Let's play together!

Soon our school will run kids' classes. Let me tell you, there are *lots* of kids' classes, and the system is pretty complicated.

For prospective adult students, you do an interview to judge their level and motivate them. For prospective child students, you do a demo lesson with the child to show their parents the style of the class and how well you interact with them.

So today we just focused on how to teach a demo lesson. We spent nearly three hours actually practising the interviews - lots of standing up and sitting down, running, hopping, doing songs with actions, etc! It was okay, but we all felt exhausted at the end of it!

Our very first prospective child student is coming on Tuesday, and I'm the lucky person who will be doing the demo lesson. Imagine doing a demo lesson with a 4-year-old boy, who speaks no English and will probably be terrified of the 'strange white person', while his mother watches your every ridiculous gesture and your rendition of the 'Letter Song' and the 'Walking Song'...

Hahaha... actually I feel positive after the training session, but you must agree that practising a kid's lesson on your co-workers is somewhat different to practising on a real child. Well, I'll be fine so long as the child is a model pupil who follows my 'script' perfectly, haha...

It was encouraging to hear, though, that we are very unlikely to start with a full complement of kids' classes from day 1 - we'll probably only have a few students at first, so our schedules won't be overwhelmed.

Slightly less encouraging was the trainer's continually saying things like 'now, if the child cries through the whole interview, which often happens...'

Anyone for some nice, delicious hormones?

Some of my students were trying to tell me that there's a nearby restaurant where you can eat hormones.

'Hormones?!' I repeated. 'Restaurants don't serve hormones. You can't see hormones.'

But they all insisted. I tried to envisage a plate of hormones, and failed. Later, I asked one of the staff members, 'oh, some of my students were saying you can order hormones around here?', expecting her to correct my misunderstanding, and she said 'oh yeah, yeah, hormones, that's right.'

Tonight, some students and staff went out for dinner and drinks to this very restaurant, and I now realise they were talking about hōrumon-yaki, which is beef or pork offal.

Yes, I now live in a world where it's common to go out for a nice meal of offal. Actually it was pretty nice. I refuse to eat intestine, which is just like eating slimy fat, but the heart and liver and other parts were pretty nice, marinated and barbecued and eaten with sauce and spring onion. Mm mm! :) And everyone wore paper bibs. :)

[click on a picture to see it larger]

Body hair

Did you know that displaying chest hair constitutes sexual harrassment? Apparently so.

A recent story in the news focused on the Somin Festival (See here for more info. ). This is a festival where a bunch of almost naked men scramble to capture 'somin bukuro' (cotton sacks). It was controversial this year and garnered a lot of attention, because the train company refused to display advertising posters featuring an almost naked man with a hairy chest.

Now the problem isn't the 'almost naked' part - I have seen one or two other posters around with almost-naked men on them, for example advertising hot springs - but the hairy chest. Apparently, a hairy-chested guy constitutes 'sexual harassment' and would make women feel uncomfortable. While that may be true, I can't say that their hairless counterparts exactly put women at ease. (And there's certainly no 'sexual harassment' issue with all the scantily clad women, bursting out of the seams, on magazine covers and posters everywhere.)

In a class today, everyone did a speech on customs they think are important.

One guy spoke about how the local festivals of towns should be preserved. As an example he talked about the Somin Festival. He said that he didn't think the poster would 'give women bad feelings' (his words) and that both the poster and the festival should continue.

After the speech, he asked if there were any questions. This is a regular thing that everyone says after a speech. So there were a couple of standard questions like, 'have you ever been to this festival yourself', etc. Then one guy asked:
'Do you have a hairy chest?'

He replied: 'Unfortunately, not...'

Everyone just cracked up.

Bits and pieces again...

Hahaha, I got a Valentine's Day gift for the first time in my life. It was from a female student who isn't even a regular of mine. It was nice of her. :) Another student brought in cakes she had baked; chocolate ones for the male teachers, and a tea cake for the female teachers.

Valentine's Day is quite different here than in Australia. For a start, the main idea of it is for women to give their boyfriends/husbands chocolate (there is a different holiday for men to give their women gifts). But it's very common for people to give Valentine's gifts to their friends, co-workers, boss, parents, etc.

***

I mentioned in an earlier post that a new student, almost a total beginner, was going to start private lessons with me. Already he's become one of my favourite students. People's personalities will come through somehow, even if they don't have many words. He's extremely bright so I think he'll progress very quickly.

