Apple
It is the crimson apple which the girl has. There is a tree of a big apple in the garden of a girl’s house. Therefore, a snack is always eating an apple.
I love the “therefore.” Nothing that precedes it validates what it claims. Simply awesome.
Filed under: Engrish, Japan on February 6th, 2007 | No Comments »
Because of my fear of making an all-encompassing commitment, the avenues that I have for meaningful, project-oriented endeavors with the junior high school students are few. The one shining exception is the annual English Speech and Recitation Competition.
The recitation component is divided into two groups, with 7th and 8th graders lumped together and 9 graders by themselves. The former group is mainly 8th graders, with the occasional ambitious 7th grader. The students pick a piece to read, sometimes a famous story or passage and sometimes just a section of the textbook, memorize it and then present it.
The speech component of the competition, limited to just the 9th graders, makes the students write their own speeches and memorize them for presentation. While that seems perfectly reasonable, these students usually don’t have the ability to write an entire speech on their own, so their speeches are oftentimes their idea heavily modified by their English teacher or Assistant Language Teacher like myself.
The role of the ALT in the speech contest, which is the generic term I’ll use to refer to both the speech contest and the recitation contest, is to try and make the students speak as naturally as possible. Students are judged on the standard gamut of voice, pronunciation, and presentation. Although most of them don’t know it, they’re also deducted points for making gestures, which is probably appropriate, since their gestures make them look as natural as a toy action figure with karate chop action.
Since the speech contest is in late September/early October, it’s one of the first things I had to get started on when I arrived last year. At the time, I was still a little uncomfortable interacting with the students, and the way I tried to coach them wasn’t as helpful as it could have been. This year, however, my rapport is much better, and the two girls who opted to participate were two of the same girls who participated last year. That they had participated last year had endeared them to me, so I’m even more comfortable with them than I am with most of the other students. This year’s coaching was much more helpful in that it was at their level, and I felt more comfortable to push their boundaries in terms of what they were comfortable doing with dynamic voices.
Even though the date of the contest took me completely by surprise the week of, I had managed to get the girls into a reasonable state of readiness. The final week was just polish. That in and of itself is a pretty incredible accomplishment, as the beginning of the school term has the students busy with their club activities and preparations for sports day. Despite that these students will stand alone in front of a group of judges and their peers, the speech contest is not given much importance in the school.
Working with the students often, I knew when they were hitting their marks and when they were missing them. It really skewed my evaluations of them. However, after my 8th grader went, other ALTs turned to me and told me that she was totally fantastic. I knew she was pretty good, but she had missed a few spots, so I was nervous, even though there hadn’t yet been any standout performances in the group.
The 9th grade recitation was different. My student lacked a bit of passion and spoke a little softly, but it was otherwise on the mark. The competition, however, was a little more competitive. Again, I was nervous.
Because I go to my junior high three days a week and some ALTs go far less frequently, I felt self-imposed pressure to prove that I was having a good influence on the student and that my being there in their English classes as often as possible was rubbing off on their ability to speak English naturally. It was my own little performance evaluation.
When the results came in, I was thrilled: my 8th grader took first place, and the 9th grader took what seems to have been 4th (I don’t know what it really was, it was all in Japanese. She got a certificate, though). They were surprised, and I was ecstatic. We celebrated their success with desserts at a nearby restaurant. It was as much as I could replicate the tradition from my youth of going to 7-Eleven for Slurpees or Dairy Queen for Blizzards after a soccer game. We would have celebrated even if they hadn’t won, but desserts taste sweeter when topped with victory.
I’m already hatching an ambitious and hilarious plan for next year. I can’t wait!
Filed under: Japan on December 11th, 2006 | No Comments »
The 100yen stores are treasure troves of bad English.
Enjoy the magic of the cocoa.
Filed under: Engrish on December 6th, 2006 | No Comments »
One of the things that first struck me when I started teaching was that all the students write on top of plastic sheets called “shitajiki 下敷 [したじき]“. The sheets make a particularly strong impression because, by and large, they’re quite decorative, some just with artwork, but most promoting sports brands, movies, or characters of some kind.
I quickly deduced that beyond being cool and insidious commercialism, the plastic sheets make it easier to write on rough surfaces like well-worn desks. At first the whole thing seemed a little anal retentive, what with everyone using them, but since I too am a sucker for characters, in this case anime characters, I quickly found myself in possession of one, and let me say, they’re pretty great for writing on. As soon as I first wrote on top of one, I felt the magic. A normally unstable surface became smooth and easy to write on. I’m sure I must have had a little grin on my face.
