September 25th, 2007
Bitchu-Takahasi, Visit II
First thing this morning I walked up the mountain. I didn’t have much time, so I went up before the office even opened and waited for them to arrive. I caught Mrs. Y just as soon as she arrived. I had a few questions about where and when I need to pick up my foreign registration card. I guess I’ll have to fit it in between classes on Thursday afternoon since I’ll be out of town most of the rest of the time during business hours. I also did a little research on how to get the computers at the library to work, and I’ll go back and try again after I get my foreign registration card. You need that before you can get a library card, and you need a library card before you can get online.
Getting the answers I needed, I zoomed back down the mountain, grabbed my bike and my books, and headed for the train station. I ordered tickets for Bitchu-Takahashi and I was on my way. It looked cloudy, and it even rained a little bit on the way there. You can see in the photos and in the Youtube video how dark and cloudy it was on the way there (The various mountain shots). It wasn’t raining when I arrived, but looked like it could let loose any time, so I hurried to the school. It’s about a 20-minute walk from the train station. I have one of those tiny little fold-up umbrellas in my bag, but those things don’t seem to last very long in my experience, so I’d rather not have to use it. That 20-minute walk is, by the way, entirely uphill. Parts of it are gentle slopes, and some are nasty inclines, but it’s all uphill all the way. Who decided that mountains are good places to build universities? The land must be cheap is all I can say.
I arrive at the university about 10 minutes before class starts and sign my name in the book. My schedule doesn’t give me much time for rest stops or breaks, which isn’t good. I’d rather leave 20 minutes early and have a little rest period after mountain climbing, but that just doesn’t work with the train schedules. So anyway, after signing in, I cross the courtyard and go into the Student Support Center. I tell the attendant “Watashiwa atarashii eigo sensei des” (I know this isn’t precisely grammatically correct Japanese, but it if works, it’s good). She looks at her sheets and says “Brian?” Yes, I must be in the right place. She shows me to little area divided from the rest of the room. This will be my “classroom.” I take a seat and wait. Here is how the rest of my time went, step-by-step (yes, I wrote it down in my notebook as it happened):
1:00 Ready to roll!
1:10 A bell rings. Must be time for class to start.
1:20 I get up and wander around the room. They have maps and magazines. One looks good, “English Teacher Magazine.” No, wait. It’s all in Japanese. What’s that all about?
1:38 I finish re-reading my entire scheduling portfolio, including my class schedule, procedures, notes, even train schedules.
1:40 I open up my new Haiku book and start reading about the original Haiku Masters.
2:05 The attendant comes over with a chart and says (I think) that the next class will start at 2:55. Uh, OK.
2:40 The bell rings again. This class must be over!
2:55 The bell rings again. Aha, a new class!
3:00 People walk in. They walk in my direction. Then they walk past me and sit down in another area. At least they said “konnicha-wa” as they passed.
3:05 I write down a few rough ideas for tomorrow’s Kindergarten classes.
3:10 I stop writing and reach for the Haiku book again.
3:15 The Chinese girl who originally showed me around the campus two weeks ago comes in, apologizes, and says I can go home now if I want, since there aren’t any students today.
Yup. School started YESTERDAY, so no one needs English tutoring yet. They probably don’t even know I’m here. That’s OK, it was quiet and I got in some reading and thinking.
So I packed up my stuff and walked back down the mountain to the train station to leave. Along the way, I stopped inside that big Buddhist temple I saw last time. I remembered my camera on this trip, so I have lots of good shots showing the mountains and rustic scenery of Bitchu-Takahashi. It’s very pretty and quiet, a perfect mountain town. Still, I wouldn’t want to live here; there’s no McDonalds.
After getting home, I see there’s no food in my side of the fridge, so I have to go to Happy Town or starve tonight. I’m sure not going to feel like doing that tomorrow night even if they are open that late. After returning from there, I dig through the teacher books on the shelf looking for stuff to do tomorrow. With my Kindergarten problems, I know I shouldn’t let it go until the night before, but I tend accept ideas more easily when I’m desperate. The adult classes are so easy; you can talk, play word games, and just anything I can think of can be made to work. But nothing, and I mean nothing, really applies to these little kids.
I figured out part of the problem today; the principal who goes with me to translate for the kids doesn’t speak very good English himself. I suspect he doesn’t understand all that I’m saying, so he doesn’t translate everything. I think I may have to start making my presentations with that in mind.
For the littlest kids, I’ll take the plastic food again, and we’ll play “What’s in the bag?” for fifteen minutes. My time with them is really short, so they’re easy enough to deal with. The 4-year-old class and the 5-year-old classes are about a half an hour each, and that’s tough to fill. People keep sending me suggestions, but most of these activities only take five or ten minutes. There’s just so much repetition that a 4 year old is going to sit through before getting bored.
I’m just going to lay it out for the principal tomorrow. I suspect he doesn’t want to suggest anything because he assumes I know what I’m doing. He can see that I’m not a normal college-age kid, so he probably thinks I have a bunch of experience in this or something. Maybe he even thinks I’d be offended if he suggested anything. I’ll make it easy for him tomorrow and just straight out ask him what I should do in the future. I know they have materials there, but I have so little time there outside of actual teaching that no one has time to explain anything to me.
Assuming I survive Kindergarten, I have lots and lots of things prepared for the other two classes, more than I can use in one class. I’ve been putting together crosswords and various games, so I think tomorrow will be a fun day for the grownups.
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