Graduation Rehearsal ... actually not really

Today, I thought I would be going to the graduation rehearsal, but really it was the farewell party for the senior students. It’s like a second party for the seniors and actually the last thing that the seniors basically get to participate in before they leave high school. It’s a show of a sort that included many acts from the students in the clubs, like the cheerleading club and the brass band club. There were other students who just wanted to get up there and show their dance moves. The teachers performed a little skit for the students too. I had a little part, meaning only one line and only three words. It was English and we didn’t want to burden the students who were trying to follow along. It was based on the famous drama in Japan about a school, it’s called Gokusen. I have never seen it and have no idea what it’s about, but I know it’s famous and it’s about a school. This lasted for the remaining part of the morning and into the afternoon. It was interesting to see and a culture all in itself. I think it’s a good display of the student’s ability to do what they feel and actually act the way they want to.

After that we got treated to a sushi lunch by the headmaster, which was nice, but definitely not enough. It was tasty but not enough to be considered a lunch. I didn’t stay too much longer. I left school around 2:30pm so I could get home early and pay rent. That’s always an important thing to take care of. I came home and paid the rent and then heard of a few other things that I should put in my calendar about things that are coming up. HT is going to be moving out of the house and into an apartment because he will start university soon. And another friend will be leaving Japan to study English in Canada. So we will do a going away party for her. I think it will be interesting for her since she speaks as much English as I do Japanese. Actually I think she speaks less. I think I might have done laundry today, but not sure and can’t remember.

The Honda's Wedding, my first Japanese Wedding Party

I really hadn’t done much today. In the morning all I did was sleep and get ready for the wedding. I had bought them a nice card from the Sogo department store at Yokohama station, and took a little time to prepare it the right way. It took some time to put the details in there. It was a nice little card that had a box and a heart inside of it. The heart folded out to have 4 pieces which I used for the main message of the card. Since it was split into 4 pieces I dedicated the top to a message for both of them in Japanese, then the sides to each one of them, meaning one for the bride and one for the groom and a closing message on the last piece. I added more to the main part of the card, just in case they didn’t open the box that said open. So I think I got all the bases covered for the card. But if they didn’t take a look at the box, I’ll let them know about it later. Anyways, I left my house later than I had planned to.

It didn’t take that long to get there than I expected. But it did take a long time. About 2.5 hours since I took a route that was a little out of the way. I went the way to get to school, and then took the appropriate trains from there. I ran into another teacher on the way to go there. I was effective in getting her and me to miss the train that we needed to take to get to the right train station. She jumped on the right train and I told her that it was the wrong train, so she got off and looked at the map and determined that she was on the right train. I agreed, but it was too late since the train had just left. But the next train wasn’t too long away. Anyways, it allowed us to talk a little, even though she only speaks Japanese and I only spoke in English and we completely didn’t understand each other, at all. It was fun at least. This is the teacher that sits next to me and rarely talks to me. She’s shy with her English.

We finally arrived at the station and then met up with another teacher at the 7-11 near the Shirokanedai station on the Namboku line. We were a little early for the party, but I figure it’s better to be early than to be late for a wedding. We were one of the first people there for the “2nd party.” In Japanese weddings, they have two parties to celebrate. The first party is more formal and the people involved are usually families and senior people in companies. So I got invited to the second party, which is more relaxed and fun where it’s a dinner type of party that is with friends and co-workers. It was fun I felt. I was sitting with all the male teachers and a former English teacher at the school. They are interesting people, to say the least and they love to drink too. One of the teachers that is normally strict and intimidating is much more fun when he’s had a lot to drink. I mean he changes his demeanor so much that he’s practically a different person and quite funny too. They did a few games, and we watched a couple videos one from the Blue Point restaurant and one that was made for the couple. It was a nice video of the couple before they were getting married and gave everyone a glimpse into their lives and all the things that they’ve been through in their lives. It was nice and very interesting to see.

After the party ended, I left with the last group of people to leave the restaurant. They were the teachers that were helping to run and organize the event. They are the teachers that I normally hang out and talk to. They had showed me something cool that I didn’t know until today. I finally got the meaning of the 2 mai – which means 2 pieces, on the ticket gates. It means that you can use 2 tickets on the machine at one time. That means I could buy one subway ticket from some point off of the line and combine it with my passnet or commuter pass and it will calculate both at the same time. That’s so convenient and so cool that it could do it that fast too. Very cool indeed. I decided to finish paying up all my bills that day too. It looked as if my neighbors were having a party of some sort since there were a lot of cars outside and a lot of noise. Sounds like they were having a lot of fun. When I finished paying my bills, I came back and there was Reiko and Nao, they were just coming to join the party, while I just went back home.

Four classes of the 8th grade

I didn’t notice that I was the main teacher for the day. I mean I was the only person teaching the 8th grade today. While I was teaching, the other class would be watching a video. So they had prepared to put me in the forefront of teaching lessons and to prepare for the students learning. Talk about pressure. But I think it went alright. Nothing special really, but I could see some good points as well as some points that could have been improved. I didn’t realize some of the smallest details that would have made a big difference in the explanation. It was a bit hard for them because they aren’t used to applying the vocabulary that they know, even though they are at a high level. I should have made sure that they understood some of the vocabulary. And I saw that the Japanese English teacher didn’t help much with translation. I think all the teachers thought that they students knew them already and that they didn’t understand because they just haven’t done it before. But once we did a practice round they started to get it and start getting into it too. It was fun, but really really short because the explanation took a long time. I had hoped to have a little bit more time, but I was rushed with only 30 minute classes and 4 of them back to back to back to back. It was really pushing it for me too. I felt like I was drained of my energy in just the second class. They were getting a tad loud too. I really haven’t heard much from the other teachers in criticism or praise. So I guess I’m on my own to get the lesson out of it. It was a pretty short day after that.

I had gone home early today because I needed to go shopping for a present for the wedding party I would be going to tomorrow. I decided that since all the other teachers told me that I should buy some tea, I went to the Sogo shopping mall at Yokohama station. I found a nice place and the lady at the counter helped me out. I didn’t understand much about tea, so I just went with her word. I know it’s dangerous, but since I’m so clueless about it, I couldn’t really say anything otherwise. I think I went with something reasonable in price and of value. It was everything that the other teachers were telling me to get and about the price I wanted to spend on tea. I think for tea, it was really expensive, but since it was a gift, it was ok. After that I went to the 7th floor to get a card. I found a really nice card that I liked and I could do some interesting things to. I like to add that Bryan touch to things. In the card section I ran into a friend of mine, which was cool, but she seemed too busy with shopping to hang around and talk.

I then went into the book store to see if they had any interesting books in the foreign section. Turns out that they had an illustrated version of the Da Vinci Code. I think it’s really cool to actually see the pictures and the places that he’s talking about in the book. I was also reading the book about the facts behind the Da Vinci Code. I thought that book was a bunch of shit to be honest with you. It’s a FICTION book for crying out loud, which implies that not all of it is true to begin with. He wasn’t writing the book to be something studied in history classes, it was to sell books and to grab the attention with some thought provoking ideas. That’s all; give the guy a break dude. I mean this book was thicker than the Da Vinci Code itself, and that’s a pretty big book. After that, I went home and bought some stuff at the grocery store. As I was walking home, it was fucking snowing on me. I mean it’s the fist time to actually be outside when there was snow falling, which was cool, I mean cold. But it was also so annoying since I was carrying my shopping bags and such and walking in the freezing cold.

Sharing my photos

Today, I only had two classes. But it was rather different today. I mean the first class that we taught today had to give their speech for the test. I thought that they did very well, but as their score reflected, they did the best in the entire 8th grade. These aren’t the highest level students either. They would be ranked 3rd highest of 4 classes. But the content of the speeches as well as the effort really showed and helped them do so well. I was thoroughly impressed with the results from the class.

We did a little fun activity in 11th grade today. All we did was listen to Queen’s “I was born to love you.” First we listened then we filled in the blanks with a lyric sheet. That song repeats itself a lot, and I mean a lot. It was kind of annoying to listen to it many times over. But then another thing came to me too. It was their last oral communication class. As seniors next year, they have discontinued the program and that next year; I will probably be teaching the highest level classes, which are the 10th graders now. I think that’s sad that the school has decided to do that. They have made some alterations to this year that won’t really benefit the students and have put more pressure on the teachers to come up with some results that are not likely. It was Ms. A’s last oral communication class at the school too since she will be one of 3 teachers leaving the school. As much as we don’t cooperate, I’ll still miss her and her feisty attitude. I think the school needed that, but there will be 3 new teachers and I’m sure some of them might bring that along with them.

After the classes were finished, I just hung around school to listen to some more speeches and then for my 12th graders. We were going to exchange pictures today, just to share our past experiences. I showed them my pictures from San Diego, and they showed me pictures of the trip they took to Kyoto and Osaka. They had bought me a gift too, which I thought was nice of them. Them refers to some of the students that were in my electives class. I think that I was able to teach them, and at least have them enjoy learning English. I hope that they could take it with them as they move onto the next level. Also today, another 12th grade student got accepted into a university. We are very excited for her because she got accepted to Keio University which is the 2nd highest ranking university in Japan. I think that’s spectacular!

For most of the day after that, I was just getting ready for my classes tomorrow. I didn’t really have an idea of what I wanted to do, but then I asked another teacher and she said that my idea sounded good and that I should just go with that instead of doing something else. I thought that sounded good and since I had prepared it for another class, I think it would have been good just to use it. I was working on which vocabulary words to work on and how to stimulate the students to learn as they are having fun.

