Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone in the states enjoys turkey day. It will go completely uncelebrated here. There was a much smaller holiday on Tuesday though, Labor Thanksgiving Day. It used to be a Shinto harvest festival in which the Emperor would dedicate the year's crops to spirits. Postwar, it was decided that the holiday should represent Japan's new constitution's move towards human and worker's rights. I guess that translates to everyone gets off work Tuesday with no fun traditions like the National Dog Show, because that's what everyone thinks of when they think about Thanksgiving.

The past couple of weeks have been a different schedule than usual. The teachers have had conferences with the students and their parents after school every day. Last week, all classes were shortened by five minutes, the cleaning period that happens at the end of school was moved to after lunch, and school ended after fifth period. This week, classes were normal length but school still ended after fifth period. Both weeks, all after school activities were canceled. Regardless of this, I had to stay at school until 5:00 every day. This meant that on several occasions, school ended at 2:00 and I had three hours to spend working on activities that it took about half an hour to plan.

Thankfully, tomorrow we will be back to regular schedule. Other than that, I don't have much to report. Maybe I can take this weekend to get around Mito with my camera, which I've forgotten every other time I've gone sightseeing. There's not much to see, really, but I can see what I can find. Until then, be thankful for something you have that I don't have access to. (I'd suggest either affordable dairy products or Mexican food).

Mostly About Food

Well, I seem to be failing to keep to my schedule. As such, this is going to be a bit long, so feel free to skip down past the festival description to find what's probably the most interesting bit (the pictures of the school lunches).
It has now been two weeks since the festival. I took quite a few pictures of the proceedings. However, as I was about to post them here the following day, a friend informed me that it is in fact illegal to put any pictures containing students online and pictures of teachers can only be posted with their express consent. So, I'll just have to make do with a typed account.
As I may have mentioned, I had Tuesday the second of November off to make up for having to attend on the sixth. School started at the normal time (8:15) and the students went to homeroom and the first three periods on Tuesday's schedule. Then there was some more time in homeroom followed by lunch. Below is a picture of what the teachers had for lunch. The miso soup was good, but the sushi and soba were not as good as the lunches here tend to be.

After lunch, students went to the rooms they had decided to spend the next three hours in. There were 22 rooms, each with a different subject. Most were led by someone from the community. In each room, the students and some of their parents worked on projects. The subjects ranged from traditional things like tea ceremony and stone stamp carving to things like making waffles or doing yoga. The science room really stole the show at the end of the day. They spent their time making water rockets (which they made out of two liter bottles and launched using bicycle pumps) which they were launching for the last hour or so across the sports field behind the school. Some of them could clear the entire field while others made it about ten feet before slamming into the ground. It was fun to watch. I spent the day moving from room to room to see what each group was working on. I was allowed to try serving tea in the 茶道 (sado-tea ceremony) room. That was an interesting experience, as the woman explained what I should be doing in very fast and polite Japanese, both of which made it difficult to understand what she was telling me to do. I managed to not scald anyone though, so that's a plus.
So that was the 6th. I then had Sunday off, as per usual, and then launched into another full week. Below are the meals I managed to photograph. It turned out to be difficult to do as I was attempting to do so without being seen weirdly taking pictures of my food. I've started eating with the students, which as given me the opportunity to be alone while in transit so I can take pictures, so my apologies if they're not too clear.

This was last Tuesday's lunch. Monday I ate in the staffroom (where I always have to get my tray of food) so I didn't get a chance to take a picture of it. This was a pretty standard meal. We always get milk and we usually get rice in a tin box. We also always get a bowl of vegetable products and another bowl of something, usually soup. It seems Tuesday was Miso. Also, Tuesday I was lucky enough to get the little cup in the bottom right. It's one of Mito's famous products: natto. Natto is fermented soybeans that tastes worse than it smells, which really says something. So far, it's the only thing I've been served that I couldn't finish.

Wednesday must have been the day that there were people in the hall everywhere between the staffroom and the classroom I ate in, because the picture above is of Thursday's meal. Again, we had milk, vegetables, and a soup broth. However, Thursday we had noodles instead of rice. The noodles were put directly from their packet into the broth, though only about half of them would fit in the bowl at one time. I remember this being pretty tasty.

