My hours got scaled back

I'm not sure that getting my hours scaled back is a good thing or a bad thing. I mean after my classes on Tuesday, I'm worried that I might be too "American" or too crazy for them in the classroom. I was told by the Headmaster of Staff that I can come to school later and leave early if I have nothing to do. They only ask that I stay around to help with the English club. I guess I won't be doing Tennis coaching full time, but maybe when the weather gets better I'll help more with that. I'm happy at least that the membership of the English club got bigger on Tuesday. Hopefully it will keep up.

Classes were incredibly loud today. I don't really know why, but they just chat, chat, and chat. I mean I'm not leading the class, so I really don't have the authority to yell, "shut up" but I'm still getting annoyed by it. I think so is my partner CP. I met some of the kids for the first time today because two weeks ago I left school early to work on getting my certificate of eligibility. So it was interesting how they received me as a part of their class. The last class of the day, was a class that I walked in on Tuesday with my boss's homeroom class. They are little 7th graders, and man are they loud. They kept on yelling my name and not paying attention to the activity. I'm sure that was a little distracting for my English partner CP. But then we realized that I wasn't introduced formally to the class. So next week I will have to do a question and answer session with them. Even though they are in the 7th grade, they can speak English well for their grade. At least in my opinion. I got the opportunity to leave early, and many teachers told me that, so I took it. I left later than they expected but still early by their standards. I stayed around to talk to some of the other teachers. They invited me to go on the school trip with them.

They decided that going to Disney Sea was better for me, but I told them that I would be going with my host family, so I called later and requested to go to Universal Studios Osaka instead. My friend told me that it sucks ass, but I think, I should still go since I don't really want to go to Disney Sea twice in the same week. And it's always good to experience new things. Universal Studios still sounds better than going to Brittish Hills, or the other options. Although I probably should go to Brittish Hills since I'm an English teacher. They might want me to do that. But we'll see what happens when I get to class on Monday. I know I told them very late for everything. I came home early to pay for my rent. Since it's due the last day of the month for the next month. They gave me a donut to eat since they know I love donuts. It was good... I miss donuts. Anyways, that was the day

NO Class and Nothing to really do

Today I spent staying at home. I've been doing that a lot lately. I'm not sure if there is a definate reason why. But I really feel homey here. I like to sit in front of the computer all day and research. It's been practically the only thing I've been doing lately. But I'm afraid that I'm withdrawing myself socially. I haven't hung out with my friends on my days off, when I probably should be. I say that I'm trying to save money, since I really don't have any right now. But I'm not that when I get my paycheck whether I'll be going out more or not. I think once I start to get the means to do it, I will. I mean it would be pointless to come over to Japan and have a wasteful life. That's not my style anyways.

My First Day of Teaching

Tuesdays are always my busiest days because I go to 5 classes and then have English club afterwards, but today was even more busy. One of of my English Teacher partners, CP was going to leave early to have a doctors appointment. She told me about this before so I would have to cover for her two classes that she's missing. I looked at my schedule for her and noticed that there are three classes that she would be missing, so I asked another Japanese English Teacher about it, but she didn't know that CP was leaving. It was kind of important because I was going to be filling in the Japanese English Teachers class CT, that's why I asked her.
So she talked to the Scheduling person, and the scheduling person didn't know, she thought we were talking about the other English Teacher, Erin S. Because she wasn't going to come in the whole day at all. So as the drama is unfolding, both of my English Teaching partners will be gone for the day. I have to cover for both of them, which was mainly possible except for one class. But I didn't have the lesson plans for Erin S's classes. So I had to learn it in 20 minutes before I went to go teach it.

First Period I have off, and then Second Period I was with CP and Eriko S. talking about foreign currencies. Third period was my true first class of teaching at a school.

The topic of the day was a demonstration speech since that's what the 10th graders are working on. They have to give one next week, so what I decided to do was to demonstrate how to do a demonstration speech. I used tying a tie as the topic. First we went over answers from the previous week's homework and the class went along with it pretty well. Then I got there attention by taking off my tie. I'm sure the girls loved that, so they were paying close attention as I demonstrated in six steps how to tie a neck tie. I needed to have six steps because that's what the assignment is. I think the class went pretty well since everyone was working on the assignment and doing what they needed to do. The Japanese English Teacher in the class, my assistant YWbe, said I did a good job. But the class is good, so everything went alright.

Fourth period I had to teach CP's class which was 7th Grade. My Japanese English Partner was CTshi, and she's really a good help. I had more fun in this class because it was unexpected. It was the first time they had ever met me and I was going over the topic of calendars and numbers. We went through that pretty quickly, but the class really understood what I was talking about, so that was really good. I think I really related to this class pretty well, but I did need to have a lot of things translated since their English level is quite low. And it's one of the better classes. This is the first year they will be exposed to English. I talked with CTshi after class and she asked if I have ever taught before because she was impressed with how I conducted the class. He only criticism of the class was my handwriting. Particularly my "r" because most of them learn to have the part at the top stick out, but I wrote things fast and they couldn't read it. But she said I did a good job, so I was happy about that.

