's festival on Wednesday with the guest performance.  We all made our way to the cultural center in the city to see an A Capella group who are apparently kind of a big deal.  Like, they've won competitions and stuff.  Or so I'm told.  I couldn't read the information sheet we were given about them, nor could I understand them when they introduced themselves onstage.  But they were pretty cool anyway!  Here's one of their Youtube videos, which is nowhere near the quality of seeing them live:

Thursday was the student performances, but they didn't start until noon.  The schedule was full from noon right until the end of the day at 4:15, so a really early lunch was required.  I got a lift to the cultural center with one of my JTEs, and we had a really nice lunch at a cafe in the center with the Home Ec teacher.  I had a fabulous fried chicken breast that was stuffed with plum (ume) and a Japanese leafy green called shiso, as well as my first taste of natto!  Normally foreigners hate natto because it's really smelly and has a strange sticky texture; this was very unusually prepared natto, as it was neither of those things, and it was actually pretty good.  It kind of reminds me of chickpeas, I think?

The performances were pretty good.  The brass band was awesome as always, the Japanese harp club played a medley of The Mickey Mouse Club March and It's a Small World that was stuck in my head for at least 40 minutes after, and all of the first year girls did a dance together that was kind of cool.  One of the homeroom classes did a Romeo and Juliet performance where all the dudes were played by girls and all the girls were played by dudes; weird, yet mildly entertaining. 

Saturday was the main event, which meant it was a working day and I had to be at work all day.  But "work" here means "following the Japanese teacher who sits across from me (Matsui-sensei) around while she takes pictures of everything for the school newspaper" and "eat food and play games."  So the way bunkasai works at my school is thus: the third year homerooms each run some kind of food tent in the courtyard, and the first and second years do random stuff; some did performances like I said before, others run game rooms, haunted houses...  Basically anything that they can pull together in the timeframe they have (which I don't actually know).  Naturally, I had takoyaki for lunch from one of the tents because it's my favorite (I love these kids, even the ones I don't actually teach but still say hi and bye to me every day, but that wasn't really good takoyaki).  The homeroom teacher for one of the classes decided that Matsui-sensei and I deserved free food, so we got hashbrown patties that were pretty good. 

The first classroom we went to had carnival-style games.  Scooping goldfish is a very traditional Japanese festival game, so they had set up one of those games.  There was no way I was going to try that; I have a hard enough time trying to catch my fish when I have a normal net, never mind the flat paper scoops they use in this game.  Matsui-sensei went for it, though!  She managed to get one fish before her net became too saturated and broke. 

They also had a shooting game, with different value targets set up along the wall that you had to shoot a rubber band to knock down using a gun made from chopsticks and other rubber bands.  Matsui-sensei managed to knock down one of the #3 targets (#1 being the big prize and #4 being the smallest prize and therefore the largest size target).  I... got consolation candy.  I hit a #3 target on my first shot, but it didn't fall down. 

Another class (which we visited but didn't participate in) had turned the entire room into a giant board game, complete with cardboard box dice that you had to roll.  I'm not really sure what all the different spaces were, because the only one I could read was "start", but it looked really cool!

We stopped by the tea ceremony club and had tea.  It wasn't busy in there at all (there were only three people in there apart from us), so when we were done, the teacher who runs the club convinced me to go up and learn how to traditionally serve Japanese tea in a ceremony.  It was...nerve-wracking and exceedingly difficult.  You'd think, "Serving tea.  Anyone can do that, right?"  WRONG.  There are so many steps and certain ways to hold your hands and there's this cloth you have at your belt that you use to hold the kettle and you have to fold it a certain way that I could not for the life of me figure out.  My hands just don't move that way! 

I served the tea to one of the tea club members, who told me it was very good, but there's a high chance she was politely lying through her teeth.  Matsui-sensei took pictures for me, and then as we're leaving after, she says, "I was in the tea ceremony all through high school and university."  Greeeeeat.  So there was another person who was legitimately qualified to judge me.  (Not that she did.  She's super sweet and we had fun together all day, but still.)

