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 | It feels like it's been forever since I've posted an entry in here. Actually, this marks the longest stretch I've gone for in which I haven't shared an update while continuously attending school. And the reason for that is...
well, to be honest, not much has happened. Maybe I've sadly come to "that" point where even my interesting days are just "normal." Sure I can tell you all about what awesome and exciting things I did today with my students, but considering there are nearly 300 similiar entries, it wouldn't be anything most of you have heard before. Well, just out of wanting to gap holes in my coverage, this will be a quick highlight-entry.
Wednesday, October 28th: ES2/KS2
ES2 is the first elementary school to begin preparations for its bunkasai (culture festival). Most of the day, the students are in the Common Room practicing their parts for the big music performance. There are traditional instruments such as koto (big string instruments), shamisen (like old banjos), recorders, and one or two taiko drums. The song they're playing is very slow, which is understandably necessary considering that for 1/5 of the kids, it's their first time performing such a band.
My most interesting part of the day actually comes from the KS group. I teach the akagumi-san and the kigumi-san, because, well, there are only 8 of them altogether anyway (5 girls, 3 boys). They're so cute because they always rush the door when they know I'm coming, then they'll listen carefully, hoping to catch me speaking what little Japanese I know. When I try to deny it and tell them "nihongo wo wakarimasen" (I don't understand Japanese), they squeal with glee. Haha... they need to be more excited about the English part, I think. Maybe next time I'll copy what they do when THEY speak ENGLISH. Kids love praise, afterall.
Thursday, October 29th: ES1
On Thursday, ES1 had its Parents' Observation Day. It's the day of the semester when parents are invited to come view all the classes-in-session. A lot of parents showed up to ES3's event, and considering that ES1 is twice the size of ES3, I was preparing myself for a large crowd of onlookers. Based on the full parking lot I encountered when I arrived in the morning, I had the suspicion that my theory was correct, however, most of them split after 2nd-period, which did me no good since I don't start my duty until the 2nd-period, and for today, all they had me doing in the morning was helping watch the 4th-graders while some ceremony was going on. Oh well, free bonus-time with one of my favorite groups of students.
Really, the only other thing worth mentioning is that my evil plan to lure the 3rd-graders into behaving and paying attention in class by bribing... I mean... rewarding them with stickers, continues to be awesome. Of course, I have to be careful that no small number of students gets too far ahead of the rest of the group, otherwise they'll start to riot. For the record, Megane-chan was the first (and only so far) to reach the 4-stickers mark.
Friday, October 30th: JHS/ES1ASP
My last day of the week was spent at the junior high school. The 8th-grade English lesson was interesting, as the kids were to present their speeches on what they want to be when they grow up. A-sensei gave me the duty of videotaping the activity, which I suppose is alright. It wasn't a great class for me, personally, since I just sat in the back of the room the whole time (which takes away my chances of being witty and charming), but a lot of the kids put on some very entertaining shows. The class favorite was the boy who wanted to be a cop, who had plenty of gestures to accompany his explanation.
The students were all being graded by their peers. Criteria consisted of eye contact, loudness of voice, use of gestures, and content. One boy was obviously aiming for just the first three, since he basically went up to the front and thought up as many things as he could to engage the crowd... without actually talking about the assisgnment, haha. Most notable moment: he just asked random kids "do you like Hindi?" Extra points for including the audience, haha.
What bugged me most was at the end of the day, A-sensei (who was in a terrible mood all day) had me figure out the averages of all 22 students (took me over an hour of straight number-crunching). When I told him who won, he didn't like the results and decided to just go with HIS favorites. I was like "okay whatever you say" while on the inside screaming "WTF!?!?! Why would you have me waste an hour of my day with this incessant calculating if you were just going to pick who YOU liked in the end!?!?!?"
Oh well, anyway, speaking of English speeches, I had a good discussion with the four 8th-grade girls who will be in this year's competition... errm, well, the same four from last year: Tenisu-chan, Alice-san, StinkyBug-san, and DollDream-san. The five of us were standing around the podium at the front of the room after A-sensei left and the rest of the class was relaxing during their free-time. For some reason, Tenisu-chan said she'd be right back, then ran off. I kinda moved myself over, so now all 4 of us remaining had our own side of the podim. A minute later, Tenisu-chan returned, only to find there was no spot for her to stand in our group. She's crafty though...
