Brian’s Japan Adventure

Today was the last day of class. After an hour or so of review, we had a graduation ceremony for the students.

The first photo is of Catherine, the other teacher involved. She handled most of the planning for the whole trip, as well as the majority of the classroom teaching. She’s great at this, and really got the students excited about pronunciation. Yes, really!

The students got a really nice certificate, and a small gift (a thesaurus and a notebook). They were thrilled:

Here’s one of Catherine with all the students. I’m the one behind the camera

And here are a few of me, just because I like looking at photos of me..

Afterwards, we went to the Outlet Mall in Jeffersonville. They wanted one last chance to shop, and they were able to shop till they literally dropped that day, since it was another scorcher at 96 degrees. Here is one student’s encounter with the local wildlife:

And another thing that involves our trip to the Air Force museum… I thought it was interesting to note what the students did and did not know. As I just said in the earlier post, they knew ALL ABOUT the nuclear bombs, but when we passed the Pearl Harbor exhibit, they didn’t look twice. Most of them knew nothing about it.

When we entered the “Cold War” section of the museum concerning the “conflict” between the US and USSR, they knew nothing about that. One of the American students with us is a Political Science major, and he did an excellent job of explaining it. I don’t they understood it even then. They had never heard of Capitalism or Communism. Maybe it’s just a matter of them having different terms for these ideas in Japan, but I don’t think so. It’s like they had never even heard the ideas before.

Another time, on another day, someone mentioned the Iraq War, and they knew nothing about that either. I guess I can understand that, since Japan isn’t really involved in Iraq very much, but not know about Pearl Harbor or Communism (with China right next door)?

Granted, these are mostly engineering and medical students, but it sounds like they have a fairly low knowledge of history. I’ll leave it to you to speculate on why that might be the case.

It’s amazing how easy it is to let blog postings get behind when you’re busy!

OK, Tuesday was once again my turn to teach in the classroom. We worked on pronunciation for the letters “R” and “L,” two sounds that are notoriously difficult for Asians.

We started off with a “Word Chain Game.” I showed a card to the student at one end of the table, and she whispers the sentence to the person nect to her, and on down the line until they all have a chance to say the sentence. The card with the starting sentence was simple enough “All roads lead to Rome,”  with only a couple of R’s and L’s. When the chain was finished, the sentence had about ten words, and made no sense at all. When I wrote the correct phrase on the board they all had a good laugh. Not even slightly close.

We then went around the room reading “Every week the garbage leaks,” a poem I snagged from Dave’s ESL Cafe. They had fun with that, but they tried to pronounce the words carefully. I then handed out a pretty long list of “minimal pair” words using R and L, such as Light/Right, Laser/Razor, and so on.  After I read them all to the students, we then went around the room, with each student pronouncing the words. Finally, we had a little fun playing “R and L Bingo.” I supplied a blank Bingo card, and they randomly filled in words from the list we used earlier. I then randomly read words from the sheet, usually needing to pronounce the word a couple of times for them to catch the difference. If they had the word on their bingo card, they would cross it off. I gave out a couple of little prizes, and they really liked it.

Toward the end of class, I handed out blank sheets and had them write questions for me on it. Anything: personal about me, about the university, Ohio, USA< or whatever. Then they fold over the sheets and hand them to me, which I then shuffle and read through. We did this last time too, and since they knew how it would work, the questions just keep getting better.  The most interesting (to me) question this time was “What is your blood type?”  Apparently, this is a big deal in Japan, and they try to separate people on their blood types, much like we do with horoscope/zodiac signs. People with type “A” are one personality, “B” is another, and so forth.  Fun stuff!

After lunch we went to the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Museum, which is now names the National Museum of the United States Air Force. They were very interestingall of this, especially since some of them are engineering students.  Even the ones who were not interesting in the planes payed close attention in this area. This is Boxcar, the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki.

Here is a replica of the “Little Boy” bomb. There was also one of “Fat Man” but I couldn’t get close enough for a good photo.

