10.29.2003

Ah, another office day, another 10000 yen. Now that I've been paid, I've finally been able to buy some desperately needed furniture for my apartment. Up until Monday I had an empty room in my 2 room place that had absolutely nothing in it. Now I've got a sofabed, chair, kotatsu, carpet, and a tv stand. Looking much much nicer. Of course, this has cost me a large portion of my monthly salary, but now I actually have a table to eat dinner off of! I'm so happy! I can actually have people come over and give them a place to sit! Coincidentally, some Mormons are coming over to tonight to attempt to proselytize me. If I shut them down in America, I'm probably going to shut them down in Japan too. Oh well, I have a hard time refusing polite people. Maybe I should tell them that I'm already Latvian Orthodox or something. They're not even the first to try to convert me either, the Jehovah's witnesses came over shortly after I arrived in Japan. Fortunately, they didn't speak English. Not that I necessarily mind talking to the people, they tend to be very nice, I just have absolutely no interest in their various religions. I'm of the opinion that if I wanted to find religion, I'd go out and look for it.

I have found another thing in Japan that has impressed me greatly, the COD. Recently I ordered some books off the internet from within Japan, and I was surprised when I wasn't prompted for payment. Instead, a few days later, someone drops by with the books, and I paid him in cash. The same thing happened with the furniture, by the way. Very cool. Now if only I could get some BBQ beef brisket sandwiches shipped over.

10.23.2003

Man, office days suck. Looks like they're going to be every Wednesday too. All I do is sit here, and read a book, or study Japanese. And there's only so much Japanese that I can study a day before I start bouncing off the walls. At least it's only a six hour day, and not an eight hour day. Six is bad enough. I don't even have internet access here. Not only would it be entertaining, but I would also be able to get some errands done while I'm wasting my time here. The junior high schools are fundamentally different, because if I get bored there I can go sit in on a class, or get up and wander around the school, if the mood takes me. Plus, I actually do productive things like teach class there.

I find that I'm not really being as helpful as ALTs in the past have probably been to people in the office. Since I tend to speak more Japanese than the average Japanese speaks English, conversation invariably turns toward whichever language the two speakers can communicate the easiest in. For people with no Japanese language experience that tends to be English, as compulsory Japanese education includes at least six years of English classes. Even if the grammar's bad, there is a large vocabulary to work with. I find that if I don't know a particular word I can often get away with bastardizing its American equivalent into Japanese. Japanese uses a ton of English loan words. So, by speaking Japanese, I don't let my fellow office mates get any practice in English.

I wouldn't mind speaking in English, but I get impatient easily, and if I can get the point across in Japanese faster, I probably will. Plus, half the time I can't understand what they're trying to say. This happens with the junior high students a lot. I feel bad, because they're saying the right thing, but they occasionally mangle the pronunciation so badly that I can't understand it. Not very motivational for the student, to say the least. Tom sensei will have to try harder.

10.21.2003

New school for the day: Futaiwa junior high school in Yawatahama. A fairly small school, with only some fifty-odd students. After today, I won't be back in this school until February. Wow. Since they're having midterm tests today, I won't even be teaching any classes to them. I suppose it's up to the prefectural office as to how I'm used, but seeing as I'll only be here once every three months, it seems like a bit of a waste. Oh well, at least I get to spend all day surfing the internet in the teacher's room. Maybe I won't even have to wait until the school day ends to go home (the students won't).

Payday's today!! I can afford dinner! And blow another month's salary on things that I need for my apartment. I don't even have a frickin table to eat dinner on. Of course, I still don't have a way of getting the things that I want to buy into my house, but that's a problem I'll work on later. And of course, now I have another month's salary to spend wandering around in other cities. Nothing beats getting the hell out of Dodge. Dodge, Japan, that is.

10.17.2003

Ah, another day, another new junior high school. Today is lovely Seiseki junior high school, on the northern outskirts of Yawatahama. It's actually not too far from where my friend Will lives, if I was on my bike I'd visit him after school lets out. As it is, today I only teach one class, this is probably the lightest day I've had so far. I even managed to get my computer set up on the network. Everyday's a new adventure trying to get that working. I'll be happy when I start making repeat visits to some of my schools. I won't have to do any more welcome speeches (even though the self-introductions will go on for quite a while). I also won't have to keep buying chocolate to give to everyone. The checkout girl at the local supermarket probably thinks I'm insane, since I go in there everyday and buy about $10 worth of chocolate. No really, I'm not that fat.

Recently I heard from a Mr. Brian Harbron, of U of I fame, who is currently serving out his JET term in lovely Hyogo prefecture. He seems to be having a good time, he's conveniently located very close to a couple major cities in Honshu. We JETs in Yawatahama have Matsuyama (the largest city in Shikoku) to run to for the big city atmosphere, so I can't complain.

