Merry Christmas one and all

As I type, I'm watching snow fall on Kanazawa with my fiancé and our friend from college. It's like we're in a snow globe, and it's sticking to the ancient pine trees, bright neon lights, and curved roof tiles. I had a kitty on my lap at the park, and now she's probably cuddled up with her friends in a shed, all full of treats.

The snow is sticking. It feels almost how Christmas should, except for how far away I am from family, friends, and traditions.

Christmas food here is KFC and strawberry cake. Christmas is a lover's holiday; New Year's is for family. It's the opposite of back home, really, and it takes a little getting used to.

Hopefully the white Christmas lasts to the morning for pictures!

Something Awesome

Way, way back in October I went to Gifu to visit a certain someone down in Gifu city. Gifu is famous for 鵜飼 (ukai), cormorant fishing.

Ukai in Gifu has a 1,000 year history, and the techniques are kept much the same as they were back in the day. It takes place at night in the summer and early fall. Lit only by balls of burning pine and sap, two fishermen steer the boat and handle trained cormorants as the birds chase after Ayu, a small sweet fish. The cormorants wear a leash around their necks that allows them to swallow small fish, but not large ones--the fisherman then takes the fish from the cormorant's mouth and tosses it back into the water. It sounds awful for the cormorants, but they're taken care of and live much longer than their wild brethren.

The first catch of the season goes to the Emperor Akihito and his family. The fishermen are living national treasures, their instruments (including the birds!) are national artifacts, and the river is a protected site.

And now, the awesome: video of the ukai!

Erin and I were the only foreigners on our observation boat. Our shipmates were super nice and wanted to know everything we thought of it.

Essays

I've been taking a more active role in lesson planning these past few months, which is part of why you haven't heard much from me. My units thus far have included giving public transit directions, and a cooking unit (make a cooking show in English!) for first years and the basics of logical single paragraph essays for second years. Making my students write feels like a cop out sometimes, but then wonderful mistakes like " one hurf of cabbage" and "fry the ham in a flying pargh" reminds me that it's worth it.

I've been grading said essays (and some written answers on other teacher's exams and homework--I volunteered) and have stumbled upon many gems.

So here it is, your November midterm treasury of quotes. English is full of comedic opportunity.

On Japanese food:

"I owe what I am today to Japanese agriculture."

"onigiri is Japanese soul food"

On cooking (and classical music):

"Wait for five minuets."

"Borb the pasta"

And, finally, on cultural misperceptions:

"I want to tell the truth to (foreign) students. The truth is that actually, there is no samurai or ninja in Japan now. I think that not so few foreigners believe in samurai or ninja. Therefore, they should know the truth. So if they come to Japan, they will not be disappointed."

I love how this kid isn't telling you the truth about samurai and ninja in Japan to end offensive stereotypes--he's telling you so you won't be disappointed.

That's all for now!

Well shoot

So. Been a while.

Massive photo update coming. Beware!

Halloween Stories part 2

And here are the funny stories. The students are finishing a story about taking shelter in an abandoned house on a dark and stormy Halloween night...

They sat and ate their chocolate. Then they heard, "please give me it!" They looked around. But there was nobody. They were so suprised, they shouted and ran away. "Wait, wait!" Someone said. They stopped and someone noticed the man who had spoken. He was their teacher. (by A)

We heard a noise and the lights went out. All of us thought something was behind us. We were too afraid to run. Our hearts began to beat faster, like something was about to happen to us. We tried to go out of the house but the door wouldn't open. Why? Because we pushed the door but the door was a pull door. (by T)

I noticed the doorbell ringing. We were surprised, and we got to be happy because we thought someone familiar had come here to help us. But we remembered we had done a shortcut, so our family can't find us. I watched out from the door...there was a tall man with a knife with blood. I was so frightened that I couldn't move. He said something, but I couldn't hear it because of heavy rain. The sound of tapping became stronger and stronger. At last, the door was broken. There was my brother. He said, "it is a surprise!! Hahaha." I couldn't help punching his face. (by R)

Halloween Stories part 1

My first years' assignment is to write a scary story. I give them the first half--they and some friends are out late trick-or-treating and take a short cut through the woods, but need to take shelter from the rain in an abandoned house--and they finish it.

Here are the best of the scary stories.

I heard a noise. But my friends didn't hear a noise. I heard a noise again at midnight. I looked back. A young girl was standing behind me. She said, "trick or treat, please give me some chocolates!" I was very surprised. I went out of the old house alone. The forest was dark. I didn't hear some noise. A long time, I was walking. I could get to my home. I was very happy.
I don't know who the young girl is. I want to forget this happening. But I remember her voice and her words every year. ( by K)

When we finished a cholocate bar, we heard footsteps. I wanted to escape out of the house, but we couldn't reach the door. The footsteps came near us, so we hid under the bed. Then, a man came into the room. He looked around the room and stared at the bed. When he lifted up the bed, I thought we would die. But he ran away out of the house! We thought why he ran away. My friend had a cross. The man is a vampire. After that, it stopped raining and the sun rose. We got home and told our parents. But everyone said there was no house on the hill. What was the house? (by Y)

I saw a light. My friend said, "someone is here! we can ask him how to get to our town!" My friends looked very happy. But my heart began to beat faster. The thing we thought was a person was a Jack'o'Lantern! It was moving alone and it said to us, "why are you here? you mustn't be here!" He looked very angry. We were too afraid to run and we hid under the bed. Then, we heard someone's voice. It said, "don't be here, don't be here..." The voice became louder and louder. We ran and hid again. For a while, we went out of the house. Then, the thunder fell on the house. The house broke. We looked around and one of my friends found her way home. Her house was near the old house. I found a light from the broken house. I said to it, "thank you very much." The light looked happy. (by C)

quothe the sensei, "hm, no, not quite right"

Most of you are probably familiar with Engrish, the art of inadvertantly funny English signs and slogans seen across Asia and the world. While not ad campaign masters themselves (yet, anyway), my students have made some of their own contributions through their written assignments and verbal answers.

