Earthquake 2

The Board of Education had the Internet so we should be in a bit more regular contact. Ichinohe is still doing pretty good in a lot of ways. People are calm and going about normal activities as best they can. My school at Kozuya even had its graduation ceremony today. You could almost forget what had happened. Till there was a small aftershock during the ceremony. After the ceremony it was annocunced that the town was out of gas. Rumor is that most of the prefecture may be out as well. The local trains and shikansen are still closed in the north part of Japan. This is mostly to conserve power. The toll roads and main highways are reserved for emergency vehicles only. They are warning people in Tohoku(the north) and Kanto(central Japan) to conserve power as much as they can. With the disasters at Fukushima Daiich and Daini and troubles at other plants the national power situation is a bit difficult. There are going to be rolling blackouts in Tokyo and most of Kanto. I don't think that this will effect our town though we might lose power completely. I want to encourage everyone to look into how they can donate to the relief effort. Many people in Japan have lost everything and need alot of help.

They Japan Meteorological Association has said that there is a 70% chance of a magnitude 7 earthquake in the 3 days following March, 13.

One site that has been recommended as a place to donate is http://www.amazon.com/.

Great Weekend

The last Friday I got to experience something very Japanese. I got to plant rice with my elementary school kids. Everyone except the first and second grade went to plant a field. The field belonged to a student's grandmother and the school plants it every year. It took about an hour for us to do it all and was pretty fun. The rows planted by real farmers were straight and even the rows planted by kids were ,lets just say, not straight and even. There were about 6 or 7 inches of water over about the same of mud. The rice goes in several plants at a time about half under the water and half above. The kids had a great time playing in the mud and splashing each other with it and I was glad to try planting the rice. However, it seems like it would be a hard job.

Saturday, the church had a festival to shear the sheep. It was mostly kids, church members, and the people from the handicap school in Okunakayama who went. I had never seen a sheep being sheared and was surprised by how docile they were through the whole process. After the shearing we had an egg hunt and ate lunch with some friends from the church. It was all-in-all a ton of fun and something that we couldn't have without living in a rural area and our close friends at the church.

Also, I went with the pastor to hear another pastor speak. The speaker was the pastor of a Japanese language church that meets in a New York Methodist church. His speech was in Japanese and I could only get about 75% of it. Even with that though it was very interesting. Though his comments about crime in America were a bit embarrassing. Since, it was in Sannohe there wasn't anyone who already knew me except my Pastor, but people were really friendly.

Sunday. Stephanie and I went to the Fuji Matsuri in Kozuya. Now this was not Fuji like the mountain but Fuji like the flower. The flowers had not bloomed because of a cold snap but the festival was fun. It was at the Elementary school and all the kids were there. The older towns people sang folk songs and the kids did dances. It was a great afternoon. One of my second graders gave Stephanie and I cotton candy and was so cute. Also the kids were selling soda and toys.

Three days of great activities show that winter Ichinohe and Summer Ichinohe are completely different. Winter is dead with nothing going on at all. Summer is alive with events every weekend all the time.

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:

First Day Back at School

Today was my first day teaching of the new school year. I was at Kozuya JHS today and it was good to be back. I have really missed teaching my students, though today I only had one class. It was my new seventh graders just up from Elementary. They are the class I did the Halloween party with and I really like them. They are so energetic that it makes teaching great. We are going over the alphabet teaching capital and lower case letters. The new English teacher wanted me to fix the students bad writing, which was a nice thought. They have also hired a support teacher who comes to English class with us. So there are 3 teachers in the room. I'm not sure how I feel about it but more as it develops.

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.

Santa Caleb

Today I taught Christmas at Kozuya Elementary to the first and second grade. I explained the reason that Christians celebrate Christmas. I also, told them about kids believing that if they are good all year they will get presents. Then I opened the floor up for questions. All the questions were about Santa and Presents which would have been true at an America school to I guess. Some of the best were as follows. Keep in mind these are all in Japanese and have to be translated by going back and forth with the real teacher. Then I had to answer in Japanese.

Why does Santa come in through the Chimney?
Because he is not a burglar and cant use a locked door or window, he has to use the Chimney.

I don’t have a Chimney how does Santa come in?
He can use the out side vent of the Kerosene Heater to get in.

Then he would be inside the heater?
Magic

Why does Santa give presents?
To celebrate Jesus birthday.

