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.