It's high time to share some with you.

1. A very bad weekend

One of my classes did a scavenger hunt/ quiz rally as a final activity in the directions unit. Some groups finished way faster than others, and I wanted to keep them from being bored. So, I asked them to ask each other about their weekends in English and write down something interesting another student did, and then show it to me. They started talking while I finished off the game, and at the end of class, one girl brought her mini-report back to me. It read:

What did you do this weekend?

I was confiscated my cell phone by my English teacher.

I caught a cold.

This put me in the awkward position of laughing and trying to look sympathetic at the same time.

2. Animal, vegetable, mineral, or abstract concept?

After another class finished early with the scavenger hunt, the teacher and I decided to have them play a vocab game. There's a Japanese game called shiritori, where you have a category of words and go around in a circle saying words from that category; however, you must use the last character in that word to start your next word. I had the students play this game in English.

One student surprised me with gnu. However, a few students down, someone had to think of an animal that began with "A." Most people would have said ant, antelope, or ape. This student was thinking outside the box. Far outside the box.

He answered, very cheerfully, "AN ANGEL!"

I let it slide.

3. The most difficult thing

For a grammar class, the students read an article in English about the Chilean miners who are still trapped underground. After reading the article, the students were to write a short answer essay about how they would deal with being trapped underground for a month.

Generally, the compositions went like this one:

If I were trapped underground, there would be no day and night and no entertainments. I would soon lose my joy for life. But after a while, I would get used to it.

However, one pragmatist added a little something:

The most difficult thing would be to defecate.

I was looking them over for a teacher, who was standing right there when I was trying desperately not to laugh. She saw my face and then read it aloud, not quite sure of the meaning of the last word. Then she asked if it was okay. I said that the grammar was correct and it was a valid concern.

I love my job.

IOU: belated sports day

Sports day was about a month ago--sorry for the delay. Lesson planning and long hours with the ESS have made me an absentee. Furthermore, this post has been somewhat of a blockage, as the highlight of the sports festival was the students and their performances and it's illegal and unethical for me to have students in public photos. However, I think that the spirit of the event can best be shown through the mascots, the giant murals each group of students painted and erected by the bleachers where they cheered.

黄色組　Yellow Team, "Merry Du'Emperor"


赤組 Red Team, "Sol Big Bang"


青組 Blue Team, "Marin Joker"


緑組 Green Team, "Balmy Fantasia"


These were entirely student-designed and reproduced on a 20 by 30 foot scale.

In addition to this, the students also worked on cheering costumes (think kimono meets pirate), cheering routines, dance routines, and a play. This is all in addition to the sports, which really were just an excuse to have a party and do a lot of art. The costumes, incidentally, were awesome. Not just cool awesome--awe-inspiring awesome. Girls wore knee-length pirate-ish dresses made of taffetta, chiffon, and Japanese print fabric. They had their hair and makeup done with care to rival most girls at my prom. Boys were equally piratically inclined with trousers, white shirts, and colored vests, unless they were team leaders. If they were team leaders, they had elaborate long coats, also made from some shiny material and some Japanese-print fabric. To see groups of these students taking the dusty field at a slow saunter was to see bad-ass personified.

And then they played tug of war and far more vicious games in these outfits in 95 degree heat. If they didn't play (and even if they did), they danced and did super-elaborate cheering routines to pop songs played by the brass band. The energy was insane.

At the end, the third-year group leaders stormed the podium and tossed the principal into the air.

At the very end, the students gathered in groups for pictures and tearful speeches. My school is a high academic school, so sports day is literally all the creative fun crazy time most of these students have. For the third years, it's their last chance to experience high school before they disappear under piles of practice examinations.

There's no equivalent in American high schools--there just isn't. The context is so different and the way it's planned and done--the sheer teamwork of it--just wouldn't happen. It wasn't about sports, but about the spirit of being a part of team, whether that team runs a relay, does a dance, or makes an amazing mural.

And I totally understand why the students were so sad when it was over.

Work (=) Life

Being an ALT has quickly gone from sitting around with little (if anything) to do during summer vacation to being slammed, staying overtime, and taking work home. The prefectural speech competition for first year students is coming up, so I've been helping prepare for that. The students and teacher supervisors have been staying until seven every day practicing, and I've been with them (voluntarily) about three or four days a week. I also helped out with test grading, which took me about an hour per 40 student class because I'm a newb. In order to meet the deadline, I had to take the last 80 home with me. Then there was the junior high lesson prep, complete with a new powerpoint. Powerpoints, by the way, always take longer than you think. Always.

I also got my sudden schedule switch on Monday. At lunch I found a note on my desk saying that I would teach the new lesson to a class that had been moved up from later in the week, "surprise surprise!" (that "surprise surprise," incidentally, was probably the only remaining thread supporting my slightly overtaxed sense of humor). Luckily, I had made extra copies for that lesson just for the heck of it.

So, all that was before Wednesday. Wednesday, I gave my junior high lessons and made the grave mistake of rewarding correct answers on the "quiz time" slides with stamps. These students went crazy. Totally berserk. One class chanted answers in unison, and in order to end it I had to give all 30 students stamps--and these were classes I didn't even think were listening! It turned out they were just discussing the powerpoint with their neighbors in Japanese while I presented in English. Then there were students who would read the slides aloud to themselves. Madness.

Wednesday was another stay-until-seven sort of ESS practice, this time working on pronunciation and intonation. I am looking forward to the end of the speech contest for the student's sake at this point--after a 2-3 hour practice, they go straight to cram school until 10 at night. Anyway, I thought Wednesday would be hump day not only for the week's duration, but also for my workload, especially because one of Thursday classes had been moved to Monday.

Nope! When I came in to work today, I was greeted by another schedule change note: one of the classes I had taught on Tuesday was having their next lesson FIRST PERIOD, in ten minutes. I made copies of lesson two and raced up, and then realized that I had already taught this lesson to this class. I was expected to teach the handout-heavy lesson three, which the other ALT and I wouldn't originally have to do until later next week!

