Luck's Adventures

The middle school graduation was yesterday. Everyone was crying. The girls were crying, the teachers were crying, the parents were crying, the boys were crying, the underclassmen were crying. I really felt like I was missing out on something. Most people were doing pretty well for the most part. But when the valedictorian, or class president, or whoever he is started speaking, and started getting choked up in the middle of his speech, every lost it. The whole place, up in tears.
There was one student, whose name is escaping me, something similar to Shirafumi, in the graduating class. He looks like one of the world s biggest troublemakers. He just looks shady, shady mixed with snarky. He looks like the offspring of a drunken meet up between the words, Sneaky and Smartass. The thing is, he is one of the nicest students around. He is also near the top of the class. Well, I tell you, that kid whose name sounds like Shirafumi was bawling like an orphan on Christmas. He had a little towel in his hand to wipe the tears away. Many people had those towels, in fact, as if they were all expecting to have a good cry during the ceremony. The little fella sitting next to Shirafumi is normally a bit of a messer. But when he got a good look at Shirafumi s waterworks, he reacted by 1/2 laughing 1/2 crying himself. It was a strange sight to see.

Perhaps I wrote about the high school seniors crying after their graduation. I think I wrote about that last time. Surprisingly, there was more crying here than in high school.

Spring break starts soon, but the teachers still have to come into work. Most of the ALTs I know will take paid vacation those days and go traveling. I m staying in. Gonna save up my vacation days for this summer and winter.

I do have to plan my trip out for Golden Week. I m not exactly sure what the itinerary will be, but I think it will be predominantly based in Kyoto.

I just drove to Oita 2 weekends ago. There were 5 of us in my little Kei car. I believe the cars will only legally carry 4 people. The gas station attendant tried to tell us as much. We pretended like we didn t understand him (well, the people in the car pretended like they didn t understand him. I literally didn t understand him). Oita was pretty great. We went to the town of Beppu. It s a little larger than my town, but not extremely cosmopolitan. It was very enjoyable though. It did make me miss city life. Which is strange. I recall not liking living in the city when I was living in the city. I think Beppu is a nice mixture of both, though. We went to a crocodile farm (cause, well, why not), the sex museum (saw a wax sculpture of Snow White getting it on with all 7 dwarfs), and a popular onsen. the onsen was really nice. I could have stayed there a bit longer, but everyone else wanted to go. I even got to try the sand onsen. I m not sure if it was what it s cracked up to be. I ll have to try a different one sometime. I also ate a lot of fried chicken. Well, it was chicken tempura. Beppu is known for that dish. I can see why. It was delicious. Oh, back to the car. Well, having 5 people in a little car meant for a max of 4 does not make for a great drive through the mountains. On flat terrain, I d get her up to about 110km/h, but as soon as I hit an incline, she d go down to as low as 40km/h depending on how steep it was. I probably took a few years off my car s life with that trip. However, by driving, we saved the group about $400, possibly more.

My high school and my middle school scheduled their enkais for the same night, so I have to skip my middle school one again. I ve only been to one of theirs this entire year. What a bummer. I did go to another high school one recently. I did a fair amount of drinking with my teachers again. I got to talk to some of them whom I ve never talked to before, so that was pretty good. I even used some Japanese. Granted, I probably sounded like someone who s been touched in the head to them, but it was good practice for me.

A few of us have started making Japanese study a regular thing. A few nights a week, we meet at a 24 hour joint that has an all the coffee you can drink/all the soup you can eat bar. The soup is from a bag. There are no bits in it or anything, just broth. I still have a minimum of 6 when I go, though. The coffee/drink bar is pretty great. I generally get 5 or 6 cafe mochas. I m not exactly sure what that is, but it gets me going. So we spend about 4 hours there per session, getting loaded on espresso and studying Japanese. It s pretty fun.

The Chinese Lantern festival was a few weekends ago. I met a buddy from university in Nagasaki for it. He lives way down in Kagoshima, where there is a volcano going off currently. It was a good time hanging out with him and his friends. I showed them around the city a little bit. I don t know the city very well, but I was the only one who had been there before, so I was automatically the guide. We did go to Glover Garden there. Glover was this Western fella who is basically Japan s father of modern industry. He started with silver mining, I think, and built a small empire from there. There is a park in his name, with his old house there. The garden is quite beautiful. I met my friends there. When I arrived, they were dressed up in 1800 s England attire. Being western, and wearing these clothes, they really stuck out. Quite a few Japanese asked to get their photo taken with them. I wonder if they thought my friends worked there…
Well, the workers in the mine of this Glover fellow, nicknamed him The Red Devil because, according to the brochure, “of his brown-red eyes, and red facial hair.” I m more than skeptical. This guy s miners nicknamed him the devil because of the color of his facial hair? Give me a break.

I have an International Day at another high school tomorrow. I m not sure what it entails. I think we just play games and talk to the students for a little bit. And they go away thinking Americans are the cat s pajamas and all of that. I m hoping, at any rate. I was originally excited to get invited to this because it s on a Thursday, and Thursday is my worst day in terms of classes. However, as you know, classes are constantly canceled (I m going on about 8 classes in the last 4 weeks) and tomorrow is no different. Tomorrow is the final Sports Day of the year. I m going to miss it. What a bummer. I love Sports Day. Not only do I get to play, but all of the students are in a good mood, so they all want to talk. Now, I have to wake up earlier than normal, and go teach somewhere. What dreadful timing.

I m considering digging up a part of my back yard and starting a little garden. Well, not a little garden, because the only thing I want to grow is habaneros. I know a guy who grows them in Nagasaki. I would like to get a few seeds from him. One of my friends taught me how to cook a spicy little dish called mappo (or mabo, or mabbo, or something) dofu. I haven t tried to make it on my own yet, but it s really delicious, spicy too. I made another pot of my cream of vegetable soup with chicken last night. This time, however, I added rice. Boy oh boy is that stuff good.

Elvis almost got in a fight with a teacher the other day. I didn t get any details as to with whom, or why. I just heard the screaming. The first year students broke a window today. I don t know who, and I don t think they ve been punished yet. More on that later.

