February 1st, 2008
A Good Friday
Got up this morning and had plenty of time to kill before leaving for class. I think that may be the biggest annoyance about my Fridays; it’s only one little 50-minute class, but I have to leave the house at noon and don’t get home until five. That’s five solid hours of trains, walking, and waiting, with a little bitty bit of teaching in the middle. And Marc does the same exact thing an hour earlier, so that’s really ten hours spent on two 50-minute classes. I guess The Company figures we’re getting paid either way, so they may as well make use of us.
Anyway, I went up the hill to the accounting office this morning and picked up my pay for January and then paid the apartment rent while I was up there. I then crossed over to the International Office and fiddled with the computer for a little while. I printed out all the copies I would need of the final exam for Monday’s class. I will wait until Sunday night or maybe even Monday morning to work out the spoken part of the test; it’s won’t be long. I’ll just read them a brief passage from the book and ask them a few simple comprehension questions about it. I remembered to take the exam on my USB drive, but for some reason, yesterday’s blog completely slipped my mind, so I didn’t update the blog today. You’ll get a double-dose on Saturday!
Disposable or Reusable? That Is The Question.
But I didn’t have that much time, so I didn’t get much “Internetting” done. I walked down the hill, back to the apartment, traded my USB drive for my briefcase, and headed out the door. I have a little hard clear-plastic briefcase that I paid 230Y for at Happy Town way back in the fall. It’s one of the best investments I’ve made here. I can carry all my lessons for one day, along with a book, notebook, my slippers, and a folding umbrella right there in that little plastic case. Office supplies here are mostly the same as at home, but things seem to be much more geared toward longer life, and less “disposability.” For example, at home we use paper “portfolios” and “binders” that are cheap and easily trashed. Here, they use plastic boxes that are about an inch thick. You put all your papers in the box, and maybe even a textbook, and carry them all together. If you have lots of loose sheets, the American way seems better, but for a thin textbook and under a dozen or so loose sheets, the Japanese system is better. I have a stack of these little plastic boxes, one for each of my classes.
Roger, I Copy That
Anyway, I grabbed my briefcase and bike and rode to the station. I stopped by a little stationary store across from the train station and had my lessons copied. I figured it was easier to pay for the copies than ask the teacher who speaks no English to do it. Actually, this turned out to be a very lucky decision, but I’ll get to that in a minute. The old lady at the stationery story spoke not a hint of English, and didn’t seem to understand me when I used the Japanese word for “copy,” otherwise said “KO-PEE” (yes really). I eventually led her over to the copy machine and she caught on. The longer I am here, the better my pantomime skills get. Maybe when I get home, I should become a mime. Or maybe not.
I took the train and arrived at the school about fifteen minutes before class was to start. The previous class ended at 2:20 and I passed Marc in the hall. He told me there was no teacher today. He said he thinks there was a fight between students earlier today, and she was stuck meeting with the parents. I don’t know if this is true or not, but why that would take up two entire class periods, or maybe more, is a mystery. Nevertheless, she really wasn’t there, so I was on my own today. It was a good thing I brought enough papers rather than relying on her to copy them!
So at 2:30 the bell rings and I walk into the room. Everyone sits down and looks at me expectantly. They are never this quiet when the real teacher is in the room, so I wonder what kind of horrors they have planned for me. I unpacked my papers and wrote the words “Game Day” on the chalkboard. Cheers and clapping ensued. That was a good start.
I used a little “grid” exercise that S-Sensei gave me last Tuesday. It’s a 5×5 square grid with one box labeled “START.” I then tell the students to “go up one square and draw a house,” then, “go right one square and draw a tree,” and so on. It’s for learning directions and just fun for listening. It worked well, and some of the more artistic kids made some very frightening animals. But they all did it, and they all paid attention throughout the game. I think they were afraid I would suddenly get complex and lose them like last week. But no, it went smoothly. This activity took about 25 minutes, which was just about what I had guessed.
No Hangings, No Prizes, No Vanna
Next, we played “guess the word.” I put underlined spots on the board and they had to guess the word by calling out letters of the alphabet. Think of it as “Wheel of Fortune” without the wheel or the fortune. OK, maybe like Hangman without the noose and stuff. One team would guess a letter. If they were right, I would fill in the letter in the appropriate blank and that team could try again. If they got a letter wrong, the other team took a try. It then went back and forth until someone guessed the word, then their team got a point for the word. I have found that all these kids love team games and competition. They won’t answer a question on their own, but they’ll do it for the team without hesitation. Anyway, they really enjoyed the game, and they had just enough trouble with the words that I think they actually did learn a few words.
Then the time was up, and I walked back to the station. I never did see the regular teacher; not in the classroom or in the teacher’s lounge. It occurs to me that whenever I am in the room alone with students, be it today, or previously in Takahashi, or Wednesdays in Hiroshima, that I seem to do quite well. It’s only in the classes where there is a “regular” Japanese teacher in the room that things seem to go less than perfectly. I wonder why that is? At first I thought it was me; that I was nervous while being “supervised.” But then again, after more thought, I think it may not be me; it may be the students themselves are more comfortable and free to talk when they are “unsupervised.” They know they have nothing to fear from me; I am not actually giving them a test or grading them at all for my stuff. Their own teachers though… have real power over them.
Is China Out To Get Us?
So, reaching Hokaiin, I stopped in at the Carryout and ordered my usual. The old lady who cooks there knows what I like now, and I don’t even have to point to the menu anymore. I ate it in front of the TV, watching the news. The top nes yesterday and today is a story about poisoned dumplings sold in Japan that came from China. What is it about China wanting to poison everyone? It also must be a slow news day for this to be the top story on every station for two days in a row, or so I thought while sitting there eating little dumplings that look just like the ones on TV. The thing about the Honke Kamodoya Carryout though is that you can see them making the food, so I know it didn’t come from China. Also, the little old lady who runs the place knows that I’ve been coming in two or three times a week lately, so she seems to give me good fresh stuff.
And that’s about it for tonight. It’s nearly 7:00. Tomorrow will be library day. I emailed my Mom, needing her to look up something on my desk. I hope I get n answer by morning. I called of course, but, well, you know: it’s off the hook again. I haven’t quite decided what I want to work on tonight. Maybe I’ll just “goof off” for a bit.
I seem to be in really good shape for next week’s classes. Monday’s exam is pretty well in the bag, and it’ll only take an hour to give the exam, and not much more to grade it. Tuesday’s classes will use the same materials and format as today, but modified with slightly harder words for the older kids. Wednesday is all set except for the evening class; I need to find some kind of “themed vocabulary” for them. I found some good news articles for the afternoon class, and have a few things leftover from this past week anyway. Next Friday, I don’t have any classes; I don’t know the reason, but they don’t want us to come next Friday. They’re probably having teacher meetings or something. That means that after I finish at Hiroshima next week I’ll have Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off; five days in a row. Maybe I need to look into some kind of new adventure. I have no idea where or doing what, but I’ll certainly have the time for something relatively big.
I seem to have more and more classroom material building up here. As the weeks start counting down to the end, class preparations are going to get easier and easier since I have so much stuff sitting here unused. According to the calendar, I see that as of yesterday, I have only six weeks left. Things just now seem to be starting to fall into place here. Isn’t that just about the way it always works?
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