Friday's lunch was an apple, another vegetable medley, milk and gyudon. Gyudon is a dish made up of thin strips of meat, onion, and other goodies on top of a bowl of rice. There are a lot of gyudon chains in Japan, and they're all pretty cheap. I think one chain, Yoshinoya, has even made it to America. I think they have one in Times Square, so next time you're in New York you might consider trying it.

Sadly, someone started to come around the corner as I was taking this, so it came out blurry. Sorry about that. Regardless, Monday's lunch was a bit odd. We were served a sort of bean chili, which I was surprised to see, along with our vegetables and milk. We had bread instead of rice (making it the third time I've had a meal without rice at the school, both of the others are also pictured in this post). The bread was kind of strange. It was a weird mix of sugary and salty which I don't know I've ever encountered with bread. Anyway, the chili was unexpected, but it was ok.


Finally, today's meal. We were fed a thick soup of some kind along with the vegetable bowl, today smother in dressing. As I'm not the biggest salad dressing fan, I could have done without. However, Japanese dressing seems to be lighter than American dressing, so I didn't have any problem with it. As I mentioned before, we're encouraged to eat everything on our trays to set a good example for the kids, though that can be difficult to do when they're talking to you and you're trying to figure out what they want to say and tell them how best to say it. So far, I've only had to be told by the homeroom teacher (teachers always eat with their homerooms) that time was up and I needed to be finished.
All in all, I think the lunches are pretty tasty. In any event, the food here is miles beyond what I used to get at my middle school. Also, they're not at all what I expected. I'm not sure what I was expecting out of Japanese public school lunch, but chili never crossed my mind.
Well, I think that's all for this post. I wrote more for the blog on paper at school today, but I think I'll save it for later in the week as this post has already dragged on for a while. I hope you enjoyed the food pictures. I think it's a pretty representative sample of what I've had there so far. Sometime I'll take get a few pictures of the inside of the sushi restaurant near me. But, I think that's all for now. More coming soon, I promise.

First Full Week

Due to tomorrow being a national holiday and there being some sort of community festival on Saturday, I had today and tomorrow off. I figured I could take a little time to blog about last week. I've now had 16 of my 18 classes (of the two I didn't have last week, once the Japanese Teacher of English [JTE] was going to be somewhere else that period so no class and the other was a third year class on a practice testing day). The students are fairly bright and for the most part very easy to teach. Of course there are a few who are clearly trouble, but even they are respectful. I think my favorite classes so far have been the first years. They seem to be the most energetic and the most excited to participate.

I've decided to include some pictures of what I've been doing. Below are activities I've made for my classes. The first was for the first year classes (6th Grade equivalent). They were practicing the word "where" and prepositions in, on, by, and under. I had them fill in the blanks with one object, one place, and preposition of their choosing. After that was done, I would pick an object, read it aloud and then the class would ask in unison, "where is my ____?" I'd pick a place from the pile (I had cut both objects and places and put them in piles on my desk) and answer, "It's in the ____." I told them not to worry about the prepositions in order to have a higher success rate. I believe "cat in the box" was the most popular, though "hamburger on the Moon" was also very popular.

I regretted the inclusion of "shoes" as they haven't studied how to properly use "are" yet, so every time I drew shoes, I was greeted with, "where is my shoes?" I guess I know for next time.

The next was for the second year students (7th graders). It was based on a dialogue in their textbook in which Mike was speaking with a doctor who diagnosed him with a cold. It was the same as regular Battleship, except they only had three ships (one 4 spacer, one 3 spacer, and one 2 spacer) and instead of numbers and letters, they would ask if so-and-so had a something-something. In case it's too small to read, the ailments are cold, broken arm, sotmachache, fever, and headache.

On this one, I regret writing "Their Ships" down below as technically it should have been "His/Her Ships" considering they weren't playing against multiple people. I feel less bad about this one though. I feel like most people say their instead of his or her regardless of what's actually correct. Still, something to avoid next time.