The History teacher is teaching the second year students about the American Civil War right now. When the teacher translated the word, “Civil,” all of the students laughed. He invited me to the class to give the Gettysburg Address. I have done it three times now. I will tell you about it using an excerpt taken from an email I wrote earlier today: I think I do a decent job, however, I m not sure if Abraham Lincoln was a baritone, I doubt he pounded his fists on the podium and flailed his arms about, and I can almost guarantee he didn t wear a bow tie cut out from paper and colored black. Other than that, I do a pretty good job.
It was pretty fun. Plus, now I talk to the history teacher, which I didn t really do before this. His English is decent too. I certainly didn t know that. Unfortunately, Friday is his last day of class as he s only days away from retiring.
Friday is also the day the other teachers find out if they will be transferred or not. I, unfortunately, have no chance of being transferred, but I am curious as to which teachers will be transferred. My supervisor wants to leave, but he s not sure if he ll get moved or not. We ll see.

How is my favorite nephew doing? I just checked, the last time I got photos was only 2 weeks ago, but it seems like much longer. I hear you re back at work now. Stinger. I trust everything is going well, however. I haven t written in a while, but that s because there wasn t much to say…until now…(how foreboding)

For starters, work has been easy. Super easy. I m pretty sure I could do this job and sleep at the same time (I probably have, in fact). Throughout my time as an English teacher, I ve learned quite a bit about the English language. Although I m no master by any means, the language comprehension required to perform my job could be learned by a mollusk in a matter of hours. I had an interesting class today. I started by having everyone stand up. Then I would ask questions and have the students sit down if they raised their hands and answered. Didn t even matter if the answer was right or wrong. Well, there was this one girl who thought she would be sly (read, lazy) by just sitting down. So I lifted her pigtail to notify her that I was hip to her game. She stood back up. A little while later, she sat back down. Now, whether I care about her participating or not is one thing, but I certainly can t allow this. So I kind of wiggled my way into her seat while she was sitting in it. She stood up and stormed out of class. I continued teaching from the seat as if nothing happened. I have made a bit of a reputation at this school. I do chit chat with the students, particularly the bad students, outside of class. I feel, if I can get the bad students to at least stop trying to give me crap in class, then I can accomplish more. However, in class, even though I m “friends” with some of the messers, if they start messing in class, I m not going to sit there and take it on the proverbial chin. So I crack down, but not really in a harsh way. I might bop them on the head with the grade book, or underhandedly toss a piece of chalk in their direction, or stick my finger in their ear if they re trying to sleep (one of my favorites). So this girl s reaction surprised me considerably. My Japanese co-teacher left the classroom when she did, and had a little chat with her. She knew that she was being disrespectful, but claimed she had a belly ache. It s possible. But this is also a girl I had to confiscate a book from a little while back. I m not sure what it is about her. She does very little work. Almost none. But I don t think she s mean spirited. Mostly, I think she s just a bit emotional. When I take books from students in class, I give it back to them after class after they apologize (In Korea, I would make the students write sentences to get things back…lots of them). Normally, I have no problems with this system. But again, this girl is a bit of an anomaly. Instead of apologizing for reading in the middle of class, she just said she had no interest in reading again. My Japanese co-teacher says this girl goes in spurts. She ll mess up a bit, then get a talking to, then try pretty hard (not really succeed, but that s not as important) for a while, but inevitably fall back into her old ways. It s just a big cycle. I m not going to waste much time on it. If she doesn t want to work, she won t. There are 36 other students in the class to worry about. She s 17; she knows what she s doing. Is that too harsh? I m not sure. We ll see how she acts next week. I m certainly not one to hold a grudge. Some of my favorite students now were the most problematic ones when I first got here, like Elvis.

Elvis know very very little English. I m pretty sure Elvis knows very very little in every subject. His twin brother is even worse. To everything I say to Elvis, which is quite a bit, he responds with, “Oh Yeah.” He could not care less about English when I first arrived. But now, though he still knows very little, he listens in class and actually does his work. I think that is a direct result of my chit chatting with him outside of class (despite the fact that our chit chats are largely unintelligible to the other party).

Going back to the fact that this one girl, Rumiko, is 17 years old. The Japanese teachers baby these kids. I don t believe the kind of treatment these kids get. For example, Elvis’ brother didn t answer a single question during the exam. In fact, judging by the marks on his paper, I m pretty sure he fell asleep. Now, as far as I know, this kid would outright fail in the U.S. I mean, he received a zero percent on his exam, which was around 70% of the final grade. However, because my school doesn t fail kids, the teachers are offering him substitute work to do instead. Not even difficult work. It s nominal stuff like, copy these 5 sentences 3 times. It s outrageous. If it were a little less outrageous, I would find it insulting and completely unfair to the other students. But it s so outrageous, I don t even know how to respond.

By the way, I think The White Stripes are my favorite band of the noughties.

I just returned from my first enkai (work party) with my high school. One rule of enkai, if an elder pours a drink for you, you must drink it. I guess, from my perspective, that s the only rule one really needs to remember when it comes to work parties. We started the meal off with some boiled octopus legs. Then it was on to various types of raw fish and squid. Then a large grilled prawn with a large snail soaked in soy sauce. I really couldn t tell you if the snail was cooked or not. There was also this cooked egg concoction with various bits of meat from various types of sea life mixed in it. There was also a small nabe full of pork and cabbage and broth. All of this was washed down with glass after glass of beer. Then, in my broken Japanese, I informed the people sitting next to me that I actually prefer to drink nihonshu (sake) to drinking beer. Matsumoto Sensei wasted no time in ordering several large flasks of warm sake. Now, let me tell you about Matsumoto Sensei. More specifically, let me tell you about my first impression of Matsumoto Sensei. This is one bad M*th*r F*cke*r. This is the kind of guy who would slit his mama s throat for a nickel, and then forget to ask for the nickel. He could beat a mirror in a staring contest. Now, let me tell you about my second impression of Matsumoto Sensei. If you will recall, my school had a sports day a while back. During the festivities, the seniors had the opportunity to dress their homeroom teachers in ridiculous costumes and then parade them around the yard. There were quite a few students involved, so each teacher was lost in a sea of kicked up dust and pigtails. When Matsumoto Sensei emerged, he was not wearing a shirt. He was wearing a wig that made him look like…like Jacky Chan in the movie Shanghai Noon during the part where he smokes the peace pipe. He smokes so much, he gets a bit out of his senses and starts playing with his braids. This is the image I had when I laid eyes on Matsumoto Sensei. Trying to reconcile this image with the man I see commandeering every single inch of space his body utilizes has been a trying endeavor. Now that you have a little background on Matsumoto Sensei, I ll tell you that I was randomly placed next to him during he enkai. When a teacher enters the room, he pays the required amount, here, 3,000 yen ($33 give or take), and then draws a number. That number indicates where one will sit. My number was at the end of a table, next to Matsumoto Sensei. As it turns out, he is not a terrible fellow. At least, that s the impression I had. He was much more relaxed outside of school. I had very small discussions with him (mostly about food, as that seems to have become my biggest hobby in the last two years). We had a few drinks together. All was good.
I also saw the gym teacher smoking, which, you know, I thought was a bit strange. I should tell you about the gym teacher. This guy is about 5 foot 37 inches. He is the biggest Japanese fellow I have ever seen. That s not a bad thing. The bad thing is, every time I look at him, I think, “I sure am glad our two countries are no longer at war. If I ever met this man on the battlefield, my mother would most certainly receive my few remains in a jar.”