Surprise first period, no one likes you and your parents think you are a mistake.

So, standing with the sensei in front of this class, I had to make up lesson four--which we were going to plan together and include on the midterm. The assignment off the top of my head that will now be the template for all lesson 4s: write train/bus directions to your favorite place in Ishikawa, read them aloud in pairs, and then present them to the class.

It would have been better with more than one minute of planning time. I think the next classes will get things like maps and bus routes, although it was pretty awesome to hear directions to Kenrokuen given from memory. The students wrote some really informative compositions, and I'm taking notes on their places and directions to use over my upcoming six day weekend.

It's good to be busy, and good to have to think on my feet. It's exhausting, but I feel like I might be starting to earn my keep.

IOU Part 1: Cultural Festival

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: There will be times when I describe totally awesome stuff that the students do, and you will wonder why there are no pictures of students doing said totally awesome stuff. This is because posting images of my students--even in the background--to a public blog is not only creepy, but illegal. It's a rule I agree with wholeheartedly, and in order to share school events with people back home, I will always take pictures of where the event took place or things the students made. /PSA

The Komatsu High School Cultural Festival took place on the second day of the school's anniversary party. KHS is 111 years old as of August 30. One of the students reading the banner over the stage before a performance read 111週 (111th) as 川週 (river-th). The Japanese language is tailor made for puns and malapropisms, intentional or no. At the assembly, Drama Club, two homerooms, and even the baseball team performed skits. These were all in Japanese, and all involved crossdressing, which meant that when I eventually had class with these homerooms, rambunctuous and terminally cool boys would introduce themselves as Cinderella.

The singing went suprisingly well. The day before, I had introduced myself in English and Japanese before the school at the opening assembly, so they knew who I was. My two beribboned interrogators, the ESS emcees, had so much genki that I thought they would explode. They also had Japanese emcee humor (one is ridiculous and the other the straight man) down pat. I'm not sure how attentively the students were listening to the interview, because there was a chorus of "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh?" when we all burst into song. There was also waving in time with the music. The students did beautifully singing in English--they practiced every day so that they could hit the higher notes in the key we sang in. They even were practicing right before we got on stage. And that was when I realized that I am dealing with a small flock of perfectionists.

Speaking of perfectionism, the assembly included two movies by the broadcasting club. The first was made of vignettes of school life from the past year, with footage from sports events, concerts, classes, and practice sessions for the sports festival. It was set to music perfectly--it looked like each of the students filmed was doing whatever they were doing to the song played. At the end, they stopped the pop music suddenly and transitioned to the school song (which is, unlike my high school song, actually pretty) played with old pictures of students from 100 years ago. Honestly, if I were a graduating senior or a teacher about to retire or transfer, I would have cried.

The second video they played was a medley of commercials from each homeroom. During a Japanese cultural festival, each grade level has a theme--this year, first years did activities and the second years made food. Each room decided what theme they would have. For example, one room was a かきごり(shaved ice) stand with a bar theme, so all the students manning it wore slacks, white shirts, and ties and the room was lit by candles. Each homeroom worked with the broadcasting club to make a commercial for their activity or mini restaurant. Most of the commercials prominently featured the class clowns using very manly Japanese. Some of them had fight scenes or directly parodied commercials or scenes from dramas. All of them were hilarious. It ended with an outtakes reel of kids flubbing their lines, cracking up, or crashing into walls. In addition to all this, the broadcasting club made a miniature movie about the ghost of a girl who had been bullied. Their preview was something I would expect to see on TV. Komatsu Broadcasting Club is serious business,　folks.

After the assembly, I managed to get my hands on a program for the cultural festival. Each group doing something for the festival had made a little picture advertising what they would do. They ranged from adorable (bunnies playing instruments for Brass Band) to intricate (a Chinese dragon for a fried rice stand). Expect these photographed and posted for your viewing pleasure soon!

The festival itself was fantastic. In addition to the homeroom events, each club did an event as well. I had my first tea ceremony with the Tea Ceremony Club and saw a display made by the Ikebana Club. ESS also did a "quiz rally," in which identifying the correct spelling of my name was a question you could answer for a prize. (The kids thought of that one on their own.) You had to buy tickets in advance for each kind of food you wanted, so there was often a ticket exchange as people changed their mind. I had curry flavored popcorn at an American-themed homeroom (pop music, Tom and Jerry, American flags, and a Statue of Liberty created this ambiance), visited the shaved ice bar, had bubble tea, and gazed longingly at the curry and naan stand, for which I had no ticket. There were pictures involved at almost every booth, at least on part of the students. Photos of me looking baffled and terrified now occupy the memory discs of many a KHS camera. I also tried my hand at fishing for rubber balls with a paper paddle, shooting candy with rubber bands, and not getting caught by a student who chased people through his homeroom's maze.

All in all, cultural festival was awesome.

rainy day raincheck?

Where to even begin? I have to cover the Cultural Festival, Sports Day, and my first teaching, hijinks included. It's an undertaking that will require more energy than I have right now, because I definitely just stayed at school until 7pm working with the first years in ESS on their English speeches for an upcoming competition.

I haven't forgotten about you, I promise.

So, I would promise not to fall into the blog hole but in previous blogging experience, doing so is a one way ticket into said blog hole.

In the meantime, a taste of life in Ishikawa in September.

Late summer is typhoon season. It sounds scary, like hurricane season, and I'm sure in most of Japan, it means howling winds and torrential downpours. This had lead to national paranoia and exaggerated weather forecasts. At a teacher's meeting this morning, the principal was talking about whether or not school should be canceled due to the coming typhoon. I had heard whispers of it the day before, so I did the American thing last night and stocked up on food and batteries, surprised that no one else was doing the same. Hearing of a potential school closing made me all excited. Wind and rain! Power outages! Life at an eerily beautiful standstill!

Well, the typhoon hit in the afternoon. There was some rain and it was a little unpleasant out. The students didn't even notice because they were taking exams.

