In London

Mate! I'm no longer 'in Kawasaki' but writing this from my friend's couch in London!

I've been here two days so far. So far haven't had much in the way of jet lag (it's wondrous what coffee will do :)) and have been enjoying myself immensely. It's the first time I've left Japan in six months, there were a few minor re-adjustments to make:

In the coffee shop in Heathrow airport, the girl in front of me asked 'what kind of muffin is that one?' and the answer was cinnamon. I thought - wow, I can actually ask that sort of question in this country! I can ask questions about food or menus, and understand the answer!

I keep expecting the train announcements to say things like 'tsugi wa Earl's Court. Earl's Court desu.' And I look at train lines and see the colours and think of the Japanese lines - like I'll see the Jubilee line and think 'okay, I have to take the Hibiya line...'

I was surprised when toilets didn't flush automatically... haha...

It's so multicultural here (frankly, anywhere would be after Japan) that I found myself frequently wondering 'can I speak to this person in English? Can I ask this person a question in English?'

I like being able to be polite again and say please and thanks very much and excuse me at appropriate moments. In Japan I (still) never know if I'm supposed to say 'arigato' or 'arigato gozaimasu' or 'sumimasen' or 'shitsurei shimasu' or 'otsukaresama desu' or 'gomen nasai' or 'hai' or whatever else in basic situations...

I was really happy to see my friend again. I'm very much enjoying staying at her place and she is being super hospitable. Best of all, she loves to cook, and is cooking me nice meals every night. :)

I'm located in an area of London called the Docklands, it's in the east. The main station I connect to the Underground on is Tower Hill. I feel pretty lucky, every time I go in or out of the city proper and change stations, I get a marvellous view of the Tower of London.

Yesterday I did the following:

went to the Tower of London where I had a mah-vellous rich lamb casserole and almond orange polenta cake (two things I could not get in Japan), did a tour, etc

went to St Paul's cathedral

weather was quite nice so sat in Russell Square reading all the bits in '84 Charing Cross Road' where Helene is in Russel Square... :)

walked all the way from Russell Square down to Trafalgar Square, via Bloomsbury Street, Piccadilly Circus and Charing Cross Road... sadly 84 Charing Cross Road is no longer an antiquarian bookstore, but a Pizza Hut! But Charing Cross Road is still lined with bookstores...

came back and enjoyed a nice evening with my friends :)

Today:

I went to South Kensington station to see if they still had the donut shop I used to patronise as a 7-year-old. And it was still there! Exactly the same store, same sign! I bought a vanilla-topped donut. It was quite nice, though my tastes have changed since I was a child.

Then it was off to East Putney to see the neighbourhood where I used to live. My mum had given me detailed directions around the area. As the train went down the District line by Fulham Green, Putney Bridge, it was all I could do not to bounce up and down on my chair.

Walked around East Putney. My old house was there, some of the streets even familiar... it rained quite a bit (the weather is about what you'd expect from London, very changeable - today was about 12 and intermittently raining and cloudy, but with periodic bits of sun).

Got slightly lost looking for the park and shopping centre I used to go to, so stopped for lunch in a pub. Very nice.

Found the old park and shopping centre and pottered about; it's now a much larger and more modern complex called Southside, I bought a book there. :)

Went back to South Kensington to the Natural History Museum, had another coffee and really really enjoyed the museum. I think I shall go back tomorrow.

I read somewhere that Tokyo has the fastest walking people in the world. After two days' worth of anecdotal evidence I can say this is ridiculous. In Tokyo I spend the whole time dodging and weaving around the slooow people. In London I'm about average.

Actually though when I arrived at Heathrow yesterday morning I envisioned long queues and bad bureaucracy/organisation, but I was lucky. Our gate was a looong way from the arrivals hall, and I was in the last 10% of people to get off the plane, but I set a brisk pace and overtook virtually the whole plane. :)

London is a very beautiful place. :)

Anyway I'm kind of tired and rambling on, so should probably post this and go have dinner. :)

I'm going to London

I'm going to London!
I'm going to London!
I'm going to London!
I'm going to London!

I'm looking at Underground maps and train planners, and glorying in all the familiar names. I can get to Paddington in 37 minutes! Or Tottenham Court Road, or Trafalgar Square, or Kensington Gardens. I'm going to see Charing Cross Road, and the Tower of London, and do a walking tour of Oxford, and spend a night in Bath, and I'm going to eat a donut in South Kensington, and walk around Notting Hill, and revisit East Putney, and goodness knows what else!

