First Day of Teaching

This is the real reason why I am starting a blog; I wanted to be able to remember the best and probably worst parts of teaching English, so that by the end of this trip I can have some fun memories to share with everyone. This is what I will count as my first day of teaching, because even though I taught before, this was the first day I had lunch with the students and got a real full work day. My first school has been Nisshin Junior High School; it has around 380 students which makes it one of the biggest middle schools in Shinjo. Japanese schools are divided by grade and then by kumi, which is just how many classes there are in each grade. Nisshin Junior High School has 4 kumis for level 1 (7^th graders), 5 kumis for level 2 (8^th graders), and 4 kumis for level 3 (9^th graders). The school day is broken up into 6 periods that are each 50 minutes long, and the students only leave the room for special classes like home ec, gym, and science. On top of that they have lunch time after 4^th period which takes place in their classroom from 12:45-1:15. In this time the students prepare their own food for their class, and must finish all of it within the given time. After lunch they have cleaning, where each class not only cleans their own classroom, but a random part of the school as well. Finally the students have a lunch break from 1:35 until 1:50 before starting their last two classes.

For my first day I was to work with Takahashi sensei and Yatsuyanagi sensei. Takahashi sensei is the second grade English teacher and I had her for first, second, and fifth period teaching classes 2C, 2B, and 2D. Yatsuyanagi sensei is the first grade teacher and I taught fourth and sixth period with classes 1A and 1B. Since these were going to be my first lessons to the classes I was scheduled to give an introduction speech and then work on the student’s English introductions. My introduction has gotten better since the first time I gave it, but I think it will need serious re-working for each school I go to. I start out by saying who I am, then I move on to my siblings. I think my favorite part of this is showing them the pictures of Ariella and Jacob and then having them guess who they are. No one ever believes that Ariella is my twin, and so far I have had one second year say that she is my wife, and one first year say that she is my mother. As for Jacob people find him a bit more believable, although I have had a first year from a different class mistake him for my father, which was equally as weird. From there I move on to a somewhat amusing map of America and I show the students where Colorado is, where I went to college, and where Ariella, Jacob, and Brianna live. The best part of this lesson is telling the students that it takes over a week to drive from Washington to New York, something that they can’t believe. The next slide was a little boring to them, and it was when I showed them a map of Colorado and told them some facts about it. Luckily by the third class I found a way to make this one of the student’s favorite slides. I had just told the class that I drove to my part time job every day in high school, and the students shouted out, “You can drive in high school?” I did not realize that there was a difference, and I simply said, “Yes you can start driving at 15.” This blew the student’s minds, so I decided to take it a step further and show them a picture of Wyoming, and tell them that you can drive at 14 over there. This is one of the few things that made my students want to come to America, and it is much better than their favorite fact which I will describe later.

From here I show them some of America’s sports, and I usually get a good reaction when I show pictures of baseball, soccer, and basketball. Students do know what football is, but it is not as exciting to them, since none of them play it. Of course if a class is quiet up until this point I can always get them to perk up when they see a picture of Ichiro, the Japanese baseball player for the Seattle Mariners. I was surprised to find out that they actually had a pretty good knowledge of American athletes, once you get them talking. It is odd, because in America kids would always want to say they knew sports players to look cool, but since doing this admits you know more about America than the rest, most kids keep quiet. I say this only because after class the kids like to talk to me in Japanese and they tell me all about their favorite players and teams, while in class they say nothing. I actually was very lucky by picking Darek Jeetar as my second picture, because I knew him and so did the Japanese students. After this comes another one of my favorite sections, the animal comparison slide. Before this class I had planned to make a huge slide full of pictures showing deers and hawks in America and Japan and comparing them, but in truth I only had time for 2 deer pictures and a buffalo. The students never believe me when I say that buffalo are taller than me, it kinda blows their minds. I thought that they would like to compare the small Japanese deer to the American deer, but that one is kind of a hit or miss. This could be of course my fault because I don’t know if deer in Shinjo are the same as deer in Nara, which are very small, so they might actually be used to big deer.

