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.