メリー クリスマス

Merry Christmas from Japan!!!

It's December!

Sorry, sorry, sorry! It's been too long since I last posted. The first week of December I was putting most of my time into work, which got really busy, and studying, which was taking up the rest of my time. I took the JLPT test on the 7th. Then I let myself relax a bit this past week. But it wasn't really a good idea. I function much better when I'm busy and feel like I don't have enough time for everything. I make time to get it done. But when I feel relaxed I tend to waste time.

I think I have a 1 in 10 chance of having passed the test. I'll find out sometime in mid-February or so. (Which I don't understand so much since it's a multiple choice test that will be graded by machine. Then again it didn't make sense for a test that is 2 1/2 hours long to last from 9:45 until 3:00.) The reason I say that is because of the several practice tests I took, I only got a passing score on one of them. I just don't have the Japanese ability to pass that level of the test. I went for the 2nd highest level out of the 4. And I refused to totally change my way of studying fit the test. Maybe silly, but I didn't want to try to cram junk in my head only to forget it. Needless to say learning Japanese has given me lots to think about in terms of language teaching.

お知らせ (FYI)

I'm staying in Japan this winter break. No plans yet for Christmas day. Maybe I'll just go to work. I'm going to have a traditional Japanese New Year though. I'm looking forward to it. I'm not sure, but if I feel like actually getting it together, I may visit Korea after the New Year.

Snowboarding!

I went snowboarding yesterday morning with a couple of my teachers. It was pretty great. I hadn't been to ski or snowboard since my year in France when I went on a ski/snowboard trip with friends there. Being in Shikoku which has similar weather to Georgia, it was obviously not real snow. We drove to the very tippy top of a mountain in Tokushima where the ski park had made a slope about 30 meters wide and 800 or so meters long. Not big at all, but they just opened recently for the season. They're adding more snow every day. It's not far and the teachers had club activities in the afternoon, so we only went for the morning. I felt bad because

Anyway, I'm sore as hell today but I'm glad I went. There is talk of a whole weekend long ski trip with some JETs and possibly a trip with some of the young teachers at my school. I was able to practice enough so that I can feel confident the next time I go. I was falling the first 4 or 5 times I went down. Then I asked Mr. Ishikawa, one of the school's gym teachers (who happens to be 50), to tell me how to turn correctly and from then on I was able to manage myself pretty well and my falls were more or less limited to when I hit a bump or hit some softer snow and not because I couldn't turn. Ms. Takahashi is the young English teacher I work with. She came but she got carsick on the way and didn't enjoy herself. She was pretty bad off. We stopped at least 5 times in the last 45 minutes of the trip. She still went snowboarding at least 7 or 8 times though. And then still had to go back and coach her gymnastics club. Pretty tough cookie.

Anyway, today I'm planning on going to one of my elementary's school fair. One grade is performing "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." Should be cute.

Udon Shop

I forgot to mention. I went out with Megumi and Chie, the people my age in my Eikaiwa, for udon on Wednesday. Chie asked her friend to open up his shop for us that night. He usually only is open for lunch. It was good fun. It was just the three of us and him. His shop was in a part of the movie called "Udon" which was a big deal in Kagawa since it was centered around their food specialty. He also is a rakugo performer. Rakugo is the traditional form of Japanese stand-up comedy, except it's always performed sitting in the traditional Japanese seiza position, so maybe sit-down comedy. I think I mentioned rakugo before when I went to see a performance and when I went to see an explanation of it. One man sits on a raised zabuton (floor cushion for sitting) wearing kimono or yukata. He usually has a traditional fan as well. I think there might be another tool to use as well. I forget. But the comedy is in the form of a longer discourse with minor punchlines or comic situations supported by gestures and the use of the fan always culminating in a final punchline.

Anyway, he didn't do a performance or anything on Wednesday, but he is just a really funny guy which is probably why he is good at rakugo. He kept telling funny little stories or taking things we said and making stories out of them. We were there for probably 2 or 3 hours. He will be performing at Megumi's family's Buddhist temple/home on the 21st. I think I'll try to go.