Graduation Party at the Imperial Hotel

I didn’t have class today, which was nice. It was weird though because I still had to go to school. They were planning to carpool me with the other teachers, so I arrived at school around 12:30pm. The party didn’t start until 4pm, but teachers started leaving school around 1pm. My car didn’t leave until 2:30pm though, and one of the teachers in the car had caught the flu. This had worried many other teachers since there has been a mess of other teachers that came down with the flu recently. We arrived there around 3:30pm because there was a lot of traffic and a couple of accidents I think. It was interesting because I was the only person in the car that spoke English. The other teachers didn’t speak English at all. So I felt this would be the perfect time to practice my Japanese, which I did so gladly. I asked some questions to the other teachers in the car. I think it was a pretty good conversation, short lived but still good. The other teachers were trying to speak English the best they could too.

It was a nice reception at the hotel. I think the school really does a good job with these types of things. I also think that they get a lot of practice with it too. When I arrived to the reception area, some students escorted me to pick up my registration materials, basically just a seating arrangement card and my name badge. Afterwards, they took me to the waiting area where all the teachers would be waiting for the ceremonies to start. I was chilling with some of the other teachers that are in the process of learning English. I think it was incredibly fun, since they are interested in learning English and I’m interesting in learning Japanese. I was talking to a math and Japanese language teacher. I wasn’t bouncing around that much and really wasn’t meeting as many people as I possibly could. I think from what I’ve noticed at these types of things, I only see the male teachers with other male teachers and the female teachers in their groups too. I think the cliques have been formed long ago and I just have to play a role in that. I mean the new teachers hang out with new teachers, and I mean always, even at school.

Once the party got started, everyone went inside and they started off with a few ceremonial things like greetings and such. Then it was the full on buffet that was served by the students to the teachers. That was great, I was just standing there and a student came and gave me and the other teachers’ food from the buffet. The food was, of course, excellent. Then the real festivities got started. The brass band performed some music and then some of the teachers performed a dance with the student to Ken Matsudaira’s “Matsuken Sanbo II.” I thought it was hilarious and great. Then they proceeded to do some more music from the band, and then the magic show. From this magic show compared to the one for the Principal’s birthday, I thought this performance was much better. It was more humorous, and involved tricks that were seemed more polished than the last time. I was watching from a distance, so it wasn’t as impressive as the Principal’s birthday party. But I still think he was more impressive. I mean they had a whole bunch of festivities for the evening. The principal even got on stage and sang his favorite song “The bridge of Glory” which is supposed to be the Olympic theme, and did an encore of Moriyama Naotaro’s “Sakura.” It was impressive and I like both songs so it was great. One of the students that I taught in my electives class was the one reading her letter to her mom. It was very sweet and emotional that she was selected to read her letter to express her feelings about what they had been through in jr. & sr. high school. It really was an experience I won’t soon forget. I’m glad that I had the opportunity to experience this. It makes you feel accomplished to be a teacher, when you get to that point where you have helped someone to reach that point where, now they will enter the world to make it a better place. Afterwards, as all the teachers were leaving, the students and the parents gave them a gift. I got a very nice cup. I lack a better name for it, but it’s a cup for all purposes. It was weird to be walking down the center aisle with all your students saying bye to me. It’s been a weird year and I’m glad that I made it out alive. Things move so fast that it’s hard to believe that the years already over.

There was an after party, of course. I was invited to go and eat some more. I also had to sit at the same table as my chief of staff. She was a bit agitated, I could tell. That made it a little bit uncomfortable, but still, I don’t care. The food at this party was great too. I really really liked it. It had a nice flavor to it that the other food didn’t. It was pretty short though, which I think was a good thing. Since the next day, we all had classes. I hitched a ride with Noki sensei. It was really cool that I did since after dropping off everyone at home, he took the time to drive me all the way home too. I mean he didn’t have to since I’m used to it, but he said that it was raining and that it would only take about 30 minutes to take me home, which would have been longer if I had taken the train and walked home in the rain. So, I thought that was really nice of him. I had a good conversation with him too. I think it was good bonding time, since he really wants to learn English. He has the right words, just a funny order of putting them in. Anyways, that was that, and then I came home and just slept to get ready for work the next day.

Laundry and not much else

My internet finally started working like normal today. I think I found out what the problem was. I think it was a Microsoft problem, and not so much my network internet card. I was just going to go buy a new one today too, to see if that was the problem. But Microsoft sent a patch to my computer today and now my internet works. I haven’t been disconnected since I downloaded. I found this out after a nice day of sleep. Even though most of the day I was still tired. I don’t like it when I talk to my family; I think that prevents me from going out. Since we have to talk about a lot of things that are going on, I don’t have much time left to go out and get what I wanted. But today, it was a combination of things. I had to do laundry today too. It was nice day, I had hoped to spend outdoors, but just didn’t have enough energy to go out. I think it’s just a waste to stay at home, but I was updating my xanga and trying to fix my computer, which both were completed. I was also talking to a few friends that I haven’t talked to in a long time too. So today, it wasn’t really a waste, but it quickly got dark before I knew it and then became too late to go out. I mean time really flew today. My student flaked out on my again today, and it’s the second time. I’m not sure she’s taking it seriously, and I think that I’m not going to take it as serious either. She didn’t pay me for the last time, and she always calls to cancel on the day of. I was planning to teach her today, but since that went out the window, I just decided to get some things done that I haven’t finished in a long time. Laundry was a definite must. I finally got more family pictures too, something I’ve been waiting for for about a month or so. But now I’ve got it. I need to get started on making my plan for the 8th graders this Saturday. I need to get all the materials finished for that. I think we’ll just play games since they are pretty much stressed out with all the testing and all the boring lessons. We should do something fun for them to end the year with a bang and something to remember. I’m not sure how many students will be leaving for another school, so might as well make the last day memorable. I’ve also fallen in love with Ai Otsuka. I think she’s hot and she’s got great music. I’ve been listening to her songs all day, and still not sick of it. It’s just so beautiful. And so is she.

Edit: there was just another Earthquake today. It didn’t feel that strong, so I didn’t think it was that big of a deal, and I didn’t see or hear anything on the internet either. EK started talking to me today. It was like the first time in a long time that he started talking to me. Of course, he wants to hang out because he had come back to Japan. His health condition forced him to come back and he’s another year behind in school.

Final 10th grade classes - Today was a good day

Tuesdays always start earlier than the other days. I don’t think I’ve gotten used to getting up so early just to go to work. I finished reading my book today. It’s a good book and I feel like shit. It’s opened my eyes on looking at something differently. Even though I thought that way before, it’s a refreshing look at myself from the 3rd person. I like that I could see it, but now I just need to formulate a plan to put it in motion. I need to put the trust into myself as well. I have decided that I really shouldn’t look back anymore. I want to return to San Diego for this spring break, but something is holding me back. I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s something that I’m not looking forward to. Not only do I not want to go back, I feel as if there is nothing I could do to help things back at home. I got rid of problems as well as built new problems with my departure.

The first class today was the 9th graders. They were like usual, spaced out. Some were talking and some weren’t. I’ve learned that many of the teachers don’t like teaching this class. I think when I was teaching it, for the first time, I really enjoyed it. But when I’m not in front of the room and CP is running the show, she isn’t able to control the room. They are beginning to become like the 10th graders with ESki. She was a good teacher filled with different ideas, but I don’t believe they are able to get control of the room. I think most of the girls are afraid if I raise my voice, and for those who know me, I really can raise my voice. But besides that, they did what we wanted them to. It took a little while for them to get going on things though. This is the last oral communication lesson before they actually go to the United States. So it was our last opportunity to get them prepared for that. Not sure if they really will be ready for it, but at least they have a little background on things. The lesson for the day of course was Fast Food. What else would it be for girls visiting California?

For my 10th grade classes, we did something out of the book. We haven’t touched the book since the beginning of when I first started working at the school. Since we make them buy it, I thought it would be a good idea to use it instead of making my own sheet like I normally do. I’m finally doing what I really wanted to do, and that’s make them speak. I didn’t give much time for them to prepare, but I think that the assignment was easy enough for them to get up and speak. I mean I introduced the new topic today, and had them speak about it today as well. Classes are only 50 minutes long too. But I managed to get all the students to speak, and not really complain too much either. Even the first 10th grade class, Yuri was able to do it, and there weren’t any problems either. The topic was basically just to write about the best memory that they had this year. They had 4 different teachers teaching them English. I think that’s a lot for one year. I mean two of them were pregnant and two came in and replaced them. So that was a bit of a change for them, and it wasn’t all at the same time too. It was in phases, which I think really hurt them because they behaved poorly. I think they understood things, but they just didn’t care and were poorly behaved. I also want to say that it’s partially the fault of the homeroom teachers. You can really see the effect of the home room teachers on the students. They carry the same personalities and the problems and the strengths as their teacher. And even the weirder ones too. So now I think I’ve finally figured out how to work with them, but next year when they all split into different classes, we’ll see how things go.

I was flooded by many students who wanted me to listen to their speech after school. It was something that I wanted to do, so it wasn’t a problem for me. But I also felt sorry for the girls in the English club who had to wait for me while I read the other girls speeches. In club, we just started talking about what’s been going on in the week. I asked the girls how my class was, but they said it was average, which I think it was. I’ve got to be able to spice things up. Then after that, we started planning for the graduation party for the senior girls on March 7th. I think that will be fun, and I’ll finally meet some of the girls in the English club that I haven’t met before. I think all the teachers will be coming too, and so it will be fun. We have secretly combined it as a wedding party for one of the teachers that will be getting married this Sunday. Well actually she’s already married, but her wedding ceremony will be this Sunday. I think that it will be fun and I’m glad that they have planned things out, since they were talking about it a very long time ago, like October, when they first found out that they were going to get married.