The next activity I was only able to use once due to the crazy practice testing schedule for the third years (in Japan, everything builds up to the High School Entrance Exam, which determines how good of a high school you can get into, which determines how good of a college you can get into, which determines how good of a job you can get, so the test at the end of 9th grade is incredibly important). Regardless, this activity was a competition between the different rows they were seated in. They were studying how to say that they didn't know when asked questions using to be, which is kind of weird because the order when you ask questions is different than when you make statements. For instance, "What time is it?" and "I don't know what time it is." The verb moves around, so I made an activity in which they had to unscramble the word order. There were five students in each row, so the first student would write the words in the correct order for the first question, and then pass it to the student behind them who would answer the second one, and so forth. The first group to finish with all the answers right would get a point, though usually it ended up being the first group to get four of five right. I actually had five rounds ready, but neither of the classes had time for more than the first two shown below.

I think this one went pretty well. You can also see here the evidence of the whiteout tape used pretty widely here. I don't know that I've seen it outside of Japan. I've been using it pretty frequently. I've already used half of the one I bought at the dollar store just before I started working. I was surprised to find that even though it's much brighter than the paper, the copier never picks it up. Maybe that's one reason I've already used half of one.

Well, I know there was a request for food, but I don't really have anything to show yet. The school lunches are pretty interesting. Also, they're pretty large and surprisingly tasty. I'll try to sneak pictures of some before I post again. I guess that's all for now though. Thank you for being patient with how long I go between posts. I'm going to attempt to post every weekend, though I tried that last time I was in Japan and it lasted maybe 3 weeks. I'll try to do better this time. がんばります!

First Day

Well, Friday was my first day at Kasahara Junior High, picture below. It has around 400 students, all of whom participated in the event on Friday. It turns out that it was a choir competition between all of the classes. In Japanese Junior High Schools, students stay with their homeroom class in the same classroom all day as the teachers come in to the rooms to teach the different subjects. Each of these classes sang one song, which took quite some time as there are 16 classes total and many of the 3rd years (equivalent of 9th grade) sang pretty lengthy songs. Not surprisingly, the third years were the most impressive. Of course, these weren't select choirs so everyone had to participate, which guaranteed that there were a couple students in each class that couldn't sing who stuck out quite a bit. Still, I was very impressed. My Middle School didn't have that high of a percentage of kids who could sing.


Anyway, that's it above. I hope to get pictures of the inside sometime, but I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to do so without it being too odd. Below is the Ibaraki Prefecture office. It's just a few blocks north of me, so it's a good way to be able to where I am in relation to my apartment when I'm out and about.

Just across the street from the school is my favorite restaurant so far. It's called Hamazushi and is a conveyor belt sushi place. (They make sushi in the back room and put it on plates on a conveyor belt that runs by where you sit and you take whatever you like. At the end they charge you based on the number of plates you have stacked up in front of you). It's pretty good considering it's price (usually runs about a dollar for one plate with either two nice sized pieces or six of the kind of rolls that you get in the US).

I apologize for the poor picture quality. It's a busy intersection with a long wait for pedestrians and cyclists if you miss your light, so I took this while riding the opposite direction. I'm mostly surprised I was able to get it into frame.

I only taught one class on Friday, so I'll be able to comment on the students more next week after I've had all of them in classes, so more coming then.

My First Apartment

Well, after getting accustomed to my area and in the middle of a week of training, I'm finally getting around to posting about my new place. I'm in what's called a "Mansion Style" apartment, presumably named by someone with a sense of irony. Generally they're a single room with a bathroom. I'd say this one is at the nicer end. I'm on the first floor. Below is the view as you enter through the door on the left and my kitchenette on the right.

The size of the kitchen area is the biggest drawback I've found so far. Well, that and apparently the walls are thin enough that I can hear the tenant above me snoring at night. I guess the walls are as thin as I was told to expect. Also, having no counter space is kind of a pain. Other than that, I'm pretty happy with it. Moving on, below is the view if you turn left after entering the apartment. As you see, it came with a washing machine and utilities are included in the price, so that's a definite plus. The toilet is the door on the left and the shower is the door on the right.

