Plan for the Future

This summer Samantha and I will be returning to America. For those of you who are hoping that we will come all the way back the Chattanooga we may disappoint you. We will be moving to Columbus, Ohio. We are both really looking forward to going back to America. Not looking forward to the many, many things necessary to get ready to go back. Seriously, there is a ton of stuff to try and do, both here in Japan and in Ohio. The thing that is most occupying our mind though is finding somewhere to live. We thought about living in married student housing at OSU, where Samantha will attend. Then we noticed that the website doesn’t even have pictures of the buildings just artist renderings. It’s not really a good sign if the school is too ashamed of its housing to show pictures of it, so we are looking off campus. You would think after living in Japan, which is famous for high rent and small spaces, almost anything would be an upgrade. However, for us this is not the case. We have really cheap rent here and have a fairly spacious house because we live in the country. So pretty much no matter where we live in Columbus the rent will be higher and the place smaller. There will be two huge benefits to anywhere we live in Columbus that I can name right now: central heat and an unbroken roof. Central heat will be so great. Another great thing about Columbus will be that we have friends there. I have moved across the world knowing no one twice in my life and it will be great to head back to somewhere I know people. Also, our Columbus friends have been great about answering question and have even made us maps of the city marked out but what areas are good and safe to live in and what aren’t. One area is labeled, “a very bad choice.”  The area between “best part of town” and “a very bad choice” is labeled “pushing it.” There are plenty of things that I will miss about Ichinohe but it will be great to live in a place with more going on.

I will be starting at Methodist Theological Seminary in Ohio this fall and be going for a Master of Divinity. I’m really looking forward to going back to school. It’s been long enough that most of college is starting to get the rose tinted glasses treatment. Though some parts definitely aren’t, like navigating school bureaucracy. Still, there is no way a small seminary and ETSU can be equally confusing. There are two things that I’m most looking forward to about starting Seminary. One, being forced to do disciplined study which will expose me to ideas that are important but I might not encounter in normal life. Lately I have been reading a lot of non-fiction but there is no real rhyme or rhythm to it I just go with what’s available and what interests me at the moment. Class forces you to focus on things and go deeper then you might otherwise. Also, in the area of disciplined study, hearing what other students get from the subject will be great. Here I read a book, bore Samantha to tears talking about it, reread it and end up with two prospective mine and the authors. (Three if it’s something that interests Samantha too.) I miss kicking around the ideas of a book with other people. Here is a rose tinted glasses moment because in college class it was never the ideal discussion, there were people who didn’t read, people offended by and only interested in minutia, people who refused to understand any other point than their own, people who raised less than stellar points like they where handed down from on high and then the small group of students trying to really understand the piece. Looking back though I have to wonder how many times other students thought I was a part of the groups of people who made the discussion suck. Probably more times than I’m comfortable admitting and they were probably right sometimes too. With Seminary they’re hopefully won’t be anyone who doesn’t read and we will all probably take turns focusing on minutia, not understanding each other, and raising bad points like they are great. That’s all a part of the process of understanding. The second thing I’m looking forward to about being back in America in general and school in particular is a library full of English language books. This is one area I don’t think I’ve exaggerated how great it was in my mind. A well stocked college library and city library can provide 80% of the books I want to read and a college library can usually borrow another 15% from another college. It’s great. I even started a list of non-fiction books I want to read when I get back. It’s at around 37 books now and will get longer before I come back. It’s also kind of an odd list so definitely some inter-library loans in my future, but I can do that.