Edit: I got a locker today at work too. I thought that was pretty cool, since I’ve only been waiting for about 5 months for it. I think everything went so smooth for me today, which was a nice thing and a relief. I hope to not forget this day.

Final Speeches

This Monday started off like usual. I got up at the right time and went to school. The classes were the same, but today for the 7th grade we asked them about how the fun faire went for them. They didn’t get many of the answers that we were looking for. They didn’t go on their quest to answer questions that were on the sheet of paper, but they did manage to talk to some people. I think the point of the whole fun faire was just to get the students to talk to people so they could improve on their English. And it’s supposed to be fun, which of course, is the point. They struggled a little bit at the beginning, but after awhile and asking friends for help they were able to figure out most of them.

The 8th graders had to give their speeches as their final exams. But it’s really only just a practice for them because their big end of the year contest on March 12 is the one they want. There are only 6 awards going out to the whole of 8th grade, and I will be a judge for the event. I’ve heard many of their speeches many times, and I know who will do well and who won’t. I don’t know what the criterion will be and how the judging will go, but I have an idea of who will do well. In this class, the test went over a little bit meaning we didn’t finish. The final students were getting antsy of it so we had to end it and come back during their home room time because they were just going to practice for it anyways.

In the second 8th grade class, they did fairly well. I think the 8th grade has some of the highest level of English speakers so they will be really difficult to judge. I think some of the people in this class were able to really do a good job, even though they are the second highest level. I think some of them will win in speech contest.

After all the speeches, CP and I went over the reviews for the fun faire and read what people had to say about the event. They were really expecting a lot. Most of which never read the instructions for how the events were supposed to go. I could agree that they were a little confusing, but I think that if at least the students were speaking then everything was good. I didn’t read anything that was saying that it sucked so that was good.

Then we had English club afterwards too. In club, all we did was go over a Play that CP bought in her trip to Nara for the JALT conference. We did the first play; it was about the Exam, since exams were last week. We thought that it would be good, even though all the girls said that it they did poorly on their tests. That’s not a good thing.

I also talked to BH tonight too. I think it’s something that we both needed to get out into the open. It’s something that was left unsaid. I know that she didn’t like the fact that I was in Japan, but I always have felt as if I was to blame for that. Which, I feel I’m not. I don’t understand why everyone felt as if I left them behind. As if they could go to a different country and leave all their friends behind to have an enjoyable life, but I couldn’t. What’s up with that? So tonight, I set things straight. It’s the selfishness from many people over the years that I’ve been stuck in the position that I was, and now that I’m free from that, I’m going to keep on running. I hate to be too honest, but if you don’t like that, then I don’t like you either. It’s taken me a long time to be able to say that, but I really want to let people know that I’m not as nice I as I was before. I have a far greater perspective now that I’m all the way over here. I really believe that if you can’t be happy for me, then your opinion doesn’t really matter to me. We are all on the same boat and we all are trying to be captains of the ship, but I’m finally going to take the wheel and steer the way I want to go because I know that’s what’s best for me. I left America, in search of myself and to become someone who is going to do something amazing. I’ve got to become more than I really can imagine I could be, and I’m going to let go of those people who drag me down. Everyone makes their own path in life; I’m just working on making mine. There are those who follow, and those who lead. I’m glad to say I’m leading my life.

Yoke Meeting

Today I overslept. I think it’s the first time that I’ve ever overslept for anything here in Japan. I set my alarm for 10:30am because I wanted to leave at 11:30am for a meeting that started at 1:30pm at the Yoke office near the Minato Mirai station. But I fell back asleep and then woke up again at 12:30pm. That wasn’t good and so I hurried up and got ready to go to the meeting. I learned a short cut today that got me half the distance to the train station in half the time, which is pretty easy since it’s near my house. I was able to get to the train station by 1pm, and then the train ride to the Sakuragicho station took about 28 minutes. When I got out of the train I was like, I’ve got to run about a 12 minute walk in about 2 minutes time. But it wasn’t that bad since I woke up so late.

But the thing is, they had changed the meeting time without telling me. What punk asses. The meeting actually finished at 1:30pm and started at 10:30am. That meant they had done the entire meeting while I fell back asleep. That sucked that I couldn’t be there. I ran into all the members of the group as they were going back to the station. I saw a few of them leaving or going down on the escalators heading up to the Landmark Tower. At least I didn’t have to go very far before turning around. After that, they just went to go get some lunch. So I just joined them. We went to the place that Me and KHma went to last time. It was a restaurant called La Pausa. It was pretty good and today I ordered another pizza. It was larger than I expected for one person since I bought it as a lunch set. It only cost 780 yen for a fairly large pizza, salad and drink. So I was plenty full and it didn’t put a dent into my wallet that I would expect. So after the lunch with everyone, I learned that there was going to a display of their trip on March 5, 2005 at the Yoke office from 10am to around 1pm. It’s open to all the members of Yokohama, so anyone could go. I think I will try to go there if I don’t have class or anything else to do. The guys took the train home together while the girls took their train home, since we were going in opposite directions.

I then went to the library at Hongodai station and spent some time in there. I then went to buy some stuff at the Fuji marketplace that is near the library. It wasn’t too exciting after that, I came home. I think today was when I started having many internet problems. I would keep on getting disconnected and I wouldn’t know why. That hinders my ability to chat or to download. So I was a little bit inconvenienced. But today it didn’t matter since I would have to sleep early and then go to work the next day.

Night of big news and English Fun

Today was quite an interesting day. From beginning to end, it was non-stop interesting. For the English Fun Faire, there are many native English speakers at the school. All of which were friends of CP. They were all paid a bit of money to participate, which would probably equivalent to about $40-50 an hour. It’s really a lot for not doing much of anything and not even having prior experience in teaching too. But I think that it was all done well. I mean the program ran well, but it seemed to me to be a bit unorganized. I mean it was organized, but it didn’t feel that way. I know it sounds strange, but it did go well, and that was the most important part. So I was grouped with the 7th graders and we were playing games in the gym first and then we went to a classroom. There were two other native speakers with me and they were working with their groups too. I think that they enjoyed their time, and since these students knew me, they took the opportunity to ask me some tough questions. Like whether I loved the other teachers or not, or if I have a girlfriend and things of that nature. They were doing it for fun, and I’m not sure why 7th graders are interested in knowing that anyways. I mean for the high schoolers that would be common, which it was when I was first introduced at the school.

There were like 50 different native speakers from all over the world, meaning from the U.S. and then Australia, Canada, New Zealand, England, and all over the place. I must admit that CP does have a nice niche of friends from all walks of life. Each was broken up into 3 groups, one for each grade level that was going to participate. It was only the Junior high school that was getting involved in this. I had some mixed reviews of from the participants, but I think they were setting their standards quite high for people who were learning a foreign language and are only in their first years of learning it. But I think the students overall did a wonderful job, and much better than I expected. Only one of the participants didn’t show up, so I had to fill in for him. But that was fine. I really got closer with the other English teachers at the school since they were the only ones at the school working on this project. We did everything on our own for it. So afterwards, I just hung around and did some Japanese coursework and to study from the Genki workbook. I was surprised to know that some of the Japanese language teachers didn’t know some of the rules that we had learned in the Japanese classes at Grossmont. I was asking some of them about it when we were walking to the Italian restaurant named Biffi that was underground and very near to the train station. The food was pretty good, small but surprisingly enough for me. It was possibly because I wasn’t that hungry though.

I learned that 3 teachers will be leaving, and it’s sad for me. It’s the two teachers that sit right in front of me and ones that I have close relationships with. They are the ones that I have conversations with all the time, and I could tell that it was tearing one of them apart. During dinner she had the look of melancholy. The third individual was cheery and glad to be leaving after being at the school for four years. Its ok, I don’t think that she will be missed by much of the staff because she wasn’t one of the most cooperative individuals at the school. But I have nothing against her because she’s actually helped me a lot in my classes. Not the most friendliest of people, but able to get her shit done, which I liked and appreciated. She’s opened up to me a little now and has started to talk to me more, but it’s a shame that it will only be for another month, and then she’ll be gone. Actually I only have one more oral communication class with her. And it will be this Tuesday. I don’t think that I even have any classes in March to teach. I have only a limited amount of responsibilities in March. Like the graduation ceremony on the first, and speech contest on the twelfth. I was told by my department chair that I do have classes in March, but she couldn’t specify which classes I have. At least not yet.

Afterwards, I had some tea with another teacher. The 10th grade department chair in fact. I would consider the person I have the best relationship at the school and one of the reasons that I’m working there in the first place. It was a great conversation that I haven’t had in a long time. It was really something that I have missed. Her English is almost perfect, and it’s great to have a conversation with her. She’s also one of the smartest people that I’ve known. She catches on pretty quick, and I mean really quick. She was starting to scare the hell out of me in fact. I’m also happy that I was invited to her wedding next week. I think that will be fun for me to attend. I think that it will be a wonderful ceremony and that she’s got some challenges in front of her. But I wish her the best of luck, she told me that only the best teachers get the hardest classes, so that would mean she’s an incredible teacher.

special training session

My plan worked perfectly and I was able to get a decent enough sleep for today’s classes. I mean I was a bit tired by the end, but that’s usual. I only had two classes for the day, so it wasn’t a big stretch for me and in both classes I didn’t have to do much. The first 8th grade class was easy because they were just writing the introduction and conclusion to their speeches which is just adding a sentence or two to their composition. But we made each student rewrite their speech, so their writing took the whole period. We had them speak at the end of class just to present the introduction and the conclusion. We actually got through the whole class, which was nice.