The next challenge was the toughest class in the entire school. My Japanese English Teacher partner was MAda, and she isn't the nicest person in the world, could be the reason why she's teaching the toughest class. This is my usual class, so these 10th graders usually see me. The topic again was demonstration speech, I did the same thing as I did before, but the class is rowdy. And MAda always has to yell in Japanese to quiet them down. But that's usual and has nothing to do with me teaching the class. I think it's quite rude because they call her by her first name instead of last name and Sensei. That's how bad this class is. They are the most unmotivated people I've met, but I'll have to learn how to deal with it, since soon it will be my class to teach. I had them quiet for about 3 minutes as I was showing them how to tie a necktie. I think that was pretty amazing, I've never seen that class so quiet before, and everyone was watching and paying attention.

Finally came sixth period. This is originally CP's class, and the Japanese English Teacher is my boss AOwa. It's a 12th grade class, but their level is lower than most of the other grades in ability. So CP told me that we had to go over some dialogue by playing the tape a lot, but that's not my style. So I had people in the far right and far left rows read the dialogue parts. It was great because the dialogue had a guy's role and a girl's role. But I teach at an all girls school, so who would speak the guys part. We would do paper, rock, Scissors and take votes so everyone would be involved and not get bored as they were reading.

We did the same for the second dialogue with the next two rows, so they would have practice speaking and listening at the same time. And it was repeated a few times so they could listen to it a lot. For the middle rows, I just read one part of the dialogue and they had to reply. That way we don't over do it. Then we had to start with them making their own dialogue since they will have to make a presentation next week about what they did. So I explained it as detailed as I possibly could. I noticed that spelling Japanese words wrong will get them to speak up to correct me. I really got along with this class, and it was a great way to end the day of teaching. The class had a lot of fun too I think it was because I was a new teacher and introducing a new style of learning. Everyone had fun, and most people believed that they saw me in California, but they didn't.

My boss was really really impressed, and that was the best part. She said the purpose of that class was to be fun and that was achieved. I really think she's not worried anymore if I could teach or not because the top two teachers in the English department Afterschool I had a lot more students come talk to me and speak English with me. All the teachers that sit around me are always listening in and kind of shocked that they do that.

My boss AOwa took me to her home room class so I could read the vocabulary words of the day to her class, and so they could see that I'm a new English teacher at the school since I don't teach their class. After that I was waiting around for English club to start, and CTshi brought some new students from AOwa's home room 7th grade class to join in the club. So today there were 8 people, which is very very high for club standards. So I was really stoked. All we did was play Hangman to practice vocabulary words since the 7th grade students don't speak much English. I had to use a lot of Japanese so they would understand what was going on. We played in teams, and then we mixed the teams up so they would be broken out of the cliques which was really good. I think we made some of the new people feel included and they were speaking English more.

It was a great day. After club, I went back to my office and my boss AOwa talked to me again. She was mentioning about my transportation fees being paid for. She has to take care of me better now, since on Saturday she got yelled at by her bosses that she didn't take care of CP because she didn't go to the Shabu Shabu because she got lost. It looks really bad when someone says they will go, but doesn't end up showing up. But I took this opportunity to ask her more information about teaching the teachers, and I didn't notice but it's mainly the teachers sitting around me. There will probably be around 20 teachers or so. Most of the teachers are around my age, which really is surprising. I'm not sure anymore if I'm the youngest teacher. I really believe that my boss puts more trust in me now, she's really really not worried about it anymore. And I can really do any format I want. I think she sees me as a person who will redeem her and her English department from what she saw in her class today. She's been talking to me a lot more and taking care of me better too. She told me to go home and get rest since it was late and I was only required to stay to 5pm, but it was already 6:30pm. I was soooo happy today, I think I really did a good job today and hit the expectations that they had for me. Since everything was last minute, I think that surprised them even more. So I'm looking forward to the next steps.

Just as usual

Class was just as usual. There really wasn't anything special that happened today. We moved some tables around because important people were going to the school that day. The 12th graders were taking exams so there were no bells. It was raining pretty hard today though. The classes were loud though, to the point where it was annoying. My English teacher partner was really getting irritated with it and actually raised her voice to the class.

Laundry Day

Usually on my day off, I don't do much and today all I did was laundry and talk on the internet with peoples. I got my electricity bill for the month, and then I did my laundry.

Sports Day Festival

Today was actually a very cool day. It was supposed to rain, in the morning, but it didn't rain all day. How fortunate for the students. I wished I had brought a camera, it really was amazing to see the difference in culture through the festivals that each culture has. I was pretty fortunate because the school had bought me a uniform that matched all the full-time staff, so I really did feel included.

They had about 33 different events lasting from 8am to 4pm, and then clean up. I felt sorry for some teachers because they were there at 5:30am to call everyone to tell them if we were going to have the festival or not. So those people had a really really really long day. The kids really put their hearts out into winning, you can really tell. Most of the people who won were from the Basketball team since they are ranked in the top ten in the Kanto area. But the fastest person at the school was on the volleyball team.

I participated in the teacher's relay. I had to wear big pants with another person and kick a ball to the other end and then run back. Some of the other teachers had to carry three boxes on two sticks, three legged race, and run in a UFO across the field. That's really the interesting one. Our team lost because one of the members forgot to pick up something on the way back and had to go get it and come back. We would have made second, but ended up at fourth place. It was fun though, since we make all the students do crazy things all day. A lot of the parents and families came out to watch too. So it was a really big deal.