did any of this post make sense? I did just return from the enkai…

It is fairly difficult to believe I have already been here a third of a year. It doesn t seem like it s been that long. I guess that s because there always seems to be something going on. One week, it is Halloween/school festival, the next is the mid year conference, the next is the Isahaya conference, and it keeps going. In fact, in the past seven or 8 weeks, I ve only had one full work week. We have had 2 national holidays recently, 2 conferences, the school festival, the City festival, exams, a marathon, and possibly something else. I constantly have time off of work. And it s a bit strange. I would like to have a work schedule with a few more classes, but I love when class gets canceled for whatever reason.

I didn t do anything for Halloween. I had planned on going to Omura. Instead, I went to the school festival during the day (it was on a Saturday, so I had the previous Thursday off) and then went home and fell asleep. The school festival was okay. The largest chunk of it was each class singing a song in a choir competition. There were 2 songs available. Six classes sang one song, six to the other. It all sounded the same to me. There was also an acapella group. They were decent enough, until they were struck with a fit of the giggles. The art projects on display were really cool. There are some talented little artists here, I ll give them that. The culmination of the festival was the fashion show. A few girls here made their own evening gowns in a sewing/cooking/home ec class. They were working on their outfits for quite a while. The entire student body was going nuts during the show. Everyone was taking pictures, boys were whooping and the such. It was good time. The dresses turned out really well. Some of the girls made kimonos ( http://www.japan-promotions.co.uk/images/kimono_r_large.jpg). I don t know too much about them, but they looked nice. The best part of the festival for me was the tea ceremony. Each student in our school is supposed to be part of a club. We have sports like basketball, soccer, archery, kendo, and we have brass band and drama club, and we also have tea ceremony. The girls (I don t know if the class is officially only for girls or not, but only girls join) learn how to perform a traditional Japanese tea ceremony. These little gatherings include hundreds of little rules like how to properly hold the ladel, how to wipe the pot off, how many times to stir the whisk, how to rotate your tea cup before drinking from it, how to display the cup when you re done drinking, how to bow, it goes on and on. The teachers told me the tea at these ceremonies is really bitter, adn they don t much like it. I thought it was fine. I was told to drink it slowly, so I did. About 4 minutes later I discovered that I was the only one with tea left and everyone was waiting for/staring at me. I immediately downed the second half of my cup. I quite enjoyed the whole process. In all, it took a little over ten minutes. The only problem was that during that entire ten minutes, we had to sit in the seiza position (http://www.dharma-rain.org/zazen/zazen-photos/Seiza-side-2-l.jpg)

The town festival is known as the Misogoro festival. It is not that big of a deal. Basically, one street in our town (a nice brick road) gets little decorations, and lots of food stalls. Misogoro was a giant who saved our town from a deadly noodle inundation way back when. Our town made too many Soumen noodles, and it threatened people s lives. Luckily, Misogoro arrived, and he brought his appetite. He ate all of the noodles and saved people from their delicious deaths. Then Misogoro walked to the sea, kept one foot on the main land, put another on a small island, squatted, and made a new island. To celebrate his heroic behavior, the town has a festival where one can eat all the soumen one wants, for free. I also had 2 hot dogs, 2 hamburgers, a chicken burger, 2 cokes, a steamed bun, and a candy apple (ew). It was a good time. I almost bought a super famicom addition to the old time famicom (original Nintendo in USA) that only came out in Japan. It was $20, and had I not spent the last of my money on a hotdog with cabbage three minutes earlier, I would be its proud owner this very day. I missed the big day of the festival, when my school s brass band marches down the street and Yosakoi (http://www.yosakoi.com/Pictures/Yosakoi2006b.jpg) dancers do their thing down the street because I was in Nagasaki City for the midyear conference.

There is not much to say about the midyear conference other than it seemed a little unorganized, a little useless, and cost me a lot of money (mostly on various ethnic foods that can be found in the city, so it wasn t a complete loss). The days of the conference were filled with all of the Nagasaki Prefecture ALTs (about 160, I think) listening to a bunch of nonsense (mostly. To be fair, there were a few informative bits) by day and then partying at night. What else is to be expected when you stick a bunch of recent college graduates in a foreign country and allow them to meet in a big city after having spent several months in the middle of nowhere around no one who speaks the same language.

I missed part of the other day of the festival because I had to work on the weekend (so everyone had the previous Tuesday off). All of the students in my school (and some of the parents) walked around town with giant tongs picking up garbage. Luckily, it was a nice day. I walked to several areas of town I had not seen previously (a nice little path running between a cemetary and the ocean) and had a good chat with one of my JTEs (Japanese Teacher of English). He s a good fellow, that one. I talk to him quite a bit now.

I accidentally broke my glasses. The just snapped in half as I was folding in the arms one night. A replacement pair cost me 16,000 yen (exchange rate as of today: $1 US = 88 JPY). My national insurance did not cover this. I was slightly less than amused about that. On a side note, my school takes out $30 from my paycheck every month to pay for parties and entertainment. We have, as of yet, not had a single party. I am even less amused by this. Not having a work party in a stretch of four months is awfully uncommon in Japanese schools. For example, Jacky s school seems to have at least one a month, possibly more. Anway, purchasing the glasses was a bit of a task seeing as how limited my Japanese is and how non-existant the ladies’ English is. The eye test involved a lot of pointing and me using phrases like “That one is good. But, this one…more…is good.”

