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!
Today I travelled very very far to my work location. The classroom was located in Otsu 大津. which takes about 75 mins from Hirakata. I had to transfer at JR Kyoto station and it was a pain in the ass since Keihan does not connect to it. I had to transfer one station before JR Kyoto station and then run to another platform at JR Kyoto station. I was totally lost for 30 minutes as I could on not figure out the correct platform, and then worse I got on the wrong train….. there are two lines that stop on the same platform and I was supposed to board on the express train running on the Biwako 琵琶湖 branch of Tokaido Hosen route 東海道本線 , instead I got on the express train running on the Keishin route 京津線. But I stayed alert and checked the train route information, and realized I can change trains at Yamashina station 山科. So I got off and (luckily) soon after I boarded the right train. Yes, I was very lucky indeed.
I also had trouble finding the classroom. I did not find the sign until after 20 mins of walking in a circle, so I called the Zenken office to get help. They were absolutely not helpful at all, but lucky again, I spotted the place. The sign was so small (and I don not understand why the school contact information was not given to me!)!
After greeting the teacher, I discussed with the teacher what she wanted to do today. There were four classes, but the first one only had one student – a 4 year oldboy. Basically I had to be a caretaker and play with him, and that was what I did. We sang, play some word cards, drew some pictures, and did Trick or Treat. That was easy. The next class was a bit more challenging. It was a 5 – 8 years old class and many parents were watching, so the teacher and I came up with a main activity that would involve the parents. After self-introduction and the warm up activities, we had the students and the parents sat in a circle. There were many pictures posted on the wall so I wanted each student to tell me the word when I point to one thing. These students have already learned many words so actually they were better than I thought. Whoever could tell me the word would get a candy. We had really good English practise and I could see the children had fun! The parents participated in the game too (telling the kids the word) so it was all smile all around. And I also learned something new – there is actually a Goodbye song!
Next up was the 9 – 12 years old class. We did a bit more serious activties – a Halloween related tell me the word game, a spelling test, and word guessing game. Unfortunately, some students were not paying much attention but overall they did well. And for the high school class, I had to do the assessment test on the students again before giving out Halloween Candies. For warm up, we did a 20 minutes get-to-know-me conversation. At the end of the class a student gave me an Apple pie as my Halloween gift! She made it herself, and even though the pie was mushy, I was happy to get something from a student on my second day of work!
On my way home, I passed by a waffle speciality store called Manekken. They only sell Belgian Waffles and those waffles looked good, so I bought two for dessert (Chocolate and Maple) along with the apple pie. After toasting it for a few seconds, the warm waffle tasted awesome! Darn, it was good! It was a long day but I was happy. Now time to go to bed!
A couple of weeks ago, some comedian duo (yasei bakudan 野性爆弾) came to OEH and shot a short segment (bakudan shakai kouken 爆弾社会貢献, a segment from the Saturday midnight program マヨブラ流). I was working at C-Flat that night so I missed it (DARN DARN DARN I would totally brag about it…. it could have been be a highlight of my Working Holiday adventure). Almost all of the residents were presented, and they did stupid things like eating Natto and Maple Syrup Spaghetti. Matt, who is looking to build his music career in Japan, was interviewed, and he got a short, but free chance to showcase his guitar playing. Good for him. Check out the video (sorry no subtitles but I don’t think you would need it).
Thank you Pete for the video I got it from you all right.
My first day as an English teach went smoothly. Hurray!
I did not have too much trouble finding the classroom. It was about 15 minutes walk from the Katsura station. I marked all the spots I would be passing by (elementary schools, Koban, and convienience stores) on my map and did find most of them. Soon I found the classroom, and I went in and greeted the teacher there. She was surprised that a Japanese looking guy would come in to teach (afterall I do look like the typical Japanese salaryman). I explained to her that I was born in Hong Kong and moved to Canada at a young age where I learned English, and I came to Japan on a Working-Holiday Visa two months ago. She then gave me the details of today’s teaching plan:
1. 50 minutes class for Children of 3 – 5 years old. Playing games, singing, Doing Trick-or-Treat.
2. 50 minutes of doing nothing. The teacher handles the 6 – 8 years old herself… good chance for me to be familiarize with the materials i am working on later today.
3. 15 minutes break
4. 1 hour class for 9 – 12 years old. Doing various activities, read story, Trick-or-Treat.
5. 75 minutes class for high school students. I am told to do an English assessment for each student.
After 10 minutes, the parents started dropping off their kids. A few of the moms stayed around, which is something that I have been expecting.
The 3 -5 years old class started off with singing, including the Hello song and a few others from the standard music CD provided by Zenken. I then did a quick introduction…i tried to be really simply as I knew beforehand I was teaching kids. Following that, I had each of them do a very easy self-intro (who are you and tell me your name thing). That killed some time before we started doing the games, which we played a treasure hunting game. The kids was so happy and they ran around the classroom with great joy. At the end of the class, the kids lined up and I gave candies to them (prepared by the teacher). Before they could take their candies, each of them had to say “Trick or Treat”.