On an unrelated note here is something that recently happened at Chokai Elementary. Since the weather is nice I have gone back to riding my bike to school. As it happened last Thursday was bike safety day at school. That means that the students, who usually aren’t allowed to ride to Elementary school bring there bikes for a safety class from the local police. Since I was the only teacher who had a bike I got asked to help out. The first part though was a safety lecture that never brought up the importance of helmets. That’s right even though so many people ride bikes in Japan the only people who wear helmets are middle school students (required), serious road bikers and me. So that bit was strange at least. After the rules of the road lecture, I practiced riding in a large figure 8 with the fourth grade. Then, I rode with them thorough an model intersection that the police had set up on the soccer field. Lastly, I road chase behind the classes as they practiced riding on the open road, WITHOUT HELMETS, to make sure they all would pass the safety check. At recess the older kids and I played cops and robbers riding on bikes in the field ,which probably flew smack in the face of safety but was a lot of fun.

Bunkasai 2010

Hello all!

We're very sorry that we've not been posting lately. We're going to try to get back on a schedule starting now.

I do have some good news though. My parents and parents-in-law were gracious enough to give me my christmas gift (new computer!) early. Said new computer has much better video editing software, so we're finally getting some video clips around here. Yay!

I've got two clips for you today. I would post more, but video takes a really long time to upload. I'll work on getting more up tomorrow.

Yesterday, Caleb and I attended a bunkasai, also known as a school culture festival. The kids acted out plays, sang songs and performed traditional dances.

The first video is of a fan dance. I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize for the blurry picture. I forgot to take my real video camera ( I know, smooth right?) so I had to film these video clips with my ipod. I'm a little impressed with the quality of picture it produced anyway. I mean the thing is half the size of a poptart.

The second clip is of the lion dance. I know those costumes look like dragons, but my sources tell me that they are, in fact, lions. My sources also inform me that it is lucky to receive a bite from the lions. Caleb got a bite this year. Unfortunately, the students were close enough that even my blurry ipod video shows their faces, so I chopped that part off. (Also, my thumb covers the camera for about half a second. I still can't figure out how to hold a camera that small.)

Tomorrow I'll try to put up video of wooden plate dance and the crazy formal cheering they do at the end of the festival.

Sports Day!

Okay! I think that I have managed to scrape together some pictures of sports day that do not violate student privacy.

I should probably talk a little bit about what sports day is.
Sports day is an event that Japanese schools have in late spring or early summer. The entire student body is divided into two teams ( the red team and the white team). There are a variety of competitions held throughout the day. At the end, one team is awarded first place and the other is awarded second place.
I'm unable to provide pictures of all of the events. In fact most of the more interesting events show too much of a single kid's face.

There was one event in particular that I wish we had a picture of. It was listed on the days schedule as the pan, pan, pan race. The pan, pan, pan was a delightfully wacky race with three parts. First, the child had to blow up a balloon and sit on it hard enough to burst it. This sounds exceedingly simple until one remembers that the child in question is a Japanese elementary school student.( Let me tell you, a swift breeze could blow some of the smaller ones clean away. )

So after each kid had bounced unsuccessfully on their balloon three or four times, they finally manage to pop it. Next, they have to run while holding a ball in a cooking pan without letting the ball roll out. The third and final challenge was easily the most entertaining. There were individually wrapped bread snacks hanging suspended from string. The children had to grab the bread without using their hands.
They. were. adorable.
They looked like little goldfish trying to catch the bread in their mouths. Some kids had the perfect strategy, while others were tragically inept, but all of them were adorable.
After I had seen the race in action I finally figured out the name pan, pan, pan
Pan!- The sound effect of the balloon popping
Pan- the cooking pan
Pan- for whatever reason the Japanese word for bread is Pan. I don't know of any other Spanish loan words.

I felt really smart for figuring this out. I'm pretty sure that's a little sad.


Anyway, on to the Pictures!



Note: there are two different sportsdays being represented here. One middle school and one elementary school. If the kids are about knee-high It's the elementary school.



Here we have an event at Chokai. The kids had to make a London Bridge style tunnel of steepled hands. The last link in the chain was allowed to run through and become the first link. The constant movement reminded me of a caterpillar.
These were the coats that the kids wore for a special dance.


After lunch, the kids got themselves ready for the cheering competition. This invovled most of the boys painting themselves from head to toe.