Then we went to the new mall in the area and had some of Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors. MMMM. There's also a Mr. Donut. I'm glad that the mall isn't closer than the 20 minute bike ride otherwise I might start having a weight problem. At least I can count on the journey itself to counteract some of the effects of whatever sweets I buy there.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Well it's Turkey day back home. Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I thought I would take a minute and say a quick hello to everyone. I miss you all so much. I can feel it especially around this season of holidays. I had my own Thanksgiving with friends last Saturday. We had a turkey, green beans, mashed potatoes, candied yams, cranberry sauce, gravy, stuffing, and of course pumpkin pie. It was great. I made my grandpap's recipe for hariata again this year as well as a fruit salad. All the other things were claimed and I was really slammed last week leading up to the dinner day so cooking something was really out of the question. I had eikaiwa on Thursday like usual and the girls came over afterward. Friday I had a major workshop/demonstration lesson day at an elementary school. Over 100 teachers came, and I taught one lesson with one teacher and did a participation workshop with 2 other teachers. After that I jumped on a train to Takamatsu to celebrate a friends birthday only to make the hour trip back so I could have time to even make something as simple as fruit salad in the morning before taking the hour+ trip to my other friend's for Thanksgiving dinner.

This week has been a bit better but still isogashii! (busy!) I just keep having way more things I want to do than I have time to do. Today, I had about 50 different things I wanted to do. I've had to prioritize and cut out some things. It just stinks that so many of them have to be done at the same time and I couldn't use all the free time I had at school since it's testing time. (I can't really cook food at school.)

That brings me to what I'm doing now. It's eikaiwa night. So we are going to have a mini-Thanksgiving celebration and we'll talk about the holiday and our traditions. We'll also eat some foods. I encouraged the people to make traditional dishes, but many will probably bring their own style dishes. But I think that's appropriate since each family in America has it's own traditions apart from the basics of Turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes (in some form), cranberry sauce, green beans (in some form), and pumpkin pie. Those seem to be the absolute basics that most everyone has. My family always had spumoni for dessert in addition to the pies. We all LOVED my mom's spumoni even though it's fairly easy to make: fruit cocktail, crushed pineapple, cherry pie filling, cool whip and freeze. We never did figure out that we could make it anytime of the year. But isn't that the joy and purpose of traditions? Something to mark a season and the passage of time. Something to look forward to and be able to share with the people you care about. I guess that's why this season, so full of traditions, is more difficult to live through when living half a world away from many of the people I care about.

Know that I love and miss you all!

(Wish me luck--I'm making mashed potatoes which aren't too hard, but the dressing I'm trying to make from scratch is a new one for me. We usually use the stuff from the box back home. I hope it tastes right.)

JLPT

Well, the Japanese Language Proficiency Test or 日本語能力試験 is just around the corner. December 7th is the big day. I decided to challenge myself by going for level 2 (there are 4 levels with 1 the highest). I did a trial test for the 3rd level back in August and passed (with a 76%) so it seemed silly at the time to take a test I knew I could pass. But now, it seems silly to be going for a test that will be almost impossible to pass. We will see.

This past weekend, I tried a practice level 2 test minus the listening section. I got a 51%. This gives me hope. The passing cut-off is 60%. So, I have just a bit less than 3 weeks to close that 9% gap. It just may be possible. I've just finished this book of grammatical phrases that account for a good chunk of the grammar section (which I did very poorly on and which is worth 2 points per question). Even though I had already finished most of the book at the time of the practice test, I hadn't reviewed any of it. So, now having finished, if I can focus on reviewing those grammar phrases and getting them in my head, I perhaps have a chance at passing.

And yes, I know that passing this test won't prove I'm fluent or anything. But goals can can be good to have. Also, up to this point, I haven't let my method of study be corrupted by studying for the test (as I just argued against doing such a thing in my last post). But having had this test in my mind has gotten me to do a lot more reading and living in Japanese than I was doing previously. And almost as a favor to it and because I don't want a poor showing, I don't think I mind doing some studying strictly for the test over the remaining weeks(in the form of memorizing those damn grammatical phrases, going over past test questions, doing practice listening tests).

Teaching to the Test

I think it's very important to realize that for any subject, teaching with the goal of passing a test is 100% wrong. Tests should be measures of progress. Tests these days are, on the whole, poorly constructed, and their standardization generally weakens their effectiveness. And because of these problems it is possible to strictly prepare students for the test (as opposed to teaching students solely for mastery of a subject). But should we do it? Should we teach to the test? I say NO.

But because of high accountability on teachers and the high pressures of students to get high test scores and the subsequent high pressure from parents on teachers to prepare students for the tests, all focus is lost!

In Japan, English is especially easy to ignore while preparing for the tests. It amazes me that teachers can continue to teach (to the test) while evidence that their students can say and understand very little natural English (even natural English limited to grammar and vocabulary that have been "taught") appears daily in front of them.

In America, the same testing trend is sadly occurring. As a French teacher, I was able to avoid the stress involved with teaching to a test. So far, most states are focused only on math and English as far as federal school accountability tests are concerned. Many states are adopting their own tests for high school graduation in all subjects. Some more advanced states, New York for example, have already created tests for foreign languages. (Sidenote: I've seen the New York tests. They are very good proficiency based tests. But even good tests can be misused, i.e. used as a goal rather than a measure of progress/ability.)