What is the English word for the animal that pulls Santa’s Sleigh?
Reindeer, the I sang Rudolf the red nosed reindeer which made them all surprised to learn that only one Reindeer had a red nose.

How does Santa know what we want?
In America kids write him a letter that says what they want.

Do they put it in the mail for real?
Yes, they do.

WAAAAAAAAAAAA We don’t write letters. If we don’t write letters Santa won’t know what we want. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Mr. Caleb what is Santa’s address?
At this point before I can tell them to address them to the North Pole. The teacher steps in and tells them that they can tell their parents what they want and they will tell Santa. I admit that I wanted them to write Santa letters just to confuse the Japanese mail system.

One kid very nervously asked if wakening up late is a bad thing?
The teacher handled this one to saying it was bad especially if it made you late to school and you parents late to work.

We then made Christmas Cards in all the classes that day. It was a lot of fun and the kids really liked it. Also, in another reason that my Elementary kids are starting to grow on me is that they are so cute. In my first grade was one girl who is little Ms. Dainty in class but at lunch was forking it (I guess in Japan I cant say forking it I have to say chopsticking it) in like rice was about to be illegal. I mean she had more rice in her chopsticks then she could force in her mouth. Things like that are just so adorable.

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.

Halloween

On the day before Halloween my Elementary School in Kozuya let me have a Halloween party for my 6th grade class. It was a lot of fun for me and the kids. I told them and every class I taught that day Taily Po in Japanese. The kids seemed to really like it they were scared by it at times and amused by my faltering Japanese at other times. Then I told them about trick or treating. The teacher made a small door for the kids the to knock on and trick or treat from. They would say trick or treat and then I would ask them a question in English and if they got it right I would give them candy. Several students made funny mistakes with their answers. One girl said that her name was candy. Instead of saying she liked candy. Another girl when asked how old she was said she was cookie. So I say in Japanese, "you are cookie years old." She and the students around her laughed. So I asked again and to help her said I was 22 years old. This prompted her to think and then claim she was 22 years old.
Me teaching the kids monster names.
My Door.
This is the poster board about me at this school. It has facts about me and this poster of me. Apparently I have light brown hair and green glasses. Also if you look closely you will see that they dont ask if I'm married but if I'm marriage so I'm the physical embodiment of marriage.

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.

Funny Stuff

I have two funny stories that I would like to share from teaching recently. They will kind of give you a feel for what I get to do every day. We were teaching things like, where to, what to which to, when to, and how to. So I thought that it would be fun to do it about travel so I asked them about Morioka. Questions like, do you know how to get to Morioka or tell me where to eat in Morioka. Then I split the kids into groups and had them pick a place in the world to make question about it to ask me. So, I'm walking around the class and one kid walks up to me and goes, "Kentucky." "Does America have a Kentucky state?" When I say yes it does he runs to the map on the wall points at South America and asks me to show him where Kentucky is. When I correct him he then sees where the map says Phoenix and goes, "the state of Phoenix is where we should ask about."

In my next class they where trying to form sentences. A girl was filling out the paper and instead of writing My brother has a bike she wrote has my brother a dike. I tried to correct her and so she changed it to My brother has a dike.

