Long ass hike on Sunday, Mt. Takao

Well, I got up earlier than I wanted since I slept earlier than usual. At first, I woke up at 5am and then went back to sleep. I didn’t have to get up till around 7:15am, but I kept on waking up before my alarm. I got ready for breakfast and went down and had some pizza toast, which was very good. I really liked it. We finished off the salad and had a bit of avocado with it too. It was really nice to have a breakfast like that even though it was too early to eat. I think that I would need the energy today though since we were going to hike a mountain.

We left the house around 8am to Gotanda station. We then took the yamanote line to Shinjuku station and waited for the other teachers at the new Keio line. We bought lunch at a convenient store inside the station. The train ride from Shinjuku station to Takaosan guchi was about 50 minutes. There were a lot of people there that day too. Since it is golden week, many places were full. We took a little chair lift up the mountain part of the ways to get to the hiking trails. We decided to go with path number 3, and not really sure of the reason why. When we got to the top of the mountain, we had lunch. It was very nice to be eating up there and it was peaceful, even though there were a lot of people there. We found a good spot to sit down and eat. But this was only the beginning of the adventure.

From the top of the mountain, we decided to go look at the lake that is near by. Actually it was 5.2 kilometers away from that point after we had already trekked up hill for about 1.5 kilometers. We all agreed and it seemed like a nice thing to do and see. So we started walking in the direction of the lake and about 30 minutes later, we were at a post that said the lake was about 5.5 kilometers away. We actually went further even though we were following the path and all this was going up hill and it was steep too. We were all getting a bit tired at this point. But as we inched closer and closer, we became more excited. It was fun and tiring though. It took us through many areas where we could see plum trees, cedar trees and other forest areas. It was nice and peaceful.

We passed a bridge and got closer and it was fun going down hill too. I took a lot of pictures as we were walking to document the trip. It was fun. We finally ended up at the lake about 3 hours later. I believe that in the whole day, we probably walked about 9 kilometers up a few mountains and down them too. My knees were killing me, but my legs were ok at that time. We sat at the lake and talked for a few hours eating soft serve ice cream. It was bliss and something really cool to be doing for golden week.

On the train ride back, many teachers were dead tired. Some slept and I wanted to sleep, but I didn’t for some reason. I was getting tired though, but it was only the beginning of the trip ride home since I was the furthest away from home. It took me a long time to get home too. I decided to stop at Yokohama station to have dinner at the small little Chinese food place I like to go too, even though the food is average and a tad bit overpriced.

Then I went grocery shopping for tomorrow’s dinner. I wanted to make curry rice, so I needed to get the ingredients for the meal. It was starting to get heavy and I was really starting to tire since I was walking all day and now I had to carry things back home and walk. When I got home I showered and fell asleep.

Incredible Saturday

Well, I had one of the best news that I’ve heard in a long while. I got accepted into UCLA today. I was a bit shocked to learn of the news. It was fucking awesome though. I never thought that I would get into any of the top 4, but so far, I’ve gotten into two of them. UCLA was a big shocker for me and I was lucky to think about checking the acceptance letters online rather than wait in the mail since that wouldn’t happen.

But for a majority of the day, I was talking with my sisters and family. We are talking about the future construction of some rooms at my house and how we want it to look like. So far, the guy sounds legit and has given us some preliminary blue prints. So things are starting to materialize for me and my family. It’s really great and I’m happy things are turning around. Today seems like it will be a good day even though it’s raining out. I was also talking to YSki. She and I were talking about love and relationships and about school. We think we might cancel our trip to Hawaii this summer and go some other time when we all have time. Both of my friends, the one in Hawaii and San Diego will come back to Japan this summer, so it will be nice to see them all again.

My dad also wants to come in summer right before I leave, so we could all leave together and he could help me move. So I am thinking I might leave Japan late August now. I got accepted to UCLA and school doesn’t start till September 28th. But I’m waiting on my first choice now and then I’ll make up my calendar for the next two years.

I will cut my hair today too because it’s starting to get a little long and unrefined. I cut it, but it was only a trim. I thought that I did a poor job with it because I was in a rush, but I think it turned out ok since everyone here has hair that’s messed up as a style, so I would just fit right in. I think that it will be fine though.

I will also go to spend a night at another teacher’s house. She will make dinner and I will have dinner with her and her husband and then tomorrow we will hang out. I think things will be pretty fun this vacation break. I’m really looking forward to it.

So here’s the update. I left my house a bit late, but after my shower I felt really refreshed and it was good to be clean upon leaving. I felt really good today too, which was a good thing. I took the Tokaido line from Totsuka to Kawasaki and changed to the keihin-tohoku line from there to Omori station. At Omori station, I ran into a teacher that just recently left the school. I didn’t stop her and talk to her since she looked busy talking to her (just married) husband. I thought it was her, and it must have been since not many people look like her. It was weird and random to see her there, but she was going into the station and I was going out. I was waiting there for a few moments before Mr. Honda came and picked me up.

We had a little conversation in the car, but I forgot what about. I think it was something about soft tennis and matches or something to that effect. When we arrived at his house, CHda was cooking and we were sitting there watching TV. There was the IQ suppli show on TV. I like that show, but we weren’t really focusing on that. We were talking for a little bit and just relaxing. Then it was time for dinner. There were a few things on the table for us to eat. There was a nice salad and okonomiyaki and otoko tofu. There was this Korean dish that she made that was really good. She also made a mushroom soup that was good too. They didn’t really eat that much and it probably made me look like a pig since I probably ate more than both of them combined. Haha. It was good though and it wasn’t very filling since I didn’t have lunch or breakfast today. Afterwards we were just talking and watching TV. They have potato chips after dinner, which is what I do. We were watching a TV program about the top 30 things about Tokyo Tower. It was pretty interesting because I didn’t think that there were even 30 things about it. First CHda went to take a shower and bath so I was talking with Mr. Honda. Then it switched and I was talking with Mrs. Honda. They went to bed around 12am, which is probably late for them, but I was still wide awake. I got to sleep on the third floor of the house, which is only a bedroom, from what I saw anyways.

Fun Friday

At the beginning of the day, things seemed like they were all peachy and dandy. As I left my house, only being a little later than usual; the sun was up and the clouds were no where to be seen. It was a nice change of weather since it has been cold and rainy recently. As I arrived to Hongodai station, I learned that all the trains had stopped for some strange reason. I couldn’t get into the train station at all and there were people everywhere. It was a bit of madness, which started off my day in a tailspin. First I had to call the school to let them know that I might be late for class. But the next instinct was the figure out a way to get to work on time. I asked the JR guy if the only line that was affected was the Keihin-Tohoku line and he said yes. So I had my backup plan.

I walked back to my bus stop going to Totsuka station. The bus stops at Hongodai station were very crowded and there were too many people that it would have taken longer to wait there. So I practically walked back home and just waited there for the next bus. It was a very long wait because there were so many people coming from Ofuna to somewhere else. I was lucky that I was able to get on the bus since it was packed. I was one of the last ones to get on. That took me to Totsuka station and since it is the faster way to work. I was figuring out if I would have enough time to actually make it there on time. Miraculously, I was. It involved a lot of running from the station and taking faster trains, but somehow I got to school one minute before class started.

The first class I had today was with 7th grade kiku. I was still trying to catch my breath in class because I just finished a 10 minute walk to about a 3 minute run wearing a suit when it was all hot outside. I was a bit thirsty in class, but we worked on a few things like the pronunciation of the R and L sound. That was the main thing for class today. We first got them started with standing up and moving to the side of the room like Left for the L words and Right for the R words. Then we played a game using their fingers and reflexes. It was fun and I participated with the students although they are a bit afraid of the male teacher being involved. But it was good and they enjoyed it. Then CP read the scripts for the recitation contest for them.

The second class I had today for 4th period was with 8th grade ran and all they did today was give their self-introduction speeches. They were pretty good. Some memorized it and did a very good job. A majority fumbled through it, but that is usual and I expected it. We finished all the speeches with 10 minutes to spare, which was a bit of a surprise. So in the end, CP gave a little listening comprehension practice for them making up a new speech to see if they could listen carefully. I think that they didn’t get a very good explanation of what was going on and that lead to some poor scores, but over all they did very well. I was shocked because the level of difficulty for the 8th grade level is pretty hard.

Since I didn’t have time to buy lunch before coming to school, I had to buy lunch at school. I had to wait a little bit since there was a mad rush to get lunch during lunch time. That is usual, but I often avoid that. I was starving because I didn’t have time to buy and eat breakfast today too. It was pretty interesting and people were all going crazy buying lunch. Another teacher was recording them buying lunch too and the madness because it will probably be used as a marketing tool to advertise to the prospective students. I was able to talk to another teacher, who was also buying her lunch today. She had waited too till the rush died down. She was sick today, but she is one of the people in charge of the part-time teachers welcome party that will happen after school. It was nice to talk to her.

The third class I had today was with 8th grade yuri and all they did was give their self-introduction speeches. They did a fairly good job. I thought that they did better than the other classes, but it was lower than the number in the last class. Some students did a very good job with memorizing it. Some students said their sentences out of order, but were still able to get all of it right. That’s a good thing because it means that they are learning the information to be able to say it out. We finished with 5 minutes to spare, so CP did the mock self-introduction that she used in the previous class. The instructions weren’t very clear, so there was a problem with that, but once the students were able to pick it up, they did a very good job.