Isahaya conference was fine. Nothing to mention there. Driving home, which normally takes about an hour took about 2.5 due to an incredible storm + rush hour traffic. Luckily, I made it home safely and then walked to the bar with a few friends. Most bars here close at midnight. We have found one, run by a rather friendly lady, that is willing to stay open as long as we are willing to drink. It s a perfect symbiotic relationship if I ve ever heard of one.

My town s Lions Club is involved in some sort of student exchange program. They sponsored four students from Malaysia to come over here for a few weeks. They only went to school for one day. I m not sure how they are spending the rest of their time. I was put in a chaperon position because they speak English and do not speak Japanese. Boy do they ever speak English. They were 16 years old and were as close to fluent as one can be. They started studying English in kindergarten. Malaysia does not have foreign teachers to teach English. It is all Malay teachers. I was a bit jealous. Anyway, they were really surprised to discover that I m also a Lion (in every manner except technically). I brought over a bunch of Lions pins when I came here. I gave the Malaysian kids (also not technically Lions, they are Leos, the youth club) some of the pins. They seemed really excited. I thought it was pretty cool. They then discussed how strange it is to travel all the way to Japan and meet an American who is in the same club they are. I m not going to lie, I think it s pretty sweet.

The day before was the school marathon (not technically a marathon, but what is technically anything it is called these days?). The boys ran 10 K, the girls ran 5 K. The fastest time was somewhere around 35 minutes. Well, most everyone ran. One student, whom I have nicknamed, ‘Elvis,’ walked the whole way. Elvis looks like a wrestler, or a strapping farm boy, or some guy who does something that requires him to have a wide stature and big muscles. However, Elvis is one of the laziest students I know. My student on the inside tells me he likes to fight on the weekend. He is in the office every week being yelled at for this or that. It never phases him. He just plum doesn t care about school. He missed a random days a while back. I figured he was up to no good. My JTE tells me he was probably helping his dad the fisherman. He has started doing work in my classes, which some of the teachers seem surprised by. This is probably because he is one of the few students who is not too shy to talk to me outside of class. As a result, I ve joked around with him a bit (he doesn t speak any English, but is good friends with Mai, who is one of the best English speakers in the student body (and is also my student on the inside (you know, the one who gives me all of the gossip), don t tell anyone) so she translates for us. So, I have noticed he writes down the stuff he s supposed to write down in class, and he no longer tries to take naps. Not that I let him get away with that before. My prefered method of preventing that is sticking my finger in the sleeping student s ear. But now, he doesn t even try. He and is friends still don t do anything when it comes to pair work, though.

My JTEs let me write the test for the second year students. This is exam week. I finished writing the test, I think they are pleased with it. I know they are at least thankful that I could take some of the work off of their plates. They all seem really busy. Busy with what? I don t know, but busy none the less. Since I finished the test, I have nothing else to do for the next few days. I ve been studying Japanese a bit (I admittedly found myself not studying as much as I would like for a stretch there).

About 15 – 25% of my middle school was out with the flu yesterday. Everyone in the building except the principal, vice principal and me were wearing face masks. My principal just brought it up to me here in the high school. He was wearing one, asked me, “You re not sick?” I m wondering if this was his Japanese (read: Indrect) way of telling me to wear a mask. From what I ve been told, Japanese people don t ask for things directly, and they avoid giving yes/no answers if at all possible. They just suggest things, and you are supposed to interpret that as a command. I don t really work that way, and I m certainly not wearing one of those masks if I have a say in the matter.

A large portion of my high school student body has been in trouble for smoking. My student on the inside says about 50% of the student body smokes, and a large percentage drinks. I m not sure if this is indicative of other Japanese high schools.

I will be judging an English competition this weekend. It s at an English Academy. One of my friends has a friend who either manages or owns the place. She asked him to judge the competition and find some friends to help him. He asked me, I said yes. I m looking forward to it. I will go to see the new Tarrantino flick this weekend. It finally came out here. I m told movie tickets in Japan are super expensive. I ll report back later. The closest movie theater is more than an hour away. I m going to one about 1.5 hours away because this one is right next to an Indian restaurant. Spicy food for the win.

I just received my study materials from CLAIR (Council of Local Authorities for International Relations…something like that). I hope this gives me a little more motivation. To be honest, I have not been studying Japanese all that much. I really need to crack down. I have also severely cut back on my Coca Cola consumption. I was at about 1 liter every day or two. I was doing that in Korea as well. Something about living in Asia makes me drink insane amounts of Coca Cola. I have tried various drinks to replace it. I think I found a decent vegetable juice to consume during non meal times. It doesn t really taste all that good with food, however. For example, I made tacos last night and would not suggest drinking a mixture of orange, carrot, tomato, and spinach juice with tacos. I also started doing my pushups and crunches. I have even entertained the idea of going for a run. But I won t get ahead of myself. If I can manage to get back into some sort of, albeit not rigorous in the slightest, exercise routine, and learn Japanese, this upcoming year could be pretty great, despite my students’ best efforts to the contrary. Oh, but I will be realistic and say that the likelyhood of me finishing this contract in good health with a large quantity of Japanese under my belt is nearly inexistent.

I just had my best class of the week. The students are only first years, but they actually listen/understand/participate. It was pretty good. Get this, some students even asked questions! Amazing, I know. This class, I have decided, is even better than the third year conversation class I lead because the students don t actually converse in the class. They don t even talk. The whole class is basically a back and forth between myself and the one girl who has decent English. She is a good student, smart girl. Unfortunately, she has told me that University is for suckers. She wants to get a job as soon as high school is over. I m trying to get her to apply to university. We ll see. I don t think she ll go. I asked her, ‘Why do you want to get a job?’ ‘Get money’ ‘But if you go to university, you can get a better job and get make more money’ ‘NO.’ I m wondering if it has something to do with her boyfriend, whom she is madly in love with. He is not going for any sort of higher education.

