December 21st, 2007
Fukuyama Friday
Marc and I got out pretty early this morning and rode to Fukuyama. Fukuyama takes just about as long to get there as it does to Takahashi, but it’s nowhere near as scenic. Actually, we have to walk about a mile along a highway with nothing to look at but factories. Bleah.
We met up with the Vice Principal, who introduced us to several of the teachers we will be working with. Only one speaks good English, so this is going to be interesting. They gave us copes of the textbooks they are using so that we can get a feel for the English level of the students. They seem to mostly be on the level of “I feel good today” and “I went to the store last week.” I often tell my students that their English is far better than my Japanese. I may not be able to say that in this case. The classes are of about 25 students each. I will have three classes on Tuesday and two on Fridays. That’s a lot of classes to prepare for. My week just got a lot busier. I don’t know what the teachers there have been told, but one of them kept going on an on about how qualified and experienced we are in teaching. Puh-lease! I’m getting more and more experienced all the time, but the last time I taught junior high or high school was… never!
The first time we will actually be teaching there is January 11th, and we’ll be going twice a week until the end of February. That’s six weeks, or about 12 times. I think there are some holidays in February, so we may not go every time. They want lesson plans when we go that day, so I do have some preparing to do. I really don’t see too much need to plan out six weeks of classes until I at least meet the students, but I can get some kind of outline together.
After the introductions and explanations were completed, the vice principal and (best speaking English) teacher took us to lunch. It was a little tonkatsu place a few blocks from the school. Only Marc and I ate, while they watched and spoke to each other in Japanese. Supposedly, they ate lunch earlier since it was 2:00 by then. Or it may have been a budget issue; it’s hard to guess with these folks sometimes. It was good, but I am not a big fan of people watching me eat and talking about me while I do it. I do the best that I can with Japanese table manners, but if you watch me close, I’m sure I probably do some things wrong. Oh well, at least I’m pretty sure I didn’t blow my nose at the table or drool too much.
Then it was time to come back, so we rode as far as Okayama station and got off there. We had some shopping to do. I went to the ticket counter and bought one of the seisyun juhachi kippu tickets that I discussed yesterday. OK, now I am committed to going somewhere. I have five one-day passes to ride anywhere in Japan, and these tickets expire on January 20th. I’ll use two going and coming back from Kyoto. I will probably use another one for Hiroshima to finally visit Miyajima. I dunno yet on the final two. As stated yesterday, the cost was 115,000Y, or about $100. That’s five tickets to pretty much anywhere for $20 a piece. That’s better than Greyhound back home, and a whole lot more comfortable. After buying my tickets, we went across the road to Bic Camera, the gargantuan electronics store I have talked about in the past. We had some more shopping to do.
PSP VS DS Round III
Let me start off by mentioning that Marc bought himself a PSP (PlayStation Portable) game last night. He’s talked about it for weeks, and now he finally did it. Good for him, I’d hate to see him waste every penny he makes on bars; at least this way he’ll have something to do in the daytime once in a while. On the bad side, I had to hear all morning about how great the machine is and what all it does that mine doesn’t do. I know all that already. I already have an MP3 player, can watch videos on my PC, and have wireless access though my Palm Pilot. I don’t need those features on a video game system. I just want something portable and reliable to play simple games on while I wait for the train or something. I have my other gadgets for the complicated stuff.
That being said, on the way home we stopped at the big electronics store and each bought a game. He bought The Powerstone Collection for his system. I have no idea what it’s about, but it’s a pretty simple action game that he already knows how to play. I have to be a little more cautious with my games, since Nintendo games typically involve a lot of reading and there is no multilingual- they are either made in Japanese or English. Guess which language all the games here are in? It ain’t English! With that in mind, my selection of games here is actually pretty small. They have some great-looking stuff that I know I could never play because of the language barrier.
I ended up buying a game that had a bunch of board games on it. It’s got Mahjongg, Go, Connect 5, Blackjack, Shogi, Othello, and a few games that I don’t recognize. The games that I already know are easy enough to play, and I think I’ll eventually work out some of the card games that I don’t know. It was a pretty safe choice, and it’s got a lot of variety in it. I like the game of Go, and they have three other games of “Go” there that all look great. Unfortunately, they also show a lot of reading in the pictures. I’d love a good Go game with lessons…in English, but these, nah.
Tomorrow
I had planned on going to the library tomorrow, to do my usual Saturday routine. However, I mentioned the Miyajima trip to Marc and he wants to see that too. I may have volunteered to go tomorrow. If we do go, that’ll be an all-day thing. At the last I heard on the subject, he was questioning the weather tomorrow, so that sounds like he might be building up to not wanting to go after all. Either way works out OK for me. I don’t want to miss out on Saturday chat, but going to Miyajima really does get priority. Besides, the pictures would be worth it!
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