The last class of the day was with 11th grade kiku. They were the last class I had before Golden Week. I would leave work early today too. The plan for today was to cover the listening practice and go over the vocabulary so that they can get better scores. I need to be able to teach them a way to remember better. I reviewed the vocabulary before the test started and then gave out the quiz. I think that they did better, but I didn’t check it. But my guess was that they did better. Then we went into the listening practice which, went by really quickly. There was a large amount of students who got perfect, but the level of difficulty was super high that I don’t think I could have done it if I were in their position. It was pretty amazing and then I had them work in pairs to get some partner work done. I wanted to think about other ways to keep the environment clean and ways to improve on the environment. Some of them had pretty good ideas. I asked for volunteers before I started calling on numbers to have them come up and present. I’m such a mean teacher, but I think that it goes well and I hope that the students like it. I do see some improvement in the participation, so that has to be a good thing.

After school, I stuck around till around 4pm. Then I left with the part-time teachers to Jiyugaoka station. Some of the teachers walked to the station and some took a train, but I think that the walk to Toritsu daigaku station is longer than the walk to Jiyugaoka station from the school. So I thought that was pretty interesting. Most of the male teachers took the train, which I thought was pretty weird. I went with the female teachers and the first group since I could get off work early to go. There were about 20 people who would join in on the party. We went to an izakaya place for dinner and drinks. The dinner was pretty good. It wasn’t excellent, but pretty good. I had a pretty good position in the restaurant too. I got to sit next to some new teachers and some of the English teachers too. During dinner, I went around to take pictures with them since it might be the last time that I get a chance to do that.

The after party was karaoke at the place where we always go. It was super fun. The room we had was enormous for only 20 people. We stayed there for an hour before we moved upstairs to another room. The atmosphere here was also super fun and I really enjoyed it. The new teachers are fun and exciting. CHda was super surprised at the difference between the offices. It was good for her to experience. I’m glad that I got to experience it too.

I didn’t get home till around 12:30am to type this up. I was very tired and talked on the phone for a little bit. I felt sick the whole night too.

Bored on Thursday

Today, I woke up surprisingly early since I didn’t have to go to work until later. I still haven’t gotten into the rhythm of going to school yet, so I’m trying to get into a groove. I’m still having to guess when to wake up and head off to work and when to get on the trains. I caught an earlier train today, which in somehow I still arrived at the same time I usually do. I swear I’m in a time warp or something. I started to read on the train though. I haven’t read anything in a long time and now I have the time to do it and I get to sit down some times.

At school I ate breakfast and then got started with preparing for my classes. The first class I had today 3rd period was with 9th grade yuri. They are a very good class and they were doing a role-play of ordering. They really did a good job too. They got menus from McDonalds, which were divided by customer and clerk. They had to practice ordering and then they even had to work on adding up the prices too. They were able to, which was a good thing. I was really impressed with this class. They were loud at times, but at least they know what they are doing.

The second class I had today for 4th period was with 7th grade ume. They were working on listening to the R and L sounds. CP planned for them to get ready for the recitation contest and wanted them to listen to the English naturally first before they get the scripts. It’s a good idea, but I’m not sure that it will be followed that way, because of the school’s politics. So we were practicing a lot of things today. They had to stand up and move to the side of the room if they heard and R word versus an L word. Then they played a little game with finger grabbing when they heard an R word. The students like it, which is good. But I’m not sure how effective it is. But as long as they are enjoying it, it’s all good.

The 5th period class I had today was with 11th grade yuri. They were lazy today and not so motivated in learning English. They weren’t bad, but just a bit lazy. I’m wondering if it is the assignments that I have for them to do that make it so hard or if they just aren’t trying anymore. I give a vocabulary test every week that should be easy, but the scores really don’t reflect that. That really is a shock to me because I made them to be easy, but I guess that’s all up to perspective. I had some of the students share their letters to the government, which were ok. There were a lot of mistakes, but I wanted them to try to speak, so it was ok. I then went onto the listening practice and read the dialogue and they had to hear the answers too. They weren’t written on the board. It was pretty impressive that most of them got all right or 4 out of 5 right. I thought it was pretty difficult and I probably couldn’t do it. Then I finished the class with them working in pairs and thinking of new ways to improve upon the environment.

The last class of the day was with 11th grade fuji. Things were better today, but they were still loud. I think I handled them better, but they were still loud. I think that they were at least interested and still trying, but that could also be the reason for their loudness. I gave them big hints for the vocabulary quiz and went over it many times before I passed it out. They still didn’t do very well and I even left the hints on the board and pointed them out on the test and they still didn’t get it. So I guess they get what they deserve. I had to write all the answers for the listening practice on the board because I didn’t think that they could handle hearing all the questions and answers. I think that was a pretty good guess too. So I covered that and in writing all the answer choices on the board I made a spelling mistake, but left it on the board. No one caught it until I pointed it out. I let the class know that I made a mistake and gave the person who could point it out with two Bryan Bucks. There was only one student that got 5 out of 5 on the listening practice and I have her a Bryan buck too. It took them about 10 minutes for them to find the mistake though, which is a bit sad, but they found it. I think that they enjoyed the class much better today and they were participating a lot.

After that I had pretty much finished everything. I scored all the quizzes and got everything set for the Friday classes. I was very bored after that and I went over to the part-time teachers’ office and hung out for a long while. I didn’t go to club today since CP was there and she was taking care of club. I was thinking about playing some tennis, but it was raining a little and I didn’t see any of the girls practicing. I was talking with the English teachers there and they were very busy. I ended up staying after school till around 7pm. We talked about a lot of things like our plan for a one day excursion during Golden Week. I didn’t realize that we would be going this Sunday since Golden week is this week. That was a bit quick for me. I let them know that I only have about 7 more weeks left working at the school. Probably less since there will always be schedule changes and many events coming up. I was able to help another teacher with a computer problem that she was having, so I felt happy about that.

I’m debating whether I should start letting students know that I’m studying Japanese or not. I think that they will continue to speak English with me, but I’m not too sure about that. I want to practice more so I could actually improve. I’m down to the home stretch and I think that if I didn’t take this opportunity it would be a waste. I should start and really work at it.

I left school and walked with the teachers to the station. I had dinner at MOS burger at Ishikawa cho station. I ordered quite a bit and was surprised that it wasn’t enough to make me full. It was enough to make me not hungry, but not full. So I’m wondering why that is.

I came home and started working on memorizing some songs because I might have to sing it tomorrow. I think that I need to find a good song to sing for the 9th grade trip to Gotemba too. I need to have an impressive performance. I will probably sing a song both in English and Japanese. I need to pick a popular song in both languages that aren’t too difficult for the students. Anyways, it just turned midnight and I should get to sleep even though I’m not tired.

Tired on a short Wednesday

I was very tired in the morning for some reason. I felt as if I got enough sleep, but my eyes just wanted to be closed. I was moving very slowly in the morning and was off to a slow start.

I stopped off at yoshinoya for lunch. It was good and actually very quick. I was surprised at how fast I got it and how fast I finished it. I didn’t think that I had all that much time to be able to do it.

The first class that I had today was 5th period with 10th grade yuri. They were working on a new paper and it was about the trips. The main focus is on the trip to Santa Barbara and it was tailored for that, but some students didn’t go, so it needed to be more open. They had a paper with questions asking them about what they did, who they met, what they ate, and things like that. They spent the whole period working on that paper. Most of the students didn’t get a chance to finish it all either, which was a bit surprising. There was one girl in the class that actually had all the receipts that she got from her trip to Santa Barbara. It was pretty interesting and it looked as if she spent a lot of money.

The last class I had today was with 8th grade fuji and they just gave their self-introduction speeches. They were very nervous about it since they haven’t given any speeches before and now they were sort of getting graded for it. They didn’t do a terrible job but they weren’t all that great either. I think that they were cramming at the last minute and thought that we would go easy on them and they could read the book while they were up there. But we forced them to memorize it and go up and recite it. It was pretty interesting how they made mistakes and how the other students were teleprompting to the ones up in front of the room.

I spent most of the day burning CDs for the recitation contest. It was pretty good since I have a new computer now and it goes fairly quick. We only used two laptop computers to do all the burning. We were able to finish 160 CDs in one full day with two people working on it and about 30 minutes last night. It went very well, I didn’t have to stay at school for a long time, but I wanted to get some things done and prepared for the Thursday and Friday 11th grade classes. They will need to begin to work on some researching and in groups and they need to tackle a problem in the world and to be able to present something on it in a speech. I’m not even near completion though, which is a problem. I need to have all the papers copied and ready for the class before tomorrow though, so I probably will be at school for a little while.

After this, I went to the LL and worked on getting my computer hooked up with the school’s wireless printers, but it didn’t work out very well for me. So I gave up and I wanted to print out some things to go over some information for the 11th grade classes. But I couldn’t dig up any information so I decided to scrap the idea and just let the students make it up. I figure that having them research will get a little boring anyways and I need them to communicate better anyways. So I will have them work in their groups and to make up ideas for their presentation. I know that I’m not setting them up for success though since I know they aren’t capable of handling a difficult subject matter like global poverty. But I will try and see how things go. Once I try things out, I’ll see how things will go for the next topic of world travel.