These shitajiki lead to another revelation: movie theaters sell merchandise based on the movie that they’re showing. That kind of thing definitely doesn’t happen in Nelson, but I can’t say that I ever saw that kind of thing in Vancouver, either. I picked one up when I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It’s pretty nice, and it was surprisingly inexpensive.
Here are some pictures of the kids I teach with their shitajikis. Some kids aren’t in the picture because they’re shy, not because they don’t have shitajiki.
Elementary 5th and 6th Grade Class
This is all 10 ten kids in those two grades at the one small elementary school I go to.
Junior High School 2nd Grade (8th Grade)
Filed under: Japan on November 29th, 2006 | No Comments »
When I used to think of Japanese food as a concept, I would probably go “teriyaki,” “sushi,” and “rice” in that order. Perhaps not surprisingly, of the three, rice is the most prevalent in daily Japanese life. Teriyaki is probably the least prevalent … or maybe it’s just that I don’t know how to read the kanji for it.
Digression aside, what is, or rather was surprising to me, was how good Japanese rice tastes. In my youth, I despised rice. I can’t remember any instances clearly, but I have a definite sense that on days when my mom made rice, I complained loudly. Since I would have had a direct influence on my brother in this kind of dinner table matter, he would have complained too, and thus, fully half of the family (the tactless and noisy half) would be complaining about eating rice.
This aversion to rice abated significantly when I got to university, and I actually came to enjoy eating rice. Prior to my departure for Japan, I felt myself fortunate that I had come to like rice before moving to Asia. I felt I would be able to handle the copious amount of rice that I had earlier in life found so disgusting.
Once in Japan, however, I found that rice is quite different from what I had been eating in Canada. It’s still white (yes I am aware of the existence of brown rice — in my broke university days, I managed to buy the most expensive rice that Safeway had: Lundberg’s Organic Brown Rice), but it’s surprisingly tastier. I can’t explain why that is, but it’s undoubtedly a combination of the rice itself and having a rice cooker. The latter, in addition to cooking it more consistently, makes it easier to prepare and clean-up after. Less work is tasty.
No surprise to anyone reading this, I live out in the countryside of Japan. Rice, like wheat in Canada, needs a lot of space to grow. I am surrounded by rice fields.
In the spring, one of my elementary schools planted rice in the little field they have beside the school. A little more than a month ago, it was time to harvest the rice. I lucked out and got to help with the rice harvesting. Since it’s a small field, it was all being done by hand … 20 pairs of little hands, plus a few grownup hands because we were using knives, descended upon that field and made short work of it. It was fun to see how manual rice harvesting gets done. Fun probably because I was only doing in spurts of 5-10 minutes. If I had to do even that whole small field by myself, I would likely have a different opinion of it.
My girlfriend lives on the outskirts of Tottori-city, and her family has a rice field or two there. When harvest time rolled around, I volunteered to help out. That kind of volunteering seems like a normal thing to do in Canada, but I can assure you that in Japan, it’s a pretty weird thing to do. Nevertheless, I persevered, imagining that it would be parents and a grandparent, bent at the waist, hacking away at rice from dawn to dusk. My imagination saw need for an extra set of hands.
I was pleasantly surprised to find what I dubbed “Skyroad-san.” Even cooler than finding a rice-harvester was that I was allowed to drive it! While my girlfriend, who had never before driven it, struggled with the tank-like controls, I was naturally accustomed to it thanks to years of playing videogames! Haha! (laugh of vindication at videogame naysayers)
Instead of hanging the rice like we did at the elementary school, we took the rice to a big rice-collection facility. I guess this place processes all the rice you drop off, and then you sell some of the rice to the processing place and get some of the processed rice later. That’s just a guess.
I’m not a rice harvesting master by any stretch of the imagination, but I have a had a lot of fun with it.
Filed under: Japan on November 14th, 2006 | No Comments »
Shortly before I went on summer vacation, my washing machine stopped working. Seeing as I rent my place and the washing machine was part of the place (and the special nature of job here in Japan), I felt it was reasonable to expect that my contracting organization, the Wakasa-cho Board of Education, would replace the washing machine.
Prior events had made this point salient to me, but Wakasa is not a rich town. It’s located in one of the smallest, least populated prefectures in Japan, and the town itself has a population of 4,500 people and 80,000,000 stinkbugs — and unfortunately the stinkbugs don’t pay taxes (or rent at my house either, despite that they love living here).
With the precarious financial situation that the BOE is in, it was with some trepidation that I enquired about getting a new washing machine. They willing agreed to get me a new machine … a new, old machine. I’m not too picky, though. I mean, you put your clothes in, it fills with water, swirls around, rinses, drains and your done. I don’t have an extensive collection of premium linens, so my demands of a washing machine are modest. A new, old machine is fine by me.