In Ishikawa, the default weather is rain. Rainfall here is triple the amount of rainfall in Seattle. Something about the Noto Peninsula soaks up typhoons like a sponge and evenly distributes the rain over the course of the year. There was no awesome storm.

On the bright side, I now have another kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) which will feed me for a week.

Imagine

In which this very ALT agrees to do a Q and A onstage at a school assembly and then burst into song.

Yes. Burst into song. With a backup chorus. Of 10 Japanese high schoolers.　

You might be wondering, how and why, and what song? Every school in Japan has a 文化祭、a cultural festival. Ours happens to be right after the fall semester opening ceremony, so, next Tuesday. Usually at cultural festivals, classes and clubs put together food stands, activities, or little shops. Before this, there is an assembly where the clubs introduce themselves and perform or show off what they do. One of the clubs is the English Speaking Society, and their options for performance are limitied pretty much to skits.

However, this year, they discovered that they have a singing ALT. So, one of the students came to my desk the other and asked me to help them practice. I had no idea what I was in for. As a group, they asked if I would sing as part of the club activity. I thought this meant singing in the background of their exibit, kind of like a party performer. I said sure, of course. Then they started talking about an assembly, and it was too late to back out because they were so excited. I did refuse to do it alone--if there as a chorus, I told them that they were singing too.

Then I found out that there was more. I wasn't just singing in front of 956 students and 70 teachers. Nope. They were going to ask me questions on the stage, game-show style. Then, they would ask what I like to do most, but they scripted this one out. I'm to answer "I like singing" and then cue the piano player.

Most of the students play at least one instrument, so they combed through their sheet music for a piece for voice, piano, and violin that students would be familiar with. They found Imagine, the one by John Lennon. We rearranged it a bit, and I sing the first verses alone, and the whole club steps forward and joins me on "you may say I'm a dreamer..."

And that's how I came to agree to burst into song in front of 1,000 Japanese High School students. It's like Glee and a Japanese variety show have been conspiring against my dignity.

Let's just hope I can pull this off.

Housekeeping

First order of business: I am debating moving this blog to WordPress, just because I think that it has a better interface and--more importantly--because I can manage entries in this blog and the other Ishikawa JET blogs I will help with all under one roof. However, the last thing I want to do is lose or confuse the people who follow this blog! If I switch, I will import past content. I will aslo link to the individual WordPress posts here each time I write for at least a month, just to give people time to update. If anyone has any opinions on the subject ("go for it!" or "stay here!") please let me know.

Tried it. I like blogger more.

Now, on to more literal housekeeping. My apartment is--and has been--most set up. I say mostly because I am expecting boxes from home, and need to store things accordingly and because I have leftovers from my predecessor. I misunderstood where certain stuff was going, and now have a spare toaster, landline phone, microwave, TV, and region-free DVD player. I don't really watch TV or DVDs, don't depend on toast, don't need a landline, and bought a combo microwave/oven because I like to cook. Right now I am trying to pass these appliances on to the ALT community.　(Hint hint!) Once that's done with and the new stuff arrives and finds places, then I will consider my apartment set up.

Living on my own has turned me tidy. The apartment is small and can easily become full of interesting smells if I don't do dishes often, sweep often, take full on baths often, and do laundry often. This seems common sense, but there's another layer of meaning here: if I don't have water frequently going through all the major pipes in the apartment, it smells like rot and mold. Yaaaaay humidity! I'm not complaining, or the slightest bit upset. It turns out I really enjoy living in a clean, well-organized space.

Getting my first paycheck was an absolute joy, but it also made me take a good hard look at my finances. The first month, I did not live as frugally as I would like, mostly because I was terrified/skeptical of my kitchen and often bought meals at combini or delica. Yesterday, however, I reaquainted myself with Just Hungry and Just Bento, two sites devoted, respectively, to simple Japanese home cooking and Japanese lunch boxes. The result has been more delicious, healthy meals and less money spent. Between this and volunteering for the Ishikawa JET cookbook project, I don't plan on combini or delica lunches ever again. I'll save my not cooking food money for going to dinner with friends every so often, spending it on something I can really look forward to and enjoy rather than feeling guilty about slurping mediocre ￥500 combini noodles over my desk and wondering what to do with the plastic.

For watching my finances, I use my keitai. It has a receipt and barcode scanner that are connected to a budgeting program. With graphs and labels for expenses. On my cell phone. It doesn't need to hook up to my bank account.

Yaaay!

Gifu and gadgets

This weekend was move-in weekend for my partner, now officially an ALT in Gifu with a rival company. I had a mild case of apartment envy (hers has a loft--a loft!) which very soon developed into a case of department store envy. While the last thing I need in my life is more stuff and less money, I really enjoy looking. It's a weird but fairly wallet-friendly quirk I have: I like to look at colorful or pretty displays but can't bring myself to buy any one thing from said display because it won't look as good alone. Catch and release shopping. The pens stay in their natural rainbow habitat. Anyway, there are lots of nice places with nice displays for me not to buy things from in Gifu.

It's also a really beautiful city, though different from what most people think of when they think of pretty Japanese cities. Most of the architecture is new and pretty much all the temples and castles I saw were recently refurbished--very, very shiny and orange. A river runs through the city, and I learned that cormorant fishing is a nightly occurance, at least in the summer. Cormorant fishing has fascinated me for a long time and I really, really want to see it. The city is also punctuated by rugged, forested mountains. It looks like a brush painting, and I wish I could go back in time and see what Gifu was like before it was bombed, or even before the Meiji Restoration. (It's not necessarily a well known fact, but a fair number of castles and old buildings were torn down in smaller cities throughout Japan during the Meji Restoration--the 100 year old high school I work at stands on the ruins of Toshie Maeda's castle.) Also, Gifu has bamboo forests. They are awesome.

Seeing Erin meant learning all manner of new things about my fancy cell phone. The nice front display panel I thought was just a clock? It's really a touch screen. With a features menu that includes a compass. There is a feature that allows me to scan receipts for monthly budgeting. There is a feature that scans kanji and finds them in a dictionary. There are at least five different menus. The camera has more options than my digital camera, including editing software that will give the photo subject bigger eyes, a smaller face, or fairer skin. (Yes, this is problematic.) There are enough widgets to make the app store gawk and blush. I'm a little terrified of what I'll find next.