I typed the previous at school, but I later realized that it wasn’t nearly the end of the workday for me. After we finished burning all the CDs we had to check to see if they work and we started to listen to all of them to make sure that all the tracks play. Each CD has about 4 minutes worth of voice recording and it’s of the same thing, so it got mundane. It was actually horrible because I really don’t like the recitation contest to begin with and now it just rubs it in my face. At least we didn’t have to do it on tapes, which were done last year. This is the first year that they rolled out the new technology for the students and put all the voice recordings onto CDs. Thanks to my help of course… I had to add the self-props because no one else does. I left school pretty late, around 7:15pm again.

I decided to grab dinner at Matsuya near Kikuna station because it was convenient and fast. I wanted to get home in a hurry and get some rest. I was very tired today for some odd reason. I think it was listening to all those CDs and making all those CDs. I didn’t get to sleep till around midnight, which seems to be the norm now. I got some news from my family that things are now squared away with that, but my sister has the stomach flu, which is something EXTREMELY TERRIBLE. My sister’s computer is also up to par with a new partitioned hard drive, so things should be running smoothly. I need to ask how things are though.

An interesting Tuesday

I really didn’t have many classes today so the reason why I came home so late really didn’t make sense to me. Things were normal in the beginning and everything seemed to be going as well as usual.

The first class I had third period was with 10th grade fuji. The students weren’t like last week and were very loud during the whole class. They were very bad actually. First of all, when I walked into the room, I found out that the door to the room was broken. In the school we have doors that slide and roll, but this door didn’t roll. I had some trouble getting in and out when class started and finished. But that was only the beginning. I think that last year, these girls also had a broken door, so I think that there is a pattern. We wanted them to play the 100 yen game that we had from last year and we wanted to focus on past tenses, but they didn’t even want to play. They all claimed that they didn’t have 100 yen to play with. That was a big problem and you could tell the attitude of the students right away. They eventually went along with it, or at least pretended to go along with it. They were very resistant to it and really didn’t care for it. We had to call on some students to do it in class out loud other wise we probably wouldn’t have known if they could have done it or not. After that game, we passed out another paper that dealt with unscrambling the sentences and putting it in the correct order. The thing that I noticed was that they were all able to do it and that they all did it. They were pretty quick with it too. It was really quite shocking actually. They finished it and just started talking again. But at least they did it.

The fourth period class was with 11th grade ran. At this time, it was beginning to rain, and when I mean rain I mean cows and horses. The cloud turned to black and there was loud thunder and lightning. I made some jokes to keep their attention because I knew that eventually they would be distracted by it and they were. We started off with the vocabulary quiz and then we let them have some time to look up the new words. Then I had my Japanese English Teacher partner give them a little lesson on English grammar from the dialogues so that they would be able to use them. I think that the explanation was very clear and they were able to understand it. It went a little longer than in the other classes though. That took more time that I expected it to be. The next thing that I wanted them to do was to use the vocabulary that they learned and the grammar that they just learned and to use them together in the practice section of the book. I think that many of the students really didn’t understand because they used the grammar, but didn’t use a lot of the vocabulary. I had some students come up and speak, they were given the chance to earn some Bryan Bucks, but they elected not to volunteer, so I had to call on them. I gave them three chances, but no one took it. I finished with the reading and let them think about the writing a letter to the city government. They didn’t have much time to get started on it, but they did get a chance to look at it.

The 5th period class today was with 8th grade kiku. We worked only on their self-introduction speeches. They were introduced with the dialogues and then the example self-introduction speeches in the book. After they heard all of that and then were able to pass the listening practice part, they got started with writing their own. That’s all we did in the class today.

During lunch today and much of the afternoon, I was entertained with some guests from the 10th grade kiku class. They came into the office and went to where my desk is and started talking to me in English. I had to usher them out of the office and into the hallway because they were being too loud in the office. They just wanted to speak English. And even in the hallway, they were very loud and everyone in both the full-time and part-time teachers’ office could hear the conversation. They were extremely funny though and their English was very good. I was really impressed. Today I met more of the students in the 10th grade kiku class. The group leader or the one that I was talking to the other day had brought all of her new classmates to meet me. They were all surprised that I was American because they all thought I was Japanese. They said that I looked like a Mister Tanaka. It was very interesting.

After school, was much of the same thing; I was talking with my department chair about the English club and what happened last week with the new students. I think that it was very clear that one of the girls likes me. Everyone knows it and even I know it. They always come into the office to talk to me and even hunt me down if they can’t find me. Today I was in the hallway between the teacher’s offices and talking so I was having a conversation with them in front of the English club advisor. It was very good for us and we were trying to get them to join the club. They said that they couldn’t because they were studying a lot, but we were pushing them to learn English and at least come once a week when they had time. I think it would be better to have more members regardless of how committed they are.

I was also talking with CHda about the English performance script during 6th period, which is my off period on Tuesdays. We were casually chatting and the students from 10th grade kiku interrupted and asked us if we knew Math. She was able to, but I chose not to be a part of that. I didn’t want to be responsible for their math ability. We talked for quite a bit of time. It was fun and we both stayed late after school.

The next task that I had to do today was to get the new scripts for the recitation contest recorded on the computer and copied onto CDs for mass production. I showed two other teachers what they needed to do and how to do it, that way next year when I’m not here they will still be able to do it. That took a long time for some reason because I had to set things up and I interrupted the personal computer club in the process, which is a bad thing. I didn’t want to, but we had no choice because it was in the LL and that’s the only place we could do all the things we needed to do. I stayed at school till around 7:30pm working on that and telling one of the teachers the wonders of technology and computers. She was shocked because she still uses Windows 95. I mean that was the new thing 11 years ago. She’s a little bit behind, but she will get a new one during Golden Week, or so she says.

I left school soon after that and I met a part-time teacher that is new to the school and found out that she lives in the Ofuna area. That’s only one stop away from my train station. We talked for a little bit on the ride home and it was pretty interesting. She’s an art teacher, which was a surprise to me. I didn’t know that, and she will only be working here till August, which is a total of 4 months. The other art teacher that left two years ago will come back, and I assume that she was pregnant and had a child and that was the reason for her not being here.

I was starving on the way home so as soon as I got home, I started cooking up a storm and got eating. I was watching a drama on TV that is interesting. After that I was very tired and did the usual before I went to sleep.

American Quiz

I thought this would be fun to post since I haven't done one of these in a long time and this is the firsr one for my blogspot too. I hope you like it and see how American are you. I'm glad that I haven't lost everything about my past life living here in Japan.

You Are 57% American

Most times you are proud to be an American. Though sometimes the good ole US of A makes you cringe Still, you know there's no place better suited to be your home. You love your freedom and no one's going to take it away from you!

How American Are You?

A busy Monday

I took care of a lot of things today. I woke up early to get ready early to go out and take care of the wire transfer trouble that I got last week. Since it is a two hour trip to the bank, I needed to leave early to make sure that I got there in time for them to send it and for me to confirm it. I arrived around noon time and it took about an hour for them to get everything squared away. I believe that everything is now finished with that and they ran away with $80 in charges, so it better be taken care of.

On the way back, I got my new commuter pass for work. Actually it will be my last one too since it will take me until the end of the school year and even into the summer. I was thinking about going shopping around the Yokohama station area, but it was getting really hot and I had other things to take care of today.

I went to a few places. I got a new dress shirt from the Fuji marketplace and some rubber gloves for washing dishes because the ones I have, have holes in them. But now all of that is taken care of. I also did some grocery shopping so I could have some soup that I just learned how to make from my mother. I miss having it, so I learned how to do it, but I haven’t tried it out, so I want to try it. It was really hot walking home.

I stopped off at 7-11 and paid for two bills and threw away some garbage too. So I really was able to get a lot of the little things done today. I was contemplating to invite one of my co-workers out for lunch today since she has the day off, but I decided that I needed to take care of other things today. But I think that if they have time over Golden Week, I should do something with them. My goal for this week is to have a meeting with someone every day of Golden Week. I think that it will be a perfect time to meet friends that I haven’t met in a long ass time.

When I came home, I talked to my sister and helped her work out some computer problems. I think that she will be able to have a faster connection once we have the program in place and everything will be running smoothly. She has a webcam on the laptop and it runs slow because she doesn’t have enough space on her hard drive. Since I just partitioned my drive, I showed her how to do it on her computer too. It should go perfectly, but we’ll see tomorrow.

I started making lunch and dinner at this time. I only had toast for breakfast so by the mid-afternoon time I was getting really hungry. But at least I feel accomplished today, which is something new for me. I haven’t felt this way in a long time.

The usual Sunday

I did the usual thing today. It rained a little today too so it was a bit cold. I took care of my laundry today, which is good. I really didn’t need to but since I was running low on clean clothes, I thought I should. I talked with family today to work out all the details of the bank situation and I talked to my sister because she was feeling very sick today. It was interesting because she thought she had the stomach flu, but I didn’t think that she got it again. She didn’t eat anything that really could cause her to get it.

