(written several hours ago)
I have very poor Internet access at the moment so I can't post anything. It's annoying timing, since I have all this time at home now it's holidays. But anyway, I've been writing random posts the last few days...
(am trying several times to post this. My Internet access is very, very slow and keeps stopping. When my Internet is like this, it's easier for me to access Blogger than, say, email, because email has more screens to go through.)
Thur 27 Dec
Ureshii! (I'm happy!) I've signed up for Internet. I won't get it until the second week of January, but who cares? Right now I can only access the 'net sitting cross-legged on the floor in the exact same spot in my room, waiting and waiting for things to load. It hurts my back, and I've wasted so much time waiting for the slow connection.
Plus, earlier in the week, I couldn't use the Internet at all. I don't like being at the whim of someone else's connection. What if they stop their Internet service altogether? Then *I* don't have it. I'd like to say I made the moral decision not to 'borrow' someone else's wireless, but the truth is, if their wireless was *good*, I probably would have just continued using it...
***
Today was a good day at work. I only had two private lessons.
K, the student who got drunk yesterday, came in for three classes today (he was only supposed to have two today, but he had to make up the class he couldn't make yesterday due to the fact that he was lying on the floor of the interview room, inebriated).
He was very apologetic and bowed with many 'sumimasen's, haha... He is one of my favourite students though because he is able to infuse the most boring classes with energy and humour.
The other private lesson was with my Mexican student. His favourite lesson style is just free conversation, which I enjoy very much, because he is easy-going and has plenty to say.
I was also lucky enough to behold the practice for a play some of the students will be doing. The lead actor (a guy, who is playing the most beautiful woman in Japanese folklore) came in to practice with Jim. It was so hilarious, I wish I had a video camera. The student is a natural, and he is going to wear his sister's yukata. I could hear them practicing while I was making my lesson materials. Later, they practiced in the lobby and I got to join in, taking some of the extra parts.
***
I've been very busy lately preparing for this 'fun day' we're having at the end of next week. It's a day of fun lessons and games; students can come and join in on any class they like. I am running a few games like Taboo and Pictionary, as well as a class on Aussie culture and language, a class on idioms, and a couple of others.
There is a lot of work involved in planning a class from scratch. I had to create enough Taboo cards to last an hour (we don't have the game here, and we need to use much simpler vocab), I've been making up handouts for my Aussie lesson, and making up lots of 'drill cards' for my idioms class. It's fun work though, the kind of thing I enjoy.
Fri 28 Dec
Okay, as it happens I can't get any Internet access at all today. This is pretty annoying, so I'll just type on my computer...
I had my first shamisen lesson today. It was great fun. It's been a long time since I tried to learn a new musical instrument for the first time. I'm going to have another lesson next week. After that, I'm not sure. It would be nice to continue and also have my own shamisen to practice on. But shamisen are expensive, and the shamisen class is in Ueno, in Tokyo. It takes me just over an hour to get there, so the only time I can really do it is Monday, my day off...
***
I speak differently when I talk to students. I cut about 90% of idioms out of my language. Sometimes I will use idioms so I can explain what they mean, but I know that any time I do use an idiom, I will have to explain it, and you don't want to constantly stop what you're saying. I didn't realise how much my speaking had changed until an advanced-level student asked me to speak using casual Australian. I couldn't do it!
In Australia my spoken English was often pretty atrocious. I'd often say things like 'I could totally go a burger' or 'I reckon I've had about enough of this' or 'this is a bit of alright' (pronounced 'this izza bit of alroight...')...
Now, I'm a changed person. I instinctively aim for the simplest, clearest ways of expressing things. This is only with students and all Japanese people (in other words, 'only' with almost everyone I speak to :)). When I talk to Jim or (rarely) another Westerner I do immediately revert to 'normal' speech. But I find it very difficult to do it with students, even at their request.
I tell you what though, I never realised just how many idioms there are in the English language. An idiom is basically any phrase where the words do not take on their literal meaning, but have a different meaning. There are stacks of them. ;)
Sat 29 Dec
Today I got up at about 1pm, which is pretty disgraceful. Like, I *know* I won't be able to get to sleep until 3am tonight, but somehow it doesn't stop me... They have these trucks that drive around the neighbourhoods here with megaphones, broadcasting messages. Today there was an annoying one playing children's music. I don't know what they are all about. I can still 'sleep in' through them though...
Today was the first day in ages that I didn't take a train anywhere but just mooched around in my own 'suburb'. What I did (in mid-afternoon, by the time I was finally ready to go outside...) was walk down the street to the Cafe de Crie... I sat there over two cappuccinos and read a book I bought yesterday. It's a book of the correspondence between Bernard Shaw and Ellen Terry and it was published in 1931. It seemed an appropriate sort of book to read in a place called the Cafe de Crie, sitting before the window, looking out at the rain-drenched streets, with people smoking nearby. I don't know why...
For the first time I realised what was meant by 'cutting' pages, as many pages were bound together (fortunately not all of them, as the book has nearly 500 pages!) It feels strange to cut the pages of a book that's over 75 years old. What it actually means is that this book has existed for 75 years, yet I am the first person to ever read these pages. And how strange that this book, published in Great Britain so long ago, should come to be in a bookshop in Jimbocho, Tokyo.
Yesterday I went to Jimbocho after my shamisen lesson. Jimbocho is an area of Tokyo known for its many second-hand bookstores. I had a good time wandering its streets. Most of them were Japanese, of course, but I did find this one bookstore where most of the books were in English, and most of them too intellectual or classical for me. Helene Hanff (who wrote 84 Charing Cross Road) would have had a ball in there; I saw many of her favourites in there; it's due to her that I heard of Ellen Terry in the first place. But I bought three books and was happy. :)
Anyway, where was I? After lingering at the Cafe de Crie, I went walking the main streets near my house. I should try to describe them, but I'm not very good at that sort of thing. There are lots of small, specialty shops that seem to be locally owned. There are a couple of chain stores - a McDonalds and a Mister Donut, for example - but most of them are 'hole in the wall' stores, a little bit ramshackle, with home-made posters and goods piled higgledy-piggledy in the windows.
The street itself is not what you would call picturesque - it's not exactly sparking and modern, and there are quite a few telephone wires, and shop curtains - but when there are lots of people about, the street has a kind of cool market feel. There are lots of older ladies lining up to buy their fish or vegetables, and people loading up their bicycles with fresh produce. There are fish shops, lots of fruit and vegetable shops, watch shops, glasses shops, shoe shops, crockery shops, electronics shops; all sorts. And there are really only locals that shop there, because this area is not famous for anything.
I like it very much.
This area is only 5-10 minutes' walk from my apartment. So when I went down a side-street to check out the markets there, I figured I'd just walk around the block and take a different route back onto my own street (it was literally two streets away from my street). BAD IDEA. Don't ask me how it was possible to get lost for two hours. Don't ask. All I can say is that the area in which I live is a total rat's maze of endless small side streets and irregularly designed blocks, and it was not long before I had no idea whatsoever of the points of the compass; I didn't even know which general direction the train station was - it could have been any direction at all, for all I knew. Also, this is just a vast, sprawling suburban neighbourhood, so there's not much by way of public maps, signs, and directions.
I kept thinking at any moment that I'd run into a familiar street, and don't really like asking for directions - I was quite enjoying my walk for a while anyway - but eventually I was forced to ask for directions. The first lady I asked, I was worried she was going to try to walk with me the whole way, taking her ages out of her way, but in the end, she gave me a long, complicated stream of directions, of which I understood almost nothing. But I said, 'hai, wakarimashita, wakarimashita, arigato gozaimasu' (yes, I understand, I understand, thank you) several times, and she left me. (Of course I didn't understand, but I didn't want her to feel obliged to walk me the whole way there!)
The second lady I asked, I actually understood a good deal of what she said (it helped that by this stage, I was closer to my destination and thus it was easier to explain); she used lots of the words from the 'Japanese for Busy People' lesson I studied recently - hidari, massugu, shingo, kousaten (left, straight ahead, traffic light, crossing).
The third girl I asked gave me the blessedly reassuring, single-word answer 'massugu' (straight ahead), so that was easy enough. :)
I still can't believe I got quite as lost as I did. I think I was heading north instead of east and thus never even hit the train station... but I erroneously thought I had crossed the tracks early on, so I was completely disoriented. I mean, I've never claimed to have a great sense of direction, but two hours was a new low, even for me... hahaha!
Anyway, the moral of the story is, Always Walk Back The Same Way You Came!
***
I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas, and I wish you all the happiest of new years. :)
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Quick note
This is just a quick note to say thank you to Catherine, Jo, Fi and Stace - I went into work on Christmas Day and found two lovely Christmas gifts waiting in my pigeonhole. (I am eating BBQ Shapes right now as I type this. :)) Thank you so much! I've been enjoying watching Summer Heights High deleted scenes - it will come in handy for my New Year's break - and eating Byron Bay cookies. The photo is on my table and I just ran out of soap, so all the gifts are much appreciated. :)
Actually, the gifts were the only part of the day that felt like Christmas! I had quite a good, relaxed day at work, but it certainly didn't feel like Christmas. So it was extra nice to get them. :)
Today we had a Christmas party at work (yes, the day after Christmas - today was the first day I could go into Starbucks and not have to listen to Ella Fitzgerald singing 'White Christmas' for the hundredth time). About eight students came. It was fun. One of the guys - I mentioned my funny student who gestures like an Italian? - had four beers in a very short period of time. He got very red in the face and kept declaring the same things over and over again. He got completely drunk and had to lie down in the interview room to recover. He was supposed to have a private lesson with me after the party but he wasn't up to it (mind you, this is around lunch time...) so he kind of staggered off home. It was pretty funny.
I joined the library today, so I have enough reading material to last me for the New Year's break. I've also found myself a second Japanese teacher, and will take lessons with her sporadically (she can't teach me every week). And on Friday I'm going to take a lesson in the shamisen (traditional Japanese three-stringed musical instrument). Should be interesting!
My Internet has been unusually bad the last few days. I've decided I'm sick of it, even though it will be expensive and a big hassle to organise, tomorrow I am going to try to arrange to get Internet. There's no doubt it *will* be a hassle, everything is when you don't speak Japanese. But I don't want to spend the next 11 months sitting hunched over the laptop in the one corner of the room where the Internet works, spending an hour trying to access one or two pages... Whatever happens with this, I probably can't get it installed until after the New Year's break, so I may be a bit hard to contact depending on whether my connection improves or not.
Anyway, I'm going to *try* to post this and watch some more Summer Heights High. :)
Actually, the gifts were the only part of the day that felt like Christmas! I had quite a good, relaxed day at work, but it certainly didn't feel like Christmas. So it was extra nice to get them. :)
Today we had a Christmas party at work (yes, the day after Christmas - today was the first day I could go into Starbucks and not have to listen to Ella Fitzgerald singing 'White Christmas' for the hundredth time). About eight students came. It was fun. One of the guys - I mentioned my funny student who gestures like an Italian? - had four beers in a very short period of time. He got very red in the face and kept declaring the same things over and over again. He got completely drunk and had to lie down in the interview room to recover. He was supposed to have a private lesson with me after the party but he wasn't up to it (mind you, this is around lunch time...) so he kind of staggered off home. It was pretty funny.
I joined the library today, so I have enough reading material to last me for the New Year's break. I've also found myself a second Japanese teacher, and will take lessons with her sporadically (she can't teach me every week). And on Friday I'm going to take a lesson in the shamisen (traditional Japanese three-stringed musical instrument). Should be interesting!
My Internet has been unusually bad the last few days. I've decided I'm sick of it, even though it will be expensive and a big hassle to organise, tomorrow I am going to try to arrange to get Internet. There's no doubt it *will* be a hassle, everything is when you don't speak Japanese. But I don't want to spend the next 11 months sitting hunched over the laptop in the one corner of the room where the Internet works, spending an hour trying to access one or two pages... Whatever happens with this, I probably can't get it installed until after the New Year's break, so I may be a bit hard to contact depending on whether my connection improves or not.
Anyway, I'm going to *try* to post this and watch some more Summer Heights High. :)
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Yuki Matsuri ni ikimasu!
Woohoo! I'm going to the Sapporo Snow Festival next year!!
If you've never heard of it, it's this thing here.
I mean, just look at those pictures! I get to see that next year!
I'm just going up there for two nights; I've organised to have one day off work in February. I've never been to Hokkaido before so I'm looking forward to seeing the city, and seeing some snow. It should be pretty cold up there!
I still have to book accommodation though... it's a difficult time of year, there will probably be about two million tourists during the snow festival...
If you've never heard of it, it's this thing here.
I mean, just look at those pictures! I get to see that next year!
I'm just going up there for two nights; I've organised to have one day off work in February. I've never been to Hokkaido before so I'm looking forward to seeing the city, and seeing some snow. It should be pretty cold up there!
I still have to book accommodation though... it's a difficult time of year, there will probably be about two million tourists during the snow festival...
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
More random updates...
Last week I went outside the department store building where I work, to get my usual coffee, and what did I find but a full gospel choir! There were about 80 of them, Japanese people, but singing English Christmas carols and some popular gospel tunes ('Joyful Joyful' was one, I seem to remember). They were really good! With the faster songs they even did the whole swaying, clapping gospel choir thing.
Lots of passers-by were stopping and smiling. It was very infectious.
***
I got a haircut on the weekend. To get there I went along Motomachi street, near Chinatown. This street is pretty cool. It reminds me of a street in Paris or Sydney (okay, so Paris and Sydney are pretty different...)... the road is small, quiet, and one-way, and the street is lined with designer stores. Of course I didn't buy any designer goods but I had a nice cappuccino and salami pesto sandwich in a bakery.
The hairdresser was cool; the teacher I replaced told me about him. hahah... he was quite a young, cool guy. The haircut he gave me was okay - I'd say, so-so ('so-so' is an expression that Japanese students use all the time) - but I will go back to him because the service was so good, I feel like I am already 'his' customer.
When I first went into the salon, he was making endless small talk with his client. After he was done with her, he started with me - a continual stream of questions and conversation. It was fun, and I couldn't help thinking - hairdressers really are the same all over the world.
The hairdresser speaks English, but punctuated with the most 'anou's and 'sou ka's I've ever heard... a lot of Japanese people use the occasional Japanese word or phrase when they are thinking - 'etouuu' ('uhh...') is common. My manager often says 'nandarou...' (which means something like 'let me think...').
I have one really beginner student who sometimes simply says Japanese sentences instead of English ones, because she simply lacks the words. I'm pretty proud of myself - one student said he went to a casino, and she asked me a question in Japanese. I translated it 'how much money did you lose?' I could understand enough Japanese to work out what she wanted to say.
I can understand pretty well all of the train announcements now. 'mamonaku' means 'presently'. 'kakueki teesha' means 'local train'. 'Omiya-yuki' means 'bound for Omiya'. Then there's 'doa ga shimarimasu - go-chui kudasai' ('the doors are closing - take care please')
***
I've more than doubled the size of my wardrobe since I came here: two new jumpers, six new shirts, two new tops, two new pairs of shoes, a new jacket for work, a padded jacket, gloves, pyjamas and thermals. It's pretty bad really. I'm not even done yet. I'd like another couple of pairs of shoes, and some black pants, and new jeans.
***
Reading hiragana and katakana has proved more difficult than I first imagined. I had pretty well learned the hiragana before I moved to Japan, and a few katakana. In my first week in Kyoto I kept looking up the hiragana and katakana on signs to practise and learn the characters I didn't remember. Since then I have intermittently practised reading hiragana and katakana in my textbook, on signs, and from children's books.
Despite all this, I still haven't *mastered* them. I still have to *think*. I guess some things, you can't just learn by osmosis. You have to study them properly, until you really know them. Just because you're surrounded by Japanese characters all day, it doesn't mean you'll magically learn them all without any real effort.
The one thing I do seem to be gradually improving in without studying, is numbers - I understand them more quickly. Sometimes now, I can understand how much money someone is asking for, without looking. Haha... but not that often...
The other day I got a letter. I thought it was for the previous resident, as the label was all in Japanese. But actually it was for me (from my insurer). Seems I don't even recognise my own name any more. Haha... I've had to write my name in katakana a few times now... and write my year of birth in terms of the Emperor's reign.
Did you know that? I was pretty surprised! On official documents, you write your birthdate as the year of the Emperor's reign. For example, if you were born in 1980, you were born in the year '55'... the 55th year of the previous Emperor's rule. This year is 19 - the 19th year of the current Emperor. My train pass had 19/12/11 as the end date - meaning 11 Dec 2007... who would have thought?
***
When I first got my teaching schedule during teacher's training, I had no private lessons. But now I have quite a few. This week I have four; next week, at least four, but different ones... it's kind of a quiet time of year, and next week there are no 'official' lessons, so it's a popular time for 'once-off' lessons.
One of my regular private students, K, is great. He has so much energy, and a great attitude. He takes so many classes! I can't describe this guy but he's hilarious. He's so outgoing and always smiling, and he gestures like an Italian, and over-emphasises almost everything. Very unusual for a Japanese guy!
Jim, my fellow teacher, says that when he is teaching, he always over-emphasises words and gestures so that the students will at least slightly emulate him - because students rarely emphasise words and feeling enough unless really encouraged to do so. (In his words, 'I give 150%, so they will give me 20%...') He says K is the only student who emulates him exactly and goes just as over-the-top. He says they look so ridiculous together, over-acting every expression...
Whenever I say 'are you ready?', K will exclaim 'come on!' and put up his fists like he's ready for a fight. Hahah... Jim told him that a big guy like him shouldn't say that, or he'll scare people...
My other private lessons? Next week I have a couple of once-off private lessons with a Mexican student. I think he's about the only non-Japanese student at the school. He's a cool guy and speaks fairly good English. You can really notice the difference in attitude between him and most Japanese students. For example, he's quite friendly, and not shy about asking questions, and has a strong, firm handshake (most Japanese people give 'wet fish' handshakes).