Jacky and I volunteered at an English camp the other weekend. It was pretty great. Most of the students were about 12 years old, and had better English abilities than my students. They were almost as shy, though. I think you ll get that regardless of ability or age. Japanese students are shy. Well, these kids were at first. It was a 3 day camp (Monday was some sort of holiday). The kids didn t say much the first day, but started opening up a bit the second day. We played a lot of rudimentary games and sang songs like Old McDonald, Bingo, and Head and Shoulders. We had hotdogs (They were nearly a foot long. I had two of them, special diet be damned), had a campfire, made smores, designed t-shirts with English phrases and pictures, and set up a shopping mall type activity for the grand finale. My group, 5 students, ran a Halloween table. We sold Halloween decorations (sold for real, using real money), and had a throw-a-piece-of-candy-into-a-pumpkin-to-win-a-large-bucket-of-candy-game. I also taught the kids, ‘Trick or treat, smell my feet’ just to make sure they were getting the full Halloween experience. The students were given 900 yen. First, they had to exchange the money at the bank (Jacky s group) into U.S. dollars. Then the could spend it at the game table, candy table, Halloween table, or stationary table (the students did the sign wrong. It was called the Staysonary table.). The counselors were even given 900 yen. I pocketed mine and used it to purchase dinner later that evening. The best part about the camp was that it was about 2.5 hours away. I drove there and back with no problems. I might be driving down to visit a friend this weekend. He went to my university and lives at least 3 hours away. Not sure if I m actually going to do it. His town has some sort of dragon boat races for their festival. The problem is that the races don t start until Sunday, and I would have to leave on Sunday. I might go.

Tomorrow, I will teach at the middle school. I really enjoy my Tuesdays. I like teaching at the middle school. The students are a lot more responsive and interested in learning. This is not because all Japanese high school students are a bunch of bumps on a log, just the ones at my high school. I have yet to find a way to motivate them. I hardly see some of them. Actually, I have been for 7 weeks, and I just had my first actual lesson with a class today. It was actually the third time I ve had the class, but the first time was my self-introduction (The Japanese make a big deal of Self-Introductions), the second time, my JTE could not go to class and there was no way I was going to attempt to teach those kids the planned lesson without a translator, so we chit chatted a bit and then played a game.

I went to Hiroshima a few weekends ago. Went to Nagasaki city a few weekends ago as well. It seems I get off my peninsula most weekends. I like it that way. I did stay here this last weekend though. I wanted an easy weekend. Hiroshima was spectacular. We ran into random people had shot the shoots with them on several occasions. I love sparking up conversations with locals. We were also invited to some German fella’s going away party. He had been in Hiroshima for a few weeks of study abroad. So we did a little bit of drinking down by the river talking to more random Japanese and Germans. It was a great trip. The food was wonderful. Even when we didn t go to McDonald s. Somehow, during that 6 day trip, the group went to McD s 5 times. I did not order something every time. I was able to get some of this stuff I call fish water. Convenient stores sell fish cakes on a stick. They boil them, and then keep them in hot spiced water until someone purchases them. I can t stand the fish cake, but the water is sooooo good. They looked at me a bit funny when I asked if I could have some, but the obliged. They didn t even charge me for it. I was amazed.

Oh, I finally found some spicy ramen in my town. I only just discovered it, but have had it a few times already. The shop seems to be owned/opperated by just one older guy. He asked me, in a mix of Japanese and broken English, what my salary is. I pretended like I didn t understand.

I learned about the place because Jacky s school had an enkai (business party) there. His school is constantly having drinking parties. I have heard stories form other JETs. Their coworkers were a bunch of stuck up teachers until enkai comes around and they all get blasted wearing ties around their heads and the such. Jacky s vice principal makes him drink soy sauce. ‘Jacky, drink this’ ‘I don t want to’ ‘You must. I am your elder and I say you must. This is Japan.’ ‘Okay…glug glug glug’ He has been to 5 or 6 parties between his two schools. My school has had zero. My supervisor apologized to me the other day for not having a welcome party. He said it s because of the student who killed himself the day I arrived. The teachers shouldn t do anything happy for a while to show that they are grief stricken.

Things to work on: Japanese, exercise, diet, going to onsens (bath houses) more, take pictures, see more of my peninsula. Until next time.

I was very fortunate to find a website that will broadcast football games live. The problem is, a 1 pm game back home starts at 2 am here. The bigger problem is that my Internet died several hours before kickoff. The repairman is coming over again today. This will be his third visit. His English is not very good, except for when it comes to vocabulary pertaining to fixing the modem. Then it is pretty good. I was wondering if it would be better to teach in this regard. Almost 0 of my students will go on to university. Most of them will get jobs in manufacturing. I was wondering if they would benefit from studying English geared toward that. Now, I know this isn t really practical in the classroom because the curriculum is governed by the board of education and not all students will go into manufacturing. Some will be hair dressors, secretaries, or other positions that do not require much formal education so the curriculum would have to be a bit more diverse. Now, I m not claiming I would be able to come up with the best curriculum for the class. I was just thinking, that in non-academic high schools, the students would benefit from English lessons that are not about the weather, or ‘I have a headache,’ or what they do in their free time. Hmmm, while I was writing this, I decided to examine the text a little more thorougly. Looking through the book, some of the later chapters will be of more value (giving directions, making plans/schedule, talking on the phone). We ll see. Maybe using this book would actually help someone in a more remedial position.

I guess this is a good time to write out a bit from the English textbook of my middle school first year students (ages 12-13).

===============================================================
‘A big old tree stands by a road near the city of Hiroshima. Through the years, it has seen many things. One summer night, the tree heard a lullaby. A mother was singing to her little girl under the tree. They looked happy, and the song sounded sweet. But the tree remembered something sad. ‘Yes, it was some sixty years ago. I heard a lullaby that night, too.’

On the morning of that day, a big bomb fell on the city of iroshima. Many people lost their lives, and many others were injured. They had burns all over their bodies. I was very sad when I saw those people.

It was a very hot day. Some of the people fell down near me. I said to them, ‘Come and rest in my shade. You’ll be all right soon.’

Night came. Some people were already dead. I heard a weak voice. It was a lullaby. A young girl was singing to a little boy.

‘Mommy! Mommy!’ the boy cried.

‘Don t cry,’ the girl said. ‘Mommy is here.’ Then she began to sing again.

She was very weak, but she tried to be a mother to the poor little boy. She held him in her arms like a real mother.

‘Mommy,’ the boy was still crying.

‘Be a good boy,’ said the girl. ‘You ll be all right.’ She held the boy more tightly and began to sing again.

After a while, the boy stopped crying and quietly died. But the little mother did not stop singing. It was a sad lullaby. The girl s voice became weaker and weaker.

Morning came and the sun rose, but the girl never moved again.

===============================================================
What kind of story is that to have in the foreign language textbook of a 12/13 year old?

