114 posts tagged “work”
As you may know, my contract here ends on Aug 1. I want to stay in Japan after that, so I'm currently looking for a new job, but even then, it won't be around here. Less than 4 months until I leave Tonami. Anyway...
I went to elementary school today for a brief meeting in advance of starting next week (actually in two weeks because of regional meeting). They gave me the curriculum and explained my schedule, and that was fine.
At the end, they're like, "Oh, because we all need to be better at English now, we were hoping you could run a couple fun and informal conversation workshops for us teachers!"
"Yeah, I can do that I guess. When would they be?"
"August!"
At this point I made a bit of a face, and my guy at the elementary school interpreted it as, "August? I don't work in summer vacation, who do you think you are!"
As I started to explain, he cut me off, "Nono, wait hear me out!"
"Hang on," I explained, "My job ends August 1st. A new teacher will come to replace me. Maybe they are as experienced and skilled as I am; they probably won't be."
"What? You're leaving? 
"
"Yup. If you can swing the workshops in July, but give me dates really soon, I'll try to make the time. July is busy though, so get crackin'."
"AAaaah ok!!!"
After work, we had a drinking party, so I went in to work again after coming home to wait for people to be ready to leave. I was surprised to find, on my desk, a flyer advertising a "Canadian Food Tasting and Info Session", taking place my school on Thursday. I'm not sure who's in charge of this, but I think it may be the 2nd grade social studies teacher, as he'd borrowed my big japanese-language fact-book of Canada.
Now, this factbook has lots of stuff about history and geography and economy and stuff like that, but not culture so much, and nothing at all about food. As such, you'd think they'd come speak to the resident Canadian (yours truly) to fill in that information.
They didn't. This was the first I'd heard of it.
With trepidation, I looked at their list of foods.
1. Tomato, Bean and Bacon Soup.
Now, though I've not had this, and I wouldn't necessarily call it CANADIAN, it's not unlike soups I have had back home, and so I will give it a pass.
2. Salmon steak covered in shredded cheese and grilled.
WHAT. WHY WOULD YOU RUIN A GOOD SALMON STEAK BY PUTTING SHITTY QUALITY PRE-SHREDDED CHEESE ON IT AND BROILING It??? THIS IS APALLING.
3. As a beverage, maple syrup.
I hope I don't have to explain what's wrong here.
What the HELL. Why would YOU DO THIS TO ME.
The proper answer for this menu should have been:
-Cheddar Cheese Soup (they get a soup, they get their cheese, and as we know, Campbell's Cheddar Cheese Soup is as Canadian as Ketchup chips)
-salmon with a maple syrup glaze
but nope! They've fucked it!
I found a bear near the Old Man Elephant.
He named Rockiy by Takae.★ROCKIY's PROFILE★
At fast Rockiy was boy.
Rockiy became girl to Takae.
But now Rockiy is boy.
Rockiy is from Miyazaki. Miyazaki is mango world.
Rockiy is kind of foreign.
He came to Tonami two years ago.
Rockiy's color is Orange. Because he is mango.But I don't found Rockiy's master.
That is the exact bear that was drawn beside this entry. How she found a bear from a franchise that was popular 25 years ago, I have no idea.
I am afraid of storange smell.
My pojicon is near the Umeki.
Umeki is suspicious.
I don't like him smell. KUSAI
Because hes smell isn't goodThis is "YUGIOH"
I have a friend who likes YUGIOH.
I'm not sure how Yugioh is related to smelly Umeki, but whatever.
Juniary 26
I played soccer at school.
Do you know about the soccer "ruuru"
I know soccer "ruuru"
Bay the way. Do you like soccer and baseball?
I like coccer.
In Europe and North America, there has been a liberalization of marijuana laws over the past few decades. Whereas before it was horrible horrible and you'd get in all sorts of legal trouble, now, in many places, no one cares if it's for yourself and you're not some sort of giant violent pot kingpin or something.
This is not the case in Asia. In various SE Asian countries, possession of illegal drugs (including marijuana) is punishable by death. This isn't the case in Japan, but it's still a very serious crime to have pot or pot seeds or pot paraphernalia.
But if it's just a DRAWING of it, that's okay, and is, in fact, very popular. Pot leaf air fresheners, pot leaf hats, pot leaf necklaces, pot leaf pencil cases, all very popular, even more so than playboy bunny goods.
It's strange, and weird. But it sometimes furnishes a bit of entertainment. In my 2nd grade class today (that would be kids who about 14 years old), one girl had a pencil case adorned with two huge pot leaves and "CANNABIS WORLD" emblazoned on it.
Another kid's pencil case was better though:
THERE ARE NO WORDS, PEOPLE. I'll just shake my head and continue on.HEMP
Smoke dope and addicts!