You can also notice the difference in how he speaks English. He doesn't know as much vocabulary as the Japanese students in his level, but his sentence structure is much better - he's one of the few students in the school who uses 'the' and 'a' correctly - since Spanish is so much more similar to English than Japanese is.
Another private student is a flight attendant. We kind of teach her whatever she feels like learning, but it can be a little difficult for me to wing lessons like that... she's good for a conversation though. I can spend a long time preparing for these lessons.
Another private student is a uni student who is just having a few once-off classes for free conversation. I'm happy to 'freely converse' with her, but I'm not sure how beneficial it really is... and it seems pretty expensive for a conversation..
Then there's my regular whom I am teaching business English too, but the English is too advanced for him, nice guy though he is. So it's somewhat boring as all I can do is drill pronunciation over and over...
Lots of passers-by were stopping and smiling. It was very infectious.
***
I got a haircut on the weekend. To get there I went along Motomachi street, near Chinatown. This street is pretty cool. It reminds me of a street in Paris or Sydney (okay, so Paris and Sydney are pretty different...)... the road is small, quiet, and one-way, and the street is lined with designer stores. Of course I didn't buy any designer goods but I had a nice cappuccino and salami pesto sandwich in a bakery.
The hairdresser was cool; the teacher I replaced told me about him. hahah... he was quite a young, cool guy. The haircut he gave me was okay - I'd say, so-so ('so-so' is an expression that Japanese students use all the time) - but I will go back to him because the service was so good, I feel like I am already 'his' customer.
When I first went into the salon, he was making endless small talk with his client. After he was done with her, he started with me - a continual stream of questions and conversation. It was fun, and I couldn't help thinking - hairdressers really are the same all over the world.
The hairdresser speaks English, but punctuated with the most 'anou's and 'sou ka's I've ever heard... a lot of Japanese people use the occasional Japanese word or phrase when they are thinking - 'etouuu' ('uhh...') is common. My manager often says 'nandarou...' (which means something like 'let me think...').
I have one really beginner student who sometimes simply says Japanese sentences instead of English ones, because she simply lacks the words. I'm pretty proud of myself - one student said he went to a casino, and she asked me a question in Japanese. I translated it 'how much money did you lose?' I could understand enough Japanese to work out what she wanted to say.
I can understand pretty well all of the train announcements now. 'mamonaku' means 'presently'. 'kakueki teesha' means 'local train'. 'Omiya-yuki' means 'bound for Omiya'. Then there's 'doa ga shimarimasu - go-chui kudasai' ('the doors are closing - take care please')
***
I've more than doubled the size of my wardrobe since I came here: two new jumpers, six new shirts, two new tops, two new pairs of shoes, a new jacket for work, a padded jacket, gloves, pyjamas and thermals. It's pretty bad really. I'm not even done yet. I'd like another couple of pairs of shoes, and some black pants, and new jeans.
***
Reading hiragana and katakana has proved more difficult than I first imagined. I had pretty well learned the hiragana before I moved to Japan, and a few katakana. In my first week in Kyoto I kept looking up the hiragana and katakana on signs to practise and learn the characters I didn't remember. Since then I have intermittently practised reading hiragana and katakana in my textbook, on signs, and from children's books.
Despite all this, I still haven't *mastered* them. I still have to *think*. I guess some things, you can't just learn by osmosis. You have to study them properly, until you really know them. Just because you're surrounded by Japanese characters all day, it doesn't mean you'll magically learn them all without any real effort.
The one thing I do seem to be gradually improving in without studying, is numbers - I understand them more quickly. Sometimes now, I can understand how much money someone is asking for, without looking. Haha... but not that often...
The other day I got a letter. I thought it was for the previous resident, as the label was all in Japanese. But actually it was for me (from my insurer). Seems I don't even recognise my own name any more. Haha... I've had to write my name in katakana a few times now... and write my year of birth in terms of the Emperor's reign.
Did you know that? I was pretty surprised! On official documents, you write your birthdate as the year of the Emperor's reign. For example, if you were born in 1980, you were born in the year '55'... the 55th year of the previous Emperor's rule. This year is 19 - the 19th year of the current Emperor. My train pass had 19/12/11 as the end date - meaning 11 Dec 2007... who would have thought?
***
When I first got my teaching schedule during teacher's training, I had no private lessons. But now I have quite a few. This week I have four; next week, at least four, but different ones... it's kind of a quiet time of year, and next week there are no 'official' lessons, so it's a popular time for 'once-off' lessons.
One of my regular private students, K, is great. He has so much energy, and a great attitude. He takes so many classes! I can't describe this guy but he's hilarious. He's so outgoing and always smiling, and he gestures like an Italian, and over-emphasises almost everything. Very unusual for a Japanese guy!
Jim, my fellow teacher, says that when he is teaching, he always over-emphasises words and gestures so that the students will at least slightly emulate him - because students rarely emphasise words and feeling enough unless really encouraged to do so. (In his words, 'I give 150%, so they will give me 20%...') He says K is the only student who emulates him exactly and goes just as over-the-top. He says they look so ridiculous together, over-acting every expression...
Whenever I say 'are you ready?', K will exclaim 'come on!' and put up his fists like he's ready for a fight. Hahah... Jim told him that a big guy like him shouldn't say that, or he'll scare people...
My other private lessons? Next week I have a couple of once-off private lessons with a Mexican student. I think he's about the only non-Japanese student at the school. He's a cool guy and speaks fairly good English. You can really notice the difference in attitude between him and most Japanese students. For example, he's quite friendly, and not shy about asking questions, and has a strong, firm handshake (most Japanese people give 'wet fish' handshakes).
You can also notice the difference in how he speaks English. He doesn't know as much vocabulary as the Japanese students in his level, but his sentence structure is much better - he's one of the few students in the school who uses 'the' and 'a' correctly - since Spanish is so much more similar to English than Japanese is.
Another private student is a flight attendant. We kind of teach her whatever she feels like learning, but it can be a little difficult for me to wing lessons like that... she's good for a conversation though. I can spend a long time preparing for these lessons.
Another private student is a uni student who is just having a few once-off classes for free conversation. I'm happy to 'freely converse' with her, but I'm not sure how beneficial it really is... and it seems pretty expensive for a conversation..
Then there's my regular whom I am teaching business English too, but the English is too advanced for him, nice guy though he is. So it's somewhat boring as all I can do is drill pronunciation over and over...
Sunday, December 16, 2007
This post is mostly about food, for some reason...
It's getting really cold now. It will get quite a bit colder than this, though. Today I tried to find a nice warm, padded jacket - everyone wears them here - but they all make me look like the Michelin Man.
I've been trying out origami; I bought a book of patterns. It's fun. What I like about it is that you can't rush it, or do other things at the same time. I'm used to surfing the 'net while typing an email while listening to music while channel surfing on TV... But with origami, you have to sit and focus on what you're doing.
I went to church again today. It's pretty good, and I like the service. The fact that the youth pastor is really good looking also doesn't hurt... The only thing I don't like is the whole 'small talk' aspect of meeting lots of people you don't really know. It would be the same anywhere, I know. Here, it's slightly more difficult because most of the congregation are Japanese - or look Japanese - so you can't tell at a glance whether they will even speak English or not (a lot of them do, but not all).
I think it's time I started taking the initiative and inviting people to do things. I am enjoying life here but the main thing I want to be doing, that I'm not doing, is just generally having more experiences out and about in different places in the cities... for example, when I go out by myself I tend not to go into any buildings if I can't understand where I'm going. Trying out new restaurants with different types of food - the kind of place where you need the restauranteur to explain how to eat each dish - and go to places that require local knowledge.
I realised that the main reason I'm shy about going into restaurants by myself isn't primarily because I'm shy about speaking Japanese. I just don't like going into restaurants by myself. I mean, even in Australia, I don't like going into restaurants by myself - restaurants are such social places.
What I am enjoying are frozen dinners, supermarket meals, and convenience store meals. That sounds bad... but they're so good and cheap! For dinner tonight, I had some gyoza (Chinese dumplings - 'jiao zi' in Chinese), a small frozen pizza, some Vietnamese cold rolls, a slice of baked cheesecake and a mini Kit Kat. Okay, I ate too much...
The convenience store has a selection of pre-packaged meals that they'll heat up for you. There are some really good rice dishes, and some pasta dishes, and this nice udon laksa... it's like, sure, if I tried, I could probably cook meals slightly better than the convenience store meals. But these meals are like $4 or $5 and require No Preparation Time From Me. When you get home at 10pm, you don't feel like cooking anything but the most simple stir-fry...
I do have a few bad temptations, as far as food goes. There are some really delicious frozen cream-based pasta meals that I like. I cook them in my toaster oven and slather them with parmesan. One of these meals costs under $4 and it's very filling; not like Australian frozen dinners where you always need something else to supplement the meal...
(I'm finding that most things here are cheaper than back home. I never thought of Australia as an expensive country, but it seems that with the strength of our dollar, we are more expensive.)
Then there's the chocolate croissants, but actually these aren't such a temptation as the bakeries nearest work are not so great; I only eat one when I haven't eaten breakfast and have no time to eat something decent.
Gyoza are a huge temptation. I always loved jiao zi but never found them often back home. In Japan they're everywhere. And they're soooo good... but they're fried in a lot of oil...
I'm also eating burgers a little more often than back home. My usual lunch is at Subway, but some days after an afternoon of teaching, my 'hamu to chedda cheezu tosuto' just isn't enough, so I get a Becker's Burger... they're so good...
Apart from that, I guess I'm not so bad. The desserts here, for example, usually don't tempt me that much. Today's cheesecake was a rare exception. :)
I don't know why I'm rambling on about food... it's not like I'm hungry, having eaten so much... I always say you shouldn't go into a supermarket when you're hungry. That's probably why I ended up buying far too much this evening. I bought about eight things I felt like eating and only got through half of them, hahah...
What did I do today, apart from go to church? Hmmm... I came back through Yokohama station and tried to go shopping to buy a padded jacket... it really is so cold... I'm wearing the kind of clothes I would wear for winter in Australia, and the cold just bites through them like I'm not wearing them at all.
The shopping centres around Yokohama station are labyrinthine... I get so lost. I bought a few bits and pieces, including - I'm ashamed to say - more food. I bought Tim Tams (I'm such a sad Australian... you can only find them in specialty shops, but I've found a few of them...). I found Time Out bars as well! And green curry sauce... mmm... I want to eat Thai green curry, enough that I will actually be motivated to cook it. I haven't had it since I moved here. I also bought an Indian curry sauce which looks good. The only curry I've had here is 'curry rice', a peculiarly Japanese invention which, while not bad, is just not the same. I have a rice cooker, but I think I'll just buy pre-cooked steamed rice from the convenience store.
(Convenience stores really are convenient. There are three within three minutes' walk of my house. I even pay my utilities bills at the 'conbeni'.)
You can really find most foods here if you put your mind to it. Though sometimes only a particular variety of a food is common.
For example, virtually all Italian restaurants serve these huge but anaemic spaghetti dishes with a meagre sprinkle of mushrooms or clams or small bacon pieces or whatever... I find the sauces a bit disappointing. I'd love a rich, hearty, tomato-ey lasagna full of mushrooms and onion... mmm... or maybe penne pasta bake... some type of pasta other than spaghetti...
Another example is bread. Virtually all bread is white, and very thickly sliced. It's fresh and delicious. But it's bloating, especially in the morning. I'm so used to eating multigrain bread, which I prefer, that I struggle to eat breakfast at all now. So now I am buying rye bread, the only other option available. It's very similar to white bread - in Australia it probably wouldn't be called rye at all - but slightly more palatable.
Generally I'm eating about as wide a variety of food here as I would back home. And to be honest I don't eat that much Japanese food; only when I eat out with others. When I'm really hungry, I want something filling and hearty, and sometimes Japanese food just doesn't fit the bill. I do love Japanese noodles though, and I like nabe and shabu shabu (both forms of Japanese hotpot).
Okay, I'm really sounding food obsessed... what else did I do today... then I came back home, ate (too much) dinner, *finally* got rid of my HUGE bag of cardboard boxes and papers (this kind of garbage is only collected once a month, so they have been waiting a long time), had a bath, and spent a couple of hours surfing the web collecting idioms and proverbs for use in teaching.
Japanese people love baths, they are for relaxation as well as washing, and nearly all Japanese people love going to hot springs and the like. I've never been big on baths but I'm kind of getting into it, mostly because it's so cold...
Students really have trouble with my accent when I say the sound 'ni-'. For example, a whole class of people were stumped by the simple question "did you have a late night?" They kept repeating the word 'nought?' 'nate?' in confusion. Then again last week, a student couldn't understand me when I said "the ninth floor".
When Jim, my co-worker with his 'standard American' accent, says these words, everyone understands. We both tried out saying them to the Japanese staff. To the two of us, they sound so similar, but to Japanese people, apparently not!
I've been trying out origami; I bought a book of patterns. It's fun. What I like about it is that you can't rush it, or do other things at the same time. I'm used to surfing the 'net while typing an email while listening to music while channel surfing on TV... But with origami, you have to sit and focus on what you're doing.
I went to church again today. It's pretty good, and I like the service. The fact that the youth pastor is really good looking also doesn't hurt... The only thing I don't like is the whole 'small talk' aspect of meeting lots of people you don't really know. It would be the same anywhere, I know. Here, it's slightly more difficult because most of the congregation are Japanese - or look Japanese - so you can't tell at a glance whether they will even speak English or not (a lot of them do, but not all).
I think it's time I started taking the initiative and inviting people to do things. I am enjoying life here but the main thing I want to be doing, that I'm not doing, is just generally having more experiences out and about in different places in the cities... for example, when I go out by myself I tend not to go into any buildings if I can't understand where I'm going. Trying out new restaurants with different types of food - the kind of place where you need the restauranteur to explain how to eat each dish - and go to places that require local knowledge.
I realised that the main reason I'm shy about going into restaurants by myself isn't primarily because I'm shy about speaking Japanese. I just don't like going into restaurants by myself. I mean, even in Australia, I don't like going into restaurants by myself - restaurants are such social places.
What I am enjoying are frozen dinners, supermarket meals, and convenience store meals. That sounds bad... but they're so good and cheap! For dinner tonight, I had some gyoza (Chinese dumplings - 'jiao zi' in Chinese), a small frozen pizza, some Vietnamese cold rolls, a slice of baked cheesecake and a mini Kit Kat. Okay, I ate too much...
The convenience store has a selection of pre-packaged meals that they'll heat up for you. There are some really good rice dishes, and some pasta dishes, and this nice udon laksa... it's like, sure, if I tried, I could probably cook meals slightly better than the convenience store meals. But these meals are like $4 or $5 and require No Preparation Time From Me. When you get home at 10pm, you don't feel like cooking anything but the most simple stir-fry...
I do have a few bad temptations, as far as food goes. There are some really delicious frozen cream-based pasta meals that I like. I cook them in my toaster oven and slather them with parmesan. One of these meals costs under $4 and it's very filling; not like Australian frozen dinners where you always need something else to supplement the meal...
(I'm finding that most things here are cheaper than back home. I never thought of Australia as an expensive country, but it seems that with the strength of our dollar, we are more expensive.)
Then there's the chocolate croissants, but actually these aren't such a temptation as the bakeries nearest work are not so great; I only eat one when I haven't eaten breakfast and have no time to eat something decent.
Gyoza are a huge temptation. I always loved jiao zi but never found them often back home. In Japan they're everywhere. And they're soooo good... but they're fried in a lot of oil...
I'm also eating burgers a little more often than back home. My usual lunch is at Subway, but some days after an afternoon of teaching, my 'hamu to chedda cheezu tosuto' just isn't enough, so I get a Becker's Burger... they're so good...
Apart from that, I guess I'm not so bad. The desserts here, for example, usually don't tempt me that much. Today's cheesecake was a rare exception. :)
I don't know why I'm rambling on about food... it's not like I'm hungry, having eaten so much... I always say you shouldn't go into a supermarket when you're hungry. That's probably why I ended up buying far too much this evening. I bought about eight things I felt like eating and only got through half of them, hahah...
What did I do today, apart from go to church? Hmmm... I came back through Yokohama station and tried to go shopping to buy a padded jacket... it really is so cold... I'm wearing the kind of clothes I would wear for winter in Australia, and the cold just bites through them like I'm not wearing them at all.
The shopping centres around Yokohama station are labyrinthine... I get so lost. I bought a few bits and pieces, including - I'm ashamed to say - more food. I bought Tim Tams (I'm such a sad Australian... you can only find them in specialty shops, but I've found a few of them...). I found Time Out bars as well! And green curry sauce... mmm... I want to eat Thai green curry, enough that I will actually be motivated to cook it. I haven't had it since I moved here. I also bought an Indian curry sauce which looks good. The only curry I've had here is 'curry rice', a peculiarly Japanese invention which, while not bad, is just not the same. I have a rice cooker, but I think I'll just buy pre-cooked steamed rice from the convenience store.
(Convenience stores really are convenient. There are three within three minutes' walk of my house. I even pay my utilities bills at the 'conbeni'.)
You can really find most foods here if you put your mind to it. Though sometimes only a particular variety of a food is common.
For example, virtually all Italian restaurants serve these huge but anaemic spaghetti dishes with a meagre sprinkle of mushrooms or clams or small bacon pieces or whatever... I find the sauces a bit disappointing. I'd love a rich, hearty, tomato-ey lasagna full of mushrooms and onion... mmm... or maybe penne pasta bake... some type of pasta other than spaghetti...
Another example is bread. Virtually all bread is white, and very thickly sliced. It's fresh and delicious. But it's bloating, especially in the morning. I'm so used to eating multigrain bread, which I prefer, that I struggle to eat breakfast at all now. So now I am buying rye bread, the only other option available. It's very similar to white bread - in Australia it probably wouldn't be called rye at all - but slightly more palatable.
