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.

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.