The best tests for language are skill/performance based tests which are not easily standardized and require time and real-time adaptability. But these types of tests require a trained language expert to holistically evaluate a student's abilities. This seems subjective and isn't mass producible making them undesirable.

So what do we do? How can we have tests while not teaching to them? Is it possible? Is this having our cake and eating it too? Is standardization helpful or problematic? And as a lowly ALT am I ever going to have an impact on this problem in Japan?

GRE

I got my results back for the test. I already had the math and verbal scores and I did well there. But I was worried about the analytical writing section. And rightly so. I got a 4.5 out of 6 on their holistic grading scale. That was at the 58th percentile. So really not good at all. I should have done some actual prep work for it.

For completely separate reasons, I've been considering not entering graduate school next fall. That would give me time to retake the test to raise the writing score. But I'm not all that worried about it. Just disappointed that I didn't prepare well enough for it. Well at all really. I didn't do any practice essays. I didn't even fully grasp what the writing section was until a couple days before when I finally read a description and started looking at the topic pool. I was hoping I would edge by with a 5 which doesn't look quite so bad I don't think. But oh well. Better luck next time.

By the way, I'm trying to do better about keeping in touch with family and friends back home. So if you haven't heard from me in a while, please leave a comment, send an email, find me on skype (usually on in the evenings Eastern Standard), or call me on my cell phone (which might be a bit expensive for you, unless you use skype where it's only about 2 cents a minute) - you can email me for the number.

LOL

I just looked at the titles of my October posts. That has got to be the most eclectic mix ever. 面白い！　Oh and Beyoncé was just on TV here in Japan. Even funnier, there's this recent group that's become somewhat popular. It's a joke kind of. I think. You never know. But it's three Japanese guys dressed up Dream Girls style in matching sequin dresses with big wigs and big makeup. They pretend that they are American girls from a Las Vegas act (I think). It was just funny to see them getting introduced after Beyoncé. But they actually sing an actual song on the show and are treated basically like all the other acts. I bet you can find it at karaoke by now.

日本語でのブロギング

今から時々日本語でのポストをする。何を言うんかなぁ。。。もちろん間違ってるところが多と思うけど。いい練習と思う。それで今日のことについて書こう。


最近とても疲れた。よく寝られないからだね。ちょっと病気な気持ち最近は。昨晩も２，３時まで寝られなかった。それから頭もお腹も痛くて学校へ行った。JTEと英語の授業が二回教えた。そうでも、本当に大変だった。給食の後で小学校の授業ある。あのハロウィーンのものをかばんに置いて自転車に乗っていった。小の先生僕を迎えた。今日は二年生だった。すごい準備できた。みんな変装して本当のジャッコランターンがあってハロウィーンの言葉も覚えた。びっくりした。一緒にtrick or treatingの会話を練習した。その後で子供たちが回ってキャンディーをもらった。それからフルーツバスケットした。楽しかった。でもその後で本当に疲れた。普通の時間に仕事から帰った。ついでにレデイで薬を買って西村ジョイで植物をかった。

今晩休むと思う。日本語でもちろん。明日アパートの掃除やガーデニングなど。

PS.　To English speakers. Sometimes I'm going to start posting here in Japanese to give me a place to practice.　Sometimes I'll translate what I wrote or give a synopsis.　Today I wrote about feeling a bit sick and tired this week and not have a great day until I went to elementary school and had a great Halloween lesson. But afterwards I was even more tired. So now I'm home relaxing. ;)

Language is more than copying

I've been attempting to follow the self-study method described throughout the website alljapaneseallthetime.com. The creator of the site, Khatzumoto, is currently living in Japan and working on acquiring Cantonese. He continues to post his thoughts and ideas related to language learning, motivation, and general self-improvement. I like to comment occasionally.

Recently, he posted a video that he participated in. I disagreed with part of it and left a comment about it and someone else disagreed with me. You can find this below the video. I wrote a response but it ended up being 2 pages long. So I only posted part of it there and said I would put the rest here. So it may be boring for some of you. But this is the kind of stuff I get passionate about. Hence the 2 page response.

I think you missed my point. Yes, it was an ad hoc video. Yes, his answers were off the cuff. But I figured the fact that he stuck with the copying/mimicking connection long enough to leave an impression on me was enough for me to post as I did. If you take a better look, you'll see that I too agreed with his general point and I simply took issue with calling it copying/mimicking. Language is much more complicated than that.