After we'd visited all of the different activities in the classes, we hid in the air conditioning of the staff room until we had to go back out so that she could take photos of the dance performance at the end of the day (the same performance they did at the cultural center, but out in the school courtyard instead of on the stage).

And that was bunkasai 2016!

In Which Mel Pretends to Know Things About Athletics

Remember the culture festival back in September?  Well in June, we have the Sports Festival! 

Those of you who know me know that, despite my desire to run (which mostly stems from my desire to use marathons as an excuse to visit Disney), I'm about as athletic as a sloth.  It just doesn't happen.  Never has.  Thankfully, it wasn't as incredibly awful as I was expecting, mostly because non-homeroom teachers have a very minimal role other than observing.  The student council asked me to be a judge for the performances in the afternoon, but we'll get to that later.

Sports Festival is basically a competition between homerooms (and, later in the day, clubs) to see who is the best at... I suppose general athletics?  But mostly track-type things?  Each homeroom designs a t-shirt that they all wear for the day, though, so that's pretty cool.  Some of them are really cute. 

The day starts out with a variety of events that had me flashing back to those godawful mandatory track and field days in elementary school, where everyone was forced to participate in two or three events, and I failed at everything because of aforementioned lack of athletic prowess.  There were stations for long jump and high jump, as well as tracks for sprint races.  The students' achievements in each component were recorded, which then translated to a score for the event for their homeroom.  I don't really understand how it all works.  Also in the middle of the track was a tug-o-war station, which was really entertaining to watch for a while. 

Before lunch was the "obstacle course," which is definitely not what you're thinking about, unless you watch anime about school life.  This was the point where basically all of my anime dreams came true.  It was amazing!  So.  What this is.  It's a relay race, with each person/group at each section of the relay tackling a different task.  It starts out with one runner, who spins themselves as quickly as they can 20 times when the pistol goes off, and then sprints forward to grab bread hanging on a line with just their teeth.  Once they've got that, they run to the pair waiting ahead and tag them in.  That pair runs to a bucket that contains the names of a bunch of the teachers.  Those teachers are waiting ahead, all dressed in ridiculous costumes for extra fun.  The pair must reach into the bucket, grab a name, locate their ridiculously dressed teacher in the crowd of ridiculously dressed teachers, and run with them to the next point.  They tag in the three-legged racers.  That part is pretty straightforward.  When that pair reaches the end of their section, they tag in a potato sack jumper, who jumps to a certain point and then is allowed to abandon the sack and sprint the rest of the way to the final section.  They tag in a team of five of their classmates (or sometimes four classmates and their homeroom teacher, which was just hilarious) who are strapped to those group ski things?  You know what I mean?

These things. 
Yeah, so they're the final section of the race.  It's all very exciting and very funny, and so much like what I've seen in anime that it pretty much made my day right there.

 After lunch (which was a bento provided through my social committee fees, so that was nice) was the time for performances.  Each homeroom created and rehearsed a two minute dance routine (which I still don't know when they had the time to do) to perform, and I was part of a panel of ten judges who would hold up a number from 1-5 after each routine.  It was really awesome, and of course the sports course homerooms for each year were the best because they had, like, acrobatics and gymnastics in their dances, but some of the other classes were good too!  I was out in the sun for about an hour straight doing that, and got totally sunburned, but it was worth it.

The day ended with relay competitions between homerooms, and then any clubs who wanted to compete together (the brass band has some surprisingly fast kids).

Everything since then has been pretty boring.  I did go camping ("camping" really, since it was a fully furnished cabin) with a large group of other JETs partway through the month, and got to swim at a fabulous spot in a startlingly cold river way down south.  That was pretty cool.  But yeah.  It's exam time at the end of first term, and then summer vacation starts.  I've got some super exciting things planned, including my parents' first ever visit to Japan!

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!