The slides that I might have to get rid of are the ones about college and what America is and is not. I think that a comparison between Japanese and American schools is interesting to them, but college is so far away that it is a little boring to these students. Furthermore, even though telling them that America is not lazy and fat and that every America does not own a gun is important, but not interesting enough. Even after I give my speech and say that most American’s don’t own guns, they just mutter under their breath, “Well the cops sure have a lot of guns,” or, “I am pretty sure they still do.” I want to replace this with a slide about American food. I got this idea when a kid asked me the odd question of, “Do I like food?” When these kinds of questions come up I have the urge to say something like, “No, I am a natural anorexic.” But I cannot because that is rude, and the sight of a foreigner muttering random words than laughing to himself might be a little too odd for the students. Anyways, after I gave them that answer another kid became brave enough to ask me, “Is Japanese food small?” I know that the natural answer would seem to be yes, but really most of Japan’s food has larger proportions than American foods, especially when it comes to rice and noodles. So when I answered, “The drinks are small.” The teacher asked me to compare the McDonald’s drinks in Japan and America. I told her that a small in America is like a Large in Japan, and all of the kids in my class screamed, “Ehhhh” (This is a very impolite way to say what). From there we began to talk about the differences between French Fries and hamburgers, and then the price differences between America and Japan. I don’t think I could have gotten a better reaction from them if I told them America was made of gold. These kids barely ever eat hamburgers, and later some admitted that the only good thing about McDonalds was the French Fries, but they were hanging off of my every word. Now the problem with having made his discovery so late is I cannot change my introduction in this school. All of my teachers know this intro, and they do not want to have to relearn everything just because I found something to catch the student’s attention for 10 seconds. So all it means is that in the next 5 schools I will have an incredibly interesting presentation, and hopefully I can learn another cool fact to teach them there. As a P.S. to this section I wanted to add that hand gestures are very helpful, but if you don’t do them right, or if you use them too much, the student’s will mock you after class for them.

So now I come to the best part of the blog, the student’s self-introductions to me…in English. I both love and hate this because it is incredibly amusing, and I have had to laugh at a few students which makes me feel awful afterwards. These introductions are incredibly basic, the student says ‘Hello’ than ‘My name is ___’ followed by, ‘I am from ___’ and finally, ‘I like ___.’ After my speech I go around and watch them prepare this and even though the teacher explains everything in Japanese, they don’t always understand. One of the best mistakes that I heard was with a student I tried to help 3 times. Each time I passed by his desk I saw that he wasn’t writing anything down, and I would bend down and give him some answers to his own introduction, yet he continued to ignore me. So when it was his turn to stand up in front of the class and speak English he was in a lot of trouble. He stood up by his desk, stared up at me and said, ‘Herrroo’ in one of the most questioning tones I have heard, and I had to crack a smile there. Then he continued by saying, “My name is Shinjo…I am from…Ryuiji Taka…EHHHH.” It was by this point, where he already said his name was the town he was from and that he was from half of himself that he realized what he was doing and screamed in embarrassment. Again I am glad to say I was not laughing just yet, but I could not help but laugh when I turned around to the other students and saw them all covering their mouths with their hands, as if they were wanting him to continue saying it wrong to the very end.

My second favorite mistake came during the lunch period. It was decided at this school that I would have lunch with every class in the school starting from 1A, and working my way up to 3D. During lunch I am allowed to speak Japanese and I get to ask the students as many questions as I want. One of the questions I just happened to ask was ‘What is your favorite Disney movie?’ Now I do not know the name of this student but he was truly a good student because he tried to answer back in English by saying, “I…like…Fighting Nemo.” Again I am glad I can suppress a smile as I pretended that he had said it right to encourage the kid to speak more. Unfortunatly for him his friend was not as kind and shouted back, “Tatakau Nemoka” (literally translating it to Fighting Nemo). This caused the kid to turn bright red as all the boys surrounding him jumped up and started smacking him while calling out “Fighting Nemo.” I honestly think that this one memory will make me laugh for at least a month, and I still can’t hide my smile while I am writing about it.

All the mistakes that day were not on the student’s end; in fact I had one of my more embarrassing mistakes as well. During class the teacher asked me, “What are you going to do this weekend?” It was on the spot, and not wanting to seem boring to my new students I told them what I did two weekends ago, and answered back, “I am going to Fukushima.” This caused the kids to gasp and mutter ‘Dangerous’ under their breath until the teacher quieted them down. I thought this was the end of it, until lunch time when one student asked me in Japanese, “Why are you going to Fukushima.” I replied back, “Tomodachiha, Fukushima ni shindeiru” instead of the appropriate, “Tomodachiha, Fukushima ni sundeiru.” So for those who don’t speak Japanese let me explain the difference between shinu and sumu. Sumu means to live, so if you want to say I live somewhere you say “___ni sundeiru.” Shinu is the opposite, and so a rude way to say someone is dead is to say, “___ni shindeiru.” So in other words, in front of a group that thought I was fluent in Japanese I responded to the question, ‘Why are you going to Fukushima’ by saying, ‘My friend is dead in Fukushima.’ I turned beat red when they corrected me, and refused to say anything in Japanese for a few minutes, reminding myself how embarrassing speaking a second language can really be.