Some of the kids were shy but I think they had fun in general. First class was considered a success.
During my break time, I was looking over the story book, and the assessment test for the last lesson of the day. I decided I would ask the students to read out the story book in the next class.
After the teacher finished her 6 – 8 years old class, we went for coffee across the street. There is a nice gift shop there (in the middle of residential area….how can it survive?). I asked her how long has she been teaching and she replied me “many years”. Seems that she has lost a bit of her passion in her job… I guess she has been doing the same thing over and over, and must be not getting much job varieties over the years.
Next up was the 9-12 years old class. I also started off with a self-introduction section which I got each of them to tell me something about themselves, followed by a question period about my background. Then we did a Halloween related word card game, which the cards were lined up face down, and the students have to flip over and pronounced the word correctly. They knew most of the words but a couple of them they have troubled with, e.g. Jack-O-Lantern. The next activity was story reading. Each read a line in the Halloween story book. I did not really like this part because it was a bit boring but that was the most conservative thing to do for my first day. Between doing Trick-or-Treat, I checked their homework. Somehow I got kicked my a student…????????? Not sure where that came from.
For the last high school class, I did individual English assessment on each student (6 of them there). They were test at the “Advaced level”. Some of the sections included:
1. Questions about the student. E.g. which school do you go to, what do you want to do in the future
2. Find answer from the picture. E.g. Where is the picture (on the wall), where is the tree (outside the house), what is the girl on the bed doing (reading a book)
3. Read a passage and answer question. The teacher has to assess if the student is reading correctly as well as pronounciation
I think overall this group of student did pretty well. All of them understood my instructions and what I was asking, and I was quite impressed with their reading abilities. A couple of them were carrying the Japanese pronounciation (e.g. Andor instead of And, Longu instead of Long), so I highlighted that on their comment sheet.
My day ended at around 8:20. I only taught for about 5 hours and spent another hour doing prep work, but I felt longer than that. But wow, what an expereince that was. I am confident that after a few more classes, I should become a pretty good teacher. Ganbare!
After a crazy night with non-stop partying yesterday, I decided I would just take it easy today. I will start working tomorrow so today I spent some time searching for directions on how to get to the school using the Yahoo route searching tool. I have tons of experience being lost since coming to Japan, so it would be in my best interest to find out the exact route to the schools that am assigned to. Tomorrow class will be in Katusra, which is in Kyoto and I will have to connect on to Hankyu. I have never taken the Hankyu before so I guess I will have to leave OEH 90 minutes earlier in case I make an error in transferring trains. It only takes half an hour to Kyoto from Hirakata and 10 minutes to Katsura from the transfer point, but since I do not want to screw up on the first day, I am going to do things the safe way.
As I was researching for my work stuff, Dave was just being lazy and stayed at the room the whole day reading manga. He was dead exhausted from handling the Japanese girls, and still traumatized by what went on last night LOL. Now I remembered that the China Doll lustfully asking Dave to pick her up and carry her in which Dave did. That was an awesome moment.
Before Dave headed back to the Minoh Dorm in the evening, we went out for dinner. We had absolutely no energy to cook, and we did not have much of an appetite, so we just went to the Yoshinoya at the Hirakata station. Believe it or not, this was my first time eating at Yoshinoya! They are famous for the gyu don, so I really wanted to something with gyu (beef) in it. I decided to have the Gyu Sake Teishoku, or Beef and Samlon Set. It tasted ok – I expect nothing more from fast food chain, but the price is unbeatable and more importantly, it is a proper meal. I prefer this over McDonalad or KFC any day of the week (Sorry, I do not consider the food served by McDonald would belong to the “proper meal” category, and their products are overpriced in Japan anyway).
After Dave left and doing some groceries at Saty, I just relaxed at OEH and looked up some videos on Youtube. I found this good song from Kobukuro, called Eien ni Tomo ni…. very moving song and very popular at weddings apparenly.
That was my day. I had some good rest and ready for work tomorrow. Looking forward to it!
Halloween will be in a few days, so the folks at OEH held a wild Halloween party last night. I asked Dave to come join the party……there has been no celebration planned at his dorm in Minoh so he has a chance to enjoy Halloween here in Hirakata. We had little budget to buy costumes though, so after my English teacher training, I went met up Dave at the Hirakata station and headed to the nearby 100yen store to buy 2 Power Ranger masks.
When I returned to OEH, everybody has already dressed in their costume. There were Spiderman, Michael Jackson, Harry Potter’s schoolmates wannabe, Gundam Lieutenant, Jack Sparrow, Scooby Doo, AFRO guy, Winnie the Pooh, Dark Angel, Drag Queen etc etc. Everyone lined up for a happy group picture before strolling off to the restaurants nearby, where our OEH manager Arata has already reserved the whole place for the night. And more importantly, she has ordered two hours of Nomi houdai (all you can drink) for everyone and…. with that, some people are bounded not to behave after the end of that 2 hours.