I thought maybe I should have rewatched the video before posting, but I gave listening to Japanese priority to watching another 30 minutes of an English interview. I also figured it would be unfair to rewatch to nitpick it given that it was unrehearsed, unplanned, and unedited. Given your comments I decided to rewatch it to see if I was off base, and I actually found I disagree in whole with Khatz’s relating language acquisition with copying in the way he did. Language is not copying. It is actually highly creative.

(It's not really fair to Khatz to analyze what he said too closely considering it was an unexpected interview and he might not have stated everything he wanted to just as he wanted to. So the rest can just be taken as my take on language acquisition vs. copying rather than a criticism of what he said. That's all it is after all. Just me expanding on my previous comment which I still agree with.)

If we're looking to somewhat recreate a child's experience acquiring their first language through input, then let's look at their baby step's towards fluency.

"Want ball"

If that's not creativity, I don't know what is. And it's not copying. It seems redundant to say so, but I think it's important considering Khatz's statements about mixing and matching the copied parts creatively. Statements I agreed with above but, after thinking about them, have come to disagree with now.

If you are copying, then you are trying to be conscious about your language use (this is different from being conscious about the content of your language). If you are being conscious about your language use, then you are not speaking with fluency. The definition of fluency is not thinking about the language when you are using it. It simply falls out of your mouth and sounds natural/good/correct to native speakers while expressing the ideas you want to express.

If we look at what someone has said, we probably will be able to see how the different parts of the sentence have come from this or that source of input, and maybe this grammatical structure was "copied" but used with this other "copied" structure and used with different vocabulary, etc, etc. But it's actually not copying. This is descriptive linguistics. This is looking at language after the fact and analyzing it and describing it. Language looks like a bunch copied and interchanged parts. But this is not how language works in the brain. And this is not how language is created in a given utterance.

I do understand Khatz's warning about not producing on your own or being creative with the language. It's because you're not a native speaker and you'll like create unnatural phrases. This is at the beginning of your acquisition phase. Eventually, you'll hopefully have had enough input to trust your brain's ability to put together the language in natural sounding ways that correctly represent your ideas.

And I think I just got what perhaps went unsaid or was implied but I didn't catch in the interview. Maybe Khatz can clarify. At the beginning of your acquisition process, you should resist being "too creative" with the language. You're not a native and you haven't had enough input to just produce the language. If you want to talk, try copying what you've heard. If you have to use Japanese in your life, this maybe this is a good idea. But if you don't, then it's probably a better idea to not speak until the words fall effortlessly from your mouth. (Just like your native language.) Until that point, you might have fun or get by using copied phrases. By copying correct phrases you won't be risking the fossilization of incorrect grammar or unnatural wording. But eventually you shouldn't be copying. And you should be able to use the language creatively. That's what being native or near-native is.

Speaking to your nash equilibrium (I had to look that up... I'm not a gamer) time and today's political boundaries and high mobility have created language barriers where they once rarely existed if at all. We have identifiable, distinct languages. Take a look at all the dictionaries and grammars. They're so tangible. But language is not tangible. The fact is, even with something as tangible as a spoon, your spoon is not the same as my spoon. Language, after all, is the imperfect representation of one's ideas. And my mental image and definition of a spoon are not the same as yours. We use the same word and can get along in a conversation about a spoon because our mental images and definitions overlap enough to have mutual comprehension. But if you were at my house and you heard "get the spoon" you might be confused since no soup is in sight, but I would know that one of my siblings was talking about getting a whooping like when we were kids. We got the cooking spoon at my house. To sum up, depending on how you define it, every person speaks a different language from everyone else. It's just that there's enough of an overlap for almost 100% comprehension for everyone who lives within a certain community that we recognize what they're speaking as a single, distinct language. If the meanings of words were copied from person to person, then there would be no difference in meaning at all from person to person and there would be no change in meaning over time and space. This is not so.

"A building site" vs. "A building place". Good example of grammatically correct and dictionary-ly correct, but dead wrong. Again, to come to a level of ability to make the correct word choice here you need to have lots of input. It's not copying. If it was copying, then it means you've memorized this phrase. And unless your willing to memorize a million other such phrases to sound natural, copying won't work for competence in the whole language. Input, input, input.

In a movie, you may consciously take note of a certain phrasing. You hear it later in a conversation. You make a mental note to use that phrase just the same way next time you need it. A week later you have a natural opportunity in a conversation and you think to use the phrase. Great! Good for you. That's one phrase. Assuming that the rest of your conversation went smoothly and wasn't entirely made up of copied phrases, you can thank your input for your ability to get by in the conversation and not your ability to copy.

