Sunny Rock has listed out many great websites that are useful for preparing to come to Japan. See them here!
There are lots and lots of (both silly and serious) entertainment you can found in Japan. Know a thing or two about them because they are great ice breakers when you meet new friends! Click here to find out more!
Thank you for visiting Rock no blog – a Japan Working Holiday Diary. I created this blog to share my working-holiday experience in Japan. Unfortunately I was not able to blog while I was in Japan because I focused all my energy on traveling, meeting people, working, and simply trying to absorb the culture. In other words, I was enjoying my working holiday adventure!!! But after coming back to Canada I realized that I need to write down my past experience because I am starting to forget about them! I also want other people to learn about my experience, especially Canadians. The number of Canadians doing working holiday to other countries (whether it is Japan, UK, Australia, France etc) is very low compare to other eligible countries. I hope my readers can come to light that taking time off from work and if possible, family commitments, will be a wonderful life experience and Canadians should take advantage of all these Working-Holiday partnership agreements with other countries.
For the time being, all the posts on this blog will be BACKDATED (From October 04, 2009, posts will be under current dates but historical dates will be shown on the title). I am expecting I will reach the Current date in the Spring of 2010. Thus, The first post will serve as a Bulletin Board.
I was scheduled to teach English at C-Flat in the afternoon so yet again I was not able to hang out with Ken and Cam. Fortunately, there was Dave and 3 other lovely ladies to be their tour guide today! And after my lesson I got to hang out with Naoko, an old friend I made in Vancouver when she was still studying in Vancouver.
Before meeting the girls, the three good-looking sweaty guys headed out for a Kansai style lunch to get energized. What else is better than Okonomiyaki for that gigantic amount of energy???
After lunch, the guys met up with the lovely ladies at the Osaka castle! Yes I am talking about the castle build by Toyotomi Hideyoshi 500 years ago (the one standing right now is largely a replica….the oringial one was burnt down a hundred years ago). Ken and Cam have never been to the Osaka landmark before so they spent time touring the museum, taking pictures at the top of the castle, and being poked by young Shogun soldiers. I love the friendly way the Osaka locals are showing towards tourists especially those from Tokyo : )
Shitennoji was the next destination on their itinerary. The oldest temple in Japan is just minutes away from the Tennoji station which is also pretty close to the station near Osaka castle, so it saved the Tokyo folks a ton of travel time. The gang enjoyed a relaxing walk and took some more pictures….before they got tired and had to sit down for a parfait! Looks good from the picture.
Soon after Ken departed for Itami airport for his flight back to Tokyo. I only saw Ken once this weekend but I will see him again very soon as I will go to Tokyo again in a couple of months!
Next up was dinner which I joined up! I finally met the group at the American Mura at around 7….. we had an awesome awesome dinner. I did one thing that I wanted to do before I die!
And what is that you wonder? I will tell you more tomorrow.
This weekend I am meeting two visitors from Tokyo – my always clumpsy Japanese Boke friend Ken and the biggest slut on this planet Cam. They both have never visited Osaka for leisure so Dave and I (and along with a few others) will be their guide for the weekend!
Ken arrived Osaka (on business) last night and Cam got here earlier in the afternoon and he hanged out at Dave’s room at Minoh Campus for a bit. I was not feeling well in the afternoon so I stayed home and rested until dinner time. Dave picked the Oosho izakaya 王道 in Shinsaibashi for dinner. If you recalled (or see here), that is the first Izakaya that Dave and I went to when we first arrived in Osaka 6 weeks ago. With a reasonably price tag and endless choices in both food and drinks, the place has became one of our favorite hang out place in the city.
We had Cam and Ken picked some items that Dave and I have not tried before. Cam picked 里芋のホクホク揚げ (Fried taro balls) which amazingly melted in my mouth, while Bukka Ken (yes, we called Ken our servants) ordered the oh-so-special yakisoba. We also recommended the Daikon steak that still tasted awesome, and Dave had Cam drank Awamori, which was not really appreciated by Cam because of that uneasy taste. As for myself, I was not feeling well so no Umeshuu tonight, and I had to stick to 燗 warm sake and eating 雑炊 Congee. I also ordered 山芋とベーコンの醤油炒め (Sauteed Japanese Yam and Bacon in soy sauce) which matches really well with the Congee.
Great Food. Fantastic drinks. But more importantly, with the reunion of us four, the stupidity from Vancouver was reborn in Osaka. We started taking stupid pictures soon after we had a few drinks.
Cam “Hey Dave Look at my chest It got bigger after I came to Japan”
Dave “Hah?? What?? I can’t see the difference?”
Cam “Come one try touch it you will feel the difference”
Dave (tocuh touch touch) “What? They aren’t different and soft like woman’s breast? You slut you just wanted me to touch you!!” (awww keep touching)
After dinner we went to take pictures at Doutonburi, and then we went to Jankara and sang Karaoke for an hour. I did not sing at all at the Halloween party last week so tonight I finally can try out some new songs! I did L’arc en ciel’s “Shine” which is not too hard but I probably can do better with some more practise. Dave also did a L’arc en ciel song “Daybreak’s bell”, which is becoming one of his favorite. Cam the biggest slut in the world sang “Toxic” from Briney Spears. The song helped everyone’s tension to go up up up up up, which gave up super powers to perform the Best Ever song there exist – Nine Inch Nails’ “Animal”. Boy, were we intensed!
