Wow the trees dumped all of their leaves and I no longer hear the scary "atsuuii, atsuuii, atsuuii" (hot, hot, hot) whine of the cicadas anymore...when did that happen? It was so cold today and the sun went down at 6pm!! Omg isn't there any in-between for summer and winter geez, it was SO freaking hot like 2 weeks ago I swear! Now people are bringing all of these harvested fruits to school...
My teacher gave me a persimmon today...Is a persimmon called a persimmon because it tastes kind of like a pear with cinnamon? I tried to teach my town office persimmon today and it came out pelsimmon....
The Japanese usually replace L for R and R for L, so when talking about the upcoming US elections, replace the L with an R in "election" and see what you get ... I have to admit it is PRETTY entertaining to hear about "the most important election of the century" and "the big election" when spoken by a Japanese speaker. Immature I know... you try keeping a straight face...
Speaking of speech difficulties, when speaking English, the mouth is wider and the tongue does alot of acrobatics. I didn't realize how acrobatic English speakers' tongues are until now when I am teaching phonics to the young and old. I always have to open my mouth and show people what my tongue is doing. Does that means our tongues are stronger? Are we better kissers? Lol
Anywaaay, my favorite kanji character right now is "mori" which means forest because it looks like three sparkles attached together to make one massive sparkling word "Mori". It is so pretty, maybe I should be mori for halloween...my favorite English word is still bubble...I wonder what that looks like in kanji....
and I arrived! The End.
Monday, 27 October 2008
Thursday, 23 October 2008
Culture Shock
So I had a case of MAJOR culture shock for the first time on Monday. I went to one of the nursery schools that I hadn't been to yet...it was strange that no one was there to greet me and introduce me at the door, which is what usually happens. That should have been my first clue. I walked in and tried to speak to some teachers, but they didn't seem to know who I was. Then this random teacher character and I went to an office and looked at a calendar and 'discussed' that Thursday would be a better day for me, but then he kept saying something about "how much"...but I didn't know what he meant...how much time? how many students? how much Japanese did I know?I was really confused because an Assistant Language Teacher had always worked at this nursery school and the date had already been set with the principal of the nursery school not two weeks ago. All I knew is that we weren't going anywhere and I could feel that something really wrong. Up until this point, I had never been unable to communicate what I wanted or needed before, but somehow, we couldn't get through to each other no matter how many Japanese charades we played or pictures we drew. At that moment, I experienced a bout with the deadly virus called culture shock.
My stomach dropped, my lungs tightened, my heart beat faster, I could hear the ocean in my ears and I felt like I was absolutely, completely alone in the world. I could feel myself panicking, so I did what any normal person would do, told him hold on and started dialing people in my cell phone.I got ahold of my co-worker and had her listen to what he was saying. I thought he meant "how much time" but he meant "how much do you cost".It turns out that I had the wrong nursery school with the SAME NAME! WTF! Who names schools the same name maybe 10 minutes apart ARGH!?!
I was still reeling from the after-effects of shock in my car...I kept thinking...OMG I couldn't communicate with someone. I couldn't believe it. I felt like someone transported my screaming mind into a comatose patient. Utterly helpless and unconnected. It is an awful, awful feeling. I wonder if that's how babies feel...maybe that explains all the crying since really that's all you can do. Or explode.
I ended up making it to the right school, just in time for the lesson, and I had an hour to wind down and scream an English song on the radio. That helped immensely as did making my Japanese students dance the Monster Mash in my Halloween lesson plan.
My stomach dropped, my lungs tightened, my heart beat faster, I could hear the ocean in my ears and I felt like I was absolutely, completely alone in the world. I could feel myself panicking, so I did what any normal person would do, told him hold on and started dialing people in my cell phone.I got ahold of my co-worker and had her listen to what he was saying. I thought he meant "how much time" but he meant "how much do you cost".It turns out that I had the wrong nursery school with the SAME NAME! WTF! Who names schools the same name maybe 10 minutes apart ARGH!?!
