December 2004
Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2004 — Elementary school
Back at the elementary school, three classes of fourth-graders. The teachers had told me the fourth-graders were the sweetest of the lot, and they were SO TRUE. They were wonderfully attentive and well-behaved during class. But the teacher of the class I taught fifth period was really nervous about singing, “Merry Christmas.” He was just nervous, period, about the English class. I heard he practiced at home a lot singing that song. Poor guy.
I ate lunch with a fourth-grade class. No autograph requests this time but I did get complimented on my rice-scooping abilities. I spent most of the meal talking with the foreign kid, an Egyptian girl who kept up a steady stream of Japanese. I don’t know if she knew any English, although her friends kept encouraging her to speak English, because she only spoke Japanese with me. Maybe because she’s foreign, she totally caught on to what I needed when she was speaking to me, which was to speak slowly and use lots of gestures. Her friend, a Japanese girl, tried some Japanese riddles on me. I was pretty useless. I was thinking to myself, “Missy, I can barely understand coherent Japanese, let alone language that’s MEANT to be tricky.”
There was a boy nearby who kept asking me how to say Japanese things in English. The conversation started off kind of rocky:
Boy: (In Japanese) Teacher, how do you say “kirin” in English?
Me: What’s “kirin”?
Boy’s friend: No, he’s asking what it is IN ENGLISH.
Me: I UNDERSTAND what he’s asking, but I don’t KNOW what “kirin” is … ! Is it an animal?
Boy’s friend: No, what is it IN ENGLISH?
Me: I GET THAT, but I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS.
Boy: Teeeeeacher, what’s “kirin” in English?
Me: …
Me: Do you mean Kirin BEER? Are you talking about the beer? (Kirin is a beer brand name.)
Boy: …
Egyptian girl: A “kirin” is a … <gestures to her neck>
Me: Ooooooooh. A GIRAFFE. “Kirin” is “giraffe” in English.
Friday, Dec. 3, 2004 — Enjoyable enkai
The English teachers at Kamona invited to their end-of-semester enkai. Rather than have a formal banquet, which is reserved for the school-staff enkai, we went out to eat at a restaurant. I was leery about going — the last one, in April, was sooooo excrutiating — but I hoped that my limited but improved Japanese would come to my aid.
When I first came to Japan, the Kamona English teachers took me out to eat at a tempura restaurant. Dish after dish of fried food. This time we went to a restaurant that served different food: fried meat and vegetables on a STICK. But I didn’t come for the food, so it was okay. I strategically placed myself between the female teachers, whose English is better than the two male teachers (although the male teachers, admittedly, are kind-hearted). Last time I really had no one to talk to but this time, I guess because even the newer teachers knew me, so I was able to have nice chats with them in English! Occasionally the male teachers would ask me something and throw in some Japanese. I was able to follow some of it, impressing the female teachers. That was a good feeling.
At this restaurant you eat at the bar and the chef prepares your food in front of you. Throughout the meal, though, any hint of classiness was obliterated by the dancing Christmas tree displayed prominently up front that sang Christmas carols loudly and shook violently. I kept looking in askance at it.
Dinner came to an end, and we all got up to pay. The bill called for about $50 per person. I handed over my money but a few moments later it got handed back to me. The male Japanese teachers were saying something that surprised the female teachers, some of whom also got their money handed back. One of the female teachers who’d gotten her money back said, “Just take it, don’t ask questions.” I really had no idea what was going on but the male teachers seemed pretty firm on not taking our money. I guess the Japanese way worked out for me in this case.
We went to a cocktail bar afterward. There was more talk in Japanese. I started to drift off, laden with the food and the non-English. It really helped that Miyata-sensei was there; she’s the person I’m closest to at this school and she’s such a nice, kind person who watches out for me. She’s the one — or at least, her six-year-old daughter is — who started calling me “Vivi-chan.”
As we left the cocktail bar (again, I was mysteriously barred from paying — the best enkai EVER!) we started making our way to way our bikes or cars were the taxis were parked. That’s when I heard someone calling my name. I looked over, and there was a teacher from my OTHER school. STANDING BEHIND A GROUP OF ALL THE OTHER TEACHERS AT THAT SCHOOL. I think they were having their school banquet WITHOUT me! They hadn’t even TOLD me about it or invited me! Sure, I would have turned them down — I’d already committed to going out with my English teachers at Kamona — but I was … OFFENDED … that they hadn’t said a word to me! I’m pretty sure the male teacher who’d called my name was somewhat tipsy, as he was smiling wider than I’d ever seen him smile. Another male teacher had been standing behind him, looking suspiciously sheepish and guilty.