Graduation

Well, our third year students graduated this past week.  Graduations are fairly solemn affairs in Japan, and definitely formal.  I had to wear my suit, which hasn`t seen the light of day since my first day here.  I hate wearing suits.  I violently dislike not having full range of motion.  I wore my pants, though, because I woke up Tuesday morning and it looked like a snowglobe outside.  I was displeased, and there was no way on this Earth I was wearing a skirt, even if that is what actually came with this blazer when I bought it.  Anyway.  Formal affair.  The principal, who wears a regular suit every day, was wearing a tailcoat.  TAILCOAT.  Do you even know how ridiculously awesome that is?!?!  Anyway, it wasn`t so terribly different from graduations back home. I`ll highlight some of the key differences:

1. It takes place during the day, rather than in the evening after school.
2. No gowns or caps.  Students graduate in their school uniforms, with a corsage pinned to their blazer.
3. Instead of each student going across the stage, the students remain at their seats, standing up when their name is called.  After all of the students have been named, the first student goes up and accepts some sort of group diploma on behalf of the class.  (I honestly have no idea if they get individual certificates after the fact or not.)

Other than that, it`s just a lot of ceremony.  There`s music and speeches and standing and bowing, and I didn`t really understand any of it.  I stood when all the other teachers stood, and sat when they sat.  Basically I was that person who never goes to church and just follows the cues from everyone else when they have to.  Thankfully, because non-school people would be in attendance, they decided it would be a good idea to pull out the BIG portable heaters, because normally the gym is absolutely frigid in the winter.  The only thing those walls keep out is the wind.

(I would also like to add that apparently most of the teachers around here hate suits as much as I do.  Many of them brought a change of clothes for the rest of the day, especially the PE teachers and teachers who have athletic clubs.)

The graduating students from my English club brought in bouquets for Morita-sensei and I, which was unexpected and sweet and gave me warm fuzzies all over!  What made it even better is that the arrangement contains my favourite flowers - Gerbera daisies!

I was also asked to sign one girl`s yearbook.  But not a girl from English club.  Or my third year class.  I have no idea whatsoever who this kid was, but she was really excited about having something in English in her yearbook. 

After that, things calmed down quite a bit.  Until announcements are made about what assignments the teachers are being given for the coming year, we don`t know who I`m going to be working with, plus I`ve heard comments in passing that we`re getting updated versions of the textbooks, so I can`t plan anything.  I`m going out of my mind with boredom.  But next week I`m headed to Tokyo again, so that will be a nice break for me.

Tick Tick... Boom! (Most of You Don`t See What I Did There)

So, this past week there was a bomb threat against the Mie prefectural government.  I don`t know a lot of the details, because I haven`t bothered to Google.  The only reason I even know about it at all is that my school is governed by the Mie Board of Education, and is therefore a prefectural property, so the teachers had to search the school for strange objects/bombs.  I got the short, translated version from my supervisor, after the news was delivered by the principal, but apparently the bomber stated that the bombs would go off on February 24th at 3:34PM.  That`s a strangely specific time.  And there are a LOT of prefectural buildings in Mie.  It`s likely this has something to do with the Summit being held in Ise in May, so there`s a chance the threat isn`t even coming from someone Japanese.  I suppose it`s rather callous of me to even think about it, and shows how incredibly desensitized we`ve become as a society to such threats of violence and terrorism (or maybe it`s just me), but all that`s really going on in my mind is, "What does a bomb threat from a Japanese person even look like?  I mean, the Japanese people as a culture are very formal, polite people...  It must be the politest, most apologetic bomb threat ever."

For those of you who are now panicked about my safety (Yes, you, Mother), I would like to remind you all that Japan is still probably one of the safest countries in the world, and that this is a very irregular occurence.  Also, I survived York University.  Which sits on the Jane-Finch corner.  And Disney gets a good few bomb threats that the public never really hears about (for obvious reasons).  I appreciate your concern, because it means you care about me, but I`m fine.  Seriously.