I was still reeling from the after-effects of shock in my car...I kept thinking...OMG I couldn't communicate with someone. I couldn't believe it. I felt like someone transported my screaming mind into a comatose patient. Utterly helpless and unconnected. It is an awful, awful feeling. I wonder if that's how babies feel...maybe that explains all the crying since really that's all you can do. Or explode.
I ended up making it to the right school, just in time for the lesson, and I had an hour to wind down and scream an English song on the radio. That helped immensely as did making my Japanese students dance the Monster Mash in my Halloween lesson plan.
Tuesday, 21 October 2008
Dragon Boat Battleship
Upon hopping into the dragon boat itself ichi-e-ichi-go, we realized that no one really had any experience with boats or rowing, or drumming (in my case). This inevitably led to a series of mistakes, which could have led to the death of the dragon boat itself. Imagine a vast crowd of 300-ish Japanese people staring out over the water in front of stone docks, and then 10 gaijin girls trying to learn how to row in front of their eyes, DURING A RACE, no less. We couldnt figure out how to keep the boat straight, and scraped along the entire half of a football field of stone wall to the starting line. People were shouting at us trying to help us out (I think) ... but we don't speak Japanese. So this made us even more nervous and uncoordinated. Needless to say, we ended up wrecking into the boat in front of us, like a battleship ... talk about EMBARRASSING!! Then, in a crazy rowing feat, they somehow managed to turn their boat and grabbed ahold of our boat so we didnt hit anything else, like the stone docks. Afterwards, they took off away from us at lightning speed. By this time, we were further away from the bulk of the crowd and starting to realize how to row a boat. We eventually made it to the starting line, but then had to somehow maneuver ourselves to a straight line with the other rowers to hold a tiny rope. This was too much, it took us about 10 minutes of back and forth, side to side rowing to figure out how to get our boat to the right place with the rope. So umm yeah, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE was staring at us, and the Japanese rowers were trying to help us by shouting "righto" and "lefto" and making wild gestures, so we didnt hit anything else, like the stone bridge. On the loudspeaker I could hear something about "ALT's"(Assistant Language Teachers is what we all are), which could not be good based on our lack of rowing ability. We were getting frustrated and shouting at each other, trying to figure out which side should row to turn left, and which side should row to turn right. I'm not gonna lie, it was ugly.
Thank God we finally made it to the little rope... after holding up the race for10 minutes of a silent crowd and shouting rowers. Then, the gong sounded, and we expected to sink our boat...but somehow, it all just clicked. We all rowed altogether like we had been rowing for years, to the beat of my awesome drumming skills and WE WON THE RACE!! ... JK , we actually came in DEAD LAST, but the fact that we made it all the way without turning in circles (like the ALT's last year) was amazing. We were screaming and screaming and making a big ruckus and pumped our way back to the docks in a straight line and had our pictures taken and were greeted with hundreds of Japanese smiles of awe and probably relief. Ohhh freakin yeah! Glorious! That's how we do it both in and out of the classroom! ;)
Thank God we finally made it to the little rope... after holding up the race for10 minutes of a silent crowd and shouting rowers. Then, the gong sounded, and we expected to sink our boat...but somehow, it all just clicked. We all rowed altogether like we had been rowing for years, to the beat of my awesome drumming skills and WE WON THE RACE!! ... JK , we actually came in DEAD LAST, but the fact that we made it all the way without turning in circles (like the ALT's last year) was amazing. We were screaming and screaming and making a big ruckus and pumped our way back to the docks in a straight line and had our pictures taken and were greeted with hundreds of Japanese smiles of awe and probably relief. Ohhh freakin yeah! Glorious! That's how we do it both in and out of the classroom! ;)
5 - 9 hour road trip
On Saturday we took off to a place supposedly 5 hours south of kumamoto called kagoshima to participate in the dragon boat races, where strangely enough, boats with dragon heads race against each other. We had reserved our own dragon boat and I was super duper excited to be the official dragon drummer (where the rowers row to my beat). SO NINE HOURS later, we arrived. According to my calculations, we had to ask 5 conbene's (convenience stores), an onsen, the restaurant JoyFull, and finally a Japanese family for directions. This dad, mom and child drove with us for about 20 min out of their way, to make sure that we went the right way. I couldnt believe it! Who does that except for serial killers?! I have 3 letters: OIJ. That's my new quote: Only In Japan. They were SO freakin nice; of course we gave them whatever we could scrounge up from the 9 hour food stash, like a super sweet box of chocolates and ALL of our oreos. Anyhow, we sang at the top of our lungs, had multiple dance parties, sang happy birthday to the car on its 150thousandth mile, anything to keep us believing it was only 3 hours and had probably the best 9 hour road trip. I ate at conbenes all weekend, which I had heard of people doing, but had never done myself and hopefully never will again. We arrived, danced, had a great night, went to bed at about 5am, woke up at 7am, and got ready for the big dragon boat race.