Generally I'm eating about as wide a variety of food here as I would back home. And to be honest I don't eat that much Japanese food; only when I eat out with others. When I'm really hungry, I want something filling and hearty, and sometimes Japanese food just doesn't fit the bill. I do love Japanese noodles though, and I like nabe and shabu shabu (both forms of Japanese hotpot).
Okay, I'm really sounding food obsessed... what else did I do today... then I came back home, ate (too much) dinner, *finally* got rid of my HUGE bag of cardboard boxes and papers (this kind of garbage is only collected once a month, so they have been waiting a long time), had a bath, and spent a couple of hours surfing the web collecting idioms and proverbs for use in teaching.
Japanese people love baths, they are for relaxation as well as washing, and nearly all Japanese people love going to hot springs and the like. I've never been big on baths but I'm kind of getting into it, mostly because it's so cold...
Students really have trouble with my accent when I say the sound 'ni-'. For example, a whole class of people were stumped by the simple question "did you have a late night?" They kept repeating the word 'nought?' 'nate?' in confusion. Then again last week, a student couldn't understand me when I said "the ninth floor".
When Jim, my co-worker with his 'standard American' accent, says these words, everyone understands. We both tried out saying them to the Japanese staff. To the two of us, they sound so similar, but to Japanese people, apparently not!
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Bits and pieces again...
I saw a sign that said: "It is keep off per classification yard."
What?
***
In a tourist magazine I read the following disclaimer:
"The publisher bears no responsibility for the contents of this publication."
Then who does?
***
There was this show teaching English. They had an English guy teaching English. The irony is that though the English teacher was teaching correct English, the subtitle guy subtitled it wrongly. Eg:
"Singing song is fun."
"Riding wave is fun."
Should really help to improve Japanese people's English...
***
We went to Kamakura on Monday and went hiking. We didn't *mean* to go hiking. What happened was we saw this kind of bushwalking trail and walked to the start of it. A nice Japanese lady passing said 'nagaiii - long way!'. But the sign pointing to the place where *we* wanted to go said '0.6km'. So we began to walk. There were many stairs, slopes and uneven paths. After about 45 minutes, we came to a sign saying '1.5km' - pointing back to the place we had come from.
After about 2.5 hours, and at least 4km of hiking, we finally reached the other end of the trail...
***
Every time I find something bearable to have on TV in the background, the show changes into something really irritating. I gradually become aware of hyperactive Japanese guys shouting at each other, and have to resume channel-surfing...
***
The other day I went to the bathroom and found this message in the cubicle:
"HOW TO FLUSH THE TOILET: The toilet will automatically flush when you place your palm at the point." (There was an accompanying illustration.) Only in Japan do you need instructions on how to flush a toilet. I've never seen so many different ways of doing it. Quite often it will just do it, seemingly randomly, of its own accord. Whether you're finished or not!
What?
***
In a tourist magazine I read the following disclaimer:
"The publisher bears no responsibility for the contents of this publication."
Then who does?
***
There was this show teaching English. They had an English guy teaching English. The irony is that though the English teacher was teaching correct English, the subtitle guy subtitled it wrongly. Eg:
"Singing song is fun."
"Riding wave is fun."
Should really help to improve Japanese people's English...
***
We went to Kamakura on Monday and went hiking. We didn't *mean* to go hiking. What happened was we saw this kind of bushwalking trail and walked to the start of it. A nice Japanese lady passing said 'nagaiii - long way!'. But the sign pointing to the place where *we* wanted to go said '0.6km'. So we began to walk. There were many stairs, slopes and uneven paths. After about 45 minutes, we came to a sign saying '1.5km' - pointing back to the place we had come from.
After about 2.5 hours, and at least 4km of hiking, we finally reached the other end of the trail...
***
Every time I find something bearable to have on TV in the background, the show changes into something really irritating. I gradually become aware of hyperactive Japanese guys shouting at each other, and have to resume channel-surfing...
***
The other day I went to the bathroom and found this message in the cubicle:
"HOW TO FLUSH THE TOILET: The toilet will automatically flush when you place your palm at the point." (There was an accompanying illustration.) Only in Japan do you need instructions on how to flush a toilet. I've never seen so many different ways of doing it. Quite often it will just do it, seemingly randomly, of its own accord. Whether you're finished or not!
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Bits and pieces
I got a new mobile phone. It's certainly the nicest phone I've ever had. For example, I can make video calls. I can use it as a camera or video recorder. I can use it as a voice recorder. I can download music or surf the Internet. It has games, and I can download more. I can download TV shows and watch them. I can send emails. Tonight I was playing with it. I downloaded some free ringtones from the Internet on my laptop, then used Bluetooth to transfer the ringtones to my phone. Now my ringtone is 'Ice Ice Baby', haha.
Oddly, the only thing I can't seem to do successfully is send an SMS! People here seem to send emails to other phones rather than SMSes... I don't really get it yet... every phone has an email address. I am still trying to figure out how to set mine!
***
In the last three and a half weeks I have bought thirteen books. I'm slightly ashamed to admit it! I really need to make the effort to join a library, now that I finally have my alien registration card. (Yes, I am an alien in Japan!)
In my defense, several of the books are to help me study Japanese...
***
Oh, as I mentioned in my last post, I think I found the church I want to attend. It's in Yokohama and the church originated in Hawaii. The pastors wear leis, and everyone greets each other with alohas during the announcements, haha... I really liked the service.
The church has maybe 40 or 50 people? It has a very warm atmosphere. Within ten seconds of my walking in, the lead pastor had given me a hug (a 'side hug' :)) and someone had written me a name tag with smiley faces on it.
The congregation is maybe 60% Japanese, 40% other nationalities. The service was bilingual, so for the announcements, sermon etc, someone would speak in Japanese and then in English. The worship was mostly in English but for some of the songs, we sang first in English and then the Japanese equivalent. The message was really good, simple and sincere. And one thing I liked is that everyone who preached or talked smiled a lot.
***
Here's what I ate for dinner a couple of nights ago. (This is a fairly typical sort of dinner for me.)
A small hot fried rice patty with chicken from the convenience store.
A few tinned apricots. It took me about ten minutes to wrest open the can without a can opener.
A small cauliflower cup-a-soup (had about half, tipped the rest out).
A piece of toast with cheese and Vegemite.
A chocolate cookie.*
A few sips of some vile, concentrated 'multivitamin pack' drink.**
*(My connecting station has a cookie stall. It's really bad because whenever I cross platforms - ie, every day - I have to walk past this stall. The smell of freshly baked cookies hits your nose as soon as you start climbing the stairs. They smell SO good. Even though they are kind of expensive, I have bought them three times...)
**According to the package, it is made from about 25 different fruits and vegetables, so it's unsurprising that it doesn't taste very good. I mean, a drink with asparagus, eggplant, sweet potato, tomato and fennel in it? But I'm consciously trying to consume enough fruit and vegetables so I can stay healthy.
Lots of people get sick at this time of year. A lot of my students have had colds. It's not surprising - the cold weather, the continual moving from a hot to a cold environment and vice versa, and the proximity with so many other people...
For example, you are waiting for a train at the end of the day, and when it arrives, you see that it is wall-to-wall people, and the windows are fogged up from the effect of so many people breathing in there. You get in there and there's a kind of warm, cloying atmosphere, and half the people are wearing surgical masks (people wear these when they have colds), and every second person seems to be sniffling or coughing. It's like walking onto an incubator for disease!
Last weekend I had a new low. I got up at 1:15pm. I went to bed at 1:30 the day before. That's nearly 12 hours in bed. And at this time of year, it's dark at 5pm. So I got to 'enjoy' four hours of daylight. Admittedly, that day was very overcast and the light was dull, so that's probably why it didn't wake me.
But getting up at 1:15pm meant I couldn't get to sleep until about 4am the next day, which was a work day, so I didn't get enough sleep, which meant the night after that was another 12-hour sleep...
The trouble is, it seems I am predisposed to get up just in time for work, whether I start work at 9am or 12:45pm... haha... oh well, the good thing about it is that I'm always getting plenty of sleep so if I feel like I'm coming down with something, I can sleep it off properly.
***
For the first 2-3 weeks of training and teaching, I was on a total high and very full of confidence. Since then, I've gone back to normal. I'm still enjoying myself and doing well, but I'm just more like my usual self. :)
***
The other day I took my first ever 'peak hour' train, the kind you imagine when you think about Japan. I thought I had done this before, but not so. This time, it was peak hour, *and* one train got taken out of service. Everyone had to get off the train - there was at least two or three hundred people on it - and join the already long lines of people waiting at the station for the next train (which in turn, was already full). But people don't stop when the train seems full. They just keep getting on.
Now I realise that a 'full' train is not just wall-to-wall people. A 'full' train is where you find yourself thinking 'it's lucky I'm not wearing foundation today, or this guy (whose shoulder my face is pressed into) would be getting white marks on his suit'. A 'full' train is where you are pressed against - not just touching, but pressed against - at least four other people. Hahah!
Oddly, the only thing I can't seem to do successfully is send an SMS! People here seem to send emails to other phones rather than SMSes... I don't really get it yet... every phone has an email address. I am still trying to figure out how to set mine!
***
In the last three and a half weeks I have bought thirteen books. I'm slightly ashamed to admit it! I really need to make the effort to join a library, now that I finally have my alien registration card. (Yes, I am an alien in Japan!)
In my defense, several of the books are to help me study Japanese...
***
Oh, as I mentioned in my last post, I think I found the church I want to attend. It's in Yokohama and the church originated in Hawaii. The pastors wear leis, and everyone greets each other with alohas during the announcements, haha... I really liked the service.
The church has maybe 40 or 50 people? It has a very warm atmosphere. Within ten seconds of my walking in, the lead pastor had given me a hug (a 'side hug' :)) and someone had written me a name tag with smiley faces on it.
The congregation is maybe 60% Japanese, 40% other nationalities. The service was bilingual, so for the announcements, sermon etc, someone would speak in Japanese and then in English. The worship was mostly in English but for some of the songs, we sang first in English and then the Japanese equivalent. The message was really good, simple and sincere. And one thing I liked is that everyone who preached or talked smiled a lot.
***
Here's what I ate for dinner a couple of nights ago. (This is a fairly typical sort of dinner for me.)
A small hot fried rice patty with chicken from the convenience store.
A few tinned apricots. It took me about ten minutes to wrest open the can without a can opener.
A small cauliflower cup-a-soup (had about half, tipped the rest out).
A piece of toast with cheese and Vegemite.
A chocolate cookie.*
A few sips of some vile, concentrated 'multivitamin pack' drink.**
*(My connecting station has a cookie stall. It's really bad because whenever I cross platforms - ie, every day - I have to walk past this stall. The smell of freshly baked cookies hits your nose as soon as you start climbing the stairs. They smell SO good. Even though they are kind of expensive, I have bought them three times...)
**According to the package, it is made from about 25 different fruits and vegetables, so it's unsurprising that it doesn't taste very good. I mean, a drink with asparagus, eggplant, sweet potato, tomato and fennel in it? But I'm consciously trying to consume enough fruit and vegetables so I can stay healthy.
Lots of people get sick at this time of year. A lot of my students have had colds. It's not surprising - the cold weather, the continual moving from a hot to a cold environment and vice versa, and the proximity with so many other people...
For example, you are waiting for a train at the end of the day, and when it arrives, you see that it is wall-to-wall people, and the windows are fogged up from the effect of so many people breathing in there. You get in there and there's a kind of warm, cloying atmosphere, and half the people are wearing surgical masks (people wear these when they have colds), and every second person seems to be sniffling or coughing. It's like walking onto an incubator for disease!
Last weekend I had a new low. I got up at 1:15pm. I went to bed at 1:30 the day before. That's nearly 12 hours in bed. And at this time of year, it's dark at 5pm. So I got to 'enjoy' four hours of daylight. Admittedly, that day was very overcast and the light was dull, so that's probably why it didn't wake me.
But getting up at 1:15pm meant I couldn't get to sleep until about 4am the next day, which was a work day, so I didn't get enough sleep, which meant the night after that was another 12-hour sleep...
The trouble is, it seems I am predisposed to get up just in time for work, whether I start work at 9am or 12:45pm... haha... oh well, the good thing about it is that I'm always getting plenty of sleep so if I feel like I'm coming down with something, I can sleep it off properly.
***
For the first 2-3 weeks of training and teaching, I was on a total high and very full of confidence. Since then, I've gone back to normal. I'm still enjoying myself and doing well, but I'm just more like my usual self. :)
***
The other day I took my first ever 'peak hour' train, the kind you imagine when you think about Japan. I thought I had done this before, but not so. This time, it was peak hour, *and* one train got taken out of service. Everyone had to get off the train - there was at least two or three hundred people on it - and join the already long lines of people waiting at the station for the next train (which in turn, was already full). But people don't stop when the train seems full. They just keep getting on.
Now I realise that a 'full' train is not just wall-to-wall people. A 'full' train is where you find yourself thinking 'it's lucky I'm not wearing foundation today, or this guy (whose shoulder my face is pressed into) would be getting white marks on his suit'. A 'full' train is where you are pressed against - not just touching, but pressed against - at least four other people. Hahah!
Outing
(click a photo to see a larger version)
Today I went to Yoyogi Park, in Tokyo. It was a nice, sunny day so there were lots of people lying around in the sun or having picnics, joggers, people walking dogs, young couples sitting by the lake, kids with icecreams, people taking photos of the autumn leaves, and quite a few random performances. Lots of people were playing the bongos and other drums. They weren't busking or anything, just having fun. Some people were practising circus tricks - juggling and so on. Everyone seemed to be having a good day.
After that I went to Harajuku, the place famous for its Sunday freakshow. Girls dress up in outrageous costumes and hang out, and masses of tourists take their photos. Apparently a lot of the girls who come to pose in wild outfits suffer bullying at school, and so use this kind of wild cos-play as an escape... I also heard that the girls hope to get their photo in a magazine, as fashion photographers often come to Harajuku to take photos of the wacky fashions. At any rate, this is the first place I've been in Japan where there were as many foreigners as Japanese people.
There's no way to describe Harajuku. It was pretty funny and everyone was having a blast. As you come out the park, first you walk past this huge gaggle of girls who are wearing the most outlandish clothes - looking like video game characters, or Bo Peep, or goths, but looking quite self-conscious considering they are there to strut their stuff... there is this one Japanese guy just dancing in a really random way by himself, and then some foreigners joining in, and everyone laughing riotously... over here a couple of guys are playing guitars... nearer the station, several people are painting and selling portraits... everyone has cameras out... a guy wearing pink pyjamas, a pink hair bow and holding a pink bunny, is holding a sign saying 'Free Hugging'... lots of people run up to get a hug...
I liked Yoyogi Park a lot, and Harajuku was fun. I think Tokyo is a cool place to visit, but whenever I take the train through Tokyo I feel glad I don't live there. There's just endless tall buildings in every direction. Now, Yokohama is still more of a concrete jungle than Adelaide, but I think it's much nicer to live there than Tokyo. A more liveable city.
(I did see something cool in a Tokyo metro station - an automatic shoe-shiner. You pay x yen into the machine and stick your foot in. I saw a guy with his foot in there... hahah...)
After that, I attempted to go back to Yokohama to go to church (I liked the one I went to last week), but with the so-called 'map' I had, that would have been a miracle. (Maps of building locations seem to be uniformly hopeless. They have a few so-called landmarks - a bank or store - but no street names. I couldn't find any of the landmark buildings on the map, let alone my destination. The church doesn't have a regular building but has a couple of different buildings it uses. I found last week's destination with no problem, but this week...)
So I wandered lost for a while until it was half an hour into the service, then decided it was too late (I was no closer to finding it than when I started). So instead I walked down toward the harbour front. I had a nice walk; I found a random park, and the streets were lined with trees literally *pouring* off their yellow autumn leaves. It was very pretty.
Again, it was a nice day and, being a Sunday, all the families were out. There were heaps of couples with small children; I think they had some kind of event for children near Yamashita Park.
I really, really like Yokohama. I like the harbour area especially. There's lots of open air and it's so different to anywhere I've ever been before.
Last night I went to Korea Town in Kawasaki after work. I went with Jim - the other foreign teacher (not his real name) and a couple of students. We went to a yakiniku restaurant. I've never been to one before and it was a lot of fun. Basically they bring you trays of the meat you order and you barbecue them yourself on a grill in the table. It was really delicious and everything had its own sauce for dipping. I even ate tongue (Jim pointed out the imprint of the taste buds on the tongue!) and enjoyed it! It wasn't a whole tongue or anything, just a thin slice of it, barbecued and dipped in lemon sauce.
I was so happy, there's just something about eating a whole lot of delicious food. :) And it's not a meal you bolt down and finish - the meal lasts a long time and you savour it, waiting for each small batch of meat to be done and eating it while it's hot. The pork was great - you dipped it in two different types of sauce and wrapped it in a lettuce leaf, covered in spring onions and garlic... mmmm!
The students are advanced level students and we had some interesting conversations. We talked a bit about accents and Jim and I compared our own. (I always thought I didn't have a very strong Australian accent. But now, whenever I hear myself reading a dialogue in class after listening to the Americans reading it on the CD, I can hear how strong my accent actually is!)
I taught them Lenny's expression, 'my stomach is smiling'. :)
I am getting used to sitting at a table Japanese style (ie, sitting on a cushion on the ground rather than on a chair) and have had lots of chopstick use! Other than that I haven't done much socially with other people, but tomorrow I'm going to Kamakura with another girl from training (a different one to before; this girl lives a lot further away but she wants to go to Kamakura too).
Today I went to Yoyogi Park, in Tokyo. It was a nice, sunny day so there were lots of people lying around in the sun or having picnics, joggers, people walking dogs, young couples sitting by the lake, kids with icecreams, people taking photos of the autumn leaves, and quite a few random performances. Lots of people were playing the bongos and other drums. They weren't busking or anything, just having fun. Some people were practising circus tricks - juggling and so on. Everyone seemed to be having a good day.