Regrettably, most of the cheer competition didn't make the great photo cut because of kid's faces being visible. This is part of the Red team's performance. The white team did a really funny lip sync of a popular boy band. Caleb and I, getting ready to perform in the traditional dance. Caleb had seen it performed once. I had never even a single step of it. Oh well, I'm sure we just blended in with the other dancers....
Oh yeah, I never blend in anywhere... crud.

This was an event for the PTA. They had to carry these little horse carts. The horses had bells on them.
This was a strange event that I'm still not entirely sure I understand. Both teams stood at opposite sides of the field. There were bamboo poles, tires and a huge rope in the middle.
When the shot fired, both teams raced for items in the middle and dragged them back to their own side. While it was immensely entertaining to watch 10 elementary school students dragging a tire in 10 different directions, the end scoring made very little sense.

I'm afraid that's all for now.

Tune in next week when one of us will blog about the sheep shearing at Okunakayama.
Here's a teaser:

Graduation

I have now been to all my schools graduations, from kindergarten to middle school. Its been fun overall but very different from graduation at home. First, its very very somber much more like a funeral then a celebration. The kids having their names read is the smallest part of it. The rest of the hour or more is speeches. Even at the kindergarten there were at least 3 speeches. The kindergarten had their principle, the head of the school board, and the elementary school principle give speeches. The Middle Schools had the principle, PTA president, village government member, school board official, and some person whose roll I didn't catch at all speak. Let me tell you it was boring. After all the speeches there was singing of sad songs. The graduates would sing to the rest of the school. Then the rest of the school would sing to the graduates. Then the graduates and other students would sing together. Then we all sing the school song. Well, everyone else sings the school song and I mouth along with it.

After the Middles school graduations were the after parties. My schools had very different after parties. Chokai had a more casual thing with food and alcohol. The teachers all said something they remembered about the kids. I told them all how scared I was the first day, but how much fun I had with them. then we got pictures with the kids. One of the fathers got extremely drunk and so the closing was him telling embarrassing stories about the kids. People were fairly friendly to me, but they weren't really eager to talk to me. Kozuya's after party had no booze and was a lot more organized. The kids lead everyone in games. The big games were pretty fun. They did one were people blindfolded themselves and held their nooses and then ate something. They would then guess what they ate. Then we played a game where they had 4 rice balls 1 filled with wasabi and the other with pickles. The crowed watched the people and then voted on who ate the wasabi. The last was bingo for prizes, I won an umbrella. After Kozuya's after party there was what they call a nijikai which means second party. The second party was the drinking party. The teachers and parents got together for a kid free drinking party. It was a ton of fun. At the start of the party before the toast the fathers set on one side of the room and the mothers the other. None of the fathers wanted to sit next to me. So as soon as we toasted they all moved down the table away from me. Which kind of bummed me out. Then most of the mothers came and talked to me the rest of the night. It was great Japanese practice and nice to meet my students families. One of the mothers brought home made rice wine that was just delicious.

Oh one of my favorite teachers is being transferred this year. So when I start back in April I will be working with a new guy.

Hank Williams Fish Market

The other day my Principle from Chokai and his wife took Samantha and I to Hachinohe. There is a big mall in Hachinohe that has an import store and several other great stores so they thought we would want to go. It was nice. We were able to get all the Christmas cards we are sending out this year and some Christmas presents. We even go some things to decorate the house. We don’t have a tree but we do have some garland and silver balls around the living room. There is a small pine tree outside the house and we are going to wait till closer to Christmas and decorate it. Samantha has suggested that we saw off the top bit to make it a small tree with out necessarily killing the tree. We also have a cloth wall hanging of Santa’s sleigh going by Mt. Fuji. I even bought a Santa costume in my size for 420 yen or about $4.20. It included hat, beard, pants, shirt and belt. It’s really a pretty good costume for the price. I can’t wait to show it to my kids around Christmas. I think that the Elementary kids will love it and I will even use it at the Kindergarten that we teach at.