Sorry, I'm a big old dork and I like linguistics and feel strongly about good methodologies in language teaching/study. Basically, I took issue with calling language acquisition copying. I don't comment all that often here. Sometimes, to agree, sometimes to say thanks, sometimes to expand on a point with my own point of view, and sometimes to disagree. The reason I comment, even when disagreeing, is to keep an intellectual dialog going or to create one. Khatz asks us to comment, after all.

Octopus Fishing!!

Well, I never thought I would do it. Well, to be honest, I don't think any of us Americans ever really have it cross our minds. But I went octopus fishing on Sunday! We took a boat from Tadotsu, a town not too far from me, out into the Setonaikai (inland sea) and dropped our hooks in the water and snagged up some of those eight-legged creatures.



Pretty fun day in all. We left around 10 30 in the morning and stayed out until 2 or so. I would have thought that you catch octopuses with traps at the bottom of the ocean. But nope. We all were given rod and reel to catch them. We didn't even need bait. Apparently, fall is the season for fishing for them. And they must be just crawling along the bottom in the thousands upon thousands. Seriously.

The hook is weighted and has several upward pointing hooks. (It actually looks like an octopus itself, but not so much to fool octopuses but probably because it's cute and actually effective.) And once it hits bottom, the octopuses will crawl on it and get snagged. Then you yank it up and reel it in. I think there's a certain feel to it. I caught 6 or 7, but some of the more experienced people caught at least 40 each. And seriously there were more than a hundred boats in our area each with 3 or more people fishing for octopuses. So tons of octopuses. Or tako, as they say in Japanese, pronounced like the mexican food.

And when we were done, all the octopuses were put together and divvied out. So I came home with 25 of the little buggers. We were given a quick demo of how to remove the ink sac by driving your thumb in and ripping it out. (By the way, the demo was done with a live octopus.) So, I had to do this 25 times. At least mine were dead by the time I got home. At least I think so. Some of them were still changing color, like they do. Then I boiled them up and invited my friend Matthew over to enjoy some tako tacos. Yes, I'm even corny with my food.

Here you can see just how easy it was to catch them. These three guys all snag them up in this minute long video. Crazy.



This video is after about 15 or 20 minutes of trying to take the ink sacs out. It was really hard and you can hear me getting frustrated. I would have posted all the videos but it takes so long to get them uploaded. I just chose a few to give you the idea of the whole process. WARNING: Gross video! If you don't like dead things or are squeamish, you might not want to watch this!



Here you can see me finally done de-inking them and boiling them. WARNING: Again dead things. General ickiness. Beware.


And here is the result of boiling them for 20 minutes. They look pretty cute. Like little dancing octopuses.









And voila! The tako tacos! Well not really tacos, but best I could manage in Japan. Even though they look like Pringles, they are corn chips and have the right taste. See if you can spot some tentacles!!

It was quite delicious. I did cheat and mix in some beef, but I didn't think just octopus meat would be enough or have quite the right flavor.

GRE

Well. It's already time to start thinking about my plans for the future. My original thoughts were to come here for 2 years. When the decision to re-sign or return home came last year, I had some trouble, but ended up staying, obviously. The truth is I'm not so certain about where my life is heading at this point. But I've started making some preparations for returning home. One of them is taking the GRE to have the option of returning home and starting graduate school.

About two and a half weeks ago, I talked with another JET at a party who I knew was planning on taking the test and she said that it she was taking it in a week (so, last Saturday in September). This got me thinking about the application process timeline. And I realized deadlines are already approaching. I think many schools are already accepting applications with deadlines sometime in the winter. I've got to think about having my test scores ready as well as all the accompanying application materials. My friend Alana who lives in Osaka where one can take the GRE was already asking me to come up for the weekend of the 11th (this past Saturday) since another friend of hers was coming to visit. So I decided to check if I could manage a test appointment and luckily there was a spot on Saturday morning, so I could get it out of the way early and enjoy the weekend with Alana and her friend.

I had bought a book for preparing for the GRE back in March I think. But of course I hadn't really started studying with it other than taking a practice test and starting to look at the strategies they suggest for a couple days before getting distracted and putting it aside. But I figured if I waited to sign up for the test until after I'd prepared, I would never get it done. So, I gave myself two weeks to prepare and that was it.

I think I did ok. I'm pretty happy with the score the computer showed for the verbal and math sections. The official scores will come in a few weeks and will include a score for the essay portion. That section was a bit of a mess. There are two parts. The first is an essay in which you analyze a quote of some sort and explain your position related to it giving support with details from your knowledge of the world, literature, history, current events, etc. etc. The second part is an analysis of a brief paragraph usually describing someone's idea for a plan of action or a change in a given situation. You must analyze the quality of the reasoning behind the idea. You have to point out the faults while explaining what sort of information would strengthen the argument.

