Karaoke

Some pictures from last weekend

I love this job

So I've had two weeks of giving the same self-introduction class over and over. It got incredibly tedious- and by Wednesday I was so sick of talking about myself I was tempted to start making things up. 

Today finally I got to teach another lesson. I was given the brief last week- they showed me which chapter in the text book the kids have just finished doing- and then I come up with a fun lesson that is related and helps them practice that language. I got very excited and actually had the time to be creative. And come up with a good lesson. Today was the make or break for my lesson entitled "a weather story" - a true test of my capability after my celta and italy experiences- I polished this lesson plan off on wednesday- and woke up eager to try it out. There were moments were I thought the kids might not get it- is this too hard for them? Well... it worked better than I imagined!!! I'm not going to bore you with the actually lesson plan- but I had such a great day. I did my weather story lesson 3 times and I think I had really nailed it by the end of the day. The teachers at my base school are so great- it's a pleasure to teach there. 

My day was so busy for the first time- it just flew by- teachers were leaving things on my desk they wanted me to go over for other classes- I had loads of marking to do- I read all the stories that students had written in my weather story class (that's 40 students a class and 3 classes- you do the math)- so great to see them using vocabulary you have just taught them. I didnt have time to go on the internet or check my phone, which was very refreshing after a whole month of only doing these things. I spent an extra hour after school with one student to help him work on his interview skills- he wants to study english at university - I felt like I had so much advice to give him after all my experience- that we've arranged to meet up next week. I hope I haven't overloaded him- I was just excited!! I was jumping around my lesson like a mad-woman and it was great- the students fed off my energy - (rather than laugh at how geeky I get about teaching). When I was leaving school a group of girls who I had taught today rushed over to me and wanted to talk- naturally tell me I had a small face (is this a compliment in japanese I wonder?) and of course tell me I am Kuwaii - my single most received compliment (means cute). Last week I gave a singular sneeze in class and students were beside themselves with how Kuwaii they thought it was - this and genki (energetic) are the most overly used expressions in this country. I have already started to incorporate genki into my english vernacular. "I am so genki about this weekend" etc. 

I feel great!! This job is the best!!! 

I know I probably won't be on a high like this everyday (especially as some of my schools are quite rough and low-level) but if I can have just one day a week where things go smooth like this- then I know I'm in the right place.

A petty attempt

This is a summary of last weekend:

Spent the whole thing with these two- a South African and a Texan. Can you guess which is which??

On the Friday night we had yakiniku 

This shrine is outside Dyars school in Moriya

Driving up mount Tsukuba:

We were supposed to climb it but took a cable car instead:

We popped down to Tokyo for Saturday night;

On Sunday I went back up to mito and went futon shopping with these people:

First 2 days of school

Yesterday I had to give two speeches. The first, which was entirely in Japanese, was to the staff of my base school. I had practised what I needed to say, so it didn’t sound so amateur – but I also don’t want my speech to be too good, because I don’t want people to think my Japanese is better than what it really is (which is next to no Japanese at all). I had to give the same speech again today at my Tuesday school – this time I had way more confidence, so I think the staff seemed a little confused at the part where I say “I cant speak Japanese, so please be patient”…or something, or maybe im asking people to wish me good luck with learning? – im not sure as the supervisor wrote it for me as a rough translation of what I actually wanted to say… Anyway, so that was a little odd – but I hope people were laughing with me and not at me, although I wasn’t really laughing, I was just pretending to be enjoying myself. The second speech, was in front of the entire school. About 700 or more students including all the staff – I bowed a lot. It was a bit scary I guess – its been a while since Ive stood up in front of so many people like that. This speech was a mixture of Japanese and English. I figured Id say a few introductory lines in Japanese… and then say a bunch of stuff in slow English.. This time my Japanese wasn’t so good – obviously my nerves got the better of me and I told the entire school that I am from England in London (in Japanese – they say it the other way round – so you can see how I messed up so easily right?) Although giving speeches was a bit of a rush in the morning, I wasn’t given any lessons to teach yesterday, so had to go back to just procrastinating in the school office from 10-4.15. I am getting VERY bored by this point. I’ve had almost a month of procrastination. I’ve lost the motivation to self-study Japanese as the boredom had turned to frustration – and the text book ive been trying to learn from is seriously awful. Having said this, I have managed to teach myself how to read katakana in the space of about two weeks. well, theres a couple of characters I haven’t covered yet… but its really exciting that I can suddenly read the labels of everything – and shop signs etc. I think I need to start taking real lessons – because trying to learn whilst sat at a desk alone is boring. I really need to study though – its not so easy to just pick things up. Today, Tuesday, I FINALLY FINALLY got to teach. It was great – loved it – LOVED it!!! It’s a shame I only have 2-3 classes a day – because I still had to waste a lot of time procrastinating. I cant wait for things to have kicked off properly – I want to be busier than this. I want to be marking work doing MORE. I always thought I preferred being lazy over busy – but I’m starting to think otherwise.