Each grade had a dance performance that they have been working on since the semester started. They were all very impressive. The marching band was also very impressive. I could really see the cultural difference and to tell that it's a very "girls" school. But it's interesting how to play off of that. Some of the dance routines had flag tossing, and then a display of fans, and balloons, and balls. It really was great to see. All the members of the grade were part of the performance too so the level of difficulty was really really high that's also what was so impressive. How to coordinate about a hundred people to make it look cool. The school even bought everyone lunch too, which was nice. And after the clean up the school took all the teachers and staff to eat Shabu Shabu. I was lucky because I was sitting with my two bosses.

They are actually pretty good people and really nice, but then again, that's the Japanese way. I was a little worried about my English Department Chair. She wasn't worried about what I was going to do for my lesson plans for my Junior High School plans and also for the teachers. She always emphasized, do whatever you want. All in all it was a great day. I found out some news that shocked me, that two teachers were married. I NEVER see those two together and I think everyone was shocked that they just got married. I heard news like that happened before too with another teacher in the English department, and they thought it was weird because everytime that they were together, no one saw. So everythings always secret secret. It's really hard to tell what's really going on in the situation. That's the most interesting thing about Japan. You really never know what's going on.

Half Day to get ready for sports festival

It was nice because the school only had class in the morning, but today I only have two classes and they are in the morning so it really didn't affect me since I have to be at school at 8am and can't leave until 5pm anyways.

My boss also talked to me today. She assigned me something to do. She asked me to make lesson plans to teach English to the Junior High School, and to teach the Non-English Teachers at the school. I think that's a pretty big assignment, and I can do it in any format covering any topic that I want. I think that's a test to see if I'm a good enough teacher or not. It's a pretty big assignment because other teachers get to see what I'm capable of and I'm sure that all the Japanese English Teachers will be there to watch me do my thing. It seems like a lot of pressure and it has been since I've been racking my brain to come up with clever, inventive ideas to make it work faster and more efficient. I've got a good plan so far, but I believe I can make it better.
But today was busier than usual since we were all getting ready for the sports festival tomorrow. Our school is a little different because sports month is actually October, and there's a national holiday to celebrate it, but we are doing it early. I think today was the first day that I started to be incorporated into the school and the staff. They invited me to do some work like carrying stuff. Which wasn't that great, but still it's a start that they are trying to talk to me at least.

Most of the staff don't speak English, so it's a little difficult to communicate. I still don't let them know how much Japanese I know so they communicate in English. They are really trying hard. The setup didn't last too long for me since all the students do all the preparations. The teachers just took care of all the big stuff.

After school, one of my friends in Yokohama called me to hang out. So I did since it was free dinner at his place. He lives pretty close to my house too, which was kinda strange. Actually a lot of my friends live near me even though I'm far from the city. On the train, it was so weird, I was stuck on a weird portal that I just couldn't get on the right train to get to the right place. I don't know what happened, but I didn't end up getting there until an hour and a half later than I expected to be. I must have been confused or something. I took the right train to get to Yokohama Station, but then I got on the wrong platform, because I was used to using the one normally to get home. But that didn't even take me to the right place, and I ended up passing it. So I had to wait at Ofuna, but then I got on the wrong train again going the wrong way. But this time I didn't know why because I was on the right platform and everything. So I ended up at Kita-Kamakura. So I had to jump platforms to go the other way, but there were a million students there because of the Big Buddha Statue, and I'm sure they were on a school trip.

Finally I ended up at Higashi-Totsuka to meet up with my friend KHma.
He didn't show up until about 10 minutes later because he had to walk there. We walked to his house, and were talking a lot about Universities in Japan. Tokyo is ranked one, Keio ranked two, Waseda ranked three, and he mentioned 4th and 5th, but some how it escaped my mind. Most of the students at my school will most likely go to these schools. My friend KH said that people who go to these schools are very elite. It says a lot about my students, but then I see them everyday, and I don't see what's so elite about them.

Anyways, we got to his house, and we were welcomed by his family. Very nice people indeed. They offered me apple and potato pie. As weird as that sounds it was really delicious. I was lucky to get two slices. We were talking a lot about the San Diego - Yokohama Sister City Exchange that will be coming up. I was trying to give him as much information as I could, but I know that many things have changed since I left San Diego. I rely on the voices of my friends to see what's going on. I want them to actually gain something from the experience and then take it back here so We can do something to change the way Japanese look at foreigners and to develop an organization that will look to solve some of societies problems. I would love to help them out if they really want to get things started and it's more possible now that it's the perfect time to do it. I really hope that things turn out better than I think, but who knows. It's still a tough call. After dinner and the chat, his dad drove me to the station and I walked home for the evening to get ready for the sports day festival tomorrow.

National Holiday Autumnal Equinox Day

I didn't have work today which is nice. Usually when I don't have work, I don't do much which was the case today. I had a lot of breaks this week so that was extremely nice. I really don't do much so it's not a big deal if I get another day off.

Song of the Moment - Yellowcard - Only One

Nothing again...Music Video Watching

I don't have work on Wednesdays so I had time to do nothing today. I really don't like to not be productive, but I really couldn't think of anything else to do. I spent all of today watching music videos and thinking about vacuuming my apartment. I saw a bunch of old Green Day ones, and some Weird Al. Some of his songs are good. I'm really hooked on Yellowcard. I really do recommend them. They have quickly become one of my favorite bands. Their music is really powerful and touching. It's good stuff.