Wow. DISSED.
At least I saved the $80 I surely would have paid for awkward company and yucky banquet food.
Saturday, Dec. 4, 2004 — Shinmachi English Day
Remember last year, how I first got to work with elementary school kids when I went to the English Day at Shinmachi Elementary School? I volunteered to go back again this year. Their English remains superb. And it rained again, this time all day, just like last year.
Sunday, Dec. 5, 2004 — Orphanage visit
The ALTs of Tokushima-ken organized a couple of visits to orphanages in December. I volunteered to go to one today, Tokushima Jido Home. We played games with the kids, who ranged from age 3 to high school, and handed out presents. I was enlisted to be an elf. We hadn’t counted on the difficulty of easily telling the kids’ relative ages. But age turned out to be easy to tell. What was REALLY difficult was telling telling their SEX. Japanese boys and girls just have this androgynous appearance going for them, from their features to their haircuts to their clothes!
This was my muttering to my fellow elves as I tried to grab the presents for the right age and sex: “A boy? A boy? Is it a boy? A girl? A boy?” This is a bit nerve-wracking when you have children approaching Santa every few seconds looking hopeful or, in more than one case, buried in the arms of an orphanage staffer.
The orphanage staff finally caught on to our problem and delicately informed us of the children’s sex in English so as not to offend the involved party, since the kids’ didn’t know that much English.
Monday, Dec. 6, 2004 — Making me proud
I went downtown to get a bus ticket to the airport this evening and ran into a friend, Sarah. As we chatted just outside Tokushima Station, I heard my name called. It was a trio of my third-year students from Kokufu Junior High School, led by Seika, one of the most outgoing girls in the grade. They were immediately intrigued by Sarah, who’s from Wales and whose hair is currently a shocking platinum blond. Seika came up and introduced herself and then asked, in her grammatically correct but completely clear English, what we were doing. She told Sarah she was cute.
I was really proud of her. Japanese girls often suffer from this severe case of shyness where they can’t even bring themselves to speak audibly or look you in the eye. This has never been a problem for Seika or for her two friends, although they stayed in the background in this instance. Sarah was really impressed with my students. It didn’t matter that Seika’s English was mangled; it mattered that she had the enthusiasm and determination to approach us and chat for a while.
Friday, Dec. 10, 2004 — Special needs Christmas party
The special needs class at Kokufu took me along for their Christmas party, which turned out to be an event in which nine other special-needs classes from other junior highs gathered, too. We met at a community center on the other side of town. This entailed meeting the Kokufu class at 7 a.m. at the bus stop. Painful.
Ogasawara-sensei had informed me I had to perform, too, but by myself. “Can you sing?” she asked. I was like, “Uh … no. Is there a piano? I can play piano …” There was, thank God, a piano. I just played Posca’s “By the Sea” because I thought it translated well — there aren’t any words, just the sound of waves crashing. A teacher later told me it totally sounded “like the sea.” Cool.
That night I went and had me some Mexican food with Sally and Satoshi, before we were joined by Chris and Rowan.
Saturday, Dec. 11, 2004 — And then there was light
HALLEJUJAH! After WEEKS of slaving over another Web site I’ve been working on, I’ve FINALLY posted it! Earlier this year I applied to be the webmaster of the AJET Web site. AJET is the national association for JETs, which means its membership is in the thousands. I didn’t get the post and, well, it’s probably for the best. The outgoing webmaster asked me a bunch of questions about stuff I didn’t know and it was pretty obvious I wasn’t qualified. It probably didn’t help that when he asked me what I’d change about the current Web site, I very directly said it was too cluttered and that I’d strip it down to its bare essentials to make it easier on viewers.
Anyways, a friend of mine, Ellie, got the post of editor for one of AJET’s biggest publications, Team Taught Pizza, a several-hundred-page spiral-bound book of lesson activities in English and Japanese. The games submitted and assembled by JETs. She needed a webmaster and found one in me.
I could have gone the easy route and just done it the site in tables — it certainly would have been easier and quicker — but I was ready to learn some new web design tricks. So I set about trying to get a rudimentary grasp of CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, an element of Web design that can make style-related changes infinitely easier and quicker. So it was worth it in the long run, even if it was agonizing in the short run. It was such a neat experience. I’d make a change and see immediate results, usually followed by a reverential whisper of, “It’s beaaaauuutiful … !” Errors, which occurred more often, were typically followed by cursing.