I was spending the whole day doing that really. I re-partitioned my hard drive too so now I have a lot of space on my C drive. I know that it’s a brand new computer, less than a year old and I’m already running out of space on my C drive. I originally had 20 gigs of space, which is a lot, but I added about 10 more since I wasn’t using it on my D drive. That took a long time to finish though and I decided to finish off the spaghetti that I had made yesterday and watched some TV. There wasn’t anything good on TV tonight though, which really disappointed me.

I was very bored today and have started thinking about what my life has become. I know that I’m the kind of person who always needs something new, but that means that I won’t be able to settle. Eventually I’ll have to cave in on that and settle, but I have no idea when that will be. I’ve been thinking about it more and more recently, but I really have no plan to attack that. I’ll see how things turn out though. Talking with family is good and it seems as though they are the only people I talk to these days. I have talked to some friends recently, but not as much as I would like.

I got an email from my friends that asked me to take them to Roppongi, since they haven’t ever been and I have a few times. I think it will be interesting though and it should be fun. I just hope that I know what’s going on and can guide them to the fun places. I wonder what they want to do though. We are thinking about going after Golden Week. I think for Golden Week, I’d like to spend some time with some of my friends since I won’t get a chance to do that often.

Song of the moment: Bonnie Tyler – total eclipse of the heart

Day off

I actually really enjoyed today since it was a day off. I have felt mentally and physically strained. I don’t know why either. I woke up late today since I slept late last night. I also was very hungry when I woke up.

I wanted to talk to family, but they weren’t immediately available. So I typed up the entries for the past two nights and updated it online. But then I was able to talk to my mother after breakfast. We were talking a lot about financial things and other things like health and cooking. I learned how to make the soup that I liked to have in America. So now I’ll be able to make it here in Japan. I’m happy about that, although I didn’t enjoy the conversation about money. I’m constantly reminded that I have to make a lot of money no matter what I do. It just means I need to keep my eye on the ball. I also asked if my father wanted to come to Japan to visit me, but he said he was busy… hahaha, because I know he’s not. I offered to pay for his ticket here too and pay for everything while he was here, but he declined.

Another interesting thing that we were talking about was the need for a new car. Since I have left everything that I have known about my house and family has changed. My house has changed so much that I couldn’t even imagine it when it was told to me. I’ve lost my dogs. I’ve lost my room. I’ve lost my car. I’ve lost (somewhat) my friends. Everything that I’ve known has changed and I believe that it will take a lot of time to get used to. Like today, my mother was telling me that my sister has a TV in her room. But her room is my old room and there wasn’t enough space for a TV, so it was just shocking to hear that. I have also learned that there is a TV for every person in the family, that’s six for those of you who don’t know, and that’s including me. I honestly don’t know why we have so many too. My mother also keeps on mentioning that I have too many books, as if that was a bad thing. It was just weird thinking about it. And when I go back the construction for new rooms will be finished in the garage too so I will have a place to stay when I go back. And that really is still only the beginning of all the construction too. There is a long list of things still needed to be changed too. It will be a busy year, I can tell already.

I talked to one of my friends that I plan to go to Hawaii with. But things haven’t been working out for us and our plan to go there. We have other things going on and it’s getting in the way. There is a lot to consider for this trip, but I know that it will be a good one, whenever we decide to go. It looks as though it will be in July and during summer though. I think that YSki will decide to come back to Japan too so we will be able to hang out in Tokyo again. All of this is before I leave Japan for good. Wow, it’s coming up so soon and I will need to see all my friends again before I leave.

After that, I was beginning to get very hungry so I started making something to feed myself. I decided that I had the right ingredients to make a killer spaghetti dish, so I went with that. It didn’t turn out as great as I thought it would be, but it wasn’t bad either. I’m not sure what was missing, but I thought the taste seemed a bit watered down. But it was still edible and I think it might have been because the noodles were cold mixed with hot sauce. Well I’ll work on that later. I watched some TV before I came into the room and wrote this up. There wasn’t really anything good on TV today. I hate bugs and I think that they are out to get me. That’s one of the things I’m not looking forward to this summer.

Thought it was going to be a bad day

Last night as I was going home, I had received a phone call from the bank. Actually it was 5 calls. It seemed important and I think that the transaction that happened a few days ago didn’t go through and that’s a huge problem. So this morning as I was calling back, I found out what went wrong. I had some wrong information on the paper that I filled out and now they will charge me an extra 4000 yen to fix it. That sucks because I lost a total of $80 just trying to send the cash over and it’s already way late. So I went to school a bit pissed off.

I had time to cool off before class started and had breakfast. It was weird because the headmaster was in the teachers’ office in the morning, which isn’t usual. I hate to eat in front of him and the VP, but I did it anyways, since I was starving. I ate it quick though and kind of suspicious so no one would see, but one of the new teachers had something to ask me about the prepositions of “in” and “at,” which I believe I explained adequately.

The first class was with 7th grade kiku. We also introduced to them the diaries and they took the time to write the days of the week and months of the year. They need to know all of it because it needs to be filled out on the diary and it’s just important to know. I find it weird that students have trouble copying information on the board though. There are always a lot of spelling mistakes in their diaries. It’s partly because sometimes there are mistakes on the board too, but it seems that mistakes are all common, which is a blasted shame. We were going a bit slower today than in the other 7th grade class. But that is ok since we just should go slowly.

The second class was with 8th grade ran and they were working on their self-introduction speeches. It was a bit boring for me since I really didn’t have much to do. We went over the dialogue and some other comprehension things in the book and then they started working on their own speeches. They had the whole class to work on it and they really didn’t need all that time to do it either. CP went to each student individually and checked their papers, so it took a bit of time and the students were getting a bit restless.

The next class was with 8th grade yuri and they also had to work on their self-introduction speeches. They spent the whole class time working on it and the teachers checking it. It was pretty much just like the class before this one and the students were also getting a bit restless. Their comprehension level is high though as well as the other class before this one. It was interesting to see it happen though. The ability of these students are quite high and it amazes me.

The last class of the day was with 11th grade kiku. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be since the other two 11th grade classes were pretty bad yesterday. I was able to attain their attention longer than in the other two classes yesterday. I think that it always has been this way. When I was teaching the 10th grade about 2 years ago, I got better as the day went on. I think that’s the reason why I think it improved. We were working on some grammar points today and I think that it was also better explained to the students. They were able to make the sentences more interesting and longer with the vocabulary that they had learned. It was really amazing and I think that I designed the textbook and lesson plan for this level. It seemed to work well with them and they were engaged in learning it. So I was happy about that and it really lifted the weight off my shoulders of worrying about it.

I stayed for club today, although I didn’t know that we would have it since we were supposed to watch a movie today, but the main person who wanted to watch couldn’t attend. But I managed to get the few girls that I met the other day to come to English club. It was pretty fun. We had a long conversation till about 6pm. The 9th grade student in the club was very exhausted after having talked to the 10th grade students. It was very interesting because we talked about many things and the new students’ level is actually pretty good. I was a bit surprised by it too. It was good though and the new students are very interesting. So I was happy about that.

I left school rather late since I want to be getting home earlier. I made it in time to go to the Chinese food restaurant by Hongodai station that I like. I had wonton noodles, which was very good. It helped my sore throat a bit. I also stopped by the grocery store to get some things that I needed for the rest of the weekend. I plan to make spaghetti tomorrow so I got the necessary ingredients for it.

I came home and watched TV. There was an earthquake again today too about 11pm. It seemed kinda big, but it really wasn’t. It was on the news though as I was watching TV. I didn’t sleep till fairly late, by my standards. I’ve been staying up late watching TV, which is something that is becoming common recently.

Feeling a bit sick

All day I was feeling ill today. I really didn’t know what it was, but I was sluggish. I think it could have been the weather since it has started to get pretty warm recently and I think the atmospheric pressure is changing. I wake up having dry mouth and a terrible sore throat. It’s not pretty. Its nice getting up later now, since the new semester changed.

The first class I had today was with 9th grade yuri. They were reviewing what they learned last week on the topic of Fast Food. We brought the pictures and the menus from the restaurants that they will go to next year. CP was pushing a lot of role-playing into today’s lesson. I think that ordering is one of the most challenging things they will experience in the states; the hardest thing for them is probably paying though. We practiced a few things in the book and then she wrote a dialogue on the board and the students went from there to order. They used the menu in the book to order. The students did pretty well though, so that was a good thing.

The second class I had was with 7th grade ume. We went over a few things like the days of the week and the months of the year. They got introduced to the new format and had a diary to fill out. They took the time to write a lot of the information that we will cover on a weekly basis today. They had a lot to write down and I’m not sure if they all understood what they had to do. It was really moving a bit fast for them and since starting next week they will start to practice for the recitation contest. So we really needed to have them finish all the basic stuff today. They also all wrote their name on a paper so that we could remember their names faster. There was one girl whose name was Riria that is a very unusual name for a Japanese person. I think that the parents are becoming really creative with names.

The third class was with 11th grade yuri and things didn’t go very well for me. The plan was to have them learn some grammar and then be able to use it with the vocabulary that they have studied in the past week. They just really weren’t into it today. They are a very moody class and they can swing from being one of the best to one that is very lethargic. Today was a very slow day for them because they learned a bit of grammar. I can really tell that most students don’t like grammar by the way that they behaved today. They were really slow with understanding it too. The explanation was very short for them too, which might have been a bit difficult for them, but I expected better work from them. I had two students come up to the front of the room to give speeches because they forgot their folders. I wanted to punish someone so that the students know that I’m serious about what I say I’m going to do. The class ended before I knew it and I really didn’t get much participation from the students or as much as I wanted.