I will have two new classes today. After that, I will have taught all of my classes at least once. I have already had one of the new classes today. It was the best high school class yet. Get this, the students actually asked questions. Supposedly, they are the same level as the class I have taught three times already. The class that is extremely low level. The class that will be very surprised when the students one day discover they exist. Supposedly, they are the same level. But this class was marvelous. Well, I guess they too were low level, but at least they were participating. That s all I really care about. I don t mind teaching lower level students as long as they are trying. Granted, I told this class that if they didn t ask questions, I would give them a test. I believe that played a large role. In fact, there were no questions before that. The questions were very easy. For example, the very first question was, ‘Are you tired?’ The next one was, ‘Do you like miso soup?’

The next class is supposed to be the highest level of the first year students. Each year is divided into 4 classes. 1-1, 1-2, and 1-3 are all of the same level. 1-4 is made of the top 35 students from the entrance exam. After the school year is over, the 35 highest GPAs will form the new 2-4. So a student could perform poorly on the entrance exam and be placed in 1-2, but then do well throughout the year and move up into the highest level class (2-4) the next year. The same is true for 1-4 students who do not perform well and move down the next year.

A number of students in each class enjoy listening to Eminem. I shouldn t be too surprised considering I liked Eminem when I was their age. But now I think he is a bit too mature for high schoolers. Funny how that works out.

I went to a bigger city this weekend. A few of us drove up on Friday night. It was a pretty good time. We got some excellent Ramen on the way there. It was much better than any Ramen in my town. It was spicy for one thing. And then, walking around town was pretty fun too. Our group of 5 American fellows ran into a group of 5 Japanese guys, and we hung out on the street corner for about an hour chewing the fat. It was great. That just doesn t happen in my small town where people my age do not live.
We actually stopped them as they were walking because one of the lads in my group wanted to purchase cigarettes from a vending machine. He put his money in and made his selection, but the machine told him he needed a certain card. The Japanese guys explained that you need to be a certain age to get the card. This is to prevent children from buying smokes. They said the card system was enacted this year. One guy said when he was 14, he was buying smokes from street machines.

I am not sure if I m going to motivate these kids to study English. We had a little listening exercise today. There were 8 short conversations about health, example, ‘Hi Tom. You don t look so good. Are you okay?’ ‘No, I have a stomachache.’ ‘Oh, that s too bad. You should take some medicine. Hope you feel better.’ The students had to listen for the problem and the solution.

When the listening part was over, we went to check the answers in class. It took about 20 minutes. I would say, ‘Okay, what s wrong with Tom?’ ‘Anyone, what s wrong with Tom?’ My co-teacher (known as a JTE) would then say, ‘Hint, Tom has a stomachache.’ (The questions were multiple choice, the answers were all in Japanese. So the JTE would say the English problem, and all the student would have to say is the corresponding number, 1 – 4.) Then I would just randomly call on a student. About half the time, the student knew the answer immediately, which I found weird. The other half of the class took a long time figuring it out. They would chat with the JTE in Japanese for a while, and would eventually answer. Mind you, they should have known all of the vocabulary because we went over it last week, and then again this week.

So, half the class just doesn t know. That s fine. The situation is not lost. The other half is just as worrying. When I asked my JTE about their silence even though they know the correct answer, he said, ‘In Japanese culture, people don t want to stand out, or force their opinions on people.’ So, even if the student knows the answer, he will not speak in class because he doesn t want everyone to think he is trying to be special. I have heard about this from other JETs, but this is the first time I have heard it from a Japanese person. He said it s pretty much the same situation at the academic high school where he used to work, but not to the same degree. I am not sure what I m going to do about this. I m not sure if there is anything I can do if it is so ingraned in the culture. Plus, I don t know how many students know the answer, and how many have what Bill Cosby would call, ‘The Brain Damage.’

The Internet has not been working at my house for at least 4 days. I went to the ATM yesterday and it refused to give me money. I will have more about that later. The bell just rang.

On the bright side, the package my parents sent me arrived, and tonight is the start of Fantasy Football. Plus, I get to leave work early to get home in time for the Internet repairman. And I think I will make tacos for dinner. There are quite a few more updates, but they ll have to wait. I ll write again soon. But for now, I have to go watch facial hair grow on my lifeless students

Back in the East.  Things are going quite well here in Nagasaki.  I have been here for one month and one day.  Well, most of that time was in Nagasaki.  I had to spend a few days in Tokyo for orientation.  That was a complete waste of time.  They gave us useful pieces of advice like: Don t go to work drunk.  Don t beat your students.  Don t tell your students they are idiots. 

My supervisor just told me he can take me to get a phone this very instant.  Gotta run.

Wow.  I thought I published this earlier, but I actually just saved it so I could continue working on it at a more convenient time.  Even when I make mistakes I m a genius.  I just got my phone.  It s pretty slick.  It was a $250 phone, but because of some discount it was marked down a bit, and then because they didn t have the cheap phone I wanted, he gave it to me for the cheap phone price.  Also, my plan is pretty great too.  I only get 62 minutes of call time a month, but that will hopefully be more than I need.  It will cost me 1.2 cents to send a text message.  It seems most every one here only communicates through text messaging.  I know quite a few JETs who have a monthly phone bill of about $60+.  They don t seem to think that s all to bad.  It seems pretty outrageous to me.  If I send 150 messages a month, my bill should be around $28.  I think I m getting a pretty good deal.

I m going to discuss a few problems I have with my placement, and then I will tell you how I will solve them.

The town where I reside is close to being out in the middle of nowhere.  There is a ‘city’ about 45 minutes away.  This is the loosest definition of the word one can use.  Though, it just recently built a McDonald s, so I guess we are not way out in the sticks.  We are getting close to being country folk who can make fun of real country folk.  I have only been to that city (called Shimabara) to go to the train station to get to a real city (like Nagasaki).  Unfortunately, the only way for me to reach Shimabara right now is using the public bus.  The bus in my town is about 400% more expensive than any other bus I have ever been on.  For example, a 1/2 hour ride on a Nagasaki bus cost me about $2.  A 1/2 ride on the bus in my town is pushing $7.  And that s not even the worst part about the bus.  I m ok with paying slightly higher prices for a night out on the town; it s to be expected, really.  My problem with the bus is that the last bus out of Shimabara is at 7:45.  What is that all about? 