I think I did fine on the second essay. You have less time, but you're just working with information that's provided. The only stuff you have to come up with is how to make it better. But the first essay, I was stumped. They have two quotes to choose from and I made myself choose quickly. A good step. But then I spent 15 minutes staring at the quote and making a few notes on paper and then typing a few ideas on the screen. Not a good step. Finally with only 2/3 of the time left, 30 minutes, I started really typing. But unfortunately, I only got 2 full paragraphs done and a sad excuse for a third clearly unfinished paragraph. Later when I was thinking about what I wrote, it seems that I had been making a connection in my head (a connection between what I was writing and the original quote) that I don't think I very clearly defined. They say that it's not just about great writing given the short time. But I really don't know if I showed enough of the kind of analytical and academic thinking that they're also looking for in my writing. We'll see.

Anyway, this is the first step to graduate school. But I'm not sure that's where I'll be, come next August. The possibility of staying in Japan a 3rd year has crossed my mind more than once. Right now I'm trying to keep my options open. I don't know if that's good. I think I'd do best to make a definite decision soon and work to accomplish whatever goal I set, rather than half-heartedly go through the motions just to "keep my options open". Being wishy-washy will just have wishy-washy results.

A hair.

Did I tell you? The other day I was at school. I was washing my hands after a messy lunch, you know, picking bones out of fish with chopsticks which doesn't really work so I end up using my fingers. Anyway, I look in the mirror and there's something on my ear. So I wipe it off. But it's still there.

It's a hair. On my earlobe. Just one hair. But it's a peachfuzz hair. So it's light blondish. But it's freaking an inch long! Sticking straight out from my ear. I only saw it cause the light hit it just right.

Of course I plucked it. And of course I was wondering just how long it had been growing to such a grotesque length. Thought you might like to know.

That and I went to my second bonsai lesson. I didn't really learn anymore. Just finished up clipping the tree I started last week. And then I started a new tree. Well it's Matt 1's tree. He couldn't take it home with him.

Then I met Hashizume-sensei for dinner. She's the music teacher who retired. But guess what, she's working again! I knew she would find something to get her out and working. She likes being busy. She is filling in for an elementary music teacher on maternity leave. She'll be there for a year she said. But she also has to teach math. So she wakes up at 4 in the morning.

I know, she's crazy. She spends the time getting dressed and then studying the math assignments since she isn't good at them. (Even though, she co-teaches math and the other teacher is the one who takes the lead.) Then at 5 she prepares her and her husbands breakfasts/lunches. I think at 5 30 is her 1st year NHK radio English lesson for a half hour followed at 6 by the 2nd year lesson. Then, she finishes up and heads to school. She cooks 4 nights of dinners and freezes them on Sundays, so when she gets home (maybe around 7 30 or 8) she only has to defrost them. Her husband has taken over some of the cleaning and laundry that she had been taking care of. And she goes to bed at 10 30.

I would say this isn't an uncommon schedule for many Japanese people. They work a LOT. I often hear about teachers who are trying to finish this or that and stay up until 2 in the morning only to get up at the normal time. And there isn't really any sleeping-in ever. That's why there's so much sleeping on the train, I guess. And for the women, it's perhaps a bit tougher, because even they've moved into the workplace as much as in the states, they still are VERY much the person in charge of the kitchen and many inside household duties. And even if some of the responsibilities are shared, it's almost universal that they are expected to get up early to cook breakfast and make dinner when they get home after work. The kitchen is the woman's place. Men here in general have no interest in cooking and never cook (unless they are in the restaurant business).

Well, I guess that post grew longer than I meant to. But yeah. A freaking inch-long hair! Sticking straight out of the side of my ear lobe.

My first bonsai lesson!

Well, after visiting the place over a month ago, I finally had a weekend to go back and have my first bonsai lesson.

It was great. Nothing big, but a lot of fun. There's a nice couple, Yoichi and Kana, who are running the family business. I saw Yoichi's father today, so he's still working around the shop. And then there are the other staff, including a Frenchman, Xavier. He's actually the only other person I've met who works there. I think more people work out in the bonsai fields.

So anyway, I showed up and they weren't expecting me because they hadn't understood my text message and it was so late (sent this morning). But anyway, we started off working with a white pine, goyoumatsu (specifically ginyattsufusa). Yoichi ran through the basic yearly care cycle for the white pine. How often to water, when to change the pot, when to prune the dead leaves, and when to wire it. October is when you usually prune it, so that's what he showed me how to do.