I don't know why but there's something about London, even looking at the place names on a map gets me all excited...

Kids

So, we've had quite a few kids through our doors in the last few weeks. Some are our students, some are potential students, so I've done quite a few lessons or 'demo lessons' by now.

My 8-year-old student is a very good student and nice girl. Every time I ask her 'how are you?', she replies with an enthuiastic smile: 'I'm great!' After a week of students saying 'I'm fine', it's nice to get an 'I'm great' from someone!

In my last class with her, this girl asked me, 'how long have you been in Japan?' I was very surprised. I think her mother might have asked her to ask me, because it's a question a lot of my adult students have asked me. The difference is that this 8-year-old girl got the grammar right, and many of my adult students don't. Hahaha...

My 2-year-old student is very cute and happy and has taken to giving me numerous hugs. She does have a slightly unfortunate tendency to open the classroom door and escape the room while I'm giving the lesson. About 10% of each lesson is spent trying to entice her back into the room (or else leaving the room carrying various materials and trying to show them to her while she's running around or rolling on the floor).

I had a demo lesson today with a 6-year-old girl. She was very cute (to be honest, most Japanese children are very cute, actually) and very, very shy. She didn't say anything to me but smiled very timidly. I gave her some pencils and paper to draw with and told her to draw anything. But she just held the pencil uncertainly above the paper. She was clearly thinking 'what if I draw the wrong thing? I'd better not draw in case I do something wrong!'

So I started drawing on my own piece of paper, to relax her, and you know what, she copied every picture I drew, down to the exact colours I used and the way I drew them. What's more, her likenesses were very good; some of her pictures were better than mine. So we drew lots of things, trees and flowers and animals and fruit and a house, with me occasionally saying the words in English, and her saying nothing at all.

The funny thing about kids' lessons, or generally playing with kids, or doing demo lessons, is that somehow the language barrier doesn't seem very noticeable. Sure, the kids often don't understand what you're saying. But most of the time you're just trying to get them to do very simple things - say a specific sentence, or repeat words, or play a game - so you actually don't need that much language to show it. It's very different to adult classes where you're trying to explain concepts, or have a conversation with them.

With this girl, after a while I ran out of ideas to draw but then it was time for the demo lesson. She spoke very quietly and nervously in the lesson, under a lot of encouragement, but afterwards as they were leaving she told her mother that she'd had fun. So that was surprising but good. Kotoba wa iranai...

We've had quite a variety of kids in; silent and sullen kids, sweet and shy kids, happy and outgoing kids. Fortunately I haven't had to deal with any crying or distressed kids, but I guess if you deal with 2 or 3-year-olds for long enough, you'll eventually encounter one...

Updating again

I've not posted for a while because I've had my sister staying with me. :) It was good, and we did lots of things, the weather was kind of annoying though. Cold and raining virtually all week, and of course now she's gone the weather's perfect and suddenly feels like spring. Today I could believe for the first time that summer is coming soon, and the air is mild and humid.

We ate a lot of pastries (I think I've mentioned that Japan *does* do pastries well, especially chocolate croissants :)) and had cook-your-own-okonomiyaki twice, and went to a bunch of different places around Yokohama and Tokyo, and we went out with a bunch of students, including Mr Sociable. :) It was good having her here.

At the end of this week I'm going to London so I only have a few days of 'normal life' before another fun change in routine. :)

Saying more than you mean to, again

We had a class today where students were discussing their hobbies. I heard one cute 19-year-old girl say, rather startlingly:
"I like to strip."

There are times when a quick pronunciation drill is in order...

Saying more than you mean to

In one class this week, students had to write down things they have to do and should do. One student wrote:

"I should wash every 3 days but I don't."

I couldn't help laughing. What he meant was that he should wash his clothes every three days.

Yoroshiku onegaishimasu

We have a new timetable, which started last week. I have a few different classes at different times, but also a different mix of students. It's been pretty busy. It's also been a bit chaotic around here, with construction work, masses of new kids' materials floating around, and staff members coming and going. I think things are finally starting to calm down a little, although one of our full-time teachers is at training all week, so we do have a few extra classes to teach this week.