The biggest problem with my town (called, Minamishimabara = South Shimabara) is that there are few people my age.  It is mostly young kids and the elderly.  This is not too much of a problem for my buddy, Jackie (A JET from America who lives about 30 seconds away), because he loves chit chatting with old women.  He s pretty good at it too.  I, on the other hand, don t speak Japanese, so I cannot engage in such worthwhile activities.  As a result, there are no locals my age who like to go out, have a few drinks, and shoot the shoots with a foreigner.  I feel like I m missing out on quite a bit by not having this opportunity.  I m going to have to learn Japanese quickly. 

The last problem with my placement is the school.  I told JET I would only teach high school students because I didn t want to teach lower level students.  I find the work much more fulfilling when I can have a little back and forth with my students, and when I can see that my students are motivated and dedicated.  However, my students are the ones who failed the high school entrance exam.  Therefore, they were not accepted at any of the reputable high schools in the area.  Consequently, my students are worse at English than many middle school students, and what s worse, they don t care to improve.  I m going to have to see if I can change their attitudes at all, or at least, get a few students in each class to actually care about the lesson. 

 I don t actually have a fix for that problem.  I have never taught a group of students as apethic about education as my current students.  Granted, I ve only had a few of the classes so far, so maybe the other classes are more enthusiastic. It is possible.  I think I will have to greatly reduce my standards and goals for the students, and maybe then we will be able to accomplish something little by little, instead of pushing too much, and going nowhere. 

 My fix for the other problems, however, is pretty simple.  I m going to get a car.  Then I won t have to worry about how expensive the bus is (driving to Shimabara will probably not be cheap, but it will be cheaper than a $14 round trip).  Also, I will not have to worry about what time the bus stops.  Finally, the city is where all of the younger people are, so I will have more people to talk to. 

As previously stated, I haven t had too many classes yet.  This is because the students just finished summer vacation last week, and are now preparing for Sports Day.  My childhood schools never had Sports Day (Field Day in the States, maybe?), but it s just a bunch of track and field events mixed with some random events. One of the random events is the smallest kid on the team will walk on the backs of the larger kids while they are hunched over.  The four teams race.  The first team to have the smaller kid go 100 meters wins.  Then there is this other event that I quite enjoyed.  It was all of the girls on one team vs all of the girls on another.  They stood at opposite ends of a soccer field.  seven 20ft. poles were laid across the half field line.  When the whistle blew, the girls would run and grab the poles and play tug o  war.  The girls were not assigned to any specific pole so one pole might have 10 girls vs 2 girls, and another might be 5 v 5.  Whenever a team got a pole back to their end, the girls would then run over to a different pole that had not been won yet.  So the last pole, which may originally have been 1 vs 2, would be around 20 vs 20 at the end.  It was a pretty interesting dynamic there.  I think it s a great game. 

I have a job for Sports Day.  I will be one of the nurses.  Specifically, my job is to put ice in bags.  I may be doing more than that considering one girl passed out from the heat during practice the other day.  Oh, also, the last event is a relay race that the teachers participate in.  I not sure which joker did it, but someone nominated me for one of the teachers  teams.  I have to run 100!   I haven t run any sort of distance in at least 8 years.  Nuts to that.  I m hoping the little bit of biking I do every day (ride to and from work) will have got me in just enough shape so I don t die when the race is over. 

I realize the majority of this lengthy installation is negative.  But that does not mean I am not enjoying myself, or wish I hadn t joined JET.  I am actually quite happy with my placement, and am looking forward to the rest of the year.  Before getting my placement, I wanted to be placed out in the middle of nowhere, and that hasn t changed.  I m in a really beautiful part of the world.  I have the mountains on one side of me, and the ocean on the other (less than a mile away.  I cannot hear the waves, unfortunately).  The food, although lacking the spicy heat I ve grown to love, is delicious.  The people here, despite the fact they are up in years are friendly.  One lady invited Jackie and I into her home and cooked us a giant pot of soup.  Another lady invited us to go play the Japanese drum.  And yet another lady, one of my coworkers, invited me to go javelin throwing.  My supervisor invited me to go boxing.  I m a bit skeptical about that one.  I m not sure what it means when my boss wants to punch me in the face so early in our relationship. 

I have not done too much exploring, but that should change fairly soon, particularly when I get a car.  I ll be able to go all over the place.  As for now, my mountain bike will have to do.  Oh yeah, my predecessor is awesome.  She left me all sorts of great stuff (she obtained the mountain bike for me for free).  My apartment is awesome too.  It s more almost twice the size of the place Irish and I were sharing in Korea.  The rent is cheap (this varies greatly from JET to JET).  I don t know what I m going to do with all of that room.  I talked to the music teacher here about the piano.  He and I are going to go through a couple catalogs for keyboards, see if we can find something suitable on the cheap.  If not, he said he would loan me one of the schools keyboards (but he said we have to do it secretly, so, shhhhh). 

I have the day off Friday and Monday because I have to work Saturday and Sunday for Sports Day.  Hopefully, I ll be able to use that time to explore a bit and take some photos.  And I have to talk to Nick, the guy who is maintaining this site for me (many many thanks, Nick), about video capabilities.  Since the site is so old (over 3 years) it s a few versions outdated.  Perhaps, we ll be able to update things and get some video on here. 

Hope everyone back home is doing well.   

I have left Korea.  Forever?  Perhaps.  I didn t even see my boss for my last week there.  He never came in, so I never said goodbye.  Oh well. Irish was still fired a month after my departure.  I found out that they hired the recruit I found.  I never received my $200 finder s fee.  Whatever.  I don t ever want to talk to the guy again.

 Oh, I also found out why I couldn t send my packages home by boat.  Apparently they were too heavy.  Heavy packages must be sent by plane, and are a lot more expensive.

 I have since been traveling…you know, I can t type on this keyboard. I ll have to switch.

I know it s been forever and a day since my last entry.  I was working on a large TOEFL project.  It was terrible.  We had to write 50 page long tests.   Each test took about 24 man hours to produce.  I was working with Ray and Irish.  Ray hated it, Irish kept pushing us to do it.  Eventually, (thankfully) Irish became fed up with the project too.  I told the boss nobody liked the project.  He got pissed.  Canceled the project.  Said he would throw everything we ve done in the trash.  You know, because that s the logical thing to do.

I also told the boss I wouldn t be staying for another year.  He disappeared for a week.  Since his return, he s been begging me to stay, with near tears in his eyes.  Pleading.  He also has been trying to get me to restart the TOEFL project.  I ve done my best to deflect his every plea.  I m not too keen on working 11 – 13 hours a day.  In fact, the only word I can use to describe that is, “NUTS!”