After the mall they took us to an amazing fish market. It was full of all kinds or fish in every state from some being still live to just the heads and tails. We walked around the building trying samples of everything from raw Octopus in Kim chi sauce to fresh crab. I mean this stuff was in the ocean that day it was so fresh. The whole time it’s really loud but I keep thinking that I hear Hank Williams. Now, I know that being in Japan can drive some people crazy. I also know that some crazy people here music and voices. So, I’m thinking that there is no way that this fish market full of Japanese people in Iwate is playing Hank Williams. Therefore I must be starting to go crazy. What's more, I asked Samantha if she heard country western music and she couldn’t. Finally we get to a quite place and you know what they were. They played one Hank Williams song after another the whole time we were there. The fish market had a sort of restaurant in it where you could buy fresh fish and then take them and rent a small grill and cook it right there fresh. We did that and it was great. We had chicken, beef, squid, huge scallops, shrimp, and some other fish. It was the best sea food meal I have ever eaten and it was really cheap too. It was one of the most not in Kansas anymore moments. Here I am eating fresh fish in Japan, trying to explain what little I know about Cockney in Japanese, and the whole time Hank Williams is going in the background.

In unrelated news the other ALTs in town and Samantha and I are putting on a Christmas play at all four middle schools in town and the church Samantha, Stephanie, and I go to. It will be a Christmas Carol rendered into very simple English. For example we may well end up changing the ghost of Christmas past, present, and yet to come to yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I will be playing Scrooge and am busy making all the props for the play. I’m really looking forward to it. I think that it will give me a great opportunity to talk to my kids about the real meaning of Christmas since they celebrate it here as a sort of Valentines Day. Also, I’m going to video the Christmas play and if it turns out well and the other cast members still agree it’s not to embarrassing post it on the blog. So look forward to maybe seeing me play Scrooge in the simplest English imaginable and then all of us singing silent night. Why Silent Night, because the Christmas lesson of the 8th grade English book is about the writing of the carol Silent Night. It gives no translation of Silent Night and they only hear it sung once but it’s the Christmas carol that our students will most have heard of.

Lastly, the weather. My teachers all say how mild the winter is. Its cold freezing cold but there has not been any snow for a week. They say that normally by the first of December there is usually snow on the ground for good.

Elementary Culture Fests

I have finally finished all my culture festivals. There was one for each school. The elementary school festivals were really cute and fun. The first one that I went to was in Chokai. The kids did skits and singing both as a whole school and as a class. They did little songs about animals living in the mountains.
As you can see cute animal costumes are a necessity.


The second elementary culture festival was in Kozuya. It was pretty much the same except that the fifth graders had grown their own rice and sold it. It was really good. They gave me a small bag of it for helping them divide it into bags. Also they had one of their plays was about the unification of Japan.

Overall I really liked doing the elementary culture fests. They were fun to watch and the kids were really happy I was there. However, I wish more parents had introduced themselves to me. I had been hoping to meet parents and see how they felt about English education. I goes since my predecessor didn't speak Japanese they assumed I didn't but I got a lot of smiles.

As a in general update it has snowed here for the first time. It mostly melted in the afternoon but it was cold in the morning. Today to winterize the house I moved the bed into the room right next to the living room. We are now using really just to room of the house. We also got out the kerosean heater because its too cold for our clothes to dry . We also insulated the house by putting bubble wrap on the big glass windows in the main rooms.