Generally, I've found that everything I've wanted to organize by hand in the US, a machine in Japan will do for me. Budgeting? My phone scans receipts and the ATM prints my balance and transaction record in a little book every time I visit. Keeping organized? The calendar on my phone can pretty much go to all the events for me. I have no doubt that the phone secretly laughs at me as I try to figure out interprefectural train schedules.

那谷寺 Natadera Temple

Nestled between Kaga and Komatsu, Natadera is a large and wooded Buddhist temple compound famous for the beauty of its trees, especially in the fall. While I plan to go back there to view the Momiji (autumn leaves), it certainly doesn't look too shabby in the summer.



I especially loved how many high vantage points there were throughout the temple grounds. You could climb almost anywhere to see the roofs of the many temples and pavillions. While the ancient steps carved into cliff faces wreaked havoc upon my knees, the views were spectacular.












Places like Natadera make me feel slightly guilty for looking at it through a camera lens. Next time maybe I won't bring one and just enjoy the place how it was meant to be enjoyed.

The rest are here on the littlepines flickr!

Summer Seminar

Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday I helped out at Ishikawa Prefecture's English Summer Seminar. It's been going on for 32 years now, and took place in a camp in the Noto Peninsula. We could see the sea from the cafeteria.

Students came from high schools all over the prefecture. They were split off into randomized groups and encouraged by a profusion of ALTs and English teachers to speak only in English as often as they could. We kept them occupied with hours of conversation practice games and a full day to prepare a skit in English based on randomly assigned genres, props, and characters.

My group of eight students (which I shared with three ALTs and two senseis) had the following draw: romance, a lei and an oven mitt, Hillary Clinton, and the proverb "there's no smoke without fire." The ALTs left the students to brainstorm ideas on their own, and while I was sitting with other ALTs chatting, a sensei came out to ask me a question.

It went something like this: "Ehto, Lauren-sensei, the students have a question about the Clintons. They heard that Bill Clinton had some sort of scandal. Could you explain it to us, please?"

So, using very simple English, I had to explain the Monica Lewinsky debacle to a room full of 15 year old Japanese girls. Another sensei helped by drawing a diagram.

The resulting skit involved Hillary Clinton catching Bill and Monica in Hawaii, fighting Monica, dragging Bill back to America, poisoning him, and running off with the cook. This was all their idea. We won funniest skit.

Over the course of the other games, I made friends with the students. They were shy about speaking English at first, but the games really helped. My personal favorite was a game where the students had to describe a trend, movie, art form, or food of Japan in English to the ALT, who then had to describe it to a Japanese teacher who left the room. The Japanese teacher then had to guess the original object. Explaining unaju when you don't know how to say "eel" in English is apparently difficult ("it is like a fish...but not a fish--it's like a snake?") and also apparently hilarious when the ALT pretends she has absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

I was kind of sad to go, honestly, because it was so much fun and I got to know both my seminar students and the members of my school's English club pretty well. I won't see the club until after the prefectural debate on the 23rd (of which I am a judge!) but I promised them a party with American snacks and a movie as a celebration of being done with said debate. I keep hearing it's stressing them out, and I feel so bad for not being able to help out with prep. But the party idea made them all really excited, so yay for that.

Well, off to go grocery shopping so I can bring a lunch with me tomorrow to Prefectural Orientation. More on that can of worms later--for now I can just say that my time would be better spent at my school even though I officially have nothing to do there but check on the English club and study Japanese.

bridges

Today, myself and three other ALTs went to Kanazawa to help out a bridge-building seminar. Yes. A bridge-building seminar for high school students. It was a two day conference with about 30 Komatsu High students and five guests from a science high school in Korea. On the first day, members of each group of eight individually designed bridges using testing software and then built them out of thin balsa wood splinters. The groups chose one person's bridge to represent them for testing. Testing involved a basket of juice boxes suspended from the bridge (which was placed on a special stand to span a "valley") by means of a cable and a styrofoam anchor, which sat on the roadway part of the bridge. The bridges were tested until they broke, and on the second day, the groups analyzed the bridges and began planning together for a new one, using information given to them about arches, trusses, tension, and compression.

So, why do you need ALTs?

In addition to designing and building a winning bridge (the teams were competing for the best weight of bridge to load of juice withstood ratio) these students also had to make and give a powerpoint presentation in English. They had about five hours to do it all, tops, and most of them also worked through lunch.

The resulting bridges were gorgeous. The strongest of them, made entirely of balsa wood and crazy glue, held 18 juice boxes--3 kilos.

Most of them had names. My favorites are easily Glorious Peace and Bridge of Love (slide description: "a bridge to connect all the world LOVE"), although Legendary Bridge and King of Bridges are very good as well.

The presentations ranged in quality from "decent considering that you had to chose between practicing and building your bridge" to "on par or better than most American high school speeches, but with interesting pronunciation." I was especially proud of about a dozed students who even prepared something beyond just reading the slides, and even sometimes explained things in English on the fly.

However, "load" is a terrible word for Japanese learners of English to have to spell (for some reason, many of the bridges in the presentations I helped with had lords on them) and "glory" is a terrible, terrible word for Japanese learners of English to say. I kept asking "but what is glowing?" until the poor teacher pulled out a dictionary and spelled it out.

I'm going to have to get very, very good at psuedo-homonyms.

In which I get a host family

It all began with a leaky air conditioner.

My supervisor asked me if everything worked okay in the apartment, and I mentioned that my AC was dripping copiously onto my deck. He called the landlord, who called the man who repairs AC units in the apartment complex. Somewhere along the line, it turned into an AC emergency and both the repair man and the landlord fussed over the AC, looking for something more severe than a missing pipe to channel the water to a proper drain. The repair man said he could come the next morning to add pipes.