We had another new student start recently, I think I mentioned the guy who decided to join after taking one of my trial lessons? (To clarify, it's not that he decided to join because of my trial lesson. But at any rate, my lesson didn't deter him from going ahead and signing up. :))

Anyway, this new guy is great. I like him so much. He's 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. Every time he sees me, his eyes light up - and probably, my eyes light up too - it's like seeing an old friend, and we immediately start talking yak-yak-yak. In the one class I had him in, he was asking the other students questions, asking me questions; he was interested in getting to know everyone (and it sounds funny, but most students don't do that so much; they don't really talk to each other unless told to :)).


***

I made a 'resolution' to try at least one new restaurant each week, and eat at least one new thing each week. This sounds stupid but I've already settled into such a rut of patronising the same stores and cafes all the time. I have a lunchtime routine of Subway and Starbucks, where I order exactly the same thing every day. It's pretty sad...

Snow Festival

So! Be prepared for Many Photos! :) If you're on dial-up, you might want to leave the page to load for a couple of minutes and then come back. :)

Click on a picture to see a bigger version.

So, here's my trip to Sapporo for the Snow Festival! Day One!

At the airport, the lady at the desk asked me if I wanted a window seat or not. It's fortunate that I did want a window seat, because I know the Japanese for 'window', but not for aisle. Haha... Anyway, you can immediately see the effect of the season on the landscape; as you go further north, very quickly, snow appears:


In Sapporo it was a nice, sunny day. This is the JR Sapporo train station, bright and modern. It may be sunny but it ain't warm.


I headed to Odori Park, the main site of the festival. It's a 1.5km-long, narrow park running through the city centre. There were rather a lot of people there and there was a real festival atmosphere! The park itself covers quite a few blocks, and people would get banked up waiting for the pedestrian crossing lights to change.


Snow just makes everything look beautiful, I think. Even ordinary trellises and rails look cool with some snow on them:


Although it's not obvious from these photos, there really is heaps of snow in Sapporo. Most of it has been effectively cleared off all the roads, and paths have been cleared on the footpaths. Of course there is still a lot of ice and slush on the paths, but they've dealt with this by adding loads of sand to the ice. This adds friction so that you can walk safely on the ice without slipping. Okay, obvious to anyone who lives in snowy countries, but not to me.

They have these free dispensers of bags of sand, so that you can help yourself and sand the path if it's too slippery:


Odori Park itself crosses several blocks, so it's kind of divided into segments. Each 'segment' usually featured a couple of prominent snow sculptures, along with some other, smaller snow sculptures, and various other stalls or attractions. Here's one of the prominent ones:


Look! It's Aslan! One of the big snow sculptures was for the new movie Prince Caspian:


There were lots of smaller statues too. Some of them made me laugh:


Ahh, snow is so... white!


Different countries contributed snow sculptures, usually representing some aspect of their own culture. Australia wasn't there, but New Zealand was, and some Asian countries... This one made me think of Stace:


I mentioned to a couple of my friends that the fashion for guys in Japan can be slightly effeminate. I found a good example right here. Who do you think spent more time in front of the mirror this morning, the guy or his girlfriend?


I thought this sculpture was quite well-planned. It's some happy people eating takoyaki... and what's right across the path from the sculpture? Why, it's a takoyaki stand!


There were heaps of families and heaps of children scampering around in the snow. I tell you what, this place was brilliant for kids. They had lots of live shows for with singers and children's cartoon characters in costumes; kids were playing in the snow or throwing snowballs, there was an ice skating rink and some kids' slides made from ice, and I don't know what else...

I thought this one was pretty cute!


Why is this next picture funny? Well, you may not realise the purpose of this bus. It's a Smoking Bus. You can't smoke in the park, so if you want to smoke, you have to go on the bus and breathe in the second-hand smoke of all your fellow nicotine junkies. Hahaha!


I spent a while looking for a 'cafe that wasn't Starbucks'. (I really like Starbucks here, but I go every day. If I go to a new city, it's nice to find somewhere different.) I was glad I looked a little harder...


I went back to Odori Park at night, rugged up in several extra layers. It was mighty cold. The sculptures were lighted up at night:


There was quite a lot of festival food and on my first night I had some ramen. Ramen is one of the (seemingly endless number of) foods that Sapporo is famous for. I stood outdoors at a little 'stand up while you eat' stall, and scarfed it all down. I tell you what, Japanese people can eat ramen FAST. I bolted mine but I still finished after everyone else around me.