Culture Fest 1

I have had my first culture festival. I forgot my camera so pictures will have to wait till I get pictures from one of the teachers. However, I will try to talk about it without the aid of pictures. This is my second Japanese culture festival and Samantha’s first. My first was at Kansai Gaidai and this one was a world apart. Which is to be expected when comparing a middle school and a college, I guess. The event was at Chokai which is my smallest school. In the first part of the day each grade did a play that they had made all the scenery and plot for themselves. The first year class has made global warming their project this year so their play was about a family and their attempts to save energy and prevent global warming. They do things like unplug appliances when not it use and turn of the car when they go shopping rather then idle it. This play was the easiest to understand because it went something like this. “I will unplug the TV,” then he would unplug the TV. The second play was a bit more interesting. I want everyone to know that this plot is not an exaggeration. The story opens with a girl confessing that she likes a boy and them going out. After the date she is hit by a car and killed. She meets a god of death who after some discussion agrees to let her not move on but posses the body of her boyfriend’s best MALE friend. She (in the body of the male friend) tells everyone that it’s not really Shinichi but Akiko (or some such collection of names), they of course don’t believe her and get mad at Shinichi for his poor sense of humor. The boyfriend pushes Shinichi down and then the scene changes. The girl in Shinichi’s body then goes to HER house to meet her grieving mother. She is wiser now and doesn’t immediately tell her mother she is really Akiko she waits a bit and then tells her. After the mother is upset the god of death comes back to take Akiko away. Then the god of death goes off stage and comes back in white socks, long underwear, wings, and a halo that kept falling off and either making him forget his lines or making the forgetting of lines more hilarious. The final part of the play is Akiko being reborn as the daughter of one of her class mates with no explanation of if the classmate has grown up or is just a pregnant middle school student. The next play was truly the most confusing and to try to relate it is difficult. It opens with the kids in class and they are complaining about school. Then it cuts to two kids rooting threw trash looking for things for their mother to eat. Then another girl comes and pushes those kids down and takes their trash. Also, the trash girl is carrying her English book and going on about how she wishes she could go back to school. Then it cuts to a scene in school where one of the boys is studying and the pushing down trash kids girl comes in and pushes him down too. Then it changes scenes again two girls are living with their parents who are happy normal people. Except, the mother is the girl who pushes everyone down. The children go outside to play soccer. Then trash boy and studying boy break in the house and murder the parents. The kids go live with their grandmother. Then it cuts back to every at school like in the opening scene. They then talk about how glad that their lives are like that and that they go to school. The play was not a continues story like we thought it was short bits of unrelated stories. After that we went to the class rooms and saw examples of things the kids had made including old English essays. One of which was about how a girl’s mother “loved her cat to much and that it made the cat want to escape. The girl’s conclusion was I know how the cat feels sometimes.” Other kids just talked about how cut their family pets are. Other exhibits where things like crafts the kids had made. There was also a room where community artists and handy crafters exhibited their work. Including calligraphy that they had made Samantha and I do. That’s right out calligraphy is right there next to some of the best calligraphy in the community. To end the festival the students had traditional dance and choral singing. The ninth graders even sang Scarborough Fair. Aaa youa goingu Scabaowa Faya. Actually it was really good singing and they had clearly put a lot of work into every part of it.

On a bit of a more serious note. Last week one of my schools closed for a week for the swine flu, it’s now reopen but the local elementary school closed for a few days this week. There is also no word here on when we will be able to see vaccines. However, in good new one of my towns does not have any cases of swine flu. This should also give you an idea of how spread out my schools are and how little contact the residents of small towns that make up Ichinohe have.

Recently I have been really busy here is a bit of my schedule tomorrow, Friday, Samantha and I are hosting a Halloween costume party. This will be after a full day of school for me where I have to teach time, months and Halloween, also I will tell the story of Taily Po in Japanese which my JTE has helped me translate. Then Saturday I have an elementary school culture festival in Kozuya. Then Sunday I have to go to my second elementary school’s culture festival. Then on Nov. 8 I have to go to my other middle schools festival. So I by the end of next week I will have worked everyday from October 25-Novermber 13 with two days off. These are not together either one day is a Saturday and the other is a national holiday. At least I can take substitute days for my weekend work but oh well. Looking back that’s not strictly true I have actually only had 1 day off since the 19th of October. So on November 13 my schedule will have been work 5 days one day off, work 9 days have one day off, work 3 then have one day off then work 6 and finally have a weekend.