There were about 50 – 60 people at the party, many of them are Japanese people that I have never met before. Apparently, they are friends of the owner Hide. Me and Dave sat at a table where some of his ladies friends are. Anna, who used to live at OEH, was sitting across me too. At around 8:30, the party started! Here is what happened:
Event
Description
1
Dinner
The party started with a big Kanpai with everyone and a small “dinner” (so little food for everyone to share).I have already had ramen for supper so I was not hungry.Food was so-so anyway.
2
Game
After dinner we played a group game.In this game, the participants were given tomato juices, with chili sauce added to one of the cups.The audiences had to guess who drank the spicy juice, so the participants cannot make any facial expressions. I was picked to the first game along with four others.Each of us drank the juice, and lucky me, I got that spicy juice.Arghhhhh… I drank it and my tongue was burning, but I was able to hold it off and not letting anybody noticed (Thank you for my Sze Chuan food training when I was in Vancouver).No one was able to guess correctly so after a couple round of guesses, Peter had us revealed the answer.I disguised well enough to make through the round, but I don’t get a prize damn it.Another five came up for the second round and this time a young audience guessed right.
3
Mingling
Then we had socializing and drinking time.I went around and drank at different tables…. some folks were already drunk.Sophie and the drag queen (see picture you will know who I am talking about) were having a huge drinking dual and they were drinking and mixing all kind of sake and hard liqueur….. and drag queen started to act a bit crazy and jumped all around, and I could see some girls were getting scared a little bit.
Ummm and then I went back to my table and socialized with the girls there.
4
Main Event
Peter, Michi, Yurika, Tomoe, and Tatsuya performed a full Michael Jackson dance. They practiced for weeks and the result was totally awesome!I will post up the video once I get a hold of it.
5
Prize for best costume
Everyone submitted a vote to pick the person who wore the best Halloween costume. Many voted for Peter (Jack Sparrow) but he was not allowed to win as he was considered as an organizer of the event, so then Michi (Michael Jackson) ended up winning!He glued and sewed his whole set of costume together, so his effort alone deserved first place! Second place went to Jon (drag queen…?), and third place went to the Gundam girl.
The Halloween party ended at around 11 and we took group picture after. But the end did not ended there – overnight karaoke was already pre-arranged at Jankara located near the train station. I planned to tag along with the OEH group, but Mr. Dave had other ideas.
During dinner, Dave demonstrated his friendly Gaijin side towards the girls at the table. We took tons of pictures, and after the party, the girls invited us to go to their next event. I did not really want to join them as I wanted to go to karaoke and then head home at around 2:30Am. But Dave pulled me along and I hesitantly went along. He was totally in Gokon mode.
The girls joined another group at a nearby Korean restaurant. Hide was there too! They all appears to be in there early thirties. We had more drinks and food, and one of the girls dressed as a China doll started hitting on Dave. The girls found their way to examine Dave’s body (being touchy touchy not anything exotic), and we then exchanged phone numbers using infrared red function (apparently this is how Japanese people exchange contact information).
The night was of course not finished. We hit the bar across the Korean restaurants and had more drinks! The China doll was still genki (and drunk) at the time and kept on molesting Dave, asking him to feed her. “FEED ME, DAVE! FEED ME, DAVE!” the girl requested in English ……..and the girl dunked the tomatoes into the salt and Dave fed her (LOL). I think Dave had fun and I was happy to see him being so friendly with Japanese people. I was friendly towards Mika too, another girl who was at the party, and we chatted in random Japanese and I taught her random English.
The night ended with the last event – Karaoke at Jankara. We tried to get a room and after a short wait (at 4am) we finally got the room. I did not follow them though – I bumped into Jon and Hiroshi, and he dragged me to the room where the Japanese residents were singing. Thus, I left Dave to be alone with those girls (ummmm….hahaha) while I rested in the karaoke rooms.
I stayed around for a bit and did not even sing a song…..I was so tired and I decided to go home at 5:00am. I put down the money and I walked home like a zombie. When I got to the door Kenji (Winnie the Pooh) was still up and smoking. I chatted with him for a bit and he told me Peter and Arata were hungry and went to have ramen (my gosh still have appetite?). I dragged myself into my room, set up the bed for Dave (in case he needed it), and finally enjoyed my beauty sleep.
Amazing things would follow. I was awoken by Dave at around 6-ish and surprised to saw him came back…. but immediately I went back to sleep. At 8am, I woke up again to urinate, and heard Sophie rushed out her room and threw up in the toilet next to mine. When I came out of the toilet, she was rinsing herself at the sink with only her underwear. Ok, she was wearing a sleeveless piece, and yes, her panties was red. Ooops am I saying too much here? I ensured she was ok and then I headed back to sleeping La La land.
It was a wild night and an interesting experience drinking and hanging out with the Japanese people. Good training on how to mingle with them!