Wednesday, 15 October 2008
Headache...
Prognosis:
Brain Binge-Eating
Cause and Effect:
Listening to Japanese all day after a 4 day weekend of mostly English causes immense pressure to the head and gives the impression of continuous pounding, making the ears and frontal brain lobe feel as if they are going to explode. This brain binge-eating is the result of a flood of Japanese into the ears after a 4 day fast.
Solution:
Sleep immediately and dream in English.
Brain Binge-Eating
Cause and Effect:
Listening to Japanese all day after a 4 day weekend of mostly English causes immense pressure to the head and gives the impression of continuous pounding, making the ears and frontal brain lobe feel as if they are going to explode. This brain binge-eating is the result of a flood of Japanese into the ears after a 4 day fast.
Solution:
Sleep immediately and dream in English.
Typical Mayhem
On Saturday, the school nurse and I hung out for like 5 hours trying to understand each other. We usually end up playing this little game called charades... perhaps you've heard of it? Yeah, it's my new favorite game. After impromptu charades we end up playing impromptu pictionary for further clarification of the language barrier. I always carry a pen and paper in my bag in case I need emergency pictionary, like if I need a train ticket and can't explain where. I learned many Japanese words- made pizza, drank coffee (weird combo!) and hung out. Her son joined us and we all attempted to have a conversation via the japanese-to-english version of charades and pictionary. Then OF COURSE, he asked to take a picture of me (so he could show his friends the foreign girl, I'm sure lol) but they were so great and I don't care that I'm a freak anymore. Later on, I headed to the city and we stumbled upon a random festival (as usual), English-speaker city folk (we usually collect together like water and make a gaijin splash lol), watched African-style Japanese dancers (whoa! oxymoron, I know) and drank sake out of mini wood boxes (that looked like you would put earrings or jewelry in). We headed over to Jeff's World Bar, a foreign fave, and later we went salsa dancing. We tried to go to a place called Party Party, but the party was over by the time we got there. So we hung out in the street talking, and then walked to our designated sleeping place for the night. All in all, it was a typical Japanese night of mayhem...
I'm a Lock Star! Lol I mean Rock Star!
So I just came back from my first nursery school class, and I feel like a rock star. If you feel sad, my solution to you is: go play with little kids. I’m dead serious. They jumped all over me and cried if they didn’t get to touch my hand. All I heard the entire time was Kasandora sensei Japanese-nonsense-this and Kasandora sensei. Japanese-nonsense-that. They served me Oolong tea out of flowers and dirty water and asked me if their mud rice balls were delicious. I was like Maria in the Sound of Music and they followed me like little ducks; I bet I could have started singing and they would have too. I was able to kind of teach them duck, duck goose, but the hokey pokey was just too much for them. Kate and I had a half hour meeting with 4 nursery school principals (4 of them) prior to today and they asked that I dress up for Halloween (since I won’t see them on Halloween). So I was Sacajawea and even found a Native American Doll, they loved it.