The karaoke session was too short to our liking but we had to leave because Cam and Dave had to catch the Monorail to go back to Minon Campus (Cam is sleeping over in Dave’s room). Subway stopped running at late 11 O’clock and Monorail to Saitou Nishi stopped running at around 12. It takes about 30 minutes from Shinsaibashi to Senri Chuo, the only transfer point between subway and monorail, so we had to leave Shinsaibashi before 11 in order for them to transfer before Monorail stops running. Considering tomorrow will be a long day of sightseeing though, I think they would be better off to head home and rest well ( for me as well… I felt weak). Explosion awaits tomorrow.
Today my lesson was in Izumi Fuu-nishi, in which the closest station was JR Izumi Fuuchuu. I had to take JR train from JR Tennoji station, but for the second time this week I got on the wrong train. And this time I was not so lucky. When I was at the train platform at Tennoji, I saw a train saying “to Wakayama” and “Kansai Kukou” at the same time so I was not sure if it is the correct train. I waited for the next train which was a Special Express to Kansai Kukou…… I took that train and it did not freaking stop at any other stations! Worse, I had to pay extra 700 yen plus I was late to work for over 20 minutes. After the express trained arrived at the airport station, I ran to the platform across and hopped onto the right train, and then slowly rode my way back to Izumi Fuu-nishi station. Apparently the regular trains heading to the airport direction actually breaks off into two shorter trains, with the fronted 4 cars going to the airport and the backend 3 cars going to Wakayama. But I found that out too late!
I ran from the station as soon as I got off the train, and for god sake the classroom was pretty easy to locate (very close to the station). And I had an easy time teaching today with the help of a knowledgeable teacher. I missed most of the class for the 5,6 years old so I could only do a short introduction, then played a quick card-matching (picture and words) games with those kids. And I barely had time to catch my breathe from running from the station. Then I had some junior high school students, and we played Guessing the word game and Flip the card game that I designed after the terrible class on Wednesday (I will write about that after the weekend….a long story). I want to elaborate on the Flip the card game a little bit. It is an easy game but I found it very effective way for practicing English as well as being a fun activity that would keep everyone interested. Also, the best thing about the game is that every teacher can make the game in an instant and customize accordingly. How? Well, I will show you what I did….. I basically wrote out easy instructions such as “sing a song”, “spell the word potato” and “name 5 countries in Eur0pe” on a sheet of paper, paste the paper onto a cardboard paper and then cut them out into small cards. As for the rules of the game, students sit around a table and the teacher line up the cards. Each student would then pick a card and do the instructions as written on it. To determine the order for the game, the teacher can ask each student to throw a dice and say out the number loud (or in a phrase such as I threw a Five).
I threw in something unusual for my cards such as “Make a scary face” and “Do 10 sit ups”. Those terms are a bit difficult but the Japanese teacher would help the students out, so in a way the students are learning new vocab. Plus everyone can have a good laugh after playing the game (it happened today in my class) so it is a perfect method to have fun while learning English.
I actually had two high school class today, with one class being more advanced. In that class, besides doing the games, I also did a questions-and-answers section, and I learned quite a few things from the interaction. First of all, I met a student who had cramp school right after the English class on a Friday night! It was already pass 8:30pm when the lessons ended and the his next class finished at 10:30. Japan do have quite a few hardcore students. Secondly, after today’s class and my experience from my past few days, I can generalize that the students in Japan typically are either very shy or talk way too much (I cannot find anyone in between so far). The boys are big sports followers with baseball and soccer being the two most popular ones, and the girls they all like Smap, Arashi, and the Johnny Boys. The girls are big on cute characters too…Anpan man, Doraemon, Rilakkuma, and Disney characters, and they carru whole bunch of accessories with those character printed on. Does anybody agree with my observation?
So after the first week of work, I have learned a lot and I truly believe I can become a really good teacher. I am going to prepare more materials next week so that I have more tools I can rely on in class.
Now, enough about work. My baka friend Ken has arrived in Osaka and he will be meeting me and Dave tomorrow night. Cam will arrive tomorrow morning (he is taking the overnight bus). Osaka is going to explode with stupidity!
I finally got a hold of the Michael Jackson dance performance by the OEH folks….check it out. Also as you can see I have posted a few more pictures from the Halloween party.
Boy, Jon was pretty drunk. He hugged everyone within his sight….. maybe that is his wild feminine side?
Happy news: Ken and Cam are coming to Osaka from Tokyo on the weekend…. Can’t wait to see those crazy people.
Thank you for visiting Rock no blog – a Japan Working Holiday Diary. I created this blog to share my working-holiday experience in Japan. Unfortunately I was not able to blog while I was in Japan because I focused all my energy on traveling, meeting people, working, and simply trying to absorb the culture. In other words, I was enjoying my working holiday adventure!!! But after coming back to Canada I realized that I need to write down my past experience because I am starting to forget about them! I also want other people to learn about my experience, especially Canadians. The number of Canadians doing working holiday to other countries (whether it is Japan, UK, Australia, France etc) is very low compare to other eligible countries. I hope my readers can come to light that taking time off from work and if possible, family commitments, will be a wonderful life experience and Canadians should take advantage of all these Working-Holiday partnership agreements with other countries.