I ended up eating that sentiment.
Witness, the replacement!
No no, this is not an advanced washing machine with dedicated compartments for treating special fabrics. I would understand if you thought that at first, as I did as well. In truth, this must be among the most primitive of household washing machines (despite the LED selector lights, which are a completely odd juxtaposition).
The step-by-step process for making it work:
Compare that process with your machine at home, and I’m sure you’ll notice the difference. Personally, I wasn’t even aware that such a machine had ever, at any point in time, existed.
In fairness, I believe it to be a perfectly functional washing machine (I never actually used it), but it was missing one essential accessory: a housewife. It seems to me that if someone were actually at home all day to manually initiate all these separate cycles, and they had a home-making frame of mind, it might not be so bad. However, baby-sitting my washing machine does not rank as an enjoyable, nay, tolerable, activity, so I never even tried the machine out. I already go to the coin laundry to dry my clothes; washing them there only added an extra 40 minutes and $8. For the time and mental savings, it was worth every yen of it.
Eventually the old washing machine was replaced with a newer, old washing machine, and there was much rejoicing.
Filed under: Japan on October 25th, 2006 | No Comments »
After-school clubs are a very involved thing in Japanese schools. During the five or six school months that precede a tournament of some kind, the kids will practice in their club from when school lets out at 4pm until 6:30pm. I’ve heard that some clubs even practice in the mornings. I wouldn’t know because my normal schedule of arriving 5 minutes before work starts isn’t time enough to observe their morning schedules! They also practice on weekends — Saturdays at least. The baseball club in particular will often play games on the weekend too during tournament time, so the teachers who coach that team literally work all week.
i mentioned that during the five or six school months that precede a tournament, but that doesn’t reflect the summer break schedule. During the summer vacation, the kids come to school everyday at the same time as if there was school, and they practice their club activities from roughly 8:30am until 12 noon.
Suffice to say, they practice a lot. This has an unfortunate side-effect for me: if I want to become a part of things with these kids, I need to commit to a lot of practices. It would be distracting if I only showed up from time to time. As it turns out, spending time with the kids like that builds the relationship that I have with them, and the better the out of class relationship, the better the in class relationship.
But there’s no way I can commit myself to that much club activity time.
Solution: find a part-time club.
As it turns out, there are a couple of sanctioned clubs that meet only once a week. These are the flower arranging and tea ceremony clubs. Of the two, flower arranging is the more interesting to me. Once, when searching for the girl I was coaching for the speech contest, I stumbled across their club, and they very earnestly asked me to join them. At the time, I had to refuse them because of the speech contest.
The kids that are in that club are very quiet in class, but their visible desire for me to join them had a strong impact on me, so I went last week.
This is the result of my craftsmanship (and the teacher’s tweaking/reworking!)
Cooler than my first flower arrangement was one girl telling me that she wants to learn how to speak English, but she doesn’t really enjoy the kind of studying that we do in class. It was the kind of confessional that really tugs at a sometimes neglected teacher’s heartstrings, so I’m trying to figure out what I can do to help her out. For now, at least, I’ll regularly show up for flower arranging club.
Filed under: Japan on October 20th, 2006 | No Comments »
During the summer vacation, I was enlisted to do an English summer-school program for elementary school kids. The organizers of the program mistakenly thought that I would be able to handle a group of kids on my own, so when I told them that I was definitely going to need an assistant, they searched high and low and finally found an available music teacher. Thus, it was decided that we were going to teach English songs to the kids.
Begin Aside
In my normal elementary school lessons, I teach a new English song every class. These are not your normal English songs, though. These are special songs for an ESL setting. You can listen to an example here.
At first brush, these songs are completely horrible. It was only out desperation that I tried to teach the accompanying lesson. Much to my surprise, the kids loved it. Even the despondent 6th graders got a kick out of it.
This song was the first one I sang with the kids. I used it because it was a free mp3 download, and I wanted to feel confident that the kids would respond to the songs if I was going to pitch the 6-CD, $200 super-set to my board of education.
This song is also associated with one of my fondest memories of the elementary school kids. One day, while walking home from school, some of the 1st graders joined me and demanded that we sing the song as we walked home. There we were, walking down the middle of the street singing this ridiculous English song that likely no one but us could understand. It was super cute.
End Aside
Because this was a special summer school program, these normal English lesson songs were deemed inappropriate. This left me in the challenging predicament of trying to find songs that these kids would be able to wrap their heads around. English kids songs are great for young native speakers because they use simple words and have fun rhythms and repetitions, but they’re generally disastrous for young ESL kids because every single word is a new experience for the kids — even the “filler words” like “a,” “the,” and “and.” Compound that with the speed of the songs and you have a recipe for shell-shock.