The last class today was with 11th grade fuji, and it got worse. They were even more tired because they just had P.E. before and probably had a sugar-filled lunch and lost all the energy from the last class they had. So it was really a struggle to get them going. They also had the similar process of grammar and using of the vocabulary. But they didn’t get much done and I kind of lost control of the class. That really isn’t a good thing, but I think that I will need to find a new strategy for teaching my lessons. I need to make this section more interesting for them. I believe that no one in the class forgot anything, but they were being lazy and probably didn’t understand what they needed to do. There are things that need to be improved in the teaching of this class and with me teaching the class. I need to make this section more interesting and something very tangible for them. I think that it might have been too difficult for them to learn and for them to use properly. The explanation was also very short so I think that needs to change and I need to get on that one.

I wasn’t sure if there was club today or not, but there was. It was only with two students in the high school and we were talking about the future of the club. The leader now will pass it off to the next oldest person in the club, which is someone in the 10th grade. She isn’t the most reliable person in the club, but we have no choice but to appoint her to take the responsibility. I was still stuck at school till around 6:30pm.

I came home and had dinner at Yoshinoya. At yoshinoya, it was very bad because I was so tired that I couldn’t even speak correctly. I was slurring my words in Japanese and it didn’t even make sense to me, but somehow the person taking my order understood. It was a bit embarrassing. I want to cook, but since I have left school late these days it’s hard to manage the time to do it. I also want to have some good food before I leave Japan. I think all of July I will be eating out to get the last taste of Japan before I leave for good.

A slow day for me

I don’t like having nothing to do. I usually finish everything early so I don’t have much to do at work. I didn’t have class till the afternoon, so I left my house at 11am. There was a problem with the Toyoko line today, although I never found out the reason why. I still got to school before lunch started, which was what I planned to do. After lunch was finished, I had class with 10th grade yuri. They were very bored today. They were just humoring CP and it’s sad that she doesn’t see that. The object of today’s class was to play a game using a coin and to ask each other questions and finish sentences. I thought the assignment was a bit childish for them and at their level. They spent most the class that one paper too. I mean about 40 minutes and then they got another paper for them to unscramble sentences and put them in the correct order. That was very easy for them, which was a bit of a surprise for me. I didn’t think that it would be that easy for them.

Now I wonder if that’s the same for me and whether or not the students are just humoring me and just doing it, but not really learning it. That’s going to bother me for awhile since I now know about it. I know that sometimes I make things too easy for my students and that is used to build their confidence. But I’m not sure if I’m letting them get away with not doing enough work too. So I have some reflecting to do.

The second class I had today was with 8th grade fuji. Last year, they were at the lowest level, and this year it’s a mixed bag since they are not ordered by their English ability but by other subjects. Some are good while others really struggle with the English. They only worked on writing their introduction speeches today so that they would be able to present them next week. That was pretty easy for them to write, but I’m interested in seeing how they present it next week.

After school I pretty much chilled in the LL. I met some new students to the school in the 10th grade that I don’t teach. They are pretty interesting. They were trying to speak English, which was good. I’m glad that they were at least willing to since the other students that I taught last year and also in the room weren’t interested in it. I was working on recovering some files that were lost in the English department. There was a flood of problems recently with the disks being used, so I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. One of the problems I couldn’t solve and gave up. The other problem, is still unresolved because I extracted the lost files, but unable to read the extracted part.

I also talked to a new teacher for a little bit. I was trying to help her with finding some songs that are good for the students to listen to that are in English. I recommended some Disney songs, but some of them are too hard for them to catch the meanings and words. So I need to research it.

I also realized that I have more work on the text book that I haven’t finished yet. I have to do that right now since it’s almost midnight and I need to take care of that tonight before class starts. I need to get a listening practice with questions and answers done now. So I’ll write more later.

I had dinner at the curry restaurant at Yokohama station. It was the first time that I had dinner outside of my house in a long time. I came home and watched a little baseball before I started working on updating my journal and working on some of the things I needed to take care of.

Tying up loose ends

Well I had class today, so I had to go take care of that. It was nice that class doesn’t start till 3rd period for me now. I had breakfast, but it was really quick and I ran out the door to make it on time.

The first class I had was with 10th grade fuji. They are rumored to be the toughest class in the school since they were pretty bad last year in 9th grade. This year, the two worse classes were mixed together to create this class. So going into it, I knew it was going to be tough. But it wasn’t that bad today. CP and Ms. Nakamura are pretty strict so the students couldn’t really get away with much without getting yelled at. So it was really ok today. They also just came back from Santa Barbara and probably their first experience abroad, so they are probably all jacked up about English. I think that could be the reason why they were fairly behaved today. The class size increased too, so it is a bit harder to manage. We did what we did in the other 10th grade classes, which was work on past tenses. They had a worksheet to fill out and they were supposed to do the partner activity, but they just cheated on that. They are still up to their bad habits, but we are going to crack down on it this year.

The second class was with 11th grade Ran. It was the first time that I saw some of the students in this class since I have never taught them before. It is weird to have said that since I’ve been working at the school for almost 2 years and there have been classes that I haven’t taught before since I had 21 classes out of 24. But this one is one of those three. I wanted to introduce what we will do for the new year and also why we learn and study English. I took the entertaining way of teaching and I think that it worked well with them. Their level is rather low, so I had to say things more broken down, but still kept the pace for the higher level students. It’s a bit challenging to balance that. But I think that it worked since they really understood what was going on and they enjoyed it. I’m glad that they were behaved and things went well. So for the first lesson of the 11th grade classes, all went well. I’m glad to report that.

The last class for the day was with 8th grade kiku. All of the 8th grade classes got bigger because they went from 5 total classes to 4 classes. Each class now has about 39 students. They are good students and probably the best behaved in the whole school. I do find that very odd since they are in the 8th grade. But most of them tend to be shy and reserved. We went over the introductions of the book and diaries. They also covered the information on page four in the expressways book. That was all we really had time for. I was really surprised at how some students got it and some didn’t. I think this is supposed to be one of the higher level classes, but I’m not sure anymore. Things changed from last year and now I’m all confused.

As soon as class was over, I ran over to the bank at Toritsu-Daigaku station and needed to take care of some money issues. The strange part about it was that I ran into one of the office staff people at the bank. She’s the new one and the cute one I have mentioned before. It was coincidence and pretty good since I really never get a chance to talk to her. I’d like to get to know her better if I could have the chance, but I doubt that would be possible. We talked for only a few moments before she needed to leave and my number was called. They had called a person to speak English with me, but he only pointed me to the paper I needed to fill out and then I was working with a person who only spoke Japanese. I didn’t think that worked out well, but still I was able to take care of everything and before the bank closed too. So things were taken care of and a big relief came over me.

After that I went back to school because there was English club today. I was working with some of the part-time teachers on an English performance that will come up next year, so I missed a majority of club. But when we finished I joined the club, and it was nice to see that we picked up two new members. I came at the tail end, so I didn’t get much time with them. When we left, I ran into one of the old students who graduated last month and was the leader of the English club. So it was nice to show the new members to her. We talked for a little bit before I went back to the office to get my things and get ready to go home. The members in the blue grade were going to see Shimura Ken, who is a comedian that is fairly famous. I left about the same time they did, but we weren’t going in the same location.

I ended up at Excelsior Café next to the station and I was there waiting for CHda so we could talk for a little bit. We talked about many things again tonight, but she was different tonight. There was a lot on her mind, and I could tell that it was bothering her. She wouldn’t admit to it though, but I could tell. She left about 8pm to go home and she went by foot. That’s a 50 minute walk home for her.

I came home and didn’t feel hungry, but I knew that I would eventually get hungry later in the evening. I watched a new drama called Attention Please about the hiring of new JAL flight attendants. It was ok for the first night. The girls on the show are pretty though, which is a given since it’s a show about flight attendants.

Close, but not enough

I talked to my family starting at 10am and we talked for a little bit, around 1:30pm. We talked about many things, like our house and what we want to do with it. We’ve got some ideas going around and it sounds good so far. Since I left the house a bit late, I decided to go to a closer bank at Konandai, but they didn’t offer the service. That was really bad news for me because I wouldn’t have enough time to make it to the bank before it was going to close. That means I couldn’t get what I wanted to do today done. That really sucks. I got to the kannai branch about 5 minutes late and everything was closed. They really know how to pack up and leave at the banks.

Since I couldn’t accomplish my task for the day, I decided to go someplace I haven’t been to in a long time. I went to world porters to do some grocery shopping. I wanted to get some food that they don’t sell at the grocery store by my house. They actually didn’t have everything that I was looking for and I spent a long time there looking for them. After that I came home. I was browsing around the internet, but there wasn’t anything interesting going on today, so it was boring. There also weren’t that many good things on TV today. So I was really bored. I decided that I won’t go back to the US this weekend. I think I should just hold out and wait for my number one choice before I go back. Today wasn’t the greatest of days because I was just bored and nothing was accomplished.