I was looking for the new Utada (Hikaru) music video for Easy Breezy. I've heard many bad things about it. I personally love her to death... but this song isn't her greatest. It isn't even close. Hopefully some of the other songs are better. I mean the tempo and beat are good, but some lines are put there and they shouldn't be. It could potentially be Superstardom suicide, kinda like what CoCo Lee did with her English Album. Both have similiar stories that they were both born in the U.S. and are huge in Asia, but when they release albums in the U.S. they move away from what made them famous to begin with and it's the end of their careers. We'll see what happens though. Utada has a little better fan base in the U.S. than CoCo does, so that might help her. But her music video is EXTREMELY hard to find. I only found websites that USED to carry it, but they expired the first week of the month. Now I can't find it anywhere. If you can find it, please let me know. But in the meanwhile, check out Yellowcard, on Yahoo's Launch. I really hate yahoo, but this will probably be the only time I would promote it. Since it carries music videos and hosts a few of my groups, but that's it. Otherwise yahoo is useless! I hate the spyware crap that they have in my computer and it won't let me delete it. Yahoo messenger isn't great either. I used to remember when it was all good and I used to like using it. But only 100 megabytes of e-mail... it's not comparing to my 1 gigabyte of space from google. MUhahahahaha!!

Song for the Moment - Yellowcard - Only One

Second week of school

I didn't sleep well last night. I'm not sure why, but I woke up before my alarm went off, and that's at 5:30am. I got ready in enough time and even was able to check all my e-mail accounts. I left my house when I wanted to and I was able to catch the bus, and the trains that I needed to get on to get to work. That's kinda rare to be honest with you. I got to school around 8:20am, but I couldn't get into the office because there was a teacher's meeting.

I was told that now I have to attend the teacher's meeting, even though it's all in Japanese, and my Japanese still hasn't improved. That's horrible. But now I have to leave even earlier to be able to attend that meeting even though I don't have a class first period. It's a little way too early now. So I just sat there trying to figure out the schedule for the day and for the week. We have 40 minute classes this week because of preparations for the Sports Day festival this Saturday. Today we also had 7 periods, when we usually have 6. The 7th period was dedicated to the dance practice for the festival.

Second Period was interesting. The class was too quiet, I mean way too quiet. I was introducing myself since it was the first time I was teaching the class since last week, I was just observing. They only asked one question, when is my birthday? Which is a new question, so that's good. But they weren't curious about anything else. I don't think that lacked the ability to ask, since it was the 9th grade class. Their English ability should be better. But last week it was a quiet class as well.

Third Period, I switched English Teaching partners and had a set of 10th grade classes. The activities of the day were just finish up the song from last week and directions and instructions. I thought the activity was well thought out, but maybe a little hard to manage with a lot of people. Some students work hard at it, while others joke around. So I make sure I work with the students that joke around. I make them read everything to me and give me the answers, so I can see if they can do it. But I help them if they have trouble, and at least the class won't be so loud. The same thing happened in all the other classes, so that was pretty easy.

Lunch time was when I distributed all the candy that I bought in Sapporo. Some really liked it and appreciated it, but I don't think that many others did. I didn't really matter, I'm just trying to give a peace offering so that the teachers would be more open to talk to me. Most are really shy because of their ability to speak English. But I always hear my name being called and something being said. Not sure if it's good or not, but I'm sure it's nothing bad....Yet. I've been put into some pretty bad situations so far, but I've managed not to cause too much damage to the structure of things. It's interesting to see the way that teachers interact with each other. You'd always have to be watchful of your back, but I think these teachers are really nice and actually welcoming, they aren't faking it. From the stories that I've heard from other people, I'm not too sure about anything about working in Japan.

I stayed afterschool because I'm required to stay until 5pm even if I have nothing to do. But I had English Conversation club, so I did have something to do. In English club, we just play the Game of LIFE. It's actually a pretty fun game. We finished and at the End I won... again. hahaahahaha. I'm such a bad teacher, I always beat the students. But I teach them along the way. It's kinda tricky how I always force them to speak English. They are naturally speaking in Japanese, but I wiggle some English in there. I taught them high numbers like million, billion and trillion. And they got it. I just hope it sticks till next week. If not, I'll have to do it again, but I would like to move on to harder things.After that, I went home. It was already around 7pm by the time I went back to my office and wrote in my daily class journal about each class. I arrived at Yokohama station and I was looking for a place to eat, but there weren't any good ones. I was looking for Yoshinoya. I've been missing that lately, but I couldn't find it. I was sooo hungry at this point so I went back to Hongodai, and guess where I ate... I went to McDonalds to get a Big Mac and Teriyaki Burger. Then went home.

Respect for the Aged Day

I have a holiday today, YAY!! That means no work for me. So today, I did some laundry instead. I was supposed to do it yesterday, but was too lazy to, I just cleaned up my room a little. Only a little. I had to leave to meet up with AHda, and MTka because we were going to meet to have drinks at T.G.I. Fridays in Shibuya. I wanted to leave around 1:30pm but didn't leave until around 2:30pm to meet at 4pm at the Shibuya Dog or as I recently found out Hachiko.