To be honest, I've only had ramen twice since coming to Japan. It's quite nice but to me it tastes just like eating a bowl of instant noodles, so I kind of question its nutritional value. Admittedly, unlike instant noodles, ramen has a small number of real (as opposed to freeze-dried chemical) vegetables and meat floating in it, so I guess it's good for something other than increasing your sodium count.

Mmm, fresh and hot!


The sculptures look cool at night...


Some of them had light and sound shows. This one is the sculpture for Prince Caspian and it had sound effects and narration as the lights changed over the sculpture. It was pretty cool:


I will probably post more about Sapporo - the other two days - and more photos, but I might wait a bit. There are already heaps of photos on this page so I don't want to overwhelm anyone's Internet connection. :)

Going to Sapporo

[written on Sunday]

So, I got up pretty early today to go to Haneda Airport. It's my first time really 'travelling' again since I came to Japan. I stayed out late-ish last night - we went to an izakaya after work, hurrah! - but didn't have any problem getting up. But I'm really sleep-deprived at the moment. I just can't be sensible with sleep. I've not had enough the last three nights...

Fortunately I left in quite good time, because I started by missing my Keikyu train connection (I wrote down a train schedule from Hyperdia and it gave me three minutes at Yokohama station to change train lines. This is really ambitious, even if you know where the Keikyu line is (which I didn't) and can go straight there without getting lost (which I couldn't).)

So I just got on the first Keikyu train which came. It had 'Haneda Airport' clearly written on it in big kanji. So I got on. They made announcements saying 'Haneda Kuko-home' (going to Haneda Airport). And the map inside the train showed a map with two possible routes for Keikyu trains. However, my train did NOT go on toward Haneda Airport, but took the next stop towards Shimbashi!

So I had to get off the stupid, lying train and take another one going in the opposite direction. (Honestly. I can understand if the announcements about 'Haneda Kuko-home' was telling me I had to change trains to go there. But the TRAIN ITSELF HAD A BIG FAT 'HANEDA AIRPORT' written on it in kanji!! Don't say it's going there if it isn't! Say it's going to Keikyu Kamata, rather! Geez! I mean, my ability to take unfamiliar trains has improved a lot since my time in Kyoto. But they are wilfully deceiving me!!)

Anyway, I still had plenty of time to check in and whatnot - I'd left early because it snowed again in Yokohama, so I didn't want to risk any public transport delays...

I brought a wad of papers with me containing important information for my travels. Once on the plane, I pulled out the papers to read through. When I was done, I tucked them into the inside seat pocket. 'Don't forget to get them out before you leave,' I reminded myself.

Of course, you can guess the end of this little anecdote.

At JR Sapporo station, I look for the papers with directions to my hotel and - hurrah - it's gone! So too is my hotel confirmation page, my flight details, my return flight details, the tourist information I printed up, and the map I drew to get to my hotel.

Man! I know I get more relaxed about air travel, the more of it I do. But usually I check and double-check and triple-check that I didn't leave anything in the seat pocket. I don't know what happened to my brain.

Anyway, it made me realise that these days, you don't actually need any of that stuff. I remembered how to get to my hotel anyway, and here I am. Using free wireless Internet. I love my new laptop, it's so lightweight I can even take it on trips.

Shin-Chitose Airport was quite full-on, it's like a tourist attraction in its own right. There were hordes of people there! I had to remind myself - duh, the Snow Festival is on, 2 million visitors a year, right? They had live kids shows on, and sooooo many omiyage (souvenir gift) shops. I totally want to do it justice when I go back there.

The train ride from the airport into Sapporo was so nice. It was sunny and clear, and the snow was deep on the ground. There's something so serene about snow-covered houses and forests on a fine day. It reminded me a bit of Finland, or Switzerland. I guess all the leafless, skeleton fir trees standing in the snow, the backdrop of mountains...

When I saw the houses with flat roofs, they all had a flat layer of white on the top of them. I thought 'wow, it's like someone used the Line Tool in Paint Shop Pro and added borders to all the houses'. Then I thought how sad it was that natural scenery would remind me of a computer program... hahah...

I will post about the Snow Festival when I'm back home, since I can't upload any photos here (don't have my camera cable).