During this inspection, my apartment was in all manner of disarray. I was just finished with assembling an epic piece of kitchen furniture, and the boxes, plastic, and styrofoam were sorted on the floor. That combined with several bags of linens and cups made the apartment look horrendous. The landlord hinted that I should sort my trash (which I took to really mean "please clean your hellhole") and the AC man asked if I was a sensei. Because teachers are given so much esteem in Japanese communities, I wondered if he was genuinely curious or also remarking on the state of my apartment.

It turns out I read way too deeply into it. The landlord double checks my bicycle baskets and watches me unlock my bike before I go out--he just wants to make sure that I understand tricky things like trash days and how to work a Japanese bicycle. As for the AC man...

Nakada-san added pipes the next day. I was home, so I offered some iced tea and we chatted for a while in English while he worked. I learned about his family and also why he asked if I was a teacher. He and both of his children went to the school that I work at, and he said, beeming, "Komatsu High is my school." Both of his kids are doing very well--his daughter has a one-year-old daughter of her own and his son is in the Japanese Air Force. Both of his kids studied abroad in Anglophone countries, and know English. Before he left, Nakada-san invited me to dinner with him and his wife.

I just got back from said dinner. They treated me to sushi, broiled mackerel, yaki-udon, beer, and Japanese spaghetti at a nice izakaya by the station. (I offered to pay; they would have none of it. They got special omiyage from Oregon.) We spoke in English for almost the whole time, and they looked like they were really enjoying practicing. They asked how I was adjusting to life in Japan, and if my family was worried because I was so far away. Both of their children live far away, so I think I've been adopted by empty nesters. Mrs Nakada climbs mountains in her spare time (she did Hakusan today) and promised to show me the sites of the nearby Minami Alps. They both told me numerous times to be careful on my bicycle, especially at night and especially in the snow. They also promised to introduce me to both of their children, and I hope I can also meet Mrs Nakada's dog Leon.

It's nice to know a family so rooted in the community and in my school. Komatsu is technically a city, but it wakes and breathes like a small town. I feel accepted, and I'm so happy that I have the opportunity to be able to get to know kind and outgoing people like the Nakadas.

Internet!

Hello world, I have internet in my apartment!

There's a lot to say about my experience so far, and probably a lot of little details that I have become used to over the past 10 days that I've been here.

I'll try to start at the beginning. Most of the Ishikawa JETS flew from Tokyo to Komatsu Airport. The landing was gorgeous--we circled over the Sea of Japan and flew toward the shore and the mountains, landing amongst rice fields and pine trees. My supervisor, fellow ALT, and one of my JTEs met me at the airport and took me straight to Komatsu High School to meet the Principal. Eek! We talked for about ten minutes, me trying to sputter out a self introduction and saying that my husband, rather than hometown, was Portland Oregon. Ooops! I corrected my mistake, and the teachers and principal all decided I was too young to marry anyway. Then we sat down and had a conversation, half of which I understood and half of which my supervisor and the JTE translated for me, as the principal hasn't used English for a while. Every bit of formality I knew, I used, and my supervisor seemed really happy about it. Then we briefly toured the school, and then went to sign up for my Alien Registration Card. Then it was lunch--zarusoba, which I had told the principal was my favorite Japanese food in summer time. We all shared a huge plate of it. And finally, I was dropped off at my apartment to meet my predecessor and unpack.

My pred and I met up with another outgoing JET (with a car) and we drove all over doing errands. I had my first crash course in navigation when after dinner, they gave directions to bike home. I was a little worried about getting lost in the rice paddies (of which there are hundreds interspersed throughout the city) or worse, falling in to the rice paddies and getting a) bitten by a poisonous snake or b) catching ensephalitis. But I did not fall in, nor did I get lost. In fact, I think my sense of direction in Komatsu--which has about two main, straight roads and 5 billion narrow, twisty, dead ends-- is stronger for the experience.




The next day, my other supervisor took me to set up a bank account and get essential shopping done. Her English is great, and she was also very encouraging when I tried speaking in Japanese. It turns out that one of the few manga I follow has been made into a drama, which is the favorite of her youngest daughter. When we went to get a cell phone the next day, she was more resolute than I was about finding an iPhone---for which, apparently, there is a one month wait in Japan. Even for the 3GS. I got a Japanese phone which includes in its features a link to my bank account so I can buy things by scanning the phone, a "relax time" tool that shows me pictures of flowers and cats, a TV receptor, a GPS, and command over a missile station in central Africa.

Since then, I've been settling in, meeting the other new ALTs, and getting to know the sights. There's a gorgeous garden right by my school, complete with a giant koi pond and a huge section of cherry trees. There's also a big Shinto shrine by the river, and a combination Buddhist temple and daycare on the way to the train station. The houses are almost all old and a little worn, but beautiful. The streets are full of tiny canals for the rain and snow--we call them gaijin traps because of the danger they pose to unwary foreign bicyclists.

The Garden:



The people here have been nothing but kind. My landlord had decided that he needs to look after me, and I found his advice about garbage days and how to unlock my bicylce patronizing at first until I thought it over. He's just making sure that I have all the information I need. My supervisors have driven me all over and made sure that I am comfortable in my little apartment. Other teachers have asked me how I'm getting along, students wave and greet me back in Engish, and one teacher even gave me a really cute mug to use in the office. The man who fixed my air conditioning discharge pipe invited me to dinner with him and wife so that they could practice their English. Middle school students have escorted me to my destination when I ask for directions. The lady down the hall gave me a bottled water on my way to the store and told me to be careful because it's hot out.

My school is great and a little intimidating. It's the second best in the prefecture, and emphazises science and engineering. Tomorrow, I'm going with some students to--I kid thee not--a bridge building seminar. These students are at school from 8 to 6, and then go to cram school afterward to study for their entrance exams. The third years are in school full time over summer vacation to study. These teens are hard core.

My courtroom...er...classroom:



One of the girls in English Club told me, after they finished working on a debate about immigration, that there are no clubs: "only study!" Everyone laughed, but it did make me worry, and made me realize that part of my job is to allow these students to have fun.