I stopped off at a place to get MTka a birthday gift since it just passed. I bought her a Harry Potter DVD, the first one. She had always told me that she liked it, but I wasn't sure if she had it or not. So I took a gamble and bought it for her.

It took a little while to get to Shibuya, but I made it there on time. I used the same line that I use to get to work. Since I had a commuter pass it was pratically free.

I met up with AHda at 4pm and we sat there and talked as we waited for MTka to show up. We knew she would be late, but how late. She didn't come until 4:30pm, which is beginning to become very typical of her. Not very Japanese indeed. Anyways, we walked over to T.G.I Fridays to find out that they didn't have a Happy Hour during holidays, I was pretty bummed. So we went wondering around Shibuya looking for a place to drink and eat to celebrate MTka's birthday and AHda going to Egypt and Turkey.

We found this little pub place that featured American food, kinda. It had an American feel to it. It was a nice atmosphere. We started off with some drinks and then started eating. We engaged in some pretty interesting conversations about the past and how we each knew each other. MTka didn't know that I knew AHda, and AHda didn't know that I knew MTka. MTka also found out that I knew a good chunk of her friends too. We left kinda late, I wanted to be home by 10pm so I could shower and sleep for work the next morning.

But we didn't end up leaving until 10pm and then when we got to Shibuya Station, we were going to talk to the station master about my Commuter Pass. They had overcharged me by a couple hundred dollars, so I asked for a refund. That process took a little time. We were trying to figure out what the best option for me to get a commuter pass that works out for me. But It's all up to me and I'm not sure how much money I would really save by getting a pass. So I decided not to get one yet until I do some more math. I still have the one going from Yokohama Station to Shibuya and I'll keep that since it was pretty cheap. I didn't end up getting home until 12am or so. I didn't sleep very well either. I felt as if I didn't sleep at all. Which is not good since I was teaching a lot of classes the next day.

Finally caught up my blog

Today is Anne's Birthday. I didn't do much today too. Last night I was talking to BHu all night, and I slept around noon here. So I didn't have much time to do anything much. I was planning to do laundry, but now I think I'll do it tomorrow, before I go to MTka birthday party in Shibuya. I've been updating my xanga all day and now I've finally caught up on my entire trip to Japan. I did a little cleaning today, but I still have much more to do.

I went looking for some of my old e-mails today. And found some good articles for me to read. I really feel inspired and I'm glad that I'm here to finally make a difference. It's really kinda weird that I'm in Japan ready to do what I came here to do. It's exciting and the anticipation is thrilling. I can finally say that I've settled down and I have almost everything that I need. I just need to make enough money to pay things off and get back to break-even before I can spend more money. I bought my commuter pass yesterday too. It was quite a weird process that costs like $600 for 3 months. That's really expensive, but hopefully I'll get that all back from the school. If it doesn't then I'm going to get into trouble. Anyways, I just finished my 7/11 dinner and now I need to find something more to do. I think I'll go read some more articles and try to clean up some more. I might do some organizing for my classes next week. But one of the things that I've been reading was to plan for the future, so maybe I might go and do that. We'll see. I'm happy that I caught up though, that's very difficult.

Song for the moment - Yellowcard - One year, Six Months

Sports Day Festival Rehearsal

First Off, I was dressed in appropriately. I came to school dressed in casual clothing, and shorts which Japanese people view as very rude. Everyone has a certain style of clothing to wear. So All I did was be a spectator with another English teacher. She was in charge of the video camera, and supervising things from above.

They started with the Warm-up which is a little aerobic work-out. Kinda weird if you ask me, but whatever, I'm living here now. So I just gotta go along with it. The warm-up lasted like 2 minutes. Then they did dances by grade level and then a variety of sports activities. They had like 100m, 400m, dashes with respective relays. They also did things like 3-people 4 legs, UFO where there are four people in a box running a relay. There were a lot of activities and games. They were competing for who gets the inside lane next week during the real festival. A lot of students fell down on the track, since it's all loose gravel.

It really was quite a scene to see. Everyone was cheering and getting really into it. I can tell the basketball team is really good, the teacher next to me, Higaki, kept telling me that people were on the basketball team. Usually all the first and second place people were on the basketball team. The faster running at the academy is actually on the volleyball team though.

The school treated me lunch, which was really nice of them. So I didn't have much to do during the time, I was just watching. I learned a lot of new things today though. I learned that I'm a full-time teacher, not a part-time teacher. That's why I have my own desk and everything. I'm required to go to school on Saturdays, even though I don't have classes, although I'm sure I will try to change that. I have to be at school from around 8:30am to 5pm. I only get certain holidays off. If I don't have class, I just help out with other people and the things they need to get finished.

My roles really haven't been introduced to me yet, but I shouldn't just let them tell me, I should find out for myself. So when school starts up on Tuesday, I'll be more inquisitive about what I'm really supposed to do and what's expected of me. So I know that I'm not letting anyone down and I can easily get adjusted to the school life.

