Kia Ora! I Know EXACTLY What I'm Doing...

Monday 29^th August

More introductions. And more English classes. I was finally subjected to playing the “glorified tape recorder” a task that every JET is warned about. It effectively means that the teachers use you to read out passages in the text book so that students can copy you pronunciation and intonation. As well as reading out vocab lists (slight stumble when the gloss in the textbook informed me that I have apparently been saying Buenos Aires wrong all my life…). I also realised that I had been tasked with this exact exercise numerous times during my exchange, but this time I was getting paid for it.

There was a meeting after lunch to address the incoming Typhoon and to confirm that the students wouldn’t be at school the next day. However in true Japanese fashion it was stressed that the day off was to be treated as a sick day (which you pretty much have to be on your death bed for) and they were not to leave the house even if it was sunny outside.

There was a small glint of childish hope and innocence that thought maybe the teachers didn’t have to go to school either, then I remembered what country we were in.

Tuesday marked one month since I had left Wellington. In ways it doesn’t feel like that long at all, and in ways it feels like forever ago, another world away.

We were warned of fierce winds and rain, encouraged to bring objects that could fly away inside and draw the curtains – I walked out to brilliant sunshine. It reminded me of when Wellington had 2mm of snow a few years back and they called a snow day for the following day – it was blaring sunshine and not a speck of snow in sight.

The pessimist in me grabbed my umbrella on the way out anyway (wouldn’t want to get caught in the rain on my 2 minute walk home). This turned out to be a rather good idea, half an hour after arriving at school, the skies opened, and then they cleared up, and then it pissed down again, and the sun came out again, and on it went…

Kyuushoku was cancelled as none of the students were here so I made the most of the free hour and trotted down to the bank in about the 4^th attempt to pay my bloody power bill. It’s really quite handy that you can also go to a combini to pay your bills – that’s provided that your town actually has a combini. Internet banking is now a long distant memory of a futuristic society outside of Japan…the irony. I was beginning to doubt that the bank ever actually opened. The momentous relief that I felt after getting that $6 power bill off of my shoulders (yes I have been stingy with my air-con).

S-sensei called for a quick break towards the end of the day, "Last Saturday there was a birthday" oh shit....that's me. He had bought cake for everyone to share and I mean - NICE cake. After I got first pick of what I wanted the principal took no time in diving in :)

The Typhoon came over later that evening, while it was quite windy and the building had a wee creak and groan, it was nowhere near as bad as it was being hyped up to be (don’t worry guys I’m still alive!) though at one stage I may have paused a skype (sorry- google hangouts )session  to check what on earth was going on outside, with nothing amiss I put I down to noisey neighbours to ease my mind.

Wednesday 31^st August

A whole new level of genki.

And cluelessness.

I’d been given a timetable for what I would be doing on Wednesdays at my primary school, so was quite happily pottering away at my desk in the morning as I supposedly had no classes until the afternoon. One of the English teachers came up and explained what we would be doing for the 4^th graders, ok cool….oh wait right now? Gotta love those curve balls.

The kids were substantially less reserved than those at the Junior High School – the teacher did feel the need to sensor a couple of questions and say that I didn’t have to share my private information about my age and whether I had a boyfriend (we’ll just forget the fact that I got both those questions in nearly every single class at the JHS (Junior High School- coz typing is tough) I did disclose that it had been my birthday on Saturday – there was a wee hiccup when several renditions of “Happy Birthday” started at slightly different times, yet somehow all managed to sync up in time to simultaneously come to an unsure halt when every single kid forgot my name.

The teacher got the kids to write their names and something that they liked on little cards to give to me – he asked them to do it in roomaji (roman script) which was fine for their names but became an issue when they tried to write things like “soccer” which is サッカーsakkaa in Japanese, however the double “k” or short “a” sounds is achieved by adding a smallッtsu which is not voiced – but this fact appeared to skip a students mind when they wrote it as satsukaa, looks like I’m going to have to be very quick about learning how to think outside the box.

Attended the next class after morning tea and due to an apparent timetable change I actually have no idea what age group I was with (leaning towards 5^th years…) what I do know is that when we were going around the class saying what season we liked best, the kids misheard when their teacher said “autumn” and so we had about 10 kids saying that they liked water…

I then spent the next period trying to figure out what spell it actually was and whether I was supposed to be in a class… A quick chat with one of the teachers left me armed with a timetable and rundown of how many students were in each class.