Nemui... (sleepy...)

Current temperature in Sapporo: -14 degrees.

And I'm going there on Sunday. Huzzah!

Admittedly, it is midnight right now. When I go there, apparently, the weather should reach a toasty 2 degrees during the day and -6 at night. I have a crafty strategy for dealing with this, known as 'wearing every item of clothing I own'. Haha... actually it shouldn't be that bad. I've walked around here when it's 2 or 3 degrees outside; it is cold but if you prepare for it it's fine.

***

My regular Japanese teacher is a new teacher. She's a volunteer, and she just started. So in our first couple of lessons we did a real 'okay, let's go through the textbook together, step by painful step, repeating words and phrases and doing the activities together'. (This is the kind of pain I sometimes put my private students through, hahah.) We would take a 'break' to have a conversation, and she would often answer my questions in English, though I would always try to answer in Japanese.

Then I said to her, 'Nihongo o hanashitai' (I want to speak Japanese). I didn't know a polite way to say it; she speaks a little English but our 'polite' way of speaking is so indirect that only more advanced English students can understand it ('I'm sorry but would we be able to speak in Japanese a little more...')...

But it certainly did the trick. Every since I said that, we haven't touched the 'Minna no Nihongo' once. Hahah! I tell you what though, she is a very patient lady. I am so determined to get my ideas out there and SPEAK, I do strange and terrible things to Japanese grammar. :)

***

Today one of the grammar classes was on using a particular kind of compound adjective, like 'sweet-smelling', 'awe-inspiring', 'sun-drenched', 'flower-covered', etc. A student asked me how you make this kind of adjective. It's a perfectly reasonable question, since the whole subject of the lesson was about them. But the book doesn't explain how to make them. And I don't know how to make them! You can't just take any old verb and noun and whack them together.

The annoying thing about this kind of question is it always seems to end in me saying 'I'll get back to you'. Then it's two or three hours on the Internet researching grammar. I just wrote quite a decent piece on the difference between 'what' and 'whatever'. Every time I finish one, I have another one to get onto...

By the end of this year I'll have produced my own grammar book, hahaha!

Furenchi Tosuto

Today was sunny and some of the snow melted, but not all of it; there really was quite a bit of it...

I went for a haircut. I wish I could reproduce the way my hairdresser talks. He's hilarious. He uses so many miscellaneous Japanese phrases in every sentence, and although his vocabulary is pretty good, he always says 'goodly' instead of 'well'...
'Anou, so I called you desu ne, sorry I don't speak goodly on the (anou) phone, nan ka, I need to work on that desu yo ne...'

I ordered French toast at a bakery today. I got a surprise. You'd agree, wouldn't you, that French toast is very much a savoury food, and not at all sweet? I was expecting toast dipped in egg. Well, what I got was bread that tasted, and had the same consistency as, pancakes. It *looked* like bread. But it was topped with icing sugar and icecream!! I must say, it tasted really good. As it turns out, in most countries, French toast *is* a sweet, not savoury, dish!

The Snow Festival warmup!!

[click on pics to see a bigger version]

Today I opened the balcony door to see if the weather was okay for hanging out my washing. I did a double-take!

This is what I saw:


!!!

I was so surprised... a heavy snowfall is Not Normal in Yokohama. And the last few days haven't been particularly cold (well... daily maxima of 7 or 8 degrees, anyway).

The view from my apartment building had suddenly become a whole lot cooler:


I walked around the streets near my home. The snow had been partly cleared from the footpaths, leaving a slippery slush. Snow was still falling.

I showed my inexperience with snow by forgetting that it's, like, wet! First I went out wearing sneakers (they were soaked through with icy, slushy water, within a minute). And, though it was snowing, I didn't think to put up my umbrella - ending up looking like a drowned rat. The weather was colder than usual - about 2 degrees - and I'd left my gloves at work (where I had been doing a lesson on 'whose gloves are these? Whose pen is this?'). So my first trip was to the local supermarket/department store to buy some heavy-duty gloves. (I promptly soaked them through by tightly gripping the stairs' railings. If I wasn't holding the railings, I would have fallen down the stairs at least three or four times...)

I stopped to admire the train station.



Very, very few people were outside, although several snowmen in the park showed that people had come through earlier in the day. Most of the shops were closed.