It looked simple enough. You look for the older needles, generally lower than the newer ones and a little yellowed, and snip them off with some scissors. At first, I said, "This is nervewracking." But mainly because he was pretty quick with the demonstration pruning and I was slow and Yoichi and Kana were right there watching my every snip. But after several snips, I started getting the hang of it, and they felt satisfied enough to walk away and before long I spontaneously said, "This is relaxing." It took a second for me to realize how opposite that was from my first statement.

It really was nice. I got into a nice snipping mood. And that was all I did for about 2 hours. I didn't finish the tree, so I will follow up next time. I wish I had taken a picture so you could see. But next time.

They have a website. And before you freak out, click the English link. And they also have a blog. They posted a picture of when I went last time with the other Matt. (Matt from Kanonji who has already returned to the States in preparation for his new job in Singapore, I think.) By the way, I'm マット２. (That means Matt 2.)

What a trip!

Back already from the Okinawa adventure. I'm at work. We got in this morning to Kagawa and went our separate ways in Takamatsu. I managed to check my emails and do a load of laundry this morning before work. I'll have to sort through the mess of baggage that I brought home with me. Of course, that will be after 3 classes (more if I decide to help with Sports Day stuff) and speech contest practice. I've got to check on what elementaries I have coming up so I know if I have any planning to do. I've got to figure out who gets what omiyage (souvenirs) because at the end I remembered lots of people, but it was too late to run back and get stuff in the airport stores. Luckily I think I got enough small stuff to last for lots of people and can rearrange other things that I got for me. And I remembered all the big gifts for people I had wanted to get. So no worries.

It's already back into the old routine. (Get to school barely on time, remind the teachers I have class with them, find out what we're doing while we walk to class, etc.) It feels as if I haven't even been gone. But during the trip it felt like time was stopped. In a good way of course. It was one of those trips where our days were just so long and filled that we thought two had passed in one.

Anyway, I'll update again with pictures when I get a chance to breathe.

Whew!

Okinawa

Woohoo for being on vacation. Boo for it raining on vacation.

Already got caught in a downpour. Bought cheesy souvenirs. Ate goya champuru. Drank shiquasa or shiquasur.

Still need to get out and see some sights and eat some other well-known foods and drink some awamori, the lethal okinawan sake.

No ferries out to the island we wanted to get to due to the typhoon. So we're playing it by ear on the main island. Wish us luck!

School's Back in for the Year

Thanks friends for keeping on me. I've been neglectful once again. But I've been having a pretty great time and been pretty active. And now that I [don't really] have the time, I'll take a quick moment to update on a few things.

Not even sure where I last left off. Well, August was 夏休み (summer vacation) but, as you know, that just means kids had no class. Everyone was still at school doing stuff. I had grand plans to study Japanese everyday, organize my desk, do some lesson planning for the new semester, get back into working out, go to some club activities, take a couple trips, etc. Not very much of that happened. I took a couple trips. But a lot of my time (and mostly my energy) went into saying goodbye to my friends who were heading home and then very quickly after, saying hello to all the new friends that were coming. Dinners, parties, nights out, short train rides here and there, out til all hours. I just never had the energy to do much when I was "at work". I studied 漢字 (kanji) each day, but that was about all the studying I did.

On to the trips. I went to Osaka for a week to hang out with Alana and our friend Erin (my friend through Alana who had moved from Atlanta to New York and was visiting for a couple weeks). I was there for the last 5 days of her trip in Japan. It was great fun hanging out together and exploring Osaka. Erin and I took a trip to Arashiyama and the monkey mountain when Alana had work one day. We ate Mexican and Indian and Mexican and American and Combini. We went to a city pool. We laid in a park and read books and drank a beer. We rode a red ferris wheel on top of a building. Alana and I had grand plans for a trip to Hokkaido after Erin left, but due to our utter lack of real planning and an unforeseen lack of energy due to Alana's crazy schedule leading up to that point, we opted for hanging in Osaka. Had a couple lazy days watching movies and hanging out. Took a trip to a beach which was a lot of fun. Then I headed home.

Actually, it went like this. Night out on Friday in Osaka which went until after midnight (not quite sure of the time... probably later). Up before 7 maybe for my 4.5 hour bus/train rides + 10 minute walk home. Showered and had maybe 3 hours to myself and then took an hour ride with the music teacher down to Awaikeda in the neighboring prefecture for a festival. They dance the Awaodori there. The same dance as in the big city, but just a small town festival. We were meeting some of my friends (and friends of friends) before the festival to get ready. The teacher had brought traditional festival clothes for me to wear. She helped me and my friends get out our clothes. She pretty much took over that part of the evening. When I get a sec, I'll post the picture. I had on a yukata (what we would call a kimono probably) and geta, the raised wooden sandals. I carried my traditional bag and a fan. I was styling. I even got a "かっこいい" (cool) from this restaurant owner.