After that I went to Harajuku, the place famous for its Sunday freakshow. Girls dress up in outrageous costumes and hang out, and masses of tourists take their photos. Apparently a lot of the girls who come to pose in wild outfits suffer bullying at school, and so use this kind of wild cos-play as an escape... I also heard that the girls hope to get their photo in a magazine, as fashion photographers often come to Harajuku to take photos of the wacky fashions. At any rate, this is the first place I've been in Japan where there were as many foreigners as Japanese people.
There's no way to describe Harajuku. It was pretty funny and everyone was having a blast. As you come out the park, first you walk past this huge gaggle of girls who are wearing the most outlandish clothes - looking like video game characters, or Bo Peep, or goths, but looking quite self-conscious considering they are there to strut their stuff... there is this one Japanese guy just dancing in a really random way by himself, and then some foreigners joining in, and everyone laughing riotously... over here a couple of guys are playing guitars... nearer the station, several people are painting and selling portraits... everyone has cameras out... a guy wearing pink pyjamas, a pink hair bow and holding a pink bunny, is holding a sign saying 'Free Hugging'... lots of people run up to get a hug...
I liked Yoyogi Park a lot, and Harajuku was fun. I think Tokyo is a cool place to visit, but whenever I take the train through Tokyo I feel glad I don't live there. There's just endless tall buildings in every direction. Now, Yokohama is still more of a concrete jungle than Adelaide, but I think it's much nicer to live there than Tokyo. A more liveable city.
(I did see something cool in a Tokyo metro station - an automatic shoe-shiner. You pay x yen into the machine and stick your foot in. I saw a guy with his foot in there... hahah...)
After that, I attempted to go back to Yokohama to go to church (I liked the one I went to last week), but with the so-called 'map' I had, that would have been a miracle. (Maps of building locations seem to be uniformly hopeless. They have a few so-called landmarks - a bank or store - but no street names. I couldn't find any of the landmark buildings on the map, let alone my destination. The church doesn't have a regular building but has a couple of different buildings it uses. I found last week's destination with no problem, but this week...)
So I wandered lost for a while until it was half an hour into the service, then decided it was too late (I was no closer to finding it than when I started). So instead I walked down toward the harbour front. I had a nice walk; I found a random park, and the streets were lined with trees literally *pouring* off their yellow autumn leaves. It was very pretty.
Again, it was a nice day and, being a Sunday, all the families were out. There were heaps of couples with small children; I think they had some kind of event for children near Yamashita Park.
I really, really like Yokohama. I like the harbour area especially. There's lots of open air and it's so different to anywhere I've ever been before.
Last night I went to Korea Town in Kawasaki after work. I went with Jim - the other foreign teacher (not his real name) and a couple of students. We went to a yakiniku restaurant. I've never been to one before and it was a lot of fun. Basically they bring you trays of the meat you order and you barbecue them yourself on a grill in the table. It was really delicious and everything had its own sauce for dipping. I even ate tongue (Jim pointed out the imprint of the taste buds on the tongue!) and enjoyed it! It wasn't a whole tongue or anything, just a thin slice of it, barbecued and dipped in lemon sauce.
I was so happy, there's just something about eating a whole lot of delicious food. :) And it's not a meal you bolt down and finish - the meal lasts a long time and you savour it, waiting for each small batch of meat to be done and eating it while it's hot. The pork was great - you dipped it in two different types of sauce and wrapped it in a lettuce leaf, covered in spring onions and garlic... mmmm!
The students are advanced level students and we had some interesting conversations. We talked a bit about accents and Jim and I compared our own. (I always thought I didn't have a very strong Australian accent. But now, whenever I hear myself reading a dialogue in class after listening to the Americans reading it on the CD, I can hear how strong my accent actually is!)
I taught them Lenny's expression, 'my stomach is smiling'. :)
I am getting used to sitting at a table Japanese style (ie, sitting on a cushion on the ground rather than on a chair) and have had lots of chopstick use! Other than that I haven't done much socially with other people, but tomorrow I'm going to Kamakura with another girl from training (a different one to before; this girl lives a lot further away but she wants to go to Kamakura too).
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
More updates...
It's 1:36am. The last couple of mornings, I did try this whole 'getting up earlier' thing. It's just not for me. If I don't have to, I won't. I really prefer to do everything - relax, read, watch TV, go online, look over stuff for work, study Japanese - after work, not before work.
It's a bit hard to dress for the weather. It's very cold outside, but very warm inside. You will be standing on the train platform freezing, and then get on the train and you'll have to take off your jacket just for the five minute journey. I want to wear a warm top for the walk too and from work, but it gets pretty warm in the office.
The other foreign teacher (I'll call him Jim just so I can give him a name) says this continual hot-cold-hot-cold thing wreaks havoc on your immune system. I'll bet it does. Fortunately I haven't gotten sick but I am consciously drinking lots of jasmine tea and juice, eating mikan (mandarines) and enough vegetables.
I prefer teaching classes to preparing for classes. Sometimes I still feel slightly apprehensive before teaching a class. But then when I'm in the class it's usually fine. On the whole, I do like teaching. But what I said the other day is the main thing - it's the students that make it a good class or not. When the students are open and warm and ready to participate, I come out feeling good and I love teaching. When the students are very quiet and don't seem interested, I come out groaning inwardly.
But one thing I do like is when students have lots of questions for me, and most of all, when I can go home and prepare info for them. They don't expect it and aren't entitled to it so it makes me feel like a better teacher to take some effort for my students. For some reason I am some sort of grammar nerd who enjoys writing up examples of grammar rules. Today I just spent two hours at home writing all about 'neither' and 'either'. (I bought a printer.) I don't have to do it, but it's fun.
***
Yesterday morning I had my first Japanese lesson. I found it online; there were a few volunteer Japanese classes listed, and this was the only one that I could conveniently attend.
I went to this kind of community centre. There were no signs in English anywhere and I couldn't find the classroom. As it turned out, I was the only white student. The others there learning were Chinese, Korean, etc, so from a distance I didn't realise it was a Japanese class; I thought everyone in the room was Japanese.
Basically, all the students work from these books which are written entirely in Japanese. Volunteer teachers work with different students - either one-on-one or in groups of 2 or 3 - and go through the textbook. So it's not a classroom setting exactly, more like a collection of people working with personal tutors.
It was an hour and a half lesson. My head hurt afterwards. The lesson was almost entirely in Japanese - with the very occasional word in English if the teacher knew the English word - so I was struggling to follow her explanations which were all in Japanese. Now I know how my students must feel (they are all Japanese students taking classes which are solely taught in English)...
Also, I was reading the textbook in hiragana and katakana (the simpler two of the three writing scripts that make up Japanese). I have learned hiragana and katakana, but not very well. I'm very slow and there are a few characters I always confuse (eg 'wa, 'ne' and 're'). So even though I was reading very simple sentences, the grammar of which I knew very well, it was hard mental work.
Still, this is perfect for me and I want something challenging.
Next week there are no classes - there is some sort of party which I won't be attending. So my goal is that by my next class, I want to be able to read at least twice as fast as now. That shouldn't be hard - I've set a pretty low standard to begin with!
I am also thinking of taking private lessons from someone who speaks English as well. I think the two types of lesson will complement each other. For about three weeks I never opened my Japanese textbook, but suddenly in the last few days I've become very motivated and have been revising stuff I studied before I left Australia. I suppose I should be motivated, considering all the failed transactions I've had... times I haven't understood a clerk's question or have received something I didn't intend to order...
***
I found a church I might visit this Sunday. I would have gone last Sunday but last Sunday I went to a former teacher's house with a few staff members from my school. It was my first time at a Japanese person's house. It was really nice; a lot more spacious than my apartment... we had nabe, which is a kind of hotpot. They cook it in a pot on the middle of the table and everyone helps themselves.
Right now I have a policy of accepting all invitations. Because I don't know that many people (apart from the huge number of students I am meeting), I am up for anything that anyone suggests. So far I've mostly just been out with people from work, like we had a few farewell dinners for the outgoing teacher. In general I don't mind being on my own at home though, because I have so much contact with people at work. It's such a good part of the job. I am gradually beginning to recognise students and starting to remember more names.
It's a bit hard to dress for the weather. It's very cold outside, but very warm inside. You will be standing on the train platform freezing, and then get on the train and you'll have to take off your jacket just for the five minute journey. I want to wear a warm top for the walk too and from work, but it gets pretty warm in the office.
The other foreign teacher (I'll call him Jim just so I can give him a name) says this continual hot-cold-hot-cold thing wreaks havoc on your immune system. I'll bet it does. Fortunately I haven't gotten sick but I am consciously drinking lots of jasmine tea and juice, eating mikan (mandarines) and enough vegetables.
I prefer teaching classes to preparing for classes. Sometimes I still feel slightly apprehensive before teaching a class. But then when I'm in the class it's usually fine. On the whole, I do like teaching. But what I said the other day is the main thing - it's the students that make it a good class or not. When the students are open and warm and ready to participate, I come out feeling good and I love teaching. When the students are very quiet and don't seem interested, I come out groaning inwardly.
But one thing I do like is when students have lots of questions for me, and most of all, when I can go home and prepare info for them. They don't expect it and aren't entitled to it so it makes me feel like a better teacher to take some effort for my students. For some reason I am some sort of grammar nerd who enjoys writing up examples of grammar rules. Today I just spent two hours at home writing all about 'neither' and 'either'. (I bought a printer.) I don't have to do it, but it's fun.
***
Yesterday morning I had my first Japanese lesson. I found it online; there were a few volunteer Japanese classes listed, and this was the only one that I could conveniently attend.
I went to this kind of community centre. There were no signs in English anywhere and I couldn't find the classroom. As it turned out, I was the only white student. The others there learning were Chinese, Korean, etc, so from a distance I didn't realise it was a Japanese class; I thought everyone in the room was Japanese.
Basically, all the students work from these books which are written entirely in Japanese. Volunteer teachers work with different students - either one-on-one or in groups of 2 or 3 - and go through the textbook. So it's not a classroom setting exactly, more like a collection of people working with personal tutors.
It was an hour and a half lesson. My head hurt afterwards. The lesson was almost entirely in Japanese - with the very occasional word in English if the teacher knew the English word - so I was struggling to follow her explanations which were all in Japanese. Now I know how my students must feel (they are all Japanese students taking classes which are solely taught in English)...
Also, I was reading the textbook in hiragana and katakana (the simpler two of the three writing scripts that make up Japanese). I have learned hiragana and katakana, but not very well. I'm very slow and there are a few characters I always confuse (eg 'wa, 'ne' and 're'). So even though I was reading very simple sentences, the grammar of which I knew very well, it was hard mental work.
Still, this is perfect for me and I want something challenging.
Next week there are no classes - there is some sort of party which I won't be attending. So my goal is that by my next class, I want to be able to read at least twice as fast as now. That shouldn't be hard - I've set a pretty low standard to begin with!
I am also thinking of taking private lessons from someone who speaks English as well. I think the two types of lesson will complement each other. For about three weeks I never opened my Japanese textbook, but suddenly in the last few days I've become very motivated and have been revising stuff I studied before I left Australia. I suppose I should be motivated, considering all the failed transactions I've had... times I haven't understood a clerk's question or have received something I didn't intend to order...
***
I found a church I might visit this Sunday. I would have gone last Sunday but last Sunday I went to a former teacher's house with a few staff members from my school. It was my first time at a Japanese person's house. It was really nice; a lot more spacious than my apartment... we had nabe, which is a kind of hotpot. They cook it in a pot on the middle of the table and everyone helps themselves.
Right now I have a policy of accepting all invitations. Because I don't know that many people (apart from the huge number of students I am meeting), I am up for anything that anyone suggests. So far I've mostly just been out with people from work, like we had a few farewell dinners for the outgoing teacher. In general I don't mind being on my own at home though, because I have so much contact with people at work. It's such a good part of the job. I am gradually beginning to recognise students and starting to remember more names.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
More misc stuff
[I wrote most of this post a few days ago.]
By the way, you'll notice that I don't really mention names, or even the name of my school, in this journal. It is actually a stipulation of my contract that I be circumspect in blogging and not post anything negative about the school or compromise its students, etc. So although I am not saying negative things per se, I think it's just best not to go there. Even though only family and friends read this blog, I'm sure it could still be found in a web search.
***
Yay, I'm finally on the grid! Today I bought a laptop. It was a bit of an undertaking. I wanted a PC, but to get an English OS on them would be a big hassle, so I have ended up with a cute little MacBook instead, and that was surprisingly easy. I know they're supposed to be better computers anyway, I just have to get used to the interface. I should have paid more attention to Stace. :)
I'm happy now I can write down whatever comes into my head. I want a good diary of my first few weeks in Japan, but to have to write everything by hand into a notebook, and then occasionally make the odd entry when I get access to an Internet cafe... well, so many details get lost.
This MacBook is pretty cool. When I first turned it on it gave me the option to run it in English. It also let me set up my keyboard English-style. So even though my 7 key may say it's an apostrophe, it does the & symbol as it should, and even though my apostrophe key says it's a * key, it types an apostrophe. So basically if you didn't already know your keyboard symbols, you would be confused by my keyboard. But I'm happy. :)
It also has a webcam built into it, yay! The only thing currently irritating me is I don't have the flexibility to edit pictures that I'd like. I just want to copy and paste my pics into a folder, open some of them and resize them, but I don't seem to be able to do that directly.
I do have wireless Internet access in my apartment but at the moment it's not really mine, so the connection is not good. If I move my laptop 3cm from its current position, I lose the connection.
Working at my school
Every time I go into a class I check and re-check that I'm teaching the correct unit for that week. I keep thinking I'll accidentally start teaching the wrong subject. Today, I finally did it. I did a pre-activity that must have made no sense to the students, and then said in a loud, confident voice:
'Please open your books to page 79.'
Blank pause.
'Page 79?'
'That's right. Unit 13.'
'But this week is unit 12.'
I look at all the students. Every one has their book open to unit 12. I ended up having to run out the room to get the real lesson materials. Fortunately I had quickly gone over these the previous week... hahah... oh well, at least I'm well prepared for unit 13, which starts on Thursday. :)
Living alone
Living alone is going okay. True, I have been living insqualor slightly more mess than I would have with Catherine or Stace, but I blame that on the garbage system. I felt overwhelmed with plastic bags and bits of packaging, and everything in my apartment was new and had packaging. It took me an hour and a half to sort my first week's garbage. I think, henceforth, a System needs to be implemented...
I think it's kind of rough that we have to follow such a rigorous system of recycling, because the wastage you see every day is horrific. I mean, yesterday I bought a small plastic container of gyoza (Chinese dumplings). They wrapped the plastic container in plastic wrap. Then they put it in a paper bag. Then they put that in a plastic bag. The amount of packaging on everything doesn't just border on the ridiculous, it's crossed way over...
Sadly the legacy of IKEA follows me, and I have already assembled an item of furniture. My apartment didn't come with a chair, which is typical - my first ryokan had no chair, per se, either. I bought a kind of cheap, basic office chair and put it together. I've also bought my MacBook and a DVD/VCR player (quite cheap really).
The downside with this is that newspapers, magazines, papers and cardboard boxes are only collected ONCE a MONTH. And of course, I started buying things The Day After that day. Now I have so much packaging from all my purchases. And my apartment is none too spacious, for storing this!
The other annoying thing about garbage here (oh, there are so many annoying things about it, actually!) is that there are different days for everything. I'd be happy to be able to just put out all my garbage on, say, a Tuesday. Instead you have to think, oh, I can put out burnable garbage on Tue, Thur or Sat; I can put out plastic packaging on Wednesdays, etc etc...
As for cooking, I have made progress this week. I'm slowing making the transition from buying all my meals around Kawasaki station, to 'cooking' frozen meals in my toaster oven. Hahaha! Right now my apartment smells of burnt cardboard. The illustration on the packet clearly showed the meal being heated in a toaster oven (the only kind of oven I have), but I must have misunderstood the directions somewhere along the line...
[It's a few days since I wrote the above paragraph and since then I've started doing actual cooking, but only the most basic, lazy sort - frying some mince, stir-frying some vegetables, pouring garlic powder, salt and pepper over it, and then adding in soy sauce. Only I don't think it's actually soy sauce. I thought I was buying soy sauce, but when I opened it, it smelled exactly like miso soup. But then, miso is made from soy, right? So I don't know. But it tastes fine, although it's definitely a 'single person cooking for themselves' kind of meal!]
By the way, you'll notice that I don't really mention names, or even the name of my school, in this journal. It is actually a stipulation of my contract that I be circumspect in blogging and not post anything negative about the school or compromise its students, etc. So although I am not saying negative things per se, I think it's just best not to go there. Even though only family and friends read this blog, I'm sure it could still be found in a web search.
***
Yay, I'm finally on the grid! Today I bought a laptop. It was a bit of an undertaking. I wanted a PC, but to get an English OS on them would be a big hassle, so I have ended up with a cute little MacBook instead, and that was surprisingly easy. I know they're supposed to be better computers anyway, I just have to get used to the interface. I should have paid more attention to Stace. :)
I'm happy now I can write down whatever comes into my head. I want a good diary of my first few weeks in Japan, but to have to write everything by hand into a notebook, and then occasionally make the odd entry when I get access to an Internet cafe... well, so many details get lost.
This MacBook is pretty cool. When I first turned it on it gave me the option to run it in English. It also let me set up my keyboard English-style. So even though my 7 key may say it's an apostrophe, it does the & symbol as it should, and even though my apostrophe key says it's a * key, it types an apostrophe. So basically if you didn't already know your keyboard symbols, you would be confused by my keyboard. But I'm happy. :)
It also has a webcam built into it, yay! The only thing currently irritating me is I don't have the flexibility to edit pictures that I'd like. I just want to copy and paste my pics into a folder, open some of them and resize them, but I don't seem to be able to do that directly.
I do have wireless Internet access in my apartment but at the moment it's not really mine, so the connection is not good. If I move my laptop 3cm from its current position, I lose the connection.