There are two problems I've been having as of late. One, I am currently starving. My method for surviving school lunch entails that I eat no breakfast, so that I will be able to eat anything by the time noon rolls around. This makes the rest of the morning fairly unpleasant. Of course, it's not just that. I also never get up early enough to get breakfast for myself. The optimal goal would be to get a hot breakfast, but with my cooking skills and general laziness, I'm not expecting it anytime soon.

Problem two: I keep falling asleep on the busses and trains that I take home. This is quite the serious problem. Last week when it happened, I was riding an express, so it kept going for another 15 minutes before stopping, and then I had to wait another hour and a half to catch a train going in the opposite direction. I got lucky last time I fell asleep because the train's final stop was my town. And even then, the conductor had to get up and wake me up so I'd get off of his train. So my question to you is, how can I fight off this sleepiness? The only thing I can think of is maybe continually gnawing on my arm or something, but that might scare the locals a little bit.

10.15.2003

Today, I regale you all with my tales of wonder from lovely Hirano junior high school, located on the outskirts of Ozu. It is the smallest school in Ozu, with only 70 students. That's nothing compared to the 5 students that are in my school at Oshima. As usual (so far), there was a welcome assembly for me this morning. All the students gathered in the gym, where they parted before me like Moses with the Red Sea. Very amusing. I have yet to teach any classes today, hopefully the kids are energetic. Apparently it's getting to be around midterm time, so there are a lot of tests being taken, this probably means that the next couple of days will be extremely boring for me. Just gives me more time to study kanji I guess.

Lately I've been trying to take pictures of every one of the classes I teach, a daunting task to be sure. Thinking about it, it seems like a year long goal, since I teach about 2,000 kids in 14 schools. Hopefully I'll get to all of the classes before they end up graduating in April. It's going to be a huge wall of photos when I'm done, and a good reminder of the places I've been.

So I spent another fun-filled time in Matsuyama this past weekend, in the company of Will and Joey. I have yet to actually get any furniture for my flat, which is one of the reasons I keep going. My place is still barren, without even a table to eat dinner at. Oh well, I don't eat at home much anyway. As it is, I don't really have much money to buy any furniture with, since I've only gotten ½ of a month's pay for the 5 weeks I've been here. I miss weekly paychecks.

10.08.2003

Teaching. Well, it's been entertaining so far. I've gone to four schools, my base school in Yawatahama, a little island school, a little coastal school, and today a medium sized school in Ozu. Today was my first trip out of town, I'm glad that I managed taking the train okay. My directions to some of the schools in Ozu get very complicated. The island school I taught at on Monday only had 5 students in their junior high school! And that was all of the classes combined, normally I will have a 2 student class and a 3 student class. It was weird having school lunch with the entire school in one classroom. Kind of cool though.

I've decided that I will try to drop in on any of the chorus classes in my schools if I have a free period, it will keep my voice in better shape, and let me mingle with the students more. I'm amazed at the differences between the first and third year students in my schools. The first years are almost always much more genki than the third years, in addition to being about a foot smaller. I can now actually tell the difference between the high school, junior, and elementary students. They used to all look the same to me.

So I went up to Matsuyama for the first time last weekend in order to get a little shopping done. The change in scope for the big cities is amazing. Everything's so much more lively, and so busy. I'm definitely going to want to visit there again. I miss that a bit, sometimes it's good to have lots and lots of people around. Not that Yawatahama's even that small compared to towns around me, there are some podunk towns that I'm glad I haven't been placed in. There are plusses and minuses to each right, but I like the plusses of the bigger cities more than the plusses of the littler ones, you know what I mean?

Well, time to go teach some third year students about the importance of being me, with my self-introduction.

10.02.03

Hoooo, long time no write.

Today's topic of conversation: garbage disposal. In particular, Yawatahama's. We use a system here that I suppose is designed towards efficiency, but leads to about 20 times more work than in the States. Garbage is divided into about 15 different types, with different days for throwing each out. Burnable (organic) garbage gets thrown out twice a week, where items like corrugated cardboard and glass get tossed once a month. I had to keep the cardboard boxes for the things that I bought in my apartment for about 3 weeks before I was able to throw them out. If there's one thing I miss from the States, it's being able to throw out garbage whenever I feel like it, at any time of day. That, and a good chimichanga. And some BBQ beef brisket sandwiches. And some macaroni and cheese. Oh well.

In other news, I still haven't started teaching at my junior high schools yet, that big day is coming tomorrow. I did bike over to a neighboring town yesterday in order to visit a friend's high school and get a little practice. My first time in teaching in another school! It turned out to be a lot of fun, and I'm glad I was with another ALT to take some of the pressure off of me. Plus, before I never had anyone notice me in Yawatahama, but now all the Honai high school students recognize me and say hi. Cool, it feels good to be known. The way I see it, I'm going to be teaching every single junior high school student in my two towns of 30,000 people, so I'll be well recognized by the kids in a month.

So today I've got to plan my self-introduction that I'll be using at all of my different schools this month. Odds are, if you know me, you're in it! Prepare yourself to be introduced to all the schoolchildren in Yawatahama!

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