Next is the main room. This is taken from the doorway next to the kitchen.

The bed about three feet off the ground to make a nice storage space underneath. Accordingly, they built in steps between the bed and desk.

The table leg is on a wheel so it can roll under and the table can fold up to be out of the way for more floor space, which will be useful if I ever have guests staying over. The wall behind it would be blank were it not for the mirror, the garbage schedule, and...

...a little something I found at the dollar store and thought would make a good wall decoration.


So that's my apartment. My first day at the school will be Friday, which will have an unusual schedule to accommodate some sort of singing competition the school is involved in. I probably won't know more until the day of, so more on that later. Also, I wanted to get some pictures today, but today was so overcast that it was practically dark enough by the time I was coming home, so hopefully I'll have time to do that this weekend. Until then, I suppose that's all.

Mito it Is

Well, after quite a bit of waiting, it turns out that I will be in Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture. This was the one I preferred, as Yonezawa would have required a car and rotating between schools every two months. Mito, on the other hand, will only require a bicycle and I will be at the same school every day for the entire contract.

I will start on the 22nd of October after a week of training starting tomorrow. Tomorrow I will go up to Mito and sign for the apartment and the contract for the job and stay the night at a hotel. Friday I will move into my apartment and visit an Elementary school English class so I can have an idea of what my students will already know. Next week's schedule was a little more uncertain other than work beginning on Friday, so I will post about it later when I know more. I may or may not have to wait for internet access to be set up in my apartment, so I'm unsure if I will be out of contact or not for the first week or so, but I'll try to find an internet cafe if so.

In any case, I'm looking forward to having my own place for the first time, as well as my first full time job. As for now, I need to finish packing and run a few errands to get ready for tomorrow. Now I'm off to the post office to use their ATM. 'Til next time.

Employment

Yesterday, I was given a provisional offer of employment. (To my understanding, the provisional part was that I had the job providing the Japanese government does not reject my Visa application). The company is Heart English School and I will be in either Mito City or Yonezawa City. They said they would get back to me on which sometime this week or early next week at the latest.

Mito City, Ibaraki Prefecture, Kanto Region

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Yonezawa City, Yamagata Prefecture, Tohoku Region

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In either case, I would be in a middle school as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT). I will post again when details have been more finalized, but in short, I have found a job that will support my Visa, extending my stay in Japan beyond this November. More on this later.

Interviews and Nagoya

Well, unfortunately the job offer didn’t work out as I had hoped. It turns out that the Board of Education did not choose the Unitas candidate, so there was no opening for me at Unitas after all. The worst part of that situation was definitely being stuck in limbo not knowing if I should be continuing to apply for jobs while I was waiting to hear if Untias had an position for me or not.

Since last week when I found out, I've had two interviews, one over the phone and on in person, in Ibaraki and Kanagawa prefectures respectively. (Both prefectures border Tokyo. Ibaraki is to the northeast and Kanagawa is to the southwest. Yokohama is in Kanagawa, but farther south than this place I applied to). The phone interview was on Friday morning and I am still waiting to hear back from them. The in person interview was interesting though. The school is called Kokusai Gaigakko School and the interview was a group interview and informational session. The other three applicants were a dancer from Brooklyn, a former accountant from Melbourne, and a Lithuanian who spent his adolescence in Queens and his adult life in different countries around Europe and most recently worked for an international organization charged with catching people in the act of illegal fishing. It was a really interesting group of people and an odd experience to say the least. Unfortunately, that one didn't pan out. We were told that if we hadn't heard back from them by Saturday then we were not being offered the position, and I still haven't heard from them. Again though, still waiting to hear back on the Friday interview. Hopefully I'll get an email one way or the other today.

I spent last weekend visiting Amelia in Nagoya. I got to meet a large number of her friends who were having a large get together on Saturday evening, which we followed with Karaoke. The next day, I accompanied Amelia to her boss's wedding reception, which was more like an American wedding reception that I would have expected. That is, of course, that it was more like an American wedding reception until two of the staff members at the ECC branch that the bride runs did a choreographed number dressed in schoolgirl outfits. I regretted not having my camera, but Amelia said she would probably put that on her blog, so hopefully that will be coming soon.

