Santa says HAHAHA!

November 25-December 21

I spent actual Thanksgiving at the JET Mid-Year Seminar. It was a rather boring two days worth of speakers and classes but I got some good ideas to use in my classes and I’ve actually already used some of them. That weekend there was a JET Charity Pub Quiz that four of us Himi people entered. Our group was called the Himi Hermits. We came in second place by only one point, too bad only the first place people got the half of the money that wasn’t going to charity. Still it was a lot of fun! Also, it wasn’t actually at a pub, it was at a Brazilian restaurant and the food was awesome. There was even turkey, which is basically unheard of here, to give me one more chance to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Exciting news for Himi is that buri (yellowtail) is officially in season! This is one of the things Himi is most famous for and, having eaten it both grilled and raw, I can see why. It is sooooooooo delicious!!!

Buri nigiri.

I haven’t done anything too grand recently but work has been pretty busy all December. For example, on Dec. 10^th I had a demo lesson for prospective students at Seibu MS. Basically, 6^th graders from the three elementary schools that feed into Seibu came and had a mock English class. I think it went okay. This was largely helped by the fact that two of those elementary schools were schools that I teach at so I already knew the students. That same day we had the BOE enkai which was great because they scheduled it at Tori No Ya which is the restaurant owned by the same guy that owns Wyatt. Having been there before I knew to expect great food and they did not disappoint.

I made little nametags (with no names...) for the demo lesson.

Also at school, I have had several really great Christmas classes. We did all sorts of Christmas activities including: Christmas bingo, Christmas card making (I made one card for each of my schools), cutting out snowflakes, reading Christmas stories, talking about American Christmas (including some pictures of my family), singing Christmas songs etc. At several schools I wore a Santa hat, which was usually met with great enthusiasm, especially from the younger kids. I even got applause when I walked into one of the staff rooms! I got the kids all riled up by walking around during cleaning time saying “Merry Christmas!” I apologized to the teachers but I figured it was okay since it was the last day of classes and I usually don’t interrupt their chores.

One of the best classes was with the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd graders at Hayakawa ES. As we were doing the fun lesson, Kyoto-sensei (vice-principal) walked by a window dressed up in a full Santa costume. The kids got really excited and by the end of class, after walking around outside several times, he finally came in the classroom and gave the students their presents (which was just some Japanese candy). I cracked up because instead of saying HOHOHO he said HAHAHA.

Another great experience was with my 5th graders at Kubo ES. We had a fun lesson and at the very end they gave me a Christmas present. Their present was to play "Silent Night" and "Take Me Home, Country Roads" on their recorders. Apparently they had just learned "Silent Night" in the few days before my lesson with them so they could play it for me. I was very touched!

More Christmas spirit has come from the decorations around town. My favorites are the lights near the main bridge that include some shaped like a buri! Also, the ALTs helped the CIR with a Christmas event for 30 or so 3^rd and 4^th graders that had more of the aforementioned activities and was really a lot of fun.

All these pictures are of the lights near the Hattori-kun bridge in.

The buri Christmas lights.

The Christmas tree outside of Sunstage. The lights flash faster and faster.

Making Christmas cards at the Christmas party. I figure that you can't see any of their faces so this should be an okay picture to post.

The card I made :D

Alex came out as Santa at the very end. Also hilarious was John's reindeer hat that you can sort of see in the background.

Christmas ice cream from Baskin Robins. I had the bear and Katie had the Santa.

Since I probably won’t update this again before Christmas: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! メリークリスマス！よいお年を！

Auld Lang Syne

November 19-23

From the 20th to the 23rd I was in Tokyo with three of my best friends from Wake Forest, Jenni, Jeannie, and Diane. Late Friday night I took the night bus to arrive early the next morning outside of Ikebukuro station, which was very conveniently about a 5 minute walk from the hostel we stayed at. I was the last to arrive so despite it being too early (around 5:30AM) for me to check in there was no problem with me just walking right into the room with Jenni who had come to pick me up…for some reason she thought my sense of direction might need a little help :P

After a few more hours of sleep for everyone I officially checked in and we headed off for our first day of adventures. Our first stop was McDonald’s for breakfast and I enjoyed a delicious McGriddle. Next up was Nakano Broadway, which is basically a big store but with several of the floors devoted to fan goods for all sorts of different things such as anime, music, and movies. It felt kind of like a classy flea market (if that isn’t too much of an oxymoron). We spent most of the day shopping and playing around in the different stores. That night we bought some food and drinks and then spent a very long time singing karaoke. It’s hard to describe just how much fun it is to karaoke if you haven’t had the real experience, but believe me when I say it’s a very fun way to spend an evening.