Despite the fact that there are only 170 students there the school is quite new and ..well – posh. A book stashed in the drawers of my desk led me to discover that until 20 years ago the whole area (including where my flat is) was rice paddies. There’s a courtyard out the back where the kids can ride around on unicycles at lunch time (some of them are pretty nippy on those things! Though I was quite relieved to see how gracefully they dismounted when they lost their balance). And in the foyer is a piano and electric keyboard that the students are (apparently) allowed to play during break times. Did I mention the pool?

I was scheduled to eat lunch with the 6^th graders in the lunch hall – on the menu today was the usual soup and rice, accompanied with fish and hijiki which according to my dictionary is “edible brown algae” believe me when I say it’s a lot more edible than it looks.

Lunchtime entertainment involved kids choking on rice after trying to mirror their friends eating and an incident that nearly ended in a milky snot rocket – gotta love kids.

3^rd and final class of the day, the teacher got the kids to write their names on a little star shaped piece of paper, and the test was to see if they could write their name correctly in English characters. So I had 30 nervous kids coming up hoping that when I read out what they had written on the paper it would sound at least vaguely similar to what their name was.

Trotted back to the JHS to help with speech practice again – and though progress has been made, there is still a small issue where one student can’t quite get the hang of the intonation. We’ve tried to explain that he needs to add a little more drama to his voice, particularly when he’s reciting the part about Martin Luther King Jnr getting shot and killed…

And while there are dishes on the bench, my flat is gradually descending into a state of disarray, and I still haven’t translated the instructions on how to sort the rubbish – my blog is finally up to date.

Thursday 1^st September

The first day of Spring! …wait no… hemisphere issues.

The first two classes of the day were with second year students who are learning how to say “there is~” “there are~”. I had prepared an activity for them that involved separating them into groups and giving each group a picture to describe. To add a bit of a cultural aspect to it I had picked out illustrations from Dr Seuss; “The Cat in the Hat” (although some of the kids were convinced it was a monkey…) Quentin Blake and Peter Pan. As was expected there were some sentences that required a little tweaking- one in particular was in describing the picute of Matilda standing on a pile of books: “There are books on the girl.”… Japanese sentence order differs slightly in that where English is Subject Verb Object (I kicked the Ball), Japanese is SOV (I the ball kicked) leading to confusion when it comes to describing WHERE things are in relation to others. Some kids were pretty quick on the uptake – managing to get out sentences such as “there is a girl on the giants hand” while others had their own quirky way of approaching the issue: “There are many crazy men”.

While I was doing a bit of reading on Akita-ben I stumbled across an explanation that described how they draw out their s’s at the ends of sentences: arigatou gozaimasssssss. Having paid a little more attention to it, I’ve realised that there are more levels to this feature. It is often slurred and shortened to what sounds something like zaimasssss and the most entertaining one is when they just greet one another with a ssssss and it just looks like everyone is hissing at each other.

This afternoon there was a meeting at the Board of Education which Alyssa and myself as well as the English teachers from NIkaho city attended. It was a 90 minute session on ways to make learning English more enjoyable and engaging, as well as an opportunity for the Head of the Board to introduce Alyssa and myself to the other teachers in the city.

Afterwards Alyssa and I trotted down to the office for a quick meeting with our supervisors. My chat involved sorting out when we could go and have a look at cars so watch this space!

More speech practice this evening – we had been evicted from the computer room and were instead in a meeting room with lino floors, which meant echoes, which meant when Tiger (I won’t put the kids real names here) projected his voice from the other side of the room Atsu had to soldier through the distraction – I personally think this turned out to be good practice for him because the kid still managed to recite almost his entire speech by hear, when even I was having difficulty thinking because of H-sensei and Tiger practicing in the same room.

Friday 2^nd September

Japanese etiquette at its most entertaining.

Every time a student comes into the staffroom they must stand in the doorway, bow, say shitsurei shimasu (I’m sorry to interrupt/excuse me) and state why they are there. So when 8 kids come in to see the same teacher and there’s  miniature production line of bowing students entering the staffroom one by one, it’s rather amusing.

I was with H-sensei teaching the 3^rd years again today, and was quite relieved to see that the young lass that sits at the front of the class managed to stay awake this time. Last Friday she had H-sensei’s hand waving in her face, slowly getting closer and closer until she finally woke up. Tthis is one of those times where it’s not good to have a childish sense of humour, ie. When you’re standing in front of the class trying desperately not to crack up laughing.

There is a culture in Japan around sleeping in class, at work, on trains. It’s known as inemuri in business it’s seen as admirable as it suggests that you have been working hard. At school it just means that the poor kids have stayed up late studying and are now suffering for it.