I suppose that's all for now. I just sent another large batch of applications out, so I should hear on those in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have good news.

Until next time.

A Job Offer...Sort Of...

Well there's been a sort of breakthrough on the employment front. About a month ago I had a phone interview with a company in Kofu called Unitas. After not hearing from them for a week after that I emailed them to be told that the person who had interviewed me had finished their contract and left the country. I've been emailing them on and off over the past month without really hearing much back, so I called them this past Monday to see what I could find out. They asked if I wanted to interview on Tuesday, so the next day I took the train two stops west and found their office.

It went fairly well and about half way through the woman doing the interview said the principal of the conversation school was going to come in and sit in on the interview. No sooner had she said it than he came in. They spoke to each other in Japanese for a while, but were speaking too quickly for me to really understand everything. However, I did get the impression that they liked me but might not actually be able to hire anyone new. It turned out that the Board of Education here is looking for an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) for one of the public schools and they asked Unitas to find someone so they requested that I come back on Thursday and teach a demo lesson to see if they wanted me for that. The lesson was to be for seven or eight year old kids, be 20 minutes long, and focus on colors but also use animals.

It went pretty well. After I finished the three people I presented it to began to discuss me in front of me in Japanese. The first words said after it was over were tanoshi sensei which means fun teacher, but again it was too fast for me to really follow all of it. However, it was clear from what I could make out that they liked me but probably wouldn't have a spot for me. No sooner had I gotten back before I received a call saying that they wanted to hire me, but it turned out not to be as straightforward as they had made it sound. After I got back to their office they told me that the Board of Education had made the offer to several companies in the region and they had all put candidates forward. Unitas doesn't want me for the ALT position but they did offer me the job of the person they put forward should he or she be selected.

So on the up side, I received my first job offer today. On the down side, the job I was offered may or may not actually be available. The BoE makes its decision on the 13th, so I should know around then.

Guess that's all for now.

Japan Again

Hello all,

久しぶり！　It's been a while. I have decided to start using this blog again as I am about to return to Japan. I suppose I should do a brief review of what's happened since my last post.
I returned to Denison and graduated with an East Asian Studies major and a History minor. Pictured above are my roommates from this past year. Left to right that's Andy looking looking leery, Steve looking bored, and Casey looking somewhat disappointed in me. Shortly after graduation, I returned to Ohio and left from there to China where the Denison Chamber Singers toured for ten days in Shanghai, Xian, and Beijing. I will probably post just about that trip at some point, but for now here is a picture of me on the Great Wall.
After that, I went on a service project with my Church to McDowell County where we did a little flood clean up and scraped and painted a couple houses. That was rewarding as always. Following that, I spent a couple weeks in New York taking a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) certification course. In the week between these two, I went to the National Archives in College Park, MD to research my great Uncle Herbert Smith who was an Entomologist for the USDA in the early 20th century to help my Uncle David with a book he is writing on Uncle Herb. As I didn't know much about entomology before, that was an interesting experience. Following that, I attended the family reunion and was then reunited with all three of my sisters for the first time in a couple of years.


That brings us up to the current adventure. I have been applying to jobs in Japan all summer and had several interviews, but am still unemployed. I recently decided to just go to Japan on a tourist visa and look for a job in person. I've heard that it is extremely easy to get a job as an English teacher in Japan once you're there, but I imagine it will be somewhat harder to find a job that will support a working visa, which I'll need to do any work. Still, I think my chances will be better if I'm already there. In light of this, I leave this week for Japan. I will be staying with friends there, so I will be saved some living expenses, and I will have 90 days to find a job before my tourist visa will expire. I am not in the least bit worried that I will not have found a job within 90 days. I'm currently finishing everything I've had to do to prepare for the trip. Today's errand is photocopying my passport, license, and diploma.


I suppose that's all for now. I plan to write more consistently this time around, so feel free to complain if I don't live up to my plan.