Is rearry bud for me?
We had our Mid-Year Seminar yesterday and today. It's supposed to be professional development, but there are no professionals involved for the most part, so it's more the blind-leading-the-blind, and isn't so awesome. What WAS awesome was the speaker. He spoke about vocabulary acquisition and how it's sometimes ass-backwards in Japanese high schools.
In Japanese junior high schools, students learn about 1000 words over three years, and these words are, for the most part, the 1000 most frequently used words. It makes sense that, when learning a language, you'd start with the most frequently used words, yes? Cat is going to crop up more often in every day conversation than cataclysm, or rhombicosadodecahedron are, yes? Junior high texts get it mostly right.
But in high schools, they apparently go for extremely difficult texts full of words I don't even know. They do this because these extremely difficult words are used in the university entrance exams because they're batshit retarded. High school students get taught to pass the batshit retarded entrance exams instead of learning what they ought to properly further their English development.
It was a couple of very interesting lectures, and I enjoyed them. They were quite academic, and not really too frivolous. I kind of think that maybe the Japanese teachers of English didn't get as much out of it as us ALTs did, because it was so academic and very high level. Some of them, certainly, did get it, and did enjoy it; most of them, I fear, did not.
The one thing about sitting through something academic in tone and truly interesting though, is that I realized that, yeah, going back to school wouldn't be too bad. Grad school? Yeah, I could handle that.
So, plan for next year in a perfect world? Take a year and intensively study Japanese, and then the year after, try to get a monbusho scholarship and go to grad school for something I'm actually passionate about.
In the real world? I'm not sure how I could swing any of that with my finances.
COME ON LUCKY 7s!
Before this one third grade class, I was waiting around, making small talk with the kids if they wanted to. This one kid who's totally awesome even though he doesn't like English much (he has the ability, he just doesn't like it, so doesn't apply himself) noticed my piercing for the first time (even though i've been teaching him for three years), and was like WOW, THAT'S AWESOME! and we talked about it for a while. That was good.
During class, I noticed that he was actually trying, working with his partner, staying on topic, repeating after me when he was supposed to, etc. It was good!
Then the teacher decided she wanted to show a slideshow about England (because we were at the "Yuki goes to London and a creepy man talks to her bout harry potter on the plane" program), so we start that. Now, the kids have seen most of these photos several times before, and they weren't interesting the first time, so why would they be now? So they were talking quietly among themselves. ALL the students, pretty much, were doing this. But about 3 pictures into her slideshow, she snaps at this kid and is like SHUT UP! IF YOU WANT TO KEEP TALKING, GET OUT. And I was like whoaaa, that's hella harsh :/ But I didn't say anything then, because I hoped things would just move on.
Well, the kid is clearly shocked, looks around in disbelief, then gets up, walks to the front of the room, closes the lid of the laptop the teacher was using for her slideshow, says "I don't need this", and walks out, slamming the door. Then she spends 5 minutes trying to justify her actions with the rest of the class. "He was talking right? You heard him talking yes? He's always talking right?"
I dunno, it upset me.
Whenever i make some small form of progress, someone always does
something boneheaded to set it all back. 
This is my friend youya miyoshi He is 13 エイズ 00 11 He plays dasedall, but he doesn't play bredall. He is likes takoyaki but he doesn't like beef. He is from osaka.
De is mi frand Kakeru Kawai. He from Toyama. He plays soccer. He like sushiandnebubutshe doesn'tlike Tomato He watchesgames.
TIHS is My fiend Kento. He plays the trombone. He likes hnbaaGu.
●This is My frend Mika
●She plays clarinet, but she boesn't play piano
●She likes pan very moch, but she doesn't like surimi
●She watches
I have a funny friend. She is Nakano. She is from Takanosu. She plays badminton.
Shes likes Kamiji Yusuke, I lick him too.
I have a good friend I like ALL SPORT
This is my brother Shunta He plays basketboll every day He likes hanbagu He doe ssn't like gurinpisu He doesn't Play track and field
Alright, here's the deal. I have a 3rd grade optional (in that, they chose to take this, over PE or science or home ec) English class. There's 36 kids in the class. Later this month, as a project, they're going to write letters, in English, to foreign people.
That's where you come in! I need, you know, foreign people for them to write to. It doesn't matter where you are, or if English is your first language or not. All that matters is that (1) you are willing to receive a letter (and, as part of that, give me your address which I promise to only use for this exercise), and (2) you're willing to reply to them in simple English about school-appropriate subject matter.
If you want to take part, reply, and uhhh e-mail or PM me your name and address. Also, tell me one thing about yourself, like your hobby, favourite food, ask a question about Japan, whatever -- just something so that the kids aren't writing blindly, you know?
Thanks for your help.