The students each have a number assigned to them, so when a teacher needs to pick someone to answer a question they will call on a number at random. H-sensei got me to do this, and I felt like a complete turd when the poor kid that had been sleeping through the entire lesson stood up.

Today was another round of “Let’s interview Chloe”, a lot of the same questions came through, though when Atsu (Speech student) got up with his group, he sort of owned the interview and actually had the knack of making it and interview rather than simply asking me a question and then choosing at random one of the example replies (nice, great, really? Me too) that were written  on the board.

During my self-introduction the other week I briefly touched on Maori culture and taught the kids how to say kia ora,  so when one group got up and greeted me with kia ora! I was pretty stoked. I think one of the lads in that group in particular had picked up on it because he said it to me in the corridor that afternoon as well. Cue me smashing out a sheet on Maori culture, complete with a few greetings to whack up on the English noticeboard.

I had assumed that, along with 80% of what I was saying, the greeting had flown straight over their heads. So the fact that they had not only paid attention to it, but had also gone out of their way to use it was quite exciting. The first couple of days were a bit flat as the students were quite nervous around me and I was effectively just the strange new gaijin that they were forced to speak English to. Yesterday felt a bit like a turning point, when I was in the corridor organising the English noticeboard, several of the students greeted me in English, using my name and I even got some smiles. Even if one of them did say “good morning” at 3pm…

Being given a whole notice board to decorate when you’re completely crap at art was a bit nerve wracking. A few people commented on it as they were walking past, motioned to the mountain that I had made out of coloured paper and asked if it was Mt. Fuji “oh no, it’s about New Zealand – it must be a New Zealand mountain.” Meanwhile I’m standing there thinking “mate, I’m just stoked you could tell it was a mountain…”

Hijiki (photo from: http://www.japanesecooking101.com/hijiki-no-nimono/)

Kyuushoku (school lunch) threw it’s first curveball when I was at the primary school on Wednesday, the side salad was hijiki edible brown algae…try to believe me when I say that it is actually edible and while I wouldn’t describe it as delectable, it definitely tastes better than it looks.

Lunches seem to provide either rice or bread as a staple. On Thursday the bread came in the form of “sugar toast”.  An inch think slice of toast with butter and, as the name suggests, a sprinkling of sugar on top. Part of me wonders if this is some “sneaky” way of trying to get the kids to eat their carbs…

Speech practice again with Atsu and Tiger, I spent the first couple of run throughs trying not to crack up laughing and had to address them both afterwards and let Atsu know that he had been swaying side to side the whole time and Tiger back and forth. Tiger hadn’t managed to look up from his script at all during his recitation so I asked if this time when he did it, could he glance up at the audience occasionally. “Ok” did his usually rolling his shoulders before he starts talking, puts his script  face down on the table and proceeded to recite the ENTIRE thing by heart WITH EMOTION. Where the F*ck did that come from….

That afternoon I went with U-san to a car yard to have a chat with the lady that owned the place. U-san has said that there this place was particularly cheap for leasing cars (easily $100 cheaper than other places that she’d looked), she also said the one that they had was pink. I took a wee moment to remind myself that it was a car, it had four wheels and it would take me places. I also starting mentally preparing myself for the shit that I would no doubt get from the other ALTs.

Owning old cars in Japan is not a thing, their biennial shaken gets really expensive really quickly so they churn through cars pretty quick and even in tiny little towns like Konoura you don’t see any old dingers, as it’s just not feasible – can I just take this moment to remind everyone of how many Japanese imports Australia and NZ get? Willing to bet that this a major part of the reason.

Due to this, the lady had assumed that I would want a newer car, which was a bit more to rent, and obviously I was a girl so I’d want pink. As an alternative there was an older car that was cheaper, and chocolate brown. Um where do I sign?

The car was in amazing condition, despite that it was practically a write off by Japanese standards it’s almost definfiely in a lot better nick and a lot newer than my NZ car (I’m still claiming it’s mine Chanelle).  I mentioned that I would have to get used to driving automatic and the lady said that there was a blue manual coming in In the next month or so, so I could rent the Toppo (Mitsubishi Toppo) for a month and then come in and check out the manual and see if I wanted to swap cars. Easy as. Tomoko is good friends with U-san so communication between the three of us is easy as and I know that she’s going to look after me (such a relief). By the time I had found a car cheap enough to make it worth buying instead of renting, it probably wouldn’t be in that great shape, shaken would be through the roof and if it broke down, I’d have to cough up to get it fixed. With leasing through Tomoko, it’s all sorted for me. Went home with a spring in my step at the prospect of potentially having a car next week.