Today is also a National Holiday, and is Ivy's Birthday. I had school on a National Holiday. There was a festival when I got back to Hongodai station. It was pretty interesting. They had some Vietnamese food, but it was too expensive to buy, so I didn't. But it looked good. Instead I used the time since I left early to buy some of the right uniform for sports wear. So now I think next week will be better for me. I'm planning to bring some candies that I bought in Hokkaido to the staff, although I think that I don't have enough for everyone. I'll bring some of the see's candies too, to see, but I know I don't have enough.That might make me run into some problems, but at least I get rid of all the candy and other stuff. It will be good to introduce it to them though. It's a nice gesture I think, but I'm not sure yet. I'll think about it a little more of how I plan to do it.

2 Classes

On Friday's I only have two classes, so I had a lot of time to sit around and do nothing. I was talking to more of the teachers to get to know them, more of them were talking to me. They introduced themselves by their nicknames. Which was kinda funny. We were checking walkie-talkies for the rehearsal for the Sports day festival the next day.

My 2 classes were pretty good. 8th grade and 11th graders. The first lesson was to discuss, the future and the daily schedule, their listening comprehension is very good. The 11th graders were learning how to do recipies and they were a good class too. CP actually made rice krispie treats for everyone, that's great. It was a little bit crispy, but still, it was good. Reminded me of my sisters krispie treats.

There were some important people at the school today, so everyone was running around a lot, and teachers were always at a meeting. I got to watch a performance from the English presentation. They speak very Japanese tone English. It's very monotone, but I can understand what they are saying. After when I came back, I was proof reading through the student's speeches for other teachers. It didn't take that much time, and since I was typing it and not writing it, it was much faster. They were all curious if I could use the laptop even though it's all in Japanese. But it worked quite nice. It's a little on the slow side, but I can't wish for all computers to be fast like mine... They aren't computer nerds like I am.

They even let me go home early, at 4:45pm. So I went to Ishikawacho station to wait to meet KMda and her mother. We had an appointment to meet for dinner. But we were supposed to meet at 7pm, but I was there around 6pm. So we met around 7:05pm and walked over to Chinatown. The food wasn't too bad. I had some fried rice, sesame seed balls, green peppers with some beef. It was good, but not enough. It was a nice small little restaurant, no one was inside. The conversation was pretty fun too. It was nice to meet KMda's mother, and all she could say was that KMda was bad for smoking and drinking too much. I had to leave early since I have school on Saturday too.

Immigration Office

I went to school early again, even though I don't work first period. I just sat there and talked to some of the other teachers that were there, they were all still curious about me. Everyone tries to speak English with me, but some people are better than others. I'm lucky that I sit next to two English teachers, although their English is a tad bit limited. My first two periods were empty, since I don't have class first and second period so I had a lot of time to kill.

3rd period today was cancelled for some reason. I didn't know why and niether did the other teacher. Sports takes higher priority in this school. The basketball program is ranked very high in the Tokyo area, which is very good. So I guess our class was bumped out of the way so a P.E. Class could do some activity, they will move the class to another open period, but I'm not sure how that works yet.

4th period was fun again, We did the 7th grade counting beans activity again. It was better since I was introduced in this class and they had an opportunity to talk with the students and they weren't all freaked out. This class was pretty good with the counting in English, and they were a happy group of people.

After 4th, during lunch, I left school early to take care of my visa situation. Actually I had to go back to my house to print out a form that turns out I didn't need to have at all. So, it was a waste of a couple of hours and money for the train. But at the immigration office, it was pretty quick.I stayed there for about 15 minutes taking care of some paperwork and they stamped my passport saying that I applied for a visa change. So I don't need to leave the country on October 7th, which is when my ticket is originally set for. So I feel like I did a lot today. Afterward I went shopping for a chair, and finally bought it. I bought some more cds and a few more shirts for work. I've had to buy a lot of clothes for work, they have a uniform for every situation. It's kinda weird.

Anyways, it was good. I have almost everything taken care of. I expect to get a postcard from immigration within a few more weeks to find the result if I need to leave the country or not.

NO CLASS!

That's right, Wednesday is my day off. So I just waited at home for my Certificate of Eligibility. It arrived around 11:30am when I was talking to my family on MSN messenger. It was kinda weird since I was waiting for the stupid paper for about 2 months and the feeling you get when you finally get it. It's not my visa, but it will make the process go much faster. So I'm glad that I have it now. I didn't do much the rest of the day, but talk to my family and talk to BHu. I really enjoyed today, it was a nice break from school.Today is MTka birthday, but she's so busy that we didn't have an opportunity to hang out. That's kinda sad that she was just working all day. That's not a good way spend a birthday

Second day of class

Tuesdays are my longest days at school, because I don't have a free period. I've got classes today from 8:30am and I stayed till about 5pm. Today I met the other Native English teacher that I will be working with. Her Name is Erin Suzuki. A Japanese last name because she's married to a Japanese guy. Her Japanese I've heard is perfect, but she's a white person from Wisconsin. She's recently announced that she's pregnant so all the students are wondering if I'm her replacement. She only works on Tuesdays and only 4 periods. I don't think that I'm her replacement, but I think it's a weird situation to begin with. At this point, I think I'm still just a part-time woker so I'm just temporary till she comes back. But she doesn't look pregnant so I'm thinking I won't take over for her until 6 months down the line.

