far, far away

Dad Cometh

Today is the day. My Dad is coming to Japan. Should be interesting...

3rd Times a Charm

On Saturday morning I attended the kindergarten's graduation ceremony. This one was much easier to sit through than the previous two. It was much warmer, thank god, and much much shorter. Seeing little 6 year olds singing is also much cuter than the 13 year olds doing the same thing. I'll miss teaching them, but I still get to see them at the elementary school, which makes me quite happy.

I was very surprised that the head of the board of education mentioned me in his speech. I was also quite pleased that the children pointed out that they learned English when asked by the principal in her speech about the things they learned. Lastly, I even got worked into the little song the kids sang about their school year in review (They even sang that part in English, thank you very much).

Hey, I've been feeling a little appreciation starved lately, you would be writing about it too, if you were me!

I've posted some pictures of the little darlings as well as two short little movie clips.

75 Kids + Game = Not Cool

Thursday was the last kindergarten lesson of the year. In a stroke of brilliance, the two teachers I work with decided that a combined class would be best. A sort of grand coalition against me, if you will.

75 little 5 and 6 year olds in one room is bad enough, but to try and teach them to tell time, in English mind you, and then execute a game based around that concept is pure madness. I was given 25 minutes to complete my assignment. I know what you're thinking. Such an endeavor would bring a normal English teacher to their knees.

Not me though. You see, I am now a field tested, battled approved, relentless English teaching machine. Last minute surprises do not catch me off guard. Lesson switches, cancellations, or additions are expected. Classes of 70+ students, no problem. It was a rough learning curve, but Joe can now play the game. English students and Japanese school faculty beware.

As you can see from the above, I'm a little out of it. Between the three graduation ceremonies and endless hours of boredom in between, this week took a lot out of me. The last kindergarten lesson went fine in the end, and the kids made me two little posters with their pictures on them. It was nice.

Just Like That

Well, today was the day. My 3rd graders graduated. It was cold, I mean really damn cold and the ceremony was long, but it happened and now they're gone. I was quite happy for them and proud of them, though I'm still quite sad to see them go. My favorite students were part of the graduating class.

It's strange how we, as humans, find the need to distill the importance and significance of whole defining spans of our lives down to a single ceremony lasting a few hours. It all seems so surreal when you're taking part in it. Everyone gathers, some words are said, memories are recounted, some pieces of paper are handed out and then....well, then its all over. Just like that, in a single moment its all over. Before the ceremony starts you still can't grasp what's going to happen and then when it's over it's too late. Somewhere in between was just a single solitary moment where things changed, it's hard to imagine, but there really is.

I suppose that moments are what we live in. Single moments are what define us. I waited around today until all of the graduating students had left, I just wanted to see them off one last time. Right towards the very end one of the girls from the graduating class walked up to me and just sort of looked at me for a second, said my name and gave me a hug. I was sort of shocked, for hugging is not something the Japanese do, not even close family. The entire 5 months that I lived with a Japanese family they did not hug each other once, its just the way things are. But this girl hugged me. I didn't even know her all that well, she was always very quiet, I could probably safely say she never said a word to me before.

I think she was defining that moment in time for herself, giving it some sort of meaning. Maybe she always meant to say hi to me at some point  or maybe she just never gathered up the nerve to try to talk to me in English. Right before that moment she that she came up to me she was still a student, but right after that she walked out of Tajiri junior high school, never to return as a student again. I'm glad that at least for that one brief moment in time we understood each other, both sad, both happy.

It really hit me today that soon I will leave this place, likely to never return, at least not like this. What will my final moment be like? How can one sum up an entire year of their life? One day I'll walk into school as an English language teacher and that very same day I'll leave as a former English language teacher, there's really no way around it. How will I define that moment? How long is a year, or the months, weeks, days, minutes, and seconds that make it up? I'm not really sure.

Finally

Ok, the first part of the videos are up. Let me warn you though, I don't think Text America was made for larger video sizes, they take a while to load. Those of you on dial-up (i.e. Dad) need not apply.

The first set is from my last lesson with my two elective English classes. We cooked smores and then made some Japanese type snack that I've had at street festivals before. It was a lot of fun. A nice way to end the year.

I'll be getting the elementary English club videos and the graduation party videos up in the next day or two.

So, for now, enjoy.

Something Different...

I'm going to try embedding a Google video, I'm not quite sure how its going to work out. But, for the moment, let's assume it will work. It's a music video that I find pretty funny. Enjoy.

Nearing the End

Well, the school year is nearly finished. No, no, I'm still not coming home anytime soon. I'll be here for the first term of the next school year, which starts in April.

Tuesday I had my last lessons with the 3rd grade students (like 9th grade back home). In the elective lessons we made smores and some sort of Japanese snack food. Pictures are up, but I'm having trouble posting the movies...working on it...

Today I had my final English Club at the elementary school. It was a lot of fun. I just brought in a bunch of games that we had played over the course of the year and let them pick. We played twister, bingo, and go fish. I was really happy to see how much the had remembered, I sort of thought it left them the minute they left the room. Same as before, pictures are up, but movies just aren't working out for me tonight.

Bento

The word "bento" commonly gets translated as "boxed lunch." It is true that a bento is, in its most basic form, a boxed lunch. What is not commonly known is that Japanese mother's go to great lengths to prepare small works of culinary art to send their husbands off to work and children off to school with. This little website, while a bit extreme even for bentos, should give you a good idea of what I mean.

Mami

I met the little girl that I'll be teaching English to today. Her name is Mami and she's really quite smart and cute. Her parents seemed very nice. I'll be teaching her once a week, on Thursdays, for about an hour.

I was fairly perturbed to find out that my BOE supervisor felt the need to tell them that I was not allowed to be paid for any services outside of my ALT job, which is technically in my contract... I really like my supervisor, but she's such a stickler for the rules sometimes. So, Mami's father apologized that he couldn't pay me, but they made it sound like they would try to make it worth my while somehow. No big deal really.

I'm actually looking forward to it. I've gathered up quite a bit of teaching experience this year, from kindergarten right up through middle school. One on one tutoring sort of had me scared, but we just sort of jumped into it today and it wasn't difficult at all.