Working at my school
Every time I go into a class I check and re-check that I'm teaching the correct unit for that week. I keep thinking I'll accidentally start teaching the wrong subject. Today, I finally did it. I did a pre-activity that must have made no sense to the students, and then said in a loud, confident voice:
'Please open your books to page 79.'
Blank pause.
'Page 79?'
'That's right. Unit 13.'
'But this week is unit 12.'
I look at all the students. Every one has their book open to unit 12. I ended up having to run out the room to get the real lesson materials. Fortunately I had quickly gone over these the previous week... hahah... oh well, at least I'm well prepared for unit 13, which starts on Thursday. :)
Living alone
Living alone is going okay. True, I have been living in
I think it's kind of rough that we have to follow such a rigorous system of recycling, because the wastage you see every day is horrific. I mean, yesterday I bought a small plastic container of gyoza (Chinese dumplings). They wrapped the plastic container in plastic wrap. Then they put it in a paper bag. Then they put that in a plastic bag. The amount of packaging on everything doesn't just border on the ridiculous, it's crossed way over...
Sadly the legacy of IKEA follows me, and I have already assembled an item of furniture. My apartment didn't come with a chair, which is typical - my first ryokan had no chair, per se, either. I bought a kind of cheap, basic office chair and put it together. I've also bought my MacBook and a DVD/VCR player (quite cheap really).
The downside with this is that newspapers, magazines, papers and cardboard boxes are only collected ONCE a MONTH. And of course, I started buying things The Day After that day. Now I have so much packaging from all my purchases. And my apartment is none too spacious, for storing this!
The other annoying thing about garbage here (oh, there are so many annoying things about it, actually!) is that there are different days for everything. I'd be happy to be able to just put out all my garbage on, say, a Tuesday. Instead you have to think, oh, I can put out burnable garbage on Tue, Thur or Sat; I can put out plastic packaging on Wednesdays, etc etc...
As for cooking, I have made progress this week. I'm slowing making the transition from buying all my meals around Kawasaki station, to 'cooking' frozen meals in my toaster oven. Hahaha! Right now my apartment smells of burnt cardboard. The illustration on the packet clearly showed the meal being heated in a toaster oven (the only kind of oven I have), but I must have misunderstood the directions somewhere along the line...
[It's a few days since I wrote the above paragraph and since then I've started doing actual cooking, but only the most basic, lazy sort - frying some mince, stir-frying some vegetables, pouring garlic powder, salt and pepper over it, and then adding in soy sauce. Only I don't think it's actually soy sauce. I thought I was buying soy sauce, but when I opened it, it smelled exactly like miso soup. But then, miso is made from soy, right? So I don't know. But it tastes fine, although it's definitely a 'single person cooking for themselves' kind of meal!]
The Art of Teaching English
Now I have a laptop of my own, and Internet access in my apartment, and I can type my heart out. So be prepared for some wordy posts, sorry. This one in particular is probably not very interesting to most people, especially when I start going on about grammar...
This post is about The Art of Teaching English. (Like I really know anything about that after two weeks, haha. But then, I have already taught 39 classes and already have picked up some things and have something to say.)
Each week I teach a wide range of levels. I don't teach raw beginners, but my lowest level classes are fairly low; I also teach the most advanced level 'discussion' style classes, though only a couple of them. I have some repeat classes in a week, so though I may teach 27 classes a week, I teach only 17 'unique' classes. It must be admitted that the second or third 'repeat' class in a week tends to get a better lesson than the first, as I think of things I should have done the first time.
Subject matter
I also teach a variety of subject matter in a week. For example, some of the classes I have taught this week included:
describing food ('what is it?' 'what's in it?' 'what does it taste like?' etc - this particular lesson went down like a tonne of bricks because nobody really had the vocab necessary to describe the food properly)
the subjunctive tense* - to talk about regrets (phrases like 'if only I had...' and 'I felt as if I were...' and 'I'd rather he...')
reporting speech (as an example, turning "Thank you for your hard work" into "The boss thanked us for our hard work"... or "Please come in early tomorrow" into "He asked us to come in early tomorrow")
talking about feelings
using 'have to' and 'had to' (eg, 'what do you have to do today?' 'I have to study my English homework', etc)
irregular past tense (eg, break -> broke, fall -> fell, leave -> left)
an 'article summary' class where advanced students had found an article and summarised it - so I proofread them, they read them, and we discussed them
modals of probability and possibility (eg, 'it should be sunny', 'he must be an actor', etc)
asking permission with 'can I'/'could I', and asking someone to do something with/for you with 'can you'/'could you'
talking about jobs ('what do you do?', 'how do you like it?' etc)
There were a few others, I can't remember them all. I kind of peek in the textbook in the few minutes before class to remind myself 'oh yeah, this is a lesson about reporting speech', or whatever.
We have two main types of lesson - 'function' based and 'grammar' based. So you might have a 'function' based lesson on a theme like 'ordering food' or 'talking about jobs'. And you might have a 'grammar' based lesson on a theme like 'using words like 'could I' and 'may I' to ask permission', etc.
*(This was really fun. For example, do you say 'I would rather he had persuaded me...' or 'I would rather he persuaded me...' Well, personally, I would never make such a horrendous sentence to begin with, but if I did, I would say the first one. But I think it's actually the second one which is grammatically correct.)
Questions
I encourage questions in my classes. I like answering questions. The thing is, the lessons can be a little bit formulaic*, so I think there is more value to be found where I can find things I can actually teach.
*(Note that the point of our lessons is to give students the opportunity to speak English. That is the main goal, because Japanese students famously learn a lot of English grammar and writing at school, but have virtually no practice speaking it, and so can't use it well at all. That's why our classes are aimed at activities to get the students speaking. They essentially 'teach' themselves the main grammar points at home before class, then they come in and we practise them.)
But yeah, I think it adds a little value if I am paying enough attention to what I'm teaching so that I can find points to emphasise, although I am not required to do that. Then I can point to a particular phrase in a dialogue and check if students understand it. Or I can mention an idiom used in the listening exercise - eg today I remember explaining 'needle in a haystack' and 'talked my ear off'. Or I can point to a particular sentence on a drill card and ask questions to make sure they understand it. Or show them a note on the grammar page and add my own view on it.
So yeah, I encourage questions, because I want to feel like students are learning from me and having their difficulties answered, not just having speaking time. I tend to think that when you're learning a language, sometimes what you need most is someone to bring your questions to. Sometimes the students are too shy to ask questions when I ask the class 'any questions?' but I can usually get a question out of them if I ask while everyone is practising speaking to each other - then they don't feel 'in the spotlight' or like they are holding up the class.
So I've had a few this week. Most of them I can answer easily. For example, we were talking about jobs, and in the book was the example sentence structure:
It's kind of/really boring.
They asked if 'kind of' and 'really' meant the same thing. That was easy to answer and explain and I said that 'kind of boring' meant that it was often, but not always, boring. Then they asked if 'kind of boring' and 'kind of exciting' meant the same thing (a logical question, actually, if you think of 'kind of boring' as meaning 'boring 50% of the time). So I explained that 'kind of boring' meant that it was 'more boring than not boring' (in fact I wrote up a random percentage, 60% boring, since these nuances are often most easily explained in percentages).
So yeah, lots of things like that, which you never think about in daily life. You just hope that you don't think of too many random answers 'off the cuff' and end up teaching them ridiculous things!
I did have one question today that kind of stumped me.
Example problem...
We were looking at probability - should and must. The book, you see, had given a kind of 'possibility line', with 'not certain - could/might/may', 'somewhat certain - should/shouldn't', 'almost certain - must/must not' and 'most certain - will, won't, can't, couldn't'.
The problem is, these words aren't all interchangeable, and some can be used in some situations where others can't. Like, you can say 'it could/should/might/will rain later today' but it's rare to say 'it must rain later today'.
My student was having trouble understanding the nuances of the difference between should and must. Well, you can't blame him. For example:
If the doorbell rings, you can say 'that must be the pizza delivery guy' or 'that should be the pizza delivery guy'.
If you go shopping you can say 'one of these shops must sell computers' or 'one of these shops should sell computers'.
And there is not a lot of difference between the two statements, except that 'must' is slightly more certain.
But then in other sentences, you can use these same words, but the sentences have a more different meaning, eg:
'This should be their best game' has a somewhat different meaning to 'This must be their best game'.
And then you have sentences that are completely different, eg:
'He should be a musician' vs 'He must be a musician'
I have thought through this quite carefully now and have a better answer to give the student next time we meet, but at the time it was hard to think of a good answer 'off the cuff'.
Classroom English
In some ways it's easier to pitch your English level to the lower level beginner's classes, than to the higher level beginner and lower level intermediate. That's because with the lower levels, you know you need to be very simple and use no difficult or unnecessary words.
So you will sound like this:
'Please look at the picture. What is he doing? What is this? Good! And what is this?'
'You are at a party. You are talking about jobs. Person A, please ask about person B's job. Person B, please respond. For example... 'Hi! What do you do?'' etc...
And you will need to elicit all keywords before every activity. For example, next week my lower beginner's class has the topic 'asking simple questions about the past'. (Eg, 'did he go scuba diving?', 'was he scared?', 'was it sunny?' etc). There is an exercise where they have to ask simple questions, and their partner will answer them based on a picture. Eg, 'did John go to the beach?' 'Yes, he went to the beach.' For lower beginners, you know that before you do this exercise, you should go through each picture and make sure everyone knows that this picture is of 'the beach', this one is 'surfing', this one is of 'scuba diving', etc.
But with higher beginners and low intermediate, sometimes it's hard to judge exactly where to aim. You feel like you can use slightly more complex language and they will understand, but sometimes you don't know when they understand or don't understand. Sometimes you don't want to patronise them by going through lots of simplistic pictures if it's obvious what they are. But then later they will stumble over one or two questions and you'll realise you should have done it.
Private Lesson
I have one private lesson. It's okay, I don't mind it at all. I like the student. The problem is that the private lesson course he is doing is far higher than his level.
For example, he can barely understand me when I say simple things like 'last weekend was very fun' and 'Will your store be very busy?' Yet in this course he is trying to memorise set phrases like "I'm sorry, the stock manager is currently unavailable. However, if you'd like, I can take a message and he will return your call'."
It's a bit sad and futile, because you know that if a real English-speaking client rang and deviated from the script my student has memorised, he would be in in over his head. And I try to mix it up slightly - change the name, the time, the request, etc - but there's only so much I can do, because his level is too low for me to actually explain phrases or concepts in English. All we can do is kind of go over set phrases, reading and re-reading them aloud, practising intonation and pronunciation, etc.
Australian accents
Most of the characters who speak on the CDs have a kind of generic American accent, but a few speak different accents, to 'mix it up' a little. There is an Australian girl in one of the advanced books, but her accent is unspeakably vile. I already told one of my classes I think her voice is annoying, and a disgrace to Australia, and they laughed (I think they agreed with me). She sounds a bit like Toni Collette in Australian Story, only more so.
Speaking of my accent, I've only had two comments.
The first was from a lady who said that when she heard I was from Australia, she thought I would be unintelligible and speak in a kind of mumbling drawl (she didn't use those words but that was the gist of it), but that in fact, I spoke very clearly. Hahaha! We have a reputation abroad.
The second was when I asked a guy 'did you have a late night too?' He couldn't understand the question. 'Late night,' I kept repeating, with slightly different prounciation. Everyone looked at each other blankly. 'Nought?' repeated the student. I wrote 'late night' on the board. They said it was my accent. I tried to say it in an American accent but it came out even more Australian than before. Oh well. :) That particular class (which was also the one in which I dissed the CD dialogue girl's hideous Australian accent) is one of my favourites. :)
Favourite classes
When I started, I was apprehensive about Saturdays. On weekdays I have 4, 5 or 6 classes a day; on Saturday I have 7. But the other foreign teacher here said he loves Saturdays; they're his favourite day because there's no 'dead time'. I thought 'well, if he really does like them, they can't be that bad'. And actually, they're not. I think they'll be my favourite day too. The thing is, I have no bad classes on Saturday. Somehow, every class is quite lively and enjoyable; on weekdays, it's kind of 50-50.
This post is about The Art of Teaching English. (Like I really know anything about that after two weeks, haha. But then, I have already taught 39 classes and already have picked up some things and have something to say.)
Each week I teach a wide range of levels. I don't teach raw beginners, but my lowest level classes are fairly low; I also teach the most advanced level 'discussion' style classes, though only a couple of them. I have some repeat classes in a week, so though I may teach 27 classes a week, I teach only 17 'unique' classes. It must be admitted that the second or third 'repeat' class in a week tends to get a better lesson than the first, as I think of things I should have done the first time.
Subject matter
I also teach a variety of subject matter in a week. For example, some of the classes I have taught this week included:
There were a few others, I can't remember them all. I kind of peek in the textbook in the few minutes before class to remind myself 'oh yeah, this is a lesson about reporting speech', or whatever.
We have two main types of lesson - 'function' based and 'grammar' based. So you might have a 'function' based lesson on a theme like 'ordering food' or 'talking about jobs'. And you might have a 'grammar' based lesson on a theme like 'using words like 'could I' and 'may I' to ask permission', etc.
*(This was really fun. For example, do you say 'I would rather he had persuaded me...' or 'I would rather he persuaded me...' Well, personally, I would never make such a horrendous sentence to begin with, but if I did, I would say the first one. But I think it's actually the second one which is grammatically correct.)
Questions
I encourage questions in my classes. I like answering questions. The thing is, the lessons can be a little bit formulaic*, so I think there is more value to be found where I can find things I can actually teach.
*(Note that the point of our lessons is to give students the opportunity to speak English. That is the main goal, because Japanese students famously learn a lot of English grammar and writing at school, but have virtually no practice speaking it, and so can't use it well at all. That's why our classes are aimed at activities to get the students speaking. They essentially 'teach' themselves the main grammar points at home before class, then they come in and we practise them.)
But yeah, I think it adds a little value if I am paying enough attention to what I'm teaching so that I can find points to emphasise, although I am not required to do that. Then I can point to a particular phrase in a dialogue and check if students understand it. Or I can mention an idiom used in the listening exercise - eg today I remember explaining 'needle in a haystack' and 'talked my ear off'. Or I can point to a particular sentence on a drill card and ask questions to make sure they understand it. Or show them a note on the grammar page and add my own view on it.
So yeah, I encourage questions, because I want to feel like students are learning from me and having their difficulties answered, not just having speaking time. I tend to think that when you're learning a language, sometimes what you need most is someone to bring your questions to. Sometimes the students are too shy to ask questions when I ask the class 'any questions?' but I can usually get a question out of them if I ask while everyone is practising speaking to each other - then they don't feel 'in the spotlight' or like they are holding up the class.
So I've had a few this week. Most of them I can answer easily. For example, we were talking about jobs, and in the book was the example sentence structure:
It's kind of/really boring.
They asked if 'kind of' and 'really' meant the same thing. That was easy to answer and explain and I said that 'kind of boring' meant that it was often, but not always, boring. Then they asked if 'kind of boring' and 'kind of exciting' meant the same thing (a logical question, actually, if you think of 'kind of boring' as meaning 'boring 50% of the time). So I explained that 'kind of boring' meant that it was 'more boring than not boring' (in fact I wrote up a random percentage, 60% boring, since these nuances are often most easily explained in percentages).
So yeah, lots of things like that, which you never think about in daily life. You just hope that you don't think of too many random answers 'off the cuff' and end up teaching them ridiculous things!
I did have one question today that kind of stumped me.
Example problem...
We were looking at probability - should and must. The book, you see, had given a kind of 'possibility line', with 'not certain - could/might/may', 'somewhat certain - should/shouldn't', 'almost certain - must/must not' and 'most certain - will, won't, can't, couldn't'.
The problem is, these words aren't all interchangeable, and some can be used in some situations where others can't. Like, you can say 'it could/should/might/will rain later today' but it's rare to say 'it must rain later today'.
My student was having trouble understanding the nuances of the difference between should and must. Well, you can't blame him. For example:
If the doorbell rings, you can say 'that must be the pizza delivery guy' or 'that should be the pizza delivery guy'.
If you go shopping you can say 'one of these shops must sell computers' or 'one of these shops should sell computers'.
And there is not a lot of difference between the two statements, except that 'must' is slightly more certain.
But then in other sentences, you can use these same words, but the sentences have a more different meaning, eg:
'This should be their best game' has a somewhat different meaning to 'This must be their best game'.
And then you have sentences that are completely different, eg:
'He should be a musician' vs 'He must be a musician'
I have thought through this quite carefully now and have a better answer to give the student next time we meet, but at the time it was hard to think of a good answer 'off the cuff'.
Classroom English
In some ways it's easier to pitch your English level to the lower level beginner's classes, than to the higher level beginner and lower level intermediate. That's because with the lower levels, you know you need to be very simple and use no difficult or unnecessary words.
So you will sound like this:
'Please look at the picture. What is he doing? What is this? Good! And what is this?'
'You are at a party. You are talking about jobs. Person A, please ask about person B's job. Person B, please respond. For example... 'Hi! What do you do?'' etc...
And you will need to elicit all keywords before every activity. For example, next week my lower beginner's class has the topic 'asking simple questions about the past'. (Eg, 'did he go scuba diving?', 'was he scared?', 'was it sunny?' etc). There is an exercise where they have to ask simple questions, and their partner will answer them based on a picture. Eg, 'did John go to the beach?' 'Yes, he went to the beach.' For lower beginners, you know that before you do this exercise, you should go through each picture and make sure everyone knows that this picture is of 'the beach', this one is 'surfing', this one is of 'scuba diving', etc.
But with higher beginners and low intermediate, sometimes it's hard to judge exactly where to aim. You feel like you can use slightly more complex language and they will understand, but sometimes you don't know when they understand or don't understand. Sometimes you don't want to patronise them by going through lots of simplistic pictures if it's obvious what they are. But then later they will stumble over one or two questions and you'll realise you should have done it.
Private Lesson
I have one private lesson. It's okay, I don't mind it at all. I like the student. The problem is that the private lesson course he is doing is far higher than his level.