I have also had the pleasure to have some pretty peculiar students so far in this school. One of the things you have to get used to when you are a foreigner in Japan is for little kids to be weirded out by you. This generally involves walking down the hall in between classes and being spotted by a student who does not know you are coming. At this point they usually yell “Ehhh” and point at you, or if they are a little more used to foreigners they will start shouting “Hey” and “Good morning” which is a little less off putting. Another unexplainable phenomenon is something that only retains to girls. Basically whenever I enter a room for the first time there is usually a group of girls who scream out and then huddle up to talk about me. I believe this is because all of the students at my school believe me to look like Harry Potter because I am also white with glasses. So once you get over that initial shock it usually gets better. Nevertheless, when it comes time to talk to the girls individually they all get bright red whenever I talk, and usually half way through their self-introduction they have to turn to their friends for help finishing up. One girl in particular was incredibly weird, I have had her for 2 classes up until this point, and my first lunch was scheduled to be in her class. As the homeroom teacher led me into their class with my lunch tray, the girl took one look at me, screamed and curled up in a ball to hide her face between her knees. I have no idea what that was or why it happened, and I did feel bad because I was put in the seat right next to hers and she had to deal with me all during lunch.

I also already have two stalkers in this school; one is a boy from the third year B class who admitted half way through my speech that he was a stalker. I did not improve my own situation by telling him what apartments that I live in and my apartment number. I have already have had 2 students show up at my apartment just because they wanted to meet a foreigner, so who knows if this is going to become a regular occurrence. My second stalker is in the first year B class as well, and this kid has not said if he wants to go to my apartment, but after hearing my speech he started following me around everywhere in the halls and asking all sorts of random questions. This one

First Impressions

So since I am still trying to cover as much as possible within the first month without posting I am going to write about all of the people that have helped me over the past month. Literally everyone I have met so far (at least all of the adults) have tried to help me in one way or another adjust to my new lifestyle. However due to limited time and memory I am only going to write down what I found to be the most helpful or amusing interactions I have had with the Japanese people to this date. I should begin by telling you one of our first encounters with Nisshida Mama at her restaurant. She works at a Korean BBQ where you get to grill your own food right in the middle of your table. Nisshida Mama and I get along very well simply for the reason that we both love meat and I can’t really turn down anything she offers me. We went to this restaurant for the first time as a way to meet the 4^th JET in Shinjo, Amanda. Amanda is from England and is one of the most British people I have ever met, which include a British accent, an actual love of the queen, and a general European view of the world. She was a science major and apparently quite smart, but she has been here one year and barely speaks any Japanese. However despite this one fact she was willing to do anything to help us acclimate to Shinjo, and if Kristin did not already know so much of this town it would have been very helpful.

When we headed over to the Korean BBQ I found out how bad of a restaurant choice it was considering out of the 4 of us I was the only one who actually ate meat. Peter and Kristin will eat fish but Amanda is a strict vegetarian, so I really don’t know why we went there. Anyway when Nisshida Mama found out I was the only one who was going to eat meat, and that I said I was willing to try anything she brought out an Andrew Zimmerman-esc dish of pig stomach and intestines. I am actually really grateful for that show because Mr. Zimmerman did teach me you can eat anything if you give it a shot, and I have to say that I really did like stomach. It was soft and had a lot of flavor, but I could not say the same about intestine. There is nothing wrong with it, but at the same time there is nothing good with it either, it is just a tough meat that tastes ok with a lot of sauce. I have been back there again and have had normal pieces of meat as well, and they are just as amazing. I figure at least once a month I am going to have to treat myself to this restaurant just so I don’t forget what real meat tastes like. Another great thing that came out of the night was that Nisshida Mama introduced me to her boss, who not only gave us some free food while we were there, but is also a Kendo instructor. I have not yet taken him up on his offer to teach, simply because of lack of time, but hopefully within the next week or so I can start taking lessons.