The 11th graders today just had their movie report speeches to give. It was their final exam for the oral communication class. We finished a bit early and I thought that they would be able to do a better job, but I’m not sure why they weren’t able to do so. It could be the lack of preparation, or just the level of difficulty. I mean the assignment itself wasn’t too challenging, but the students took it upon themselves to make it more difficult. They would get too in depth with the information and just have too much to memorize, when we really didn’t require them to. I think overall they scored well, even though I felt they could do better, judging from the last performances.

After school, I hung around a little bit for a “special training session.” All I was required to do was just to listen to the 8th graders give their speeches. It was good because I was chosen to be a judge at the Speech Contest. I heard the student’s speeches and corrected them accordingly. I think they all will do a fine job. I mean they have to memorize it next week for their final exam. The speech contest isn’t for another month away, so they will have plenty of time and preparation for that. I think they will be wonderful because of all the time we have spent for them to practice and get them into a position for them to do well. Then I left abruptly. I just felt like I needed to go home a bit early, I didn’t know why. I was getting a bit tired and feeling a bit ill.

Japan's 3rd International Airport

The whole good night’s rest crap didn’t work as well as I planned. I couldn’t go to sleep till around 4:30-5am because I’m just not on my regular pattern. So I only got like an hour or two of sleep. My alarm woke me up at 7:30am, but then I stayed awake because they are doing construction near my house. I mean like really near my house and it’s loud as hell. They are still doing it as I’m typing this, it sucks ass.

I’ve been reading a lot of news today and learned that Japan just opened its 3rd international airport in Nagoya. I was like where the hell did that come from. It’s made on top of reclaimed land and is entirely environmental friendly. I think it’s really remarkable that they make everything on reclaimed land. But that it functions very well and becomes a prime area for business (e.g. odaiba where Fuji TV broadcasts, and where expensive ass hotels are). It’s quite interesting of all the things that I’ve been reading for a bit. It’s opened my eyes a bit more and I’ve been able to see things differently. I enjoy reading about things and it’s helping me in my thought processes.

Earthquake shakes Tokyo

This was the second Earthquake that I felt within the week and the third this month. How crazy is that? Today’s Earthquake was kinda big; it measured 5.4 on the Richter scale and an intensity level of 5 on the Japanese scale. It was while I was sleeping, so that could have been around the morning till the mid-afternoon. But I was still sleeping so who knows. It wasn’t that bad, it woke me up for like a minute, then I went back to sleep. I decided that I live far enough inland that a tsunami would not take my house away. So I have ruled out that a tsunami is a factor in my safety if there were to be a huge Earthquake that rocks the area. Japan is expecting a really big Earthquake to happen sometime between now and the 2020 since there hasn’t been one to hit the area in awhile. So I’m always on alert. I’ve got enough food and water to last a week or so. And enough gear to tough it, at least for a little while. But I think that brings the total amount of Earthquakes in Japan to about 6.

On another note, I prepared for one of my private English lessons. She had cancelled out on me last week, which really wasn’t a bummer since I wasn’t prepared to do it, but it would have been nice to know earlier so I could have gone on a vacation of some sort, which in fact I should have done this week. If it wasn’t for the bad experience I had in Chinatown I think I would be out and about more. But I’ll be more reserve about things for the time being. I had called her to tell her that I’d be late, but I actually arrived on time and she was the one who arrived late. I think that was weird how that worked out. We went to Mister Donut again, but this time we only ordered drinks. I got a vanilla milk shake, but I think that made me sick. The lesson went pretty well, and I can see that she’s making improvements, but it’s a little difficult for her to make things up on the spot. But I think with a little more practice she’ll be able to do it. We talked for about 2 hours, but I only charged her for one, but in the end, she stiffed me. I didn’t get paid. I’m not sure how that worked out, but we just got up and left and went our separate ways. It was her father’s birthday today, so she could be saving up the cash to get her father a gift and that she’ll pay me next week. Which I think that might happen, since she was just paid yesterday. That’s why the lesson was cancelled last week.

I went to grab dinner at Dennys by Totsuka station. It’s a nice little place, with nice servers. I actually started to understand the Japanese that they are using when they take my order. It only took 7 months, but now I’m starting to get it. So I ordered something tempura and a soba set. It was pretty appetizing and enough to fill me up. But at this time, I was starting to feel really sick. And being the idiot that I am, I wanted to walk it off. I walked home from Totsuka station. I had previously estimated that it would take about 45 minutes to 1 hour to get to my house from Totsuka station, but I was wrong, I took only around 30-40 minutes which makes my house equidistant from all the nearest stations. All the train stations are within 35 minutes away from my house, which sucks since no matter what it would take me that long to get home, no matter which way I went, but still nice to know.

After a shower, I went back online and decided to go into a chat room. I haven’t done that in a long ass time, so it felt good even though it was a bit weird. I just joined a new group on MSN. I was talking to a bunch of people and they seem very nice and pretty chill. Most of which are learning Japanese or are Japanese learning English. Their English level is pretty high I think and it’s really expanding my mind about Japanese and their culture for learning the English language. I was talking to some of the hosts and a guy from Germany. He was cool until he pissed off the host, I tried to cool the situation down, but he split and I ended up having a conversation in Japanese, which was pretty cool. But that didn’t end till around 3:30am. Then I tried to go to sleep because I wanted to get up at 7:30am so I could get back on my regular sleeping pattern. I figure that if I don’t get enough sleep, I’ll want to get sleep when it’s my regular sleeping time, basically just deprive myself enough sleep so I could get a good night’s rest.

Paid FedEx

I finally paid a bill that I had received from FedEx today. I had to pay by credit card because I didn’t know how else to pay. It actually is from a few months back, well actually more around the time when I first got my working visa. Since I didn’t have any money or even a bank account at the time, I couldn’t pay. So I asked them to do something else and send it back to the person sending me the package, but it turns out that it was impossible, so they sent it back to me. Fortunately for me, the situation has changed and I have money now and am able to pay. Confusing matter that I’m glad is over with.

Other than nothing exciting happened. I just went back into my room and just chilled there. I worked on my website to add new stuff to it, and I’m about to release an updated version included with an English page. I’m looking for a new host since the one I used to have started charging and kicked me off. I still have the spymac host, but lost my shyper. I’m looking at freespaces for it, but for some reason it isn’t as appealing as the others. So, I’m still doing some digging around to see what I could find and still working on some things that will take a little more time before I really unveil my new website. I’d like to add a lot more stuff to make it more interactive and educational. Plus you could learn all the things that you never really wanted to know about me. Just need to decide what to include into it. If anyone knows of any good web hosts that are free and offer at least 100 megabytes of space and at least 10 gigabytes of bandwidth a month, let me know. It’s a pretty tough criterion to mold to, but I’ve found a few and I know that there are many more out there, but many of them have too many ads. Oh yeah, no ads too. Shyper didn’t have any and was the best at the time since it offered way more than I needed, but then they got rid of their free service and now charge way more than they had originally when they first got started. Looks like they got money hungry after all. Freespaces is the best right now because I could always ask for more bandwidth and space later, but they start you off with something very low. And freespaces doesn’t sound so appealing either, so looking for a cool name. Help if you can.

Valentines' Day

I hadn’t done anything in a while, and I wasn’t really planning to either. I spent another day in front of my computer, but at least I was more productive today than usual. I have been working on my flash cards for my Japanese improvement. I’m almost about to finish it, I mean the first to two books. It has taken a lot of time and I hope to have learned it all by the next week or so. At least get a good jump on it.

I have a list of things that I need to take care of this week, but it appears that I won’t be able to finish all of them or even get a good start. This week hasn’t turned out like last week when I was able to finish everything. I’ve been more distracted this week as it seems. I’m really on vacation mode even though I haven’t done much. I’m not sure what to do at the start of the next week either since I don’t have any plan for the 10th graders of if anything will be changing at all. I really haven’t prepared anything for them if I have to teach them anything, which I believe that I will have to.

So this year, I spent the holiday by myself, but it’s not as bad or as poor as it sounds. I really enjoyed it. I was watching a movie today while I was making dinner. I watched 50 First Dates. It was an enjoyable movie that I’ve seen a few times already, but it’s still nice. It hasn’t lost its luster yet. Actually it was more around lunch time. At dinner time, I was watching Fuji TV and SMAP X SMAP. I think that show really is awesome. After that I watched a little bit of Chinese language study and then Eigo De Shabera- Nighto. It wasn’t that bad this week and it is encouraging for others to learn and speak English and to watch others struggle. So, I’m glad that there are programs on TV that are out for the improvement of society, even though it’s not top notch, it’s better than nothing. I’ve been having a lot of trouble sleeping lately. I’m not really sure why, I mean I went to bed around 2am, but couldn’t sleep until around 4:30am. It was incredibly hot last night too, well under all the layers of blankets that I have, I’m sure it was much colder outside.

Dinner with some teachers

I think it was nice to be invited by some of my co-workers to their house and to enjoy dinner together. I mean they are very nice people and are interesting people. This was the only thing on the agenda for today, so I lounged until then. I mean I didn’t get up till around 3pm today, which only gave me about an hour and half to get ready and go.

The trip didn’t take as long as I thought it would, since they live near the Motosumiyoshi station on the Tokyu Toyoko line. I arrived just at 6pm when they asked me to be at the station. One of my co-workers was already waiting, and told me that the other teachers would be late by 4 minutes. I thought that was kind of precise, but in fact they were late by 6 minutes. We then went to a little grocery shop to get something to drink for everyone, and then went to their house. I mean it literally is one minute away from the station. For me when I get to Hongodai station, it takes one minute to get out of the station.