For example, he can barely understand me when I say simple things like 'last weekend was very fun' and 'Will your store be very busy?' Yet in this course he is trying to memorise set phrases like "I'm sorry, the stock manager is currently unavailable. However, if you'd like, I can take a message and he will return your call'."
It's a bit sad and futile, because you know that if a real English-speaking client rang and deviated from the script my student has memorised, he would be in in over his head. And I try to mix it up slightly - change the name, the time, the request, etc - but there's only so much I can do, because his level is too low for me to actually explain phrases or concepts in English. All we can do is kind of go over set phrases, reading and re-reading them aloud, practising intonation and pronunciation, etc.
Australian accents
Most of the characters who speak on the CDs have a kind of generic American accent, but a few speak different accents, to 'mix it up' a little. There is an Australian girl in one of the advanced books, but her accent is unspeakably vile. I already told one of my classes I think her voice is annoying, and a disgrace to Australia, and they laughed (I think they agreed with me). She sounds a bit like Toni Collette in Australian Story, only more so.
Speaking of my accent, I've only had two comments.
The first was from a lady who said that when she heard I was from Australia, she thought I would be unintelligible and speak in a kind of mumbling drawl (she didn't use those words but that was the gist of it), but that in fact, I spoke very clearly. Hahaha! We have a reputation abroad.
The second was when I asked a guy 'did you have a late night too?' He couldn't understand the question. 'Late night,' I kept repeating, with slightly different prounciation. Everyone looked at each other blankly. 'Nought?' repeated the student. I wrote 'late night' on the board. They said it was my accent. I tried to say it in an American accent but it came out even more Australian than before. Oh well. :) That particular class (which was also the one in which I dissed the CD dialogue girl's hideous Australian accent) is one of my favourites. :)
Favourite classes
When I started, I was apprehensive about Saturdays. On weekdays I have 4, 5 or 6 classes a day; on Saturday I have 7. But the other foreign teacher here said he loves Saturdays; they're his favourite day because there's no 'dead time'. I thought 'well, if he really does like them, they can't be that bad'. And actually, they're not. I think they'll be my favourite day too. The thing is, I have no bad classes on Saturday. Somehow, every class is quite lively and enjoyable; on weekdays, it's kind of 50-50.
Monday, November 19, 2007
To give you an idea of what I'm doing here...
The only bummer about living in Yokohama is that their recycling rules are many and complicated. You have:
a) burnable garbage which is collected Tue, Thur and Sat, and you must drain all excess liquid from kitchen scraps, and put it in transparent bags;
b) packaging, which is collected Wed and which must be cleaned before being thrown in the garbage;
c) bottles and cans which are also collected Wed (and the plastic bottles must be crushed);
d) 'small metal items', I don't know what day;
e) aerosol cans and glass which are supposed to be put into a plastic bag and labelled;
f) newspapers, magazines, papers and cardboard boxes, which are supposed to be squashed flat, and tied together with string or put in a paper bag, put out the third Mon of every month
Plus a variety of other 'special' collections like clothes, dry cell batteries, umbrellas, I mean I have three different recycling guides and it's more confusing than any lesson plan I've had to do. :) I will look at a scrap of cardboard packaging and think 'okay, this could be burnable garbage, packaging, OR paper...? I'm too afraid to throw my garbage out...
***
A typical day goes something like this:
Get up at about 10am. Get ready for work. (My apartment has this cool hot water service. You turn it on instantly with the press of a button, and can set it to whatever temperature you like. So I turn it up to 75 when I want a cup of tea, it's far quicker than boiling the kettle on the stove.)
Walk to the train station. My apartment's on the third floor, and I go through a couple of train stations to get to work, so I take a lot of stairs in the course of a day. (Train stations all have lots of stairs; many have no elevators at all.) I take the train to my connecting station, then switch to get to Kawasaki.
Kawasaki station area is really cool. There are several large, very modern department stores and loads of places to eat and drink. So I have breakfast - a cheap toastie - here usually. My school is in one of these department stores, surrounded by restaurants, and it often has live music playing outside it when I come out. My school is just by the station.
I usually come in an hour before work to do a little lesson prep. Then I'll teach several classes throughout the day. My easiest day has four classes; my busiest has seven.
Most classes follow a similar structure which involves a few elements like:
-drills, where you use drill cards to practise example sentences and phrases.
-roleplay activities where students try to use a particular teaching point (ie, 'you are moving house, please ask your friend for help' to practise sentences like 'could you ---?' and 'would you mind ---?'
-exercises from the textbook and students reading aloud
With the lower level classes especially, you often have to do a lot of 'setting up' and making sure they know words so that they will understand what you're talking about, or be able to follow an exercise in the book.
So you do a lot of eliciting keywords, eg: 'what is she doing? Yes, good, shopping. And where is she? Yes, downtown. At a market. And what is he doing? Studying? Yes, she's doing her homework.
Some of the classes have different components and emphases, but that's the gist. This is why it's pretty easy to learn. My first class last week took me an hour and a half to prepare for; by the end of the week I'd got it down to about 15 minutes per class. (I taught 17 classes last week, but some were repeats.)
Really you just have to do a quick look at the materials and think 'okay, what's the point of the lesson - how do I use the drill cards - what's the best way to explain this - what comprehension questions should I ask - what ideas should we brain storm', etc.
The roleplays are when you see the personality of a student and their attitude to the class. Some of them will develop quite long conversations, and make jokes, and others will follow the little 'script' you give them to the letter.
After work, I have dinner and go home; I usually get home at about 10. It's getting pretty cold now. It's like winter came in the last couple of days.
***
Today is Monday and I spent the day (well, what was left of the day after I got up at 11am) going for a little walk around my neighbourhood, then checking out some stores around Higashi-Kanagawa (a nearby train station). I've been shopping. I'm afraid I already bought quite a few things. It is a strange novelty being able to find clothes and shoes that I like, which fit, for a reasonable price. I was a bit worried because the teacher I replaced, who is taller than me but much slimmer, said she could hardly ever find clothes. But I have already found many. :)
Right now I'm in an Internet cafe in Yokohama.
Yesterday when we went into Yokohama, we went to the Minato Mirai area, which is the harbour. My friend said it reminded her a lot of Seattle (where she lived previously). We rode the biggest ferris wheel in the world and visited the biggest Chinatown in the world.
Today I'm in the area around Yokohama station, and it's a happening place. I came out of the station and saw all the neon lights and a little refrain chanted in my head 'this is only a few stops away, a few stops away!' (The station near my apartment is not far from Yokohama station; I can get there quite quickly.)
I am definitely hoping to get a mobile phone and a laptop in the next two days, so hopefully I will be more contactable then. I'm really craving my music; I keep having the TV on in my apartment just for some background noise, even though what's on is usually deeply annoying. There are far too many loud, over-excited yelling guys hosting game shows on Japanese television.
I am not going to get a landline, but intend to use a webcam. There's some free program called Skype that everyone keeps recommending, so I'll get that.
a) burnable garbage which is collected Tue, Thur and Sat, and you must drain all excess liquid from kitchen scraps, and put it in transparent bags;
b) packaging, which is collected Wed and which must be cleaned before being thrown in the garbage;
c) bottles and cans which are also collected Wed (and the plastic bottles must be crushed);
d) 'small metal items', I don't know what day;
e) aerosol cans and glass which are supposed to be put into a plastic bag and labelled;
f) newspapers, magazines, papers and cardboard boxes, which are supposed to be squashed flat, and tied together with string or put in a paper bag, put out the third Mon of every month
Plus a variety of other 'special' collections like clothes, dry cell batteries, umbrellas, I mean I have three different recycling guides and it's more confusing than any lesson plan I've had to do. :) I will look at a scrap of cardboard packaging and think 'okay, this could be burnable garbage, packaging, OR paper...? I'm too afraid to throw my garbage out...
***
A typical day goes something like this:
Get up at about 10am. Get ready for work. (My apartment has this cool hot water service. You turn it on instantly with the press of a button, and can set it to whatever temperature you like. So I turn it up to 75 when I want a cup of tea, it's far quicker than boiling the kettle on the stove.)
Walk to the train station. My apartment's on the third floor, and I go through a couple of train stations to get to work, so I take a lot of stairs in the course of a day. (Train stations all have lots of stairs; many have no elevators at all.) I take the train to my connecting station, then switch to get to Kawasaki.
Kawasaki station area is really cool. There are several large, very modern department stores and loads of places to eat and drink. So I have breakfast - a cheap toastie - here usually. My school is in one of these department stores, surrounded by restaurants, and it often has live music playing outside it when I come out. My school is just by the station.
I usually come in an hour before work to do a little lesson prep. Then I'll teach several classes throughout the day. My easiest day has four classes; my busiest has seven.
Most classes follow a similar structure which involves a few elements like:
-drills, where you use drill cards to practise example sentences and phrases.
-roleplay activities where students try to use a particular teaching point (ie, 'you are moving house, please ask your friend for help' to practise sentences like 'could you ---?' and 'would you mind ---?'
-exercises from the textbook and students reading aloud
With the lower level classes especially, you often have to do a lot of 'setting up' and making sure they know words so that they will understand what you're talking about, or be able to follow an exercise in the book.
So you do a lot of eliciting keywords, eg: 'what is she doing? Yes, good, shopping. And where is she? Yes, downtown. At a market. And what is he doing? Studying? Yes, she's doing her homework.
Some of the classes have different components and emphases, but that's the gist. This is why it's pretty easy to learn. My first class last week took me an hour and a half to prepare for; by the end of the week I'd got it down to about 15 minutes per class. (I taught 17 classes last week, but some were repeats.)
Really you just have to do a quick look at the materials and think 'okay, what's the point of the lesson - how do I use the drill cards - what's the best way to explain this - what comprehension questions should I ask - what ideas should we brain storm', etc.
The roleplays are when you see the personality of a student and their attitude to the class. Some of them will develop quite long conversations, and make jokes, and others will follow the little 'script' you give them to the letter.
After work, I have dinner and go home; I usually get home at about 10. It's getting pretty cold now. It's like winter came in the last couple of days.
***
Today is Monday and I spent the day (well, what was left of the day after I got up at 11am) going for a little walk around my neighbourhood, then checking out some stores around Higashi-Kanagawa (a nearby train station). I've been shopping. I'm afraid I already bought quite a few things. It is a strange novelty being able to find clothes and shoes that I like, which fit, for a reasonable price. I was a bit worried because the teacher I replaced, who is taller than me but much slimmer, said she could hardly ever find clothes. But I have already found many. :)
Right now I'm in an Internet cafe in Yokohama.
Yesterday when we went into Yokohama, we went to the Minato Mirai area, which is the harbour. My friend said it reminded her a lot of Seattle (where she lived previously). We rode the biggest ferris wheel in the world and visited the biggest Chinatown in the world.
Today I'm in the area around Yokohama station, and it's a happening place. I came out of the station and saw all the neon lights and a little refrain chanted in my head 'this is only a few stops away, a few stops away!' (The station near my apartment is not far from Yokohama station; I can get there quite quickly.)
I am definitely hoping to get a mobile phone and a laptop in the next two days, so hopefully I will be more contactable then. I'm really craving my music; I keep having the TV on in my apartment just for some background noise, even though what's on is usually deeply annoying. There are far too many loud, over-excited yelling guys hosting game shows on Japanese television.
I am not going to get a landline, but intend to use a webcam. There's some free program called Skype that everyone keeps recommending, so I'll get that.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
End of the first week
Hi,
I've finished my first week at my new school. My apartment is in a quiet neighbourhood, it's very small but nice enough.
I found the week wasn't too bad, a fair amount of coming in early and preparing for lessons, and lots of forgetting names, especially the four-syllable names of my male students. :) I feel like I've been fending for myself a bit, living on my own, finding my way around, working out my classes and whatnot. I've answered 'where are you from', 'why did you come to Japan', 'do you like Japanese food' and 'what do you think of Japan', about a hundred times now...
Thanks for your birthday wishes everyone, I'm glad I could finally get online tonight. Mum I got your card, thanks. Sorry I don't have time to reply to emails at the moment. I've not had the chance to get online this week yet, and also I haven't got a phone or anything. I have to get my Alien Registration Card first.
I had a good birthday today; when the new day started I was in a bar in Kawasaki with about thirty students and teachers. I had my welcome party on Saturday night/Sunday morning and I didn't get home until 6am. :) We started in an Italian restaurant owned by one of the students, then progressed to the bar, then finished with several hours of karaoke, which was great fun. They had a tiramisu cake for me with 'Happy Birthday' written on it in chocolate powder. Even at 5:15, when the party was wrapping up, there were still about 30 people there. It was a lot of fun.
The trains here are good but stop 'early' - around midnight. This is ridiculous because the last train of the night always has hundreds of people in it - businessmen who've been out for dinner and drinks after a long day in the office, etc - and if they ran trains all night, there would definitely be a demand for it. I got caught out like this on Wednesday; we went to an izakaya for the outgoing teacher's farewell - just five of us - and I forgot about the trains. Fortunately I only missed my second train, so the taxi wasn't very expensive. The alternative to leaving a party early is to leave very late - ie, in time for the first train of the next day at 4:30 or 5am.
It's worrying when everyone asks me if I like Japanese food, because I don't. I don't like raw fish, or wasabi, or chicken cartilage skewers (yes, I ate chicken cartilage), or octopus too tough to even bite, or pickled radishes, or any of the other horrible things I am confronted with! At the izakaya they had an English menu and it was worrying looking through the translations and thinking 'mmmm, beef diaphragms, sounds tasty'...
This afternoon I met up with a girl from training to explore Yokohama. (I'm in her apartment now 'stealing' wireless Internet.) It was pretty cool, I've never been there before (even though I technically live in Yokohama, my neighbourhood is very quiet and feels far away from the action. :)) The harbour area is really cool and we went on the ferris wheel.
I found that this week I have already 'un-learned' a lot of stuff from training, haha. Nobody adheres to the Official Lesson Plan exactly, and it kind of works nicely when you use your own discretion - you know, try two exercises if there's lots of time left, start the lesson with a bit of a chat, etc...
Teaching classes was okay. It's quite formulaic, so it's not so hard to teach multiple classes. It's very clear that it's the students that make it a good class or not. I had this one group lesson that was like pulling teeth - nobody wanted to volunteer anything or get creative with their dialogues - so I thought 'oh, I don't like teaching that lesson'. Then I taught the same lesson to a different class on a different day, and had a great time - the students were fun, and asked questions, and seemed to actually want to be there.
The other foreign teacher at my school is a nice guy, I think we'll get on well. The Japanese teachers are my school are quite nice too, haven't really clicked with them. Actually I've been mostly working autonomously anyway.
Hope everyone is well, sorry my emails are so sporadic, but I enjoy getting yours. Hope to get in touch properly soon. :)
I've finished my first week at my new school. My apartment is in a quiet neighbourhood, it's very small but nice enough.
I found the week wasn't too bad, a fair amount of coming in early and preparing for lessons, and lots of forgetting names, especially the four-syllable names of my male students. :) I feel like I've been fending for myself a bit, living on my own, finding my way around, working out my classes and whatnot. I've answered 'where are you from', 'why did you come to Japan', 'do you like Japanese food' and 'what do you think of Japan', about a hundred times now...
Thanks for your birthday wishes everyone, I'm glad I could finally get online tonight. Mum I got your card, thanks. Sorry I don't have time to reply to emails at the moment. I've not had the chance to get online this week yet, and also I haven't got a phone or anything. I have to get my Alien Registration Card first.
I had a good birthday today; when the new day started I was in a bar in Kawasaki with about thirty students and teachers. I had my welcome party on Saturday night/Sunday morning and I didn't get home until 6am. :) We started in an Italian restaurant owned by one of the students, then progressed to the bar, then finished with several hours of karaoke, which was great fun. They had a tiramisu cake for me with 'Happy Birthday' written on it in chocolate powder. Even at 5:15, when the party was wrapping up, there were still about 30 people there. It was a lot of fun.
The trains here are good but stop 'early' - around midnight. This is ridiculous because the last train of the night always has hundreds of people in it - businessmen who've been out for dinner and drinks after a long day in the office, etc - and if they ran trains all night, there would definitely be a demand for it. I got caught out like this on Wednesday; we went to an izakaya for the outgoing teacher's farewell - just five of us - and I forgot about the trains. Fortunately I only missed my second train, so the taxi wasn't very expensive. The alternative to leaving a party early is to leave very late - ie, in time for the first train of the next day at 4:30 or 5am.
It's worrying when everyone asks me if I like Japanese food, because I don't. I don't like raw fish, or wasabi, or chicken cartilage skewers (yes, I ate chicken cartilage), or octopus too tough to even bite, or pickled radishes, or any of the other horrible things I am confronted with! At the izakaya they had an English menu and it was worrying looking through the translations and thinking 'mmmm, beef diaphragms, sounds tasty'...
This afternoon I met up with a girl from training to explore Yokohama. (I'm in her apartment now 'stealing' wireless Internet.) It was pretty cool, I've never been there before (even though I technically live in Yokohama, my neighbourhood is very quiet and feels far away from the action. :)) The harbour area is really cool and we went on the ferris wheel.
I found that this week I have already 'un-learned' a lot of stuff from training, haha. Nobody adheres to the Official Lesson Plan exactly, and it kind of works nicely when you use your own discretion - you know, try two exercises if there's lots of time left, start the lesson with a bit of a chat, etc...
Teaching classes was okay. It's quite formulaic, so it's not so hard to teach multiple classes. It's very clear that it's the students that make it a good class or not. I had this one group lesson that was like pulling teeth - nobody wanted to volunteer anything or get creative with their dialogues - so I thought 'oh, I don't like teaching that lesson'. Then I taught the same lesson to a different class on a different day, and had a great time - the students were fun, and asked questions, and seemed to actually want to be there.
The other foreign teacher at my school is a nice guy, I think we'll get on well. The Japanese teachers are my school are quite nice too, haven't really clicked with them. Actually I've been mostly working autonomously anyway.