Today was my last day of classes for this Japanese school year.  I`ll miss my first and second period classes from Friday because they were awesome, but good riddance to my fifth period class!  ...Okay, I`m kidding, they`re sweet kids, but seriously, they don`t talk.  Even to each other.  It`s terrifying.  I`d say you could hear a pin drop, but you couldn`t because the room is carpeted and that`s why they won`t let us put a heater in the room, but that`s a whole separate issue...  Anyway, I thought I`d share some of my last homework gems.  I`ll be getting more next week, since I only assigned it to some classes today, but I have some of the earlier ones on my desk now.  So this assignment was to complete a chart in their textbooks about World Heritage Sites.  They had to choose a site to research and give its name, the date it was named a Site, its location, and two facts about it.  Most of the students wrote about either Mt Fuji or Himeji Castle, one class wrote almost exclusively about the monuments of Old Nara, and then I got this one:  Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.  Good for you, kid!  Branching out!  Googling!  One of the fact points, though, is...  I`m really not sure what`s happening here:
"Pope Benedict XVI came on November 7, 2010 and held mass and I poured holy water in a temple of Confucius and did sacring, and in Sagrada Familia, it was with Bali deer."

...

Yep, just let that sink in for a minute.

What does your mental image look like?  Because mine has the pope standing beside a Japanese kid (who was obviously not actually there and they`re not using the right pronoun), pouring water into a shallow metal bowl at the altar of a temple while a bunch of deer stand on either side of the temple.  And they`re anthropomorphic deer, so they`re standing on their hind legs.  And wearing priest robes.  And holding incense sticks. 

But why are the deer Balinese?  And what are Balinese deer doing in Barcelona?  Is there even a type of deer specific to Bali?  (I Googled it - there`s no such thing as a Balinese deer.  However, West Bali National Park is home to Javan Rusa and Indian Muntjac deer, and the Javan Rusa is technically native to Java, Timor, and Bali.)

Unrelated to anything else, I would like to take a moment to express how grateful I am that Japan embraces the lesser-known and not-as-popular musicals that no one likes but me.  I have a love of somewhat obscure musicals.  Not all of them, obviously, because some of them are obscure for a reason (they sucked) and no one should ever perform them again.  But some of them are fantastic!  An ad showed up on my Facebook last night out of nowhere for a revival production of Jekyll & Hyde that`s going around Japan, and I basically freaked out like the strange fangirl that I am and sent the link to Ros so that she could read it all for me.  She`s going to help me buy a ticket tonight.  She also found me a Japanese production of the German musical Elisabeth that`s going to happen in the summer, and I`m so stupidly excited about that.  I haven`t seen a Musical That No One Likes But Mel since the London touring company of Chess came to Toronto back in (I think?) 2011.  (I`m 99% sure I was the only person in the balcony who was there on purpose, and not because it was part of the subscription and therefore already paid for.)  Now I just need to convince someone that people would love to see Tanz der Vampire remounted, because there are few things as entertaining as hearing Total Eclipse of the Heart in German.

(A note for the people who don`t get it but want to: The title of this post, "Tick Tick...Boom!", is the name of a musical that no one performs by the same guy who wrote Rent.  So it`s a reference to the bomb, as well as an obscure musical.  Get it?)

WTF, Sports School?

Hey guys.  Still not much going on around here.  The school year is winding down (Japanese school and fiscal years run April - March), so I`m teaching my last few classes this week and next week, and then I have pretty much zero work to do in March.  I`m going to go out of my mind.  I predict another "What`s Happening in Mel`s Head" post in your future.

I was talking with one of my first year teachers today as we were walking back from class, and she said that she was surprised that one of the boys in the class was participating.  Apparently he was bullied at the beginning of the year by the older boys on the soccer team, so he is always really reserved (even for a Japanese kid).  I am choosing to take some credit for his new confidence.  My English classes are just so awesome and engaging that he can`t help wanting to participate!  And he`s quite good at English, too.  At least, his reading aloud is, which is what he usually volunteers for.