One thing I have noticed is that names have become much easier to learn. I've taught perhaps 40 new faces in the last week, but I remember almost all their names already. There are a couple of new classes that are going to be 'grit your teeth and bear it' classes, but other new ones which should be quite great.

The other thing is that sometimes with a new class, or new mix of students, the first class or two can be a bit tedious or stilted and you think 'oh, I won't like teaching this class that much', but as a few weeks go by and students get more used to each other and the class, it relaxes into something more fun.

A few posts ago I mentioned a student "probably in his early or mid twenties, and you can tell he just likes people. He's got this super positive, energetic vibe about him." I'm happy to say he switched classes so he could be my regular student. I should think of a nickname for him on this blog, let's call him Mr Sociable (incidentally, every time I talk to him he's like 'oh, this weekend I'm going to Niigata with my friends; this weekend I'm going to Fukuoka to see my friends, this weekend I'm going to Hiroshima to see...' I swear, in the last three months he's visited half of Japan').

Well, for a few weeks Mr Sociable was the only student in his timeslot, so we'd spend more than the usual % of class time just chatting. With the new timetable, he was going to have a regular classmate. I was a bit worried, since I didn't recognise the name of his classmate - what if the new student was one of those uber-quiet types with no desire to talk; then he might feel a bit stifled in the class.

I didn't have to worry. His classmate is also lovely, and friendly, and communicative. She's a few years older than us. What was nice was that before class, she and he were sitting at a table together yakking away (in English :)), having only met the week before. Now this doesn't sound remarkable but with a few exceptions, students rarely chat to their classmates outside of class (unless they've been attending the same class for, like, a year). After class, too, they both lingered to chat a bit more. It made me feel good to see students making friends. Our classes are going to be fun. :)

We've had two assistant managers in the last two months. Our new assistant manager started today. She's young and pretty and shy, and seems pleasant. Actually, she's only a year younger than me, but she's fresh out of university (which is traditionally a bit of a carefree time of life for Japanese people), so it must be a bit of a dramatic change to step into such a busy, full-time new job.

Anyway, I had a good first impression of her. It's kind of funny meeting a new Japanese member of staff, I kind of go to shake hands and end up half-bowing and saying 'yoroshiku onegaishimasu' after they do that to me (our manager always laughs at me when I do that... this time I had a Starbucks cappuccino in one hand as I was just walking in the door, so it probably wasn't a very traditional Japanese greeting).

Today was 12 degrees, windy and raining. A charming day. I really thought it would be getting warmer by now. We are a full five weeks into spring...

I mentioned there was a funny smell in my apartment. I never did find the source of it - for about three days, every time I came in from outside, the smell was a little stronger. But it's gone now...

My sister is coming this weekend, and I am Very Much Looking Forward To It. :)

Random updates

There's a funny smell coming from somewhere in my apartment. Thing is, I've actually cleaned my apartment recently (that was a red letter day, I can tell you :)), so I don't know where it could possibly be coming from. I just can't pinpoint the exact location.

Speaking of my apartment, the other day I got up and there was no water. So I went to work early and washed my hair in the janitor's room, and nobody was any the wiser, hahaha... I realised as I left my apartment that there was a big poster on the apartment's message board about the planned water outage (I found the kanji 'water' and the current date on it, anyway). This kind of thing happens when you can't read the language...

This has been kind of a tiring week. We have a new timetable now, and it's a bit more stressful. I also have about double the lesson preparation than before, so I've been coming in to work early and taking lesson plans home to review, something I haven't done since my first fortnight at work. I also have my first kids' classes this week.

My first kid's class, with the 8-year-old angel, went quite well. She really is a great kid. It was odd; never before have I felt so much like a language barrier didn't exist. Because I wasn't trying to engage her in conversation like I would with adults, just lead her in games and activities, which she understood perfectly and immediately (she really is smart), it was actually easier to communicate that lesson than with adults...

The other kid's class will be with a 2-year-old and her mother, and it's tomorrow. She has just turned 2, and the lesson is 45 minutes long... hmm...

Oh, I did do a little cherry blossom viewing (really, cherry blossoms are absolutely everywhere, it's difficult *not* to see them), despite the continual bad weather lately. Click on a pic to see it bigger:





By the way, I changed my blog settings so it should be easier for people to leave comments.