Hope everyone is well, sorry my emails are so sporadic, but I enjoy getting yours. Hope to get in touch properly soon. :)
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Let's sing the 'hello' song!
Greetings from Omiya! There's a light at the end of the tunnel - only one more day of training to go. Of course, then next week it'll be actual work, which isn't exactly a reprieve!
Feeling quite stuffed at the moment but it's been a good week.
Maybe I should change the name of my blog because as it turns out, while I'm working in Kawasaki, I'm actually living in Yokohama. (They're right next to each other. It's only half an hour commute to work, switching train lines, which is pretty good for the Tokyo area.) I think this is great. Of course, I don't know anything about Yokohama, having tried to research Kawasaki, but Kawasaki sounded like a slightly uninspiring industrial town, whereas Yokohama is supposed to be very lively and cool and pretty.
I have my apartment and schedule information. Some of it goes like this:
All my classes are 'standard' lessons - grammar and function classes. No kid's classes, no private lessons, no business classes, or any other curve balls.
I teach 26 classes a week, but 10 of these are repeat lessons, so I only have to prepare for 16.
I work from 1pm-9pm three days a week, 12-9pm one day, and 11am-8pm one day. Apparently my school is in a shopping centre with lots of restaurants on the same floor.
My apartment will be new (as in, no other teachers have lived in it), but very small. (Which I expected anyway.) From the address I think it's on a somewhat main road, which is good.
There's only one other 'foreign' teacher at my school, and as I already found out, he's a guy from Chicago.
Gee I feel tired...
Ummm, what is there to say... training week has been quite good, considering how full on it is. We have heaps and heaps to learn, about how to teach each type of lesson. As I mentioned in my last post, the lessons are quite structured. So once you're on top of how to do them, you can prepare your lessons quite quickly, since you have all the materials. So for example you'll have a listening exercise from the textbook, and a section where you use drill cards, and a section where you do a scenario roleplay, and so on.
I'm finding it a lot of fun to be sharing this training centre with all these people. Everyone gets along really well. Since being here I haven't felt down like I did when I was travelling by myself; I guess it'll be quite different next week when I move into my apartment by myself, but this is a good transition week.
It's good having broken routine so completely; I'm doing things I've never done, hanging out with people I've never met, and enjoying myself.
All of us had to do a little bit of kid's training. Not all of us are going to schools where they have kids - I'm not - but we all did the basics just in case our schools or situations ever change. So it was pretty funny seeing all these guys holding hands and singing the 'hello' song (accompanied by the 'hello' dance).
Hello, hello, hello, hello, we are glad to meet you...
Hello, hello, hello, hello...
It's a pretty catchy tune, and you can't go more than an hour here without hearing *someone* singing it, so it's been in my head pretty well continuously for three days. Other popular favourites are 'walking, walking', 'how's the weather' and 'I can make a letter'.
The other thing is that you catch everyone, in everyday conversation, doing their 'Classroom English' voice. Classroom English is where you really simplify your instructions and eliminate all unnecessary words, so that beginner students can understand you.
Eg, instead of: "Could you all please open your books", you just say:
"Please open your textbook."
And instead of:
"Keiko, would you please come up here and practise this with me," you just say:
"Keiko, please be my partner." (gesture)
So even outside of training, everyone here is intoning their words very clearly, saying 'please _____' and gesturing excessively. Today I said a couple of things and used the words 'appropriated' and 'surreptitiously'. The trainer told me that I'd soon lose my vocabulary. Haha :)
We're in Omiya, which is a fairly small city but has a bustling area near the train station about half an hour's walk away. We've gone there a few times for meals. We're in a quiet suburban neighbourhood here. There's also a nearby park with a shrine and zoo.
I've taught two half-lessons so far. On Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, they had a bunch of Japanese students come in from the surrounding areas to get a free English lesson from us new teachers. Both of mine went quite well. Apparently I use good classroom English and a good talking speed, have good lesson structure and a nice, friendly teaching manner. On the other hand I need to do more eye contact, think of different ways to elicit answers when they students aren't talking, etc etc...
Tomorrow's the last day of training and we have to give our first full lesson, with all the component parts. I'm pretty exhausted so I should go and prepare so I can get a nice long night's sleep... see you!
Feeling quite stuffed at the moment but it's been a good week.
Maybe I should change the name of my blog because as it turns out, while I'm working in Kawasaki, I'm actually living in Yokohama. (They're right next to each other. It's only half an hour commute to work, switching train lines, which is pretty good for the Tokyo area.) I think this is great. Of course, I don't know anything about Yokohama, having tried to research Kawasaki, but Kawasaki sounded like a slightly uninspiring industrial town, whereas Yokohama is supposed to be very lively and cool and pretty.
I have my apartment and schedule information. Some of it goes like this:
Gee I feel tired...
Ummm, what is there to say... training week has been quite good, considering how full on it is. We have heaps and heaps to learn, about how to teach each type of lesson. As I mentioned in my last post, the lessons are quite structured. So once you're on top of how to do them, you can prepare your lessons quite quickly, since you have all the materials. So for example you'll have a listening exercise from the textbook, and a section where you use drill cards, and a section where you do a scenario roleplay, and so on.
I'm finding it a lot of fun to be sharing this training centre with all these people. Everyone gets along really well. Since being here I haven't felt down like I did when I was travelling by myself; I guess it'll be quite different next week when I move into my apartment by myself, but this is a good transition week.
It's good having broken routine so completely; I'm doing things I've never done, hanging out with people I've never met, and enjoying myself.
All of us had to do a little bit of kid's training. Not all of us are going to schools where they have kids - I'm not - but we all did the basics just in case our schools or situations ever change. So it was pretty funny seeing all these guys holding hands and singing the 'hello' song (accompanied by the 'hello' dance).
Hello, hello, hello, hello, we are glad to meet you...
Hello, hello, hello, hello...
It's a pretty catchy tune, and you can't go more than an hour here without hearing *someone* singing it, so it's been in my head pretty well continuously for three days. Other popular favourites are 'walking, walking', 'how's the weather' and 'I can make a letter'.
The other thing is that you catch everyone, in everyday conversation, doing their 'Classroom English' voice. Classroom English is where you really simplify your instructions and eliminate all unnecessary words, so that beginner students can understand you.
Eg, instead of: "Could you all please open your books", you just say:
"Please open your textbook."
And instead of:
"Keiko, would you please come up here and practise this with me," you just say:
"Keiko, please be my partner." (gesture)
So even outside of training, everyone here is intoning their words very clearly, saying 'please _____' and gesturing excessively. Today I said a couple of things and used the words 'appropriated' and 'surreptitiously'. The trainer told me that I'd soon lose my vocabulary. Haha :)
We're in Omiya, which is a fairly small city but has a bustling area near the train station about half an hour's walk away. We've gone there a few times for meals. We're in a quiet suburban neighbourhood here. There's also a nearby park with a shrine and zoo.
I've taught two half-lessons so far. On Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, they had a bunch of Japanese students come in from the surrounding areas to get a free English lesson from us new teachers. Both of mine went quite well. Apparently I use good classroom English and a good talking speed, have good lesson structure and a nice, friendly teaching manner. On the other hand I need to do more eye contact, think of different ways to elicit answers when they students aren't talking, etc etc...
Tomorrow's the last day of training and we have to give our first full lesson, with all the component parts. I'm pretty exhausted so I should go and prepare so I can get a nice long night's sleep... see you!
Sunday, November 4, 2007
At the training centre
Hi everyone! I'm writing this from our training centre in Omiya. It's like a school camp, since we're all living in the training centre together in rooms like dorms. There are ten of us new teachers here. I'm sharing a room with a girl from small town New Zealand. There's also one other Aussie, a Canadian, and the rest are Americans. It's such a relief finally being around other people who speak English. I feel like a normal human being again!
Today is our day off training, but tomorrow we have five consecutive days of 11am-8pm training. It's going to be full on and we'll have to teach real Japanese students three different lessons. The lessons seem very formulaic though, so once you get used to it it should be easy enough.
Nikko was really nice. It was a lot of effort to get there - took about 7 hours from Kyoto, and as usual I took a train I didn't intend to take... But it was really stunning there, and I got a free room upgrade. I had a double room, my own personal dining room, and the hot springs bath was really fantastic after a long day walking around in the cool.
It's funny, sometimes I travel in a kind of 'I've heard of this place, I think I'll go there' way, without really knowing where I'm going. For example I went to Lake Chuzenji from Nikko, not realising it was up in the mountaing. We went up 700m in altitude - it was a stunning bus ride - and you could feel a tangible drop in temperature up the top!
In one of the temples - they all sell good-luck charms - I saw a 'dragon arrow talisman'. This item 'protects from misfortune for eternity'. When I saw that I thought 'for 3000 yen, an eternity without misfortune is a pretty good deal'!
I'm very adept at recognising the katakana for 'cappuccino' now.
I had dinners at my ryokan in Nikko, and I couldn't believe it. It took me a full hour to eat. My first night, I sat down and there were only about five small dishes in front of me. I thought 'bonus! This is achievable! I can eat all of this!' Five minutes later, a lady came in with eight more dishes... oh well...
Sometimes I can hardly believe what I'm eating. There are occasions where I don't even know whether it's meat or vegetable. Still, I can be more adventurous at dinner than breakfast. There are lots of pickled or vinegar-y flavours. The other night I had whole anchovies, and what looked like the cross-section of a fish, including all its internal organs, only the whole thing was a dark, ominous, purplish-grey.
Sometimes I feel like Bill Murray in 'Lost in Translation'. You know the part where he's filming the TV commercial, and the director gives him heaps and heaps of instructions - just talks on and on - and then the translator gives a three-word translation. It's so true. You'll be on a train and there'll be this very lengthy spiel in Japanese, talking about arrival times and which stations you'll stop at, and it will be followed by the English:
"The train at platform 8 is going to Joyo."
Yes, thank you.
Better still is when they cut off the 'unnecessary' English translations in mid-sentence, eg: "The train at platform 9 is the local train bound for -". Yes? Bound for where?
I saw a food stall with the interesting sign:
"Would you like to have a Rice Clacker?"
I decided I would like to have a rice clacker, but I regretted it. It wasn't very nice, and like most things I buy here, it went in the bin.
I actually bought a jar of Vegemite today. I'm such a sad Australian...
Last week I actually had my first ever Big Mac, in Kyoto. I was fairly unimpressed with it; it was a pretty sad excuse for a burger, in my opinion. But I've never eaten Hungry Jacks or Maccas burgers, I'm used to home-made ones, or gourmet ones, or even fish-and-chip shop ones, so this was pretty sad in comparison.
All this trip, surrounded by the Japanese who are light packers, I've felt like I've had a ridiculously excessive amount of luggage with me. It hasn't helped that I've been hauling it around several cities and train stations. But compared with most of the other new recruits, I've packed very light indeed. It's all a matter of who you compare yourself with, right?
Anyway, I should probably go and prepare my lesson material and read my notes for tomorrow... fun fun... wish me luck, I'm a bit nervous about teaching in front of people... hope you're all well! :)
Today is our day off training, but tomorrow we have five consecutive days of 11am-8pm training. It's going to be full on and we'll have to teach real Japanese students three different lessons. The lessons seem very formulaic though, so once you get used to it it should be easy enough.
Nikko was really nice. It was a lot of effort to get there - took about 7 hours from Kyoto, and as usual I took a train I didn't intend to take... But it was really stunning there, and I got a free room upgrade. I had a double room, my own personal dining room, and the hot springs bath was really fantastic after a long day walking around in the cool.
It's funny, sometimes I travel in a kind of 'I've heard of this place, I think I'll go there' way, without really knowing where I'm going. For example I went to Lake Chuzenji from Nikko, not realising it was up in the mountaing. We went up 700m in altitude - it was a stunning bus ride - and you could feel a tangible drop in temperature up the top!
In one of the temples - they all sell good-luck charms - I saw a 'dragon arrow talisman'. This item 'protects from misfortune for eternity'. When I saw that I thought 'for 3000 yen, an eternity without misfortune is a pretty good deal'!
I'm very adept at recognising the katakana for 'cappuccino' now.
I had dinners at my ryokan in Nikko, and I couldn't believe it. It took me a full hour to eat. My first night, I sat down and there were only about five small dishes in front of me. I thought 'bonus! This is achievable! I can eat all of this!' Five minutes later, a lady came in with eight more dishes... oh well...
Sometimes I can hardly believe what I'm eating. There are occasions where I don't even know whether it's meat or vegetable. Still, I can be more adventurous at dinner than breakfast. There are lots of pickled or vinegar-y flavours. The other night I had whole anchovies, and what looked like the cross-section of a fish, including all its internal organs, only the whole thing was a dark, ominous, purplish-grey.
Sometimes I feel like Bill Murray in 'Lost in Translation'. You know the part where he's filming the TV commercial, and the director gives him heaps and heaps of instructions - just talks on and on - and then the translator gives a three-word translation. It's so true. You'll be on a train and there'll be this very lengthy spiel in Japanese, talking about arrival times and which stations you'll stop at, and it will be followed by the English:
"The train at platform 8 is going to Joyo."
Yes, thank you.
Better still is when they cut off the 'unnecessary' English translations in mid-sentence, eg: "The train at platform 9 is the local train bound for -". Yes? Bound for where?
I saw a food stall with the interesting sign:
"Would you like to have a Rice Clacker?"
I decided I would like to have a rice clacker, but I regretted it. It wasn't very nice, and like most things I buy here, it went in the bin.
I actually bought a jar of Vegemite today. I'm such a sad Australian...
Last week I actually had my first ever Big Mac, in Kyoto. I was fairly unimpressed with it; it was a pretty sad excuse for a burger, in my opinion. But I've never eaten Hungry Jacks or Maccas burgers, I'm used to home-made ones, or gourmet ones, or even fish-and-chip shop ones, so this was pretty sad in comparison.
All this trip, surrounded by the Japanese who are light packers, I've felt like I've had a ridiculously excessive amount of luggage with me. It hasn't helped that I've been hauling it around several cities and train stations. But compared with most of the other new recruits, I've packed very light indeed. It's all a matter of who you compare yourself with, right?
Anyway, I should probably go and prepare my lesson material and read my notes for tomorrow... fun fun... wish me luck, I'm a bit nervous about teaching in front of people... hope you're all well! :)
Monday, October 29, 2007
Oh, lastly...
Just to let you know Catherine and Mum, I got your emails (Yahoo put them in junk mail for some stupid reason), thank you both, my time has just expired but I read them, thanks again, will write proper emails some time soon... I don: tknow when I:ll get a phone, hopefully soon after arriving in Kawasaki...
Still in Kyoto, post 2
Hmmm... lots of random little impressions...
I have never gotten lost so many times in one day, as when I went to Osaka. I don't have a particularly great sense of direction but give me a map and I can successfully navigate my way around many cities, from Sydney, Rome, Paris, Kyoto, Tokyo... Osaka was something else... One reason I do so much walking here is because I'm continually re-tracing my steps. I swear, in Osaka station you could walk 'around the block' and end up nowhere near where you started. You'll see a sign saying 'JR line' and follow it, only to soon see a sign for 'JR line' pointing in the opposite direction. I spent 45 minutes there looking for the information centre... -_-
There are also so many steps. I'll soon have thighs of steel.
I don't know if I'm losing weight because although exercising a lot, I am eating a lot of rubbish - chocolate croissants, icecreams, etc. The reason for this is that I really do not like the local food. I can't describe it, but it's disgusting. Virtually everything comes with, like, bean curd, or a raw egg on the top. I'm about as big a fan of raw egg as the next Aussie, which is to say, not at all. The other day I had noodles and the waitress indicated that I should break my raw egg into a bowl of sesame sauce and then pour it all over my noodles. I actually did it, too. It wasn't actually as bad as it sounds; the problem is you have to be pretty hungry to eat it... I was sitting there thinking 'I am eating cold gelatinous noodles coated with raw egg...'
The other thing is that even if you find something you like, it is usually topped with something you don't like. For example, I like okonomiyaki (vegetable pancakes), but then they come with, say, a raw egg and tofu on it, or raw egg and ham, or something that looks like pink creamed corn...
And as for Japanese sweets, some of them look nice on the outside, but inwardly they are vile and usually contain red bean paste.
The main thing that strikes me about Japan is that they really have created their own unique world here. I mean, there's nowhere else like it. It's like a different planet, just for Japanese people.
It is probably the most civilised country in the world. Trains run on time. Everywhere is clean. Service is extremely good. The moment you sit down in a restaurant, you're brought a handtowel and glass of water, even if you're just having a coffee. They have plastic bags outside department stores that you can put wet umbrellas into. The water is clean. Machines work.
So many machines have sensors. For example you will walk up to a ticket machine and it will speak to you. Or you start to walk through a ticket gate - which is open by default - and if your ticket is invalid, it will slam shut right in front of you so you slam into it - a bit disconcerting!
It gets dark here from about 5pm, it's totally dark by 5:30.
If you are in a hurry to get anywhere, you're in for intense frustration. There is little meaningful information in English anywhere. And I did exactly what I did last time I went to Tokyo and tried to go to see Mt Fuji - took a local train instead of a rapid one, not knowing whether I was 'allowed' to use the rapid one on my ticket - therefore stretching a 90min journey into 2 1/2 hrs...
Like I mentioned, it can be frustrating because I don't understand anyone and I feel stupid most of the time. I feel dumb when I don't even know when to say 'thank you', dumb when I walk around in circles at every major train station, dumb when I don't know what to do with my things in the ryokan, dumb when I don't know how to pay the bill in a restaurant (I figured it out by now...), dumb when everyone else suddenly gets off a bus and I don't know why, etc etc. Anyway, I am learning but I guess I will have to repeat this process in Kawasaki.
For the first time last night there was someone speaking English on TV. Matt Damon was on some Japanese cooking show. Yay Matt!! I can understand you!!