They have a nice little apartment. I think I have more space in my room than they did in theirs, but they had bigger furniture than I do, so I really couldn’t tell. But I think it’s a typical Japanese apartment…small. It’s nice and cozy and later I found out that all their decorations and things are all from gifts. I mean their wedding gifts. Even the dishes we were using for our dinner. The menu for the evening was oden, which is a traditional Japanese food. I’ve had it before at one of my school’s festivals. Mrs. K also made onigiri – rice balls. They offered some tea and crackers afterwards as we were watching a historical drama on NHK.

I think this was when we all really started talking to each other. One of the teachers that was there is really trying to start to learn to speak English. And she wants me to teach her. So we had a little conversation, something that I’ve noticed is that they change from topic to topic without letting you know. I mean they just jump around, but it’s not that way in Japanese, but I’ve noticed that a lot of people do it. That’s something I’ll need to keep in mind. We started to talk about what our dream was, and I’ve learned a little about the people I work with. I mean I don’t even know all of their first names. But, Mr. K wants to have a big house with a garden and pool somewhere in Germany or Switzerland. You could tell that he likes alcohol. Mrs. K and Ms. Tmura wanted to be a teacher when they were young. Since they have now achieved their goal, Ms. Tmura wants to have a small dog. She struggles to answer that question because for them, after they achieve their dream, they don’t know what’s next. Ms. Tguchi wants to travel around the world and speak to many people in English… like in France. But we pointed out to her that they don’t speak English in France, they speak French and despise English. She was kinda shocked to hear it.

We ended the evening around 10pm because they had work the next day, on Valentines and I had a day off, or a week off. So I wasn’t in a hurry or anything. I had given them their gift at the station, and told Mrs. K that her cooking was good, despite of what the boss says. Which really gets me to think why she was saying that Mrs. K’s cooking was horrible. I’m really surprised. I hoped they like their gift. When I got home, I started talking to BH. I haven’t talked to her in a long while, and I could tell that she had left her MSN on. We went into a lengthy conversation. One that didn’t end for me until 7am. I hope that she had seen something that I had seen while I was reading the book on the train. Something finally made sense to me about goal setting and how to get what I want. I’m really enjoying my train rides because of the things that I’m learning while I go from place to place.

Meeting in Shibuya

I finally left the house today, again. Even after the run in yesterday, I can’t exclude myself from society too long. I had an appointment to meet one of my friends that I met at Grossmont. I think this was the beginning of when my sleeping patterns got really messed up and I’ve been staying up way too late. I mean I didn’t get up till the afternoon today. And I mean around 2pm when the temperature is starting to get cold. As you can clearly see, much of my day is wasted. And since I needed to meet my friend at 5pm at Shibuya I had to leave by 3pm to get there on time.

I managed to get ready and go on time and arrived there a little early even. I got lucky and jumped onto the limited express trains to Shibuya on the Tokyu Toyoko line. I enjoyed a lot of reading on the way, which is a great way to spend my time I think.

The first thing that we did was go to dinner. I haven’t seen this person in a long time, partly because I’ve been avoiding them, but I figure it’s a new year and maybe things have changed. I found out that she isn’t as bad as I originally thought, still sort of bad, but tolerable. She’s the typical Japanese youngster that loves to drink and smoke, and spend money like there’s no tomorrow. I mean we only had a little to eat and one drink each and the bill was about $40. I guess it was kinda posh. We only stayed there for like an hour or so and then moved onto another place to drink. It was Nijiya maru, I think it’s a more famous place. It certainly was impressive with the appearance and how things were set up. It was a little too enclosed for me and they had the heater on way high so it was really hot. We just ordered more drinks, and shared a plate of French fries. Not so bad, only about $25.

But that wasn’t enough, so we went to go Karaoke for another two hours till I needed to catch a train to go home. We went to one of those karaoke boxes, because she has a membership card that gave us another 5% off. I’m not sure if it really helped or not, but still a discount is better than nothing. I think I started to get bored after the first hour. I mean it was too much singing, and she’s not a great singer so it was a bit of a drag to have to sit there for two hours listening. I’m sure she had the same thoughts about me, since I was doing some Japanese songs that I haven’t tried before and I couldn’t read some of the Kanji so it was bad. After that concluded though, it was about another $20. But that wasn’t enough for her, so before we parted ways, she stopped off at Starbucks to get something. Just so you know, Starbucks in Japan is more of a rip-off than in the States. This is why, the prices are the same, but the largest size here is about the same as the small in the States.

Anyways, I enjoyed another reading session while I was going home. So that was nice. I didn’t get home till around midnight and then jumped on the computer.

Bryan's lesson of the day - NEVER go in public

Well I had to learn the hard way, but NEVER buy anything in Yokohama Chinatown. I found out why I stay home all the time and never leave. I like to have a simple life, it’s just so simple. Actually, I’m just venting because I’m a stupid shopper. But just so you don’t get conned too, don’t buy, just look. I don’t think I’ll ever go back into Chinatown again. Which I know is a lie, but at least I will stay as far away as I can.

Today started off normal though, I mean with the waking up in the afternoon and not doing anything for most of the day. Until I had the sudden urge to go out and do some exploring. I left kinda late and it was starting to get cold, but I still needed to eat dinner. So I decided that I would go to Ishikawa-cho because I haven’t been there in a little while and there are actually a lot of things to do around there that I no idea before. Even though it was a little too late to do any of those things, I still went and grabbed dinner there. I must have been in the area for like 3 hours in total, just walking around. I explored every corner of Chinatown, since it was Chinese New Year recently; I thought that they would do something special, which they didn’t. I mean the main temple in the center of Chinatown was closed but they did have an interesting display up. I walked down to Yamashita Park to get a picture of the Minato Mirai area…again. It was nice, but damn it was cold. I went back to bought some Coconut Milk Tapioca drink. It wasn’t too bad, but wasn’t worth the $3. I mean compared to San Diego Tapioca drinks. After that, I thought I would get something nice for some teachers that invited to me to their house on Sunday for dinner.

You know those things that you see at Sea World and in San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf, you could get rainbow designed characters written in a frame. That usually goes for around $20-30 in total. So I thought that wouldn’t be a bad gift to get a married couple that works at my school. Turns out that I wasn’t even close with the price. It was just a bad guess. I found out this after he started working on it and asked what I wanted on it. So partly it was his fault too. The first thing I asked was the price, which he didn’t reply to me. I didn’t see any sign posting any price and was wondering why, but I wouldn’t find that out till the end of course. I thought originally that it would be something that you could barter, which turns out you can. Well in my case at least. It was much smaller than the ones you could get in San Francisco or in Sea World, but just as nice I suppose. I was wondering why everyone who saw me and the person doing it was saying “okane mochi” which means rich person. At the very end I realized why they were saying that. When he finally finished, he revealed the price. I was right about the price being about $20-30, but it was actually that much for ONE CHARACTER! I had 3 characters and 2 additional drawings which cost $30 each, plus a frame which was $30. Talk about a really nice gift huh? The grand total was a little over $150. Talk about being a bad situation. This is where the lost in translation helps actually and hurts… Lucky for me, I was able to talk down the price and paid something that was incredibly cheaper that what he would have hoped, but way more than I was planning to spend this week. I walked away with the gift for 1/3 the price of the grand total. I really hope they like it because well, it caused me great pain to get it and well, I don’t really like great pain.

When I came home, I had to call the teachers just to make sure that we were going to meet, since it would be a shame if we didn’t. Mr. K picked up the phone and it seemed as if he didn’t know English anymore, and it didn’t really sound like him on the phone. I think things were lost in translation because I had heard that they had cancelled it because they didn’t have time. But they would call me when they did.
Turns out that when Mrs. K called me, they hadn’t figured out the time to meet yet. Not that they didn’t have time, just they didn’t know what time. And the people slated to go was going to change and two other teachers were coming. I felt like shit for a little bit, and after my shower I felt much better. Partly because I could feel my hands and limbs and it wasn’t that cold with the heater on. I think I pulled away with something that was nice for the K’s, but I’ll just have to take the bullet for the price. Still trying to save to make a trip back to the States and various other things. I mean I could totally afford to pay for it at full price, but I didn’t like the way he conducted business with me. So served him right and me too.

My parents were right about one thing, I’m going to have many challenges this year. That’s a fact and now I know it. I can tell by what my dad told me that what kinds of events are going to happen for me. It’s really going to stretch me to see what kind of character I’m made of. I can see that every difficulty has an opportunity and every opportunity has difficulties. But I’m sure this year will have a great share of difficulties just from what has already happened this week. It will really test my endurance and strength just to see if I could keep up. I mean I had both of my Private English lessons cancelled in one week and things seem to have been falling apart on me lately. I’m not sure if it’s my teaching ability or just shit happens. I think for the most part, it’s just shit happening because one of them has a fever and her phone broke. The other hasn’t given me a reason yet, but asked me to do it next Wednesday. I think I’m just costing her too much money. Well, we’ll see how things go. I hope for the better.

mom and sister's birthday

I seem to be on a streak of not doing anything. I spent today, much like yesterday. But I didn’t talk to anyone; I just watched a lot of TV too. I haven’t done that in awhile. I’ve been so bad about that, so I think I’ve got to work on a plan to go out and do some exploring.

Later in the evening I was working on a plan to do things that I haven’t done. I looked at some of those brochures that I got for RW when he was here on his trip and it turned out that I haven’t done a lot of those things either. I mean there are places that he’s been to that I haven’t. He’s been to Meiji-Jingu shrine, which is Japan’s biggest and most precious. Even though I’ve been to the area a lot, I just never have been inside, I’ve been to the gateway to the shrine, just never went in.