That, I am looking forward to most of all.

Quick, photos!

I'm at a mangakissa (combination hotel, karaoke, comic shop, gamer store, and internet cafe) to quick upload pictures. I should be getting internet tomorrow, so expect a real update then.

Until then, though, take a look at my city!

More photos to come.

Morning Conbini Raid

My Breakfast.
Mt. Rainer (The Mountain of Seattle) Double Espresso Drink (purchased at a Shinjuku Lawson)

When I purchased these fine breakfast items, I got a chance to practice my extremely basic Japanese on the cashiers. Both the old-ish guy who rang up my purchase and the young guy next to him were pretty impressed that I could spit out, "hot out there, isn't it?" and understand them asking if chopsticks were okay. Maybe setting beginner standards in Komatsu will be a good thing--I won't offend anyone or embarass myself for asking them to repeat something, but when it all comes back, it will be that much more a point of goodwill.

So, yesterday. It was full of speeches. I found all of them useful and 90% of them either hilarious or adorable. The speeches from Japanese English Teachers and a Japanese school pricipal made me way less intimidated.

Now it's off to team teaching workshops and...more speeches.

The Gaijin Are Coming

Every time I visit Seattle, I fall in love with it a little. Maybe it's how fresh the air is, or maybe it's the mountains and the Sound. Needless to say, sharing that with my partner before we said our very temporary goodbyes was magical. Also, dinner at Lynne's Bistro with my dad was pretty cool and very delicious.



As for the Seattle Orientation, I learned a lot about things they probably won't have time to address here in Tokyo--Japanese NGOs and Ranald McDonald, the first American to teach English in Japan. (It's actually a kind of awesome story and totally worth a wiki search.) The best part, though, was definitely meeting fellow JETs at the Consulate Reception.

Those of us who travelled to Seattle--apparently the only ones who had packed in advance--stayed at a cute hotel...with one working elevator. This caused luggage panic, stress, and twenty minute delays on the morning of the flight. Still, we managed to get to the airport early, not that it matters at SeaTac. The whole process of getting us all checked in was very well coordinated; the security line, however, was a bloody mess and probably the main reason I couldn't sleep on the plane.

So, three romcoms, two meals, and a very depressing episode of Mad Men later, we landed in Tokyo. In the JET section of the plane, there arose a great titter of excitement, followed by groans as we tried to unload our over-stuffed carry on bags. And then everything ever was in Japanese, and I even managed to carry out all of my conversations with airport personnel in Japanese, except when I explained that I had less than a month's worth of a prescription. That was a little too important to mess up.

Then we put our giant baggage carts on the escalator (I feared for my life) and rolled out to the buses. And invaded a five start hotel. I would say we ransacked the Keio's little conbini, but very few of us seem to have been able to find it. Mmm, Zarusoba. I would have taken pictures of it, but I was too hungry.

Tomorrow the orientations begin!

Best laid plans

In regard to my one suitcase goal: Ha. Hahahahaha.

My goal was to follow the advice of OneBag and other light travelers and, well, just have one suitcase. Pretty soon, I realized that is advice was geared for traveling, not moving.

One suggestion, however, was extremely helpful: limiting the use of wheeled bags. The frame and wheels on a good rolling bag add to the weight of the bag, and thus detract from the weight you can shove into the bag. In my giant, shapeless, and pocketless black duffel, I fit all of the clothes--all of them--and toilettries plues a few books. And it weighed about 25 lbs. I had to move some of the clothes into the wheeled bag for cusioning omiyage and such. The small wheeled bag, which has no books and nothing individually heavier than 5 lbs, weighs 45 lbs.

Of course, I'm switching stuff around because of a traditional discrepancy between my home scale and the airport scale. But if I had two huge duffels? I'd probably fill them up without approaching the weight limit.

The last minute luggage quest begins...now.

One Week

One week from now, I will be almost in Seattle. Then a disorienting amount of orientations will happen on both sides of the Pacific, and I'll settle in to Komatsu.

Fate has decided to send me reminders in the form of several tourists from Ishikawa. We ran into each other in a Made in Oregon store, as we were all looking for omiyage. I managed to help them find very Oregon things, but for some reason couldn't spit out 小松に英語を教えて行きます (I'm going to Komatsu to teach English).

Ack.

Victory!

I've managed to solve my thorniest omiyage quandary. I needed to find something uniquely Pacific Northwest to place out in the teacher's room, something edible and nicely packaged. My first thought was HAZELNUTS, but those come in very non-omiyage containers. Then, yesterday, my parents asked me what I would be bringing and I responded, "I don't know...maybe Aplets and Cotlets?"



It turns out this was inspired. The website has (lightweight!) 48-piece assortments of fruit and nut candies made from Northwest fruits. I settled on a cherry package because both Oregon and Washington (the two places I grew up) are famous for their cherries...and also because they will be in season in Japan when I get there, so it will be perfect. Added plus: fancy container. There's one worry, gone.

The place where these are made, Liberty Orchards, is part of a great childhood memory for me as well. When I was little, I used to swim competitively and go to swim meets all across Washington state. There was one in Wenatchee in the summertime and my family decided to make a vacation of it. I don't remember the meet, but I do remember swimming in Lake Chelan on a cloudless day. We went to the orchards in the area too, where all those tasty Washington apples come from, and got a full tour. The orchards were gorgeous, and we had tours of the Tree Top and Liberty facilities--complete with apple tastings. The Aplet and Cotlet candies were the highlight, though. The closest thing to them is Turkish Delight, I suppose, but they taste more like fruit than candy. So delicious.

So, yes. Kickass omiyage accomplished.

Goals and Musings

I set some goals for myself about a week ago--here's how I'm doing.

1. Brushing up on Japanese. I've started reviewing vocabulary and kanji on smart.fm. I'm also doing dictation, which is a legit challenge at this point and probably exactly what I need. Also, I've been flipping through books, refreshing my memory on verb patterns.