Diane in front of the sign for Nakano Broadway

Just one of the many stops we made to play some ufo catcher games. Jenni is really good at them and Jeannie really wanted some Christmas Disney characters.

When we say this huge ice cream cone we just knew we had to get it. Jenni looks very devious in this picture.

It took very little time for the ice cream to go from the previous picture to this one. I love Jenni's face...I promise I was just pretending to steal her bite of ice cream :P

Jeannie and I posing with our ramen we had for lunch.

It was really awesome to see UNC paraphernalia in a store in Japan!

Weeellllll, I spent a bit of money but I now have the entire set of the One Piece poster...and lightsaber chopsticks, so it's okay.

Yes, we bought matching Mario one-up mushroom "Get A Life" socks.

Sunday Diane went to go visit her host family so Jenni, Jeannie, and I went to go see the new Harry Potter movie. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should go! Before the movie started we did a Harry Potter themed purikura (picture booth), one picture had Hogwarts in the background and the other with the Weasley’s. After we all met back up we went to Akihabara and did some more shopping and exploring. For dinner we went to a sukiyaki restaurant and had delicious, delicious food.

This frog and Santa Spiderman were hanging around outside the movie theater advertising some nearby shop.

There was Harry Potter purikura inside the theater! I tried to take pictures of my pictures so these aren't the best quality. Here we were trying to make the same face as Ron.

Yay Hogwarts!

Jenni and I playing the taiko drumming game after the movie.

Jeannie and I posing with the movie poster after watching the film.

Many of you won't appreciate how extremely cool it was to see this cafe. Basically Gundams are giant fighting robots.

Jenni and Diane posing with the Gundam taiyaki.

Sukiyaki!

After cooking the meat and veggies you would dip it in raw egg to make it even more delicious. I know this is a little off-putting for many westerners but the Japanese use raw egg quite often and I haven't gotten sick yet *knock on wood*

Since Tuesday was a national holiday and we had no work, I was able to ask for Monday off. Monday morning Jenni and I were on a desperate search to complete the poster collection we had started and Jeannie and Diane were willing to humor us so we headed back towards Nakano Broadway. With some good luck we were able to get the full set of One Piece posters! Lunch was at a kaiten sushi restaurant named sushi-go-round, which is my new favorite description of conveyor belt sushi. After lunch we split up for a few hours so Jenni and Diane could go to Korea town and look for fan goods for some musicians they liked. Jeannie and I went off to Tokyo Tower since I had never been. It was cloudy so we didn't pay to go all the way up to the top but we had a lot of fun exploring around inside.

First glimpse of Tokyo Tower.

We did our omiyage shopping at the tower. This was one of the particularly good bits of engrish there.

The very disturbing Tokyo Tower mascot...sorry, but I don't think I would ever buy my child a stuffed animal that looked like that.

The so-bad-it-was-hilarious 3D haunted house movie Jeannie and I watched. It had worse graphics than most video games made in the past decade.

We were being Godzilla.

Naturally we took a picture with the mascots, wouldn't want to forget how disturbing they are.

Outside the tower was very festive!

Our last stop was Yokohama to go to Chinatown for dinner. We went to a dim sum restaurant. It’s like a buffet but better because you pay a set amount and have a menu with tons of items on it that you can order from. They bring out a small dish that everyone at the table can share. We at sooooooooooo much food and it was all freshly cooked and delicious, as opposed to cold, stale, and touched-by-who-knows-how –many-people food you get at a buffet.