I'm sure she was hurt from hearing that she was being replaced, and since she just met me today for the first time and no one told her that I'd be working with her. I think that will complicate the situation a little more. The school isn't that good with adjusting people to the situation with everyone. I always feel they put me in a bad situation. I don't think I'm replacing her because they only signed me on for a one year contract, so they will have to find two people to replace next year. But it's just the first week, i'm sure that I'll get more information as time goes along. I can really see the difference between the two native teacher's teaching style. I can see the advantages of both teachers, but I'll have to find something that adds my own style to the school and to the class that students can effectly learn and still enjoy it. I've gotta think!

First day for me at Yakumo

I'm not techically working yet, but I'm going to observe the classes that I will be working at. I decided that I won't teach first period on any day since I live so far away and it's difficult for me to make it there on time. I get up at 5:30am to get to school by 8:30am, that's really early. Today, I stayed from 8:50am-6pm. That's a really long day don't you think, but actually that's shorter than most of the other full-time teachers.

I went to first period to watch CP, the other native English Teacher. Then I followed her around all day. I got to see how the class is ran with 3 teachers. Usually it would have been with only two, but now they have to find a way to work me into the syllabus. We will figure something out I'm sure. The 7th grade class was playing a counting activity where they were to count beans, it was actually the first time I really participated in the class. Most of the classes I stayed in the class just to observe.

But in CTshi class, she invited me to help out. She's a really good teacher and very friendly. I think she's probably one of the better English teachers at the school. Her English sounds very native. CP had to stay after school because she was doing something with the English Club. We just played the game of life, which was pretty good. I informed them that I would be coming back a few days this week.

Nothing

I didn't do much today, but prepare to go to school the next day.

Ushioda Junior High School Korean Festival

Since I didn't get much sleep, I had to get up early on top of that. I was planning to attend a festival put on by the school that I visted last year. It was really weird how I looked at the school and the people recognized me. The activities were interesting to watch and to participate in. They had a martial arts demonstration, then a Korean drumming, and a Korean dancing activity. It's mainly to celebrate the Korean culture in Yokohama. It's an annual event that happens once because Korean culture in Japan is often surpressed. Most Koreans living in Japan, often go by a Japanese name so they aren't discriminated against. It was really interesting to see the situation about it.

After the festival, we went back to Tsurumi Station and the group split up. The people in group C, and Me went to a dessert cafe to get some dessert and something to drink. I had a cheesecake dessert, it was tasty. One of the best cheesecakes I've ever had. The group discussed their plan for what they will present in San Diego and the issues they were going to tackle. They decided pretty quick while AMrai and me talked a little bit about the other night. Although she had forgotten most of it. That's when I realized that she didn't really care, so I stopped helping her out and let her know that she would have to do things on her own. So we'll see how things work out. I've kinda decided to leave that organization for awhile. I've been doing too much for everyone that it almost became something they were depending on, which is bad for an organization

Shibuya / Shin-Yokohama

I had an appointment to meet with KMda at Shibuya at the dog. It was raining pretty hard at this time. We went to go get some dinner at T.G.I. Fridays and get some drinks since it was happy hour. I ordered the Pasta Jumbalaya, I love that. It was ok, and kinda small, but it was ok. KMda can drink, and she drinks a lot. I had a drink too, but she really consumed a lot. Her face and head was all red, and she'd still order more. She's going to die young, I'm 100% sure. She couldn't even finish her order, 4 pieces of Fried Cheese Sticks. Kinda ridiculous if you ask me.

After that we met with her friend Aiko. She was a gymnastics instructor and very interested in Korean Culture. She wanted to practice English with me though. We ended up going to a Korean restaurant place called gyakaku. Or something like that. She ordered kind of a lot of food, it looked good, but I didn't have anything. Just drank water. We left a little later than we should have and I unfortunately missed the last train to get to my station. Which means I was stuck at the Shin-Yokohama station for the night. That was not a pleasant experience at all. I was lucky that I was there at 1am and the trains open at 5:30am. So it wasn't that much time that I had to kill, but there's no night life there, so it was pretty boring.

I killed most of time, just walking around the neighborhoods. Watching other people who had missed their trains. I studied Japanese a little because I had a newspaper. But it seemed as if time was going sooo slow. I can't believe that it took that long. I ended up getting 15 or so mosquito bites, and that really wasn't fun. My leg was all puffy and gross. I was lucky that I brought a Jacket otherwise I would have had a lot more. 5:30 arrived and I went back to my station and walked home. I took only a short nap

Meeting with the English Dept. Chair and YMCA

So I had to come back again at 2:20pm so I left around 11:30am to get there on time. I arrived just in the nick of time. I was waiting in the "conference room" for them. It was a pretty quick conversation between us all. I learned that I will be working 15 classes a week. Which is only 15 hours total, but it's 15 different classes at different grade levels. They are working me in their schedule, and it seems pretty busy, but managable.

Later that evening I had an appointment to meet up with some YOKE people because they were doing an activity to get some research done before they head off to San Diego. They were visiting the YMCA to get some information. I went and it was actually an interesting Lecture. At first it was a little slow, but to hear about the perspective he has on certain issues. The main topics were trauma, psychology, HIkikomori, and the different programs that they have opposed to the ones in America.