In my search for songs that would be appropriate for these summer lessons, an elementary school teacher lent me an old book of children’s songs. While they were generally standard fare, I stumbled across Tom Dooley. While I vaguely remember the song from my youth, now, 20 years later, the lyrics positively floor me.
Chorus
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
I met her on the mountain, there I took her life
Met her on the mountain, stabbed her with my knife
Chorus
This time tomorrow,
reckon where I’ll be
Hadn’t-a been for Grayson,
I’d-a been in Tennessee (well now, boy)
Hang down (your head) your head (Dooley) and cry
Hang down your head and cry (ah poor boy, ah well-ah)
Hang down (your head) your head (Dooley) and cry
Poor boy, you’re bound to die (ah well now boy)
Hang down (your head) your head (Dooley) and cry
Hang down your head and cry (ah poor boy, ah well-ah)
Hang down (your head) your head (Dooley) and cry
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
This time tomorrow,
reckon where I’ll be
Down in some lonesome valley
hangin’ from a white oak tree
Chorus
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry (poor boy ah well uh)
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
Poor boy, you’re bound to …….die
It’s so grim. People used to sing this and have fun? That’s messed up.
Despite the copious amount of repetition in the song, you can be sure I wasn’t going to spend time trying to teach this! I ended up choosing Bingo (the 1st-3rd grade class was mediocre, the 4th-6th grade class was OK), Ten Little Indians (1st-3rd grade class only; it went well), Old McDonald (4th-6th grades only; so-so).
As a final note, despite that this year’s lessons went off relatively well, if I’m asked to do this again next year, I’m going to try and avoid another music program.
Filed under: Japan on October 16th, 2006 | No Comments »
Recently I have felt very little desire to cook for myself. There are several compounding factors ranging from never having liked cooking for myself (cooking for others is something else entirely) to feeling stronger draws on my time.
Not doing much home cooking has meant that I’m not in the grocery store very often. However, on a recent trip, I was rewarded for my fleeting devotion to my diet.
To the untrained eye these surely resemble a random assortment of cheap Japanese snacks. The truth, however, is much more edible: these are a random assortment of cheap, lactose free Japanese snacks.
Until just a few days ago, I had lived under the impression that every prepackaged Japanese foodstuff that seemed sweet and desirable had lactose in it. The lactose presented itself in incarnations ranging from butter/margarine to chocolate to lactose proper. Shortening is not on that list, and it was my saving grace when it came to those individually-wrapped, bit-sized almond cookies (a sad loss for environmentalism), and those cookies were the catalyst for all the other snacks. Once I had found them, it was like an iron curtain had been lifted. My passion for snacks that had evaporated in the last year of living here came surging back. I spotted some cheap, dodgy looking snacks (re: everything in green plastic) and began searching through their list of ingredients for the dreadful 乳 character.
It turned out that there were quite a few snacks that were safe for me to eat without medicine — and each and every one that I found made its way into my basket. At around a $1 a piece, it wasn’t exactly gross extravagance.
To my delight, the ones that I’ve tasted so far are actually relatively tasty. Dr. Pepper is always tasty, of course.
The secret to happiness? Low expectations.
Filed under: Japan on October 14th, 2006 | No Comments »
Recognizing that I have a bad memory, I set a repeating iCal alarm for July 24th. The reason? It’s been one year today since I flew into Tokyo’s Narita airport. One calendar year; that’s one summer, one winter, and a never ending stream of insects.
Recently I found a really interesting document of history: The Arrow of Time. It’s a photographic chronology of the Golberg family. In truth, it’s not entirely unlike those books that parents buy to put annual school photos in. It’s main distinctions, as far as my experiences with those school books are concerned, are scope and completion. Those two elements make this fascinating to explore.
I’d like to create my own version. Today is just as good as any to start and more significant than most, so here it goes.
This isn’t quite my usual state, what with the glasses and all, but it gives you an idea of how I am now.
For reference, here is me one year ago.
Sitting in a crazy, vibrating massage chair in Yodobashi Camera in Tokyo.
This is how I celebrated dinner on my one-year anniversary.
Item :: Representation of…
)From a cleancut guy in vibrating chair to a scruffier looking guy dangerously eating in front of his computer. Tomorrow I start my second year in Japan, but the second year was almost a given. There real questions now are, “‘where will I be this time next year? How will I get there?”
For the record (mainly my own, I think), glasses are an anomaly right now. I usually wear contacts.
“shrug“
Luck of the draw.
Filed under: Japan on July 24th, 2006 | No Comments »