Catching Up

I'm pretty late delivering this blog, so I'm sorry about that. I'll try not to make a habit out of it. A lot has happened, and I've been pretty wrapped up in it all. Over the past week or so I've attended the Tokyo Game Show, dined with the company of one of my old Sophia University friends and a bunch of owls at an owl cafe, had my first day at elementary school, went canyoning with a bunch of other ALTs from Gunma, and attended the sports festival at my middle school. I really need to keep these write-ups coming fast and furious because if I don't I get all backed up with cool events like this.

Let's start with the Tokyo Game Show. For the uninitiated, that's an annual video game expo held in Makuhari Messe near Tokyo where publishers and developers show off and let people play all the coolest unreleased games...as well a ton of shitty unreleased games. People come from all over the world to attend the event, and while it's open only for the press its first two days, the second two are open to the public. I went with some friends two years ago and had a blast. I was bummed I couldn't go last year because I departed Japan just a week or two before the event.

That show is massive. It's held across three enormous halls and all of them are packed to the brim with exhibits and fans--people fans, not electric fans unfortunately. It was hot in there.

To give you an idea of the cool stuff I saw, I either got to play or watch demos for Bloodborne, Resident Evil Revelations 2, The Evil Within, Halo Master Chief Collection, Final Fantasy Type-0 HD, Kingdom Hearts 2.5, Borderlands The Pre-sequel, Evolve, Sunset Overdrive, Mighty No. 9, Oculus Rift stuff, Monster Hunter 4 on the New 3DS, Hyrule Warriors, Little Big Planet 3, and I don't even know what else. There was an obscene amount of media on display, but those were some of the highlights for me.

There were of course a ton of people in costume for the event as well, which is always fun to see. In this post in particular, I don't have room to post all the photos I want to on this page, so be sure to check out the link to all of my photos on the right sidebar over there.

To move on to my next little adventure, I met up with a friend in Tokyo I hadn't seen since I left last time. We had our sappy little reunion and then went out to eat at an OWL CAFE! I had heard a lot about cat cafes here when I came before--which are pretty much just little cafes where you get to hang out with a bunch of cats while you eat your food. That seemed okay, I guess, but I see plenty of cats back home. It wasn't until after I went back to the States that I learned about owl cafes. Those are pretty much the same deal as the cat cafes, except they're way cooler because you get to chill with a bunch of AWESOME SUPER-ADORABLE OWLS! That was maybe the most fun experience I had since I came back to Japan.

I stayed with my friend that night and went out to Shibuya the next day with her sister who didn't speak a lick of English. It was a little tricky, but it gave me a great opportunity to blabber in Japanese and practice my speaking skills.

I definitely want to head back to Tokyo before too much longer to see more crazy stuff and meet up with some old friends. It's comforting for me to know some people in that huge and ridiculous city.

I finally made my way to the elementary school I'm teaching at last Friday. I switch off on Fridays between visiting an elementary school and visiting a preschool--so I only actually go to that school every two weeks. I was out sick last time I was supposed to be there, so almost two months in I finally got out there. Even so, I didn't teach any classes because the kids were all practicing for the upcoming sports festival. It wasn't a normal day of school. 

I did get to go meet the principal, vice-principal, and a whole bunch of the staff though. I poked my head in a bunch of the classrooms and said hey to the students as well. They're so young. A lot of them are like 6 or 7 and still learning how to write in Japanese, so I can't imagine English will be a very intensive class. I'm just intending to introduce some simple phrases and vocab to them and then play some games in English with them.

Okay, moving on once again, I went to the canyoning event put on by our little student council of JETs thing with a whole bunch of the other ALTs. Just to explain canyoning briefly--I didn't know what it was either--it's basically gearing up in a bunch of pads and swimwear and then floating/sliding/jumping/falling down a series of rapids and waterfalls in a river. It got off to a pretty slow start, but then next thing I knew we were jumping off a 6-meter waterfall, so yeah, that was pretty exciting.

There was more to the event too. There was a big BBQ that night where we all grilled our own food. One of the guys with me there was a super awesome cook who turned what would have already probably been a good meal into a crazy delicious meal. He grilled the steak, chicken, pork, and everything, and I did a lot of veggies and fried noodles. It was a lot of fun just hanging out, grilling, and eating with everyone. Less fun was the after-party where everyone got smashed and chose my room of all places to coalesce. It was fun for a bit, but less so when I'm wiped at 3am and there are 15-people just hanging out in our 4-person room.

Just to briefly cover the most recent event, my middle school is presently in the middle of its school sports festival. (I took a break to come in and write this :P) The entire school is participating in this day-long event involving relays, long jumps, races, timed sprints, vaulting, 30-person jump rope teams, and a bunch of other things. One more nice thing is I don't have to teach any classes today. I just get to watch the events and hang out with the students and staff. Not a bad way to start a work week.