She actually just quite literally slipped in front of me. I then quite literally just pushed her aside, haha. It got a slight chuckle from the others. Not wanting to be outdone in terms of bringing laughs, Tenisu-chan again stepped in front of me, only this time she was telling me I wasn't needed anymore because now SHE was me.
She points at herself while addressing me... "Xeno-sensei desu!"
She turns back toward the podium and the other 3 girls and starts pounding the podium with her fist and talking in a deep voice.
I can't be outdone by that... and because now the universe was short one Tenisu-chan, the void had to be filled.
I pointed at myself while addressing the whole group of them and say... "I'm Tenisu-chan!!"
I immediately rushed right alongside... ummm... "me"... and kinda bumper her aside, while bobbing from side-to-side, talking in a high-pitched voice. I forget what I was saying (probably just say "la la la"), but whatever it was, it had all the girls laughing, two of which ended up on the floor. Oh, and I pretended to pull on my pigtails, too... just to add to the girliness of it, heeheehee.
I left the JHS at 4pm since most of the students were taking the National Kanji Test this afternoon. I visited the After-School Program where I got some "smile candy" from Semi-chan. I don't know if it counts as origami since it's literally just a piece of paper wrapped around another balled-up piece of paper. The one on the inside has a smiley-face drawn on it, hence, "smile candy." Too cute.
Friday Night: ES1 Nomikai
I was told on Thursday that there would be a drinking party with the ES1 teachers and parents on Friday night (hooray for advanced-notice!). Luckily I didn't have any plans for that night anyway, so I was able to attend. I ended up sitting with the kouchou-sensei, as well as the 3rd-grade teacher who I don't think likes me. Maybe after spending the whole night together, she's soften her opinion of me. We also sat with two parents, one who was near impossible to hear because of her quiet voice. No shock to discover that she is Silent-chan's mother. Guess that solves one mystery in my life, haha.
The night was fun, despite it being a 3-hour and 45-minute event (yikes). I got to talk to 4-sensei later in the evening and we made plans to go bowling next week Saturday morning. As he got drunker and drunker, he started calling me "ecchi" out of nowhere. Then he asked me how to say it in English, to which I regrettably told him "perverted." He spent the 10 minutes after that just telling me that I'm "perverted," which I think was just him admitting about himself since he was telling me just before how his favorite part on the female body is the nipple, haha.
Monday, November 2nd: JHS
My week started off with me again behind the video-camera during an 8th-grade performance. They needed to rehearse their play performance and needed a video of it. There isn't much to say about this except that after we were done, the kids all needed to shoot little "ganbatte!" mesages while introducing theselves and their characters. The funniest one goes to Tenisu-chan and StinkyBug-san who did these adorable little salutes as they introduced themsleves, haha.
After lunch today was my long-awaited Halloween Super BINGO activity for the English Club. I had advertised it all week and had a few students express interest. Unfortunately, a lot of them were gone throughout the day because of some tennis tournament in the city, and then of the 7th-grade boys who wanted to come, I guess they just plain forgot. Oh well, at least Taisou-san showed up. She's undergone some kind of personality transformation in the last year. She used to be so quiet and reserved... often just asking me questions calmly. Now she barges into rooms screaming her greetings and is a lot more openly playful with what she wants (mainly stickers). We were waiting for more people to come to the game as she started yelling that she wanted the game to start and to screw anyone who came in late, haha. I didn't see the point in trying to play BINGO with one person. I think she just wanted to guarentee that she'd win a prize sticker.
Her plan was almost foiled by Blue-chan who came flying into the room after finishing her kitchen clean-up duties. The game came down to the very last word, which meant I needed a tie-breaker. I had them race to read the list of words, which still only barely yielded a winner by a tiny fraction.
Nothing worth mentioning about the afternoon classes themselves. After school I had been on planning on joining the volleyball clubs, but with the Track Team currently taking members from all the usual clubs, it wouldn't have been worth much to go to the other clubs. Since we're still preparing for our postponed Culture Festival, I went to the 9th-grade classroom to help Yochien-san, Johnny!-chan, 5-0-san and the Japanese teacher with those banners that hang off to the side of the stage telling the audience the name of each performance and who is in it.