First Days at Kozuya

I have just completed the first two full days of teaching. They have both been at Kozuya Junior High School. There are around 50 students in 3 grades here. This translates to there being three classes in the whole school. The first day I was here I only did one class of first year Junior High Students. I did my self introduction power point presentation. There were only a few students in the class who really seemed eager to participate. Don’t take this to mean that they were not interested. They were interested they just where to embarrassed to join in. I only have one story that I want to relate from the class. I went around the room and ask students their name, what sport they play, and what they liked. Every student in this school is part of a sports club which is why I asked what sport they played. I go around the room till I reach one of boys. He tells me his name. Then he says he plays baseball. So I ask the last question, “What do you like?” He looks at me like I’m a perfect idiot and says “I like baseball.” Even though his English was not the best in the class I felt that he reacted most like a native English speaker. After school all the students go to sports teams. My JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) is the couch of the boys and girls volleyball team. They have track and field, volleyball, baseball, and tennis. The school also has a pool but no swimming team. I tried volleyball a little, but quickly reviled myself to be terrible at volleyball. So, after that I helped out with baseball. It was a lot of fun I stayed about 40 minutes after school and played catch with the kids. Maybe when I have a bike I will stay longer. The next day I did my self introduction for the second and third year students. They seemed a lot more excited about it all. They asked a lot of questions in both English and Japanese. Being able to speak Japanese, even at the level I am, has helped a lot already. The other teachers don’t know English and so they feel more at ease because they can talk to me. Also, they have a really good impression of ALTs in general thanks to my predecessor Dan. (In a small aside when I ask something about how Dan did things or make a comment about how helpful Dan was they look at me like I’m crazy. Dan went by Daniel Sensei here and to call him anything else invites confusion.) The students seem to enjoy asking me questions in Japanese that are above their level of English, tough often the JTE has to translate. The second day I also helped to teach my first real lesson. We worked on teaching plural to the first years. Things like 1 pen vs. 2 pens or 1 CD vs. 2 CDs. We also did a dialog about ordering at a fast food restaurant. Samantha drew pictures of the food things like hamburger, cheese burger, and a truly hilarious picture of a chicken burger. The chicken burger had a whole live chicken between 2 buns the kids seemed to think it was funny. And you know what even if they didn’t I found it hilarious and will probably post a picture of it either with this post or latter and you all can tell me if it was funny or not. My vote is funny.
My name has been a big challenge here. Teachers students and well everyone has trouble with my name. They all make a very valiant attempt at it but its hard for them the L sound and the final B are very difficult. I hope that my other schools are this fun. Oh this weekend is the Ichinohe festival. It last for 3 days. I will miss the first day because I have to go to Morioka to get some immigration business taken care of but the second day Samantha, Stephanie, and I will dance in the festival. We will go to a class about the dance tonight or last night depending on when I manage to get this online. I hope that this will be a great time to meet some more people in Ichinohe. I also am going to say that I have heard the first round of post cards hit the US. We will be sending more and would love to get some post cards from home as well. If you want to send us one please email Samantha or I for our address and we will be happy to give it to you.
Part 2
Morioka was a lot of fun actually. I was nice to see the people I came to Iwate with. We also had some more training times. I did some shopping in Morioka. This weekend Samantha and I will get cell phones. We had to order them so that we could get English menus. We will be able to call each other for free which will be nice. I also found a bike. It’s a mountain bike that will be good for the snow. It’s a used bike but the frame is large enough for me and the bike shop is putting some work into it this week and I can get it Friday. I was in pretty good shape but they want to change the tires work a few places that were starting to rust and tune the brakes and gears. They were really helpful and the whole thing will be around 200 US dollars which is cheap for a real bike here. This weekend was the Ichinohe festival. Samantha, Stephanie, and I danced in it Saturday night. There were really cool floats that each area of town made. I have good pictures of all of them and will post those later. Sunday, Samantha and I helped our neighbors pull the float around town and through out area for 4 hours. We would stop and the kids would play flute and one of the older people would sing at different places in town. It was a lot of fun and we meet many people who lived around us. They were all very friendly. After, the festival we went with the adults from the area to a party above the local fire station. It was a lot of fun. We set with some of the town councilman until we reached the let your hair down part of the party. Then some more people came over and talked to us less formally. All in all it was a great day. People really made us feel a part of town. From our neighbor who saw us walking and invited us to help pull the float, to the old lady who gave us paper flowers to hang in front of the house like everyone else in town, to our local pharmacist who had us sit with her family at lunch, to the people who made it a point to talk to Samantha even if they had to wait for me to translate. It was just so nice to know that the people around us cared.

Today I taught my first Elementary School. Kozuya Elementary. It was fairly difficult actually. First, at Japanese Elementary schools they don’t have English teachers. This means that the level of English amongst the staff was pretty low. The fifth grade teacher had the best and I just had to do all communications in a horrible mix of English and Japanese, mostly Japanese. The students were friendly and really really high energy. The first thing they had me do was teach the fifth grade a game that I would later play with the whole school. That’s right I had to come up with a game for 87 kids who were in first to sixth grade to play. We did red light green light. The kinds loved it the teachers seemed to like it but it took them a whole to make the driving parallel. In the upper level classes I did an introduction in English and Japanese. Then the kids ask me prepared questions. The sixth grade teacher had a bit of trouble with the kids doing the questions. Some of the question were, “do you marry” and “what is your no thank you food.” Now the meaning of these questions is clear are you married and what food don’t you like so that’s a victory, but its still odd. At recess I played soccer with the kids. It was really more like mob with a ball. When it started there were two teams of five when it ended they were about 30 boys trying to steal the ball from each other. After that I did my introduction to 3rd and 4th grades and played some more games. Elementary is fun but exhausting.