School lunch

So I can either bring in my luch or I can pay 400 yen (£3ish) and get a bento box. Naturally Im gonna chose the bento box. They are so awesome! its like a box full of weird and delicious suprises. I took a sneaky webcam picture of my lunch today. Sometimes it comes with miso soup. this is the second bento box ive ordered. Now that terms started ill be eating them every day. Yay!

Lost dog

At some point this week, I will make a big post about my awesome weekend. But I thought I should just quickly post that on my way home this evening (in the dark with rain and lightening) I found a lost dog (googled it- dog breed is kishu- very cute) it was running around on the Main Street in my town with a long wire lead attached to its collar. I figure it's owner had it locked up outside- it somehow broke free. I caught it and took it to the police station. The police here are so nice!! They took my statement (had Alistair translating over the phone) and took the dog. I hope they find it a home. I feel like a hero!!

The dog looked like this:

I was asked by the police if I wanted to buy the dog. I said "no, I don't think you understand, you need to find the owner of the dog."

The next day, I told my superviser about what happened.

She went and found the terms for my apartment to show me I am not allowed pets.

IS ANYBODY LISTENING?

Wonderex

I know this is a really boring post but im VERY BORED. School term starts next week thank god - I`ll actually get to do something for once. Ive been sat in this office for 3 weeks now doing NOTHING. YES ive been lesson planning and trying to learn some japanese, sometimes I get to make little trips with my supervisor to random places to set up all sorts of admin - theres also been the visits to the other schools I:ll be teaching at - at lest those days have been broken up with something, but some days, like today, there was nothing to do, so I completely lost motivation. Im bored of self-studying japanese, you can only spend so many hours in one week. my butt is sick of being on this chair. What else has happened this week? I went for a curry on Monday with this girl who lives in Mito. it was probably the best curry ive ever experienced. ran by an indian family - it was very weird trying to speak in japanese to an indian person at an indian restaurant. hmm. I also met up with daniel and Hana on wednesday for a few beers in my town. we went to this hawaiin bar and had some hawaiin beer - very nice. then we went to this trendy thai style bar which was playing reggae music and was full of indian-style throw things which partitioned off different tables - i thought tht was pretty cool - you get your own private booth thing. ordered some spicy chicken - it was good. and now here is a very boring story about a shop I went to yesterday. Usually I write this stuff to keep my parents in the loop, but Im just so bored at work, that writing about mundane stuff is filling up my time; I had heard about a second hand store in my area, and was very keen to check it out. As you might of heard, Japan`s a pretty expensive place to live (shock shock horror horror).. so the idea of a thrift shop is very exciting. Again, I forgot to take my camera, sorry. But we have adjectives for a reason. The clothes department, where I started out was somewhat of a let down. I didnt find the array of quirky vintage stuff I was hoping for. everything about this place was like a tk maxx, down to the displays, the layout, the atmosphere, the types of people (although japanese versions) TK maxx, which is depressing because I HATE tk maxx- so I think I:ll just stick to uniqlo for cheap clothe thank you. After feeling a little disappointed I thought I would see what else Wonderex had to offer, turns out it had the coolest bunch of stuff! There was a huge section of original star wars toys like what Joe used to collect - all for crazy cheap. They were all american - I was looking at the packaging. That stuff must be worth quite a bit no_? They had a lot of toys - I think all of the crazy collectors at forbidden planet would have been very thrilled. They also had all sorts of furniture, very useful to know about, and very cheap! Someone was explaining this to me the other day, apparently Japanese people like new stuff - second hand stuff is not worth very much AT ALL. the best was The electronics department, it was amazing! they also had a load of records and some record players -so tempted to buy one just so I could have listened to old weird japanese pop music - where else are you gonna find that sort of stuff?.There was also old games consoles with games, a big department of instruments, tvs, hi-fis, household electronics etc etc... great place to know about, and about a 10 minute drive from my place. This was some of the best second hand stuff id ever seen. Japanese people are so clean and respectful - that all of their stuff is kept in amazing condition. good work japan.