I have wanted to prepare tomorrow’s lesson for MO, but I’ve been lazy to do even that. I have a majority of that stuff done already; I just need to organize it better and stuff. I mean the idea has been set for the first 7 lessons or so. And for my other lessons for “A” are fairly easy. I think I’ve got to kick it up a notch to make it more interesting even though she missed the lesson for this week. We’ll have to see how things go later. Later in the evening though, I had received some phone calls, which isn’t usual. I got one from a stranger calling the wrong number and 3 from a teacher that I’m supposed to meet and have dinner at her house. I was in the other room so I didn’t hear it, but I’m sure she’ll call back again tonight. I got an e-mail from MO’s mom letting me know that MO has a fever and has to cancel the lesson for tomorrow. Therefore, I didn’t have any English lessons for this week. If I would have known that earlier, I might have gone on an excursion somewhere far, but I highly doubt it. I’ve really got to get it together and at the very least be productive. I haven’t even been studying Japanese or reading any of my other books. I was thinking about just jumping on the train to read the books and don’t go anywhere in particular, just to be on the train and read.

Chinese New Year

I spent today doing nothing. I didn’t realize that it was Chinese New Year, or I probably would have gone to Chinatown, because they would have something interesting to see. I missed a chance there; maybe I’ll go tomorrow to see if they did anything with the area. I didn’t get up out of bed till around 2pm, so half of it was already wasted. I found that something really stinks in my refrigerator, and I can’t figure out what it is, but I’ve got to find it soon. I don’t have much in there, but I think I need to get rid of everything, just to get rid of the smell and I need to do some cleaning anyways.

I talked to some people that I haven’t talked to in a long time. There was a time when I used to go into chat rooms and just talk to people, which is something I should probably start again because I have all this time on my hands. But we haven’t talked for about 3 years, but she wanted to wish me a happy new year. So I did the same and we started talking again and getting reacquainted with each other. It was actually a very good conversation. I talked to TTki for a little bit about buying DVDs and such. I want to get the west wing DVD set for the first four seasons and looking for the best price. I also want to get October Sky too. That was such a good movie. I found that Amazon has the best prices that I found, but I didn’t look at too many places, since TTki and I only know of a few.

I talked with AWs and ACk today too, as well as my hideous stalker. I know that’s not very nice of me to say. But I figure that ignoring her for the rest of my life wasn’t cool of me either. So I think it’s a new year now, I should give everyone a new chance to mess things up and for me to be mad and discriminate for another year. At least I’m nice enough to give them a chance. BHu has also contacted me recently too and we have decided to become friends again. I think that’s a good way to start the year, giving everyone equal opportunity and for me to erase any good and bad thing. People change and I’ll see what has and what hasn’t, in others and in me. Anyways, Happy New Year!

Debate Test Day

I had left to get to work on time today. Since I began reading the book I’ve been reading, I have started to get a different perspective on my life and the direction that I’m taking. It also has me reflecting on the path that I’ve been on previously too. I think that since I’ve been on both, I’ve got a better background to where I want to go. I still have a long way to go and many more hours of work, blood, sweat, and tears to go through. I realize that I’m only at the beginning and have a really really long way to go. I think that at least the picture is clearer for me. I think that helped me to get through today too. I think that from the first class that we had, it was starting off rocky.

The 9th grade class was a bit out of it today, but not in the sense of being spaced out, they were just chatty. That’s unusual for this class because they normally just sit there, without any response or signs of life. They were incredibly chatty today more than any other time before. It was difficult to get them focused on what the topic of the day was. We were just finishing up on food and how to order and things, since they will be going to Santa Barbara really really soon. It’s in about 2 weeks and right after finals. So they will almost be finished with Junior High School. It just dawned on me now that all this is happening.

My 10th grade classes for the debate. They knew that they had to memorize it and it was incredibly easy, so easy in fact that no one failed. I wouldn’t think that any of them would fail anyways, but I didn’t require much from them especially from what they’ve had to do before.

Yuri: In this class, since it was the first time that I’m giving a test, the boss of the 10th grade oral department came in a helped a little bit. I could understand why she worried. It’s not that she worried about me, but more so about the other teacher. I’ll have to admit, she makes new teacher mistakes and she’s a whale by nature. She’s incredibly beautiful and looks young although she probably isn’t as young as she looks. But she gets in the way of the instructions to the students. I’m not sure if she in fact understands the instructions. We went to this class 10 minutes early to start just to make sure that we would have enough time to finish the exam on time. But eventually we started on time. Only on time, because the students weren’t ready to go yet. It’s the responsibility of the Japanese English teacher to assist me in my lesson, but she gets in the way by actually helping the students in a way that they are the customers. Her job at this point was to get them ready and in their seat so we could start the class and the test. It took about 10 minutes of the students complaining about the test that they’ve known about for 2 months before we even got started with filling all the papers and evaluation sheets.

Luckily the 10th grade oral department chair came in a helped the process along. This is the highest level 10th grade class, but by far one of the most immature. They have the ability to do what I asked them to do and since it was incredibly too easy, I didn’t expect that much bickering about it. But after I got things going, it was going fine. I’m not sure how the other teacher was grading her papers, but I was able to do it in the front of the room, while she was in the back. I’m sure during the day; I might have pissed a few people off. Even knowing this, I did it anyways. After the first group of students went, the second group hadn’t gotten their papers ready, this took another 5-10 minutes of class, and I wasn’t going to have enough time to get all the students to finish, so I made the last group organize their papers too. After all that wasted time, they had mixed up their speaking order and since they didn’t follow my directions by writing their name in English, I wasn’t able to correct their papers. So I had mixed up their scores, meaning I was grading the wrong people. It was ridiculous that they didn’t follow simple directions, and after all that wasted time trying to figure it out, they got it wrong. This was after the department chair left too. And to top everything off, there was an EARTHQUAKE right in the middle of the test. I realized at this point, I wasn’t prepared to handle and earthquake right in the middle of testing. Fortunately it wasn’t a horrible one or a big one. It was just enough to shake up the building and ruin the rhythm of my class. Over the past 5 weeks or so, this has been the only class that has been giving me trouble. Not so much from the students, but from the help. We ended the class 5 minutes over and there were still looming problems that would have to be solved out of class.

Kiku: in this class, things went so smooth. Everything went like clockwork. It just ticked and everything was fine. There wasn’t a single problem with the instructions that I gave, which was the exact same from the first class. They all understood what I wanted, they knew it was a test and they were ready for it. This is one of the lowest level classes, but they performed at a higher level than the last class. They seemed as if they were more prepared to go than the last class too. My help in this class has more experience as well, but she can be described as “unfriendly” sometimes. But she knows how to do her job. The only bad comment I would make about this class was that they organized in groups quite slow, but I think that’s because they were processing what I was talking about. We started later and ended earlier with the same instructions and everything. I’ll give the other class some credit that this class is smaller, but still.

Fuji: This is a big class, one of the most problematic classes in the entire school, but today, I didn’t have a single problem. Everything went perfectly. Once again, everything worked out fine because I knew that the plan wasn’t flawed, and I gave enough preparation to the students that they were not only confident enough to speak, but to do it well. I only had a few instances the whole day that I heard Japanese-English meaning saying English words with a Japanese tone. I mean all the students really sounded like they were speaking English. Some of the students during the last oral test decided to take a zero than to speak, so I think we’ve made some improvements. Even though this class was larger than the last and about the same as the first 10th grade class, we finished early. That’s how smooth it was.

Ran: This class was really on top of things. Since the 10th grade teacher in this class had saw how I organized the first class, she had the girls already grouped up in the correct order and explained everything before I even got there. That’s how on top of the ball she was. It went smoothly because they were prepared. They are a higher level class too in a sense that they understand and have the ability to do what is necessary, but I think they don’t provide the creativity that the Kiku class has. I only had a few students do poorly in this class, which was the bad part. I would have hoped that they did better, but it is what it is.

All in all, I think today went pretty well, even with the problems in the Yuri class. The test was a success, and it did sound like they were really debating. They have room for improvement, but then again, it’s a foreign language. If my Japanese teacher at Grossmont told me I had to debate my classmates in Japanese, I’d laugh at her because that would be incredibly impossible. I’d probably do worse than my students did in English. So they did well. I would have hoped for more, but you can’t expect that to happen over night or even in a process of 6 weeks. It’s only one day a week, which isn’t enough focus on the oral communication to be able to be effective. Anyways, that’s a whole another issue.

Afterwards, I just chilled out in the office. Since I was technically on vacation already, I didn’t end up leaving till around 7pm. I studied up to 100 kanji characters now. At least I can write them all and know most of their pronunciations. Each Chinese character has three and sometimes more ways to pronounce it. That makes learning the language tough. As it was getting time to leave, one of the teachers invited me to their house for dinner; actually it was the teachers that are married to each other. I thought that was pretty cool, it’s not the first invitation, but the first that I’m going to take. I’ve been warned by the boss that her cooking sucks though, it was quite funny and she told me that I get to try it now and judge for myself. She says it’s safe because other teachers will be eating it too, but that doesn’t mean anything in reality.

I also asked a teacher a question that no department could answer. I asked two teachers in the science department, a history teacher, an English teacher, a math teacher, and a Japanese language teacher about something that I noticed on the calendar they had given to all the teachers as a New Years gift. But they couldn’t answer it, but after about 10 minutes we all came to the conclusion of what it could be. But not a, for sure, reason what it meant. It was about a kanji character next to the month.