2. Lesson plans. It turns out my predecessor is leaving me with some to get me started. However, I'm not slacking off. I've found some sites that have games, and while I don't know what exactly we'll be studying when I arrive, I'll at least have a repertoire.

3. Packing. Right now, I am entirely unpacked from college and about half packed for JET. I packed things for JET before unpacking and felt like I had extra clothes even then. Now, figuring out what to do with stuff is my very own Sisyphean challenge.

Lately, I've been meditating on what a language class should be and why it's important. My own experiences with language classes have been uniformly amazing thanks to great teachers. (It should be noted that my current state of 日本語をあまり話せない is no one's fault but my own for not practicing.) In retrospect, even quizzes and tests were fun and felt more like puzzles than exams. I've never felt like learning a foreign language was an all or nothing deal or even all about me; rather, the classes were about understanding what other people had to say and finding a way to express myself, even through the haze of new vocabulary and sentence structures.

It's idealistic, but I want my time with students to be an environment like this. I want to make students feel comfortable and feel like themselves when they read, write, listen to, or speak English. I want it to be fun, and I want to make it so they can see themselves grow. No, I'm not the teacher--merely an assistant--and yes, my job will be mostly review, games, and random supplementary lessons. However, it's the games and the random happenings in the context of learning a foreign language that made it so fun and that held my interest.

This job isn't simply about me or my personal/career advancement, and I love that.

More Preparations

I never use the phrase "I have things to do," or even the last three words of it.

It's not a product of any grammatical grudge. I actually dislike it when people make a big fuss over grammatical errors or inadequate typography--it's like seeing the ugly, over-privileged, grasping, vindictive side of people who are genuinely intelligent. There was a poem I read years ago where "I have things to do" was a solo line, used as part of a reason one person was abandoning...a kid, friend, lover, pet? I don't even know the specifics, but since then, that phrase has carried too much of an emotional weight to use.

This is a problem, however, when I need to do things, and especially when I need to make a list in that regard.

Right now, I have three goals in the 21 days before I leave.

1. Brush up on my Japanese. I'd like to get beyond the Durrr Gaijin Durrrr phase as quickly as possible.

2. Learn some teaching games, as I just found out that in my particular situation, I play a very active role in teaching. I'm super-stoked, but equally nervous.

3. Pack everything (clothing, some yarn, electronics, books, omiyage, toiletries, random stuff for decorating) into a single suitcase. Also, prepare one box for the family to ship sometime in the fall that includes winter clothing.

More music would also be awesome, but le budget does not think a big iTunes card is a good idea right now.

Driving around my hometown has been odd lately as I realize that I'm going to be, you know, leaving the country. It's gone from a someday thing to being more on the immdiate horizon. While it's really exciting, I'm still afraid that I'm going to fail in some way, make some big mistake right off the bat. I want to teach, and I want to be something important to the students I'll be with. There's a possibility of mutual inspiration, and I really, really don't want to screw that all up.

Preparations

I leave for Seattle on the 22nd of July. Then I leave for Japan on the 24th.

These are facts that I have committed to memory, but facts that I have yet to actively wrap my head around.

A more accurate assessment would be:

I will be saying goodbye to my family, lifting at least one large and heavy suitcase and some backpacks onto a train, having the awkward "we're going to be apart for a little while" chat with my partner on said train (again), training with many other JETs, checking into a flight, and waiting on a plane for 14 hours before training in Tokyo.

Before then, I need to unpack. Yes, unpack. From college. Then I need to pack. My goal: one suitcase. This will be accomplished with a lot of ebooks and not a lot of clothing. Luckily, Komatsu is not Minneapolis/ St. Paul, so I don't have to worry about a lot of bulky items. I've heard that my future apartment is itty bitty, and I want to try living with a minimum of clutter. (Stop laughing!) My European housemates in Cape Town had it down: just a few pairs of pants, a nice variety of shirts--enough that they could go a week without wearing the same outfit twice, but no longer. I want to bring minimum essentials and then have a big box of yarn and knitted/winter items ready to be shipped. Right now, whittling down the books is the hardest!

Also, omiyage. OMG omiyage. Oregon does delicious regional treats really well, but it also does green very well--none of the treats are individually wrapped like Japanese omiyage. The searching continues for a tasty オレゴンから treat! For students and prizes, I'm going to buy a massive pile of postcards. That way, students can collect them and learn something about my hometown in the process. I need to find a few nice things for the people who I'm sure I will be really indebted to...principal, whoever sets me up with bank/cell/etc. Chocolates? Too bad there's a limit on wine!

The whole teaching bit is weird. I know I'm going to be at the front of a classroom, but I still can't picture myself there. I've been a student for too long.

Getting Here

So, right. I'm an ALT with the JET Program, one of many young, Japan-bound college grads cluttering up the blogosphere. In three weeks, I leave for Komatsu, the second-largest city in Ishikawa Prefecture for what I'm hoping will be the Best Job Ever. I get to help teach high school students my mother tongue!

Getting accepted into the JET Program was a suprise for me. I wasn't a Japanese major in college--I majored in Political Science and International Studies and studied away in South Africa-- and I've never been one of the better communicators in my Japanese classes. I do, however, love teaching. I worked as a peer writing tutor at my college for three years, acting as the informal ESL specialist. JET actually appealed to me because I liked this job so much!

The application process should start in early October of one's senior year in college/university. There's a whole slew of application questions, transcripts, medical forms, letters of recommendation, and a personal statement involved at this stage. I remember setting aside an afternoon to get everywhere for copies, recs, the physical, transcripts, etc was very helpful. I also recall that the sheer amount of office juggling was a little enfuriating. Anyway, in January you hear back whether or not you got an interview. Most of the people from my college who applied (10) got an interview. The interview itself (mid February) made me very nervous. With the help of my partner's internet findings, I convinced myself that the interviewers would ask only the most offensive personal questions and the most random ones about American culture. They didn't, and I actually had a fun, professional conversation with my interviewers. I found out in early April that I made the shortlist and in May that I would be placed in Ishikawa-ken. I've been scurrying about filling out more forms ever since!