After the lecture, we had a meeting with the delegates afterwards to discuss the plan of action and what they wanted to present in their presentation at the symposium in San Diego. They separated into three groups. After that, AMrai and I went to dinner, since she has a tendency to just leave me out of things. We had a pretty good conversation about the differences between the societies in Yokohama and San Diego. The approaches and even the reasons for doing things. She was really interested and learned many things. I also learned many things. I ended up looking up a lot of things on the internet after I arrived home. To help her out

Meeting with the vice chairman

Today, I called my boss. He was supposed to call me yesterday, but he didn't so I called him. He said can you meet me today, and I'm like "I live two hours away" but I decided to meet him 2 hours from when we talked on the phone. I quickly got dressed and ready to go to the school to meet him. It was a pretty informational meeting I think. I made an appointment to talk to the other foreign English teacher and the Chairperson of the English Department. Actually I've met her before, but I didn't know that she's the chairperson.

Then I just went home and bought some food and that was it again. Another wasteful day.

Nothing

Another day of just sitting at my computer not doing anything special in particular. It's very disturbing. I might have been updating my website or Xanga today. But that's it.
September 6, 2004 - Classes at Yakumo School start todayBut what I am doing? Nothing, since I'm still waiting for my visa, I'm just doing nothing.

YOKE Presentation

Today I had a presentation at The Yokohama Office of International Exchange. I was making a presentation for the people who will go to San Diego Next month. I had prepared a nice powerpoint presentation. I arrived there at 10:30am, but the meeting didn't start until 1:30pm, so I had some time to kill. So I just worked on making the presentation a little better and fixing the Japanese on the page.

By around noon, AMrai took me to Lunch, but she actually just dropped me off so she could go back to the office and finish up her paperwork for the meeting. So I was at the Minato Mirai Station having lunch at a cafe. The food was pretty good, and I also recieved a call from KMda to meet on Friday in Shibuya. After I finished I went back to the office.

When I got there, some of the delegates arrived already. But I was really shocked to see one of the delegates. It turns out that one of them was one of my friends at Grossmont. I mean we are thousands of miles away and we run into each other doing the same program. It was a trip to see him since he fell off the face of the planet. No one knew where he went when I first went to Japan and came back to the United States. Now I run into him in Yokohama. It's crazy. It's such a small world. Anyways, we started the program. Many of the delegates were sleeping through most of it. It was very boring actually, and I'm surprised that I didn't sleep through it. I went last, and actually I wasn't really presenting much. I had a translator who said more than me. And described things in great detail, more than anyone would have wanted. The meeting stretched out much longer than was necessary. But after it finished My friend and I went to get some coffee at starbucks to talk. It was nice to talk and chat about that stuff. After that, we went our separate ways to get home.

Haircut

I went all the way to Omiya to get a freakin' haircut, that's about 2 hours away. And it was in the pouring rain. But it was cool, I went with MTka so I could get a good translator to the guy cutting my hair. He didn't do a bad job. It's a bit longer than my usual, which is a nice change. She was getting her hair re-colored, since it was colored a few days previously. The cut costed me $32 with a 20% discount. That's hella expensive, since I'm used to cutting it myself for free.

Afterward we met up with her friend Megumi. It's someone she met in her high school that also studied in New Zealand with her. We went shopping for clothes for me. I needed some new threads to go to work. I ended up buying a new summer suit, a carrying bag, two new shirts, a tie, some socks which ended up being a grand total of about $177. The problem was my credit cards didn't work. So I had to pay in Cash. I had exactly $177.64 in my wallet after getting my haircut, and paying for my train ticket. Which meant that I had only 64 cents left. That wasn't enough to buy dinner. So I had to get a loan of 600 yen from MTka to eat at Lotteria. We chilled there for a bit till I had to go home. I wanted to be ready for my presentation for the next day.

My First Utada Hikaru CD

I went to get some money from the citibank atm at Yokohama station, then I went to Sakuragicho Station to go to YOKE. I wanted to talk to the coordinator of the exchange program that I've been diligently been working on. I just went through all the literature first because I saw that she was in a meeting about the exchange. Then we had an opportunity to talk a little. I got to meet all the old people from the exchange even though most of which forgot who I was. I still remembered them. She invited me to come to the orientation that was on Sunday and to make a presentation.

I felt pretty good after that conversation that I came to the store next to my house to look for that damn chair that I've been wanting to buy. But by the time I got there it was already sold. So I went into the CD section. I found a few Utada Hikaru cd's so I bought them all. Now I don't feel so bad for downloading them because I actually bought the cd too. Even though it was very very cheap, I'm still a paying customer and contributing to her million of dollars. I haven't bought CD's for a very long time so it was good. It's actually much cheaper than all of you think, I would say cheaper than blank cd's in America. And these were full albums too. I bought a few other artists while I was there.

Talked to BH

I talked to BH for a long time on Messenger. It was nice talking to her again. There's been something missing for a long time, and it hurt, but still felt good. There's been a void ever since I've been here in Japan. Something was just a little off, but I'm happy that I got to speak with her. I'm sure she'll be happy to read that. She didn't sleep much, and she always has problems with her computer. But it was good to catch up on news that's been going on with my organizations and things like that. Keeping up with friend dramas and such.

At Home

I didn't do a thing again, just stayed at home and go to 7-11 to buy food, i'm not sure I even did that. I don't even know if i ate during this time period.