Anyway, should stop here. I hope you're all well. I am okay... I feel kind of down in the mornings, but when I'm out and about I usually feel okay... sometimes I think 'I want to go home' but I'm between homes now anyway so there is no such place... hmmm... anyway, I don't know what I'm doing today, maybe I'll have a coffee and go to Nara. But I am a bit temple-d out!
Tomorrow I'm going to Nikko, after that to training....
Cheers to you all, hope you're all well :)
I have never gotten lost so many times in one day, as when I went to Osaka. I don't have a particularly great sense of direction but give me a map and I can successfully navigate my way around many cities, from Sydney, Rome, Paris, Kyoto, Tokyo... Osaka was something else... One reason I do so much walking here is because I'm continually re-tracing my steps. I swear, in Osaka station you could walk 'around the block' and end up nowhere near where you started. You'll see a sign saying 'JR line' and follow it, only to soon see a sign for 'JR line' pointing in the opposite direction. I spent 45 minutes there looking for the information centre... -_-
There are also so many steps. I'll soon have thighs of steel.
I don't know if I'm losing weight because although exercising a lot, I am eating a lot of rubbish - chocolate croissants, icecreams, etc. The reason for this is that I really do not like the local food. I can't describe it, but it's disgusting. Virtually everything comes with, like, bean curd, or a raw egg on the top. I'm about as big a fan of raw egg as the next Aussie, which is to say, not at all. The other day I had noodles and the waitress indicated that I should break my raw egg into a bowl of sesame sauce and then pour it all over my noodles. I actually did it, too. It wasn't actually as bad as it sounds; the problem is you have to be pretty hungry to eat it... I was sitting there thinking 'I am eating cold gelatinous noodles coated with raw egg...'
The other thing is that even if you find something you like, it is usually topped with something you don't like. For example, I like okonomiyaki (vegetable pancakes), but then they come with, say, a raw egg and tofu on it, or raw egg and ham, or something that looks like pink creamed corn...
And as for Japanese sweets, some of them look nice on the outside, but inwardly they are vile and usually contain red bean paste.
The main thing that strikes me about Japan is that they really have created their own unique world here. I mean, there's nowhere else like it. It's like a different planet, just for Japanese people.
It is probably the most civilised country in the world. Trains run on time. Everywhere is clean. Service is extremely good. The moment you sit down in a restaurant, you're brought a handtowel and glass of water, even if you're just having a coffee. They have plastic bags outside department stores that you can put wet umbrellas into. The water is clean. Machines work.
So many machines have sensors. For example you will walk up to a ticket machine and it will speak to you. Or you start to walk through a ticket gate - which is open by default - and if your ticket is invalid, it will slam shut right in front of you so you slam into it - a bit disconcerting!
It gets dark here from about 5pm, it's totally dark by 5:30.
If you are in a hurry to get anywhere, you're in for intense frustration. There is little meaningful information in English anywhere. And I did exactly what I did last time I went to Tokyo and tried to go to see Mt Fuji - took a local train instead of a rapid one, not knowing whether I was 'allowed' to use the rapid one on my ticket - therefore stretching a 90min journey into 2 1/2 hrs...
Like I mentioned, it can be frustrating because I don't understand anyone and I feel stupid most of the time. I feel dumb when I don't even know when to say 'thank you', dumb when I walk around in circles at every major train station, dumb when I don't know what to do with my things in the ryokan, dumb when I don't know how to pay the bill in a restaurant (I figured it out by now...), dumb when everyone else suddenly gets off a bus and I don't know why, etc etc. Anyway, I am learning but I guess I will have to repeat this process in Kawasaki.
For the first time last night there was someone speaking English on TV. Matt Damon was on some Japanese cooking show. Yay Matt!! I can understand you!!
Anyway, should stop here. I hope you're all well. I am okay... I feel kind of down in the mornings, but when I'm out and about I usually feel okay... sometimes I think 'I want to go home' but I'm between homes now anyway so there is no such place... hmmm... anyway, I don't know what I'm doing today, maybe I'll have a coffee and go to Nara. But I am a bit temple-d out!
Tomorrow I'm going to Nikko, after that to training....
Cheers to you all, hope you're all well :)
Still in Kyoto, post 1...
Hi everyone, how:s it going :)
Sorry if I don:t reply to individual comments and posts just yet, I still don't have long on the Internet each time, but I appreciate them and one day will reply properly hopefully :)
I'm glad I can find my way around a computer because I am really depending on my knowledge of keyboard shortcuts using the Internet here :)
Sooo... what's been happening (note that I'm trying to use apostrophes properly now, I guess I'll have to get used to apostrophes being shift-7 on a keyboard...)...
So far my itinerary has been like this:Day 1 - around Kyoto - near my ryokan, Fushimi Inari shrine, Kyoto Station area, ArashiyamaDay 2 - to OsakaDay 3 - to Himeji (Adelaide's sister city in Japan! It has a famous castle, very pretty)Day 4 - around Kyoto (Kinkakuji, Ginkakuji (by accident - darn bus transfers), Heian Jingu, Gion)Day 5 - around Kyoto again (Kiyomizu, Gion and Pontocho, Kamogawa Shrine (only went there for the long bus ride, let me rest my poor aching feet))
My favourite places so far have been Arashiyama (a pretty mountainous place in the west of Kyoto), Dotombori (a lively shopping area in Osaka), Himeji Castle, Kinkakuji (a gold-foil-covered temple), Kiyomizu (a shrine - there's a related shrine nearby where all the young girls go 'cos it's known as a matchmaking shrine :)) and Gion, the famous hanamachi (geisha district).
Before I left home Mum asked if I wanted to bring an umbrella, strongly implying it would be a good idea to do so. I didn't take it - probably a good thing as my luggage weight was very borderline. Now I've bought one and I remembered why I never like umbrellas - Murphy's Law. If you bring it, it doesn't rain, and if you leave it behind, it does. After it bucketed with rain all night and all morning - you needed an umbrella to walk even 5m down the street - I bought an umbrella, only to come outside from the shop and find the rain had stopped, and had stopped for the rest of the day. That night and the next morning it poured again, so I brought my umbrella the next day, only to find that as the train to Himeji continued, the skies cleared up. I mean, that's great, of course, but I never seem to have my umbrella at the right time...
Anyway enough rambling pointlessly about umbrellas... that's a roundabout way of saying it rained for half of two days; the rest of the time has been ii tenki (good weather). I left my ryokan in a tanktop and the proprietress asked if I wouldn't be cold! In Australia, people wring out every last ounce of enjoyment from warm weather. If the weather allows, people will wear as little as possible. Here, people dress seasonally - it's autumn, so wear long tops...
This place is a shopper's paradise; nobody could call me an enthusiastic shopper but even I am having to restrain myself, since I still have to lug my suitcase through a couple more cities. At first I thought everything was expensive but I've found lots of cheaper stuff now, even shoes for $15, $20, $25, which you never find in Australia apart from at Spendless Shoes, which doesn't count (even though I buy most of my shoes there :)).
Anyway this computer is shocking, it keeps freezing, so I'll post this and then try to get another one...
Sorry if I don:t reply to individual comments and posts just yet, I still don't have long on the Internet each time, but I appreciate them and one day will reply properly hopefully :)
I'm glad I can find my way around a computer because I am really depending on my knowledge of keyboard shortcuts using the Internet here :)
Sooo... what's been happening (note that I'm trying to use apostrophes properly now, I guess I'll have to get used to apostrophes being shift-7 on a keyboard...)...
So far my itinerary has been like this:Day 1 - around Kyoto - near my ryokan, Fushimi Inari shrine, Kyoto Station area, ArashiyamaDay 2 - to OsakaDay 3 - to Himeji (Adelaide's sister city in Japan! It has a famous castle, very pretty)Day 4 - around Kyoto (Kinkakuji, Ginkakuji (by accident - darn bus transfers), Heian Jingu, Gion)Day 5 - around Kyoto again (Kiyomizu, Gion and Pontocho, Kamogawa Shrine (only went there for the long bus ride, let me rest my poor aching feet))
My favourite places so far have been Arashiyama (a pretty mountainous place in the west of Kyoto), Dotombori (a lively shopping area in Osaka), Himeji Castle, Kinkakuji (a gold-foil-covered temple), Kiyomizu (a shrine - there's a related shrine nearby where all the young girls go 'cos it's known as a matchmaking shrine :)) and Gion, the famous hanamachi (geisha district).
Before I left home Mum asked if I wanted to bring an umbrella, strongly implying it would be a good idea to do so. I didn't take it - probably a good thing as my luggage weight was very borderline. Now I've bought one and I remembered why I never like umbrellas - Murphy's Law. If you bring it, it doesn't rain, and if you leave it behind, it does. After it bucketed with rain all night and all morning - you needed an umbrella to walk even 5m down the street - I bought an umbrella, only to come outside from the shop and find the rain had stopped, and had stopped for the rest of the day. That night and the next morning it poured again, so I brought my umbrella the next day, only to find that as the train to Himeji continued, the skies cleared up. I mean, that's great, of course, but I never seem to have my umbrella at the right time...
Anyway enough rambling pointlessly about umbrellas... that's a roundabout way of saying it rained for half of two days; the rest of the time has been ii tenki (good weather). I left my ryokan in a tanktop and the proprietress asked if I wouldn't be cold! In Australia, people wring out every last ounce of enjoyment from warm weather. If the weather allows, people will wear as little as possible. Here, people dress seasonally - it's autumn, so wear long tops...
This place is a shopper's paradise; nobody could call me an enthusiastic shopper but even I am having to restrain myself, since I still have to lug my suitcase through a couple more cities. At first I thought everything was expensive but I've found lots of cheaper stuff now, even shoes for $15, $20, $25, which you never find in Australia apart from at Spendless Shoes, which doesn't count (even though I buy most of my shoes there :)).
Anyway this computer is shocking, it keeps freezing, so I'll post this and then try to get another one...
Thursday, October 25, 2007
In Kyoto, post 3
I can:t post photos just yet as I don:t have my laptop and stupidly forgot to bring the cable that connects my camera to a USB port (I thought I would bring my laptop so I wouldn:t need it, then changed my mind at the last minute, that thing weighed 5kg all on its own).
Everything becomes a bit of a challenge when you don:t understand anything. You have to mentally prepare yourself for every transaction, work out what you will say. As I said though, I have used a lot of Japanese. If I couldn:t speak a little it would be very hard.
And not understanding anything leaves you a bit helpless at times. You might hesitate somewhere, not knowing if the sign says :public welcome, please enter: or :trespassers will be shot:. Or you:ll sit on a train for half an hour (as I did), expecting it to leave at any moment but not knowing when it will. (What is the point in translating the message :Welcome to our train from the airport, the toilets are at the back of the carriage, there are phones available:, but not translating the message :the train will leave at --- and arrive at ---?) Or you:ll stand in a lift and not be able to figure out how to open or close the doors!
Oh! I used one of those high-tech toilets for the first time! Haha! First of all, the seat is warmed. You can turn on a fake flushing sound - and change the volume! - to disguise certain other noises you might make... You can turn on a :powerful deoderant: (?), a bidet or a spray. This was powerful and slightly alarming until I realised you had to hit :stop: to turn it off!
Anyway, not much else to say at the moment... I really must do a quick surf before my hour:s up and see if I can find sightseeing info... I didn:t bring a guidebook and there:s virtually no English info at the tourist bureau... I don:t know what places are must-see places...
Anyway, hope you are all well, I will post again when I can... Cheers to you all, I'm thinking of you, but not too much or I'll feel sad :)
Everything becomes a bit of a challenge when you don:t understand anything. You have to mentally prepare yourself for every transaction, work out what you will say. As I said though, I have used a lot of Japanese. If I couldn:t speak a little it would be very hard.
And not understanding anything leaves you a bit helpless at times. You might hesitate somewhere, not knowing if the sign says :public welcome, please enter: or :trespassers will be shot:. Or you:ll sit on a train for half an hour (as I did), expecting it to leave at any moment but not knowing when it will. (What is the point in translating the message :Welcome to our train from the airport, the toilets are at the back of the carriage, there are phones available:, but not translating the message :the train will leave at --- and arrive at ---?) Or you:ll stand in a lift and not be able to figure out how to open or close the doors!
Oh! I used one of those high-tech toilets for the first time! Haha! First of all, the seat is warmed. You can turn on a fake flushing sound - and change the volume! - to disguise certain other noises you might make... You can turn on a :powerful deoderant: (?), a bidet or a spray. This was powerful and slightly alarming until I realised you had to hit :stop: to turn it off!
Anyway, not much else to say at the moment... I really must do a quick surf before my hour:s up and see if I can find sightseeing info... I didn:t bring a guidebook and there:s virtually no English info at the tourist bureau... I don:t know what places are must-see places...
Anyway, hope you are all well, I will post again when I can... Cheers to you all, I'm thinking of you, but not too much or I'll feel sad :)
In Kyoto, post 2
As I mentioned, I felt wretched coming over on the plane. I was appalled at what I:d done and at the thought of it being a WHOLE YEAR... and realised how much I love all my friends... and now I was sentenced to a year by myself... but when I finally left the plane into the Osaka airport it was with a smile on my face, looking forward to getting started. Since then I have mostly felt just fine with the occasional slightly down feeling. I think the main thing is to think of each day at a time, not think :aaagggh a whole year: but :cool, today I:m in Japan, what can I do today?:
I love my ryokan. (A ryokan is a traditional japanese inn. With a futon on the floor, a chair with no legs, sliding doors, and you get green tea and sweets brought to you every time you come in at the end of the day :)) It just has a nice vibe. The only thing I can:t handle is the breakfasts!
I can eat a big breakfast, OR an early breakfast, OR a Japanese breakfast. But I can:t eat all three. For example, yesterday:s breakfast consisted of the following:
a big piece of blackened fish, a nearly raw egg, a big wobbly slab of tofu with soy sauce, a bowl of miso soup, ham and lettuce, fruit pieces, fermented soybeans (natto), pickles, some unidentifiable orange jellied stuff, a bowl of sticky rice, some green unidentifiable stuff, and green tea.
This is enough food for four people and I had no hope. I could eat the miso soup, which I like, and maybe the fruit, and that on its own would satisfy me at 7:30am. Sadly I:ve devised a cunning strategy of eating some and hiding some in a plastic bag to throw out later. Luckily my breakfast is brought to me in my room so I can eat (and disguise my failure to eat enough for politeness). My major motivation to come on the Internet today - otherwise I might have waited another day or two - was to email the ryokan website to cancel my breakfasts in Nikko, the next town I:m visiting!
To compensate I have been eating things like bread and cheese scrolls, toasties, etc. There are many great bakeries and patisseries. I haven:t seen a lot of food like pasta or curries or anything, but a few.
I:m in Kyoto for a week. I spent yesterday sightseeing. I walked a lot. I went around near my ryokan. It:s just as you:d imagine Kyoto. Full of little houses with Japanese-style rooves and sliding doors, and vending machines, and it:s quieter than I thought, much quieter than Tokyo. I saw the Fushimi Inari shrine, which has hundreds of torii (red gates). I walked quite a lot around the city centre and the Kyoto train station building. I went to Arashiyama, which is a pretty place with mountains, a river, and loads more shrines and temples. You can:t seem to walk for fifteen minutes anywhere without stumbling over a shrine or temple. Since I don:t understand anything I:m seeing...
It poured with rain overnight but seems to have tentatively cleared up at the moment.
It:s funny, in Japan even looking at shops is interesting. There are so many food items where I can:t even determine a base ingredient. Is it vegetable, mineral? You go into a book store and there are about fifty people all standing reading magazines, :cos people commonly read in book stores, it:s acceptable...
Okay, I:ll post this then add a little more.
I love my ryokan. (A ryokan is a traditional japanese inn. With a futon on the floor, a chair with no legs, sliding doors, and you get green tea and sweets brought to you every time you come in at the end of the day :)) It just has a nice vibe. The only thing I can:t handle is the breakfasts!
I can eat a big breakfast, OR an early breakfast, OR a Japanese breakfast. But I can:t eat all three. For example, yesterday:s breakfast consisted of the following:
a big piece of blackened fish, a nearly raw egg, a big wobbly slab of tofu with soy sauce, a bowl of miso soup, ham and lettuce, fruit pieces, fermented soybeans (natto), pickles, some unidentifiable orange jellied stuff, a bowl of sticky rice, some green unidentifiable stuff, and green tea.
This is enough food for four people and I had no hope. I could eat the miso soup, which I like, and maybe the fruit, and that on its own would satisfy me at 7:30am. Sadly I:ve devised a cunning strategy of eating some and hiding some in a plastic bag to throw out later. Luckily my breakfast is brought to me in my room so I can eat (and disguise my failure to eat enough for politeness). My major motivation to come on the Internet today - otherwise I might have waited another day or two - was to email the ryokan website to cancel my breakfasts in Nikko, the next town I:m visiting!
To compensate I have been eating things like bread and cheese scrolls, toasties, etc. There are many great bakeries and patisseries. I haven:t seen a lot of food like pasta or curries or anything, but a few.
I:m in Kyoto for a week. I spent yesterday sightseeing. I walked a lot. I went around near my ryokan. It:s just as you:d imagine Kyoto. Full of little houses with Japanese-style rooves and sliding doors, and vending machines, and it:s quieter than I thought, much quieter than Tokyo. I saw the Fushimi Inari shrine, which has hundreds of torii (red gates). I walked quite a lot around the city centre and the Kyoto train station building. I went to Arashiyama, which is a pretty place with mountains, a river, and loads more shrines and temples. You can:t seem to walk for fifteen minutes anywhere without stumbling over a shrine or temple. Since I don:t understand anything I:m seeing...
It poured with rain overnight but seems to have tentatively cleared up at the moment.
It:s funny, in Japan even looking at shops is interesting. There are so many food items where I can:t even determine a base ingredient. Is it vegetable, mineral? You go into a book store and there are about fifty people all standing reading magazines, :cos people commonly read in book stores, it:s acceptable...
Okay, I:ll post this then add a little more.
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