The next story was actually one of the most embarrassing times someone has offered to help me. It was my first Saturday in Shinjo, and I had thought that I would spend that day sleeping and getting ready for the next week. Nisshida Mama had another idea though, and she decided that it would be better to take Kristin and I shopping for food that week. Unfortunately for me, I did not know the door custom in Japan, which is that anyone is allowed to enter your house and stay within the first few steps of the doorway (The place where you don’t have to take your shoes off) as long as the door is unlocked. What this meant was that Nisshida Mama knocked on my door as I was changing, and as I went over to shout that I was not dressed yet, she walked in to tell me we were leaving. So one of her first impressions of me turned out to be a white guy standing there in only his boxers, who in shock had forgotten all of his Japanese, and just waited for her to close the door, before getting quickly dressed and following her out. From there Nisshida Mama took us to Daiso once again to do more 100 yen shopping and then to a grocery mart to get our food. In the grocery store we met up randomly with Amanda who decided to tag along since she needed food as well. Nisshida Mama took over from here though, telling us what she wanted to eat and that we should get food based upon that. I, for instance, like mushrooms, but since Nisshida Mama is not a big fan, we did not get many mushrooms. She did show us the best curry to get, which was truly delicious, and what kind of miso to buy (which I haven’t tried yet). Unfortunately about 50% of the food that she showed us to buy I could not actually eat in time because people kept inviting us out to eat, so I never had time to cook. From there she took us to a drug store to buy some more cleaning supplies as well as shampoo and conditioner, which I desperately needed. The best part about this woman is if you tell her you need something she will always go out of her way to get it for you.

The best example of this was when Kristin and I told her that we wanted some weights to start working out with. Well as it turns out Nisshida Mama happens to be best friends with the owner of the sports store in town and she said she would take us to get a special discount. Now apparently just taking us to a sports store and back was too boring for Nisshida Mama because when we got in the car she simply turned back to us and said, “So we are going to a mountain now.” That was basically all the information I got, and it took 10 minutes of driving to figure out that the mountain in question was an hour away, and that we were going to be climbing that mountain. Of course I was prepared for this with my handy-dandy mountain climbing flip-flops, so I wasn’t worried at all. Unfortunately for me and my sandals, the weather became way too hot for us to climb, so instead we just drove to the top and walked around. It was a beautiful temple and the mountain itself was gorgeous, so again I am incredibly grateful for the experience. We explored it for about half an hour before deciding to get a snack before heading down to what I assumed would be the sports store. Now this snack was basically a combination of two of the blandest foods in Japan. The first I forget its name but it is basically three semi-transparent balls on a stick (similar to Dango, but much larger, if you know what that is) that has absolutely no taste. To make up for this they stick it in a miso broth and slowly boil it for hours to give it some flavor, but since that is still not enough they give you Japanese mustard to put on it as well, and that makes it taste good enough to eat. Another interesting fact about this food is it apparently has negative calories, meaning that you burn more calories when chewing and digesting then there are in the food.

The next food that we tried was something that we do have in America, but not in this form. I had mocchi, which in America is what the Japanese lightly cover ice cream with to make a delicious treat. Here it is just a large blob of gloopy mush. The best way I can describe it would be to melt down a marshmallow and then take out all sugar and taste, and then they cover it with miso powder or green tea powder, making it a blob of mush with flavored powder on it. To make it worse they are about the size of a fist and they are served in fours, so this is a food that is very hard to eat politely. I would complain more but a lack of a taste is always better than an awful taste, and some of the food here can be truly awful. Well after these delicious snacks we headed back to the car to go back to Shinjo, or at least that is what I thought. Instead they decided to go to Sakata, the coastal town in northern Yamagata, to get some fish for a BBQ they were throwing that night. So this was another half hour drive in the opposite direction of Shinjo, now making it a hour and a half drive back, in order to pick up fish I could not eat. Well the best part about this trip was that I got to talk to her son Taku, who I am now teaching in Nisshin Junior High School, and who also ignores me every day that I am at the school. The fish market itself was cool, since I have never really ate seafood much before Japan I have never seen anyone actually buying it in front of me, and it was interesting to see what she was purchasing and why. Well after exploring that store for a while we finally did start to head home, and the drive wasn’t too bad this last time because I knew how long we were going to be driving, and I could take a nap. That brings us to our final part of the day, at 4 o’clock we reach the sports store and head inside. Instantly she finds us a jump rope in the front of the store when we believed there weren’t any, so just within the first thirty seconds she is proving to be a better shopper than us. From there Nisshida Mama gets her friend who pulls out an exclusive catalog to order from. She finds us our dumbbells, which turned out to be a little expensive, but this was a great find and Kristin and I both placed an order for a pair. Finally we were done shopping and we could head home. The trip was planned for 10:00 am, we would leave, go 2 blocks to the sports store, and then come back to rest and nap for the rest of the day. In truth we left for the mountain at 10:00 am, got back from the sports store at 4:00 pm, just in time for me to politely decline the invite to dinner, feeling that I needed some alone time to finally relax.