A Day In The Life Of An ALT

7AM This is the time that I normally wake up to get ready to go to school. It takes about 30 minutes to do everything in the morning. Though it gets harder and harder to get out of bed for the morning to start as it gets colder.

7:30 AM Ride my bike to work. If I’m going to Kozuya this entails a short ride down the main highway route 4. There is a big shoulder and sometimes other bikers so its pretty safe. When I teach at Chokai it’s a 30 minute ride through the mountains so I can enjoy the scenery. Also, I will often stop and buy some fruit or vegetables.

8AM Arrive at school. I usually get to school a few minutes before the morning meeting. If this is the first day I’m at the school for the week its when I find out my schedule for the day. There is a short teachers meeting every morning. Before the meeting though we all use our name stamps to sign in. This is the time where I get ready for the day if I haven’t gotten everything done the day before. Things like making worksheets and the like.

There is home room and other things until around 8:45. This is when the first class of the day begins. Most schools have 6 periods in a day each of 50 minutes though all schools have a short schedule of 45 minute classes that they use sometimes. There are frequent changes to the class schedule because of assemblies and what not. When I say frequent I mean it to they change for anything especially elementary.

12:35-13:05 is lunch. I eat the school lunch like all the students and all the other teachers. Its usually pretty good. There is rice or bread, milk, vegetables, soap, and some kind of meat at every meal. It’s usually very filling and is very cheap, only a few dollars a day. After lunch there are 2 more class periods. Then the students clean the school and have another short homeroom. After all that there are club activates. These can go till very late after school some times 21:00 if there is a competition coming up. I hang out for a little of the club activities. Clubs are different at each school of example Kozuya has Volleyball, baseball, tennis and track and field. While Chokai only has table tennis. My normal time to leave school is a little after 16:00. Then its home for dinner.

During the day I can teach between 0 and 6 classes depending on where I am. If I’m at a middle school the normal amount is 2 but I can do up to 4 if the school has a special education class. At elementary I’m much busier since I go only once ever other week they have me teach as many classes as they can so usually 4 or 5. Also, I have more responsibility to plan the lower level lessons. 5th and 6th grade have a text book that they use but its teachers manual is only in Japanese so its very difficult and many ALTs hate it. For 1st-4th grade I can be the lead teacher and plan and execute the lessons virtually on my own. For an example week I will teach 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 6th grade. I have to plan the lesson for all but 6th grade. 1st and 2nd are about numbers and time. First grade gets numbers 1-10 and second grade gets what time is it and o’clock. For 4th grade I will be teaching a different lesson. It will be over these vocabulary words: standup, sit down, raise your hand, clap your hands, turn, jump, run, walk, swim, read, sleep, left, and right. I will also do a review over my name is and I like/don’t like. My main job in the elementary is to make English fun and teach vocabulary not grammar. I know that after reading this many of you are saying good since my grammar is bad and we all know I shouldn’t be teaching penmanship or spelling. The big challenges in the day are correcting the students and sometimes teacher’s grammar without hurting feelings. Also, I have to make warm ups and games for the middle school students which can get hard to come up with. Games need to teach a grammar point or review vocabulary, but do at least a little fun. Games that I like doing are Battle Ship, Shiritori (a Japanese game where one person says a word and the next person says a word that starts with the last letter of the previous words), and any game with lots of running in the elementary schools.

My Commute

These are some pictures of the commute trough the mountains to Chokai where I teach every other week. Its a great ride that I even do some times on the weekends for fun. Also, since the area it goes through is so rural there are a couple of great fruit and vegetable stands. They leave bags of whatever has come into harvest and everything is 100 yen or about 1 dollar. Its a great way to get some cheap healthy food. Last time I went to one I got 4 big pears, a bag of shitake mushrooms, and a bag of home grown tomatos all for way cheaper then the grocery store. I will not be posting pictures of the ride to Kozuya as its on the intersate and there for not pretty or interesting.