Okay, this is almost certainly one of the longest posts I've written on this blog, so I'm gonna go ahead and wrap this up. Again though, I have a lot of great photos I didn't have room to include as a part of this post so please be sure to check out the link to my whole album over on the right so you can see all the cool goings on over here. Also, I always appreciate comments and feedback, so if you want to please leave me a comment here or on Facebook, like and share my posts, and all that. Some people have told me that they can't comment here because they don't have an account. You can sign in with your Google account--which you already have if you use Gmail, among a few other options. I can't do anything as far as I know to allow anonymous comments though, so I'm sorry about that.

Anyway, as always, thanks for keeping up with me, and please look forward to the next exciting update.

Until then!

I'm a Teacher?

This is the front entrance to the school. There's a lot of
construction happening right now though, so it's a bit messy.

Well I've successfully completed my first week as a teacher. People keep calling me "mister" or "sensei," and it's really frigging weird. I keep telling them to stop. I had nine classes between Monday and Friday that I either taught or helped teach. I went to a hoikuen on Friday, which is like some sort of preschool daycare thing. Those kids were so cute! My middle school has three grade levels that I think correspond to 7th, 8th, and 9th grades back home. Each grade level is divided into three classes, so there are 9 classes, plus a special needs class for 10 total here.

My 1st years are secretly my favorites. Don't tell the 2nd and 3rd years. The 1st years are way into English class and really seemed to enjoy my self introduction lesson. The 2nd years weren't there last week, so who knows, maybe they're awesome. My 3rd years just did not give a crap, though. I have a number of questions with prizes throughout my lesson to keep the kids awake, but it just did not work with the 3rd years. One of the 3rd year classes was actually pretty good, but the other two were either almost or actually asleep throughout most of my lesson. Oooohhhh weeeellll.

The bike ride to school is really pleasant.
I pass through a ton of rice fields.

I covered a few basic things about myself like my name, age, height, favorite food, and where I'm from. I talked about the redwood trees and beaches in Humboldt County, plus some local events like the Kinetic Sculpture Race. I broke it up with some American and Japanese media I like and tested the kids to see which they knew. If they answered my questions correctly they got a super-awesome American Pokemon card.

The school is pretty big. It's two buildings, each three floors. For whatever reason, 3rd years are on the first floor, 2nd years are on the second, and 1st years are on the third. I do a lot of stair climbing as I trek back and forth between the staff office and the classes. I also need to change shoes quite a bit, since you're supposed to have different shoes for indoors and outdoors. I come to school in one pair of shoes, change to a different pair when I go inside, then if I go to the gym, I have a third pair of shoes. I think you're actually supposed to have even more pairs for various other occasions but I don't have enough room in my bag for that.

Various awards displayed prominently at the entrance, of course.

The staff has been super great too. There are three JTEs here (Japanese Teachers of English), and they're preeetty much the only people here other than me who speak English. I'm getting by pretty okay with my so-so Japanese though. Everyone keeps telling me how good I am, but I still have a ton of trouble understanding people, so I don't feel like I'm that good. I want to take the Japanese Language Placement Test every year I'm here and move up by one level each time. We'll see if I can actually accomplish that. The test goes from level 5 up to level 1. I would guess I'm somewhere between 4 and 3 right now, but I don't really know.

In addition to my self-intro lessons I've helped the JTEs with a couple of standard English lessons. The kids are learning basic stuff like "I like," "I have," and "this is." It's really surreal seeing like the inverse of all the worksheets I was doing when I started learning Japanese. Now all the directions are in Japanese and the questions are in English. I've also taught the special needs class twice now. It's a really small group and they're pretty mellow so that class is a nice break from all the high-energy 30-student classes.

This is the hallway right outside
the staff room. You can kind of
see my desk.

On Friday I went to the preschool and played a ton of games with the kids there. I was just there for an hour, but in that time we played 4 Corners, Simon Says, Duck Duck Goose, Blob Tag, I gave a little intro, the kids asked me a ton of questions, and they introduced themselves. Everything happened really quickly. I didn't think I'd like being around little kids so much, but they're all so happy and curious. They asked me the most adorable stuff like what my favorite animal is and if I like strawberries. I think I said giraffes for whatever reason, and yes I like strawberries.

I'll be at that preschool every other Friday and at an elementary school on the other Fridays. I've already started in on my second week of work over here. This week the 3rd years are gone, and the 2nd years are here. I'll report in on all things 2nd year next week.

A quick note about photos of the school though. I'm not supposed to take pics of the kids, particularly if I'm going to put them online, so school pictures may be a bit barren. Sorry 'bout that.

As always, thanks for keeping up with me, and if you like these posts, please like them, share them, and/or comment on them. I love getting feedback. Let me know if there's anything you want to know and I'll try to cover it next time. Until then!