My first adult class was fun as well; I love being able to actually talk to them without singing or playing games. I introduced the concept of Show and Tell to them. The first Show and Tell was funny, the old guys get up and ramble on and on about their airplanes or whatever else they’re interested in. Then the other old people start asking questions in Japanese and I have to remind them that this is an English class. But we have fun, they are a great group. One guy brought his Swiss nail clippers to Show and Tell. Believe me it was fascinating...I didn’t want to touch them, but other people passed them around like they were the greatest thing ever. Then he explained that in his photo album, a picture of the aforementioned nail clippers could be found on page 54. It was actually pretty hysterical and I can’t wait to see what people are going to bring to my next adult class.
My first adult class was fun as well; I love being able to actually talk to them without singing or playing games. I introduced the concept of Show and Tell to them. The first Show and Tell was funny, the old guys get up and ramble on and on about their airplanes or whatever else they’re interested in. Then the other old people start asking questions in Japanese and I have to remind them that this is an English class. But we have fun, they are a great group. One guy brought his Swiss nail clippers to Show and Tell. Believe me it was fascinating...I didn’t want to touch them, but other people passed them around like they were the greatest thing ever. Then he explained that in his photo album, a picture of the aforementioned nail clippers could be found on page 54. It was actually pretty hysterical and I can’t wait to see what people are going to bring to my next adult class.
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
Honey Toast and Good Times
This weekend about 45 of us went to a beautiful little beach town called Amakusa. We swarmed en mass into our local Justco Supermarket (maybe trying to be Cosco?) and were greeted by the shocked stares of the local Japanese population who were unused to this herd of foreignness. We stayed in cabins and had a wonderful time with a DJ and lots of meat and bread. In the middle of the night, we had an impromptu bread festival to celebrate the Japanese belief that all English-speakers love bread. I woke up with a numb chin and good memories. I won’t elaborate here, as I’m sure you get the picture.
The next day, we went to see the Iron Man movie and I had the greatest dessert ever called Honey Toast. It’s the new love of my life. It’s half a LOAF (That`s right freaking HUGE) of Texas toast that has Japanese honey (which is less sweet and thick than American honey – more like a syrup) and ice cream. Together! Umm… When the waiter asked us if we would like more honey on our toast,, we said YES! Hell yes! He came back with a bottle and asked us to say stop when we wanted him to stop. THEN, he started singing
Boom Boom Boom Hachi Gato Boom. Boom Boom Boom Hachi Gato Boom. Boom Boom Boom Hachi Gato Boom.
By the time he got to the third stanza of this strange song, we realized that our bread was soaked in honey and said stop. We were so shocked that we just let him sing and sing. We had no idea what he was saying but it sounded cool. I tried to sing it to my teachers the next day and they thought it was great. The said it meant
Buzz Buzz Buzz, Flying Honey Bee. Buzz Buzz Buzz, Flying Honey Bee.
Apparently that dessert is famous in this area AND it comes with that song every time. WOW dessert AND a song, two things for the price of one; I’ll take it!
Forget cake, I want Honey Toast for my birthday and I especially someone to sing that song!
The next day, we went to see the Iron Man movie and I had the greatest dessert ever called Honey Toast. It’s the new love of my life. It’s half a LOAF (That`s right freaking HUGE) of Texas toast that has Japanese honey (which is less sweet and thick than American honey – more like a syrup) and ice cream. Together! Umm… When the waiter asked us if we would like more honey on our toast,, we said YES! Hell yes! He came back with a bottle and asked us to say stop when we wanted him to stop. THEN, he started singing
Boom Boom Boom Hachi Gato Boom. Boom Boom Boom Hachi Gato Boom. Boom Boom Boom Hachi Gato Boom.
By the time he got to the third stanza of this strange song, we realized that our bread was soaked in honey and said stop. We were so shocked that we just let him sing and sing. We had no idea what he was saying but it sounded cool. I tried to sing it to my teachers the next day and they thought it was great. The said it meant
Buzz Buzz Buzz, Flying Honey Bee. Buzz Buzz Buzz, Flying Honey Bee.