Things were better today

I mean I didn’t get to sleep in too late since I actually had work today. The first day of work in February, this isn’t bad since it’s the second week of the month. My first class was 3rd period starting around 10 minutes before 11am. It was a 7th grade class, one of the higher levels so it wasn’t that bad. They at times can be quite loud, but what else would you expect from them? What we did in class today was an interview practice. We had the students get into 6 groups of 5 people and each student plus myself, were given a piece of paper that we had to ask questions and write down the answers. It would list things that you would ask anyone you would meet for the first time. Like what are your hobbies, where are you from, what kind of Japanese food do you like, who’s your favorite actor or actress? Things like that. There were about 6 questions that you had to ask and answer in a time limit of one minute. We would go at this with group a and group b, then we would have group b rotate, so that they have new partners each time. And each time, the time limit would be decreased and they would have to do it 5-10 seconds faster. We were trying to improve their fluency for the English Fun Faire coming up. We went at it till the last 10 minutes in class and then we would ask around and see who matched our own answers and write down their name. It was a fun activity and I think they are prepared enough for the fun faire.

For our 4th period class we had the 8th graders. They are quite an amusing bunch. We had them work on their speech introductions and conclusions since the next class we have with them will be the test. Their test consists of memorizing their speech for the speech contest. I’ve gotten many students who want me to help them with their speeches so they could win. We just did a little bit to introduce the topic to them and then we just let them go. It was extremely quiet in this class, which is really not typical at all. They had to rewrite their entire speech onto another piece of paper so that took a lot of time. With the remaining 10 minutes in class, we had some students go up to the front of the room and give their introductions and their conclusion. It was funny sounding because it sounded so incomplete.

The 5th period 8th grade class was much the same thing, but they were very chatty. They are the troublemaker class, which is a little unsettling since we used to begin the day with this class, and now we end the day with this class. We meaning me and CP. Well actually, I used to begin the day with this class, but now we both end the day with this class. The assignment was the same, they just had to prepare for their speeches and in this class we had about half the class speak before time was up.

I hung around school till pretty late today because I hadn’t worked all month and wanted to be available to the teachers who needed some last minute help with the speeches or things for the upcoming finals. I did a lot of studying of Japanese today starting with kanji. I studied about 50 kanji today and now beginning the review of those 50 that I started before. They probably aren’t the most common, but it’s a good start to get to know the other characters. I don’t think that it’s necessarily a bad thing that I’m using the company time to study for myself because I’m available for the other teachers if they need help, otherwise I’d just leave. So it’s a little weird, but at least I get a lot of help from the other teachers around me as well. I think that’s a good balance for the both of us.

Today is a bad day, that's about it

I think that’s the simplest ways I could express it. I had planned to do something today, but that was delayed because of some news I had heard from my sister around the time I woke up. My parents warned me of some challenges that are coming after me in 2005, and I guess here it is. I should have guessed that it would have come back to get me, and here it is. It was a decision I made in business about 4 years ago. Something I’ve been trying to remedy since then and now the shit has hit the fan. Obviously it was a poor decision on my part and I should have judged the situation in the large scale and admitted defeat, or should have been lazy and not go, but all that doesn’t matter now. I won’t get into too much detail about it here, since it’s more of a professional problem, but it’s going to ruin me for the next several years.

In a way, I’m 100% pissed off, but still calm and know that everything is going to be ok. At first I felt it was futile to fight back, but now I realize that if it takes every last ounce of energy in my body, I’m going to fight and damn it, I’m going to win. They pulled the dirtiest little trick and now I’m pissed. It will be my life’s focus to fight this company and to win. I will give you a few details so that you’re not completely in the dark. And I guess that admitting my mistakes makes me more human although I don’t like to show it, it’s only natural that I do, since I am human you know. I had bought something from a company, a service of some sort and had changed my mind about it and cancelled it, at least did everything at that time to cancel it. But it wasn’t cancelled. In fact I’m still being charged for it even after 4 years. I’m sure you must think that I’m incredibly stupid for not doing something sooner, but to be honest with you, I have. I’ve been doing a lot of research just to hunt them down. But they keep on changing their company names and doing bad business. Well, the news that I heard this morning was that they are threatening to ruin my credit if I don’t pay more money to them. Sounds like a nice company huh? Well, that pissed me off, so I decided today that I might have to take legal action against them. I’m formulating my plot as I type this to utterly destroy this company and all the people working for them. You might think that this is something of a joke and that I’m just overreacting to something that I really can’t do anything about, but you better believe that I can and I WILL. I’m starting to pick apart each detail and mistake that they have made in the past 4 years. They stand by their decisions against people and I’ve read stories and it’s quite similar to mine, so obviously I’m not alone on this. But I want to find a way to put an end to it once and for all. I’m not going to kill the people or anything that would be too easy. They in fact need to suffer just as much as everyone they have done business with.

That took the majority of the day, so I had to put off what I really wanted to do. I wanted to go to Ofuna station and to Yamada denki to see how much it would cost me to upgrade my wireless internet card. I didn’t get the chance to go until around 8pm, which meant I didn’t have any food till then too. So I arrived there around 8:30pm and checked out the price. It was only $80 for the NIC, which is pretty expensive in my eyes. Since the one I have now still works, I think I’ll just have to stick with it, even though it’s slow and sometimes doesn’t work. There’s nothing I could really do about that. I grabbed dinner at Yoshinoya again, but ordered something that I haven’t ordered there before. Gyu-curry rice. It was ok, nothing special and then after dinner I spent another 30 minutes walking home. It was nice to at the very least be getting some exercise. I think it’s good for my health even though I feel myself getting heavier. It’s not muscle mass either. Then when I got home, I started making this entry. I really didn’t accomplish all that I had hoped to this week like planning my vacation for next week, but it looks like I might have more challenges than I ever wanted or ever hoped for. I guess the test will be how I take care of it while I’m living in Japan and I’m sure a few lawsuits are in order as well. This will be spectacular.

Exploring Kannai

I decided to get off my lazy ass today and do something. I needed to do a bunch of things today to get caught up on my goals for the week. So there weren’t that many things on my list to do since I’ve taken care of most of them. Something I’m quite proud of since I’ve been really unmotivated recently. But I wanted to locate the travel agency so I could talk to them about the prices for where I would want to go and all the things necessary for me to do so. I found that the nearest IACE travel agency was near the Isezaki Mall by Kannai station. Since that isn’t very far and I needed to go there to get some clothes hangers and shop for some other stuff. I thought I could get a bunch of birds with one stone, since they are all in the same area. I thought that was quite convenient.

I did some laundry before I left and picked up some lunch while that was all happening. I was watching a bit of TV too and the weird part was that I could actually understand what was going on. I would even laugh when there was something funny. I mean I didn’t understand what they were saying 100% but at least I could guess what was going on. That’s good enough for me right now since I have failed to study Japanese as much as I would have hoped this week. I need to get back to that tomorrow to make sure I meet my goals for the week.

After that I took off towards the late afternoon, so I knew it would be cold I was tempted to not go, but decided that it was in my best interest to go. So off I went walking to Hongodai station and then ended at Kannai station. I’ve been to this mall area before, but really haven’t been down the whole street. My main focus was to find this travel agency since it would be important to know where it was for when I decided to leave Japan, I would already have a relationship with the company and I could trust them to get me home. But the problem was finding the place. I mean I walked down the whole length of the entire street, almost. At least it felt like it. It was beginning to get a little dark. I found another shopping street area that I’ve seen in other cities in Japan. I didn’t know that Yokohama had one. It is called Yokohamabashi. Another thing that I noticed is that the area gets a little bit unfriendly after the sun sets. Well maybe unfriendly wouldn’t be the right term, it’s more a bit eerie. You get a completely different feel that during the day. I mean I had African-American individuals trying to pass out flyers to me, I’m assuming they are for “gentlemen clubs” and they would be chasing me down the length of a block. They would only chase me down the length of one block because he had a friend on the next block that would chase me around.

They are dedicated to their work, to say the least and I was running for most of the time. I couldn’t scare them off with English since I’m pretty sure they spoke English too. That usually works with the regular Japanese people who pass out flyers and advertisements, but in this case I just had to run. So as I was running I was looking for the travel agency at the same time. I just couldn’t find it, but most of the time, I was just running. And since I had bought some stuff, my backpack was getting heavy and troublesome. I know now, not to go there at night. I think the area is pretty notorious for those joints since it wasn’t the cleanest area in Japan that I’ve been too, but it wasn’t the worst either. So just a warning to those of you out there, who are coming to Japan, be careful at night, unless you want to get friendly with some people, and I mean too friendly. The people will be a little pushy and they are the “get in your face” types too. To say the least, it was an adventure and a lesson learned about the area. No wonder none of my friends have ever taken me past that point in the mall. It is interesting there though, with the exception of all the running around I did. I think they have some nice stores that remind me of La Mesa Blvd. A nice feel and I noticed a lot of foreigners too. That was a bit weird for me, but shouldn’t be since Yokohama has the highest concentration of foreigners in Japan. But all this time I never knew where they were, but now I do. So I grabbed dinner before I went home, and then just chilled. I was thinking about watching a movie, but decided against that. I just finished up my laundry and cleaned up a little bit. Played some games till I decided I should go to sleep. Tomorrow will be the last day of my long boredom, which is a waste I didn’t realize that I had such a long break before I could have done something useful with the time. I doubt I’ll get this much time next year, but I should plan something out anyways.

Cooking Day + Love Actually

I had wanted to go to the immigration office today to pick up my multiple reentry permit, but I wanted to do some research online for the packages that were offered by the travel agencies, just to see if I was going to go on a trip or not. I think it’s pretty feasible to go on a trip to anywhere in Asia, at least for a couple of days. I’ve gotten a pretty good response from my friends to which places would be good to go to. I think that I haven’t really decided yet and looking at the visa situation. I should at the very least inform people at my work that I will be going that way if there is a huge disaster that they know where I’m at. I mean it’s a long hard process just to go traveling. I mean I want to know what kinds of things I need before I leave the country. If I make a mistake, I’d have to start the whole visa process over again and I think I could lose my status if I make a mistake. I’d like not to have that happen so I’m going to take as many precautions as possible to prevent that from happening.