Cleaning up a bit

I did a bit of cleaning around the house. It was raining a little today and it was very cool today too. It was refreshing though, but a bit gloomy. I took care of the cleaning today with vacuuming and laundry. I didn’t spend that much time to do it and after that, I went over to MTki’s house for dinner. I stayed there for a long time and ate a lot. I was pretty stuffed. I was happy that I was invited over since I was hungry at that time. So it was good timing. They had a lot of food there and I was able to eat a lot of it, so I was happy. MTki can cook and I’m always happy to eat her food. It is always delicious.

I didn’t get to talk to any other friends or family today, which I was hoping to. I have to take care of getting a plane ticket to go home tomorrow and send over some of the money that I earned back into the states. I’ll probably start packing right after I get the tickets too. Wow, I’m already getting started on the leaving process.

Song of the moment: Hitoto you - kazaguruma

Grant and Chandra's Sayonara party and English teachers welcome party

Well, I got a rude awakening today. I got a call from my family at 6am. They thought it was 9am, but I guess their clock is broken. I talked to them for a little bit and decided that it would be best to go back next weekend, and only for the weekend. I need to research prices and everything though. I will probably bring back half of all my clothes here and other things too.

I got lost for a bit because the directions that were given were pretty bad. I got there later than I wanted, about an hour because I left my house late and couldn’t find the place for a little bit. I ran into a couple of other people on their way there and that’s how I eventually found it. There were 70 people at the apartment, which was really large for Japan. It was really nice too. I was talking to only a few people. There was this one girl that I was talking with a lot. She was cute, but I didn’t make a move or anything. I have a problem with stringing things along, meaning I don’t like to drag things out longer than necessary. I really enjoyed the party though, which was something that surprised me. There was toy story on the TV for the little kids that I started to get addicted to too. It was a bit interesting since I was watching the video too, but I was watching it from afar. I was standing next to all the food… hehe.

The left the party late, so we arrived at the dinner for the new English teachers late too. But we weren’t as late as I thought we would be. It was only about 10 minutes even though we left much later than I would have liked. I got lucky and sat with a lot of the teachers that I’m closer with, but for some reason, I didn’t feel like talking much. I was very quiet for most of the night. I was very distracted by a lot of things, and I didn’t really like the distraction part. I’m not sure what it was either. The food was really good though. It might have been very expensive since it was a French restaurant. We got some bread, which was pretty good too. It wasn’t the best I’ve had, but it was good. I ordered steak which was excellent. We got green pea soup, with scallops, which was pretty good too. The first dish was grilled fish, but raw in the middle which turned out nice and was really tasty. The dessert was Orange sherbet ice cream on top of a French Toast like bread, which was a little too much flavor for me. I stuffed it down, but it was hard to ingest.

Another better than average day

The day started off slow and I thought it was going to be a precursor for the day. When I got to the station, I ran to get on the train only to realize that the train wasn’t leaving. It was actually not moving for another 10 minutes. Apparently, there was smoke coming from another train on the line and a lot of the trains at that time were delayed. I was lucky that I left my house earlier and I didn’t get stuck there. I wasn’t late for school either, which was a good thing.

Third period today was with 7th grade kiku, which is the first time that I’ve seen or met any of them. I realized that I don’t like teaching 7th grade last year, but I think that hasn’t changed much in the course of a year. All we did today was self-introductions and answering questions about ourselves. The teachers introduced themselves first and it was basic things like name and where we are from. Then the students had a chance to ask us questions. We usually get the same ones like, are you married? Do you have a boyfriend / girlfriend? How old are you? Do you have any brothers or sisters? What foods do you like? This class was not an exception. But they did ask me a hard question that I wasn’t prepared for. They asked me who is your favorite Japanese celebrity? This would be a slam dunk in the states with my friends, but I was debating what I should tell them. In the end I gave them Utada Hikaru, since she still is my number 1. We didn’t get around to much of anything else in English study wise, but CP did have a chance to take pictures of her teaching and of the students. She wants to remember their names, but I doubt that she will be able to the way that she did that. I think she might have broken a few school rules in front of the students, but I didn’t say anything and neither did the other teacher in the room, although we both saw it.

Fourth period today was with 8th grade ran and all of the students are mixed up from last year. You have some really great English speakers in the class, while also not having such a high level. They got a lot of Japanese translation from the Japanese English teacher. They really didn’t need so much, though, but since the Japanese English teacher is new at oral communication, she did that. She really didn’t have to though.

Fifth period was with another 8th grade class, yuri and we pretty much did the same thing as the last class. During lunch I talked to the Japanese English teacher, since she sits next to me and I told her that she didn’t need to translate so much. I think it is better for the students to get more language instruction in Native English rather than have things translated into Japanese.

I ended the day with 11th grade kiku. They are a very high level class and I really enjoyed teaching them. I left out one thing that would have made the pacing and timing perfect. But it still went very well. It was easy for them, but it’s only the first day. I will require more from them as time goes on. I went according to the plan I mapped out for them. I think that it will be a good year with the 11th graders. Things went really well and I’m happy about it. I went over why to learn English, which transitioned nicely with the new topic. I also reviewed the topics that we covered last year in 10th grade. The class rules and all the silencers were pretty easy to get through and didn’t take that much time. The timing in this class was a little off, which really bothered me since I had some things to fill in that time, that I should have done in the beginning and didn’t so I let some things run on too long.

After class, the Japanese English teacher mentioned that the students were good in that class, but it got me wondering if it only stopped there with the students? I did make it interesting for them and I believe that everyone was participating and active. They learned some new things too and it appeared that they enjoyed it, which is probably something new for them in Oral Communication. I’m not sure if it was an indirect compliment or if there is something I need to work on to improve. It left me a bit confused afterwards.

After school, there was a bit of club today. We stayed after and played Spell-ominos. They talked a little bit about what they will do for club recruitment. I think that some of the people really have no idea what is going on with the club and everything that goes on. It’s hard for them to consider the ideas and thoughts of the students and I think that leads to the low membership. The green grade teachers went to go see a comedy show tonight too. I wasn’t invited though, which I thought was weird since I’m in the green grade. I might go with the blue grade since I usually do things with them, but maybe I might not go at all.
I had dinner and watched TV till late night. I realized that Friday nights are one of the best nights to watch TV.

My Debut

Third period was with 9th grade yuri and I learned that they are a pretty good class. It is mostly made up of people from last years R and Y class, so they are still pretty high level. They were strangely quiet today too. Many students had forgotten their books, and I guess that hasn’t changed much about them. I realized that they are my only 9th grade class that I teach this year. It’s sad I think. I think that if I have a chance when I’m back in America that I might visit them in Santa Barbara though. I think that most of the students didn’t really enjoy the class and it seemed like most of them were bored. I think the lesson is too easy for them. We started up with Expressways again and continued with lesson 10 on Fast Food. We had some pictures of In-N-out and of the girls ordering last year, so it was good to show them. They were really excited by that, so we are starting them up early on getting them all hyped up about the trip. They also had to write in their diaries, but nothing much was new.

Fourth period was with 7th grade ume was a new class to the school that we haven’t taught before. They were all shy at the beginning, but CP was being funny so they laughed and loosened up. All we did today was introduce ourselves and had the students introduce themselves. They had the opportunity to ask the teachers questions, most of which were directed to CP since she was the main person speaking. I was surprised that they didn’t ask me if I had a girlfriend or how old I was, although they did ask CP how old she was and if she had a boyfriend. She did answer them too and the answer sort of surprised me. She is 44 turning 45 next month and does have a boyfriend.

Fifth period was my debut as a head teacher without CP on my plan with the 11th grade yuri class and things went incredibly well. I really hit it off with them and got off on a good start for the semester. All of the students were really into it and all I did today was introduce a new textbook to them. We covered my little format of how I will run the class for the next semester. I taught them a few things to keep them quiet. And I gave them a little opportunity for them to earn extra points. Most of the girls in the class were made up of the Yuri class that I taught last year, so I was very familiar with them. I felt comfortable today in front of class, but before class, I was nervous as hell. I really don’t know why either. The weather has been strange recently. It was a bit hot today because of the humidity.

Sixth period was another 11th grade class fuji. They were pretty much the same group of girls from last year in the class. I went a lot slower for these girls, since they would need me to be a little bit more patient in here. I think the pacing was much better in this class than in the last class. I went much slower and covered things more in detail, which took up more time, but I think it was worth it because I wanted everyone to be on the same page as I was. I think today’s lesson was pretty simple because all I was doing was giving them an outline of what we will cover for the year and how I run the class. It was different for them and they liked it too, so I was happy about that. Some students were sleeping, but not because of me. It was because they were tired and probably from the heat, so I punished them anyways and had them go up to the front of the room and read the dialogue we were practicing in front of everyone. I wanted to let everyone know that I mean business. I will lay down the law if I have to, but otherwise, it would be enjoyable.

After school, I was working in the part-time teacher’s office with some of the teachers there. They were having some computer problems, so I was trying to fix it. Unfortunately, out of the two problems that were there, I wasn’t able to solve even one of them. That was a problem for me. I spent a lot of time working on it too, but I think that tomorrow I will give it another go. I had to stop trying because there was club today with two students.