Apparently that dessert is famous in this area AND it comes with that song every time. WOW dessert AND a song, two things for the price of one; I’ll take it!
Forget cake, I want Honey Toast for my birthday and I especially someone to sing that song!
Thursday, 2 October 2008
10 Things I Love About Japan
I love it when my students attempt to flip each other off and use their ring finger instead. I almost die laughing; I will never correct them.
I love it when I see a boy casually sitting on another boy, or boys primping each other's hair, without caring how it looks.
I love it when we talk about things in class like “Can you find a skiing snowman?” and it turns into “Do you like the dancing girl?” or “the swimming boy”.
I love it when I make sweet rice (rice, sugar, milk, cinnamon) and they act like it is THE SICKEST thing in the world that they have ever heard of. Then, I love it more when I make them eat it as an American Challenge. (One guy had tears in his eyes that he WIPED AWAY as he ate it.)
I love it that my students have no idea that they're carrying around towels that say things like “natural born sex pervert” and they like it because it's in pretty pink cursive script. It makes me wonder what kind of Japanese (Chinese) characters we are carrying around or tattoing on ourselves.
I love it when I bow in my car at people when I go to work everyday.
I love it when I fill up my car and can only say things in Japanese that I know like “Car…I am full…please” and now my gasoline man knows who I am and tries not to laugh. (The town office tells me that the gasoline man is my boyfriend.)
I love that I make an example Show and Tell presentation with a Nalgene bottle and the students are so interested in the example, that we talk about my water bottle for like 1/2 hour.
I love that all of the English speakers are starting to say Japanese English like "See you" (instead of see you soon or see ya or see you later) or daijobu (instead of ok)
I love that I got 2 more schedules this week. I finally figured out how to tell which days are "A" "B" "C" or "Super C", but now there`s apparently another "Super Special Schedule". So in total there`s 11 schedules that I have and counting: lunch schedule, random-schedule-that-showed-up on-my-desk that I don`t understand, 5 daily schedules(A,B,C,SC,Super Special), town office schedule(which has schedules for my elementaries, nurseries and adult class), my monthly school schedule, different weekly school schedule AND English school schedule. PHEW!
I love it when I see a boy casually sitting on another boy, or boys primping each other's hair, without caring how it looks.
I love it when we talk about things in class like “Can you find a skiing snowman?” and it turns into “Do you like the dancing girl?” or “the swimming boy”.
I love it when I make sweet rice (rice, sugar, milk, cinnamon) and they act like it is THE SICKEST thing in the world that they have ever heard of. Then, I love it more when I make them eat it as an American Challenge. (One guy had tears in his eyes that he WIPED AWAY as he ate it.)
I love it that my students have no idea that they're carrying around towels that say things like “natural born sex pervert” and they like it because it's in pretty pink cursive script. It makes me wonder what kind of Japanese (Chinese) characters we are carrying around or tattoing on ourselves.
I love it when I bow in my car at people when I go to work everyday.
I love it when I fill up my car and can only say things in Japanese that I know like “Car…I am full…please” and now my gasoline man knows who I am and tries not to laugh. (The town office tells me that the gasoline man is my boyfriend.)
I love that I make an example Show and Tell presentation with a Nalgene bottle and the students are so interested in the example, that we talk about my water bottle for like 1/2 hour.
I love that all of the English speakers are starting to say Japanese English like "See you" (instead of see you soon or see ya or see you later) or daijobu (instead of ok)
I love that I got 2 more schedules this week. I finally figured out how to tell which days are "A" "B" "C" or "Super C", but now there`s apparently another "Super Special Schedule". So in total there`s 11 schedules that I have and counting: lunch schedule, random-schedule-that-showed-up on-my-desk that I don`t understand, 5 daily schedules(A,B,C,SC,Super Special), town office schedule(which has schedules for my elementaries, nurseries and adult class), my monthly school schedule, different weekly school schedule AND English school schedule. PHEW!
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