So now I m looking for a replacement.
Class has started, I ll fill in details later.

Happy Chinese new year.  Today is the actual holiday, but we had yesterday and will have tomorrow off as well.  And, we had to work last Sunday because we are getting this Saturday off.  So, we worked 9 days straight, but now we have a 5 day weekend.  I m going to the bus station in a few minutes.  Gonna head down to Gyeongju for a few days.  I need to get out of Seoul.
Nothing new to speak of over here.  Been working a few extra hours a week because of the winter vacation intensive classes.  I took all of Irish s high level classes and now he teaches all of the lower level students in the school.  Well, not all of them, but most of them.  There was word that Saturdays might be canceled after the vacation, but I very much doubt it.  Irish is still clinging to a bit of hope.

The foreign teacher manager, the man whom Irish and I depend on for everything, will probably quit in the next few weeks.  That s going to be devastating.  He doesn t make a whole lot of money, but he has an incredible work load.  If I were him, I would have quit a long time ago.

Some of my students are brain dead.  I have been teaching a W3 class (oldest students, but lowest level) for 4 weeks or so.  Which means, we ve had 8 or 9 classes.  One of my students in there has a 0%.  He has not done a single word of homework, nor has he ever opened his mouth in class.  Here are some of the gems I ve received in this class.  It is a writing class.  The topics come from their reading book.  The book covers beginner s topics like, Fuel consumption, Saving the Rain Forest, and my favorite,  Psychoanalysis………I ve complained about this book several times.  Anyway, this assignment was based off of the rainforest chapter.  The assignment was, “Write 10 sentences about how forests help people.”  Here are a few responses:

Cats and dogs have different natures.

The laws of nature.

Nature is the best physical.

——–Those three sentences came from the student with 0%.   It was on Monday, the first time he did his homework.  I started teaching him at the end of Dec.

Becomes the rest place

Clearly air

When elegy coming plentifully, to close a flood.

The bottle to do to recover

The carbon dioxide it absorbs water

Forest furnish us break place.  (I believe he means something along the lines of “we can make furniture from trees.”

A while ago, we started feeding a wild cat.  Eventually, the cat became friendly.  A little while after that, the cat started coming in the house.  A month after that, the cat peed on my bed.  I was not too happy.  We have a litter box now.  She hasn t used it once.  I no longer like the cat.  Irish still lets the thing in the house.  Right now, our friend s dog is living at our place.  She s much better than the cat.  I took her for a walk yesterday.  It was pretty nice.  I haven t gone for any walks in quite a while.  It s too cold.

I received that package you sent.  The gloves were really helpful, until I misplaced one.  There is a chance it is on my bed.  There are a lot of clothes on my bed.  Irish is really thankful for his gloves.  Little does he know I m taking them to Gyeongju with me today.  The goldfish, hamburger helper, soups, and most importantly, taco mixes are all much appreciated.   I don t know where I d be without those taco seasonings.

Our neighbor is still crazy.  Still screaming about recycling.  The other day, the paper guy finally showed up (at 8 30 am. grrrrr) to pick up her paper.  I d say the lady gave him about, if it were to all be stacked into one pile, a 50 – 60ft. pile of newspaper.  She had mountains of it.  The other day, I helped her carry something into her house.  She had plastic bags full of cardboard, shoes, other plastic bags.  The lady is a master recyclist.  I did not know that was a real word until just now.

One of my good friends went home, well, left Korea this week.  He ll be in Vietnam for a few months, just hanging around and the such.  It was  a little upsetting.  Next month will be much worse though.  Two of the four guys in my original group of friends are leaving.  The other two, Noah and Ben, took off over a year ago.  One of the guys, Matt, is the one who married a Korean lady.  He s been living here for over 4 years.  The other one, Michael, is the one who went home, came back, and is now leaving again.  I don t believe they re getting out of here before me.

Matt is busy trying to get his wife a visa.  The whole process is taking much longer than one would expect.  After all, they have been married for over 2 years.  It is not as bad as my Prof. s story.  I believe I wrote about it.  If you remember, he married a Vietnamese lady, and the consulate gave him a massive run-around and plenty of loops to jump through when he wanted to move back to the US.

The new president s education department is trying to make some major changes.  Schools are now going to focus much more heavily on English, much much more.  So, parents are going to want to send their kids abroad more.  Since Matt has been here a while, and his wife is Korean, his house in USA will be a prime spot for Korean children to stay when they come over.  He is looking to make a nice bit of money when he settles down over there.  The problem, of course, is he will never escape kimchi.

Saw the Vincent Van Gogh exhibit a few days back.  That was swell.  I went on one of the last days of the students  winter vacation.  One of their pieces of vacation homework is to go to a museum.  The place was jam packed.  I mean, filled to the brim.  It was insane.

The students are still on vacation however.  They have 6 week winter vacation, and then they go to school anywhere from 5 – 10 days, and then they have spring vacation.  During those 5 – 10 days, they participate in experimental educational activities like watching Shrek, cleaning desks, and taking naps.  One of my students said he only had a 3 hour day of school last Saturday.  He talked to friends for 30 minutes, and then slept for 2.5 hours.

We have not decorated the house yet.  But Irish recently had a great idea.  He proposed we hang up all of the punishment sentences we collect.  Whenever students don t do their homework, we make them write sentences like, “I will not waste class time”  “I will do my homework every day” and “I will do all of my homework every day, to the best of my abilities, so that years from now, when I am much older, I will be happy and successful and not have to rely on the help of my family and friends who took care of their responsibilities when they were in grade school.”  We collected an absurd amount of sentences in the past week and half.  I d say we have over 2 lbs. of looseleaf paper.

I know there are more things to talk about, seeing as how I haven t written anything in the last several weeks, but I just can t think of anything at this point.  I still can t take Korean lessons.  My level has class at 7 pm.  I guess I could take classes at another place, but it would be 4 hours 5 days a week.  It would also cost about $1500.  I have not found another academy that is as cheap or has as good hours as my place.  A 101 level started this month.  Irish claimed he was going to go, but he has skipped the first 3 classes.  We ll see how that works out.  He and I were talking about his Korean abilities a few days ago.  I challenged him to give me 10 Korean words.  He gave me 7 or 8.  I giggled.  He hasn t bothered to learn anything because he always goes where I go and never needs to speak for himself.

Ok, I m going to take off.  Happy new year.