Oh, and I can also tell you about the school marathon, because that happened right after my last post.  So every year at the end of January, my school has a race that all the students are required to participate in (first and second years - by this point, third years are pretty much exempt from everything).  I use the term "marathon" here because that`s what the Japanese say, but it`s not a legit marathon.  The Japanese use the term "marathon" as a title for any distance footrace, regardless of whether or not it`s 26 miles.  In the case of my school, there are separate races for males and females.  Normally, the girls` race is 6K and the boys run 8K; there was construction along the usual route for the boys though, so they ran 6.5K instead.  I knew about the race in advance, and had even considered joining the students.  Then I got the plague, and there was no way I was putting my lungs through that, so instead I joined my supervisor at her assigned post near the finish to cheer the students on.  It was while I was chatting with her that I learned that not only are the students required (unless there`s a legit reason for them not to) to run this thing, they have to do it in a certain amount of time.  If they don`t manage to complete it in time, they have to do it again.  I don`t think they have to do it again the same day, but I didn`t really get clarification because my mind was too busy freaking out about this.  What the heck, sports school?!?!?  The girls have 50 minutes to complete the 6K.  That`s a pace of 8:20 per kilometer.  I can do that on a good day.  With a lot of warm up.  And if I`ve been keeping up with my training.  It seems less insane now that I`m doing the math, but at the time, I thought it was cruel and unusual punishment (I still kinda think that anyway, but that`s because I`m normally about as athletic as a stick of butter).

But yeah, really not much going on.  I have another trip to Tokyo planned for mid-March.  There are events happening at Disneyland that I must experience!  Extra characters!  Limited merchandise!  Decorations!  Also, we`re going to the Kawaii Monster Cafe, because it looks like most of my dreams come true.  Seriously.  It`s ridiculously flashy, with bright colours and cute things...  My childhood dreams met with Lisa Frank and then plastered themselves all over every inch of a restaurant.

I think I`m also going to make some cards for my graduating students.  Not all of the third years, obviously, because I don`t know most of them.  But my class of 20, plus Mayu (the English Club VP that Haruna and I confused with our excitability over anime with strange premises) and Tetsuro (the boy I had conversation lessons with on Friday).  That should occupy me for a while, especially if I make them at school!  ...Except our graduation is on March 1st, so really I have to have them done by next week... Rats!  There goes my plan to keep myself busy during my dead month.

Heh.  My supervisor is talking with the Japanese teacher who sits across from me about Disney.  It`s funny.  There are so many times I`ve caught conversations about Disney around the room, even on the opposite side.  Like I`m conditioned to automatically start paying attention when that name is said in the same room as me.

I`ve also decided that Friday is Tea Day.  When I had the plague, and Morita-sensei came back from her flu leave (seriously, it`s policy that you are not allowed to work if you have the flu, and you`re given five paid days to recuperate), I brought in some Organic Detox from David`s Tea.  I`d talked about tea before, when I got here, and when I got care packages/gifts from home.  But she never really understood the scope of Western tea-drinking.  So when I brought that stuff in, she went on the website to check it out.  I have never seen a woman so excited over everything before.  Like, I think I was less crazy when Ros and I discovered the original David`s store in university.  Everything was "so creative" or "so cute" (because she looked at the mugs and stuff as well)!  And the idea of chocolate tea pretty much blew her mind.  Last week I brought in Forever Nuts for her to try, since it`s my favourite and I now have a metric tonne of it thanks to Christmas.  She was so startled by the colour!  It took a bit to explain, though, that "herbal tea" to us means "hot flavoured drink made of dried things that are not tea leaves," and doesn`t always have healing properties or a purpose.
Morita:  So this is herbal tea.  What is it for?
Me:  ...To...taste good?
Today was Yogi Berry.  Less exciting than Forever Nuts, but still pretty good.  And oolong is a flavour the Japanese are much more familiar with.

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.