We went to the LL and talked for quite a bit actually. We talked a lot about the 9th grade trip to Santa Barbara since one of the students is in the 10th grade now and the other is in 9th grade now. The 9th grade student is new to the club and was there only to check it out to see if she wanted to join or not. So I wanted to give her a good impression of the club. The 10th grade student is almost native in English, it’s very good. Well at least speaking and listening wise. So I think that it might have helped the younger one to join it. We were talking about a lot of different things from dramas to actors or talents as they say here in Japan. I wanted to bring up a lot of the Santa Barbara trip, so that I could at least get an idea of what was going on while they were there. What I found out was that if we get about 20 members in the club, we could also get a trip to go to Santa Barbara for the club trip. I didn’t know that. The price would probably be around $2,000 to $4000 though, so that isn’t the cheapest place to go, but we could do it. I thought that was pretty cool. The students didn’t leave school until 6:30pm and I didn’t leave till 7pm. I left with one of the new teachers to show her how to go the teacher’s way.

I bought some groceries on the way home and then watched some TV while I finished dinner and then went online. I talked to one of my good friends YSki online before I went to bed. We are supposed to go to Hawaii together, but we haven’t found a good time to go since she will have summer school. I’m thinking that if that is the case, we might have to go sometime during the summer in July. I was expecting to go in May, but since I’m not, I could use that valuable time to go somewhere else, so it’s not wasted or anything. I think that now I will have more time and money. I need to find a new traveling partner and I’ll be all set for a great trip, well actually great trips since I have more than one block of time off of work. We were talking for a little bit too, even though it was late for me and I was getting really tired.

First day of school

It wasn’t so bad today, but it wasn’t so great either. The good part was that I got up early and could take care of some things. I woke up at 8:30am today and had a late breakfast before I started off to work. It was raining pretty hard, but by the time I left the house the rain had stopped. It was the first time that I didn’t carry an umbrella to work when it looked like it was going to rain. I had confidence that it wouldn’t rain anymore, and I was right.

I was feeling pretty good today since I didn’t have to be at work till around 1pm, but I got there a bit early. I arrived around 12:30pm. I helped some of the teachers with the preparations for my 11th grade classes. They were making the textbooks that I had prepared for them. It was pretty cool to see it all laid out and actually in book form. I actually get to see it lived through and hopefully it will produce the results that I’m looking for. It was totally weird walking in the office in the afternoon and only having two classes today. It was weird, but a great feeling at the same time.

The first class I had for 5th period was with 10th grade Yuri. This is the highest level English class of the grade level. It really has all the upper level students, but I feel that the class isn’t challenging for them. The course material will be too easy for them and I could really tell that. Today I got the syllabus, well somewhat of a syllabus, for the whole year. It basically outlined the objectives and goals for the year, but nothing really concrete and itemized by days. So we were welcoming them to high school by letting them know that they will have more tests. Aren’t we the greatest teachers? The topic for the day was past activities, which is way too easy for them. I think it’s actually a joke to be teaching them that since they learn that in the 7th grade. They did very well, of course, and all seemed a bit bored by it. I don’t really blame them since I was getting bored and actually started making a lot of mistakes in front of the room because I wasn’t paying attention. It’s really bad and I’m not sure if it was me being still on spring break or just something, but it was unusual for me.

The last class today was with 8th grade Fuji. They aren’t as bad as I originally thought since it is all mixed up with members being from all of the classes last year. There are some good English speakers as well as some bad ones. They were getting an introduction of the Expressways Standard book and their diaries. We started a bit on introductions and greetings, which is lesson one. Some did it fairly well, while others were struggling. It’s really a mixed bag and it will be interesting how things will turn out for the rest of the semester. The Japanese English teacher is a bit worried about her English, so it will be interesting how that will play out too since I’m not sure if the translations will be up to par. But I think overall, everything will be ok.

After school, I went up the LL and started working on finishing up my textbook for the second topic, which I did in a relatively short time. I had it all printed out too, which was great for me. I had also finished making up the vocabulary quizzes for the whole semester too. The last thing I need to work on is the listening tests, and listening practices. That should be pretty easy since I got most of the hard stuff out of the way. I think things are really starting to turn out well for me recently so that has been good for me. I am just glad to have gotten everything out of the way and now I can really relax for the last semester that I’m here. It is really all just coasting now. I helped the other teachers for a little bit too. CP was trying to get online, which I helped her to do. Mr. Ito was looking for pictures for CP to have in class to show the 9th graders to get them excited about going to Santa Barbara. He spent about 30 minutes to look for pictures, but couldn’t find any, but I spent a total of 2 minutes and found two that he subsequently used. It was really convenient for him to drop by when I had access to everything at my fingertips. But that wasn’t it. When I went back to the teacher’s office, he had already laminated it and made it a bit bigger. He was looking to add some adhesive magnets on there, but they didn’t have any. But I did, so I brought my stack out and helped him out there too. So I really felt like I was of some use today too. I was talking with my department chair for a little bit today. She was showing me some pictures of the Santa Barbara trip from when she went 6 years ago. Wow, that sounds like a long time ago. I also hinted to her, that I might go back to California next week too. But since I haven’t made any plans to, I doubt I will, but if I don’t hear anything from the other universities by the 17th then I’m going to started to make plans to leave Friday night after school. I’ll have to see the feasibility of it though and see how that will work out.

I left school after 30 minutes of just hanging out celebrating the fact that I’m done with all my work. There were surprisingly a lot of English teachers in the teacher’s office since usually they are never around. I think that almost all of them were there. I came home and started to make dinner immediately. It took much longer than I thought that it would. I didn’t finish everything cooking and eating till 9:30pm, which was later than I wanted to. I was watching this TV show that was like Iron Chef, but it was with two different celebrities and their team. It was Males versus Females. The males won in surprising fashion, but it was really cool what the male team made. The leader of the female team was Sayaka Aoki, so I didn’t think that it was really that fair. I don’t believe that she’s much of a Chef and she did have a lot of help from someone that could have helped her win if she was the lead cook. Anyways, that’s it.

Wanting to work, but not

Well, the plan today was to finish up all the textbook errors and to get all the last minute things done for my class, but I didn’t even get close to even starting it. I was talking with my sister today for a few hours. It was good; we talked a bit about school and the future. I think that things are starting to be more unclear since I’m a bit worried about going back to the United States. Things in Japan have been very easy for me, even though living in a different country is a different experience; I think I will have more trouble going back. I’m getting a bit tense about the future and actually how I’m going to pay for university. I have saved up a good amount of money, but it’s not enough to get me what I want. When I was talking with my sister today, there was an earthquake again. It wasn’t a very big one, but there was one nonetheless.

After we finished talking, and because it was very late for her and I had gotten up late this afternoon, I needed to go out and get some food. I decided that I have been eating a lot of rice recently so I would make some soumen that I got as a gift from the school. I have a lot of it, so I made two batches tonight, which was a bit much for me. I finished it and that was a surprise to me. I went to the grocery store in the rain to get some things that I needed to eat with the soumen. It turned out really nice and I’m glad that I did it. I even made some food for tomorrow’s breakfast and lunch; if I get up early enough to make it. I don’t have to get up early tomorrow, but it will be the first day of school for me and I am a bit tense about that too.

I also picked up my dry clean today, so I have a fresh new suit to wear to work. I’m ready for this year to begin. I haven’t touched the textbooks for the 11th grade yet and probably won’t till tomorrow. I will try to see if I can work on the computers at school so I could do it there. I hate to do work at home, and it is much better to get it all finished and done at school. I’ll see what I need to do tomorrow though. I wasn’t really productive in any way today either. I was just reading a lot of the news.

I downloaded a new program that actually downloads the internet offline. It is an interesting tool, but I haven’t gotten it to work yet. I need to work out the bugs on it and see what’s going on. I wonder if I still have the virus that attacked my computer last week. I hope it went away, but things aren’t sure since my computer has been acting funny recently and my mouse too. Anyways, I should get to bed since I should get up early to get breakfast and finish up the things I need for school.

Also, I am thinking about going back to the U.S. for a day or two. The orientation for UCI is on April 22nd and that’s a Saturday. I might go back after school on Friday and get their early. If I do that I will make it in time for the orientation and have a good two days in America after that. I could go back to San Diego and get a few things and also bring all my winter clothes back too and a lot of the junk that I won’t need in Japan anymore. That way I am already starting to move back. I think that will be a good idea if I can do it. I’m waiting on the acceptance letters for the other schools before I make any decision though. But I think I will have to decide if I will go with that plan by the end of this week. So hopefully I begin to hear something this week.

Another thing that has been on my mind is the concept of freedom. Something that I have been talking with my friends and family is freedom. I mean living in Japan, I have a whole lot of freedom from family and all the stress that I had when I was in the states. But it does come at a cost that I really do have to take care of myself. I have to do a lot more things here on my own than I ever had to in the US. I miss being home as much as I don’t. There is always a balance between the two and I’m trying to see where I fit in with that. I think that most Americans really have no idea about the concept of Freedom, based on the things I read up on the news. Of course that is only according to the writer’s opinions, but things aren’t always made with a very good perspective. Well I’ll write more on this later, I’m getting tired and I’m sure this isn’t making much sense.