The research took much longer than I would have hoped and since my sister started talking to me I knew that I wouldn’t be able to go to immigration at all, which means that I could have missed my opportunity to go on a trip at all. I mean next week is Chinese New Year and there are holidays here in Japan too. I doubt that I would be able to figure out how to get to a travel agency and to be able to communicate with them to see if I could get the airline ticket to my destination. But I feel it would be a waste not to go anywhere. I mean I should at least do something with all this time off. It’s a rare thing to have in Japan, days off. I think I’ve spent enough of it doing nothing, so I should get out there and do something that I haven’t done before. But then again, I need to make sure that everyone is squared away too.

Today, instead of going out to eat, I cooked for myself. I’m quite proud of that. It was actually pretty good too, and I guess all the practice has actually paid off. My spaghetti actually tastes like spaghetti now. I made the perfect amount too just to have for dinner. But clean up was a pain, since my sink only has freezing cold water washing the dishes was a bit challenging. I mean I was washing my pan that had some oil in it and it froze the oil in the pan… I then had to reheat the pan and scrap it off. Not that fun and left an oily residue everywhere. So, I think I’ll just wait for the spring to cook again. I think at least by then, the freezing water won’t be so bad.

After dinner, I decided to watch a movie. The movie I chose to watch tonight was Love Actually. I’ve seen it before with my girlfriend at the time, and didn’t remember much about the movie. Everyone I talk to about it loved it. My sister loved it so much that she bought it. And even seeing it again today, I still don’t understand. What is it about that movie that makes it great? Am I just not paying attention? Do I not have a heart or something? I just don’t get it. I think it’s nice at some parts but the whole movie didn’t move me like it did with others. I thought it was a bit corny to be honest with you. I don’t know, I guess I need someone to explain it to me, since I’m just not getting it. Yeah, so someone please fill me in on what I’m missing about this movie. There were a lot of famous Celebrities in this movie, I mean a lot, which was a bit surprising for me, but cool.

Setsubun Festival - The coming of the spring season

Tonight is the annual festival of the vernal equinox. It’s the day right before the spring season, even though I had heard that February was the coldest month of the year. It’s like their groundhog’s day. Well, in America we like to gather around the TV and watch a groundhog tell us our future and how much horrible weather that we still have left before we can all blossom into the spring season. But in Japan, they have a more straightforward approach. They take beans and throw it at a devil. That’s right, it’s the bean throwing holiday, where everyone takes turns to throw beans at dad wearing a devil mask and run around their house. I really am looking forward to seeing this. I heard that people do this after dinner, so I will be out and about to witness this. I’m sure it will be quite an interesting affair. I will try to get some photos and videos, but it might be dark then. But let’s see what I could do.

I actually couldn’t get to see any bean throwing. I guess they don’t do it around here. At least not that I found. I guess I’ll have to try again next year. This time, I’ll have to be more ready to go out and hunt them down, since I won’t have a shot to see it again after that. But for the most part of the day, I just stayed at home. I did go pick up some gas for my heater and went to the grocery store to stock up on my water supply. So it wasn’t a complete waste of a day, although it was pretty close to it. I just wasted another day in front of my computer. But at least, I was able to receive a package today. It was from my sister, and the last package I suppose. Still a little incomplete, but what could I do about it. I just got my books so I could entertain myself on the long train rides to everywhere. Most of it is for work, which is something that would be incredibly helpful and others are just for personal reading. I’m going to try to get back on the old track with all my reading for the mind. It’s some stimulating materials and such. I also got some flashlights and a new neckpiece for the upcoming Chinese New Year. It’s always nice to get some things in the mail.

My second meeting with my first student

I really hadn’t done anything all day. I just get a lot of rest. I think I racked up about 12 hours, which I feel is a waste of a day, but I guess if I didn’t get up until then, I really needed it. I mean I still got up fairly early, 11am. I still could do a lot of things and now that I’m sleeping earlier I think it’s good too.

In the morning I pretty much focused on getting ready for the private lesson tonight. I was working on new material that I would introduce to her based on some things that I learned when I was back in San Diego. I think it would help her at least get a barring on what she wanted to talk to customers about. She works at a café in Yoyogi in Tokyo. So she also has a long trip to take to get to work. She has to get up at 6am every morning to go to work. And I thought I had it bad. Well at a time, I did, but now that things are slowing down for me, and I don’t have much to do. I guess I should just enjoy that I have a lot of time off. It’s probably better than working the usual 12 hours a day.

In the meanwhile, while I was working on my materials, I was talking to my family via MSN messenger. It’s so convenient to have a webcam setup so I could communicate with them via internet for free. For me it’s actually free too, since I don’t have to pay for internet service living where I’m living. Even though it cuts out sometimes, it’s free, it’s not like I could complain, but if I wanted to, and I could upgrade my hardware too. I think that I have decided to go back to San Diego during spring break. Right now it’s only tentative that I come back during that time, but I think it’s a definite that I do return to San Diego. I didn’t really want to go back, but I think the circumstances speak for themselves. My grandmother has been hospitalized for the past few days, and I’d like to see her again. Things that I didn’t take care of before leaving for Japan are being a pain to everyone else and since I should have taken care of it, I need to be responsible and spend the time and money to go back and take care of it. I’m not sure how long I will stay there; it will probably be for a week because I’ve got to get back to Japan to start work with the New Year. My sister was right; I shouldn’t stay too long that I get comfortable again. So that’s something that I need to plan for. How am I going to spend those days while I’m back in SD.

But then there was another thing about this month that I wanted to take care of. I think I’ve got some time to go traveling this month too, although it might only be a few days, I think I could afford to get to another country. I think it would probably be well worth it, even though I wouldn’t be able to spend that much time there. I’ve been taking a personal survey to see which place would be better to go. The choices are going to Hong Kong, Beijing, Seoul, Taipei, and Okinawa. At first I hadn’t been getting a lot of feed back, but today all of a sudden everyone started giving me input about where I should go. A lot of the reasons made sense and helped me get a better understanding of what I would be able to do while I was there. After I talked to some of my friends, the choices were cut down to Hong Kong, and Okinawa. The reasons being, I could visit Taipei with my friends being there, but that would also depend on when they will be going back to Taipei. Beijing would be thrown out because I could always go with one of my friends who spoke better Chinese than I to go there and I think it would be more enjoyable if I had a friend to go with. Seoul I heard was pretty cheap, but once again, I don’t speak the language and I don’t have any friends to go with there. Hong Kong would be a good choice because I do speak Cantonese and it will be such a short time that I really wouldn’t get into that much trouble. Everything is pretty inexpensive there and I think it would be a great experience. I could put that into the “I’ve been to another country” category. Since I’m all the way over here anyways, I wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to go there and experience it. At least all the food would be a good reminder of what I’m missing out on. Then again, Okinawa could be another good choice too. It’s only about a 2 hour plane ride away and I could get some more time to hang out and do stuff. I hear it’s always nice there and the ocean is clear blue. But then I was thinking that I could go there when my friends return to Japan and I would have someone to show me around. Plus I wouldn’t be going to another country… so I’m leaning towards going to Hong Kong. Now I just gotta find out how much and all the other important crap. Not to mention I have to get my multi-entry permit from immigration. That alone might bust my trip open and I wouldn’t be able to go there, but then I could just take a nice trip to somewhere in Japan that I haven’t been to like Okinawa or Nagano.

It was nice because I was talking to friends that I haven’t talked to in a really really long time. And it was nice to get their input. It was weird that I was talking to so many people and some that I haven’t talked to ever. So that was refreshing, I also caught up on some news that was going down in San Diego too. I’m not sure if I’ll have time to visit people while I’m there. I’ll probably be able to see them when I’m just out and about in San Diego though. But I need to take care of business before I just lounge and do nothing. I learned the lesson the hard way there. I hadn’t realized how much time I had used doing this, so I was almost late for my lesson.

I got to the station as fast as I could, and made it there early by five minutes. She wasn’t there waiting for me like last time, but I was waiting for her. It turned out that she was already there. Since last week we went to mister donut, this week we went to McDonalds. From one junk food joint to another, and at first it was loud, but then we found another place where we could do our lesson. I think she’s improved a lot, but hasn’t remembered the vocabulary words that I’ve taught her so far. I think vocabulary is an important part to learning language. It could help you piece together the conversation even without truly understanding what is being said. You’ve just got to put two and two together and presto, you’ve got a conversation. So, I was refreshing her memory on that. Then we started to work new material and how asking questions could change with the substitution of some subjects and objects and verbs. I think it’s really quite simple, but I haven’t really taught her how everything works together yet. I think that might be a little too advanced for now, so I’ll keep things simple. We didn’t end up leaving till around 8:30pm, which would have been 2 hours, but I let it slide since it was fun and she’s a friend of my landlord. I didn’t feel like I wanted to have to give that back in rent. And besides I’m not there to steal her hard earned cash, I want her to learn English and I think the money is a good motivator to ensure that she values the lessons and time she spent into studying it.

Then I came home and started working on my own lesson plans for me to learn Japanese. I need to make advanced improvement before I go back to school. I need to learn Japanese and be better at communicating it. I think the first night of my vacation, I was able to pick up a lot, but I lacked the vocabulary to apply it, so tonight I started studying a lot of vocabulary. I started from the back of the book and am not working towards the front to things that I already learned and know. So I’m learning new things and then reviewing the older stuff, just to make sure that I know it. I guess when I go back to San Diego and go to places; everyone would have expected me to be able to speak Japanese fluently. I wouldn’t want to disappoint them or myself for that matter. So now I’m making that effort to do so and be able to make strides to learning more and faster and better. I did this till I was tired and fell asleep; once again, it was early.