After dinner we did a group purikura before my night bus left. We cut it rather close and Jenni and Diane waited at the bus stop while Jeannie and ran back to the hostel from the train station and then ran to the bus. This is probably why I got sick a few days later because it had started rainy and was rather chilly and I was dashing about working up a sweat and getting rained on. Luckily I made and after a final round of hugs and a group phone call while we were waiting for actual final departure and could still see each other, I was headed back to Himi. The bus got into Takaoka just in time for me to catch the first train into Himi and I spent a large part of the Tuesday just sleeping and realizing that I had caught a cold.

A couple of the purikura we did. We were on a pirate ship in this one. Clearly I'm the captain because I have the top hat and mustache.

I love how this one came out!!

So to summarize the trip: I had an awesome time, got some cool swag, and got to see some people I love. All in all, an excellent way to spend the weekend before Thanksgiving!

It's the Holiday Season!

October 27-November 17

Surprisingly, it is the Holiday Season here. Christmas stuff has been appearing since before Halloween. This post though is going to focus on the holidays I've celebrated so far, namely Halloween and Thanksgiving. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet, but the weather here has become unseasonably cold. So I’ve supplemented my wardrobe with some cute but warm Japanese clothes. Also while shopping, I found a Halloween costume! Well it wasn’t really a costume, just the hat from Chopper in the anime One Piece. This is my favorite anime and a favorite among Japanese people of all ages.

Halloween was a great time for me. Three out of five schools asked that I prepare materials for special Halloween classes. Thursday Oct. 28 at Seibu JHS we did a crossword with Halloween words and the students had to draw a face on a blank pumpkin picture and write a story about the jack-o-lantern they made. The kids had a lot of fun and those stories were probably the most creative I've seen any of my students get with English. Also, I brought in my Chopper hat and the kids thought it was awesome. Many of the students wanted to wear it so it got passed around quite a bit (it was even more popular with my ES students)…luckily I don’t seem to have picked up any sort of head bugs.

The next day at Kume and Hayakawa Elementary Schools I printed out pictures of kids in costumes and jack o’ lanterns to teach the kids about what we did in America and then taught them fun Halloween vocabulary. At Kume we played Halloween bingo. The best though was when we played a trick-or-treat game. Each teacher went to a different corner (wearing our silly hats of course) and the kids had a chance to get candy if they could correctly answer a question in English. They loved coming up to each of us, pretending to knock on a door, and saying trick-or-treat. If they didn’t understand the question they had to say “help me please” before they could get a clue to help them get the candy.

At Hayakawa they combined the 5^th and 6^th graders that I usually teach into one class so that I could also have a class with the combined 3^rd and 4^th graders. Also, in between classes Tamaki (the Japanese girl that helps with translation) and I went to the 1^st and 2^nd graders with candy. All they had to do was say trick-or-treat and they got a piece of candy but they still loved it. At Hayakawa we also did the trick-or-treat game but changed some of the other activities. The 5^th and 6^th graders got to make jack-o-lanterns and give them a name but they didn’t do the writing part. For the 3^rd and 4^th graders they made tissue ghost families. It was so cute!!! So far that has been the single most fun day of teaching yet…probably because it was a party rather than the normal less interesting stuff…

These are the tissue ghosts I made with the ES students. They became Halloween decorations for my apartment.

That weekend Wyatt’s (the bar where the ALTs know the owner) had a Halloween party. Cody, Joe, and I went. It was nomihoudai (all you can drink) for 3000yen but I didn’t want to pay that much or drink that much so Satoru (the owner) said I could just buy a bottle of wine instead. Yay connections! I’m pretty sure all the Japanese people in Himi between the ages of 20 and 35 were present…so there were a few dozen people. I wore my Chopper hat again and it was a good icebreaker with the Japanese people. They all thought it was really fun to come take pictures with the foreigners and one of my favorite picture was with other people dressed up as different One Piece characters.

This is Chopper.

She was one of the first people that asked to take a picture with us. Joe and Cody didn't have very creative costumes :P

Eri and Nabe are the two bartenders at Wyatt that are always really nice to us and a lot of fun.

This guy copied my costume, I was there first though so HA!

These were the other One Piece characters. Usopp, Chopper, Zoro, and Nami.