I have to say, I was really happy to see snow. It made my day! And snow really does beautify drab scenery. But as an ongoing thing, I'm glad it rarely snows here. It's pretty, but it's not comfortable. I was cold and wet; and I had to continually tiptoe through puddles and walk painstakingly slowly through the very slippery slush. (I mentioned that a girl from training broke her leg last week? Well, she broke it slipping on some ice - she lives in an area with lots of snow. the news today was full of stories of injuries, transportation delays and grounded planes.)



I went to the Cafe de Crie for a cappuccino and Dido's 'Thank You' came on. It's one of my favourite songs, so mellow and pretty. Somehow it seemed like a really suitable song to hear while sitting in that warm, slightly smoky cafe, watching the snow fall.

My tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why
I got out of bed at all
The morning rain clouds up my window
And can't see at all
And even if I could, it'd all be grey
But your picture on my wall
It reminds me, that it's not so bad, it's not so bad...
And I want to thank you
For giving me the best days of my life...



[That store's name is 'Grace'. :)]

Fi-ind a place to crash...

I'm finally starting my weekend...

One of the girls from training broke her leg this week. How horrible is that? She is stuck in hospital for a couple of weeks. If she lived anywhere nearby I'd go and visit her, but it'd be a six hour trip. But to have that happen during your first few months in a new country...

You'll have noticed that I post a *lot* more now that I have secure Internet. It's exactly what I feel like doing at the end of the day - coming home and writing a diary entry. I always liked keeping a diary, but sometimes I wasn't very reliable at posting because it was such a hassle to go online. Now I finally have a computer that boots up really fast, and a flawless Internet connection. So it's a nice way to unwind, and write.

Already I don't know how I'm gonna re-adjust to the non-existent high-speed Internet services in Australia after this. I don't know the technical details of my connection or even what technology it uses (I have no idea what I signed up for; I just registered for the only one I could get in my 'mansion'.)

I'm paying about $40 a month. There are no installation costs. It's very reliable. I have unlimited hours and unlimited downloads. And it's extremely fast. I can download a 10 meg file in about 3 seconds.

So I've been hitting YouTube a lot and watching lots of videos. My favourite one so far is this MST3K video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THYVh9AhtLk - it's semi-geek humour but I still recommend it. :) Basically it's a bunch of sarcastic American guys commenting on an old 50s video on 'the ideal way to comport yourself at the family dinner table'.

Right now I'm listening to Mix 102.3 as I blog...

***

I don't know what's weirder - the fact that toilets speak to me, or the fact that I speak back!

The toilets in the Kawasaki Station food court speak. You approach one and it introduces itself ('kono toire wa...') If you take more than a couple of seconds to sit down, it repeats the message (to which I usually say 'stop talking to me!').

Once you sit down it immediately starts this fake water-running noise. This sound is common in many of the nicer toilets, but to be honest, I find the sound more embarassing than the 'other' sounds it's meant to disguise! It kind of draws attention to what you're doing - I mean, the fake flushing sounds are pretty loud!

Then, frequently, the toilet will decide it needs to flush, often before you're actually finished. So then you need to flush it again, all because the toilet was over-eager to save you the 'exertion' of pushing a button. What a waste of water. Not to mention power. Do I really need a toilet that speaks to me? I suspect not.

***

I can't believe how many nice people there are around here. Almost every time I meet a new prospective student I come out saying 'wow, they're so nice' or 'she's really sweet'. I just like everyone. It seems like we've had a few prospectives in lately, which is good for business - we really want all we can get, and we've just had a slow couple of months. Today I was told that a new student is gonna take private lessons with me - and him an almost total beginner! I wasn't so thrilled, but then I met the guy and he was lovely, despite his few words of English.

As I write things like that, I can't help but see in my every attitude the classic 'honeymoon' attitude they say often accompanies the first few months in a new country. No hassle is a big deal; everyone is nice; work is fun; nothing can really overshadow the enjoyment I get from living here. It will be interesting to see what life is like in a few months... I wonder if I'll still like it just as much? I guess every new thing is exciting at first but all novelties wear off....
***

This morning I was sussing out the best time to leave my house to get the trains. I think Japan is the only country in the world where you can think:
"Okay, so my train arrives in the station at 11:27, and the connecting train leaves at 11:28. One minute should be long enough to go up the stairs and across to the next platform."
And you know for sure that your first train *will* arrive at 11:27, and the second train *will* leave at 11:28...