There are two more events that I feel are worthy of writing down, which were our first taiko practice and then the fireworks festival. I will say at this point that for some reason I decided that I was done writing and took a 2 month break between the last sentence and this one, so if the writing style suddenly changes that is due to time and a lack of sleep from the last night. Our first taiko practice was particularly strange because we were not given drums to practice with, but instead given bamboo flutes. I have never played a wind instrument before this, so waking up early on a Saturday morning, driving to a random field, and being given a bamboo flute instead of the expected drum through me off quite a bit. Besides that our instructor spoke no English, but between his pantomiming and the both of our broken translations, we were able to understand the man. The practice lasted for 2 hours but it took us at least one hour just to get a single sound out of the flute. It was pretty funny and embarrassing to be standing in a group of 20 or 30 college students and salary men, blowing over the top of a piece of bamboo and not making a single sound. The man who was teaching us kept telling us to stretch our lips to make a long flat line, which was a facial expression I had never done and every time I tried to picture how I looked at the moment I lost all of my concentration and burst out laughing. I am proud to say that I was the first to make any sound come out, it wasn’t pretty, and it certainly wasn’t a note, but I did make the thing sound like a flute. After the first ‘note’ it got a bit easier but soon my cheeks were killing me and I had to call it quits for the day. Maybe next year I can join the festival but at the time we were only 2 weeks away and we were not going to be in Shinjo for the time anyways, so there was no point in continuing.

The fireworks festival was amazingly fun, and although I love the cool temperature and beautiful leaves of fall, I will miss the summer fireworks. I have been to many fireworks festivals in Japan, and I can easily say that Japan truly knows how to put on a firework show, nothing in America can compare to it. This firework festival was in Akita, the ken (state) right above Yamagata. Nisshida Mama came to pick us up at 5:00 right after work, giving us just enough time to change before jumping in the car with her friend, her son, her daughter, and her daughter’s friend. Hideharu (Nishida Mama’s friend) is an amazingly amusing man but also basically a functioning alcoholic. The second we got in the car he offered me a drink, and when I asked what it was he said it was something he created himself, and that I had to try. It was good, but it was strong, and through the hour and a half long car ride to Akita, I had two glasses of the stuff. The festival itself was pretty cool; it was just a stretch of land along a river that had a row of food stands that stretched about 150 feet. That was no the impressive part, to the other side of the bridge was a parking lot that was at least a quarter of a mile long and growing, and more than 2 thousand people gathering along the river to watch the show. In my opinion the best part of a Japanese festival is the food, hands down. So as soon as we parked the car Kristin and I set off on an epic food quest. It started out with Japanese cotton candy which turns out is just like American cotton candy, then we got some Takoyaki, Okonomiyaki, and crepes. I got my favorite ‘Japanese food’ which turns out to be steak on a stick, but it is delicious for a country that barely serves meat. The fireworks show itself lasted an hour, which might not sound impressive but it was an hour of straight fireworks. 99% of the fireworks shows in Japan do not play music, I used to say all but I did recently go to one show that did, but that was a competition and not a fireworks festival.

As we were walking back with our food I bought a beer for my meal, drank that, and then ran into Hideharu and Nishida Mama. Upon meeting them they offered me another beer, which I had to drink because Hideharu wanted to see how much it took to get a foreigner drunk. He must have told every one of his friends that this night because when we found our seats among a group of Japanese people I did not know everyone kept offering me drinks. Now you might be thinking, ‘If you didn’t want to drink why would you keep drinking then?’ Well to answer this you must know two things. The first being very obvious was that I was in fact tipsy by this point, and probably not making the best decisions in the world. The second is more of an excuse. When Japanese people want to get a foreigner drunk they do not ask, “Would you like another drink?” Instead they ask questions like, ‘Can you drink alcohol?’ or, ‘Do you like beer?” or, “Have you had this drink before?” If you answer yes to any of those questions you are then obligated to finish whatever drink they were talking about. In the end I really don’t know how many drinks I had, but I can say it was definitely more than I should have, because I had to end the night looking up how to say, “Excuse me, there are no toilets around and we have a long car ride ahead of us, where can I go to the bathroom?” The night ended like any other, drunk and tired, knowing that I had work in the morning and hoping to god that I would not have a hangover