Song of the moment – Bob Marley – Redemption song

All day at work

It was brutally tough for me today. I had to get up really early and get my ass to school on time for the new student assembly done by the associated students. I thought that I left at a reasonable time to get to the school on time, but unfortunately, I didn’t. I was only about 5 minutes late, but still that marks the first time I didn’t arrive at school earlier than I expected. I took an earlier train too, so that was weird.

The new student assembly was good. It covered a few things like, a video of their trip to Santa Barbara, all the clubs, a presentation dance by the drill team, a performance by the new teachers (which was pretty good), introduction of the new grade 1 teachers for junior and senior high schools, a performance by the band (which was also very very impressive) and a song by the headmaster for the new students. It went from 9am to around noon, which two breaks in between. It was good though and I’m glad that I went. I wasn’t really required to go, but I wanted to see what was up. I helped them clean up for a little bit then I went back to the office to get lunch.

After I finished lunch, I was working on getting all my papers copied and ready for when school starts. I wanted everything to be perfect since I was working late last night to make sure it was all good and ready. I went to the LL to print out the papers, and made enough copies for each of the teachers that teach with me for 11^th grade. I mean, everything at this point was going very smoothly.

The next thing on the agenda was the all faculty meeting. In the one hour meeting, the headmaster talked about a few things that teachers should do in the classroom to maintain control, and what he said made sense to me. The VP talked a little bit about the rules and other miscellaneous things that we needed to know and covered pages from a book that we all received at our seats when we sat down. The new homeroom teachers were announced and the head of the office spoke a bit about something. I didn’t quite catch it though.

After that, we broke into our department meetings. I was pretty much ready for this moment for a long time, so I was well prepared going into it, although that wasn’t the case coming back out. At first, the department chair talked a little bit and we all introduced ourselves since there were 4 new members to the department. After went over a few things, we broke into grade level meetings where we would meet with the leads of each grade and go over a few points. I did my little talk with the teachers that I needed to talk to really quickly since everything was all worked out. The problem that I faced was with CP. I had the impression that she had already planned everything out before since she came to school on the 4^th to take care of these things, but I guess that wasn’t the case. She decided to change a lot of the things on the syllabus that fit with her needs and her plans. I felt really sorry for all the other teachers because that really affected them. Everything that they had planned before pretty much was scratched out and they started all over again. That really sucks for them and for us since the school year will start in a few days. All the teachers are already busy with their own classes and now they have to worry about Oral Communication class too. I actually can’t believe that it happened like that.

Well we went over time so we had to get ready to go to the Imperial Hotel because of the new teacher party we were going to have tonight. I was pretty at ease because most of the things were taken care of already. I went with the new boss of the high school and got to sit shot gun too. I understood the conversation in the car for the most part, but not everything. We arrived at the hotel a bit early, which was good since I felt we left a bit late.

I enjoyed the party. I was at table C, with a few people that I knew before and most of the teachers I didn’t talk to before. There were a few performances by the new teachers in the full time office and the part time office too. We played some games too. The dinner was great, like usual and something that I’ve come to expect, since it is the best hotel in Japan after all. It was fun, I ate enough food, not that it was too much or too little, but just enough. I didn’t get to try the curry rice, which everyone was really raving about. They ran out right when I got there. That stunk for me. I did have a bunch of other good food there. Tonight was also the first time that most people heard that I was leaving Japan for good. I felt a bit sad about that since I have really started liking to live in Japan and working at the school. It’s just they don’t pay me enough.

After the party was the after party on the 17^th floor of the hotel. I got to sit with the new teachers and the headmaster, like usual again. It was a very tense time and I think it was because the new teachers were really tense and being all formal and things like that. I’m really worried about one of the new teachers. She could be weird, but I sense that it could be that she might quit. Everyone is really worried about her actually since she has that look of not knowing what to do. We ended around 10pm and then we all started going home. The driver of the car was really sleeping and I was sitting shot gun again, so I needed to keep him away and talking. I think I did a good job with that since we didn’t die or anything, but I could understand how tired he was since I was already tired too and getting sleepy on the way home. Today was really a busy day. I’ll post up some pictures later.

Getting some last minute things done

So I was at home today trying to get some things finished before the English department meeting tomorrow. I remembered that there were many little things that I had to take care of, but they all came a little too late for me. I was working mostly on my textbooks for the first semester of this year. That took a little bit of time to get all the details worked out and all the translations. I stayed up pretty late getting it all finished too. That was because I waited to the last minute to get started with it. Other than that, I was online all day doing a lot of researching and downloading. I like to read a lot of the news. My family really wasn’t around so I couldn’t talk to them much. They haven’t been around recently so I haven’t had a chance to talk to them a lot either. I was talking with two of my other friends though.

We were talking for awhile. It was a lot about relationships and things like that. The topic of relationships really comes up a lot and I have been thinking about it more too. I’m not sure that I would like to get started in one, but I think that it would suck not to have one in two years that I’ve been here. I’m weighing all the pros and cons about it. I need to think about it some more and hopefully I’ll get a chance to do something about it later. Talking to friends is always good and I’m glad that usually on my day off I always have someone to talk to, even if it is for a little time. It makes my time more useful than if I didn’t do anything, but download and research. I did go out today though, but it was to pay a bill that I had and to get dinner. It really wasn’t that much and I’m surprised at how fast the day goes with me doing very little.

Getting a Burberry suit

So I didn’t have much of a plan for the morning and early afternoon. I still am trying to get used to getting up in the morning to get my body used to getting up earlier. I think that it has been working recently. I’m still sleepy for a little bit, but it’s getting better. The only thing that I had planned today was to go to school around 3pm. The headmaster of the school is going to take the male teachers shopping for a new suit.

But before that, I saw some TV and had lunch, which wasn’t much. It was an instant ramen dish, something that isn’t too healthy either. I also talked to my mom and sisters for only a little bit. It was the strangest thing, since I was only talking to them for about 15 minutes. The weather changed drastically. It was all nice without a cloud in the sky and the temperature was warm. It was much like San Diego’s weather. But then in a matter of minutes, the temperature dropped about 10 degrees Celsius and it started raining with thunder and lightning. I was like, what the hell is going on. I had to get ready in a suit to go to school, so I was all confused as to what to wear. But when I was changing, the weather changed again. It was so weird because it was all nice and sunny again. It was nice and very warm even. It was good because I could walk to the station instead of taking the bus. It really felt like spring outside, so that was good.

Since I left late, I thought it would be late to get to school, but I actually arrived on time. I wanted to get to school at 3pm, and I did. I kind of figured that we really wouldn’t leave school at that time, but at least if we did, I would be ready. So I was just cleaning up my desk for a little bit throwing things out that are old and nasty. I have a lot of clutter in the drawers in my desk, so I needed to clear that up. That was really quick though and I found myself with nothing to do again. I was talking to some teachers for a little bit until I decided to start studying Japanese again. It was horrible. I had forgotten a lot of what I learned at Grossmont. That’s horrible since it is a foundation that I had to build on, but I think overall my Japanese has improved, but still it is horrible. I’m all messed up with my Japanese grammar and vocabulary. I really need to find a way to improve a lot. It will be a waste to learn all this Japanese and not be able to use it later.

We left school around 5pm and we walked to the station, which was a surprise for me. We took the train from Toritsu-daigaku to Shibuya and changed to the Ginza line to Mitsukoshimae. That’s where we would end up. We got to Mitsukoshi and then took the elevator up to the “tailoring” floor. It was a pretty neat experience for me since I have never had a custom tailor made suit before, let alone one that is a Burberry suit or one that would cost my boss about $1,300. I learned that my left arm is about 0.5 cm longer than my right arm. The person was having trouble measuring me because the language he used was something I didn’t understand and haven’t learned. I was getting help translating from a Science teacher, Mr. Honda. I took the longest of all the teachers since I was new and they didn’t have any information for me so they had to take all the measurements. All of the other teachers have had suits made for them before, so it was just a simple matter of just checking to see if they stayed the same, which most of them were.

We also got custom made shirts too. That was pretty cool, I think. That also took a little bit of time to get measured too and to choose a color and logo and letters and stuff. It was pretty neat to have one made like that. But I think that in the future, I will do things like that too. It is very good to see how the headmaster treats his teachers. It’s a good custom to see. It really motivates me to work harder and to appreciate the things that I have had here in Japan. It has become a really unbelievable experience.

After we all got fitted for our suits, we had dinner at a nice high-class Chinese food restaurant. The restaurant’s specialty was Shark’s fin. I must say that the food was very delicious and some of the best Chinese food that I have ever had. It was a full course and I started to think that I might not fit the suit that I just got because I was stuffed like a turkey. But damn, that food was delicious. The Shark’s fin was especially good. The mango pudding at the end was also pretty good. We had crab and other foods too like wonton soup. But the most delicious food was the Shark’s fin soup, which I found out costs \4200. The whole meal per person was like \20,000. There were 12 male teachers, plus the accountant and the headmaster and his secretary. So it got pretty expensive, but I would have never had that experience in the states. I’ve been treated to things, but never to this level. I think the headmaster spent more tonight than I make a year working at the school, which is strange to think about it. We left the store around 10pm so I got home around midnight. It really is a night that I won’t soon forget. It’s just crazy to be honest with you.