Later in the day, we walked through the more modern displays, including these:

And

Notice a pattern here?

Surprisingly, the room with THESE didn’t much attention:

Yes, these are actual nuclear ICBM’s that have been put on display.

My own favorite section was the stuff about the space program. Since this is not a NASA museum, but rather USAF, there really isn’t much. But they did have the original Apollo 15 re-entry vehicle:

And one the way out, we all stopped for some fun with our cameras:

Don’t ask about the sunglases; it’s some kind of “Japanese Thing” right up there with the “V” thing they do with their fingers. No one can explain it.

Wow! Things had been going so well until today. Oh well, if this is as bad as it gets, everyone will still leave happy.

The original plan was simple enough; after English class we would go to the Dayton Art Institute for a few hours and then go see the local baseball team, the Dayton Dragons, play this evening. It didn’t quite work out that way.

We found out this morning that the Art museum is closed on Monday. Fortunately, we learned it before driving all the way there, but it was still pretty late to think of alternatives. We gave them a choice of what to do until the ballgame.  Some chose to go back to their apartment and sleep (they had been up till SEVEN IN THE MORNING playing cards), some chose to go to the local Barnes & Noble bookstore, and others wanted to go back to the mall.  My group went to the mall. While we were shopping, it started raining. Then it started pouring. I learned a new Japanese word today. Za-Za, or  “heavy downpour.”  It’s now nine-thirty in the evening and it’s still za-za’ing outside.

After the unexpected shopping trip, we all gathered together to eat at Chipotles, a place a few of the students had requested. That went well, and everyone left very full.  Here they are literally stuffing their faces:

While we were eating, we called ahead to check whether or not the baseball game had been canceled. They told us it had been delayed an hour. To kill na hour, we went to the local Dollar Tree store (where everything costs $1) and they went berzerk in there.  If they have exchange students next year, the dollar store should be on the list for the very first day.
After another call to the stadium, and another hour delay, we went to Wal-Mart. They liked it and bought a few things, but seemed “shopped out” for the day. Finally we called one more time and thy said the game might start at nine. At that point, enough was enough, and we said just forget it and took them back to their apartments.  They were planning on having a little birthday party for two of the girls tonight, and they were perfectly happy to go home and prepare for that.

Overall not much went as planned today, but no one got upset. Tomorrow we’re doing another indoor activity, and maybe go to the ballgame afterward (we have the tickets from tonight after all). It’ll be a VERY long day for me, since I’m classroom teaching tomorrow too. Let me be blunt; I am NOT a baseball fan. I’m somewhat hoping for rain tomorrow night too

Today was about as easy for me as it’s going to get.

I arrived after the English class and lunch and took the students to the nearby shopping mall. They were buying whatever they needed for their weekend homestays. Each student is going to spend the weekend with some volunteer and stay in their homes and go places and do things with that volunteer. Some are people who have been to Japan in the past, and most of them are faculty or people related to faculty, so they are familiar with the program. The bottom line is that all the homestay volunteers were a good match for the individual student that they were assigned. It’s a Japanese tradition that they must buy a gift for their hosts, so it was an absolute necessity that we go shopping before they left.

After the mall, the students returned to their apartment to pack up whatever they would need for the weekend, and at 6pm, everyone got to meet their homestay people for the first time. In most cases, the students had not previously met the person they would be staying with, so they had to be a little nervous. It all seemed to go very smoothly, and I really think they’ll all be happy with their matches.  Day Ten and Eleven will happen with their host families, so I won’t be reporting on those.

So what about me? I get the weekend off…sorta.  I still have to clean up and finish my Master’s paper this weekend, as well as prepare my classroom lesson for next Tuesday. It’s nothing especially difficult, but I find that I’m procrastinating more than I should.  I still have some shopping to do for my own upcoming trip, and need to fit in some family time as well before things get too much crazier. From Monday till early Friday, I’ll be doing the Japanese students again just like last week, so it really cuts down on my preparation time.