Another fun holiday event happened the weekend of Nov. 13^th. It was the Toyama JET Thanksgiving party. Alex and I were the only two that went because it was really far away and we knew we would have to spend the night at the host’s house. The food was awesome because it was a potluck party with all sorts of dishes (I made stuffing) and there was even a turkey (which you almost never find in Japan). It was great because there were a lot of people from other countries that got to celebrate their first Thanksgiving. It was definitely not the most traditional Thanksgiving but it made me really happy to have a great group of people to celebrate with during my first Thanksgiving away from home!

That same weekend had some other fun events. On Saturday Alex and I went and watched our students in a Handball tournament before we left for the Thanksgiving party. My team lost but Alex's won the whole tournament! I had never seen handball before but it is really popular here. According to Alex the game play was very similar to water polo just on land. Then on Sunday John, Katie, and I received tickets to a band concert that some of our students were in. It was a large group that had students from many schools. These students were lucky enough to go to Seattle to march during the halftime show at a Washington University football game. The performance was partly to show us the march they did. I was very impressed and I really like seeing my students outside the classroom setting.

I think this picture should be okay because you can't see any faces. This is the Jusan girls team. For whatever reason there was no boys team.

The quick (probably not) and dirty (definitely not) rundown of the past month

September 21-October 27

Now that I’m finally done with the in depth description of my grand three day adventure I can move onto everything else I’ve been up to. Since it has been a while you aren’t going to get the normal blow-by-blow description of each and every day. I’m sure you are all very disappointed. I’ll just hit you with some of the highlights of the past few weeks.

One thing I was very excited about was that I finally made it to church! It was a small little chapel and I still can’t understand most of the Japanese but it was very refreshing to finally go. Jesus in Japanese is イエス or iesu which is pronounced ee-eh-soo.

The week after the tour I went to the Tsukurimon Festival and visited a mini zoo in a park in Takaoka. The zoo had some good stuff and the animals didn’t seem too depressed despite being in cages. As for the festival, I have no idea what it was supposed to be about but it featured art made from vegetables so it was probably some sort of harvest festival. Some of the pieces were very elaborate and I wish I could have been there for the judging of the winning sculpture.

My favorite animal in the zoo because of the following sign...

Porcupines spend their days eating wood and sleeping.

For some reason there was a sumo ring in the park.

The Takaoka City mascot was wandering around the park.

One of the crazier events was on Thursday Sept. 30. My Thursday and Friday schedules were swapped but this meant that I was at my elementary schools by myself on Thursday instead of with Tamaki who usually helps with translation between Japanese and English. Most of the day was fine, fun even since I was largely in charge of the lessons myself, but at the very end of my very last class a huge hornet flew in and stung a girl. She had to go to the hospital, so while the teacher was taking care of her I was left in the classroom with all the other riled up students. I managed to get them settled and distracted them with stickers and by getting them to teach me how to say things like “getting stung” and “hornet” in Japanese. However, that only worked for a little while and while I was talking to several of the girls two boys started fighting! I broke them up from where they were rolling around on the floor and I held back one boy while the other kids held back the other. I had no idea what to do. I just kept thinking that if this was America and one of them got hurt while I was separating them then I would probably be sued. Luckily Japan tends to be a lot less strict about things like that (I’ve seen teachers behave much more forcefully with misbehaving students than I was by just keeping the boys separated). Our combined efforts kept the boys apart until the teacher came back shortly thereafter. Since my class time was far past finished I was told I could go back to the staff room. While I was down there waiting for 4 o’clock to roll around the boys were sent do to apologize to me. I got a pretty formal apology and a deep bow and the principal thanked me for being around because who knows what would have happened if there hadn’t been anyone in the room at all. I’m still a little worried that it made me look bad that as soon as I was left alone with the kids they start misbehaving but no one has treated me any differently yet.

October 10 was the Kubo ES School Festival. The morning started with the 1^st graders and ended with the 6^th graders. For those of you familiar with the IHM Christmas Musical, it was similar to that but with no overarching theme (as far as I could tell). Each grade performed a skit or song and every student had a speaking or performing part in front of everyone. Also interesting was that the older students were in charge of the lighting and set changes. I really liked seeing my students perform but also neat was seeing the little kids who I don’t actually teach. Everyone was super cute!