Since I can't write Kanji, I just helped Yochien-san tape the backs of them. It was enough to be useful and earn some brownie points. Of course, this makes me wonder what I was doing last year after school each day when all the 9th-graders then were preparing for the culture festival. I'll have to check my old entries for a refresher.
Personal Life
Let's discuss Halloween in Japan. Okay, we're done.
heh heh... j/k... kinda. As you can imagine, Halloween hasn't caught on too big here. The Japanese do the pumpkin-carvings and some of the spooky decorations, but there isn't like any big influx in candy distribution, and trick-or-treating door-to-door is absolutely unheard of. Not surprisingly, the place you'll find the most "spirit" (no pun intended) is at stores and restaurants. As for my classes, aside from the aforementioned JHS English Club Halloween-themed BINGO, the only other holiday-related activity was coloring and teaching a few words to the ES3 1st/2nd-graders. I would liked to have done more, but all my classes are behind-schedule because of the Swine Flu.
Oh well... I did grab myself a handful of Snickers and Kit-Kat bars the other day. It was my only "taste" (again, no pun) of the holiday this year.
As for personal entertainment, I used the rainy weekend to catch up a bit on To Aru Majutsu no Index and Family Guy, plus the latest South Park, which, coincidentally enough, rags on the Japanese. And for a trip back to the past, I stumbled upon some old episodes of Rescue 911 on YouTube, which had me aching for my old fire dispatching days (well, the exciting nights, at least... the boring nights I can do without). This prompted me to go on a search for the vids that people take at fire scenes, trying to find if anyone caught any of the fires I worked. Not only did I find one, but I found a site where a guy was selling full-coverage, which includes all radio transmissions. I dug up one of the last fire incidents I could remember and ordered a DVD copy, just as a cool momento of that period of my life.
Stepping back to the present... errr... recent-past... I also went to Kurashiki to check out the big shrine there, though my camera batteries died sooner that I would have liked. On Sunday, I went to the little art musuem in Nariwa. The museum building itself was the most interesting part of that excursion. I think I scared the art out of one of the cute curators there by randomly shouting "hello!" at her. She smiled, but BradPitt-sensei just gave me a weird look and tried to make fun of me for talking to girls. He's fired as my wingman... he's scaring away all my girls.
The last point of interest I want to mention is that I was mentioned on the Boston radio show that I listen to over the radio every night. I made a joke about the new Michael Jackson This Is It movie by giving a spoiler alert ("he dies at the end") that the hosts found worthy of a mention. They also seemed surprised that they had a listener in Japan, heh heh.
And now I need a hot bath. The daytime temperatures here have finally sunk below 60F, all thanks to the rainstorm that barreled through Okayama over the weekend. The leaves are just starting to change colors, so I'm hoping to use my random holiday (it's Culture Day) tomorrow to go someplace where the colors look beautiful.
Until next time... see you!
P.S. LOL... I just got a voicemail from 4-sensei. He doesn't speak much English, so it sounds like he wrote out what he wanted to say, then read it extremely extremely slowly. |
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Displaying comment(s)
| #1 | 
ErwinRommel | It's too early for a Suzumiya Reference
Sigh...It's sad that any Suzumiya reference will now include Endless Eight. Thanks to the internet, these things are immortal like Facebook epitaph.
What would truly qualify for Halloween would be dressing up like Tenisu-san. With the whole pigtails and soft tennis uniform....chilling.
I can't wait to see more stuff coming out of the English club that you set up. It's the one topic that you tend to bring up but don't seem to elaborate much about beyond the speech contest. If you're running out of topics you could always just throw in a paragraph or two about Blue-san or Ball-chan. That'll be catnip to us cats.
2009-11-02 23:07:04 | | #2 | 
xenocrisis0153 |
@1 - haha, I should just write a blog entry, then c+p it 8 days in a row, just to see which readers catch on first. ^___^
More English club stories, eh? We haven't been meeting much because of the culture festival prep, but now that that's over and done with, I'm hoping we can get back to our regular attendance. They seem to be hyper over Super BINGO, so it might be a great way to lure in more members.
And funny you mention Ball-chan, since she had a lot of "screen-time" in a later entry... November 7th entry (a href="http://www.anime-source.com/banzai/modules.php?name=Blog&bop=display_entry&id=640">Xeno Goes to the Dead People Center
2009-11-11 08:02:34 |
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