Code doesn’t come easily to me, so this meant spending a couple weeks’ worth of evenings devoted to scouting the Web for CSS-related info and playing around with things. I have to give a shout out to my friend Jacob, who visited me earlier this year, for his help.
In addition to figuring out the layout, I was contacting the Team Taught Pizza members for profile information, the former TT webmaster for background information and the business manager for sale info. It took quite a while to collect all the necessary data. I also needed to get in touch with the site host to alter some e-mail addresses. But, finally, everything was in place and tonight I was finally able to “go live” with site. I was so excited when it was posted, I was like, “I HAVE TO TELL SOMEONE!” so I e-mailed Ellie, who was at the JET Christmas party (which I’d chosen to skip again this year).
The bar Ellie was at happened to have Internet access, so she took a look and then left the site up for other JETs to see. And it was good.
So now, for your viewing pleasure, I present Team Taught Pizza: www.ttp.ajet.net
Sunday, Dec. 12, 2004 — Christmas with pre-schoolers
Last year, I worked an English Christmas party for pre-schoolers. This year, the same. It was neat to think I’d seen some of these little kids a couple times over the course of the year. Some are regulars so they know my name and I know theirs. The unsmiling twosome even came, and what’s more — they smiled! I even heard them LAUGHING! My, how my little ones have grown.
Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2004 — Just you try, kiddo
In the third-year classes, they’re learning about the use of “who,” such as, “Rachel Carson is the woman who wrote ‘Silent Spring.’” That’s almost verbatim from the book. The passage in which they learn the use of “who” discusses “Silent Spring.”
As an exercise, we made the kids write hints about people using the grammar point. I went around the room making sure their sentences were in order. One kids had hints about a “man who was short” and a “man who is a like a boy” and something about “Lord of the Rings.” It wasn’t hard to jump to the conclusion he was talking about Elijah Wood.
“SuGE! SUUUUGE!” he kept yelling, shocked that I’d guessed. I started laughing. A little while later, he approached me with three more hints about someone else, something about a middle-aged man in “Rush Hour,” which of course had to be Jackie Chan. Yūto was kinda freaking out, which made it even funnier. He was really impressed! I love to impress people, hahahaha. He said next time, he’d stump me. Poor kid doesn’t know movies are my OBSESSION. Plus, his clues were really easy. I didn’t have the heart to tell him.
Wednesday, Dec. 15,2 004 — Reading comprehension can be FUN
Miyata-sensei returned to school today after a two-day comp-time for working the weekend. The second-years had gone on a school trip to Okinawa. There was some lucky JETs who get to accompany their schools on such things as that, but I am not one of them.
Miyata-sensei and I had briefly discussed the lesson for today but I’d misunderstood and prepared for the wrong thing. This was bad. We had a longish passage about “Silent Night” and nothing to do with it with the four classes we had scheduled today. So we quickly hatched an idea to turn the reading comprehension questions into a team competition. I wrote down a list of 12 questions and prepared a blank answer sheet for each time. During class, we spent the first third going over the passage. Miyata-sensei had prepared a handout explaining some of the phrases in the story.
Then we broke the kids up into six teams. I told them I’d ask them questions, and they’d have to write down their answers and rush the answer sheet to Miyata-sensei. Points depended how quickly they turned their sheet in; first place got six points, second place got five points and so on. As an added bonus (because you know I love those bonuses), I said answers written in complete sentences would merit two extra points, no matter what place.
It turned out to be a fabulous idea. The kids really got into the game, even the ones I’d feared would just sit there, thinking it too hard. It really helped that you got points as long as you turned in a correct answer. The fact that you got more points for complete sentences aided the more advanced teams but at the same time, those answers took them longer to write, making it a fair playing field for the less-apt students. These kids were practically trampling each other trying to turn their answers in.
Thursday, Dec. 16, 2004 — I want money
I had one class withHashimoto-sensei’s class today. We did an interview test. I asked everyone three questions, including, “What do you want for Christmas?” I was a bit aghast to find two-thirds cheerfully answered, “I want money.” And they meant it, too. This was no joke. A little off-putting.
Saturday, Dec. 18, 2004 — As they say
As Janet Jackson says at the end of “Son of a Gun”: I’m gone. Check back in January. Until then, I hope your holidays are happy. E-mail me some Christmas greetings — I’ve only gotten, <sniff><sniff> ONE Christmas card … ;-)