One of my favorite performances was the 4^th graders doing demonstrations of what they had been learning in PE. They started out with tumbling but quickly progressed to some stuff that I wish I had got to play with, such as stilts and unicycles. My 5^th graders performed a play and my 6^th graders played two songs with instruments. First was a song called Summer and next was La Bamba. According to the teacher that was filming the whole thing, he recorded me clapping along to La Bamba. Afterwards they gave me a sushi bento for lunch and then I got to walk around the classrooms and see the art and other works the students had made this year. I’m very impressed with how talented my cute (sometimes) little (most of them) students (when they feel like listening) are.

On Monday October 11(the Japanese national holiday known as Health and Sports Day) John planned a fun adventure in the next prefecture, Ishikawa, and Katie and I went with him. We drove on a beach, we went to a love temple (not as sketchy as it sounds), we went to several scenic outlooks, and we rode a boat in Ganmon. A very fun and tiring day.

The driving beach. It looked a lot like the beaches in NC.

The love temple, also know by its real name of ketataisha.

Everything was themed around love even the prayers cards (ema).

The boat tour we went on. It was really windy and the water was extra choppy so it was really fun.

Our cruise ship.

John, Katie, and I post boat ride.

One of the scenic views. I don't know why there was a time shrine and a rope attached between the rocks but it did look pretty cool.

Taken at another scenic spot with my camera's sunset setting.

Also since the three day trip I’ve had two enkais and I was able to watch the school festivals for both of my middle schools. For Seibu I volunteered to go and watch the rehearsal and for Jusan I was there on the actual day. Both were even more impressive than the Kubo one and at the Jusan one I even got to participate!

My Seibu kids were great singers even though there are only about 90 students in the whole school. I think they were actually louder than the Jusan kids. At both schools, students I had helped practice gave speeches in English that they had memorized. From where they started it was great to hear how much they had improved. Unfortunately, the rules about posting pictures of students is even stricter than I thought so I had to take down my previous post of Sports Day and I’m not going to include any photos from the School Festivals.

At Jusan the last song was performed by the whole school and the teachers got up and sang and danced (well more like swayed back and forth). I hadn’t heard anything about this but when kyotou sensei (vice-principal) saw me singing along during the last practice that morning, she invited me to come up too. Clearly being a teacher and living in a foreign country has completely changed my perspective on standing out in front of a large group of people because I was eager to jump up there and more offended that no one had thought to ask me earlier if I wanted to participate with the other teachers. Some of you might be interested to know the song was "sekai ni hitotsu dake no hana" (世界に一つだけの花) or "A Flower Unlike Any Other in the World" by SMAP and was the first Jpop song I was introduced to back in high school. Here is a link if you want to know what it sounds like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdB47-DdNUo

This was also my first chance for any real parent interaction, though really this was limited to one mother who used to work as an English teacher speaking to me in English. I was very appreciative of her coming up to me and I actually gave her my contact information if she wants to practice some more in the future. After the parents left and several closing speeches were given by the principal and student government president, but right before clean up time, there was what my JTE called a “folk dance.” As far as I could tell this was just all of the students and teachers line dancing…well circle dancing.

For the first one the girls were in a circle in the middle and boys were in a circle on the outside. We did a fairly simple (I mean, I was able to pick it up pretty quickly so it must have been easy) step for a few seconds and then everyone would run to the middle and then spread back out. It was fun! Even more fun was when they told guys and girls to pair up. Naturally, one of my shortest students was standing behind me. We just laughed and he told me I was too tall but we tried anyways. The dance consisted of just a few steps, the guys spin the girls, and then they move onto the next girl. So I danced with many of my students and one of my coworkers. My students had many different reactions when they got me (the funniest is when they blushed) but the most common was definitely to tell me I was tall, which also amused me to no end.

That evening was another enkai for all of the Jusan teachers. It was even more fun than the first one and I got invited to the second round when some of the people moved to a karaoke snack bar. I went and had a great time and amused everyone by singing English songs (though who knows if it was the songs or my singing ability) to go with the Japanese songs they were performing.

I think I'll end here and fill you in on Halloween in my next post.

P.S. What do you think of the new layout? Is it good? Is it too hard to read? Is the background distracting?