Let's see. After that we went home. The teacher said she would maybe sew me a yukata. (At this point, she's already bought the fabric and will probably have started on it. She said it might take a whole year though.) She's a handful. I need to talk to her. It's been a while.

The next weekend, I went to basically the same city, just one town over, for a friend's house party. That was quite a night. I was up til maybe 5 or 5 30. Got up at 9 the next day and (barely) made the train (are you surprised). I literally broke into a sprint for the last 3 minutes. The train wasn't taking me home, but to the other side of Kagawa where there was a festival. It was on the beach, so some of us met early to enjoy the beach and swimming and a lot of others joined later throughout the afternoon and evening. Eventually we had probably more than 30 people in our group. It was a crazy night. I couldn't quite enjoy all of it since I was soooo tired. I ended up crashing at a friends around 1. Then made my way home the next morning. (By the way, I had found out at the party Friday night that my friend Sandra's goodbye dinner with the teacher would be that Sunday around 5.) So anyway, I was up in the morning early enough to get the train that would arrive at 12. Guess who called me right at 12. Yes, my friend, the music teacher. She wanted me to come over then to help make a cake. I absolutely couldn't. I had to get home and decompress for a moment, maybe take a nap. Definitely a shower. I managed to be ready to go over at 3 to help prepare. The cake couldn't happen since I wasn't able to help because she had everything else to prepare. :( But it was a great night. It lasted forever and of course ended in tears when the teacher gave Sandra a handmade apron with Japanese fabrics. It was really beautiful.

Since then...
Sandra had her hands-down-best-party-ever goodbye party. We went to an izakaya followed by karaoke. We had 20 people? more? Insane. Insane. And tearful at the end. She was really gone the next day. :(
School has started up again (last Monday) with my list above of things I wanted to do still looking about the same.
Planned a trip to Okinawa which leaves in 4 days.
Registered for the fall ALT tournament for the following weekend.
Spending my afternoons helping students for the speech contest.
Restarted my Japanese tutoring.


Today I got home and did a lot of cleaning and work and still only got through half my to-do list. Trying to get ready for my trip. Leaving Thursday night in preparation to get to the airport for the flight on Friday. I have elementary classes every afternoon starting tomorrow through Thursday. Speech contest practice every afternoon after elementary (which means biking hurriedly back to the junior high). Tutoring tomorrow for 2 hours. Wednesday packing/preparing plants for my absence. Maybe racing for a train on Thursday.

Anyway, that brings us up today. And I even got a picture up (despite my computer trying to foil me by not producing any text in my file browsing windows whenever I really want to use them).

I hope all is well with everyone. Mwah! Miss you all!

1 YEAR!!!

I can't believe I let the day pass without posting! It has officially been a year since I came to Japan. (As of July 29th)

Time really flies.

People I run into keep asking if I'll stay another year and I say yes. And then they ask why. It's funny because I don't really know why. JETs who knew that I was wavering on my decision back in January/February ask me if I regret signing on for another year. It's hard to answer. Parts of me wish I was already back in the US but other parts are perfectly happy being here and have plenty of things to do before leaving next year. Sometimes I have pangs of "Why did I decide to stay!!!" But just as often, I think... "Maybe I could stay for 3rd year."

Well, most of you know, but just to set the record straight, I won't be coming home this summer. It would really be a major expense and wipe out all of the savings I have managed to accumulate (since I started saving in December after I realized I had spent more money that I had made in Japan by that point). Not to mention my family and friends are now all over the map and just traveling to Atlanta wouldn't provide me with the opportunity to see everyone. I'd want to go to Arizona, Savannah, Pennsylvania, London, Sweden, etc. and that just can't happen. Plus summer is the easiest time to travel home for an extended period, but it's also the time when I have to say goodbye to the leaving JETs and I get to welcome the new JETs. And if you recall from last year, it's the time when there are summer festivals EVERY weekend. I'm getting to see ones that I didn't get to see last year. And I'm going to travel up to a big music festival in Osaka and possibly Hokkaido!?! Still working on those plans. I'm a little upset because I'll be missing Tokushima's Awa Odori Festival. But I did get to go last year and I don't get to see my Osaka friend Alana very often. She's a blast to travel with.

I'm still working on getting pictures up on the blog and picasa and facebook. My friends here are always mad at me because they see me take lots of pictures, but I never put them up on facebook like everyone else. I just need to start making it a habit. I think I may try to use mainly the picasa albums online and just link to them rather than trying to post on all three sites. I'll let you know when that gets started.

By the way, I just took over the eikaiwa (English Conversation Class) in Takase that Dan used to teach. He's gone home now and so I've got the job. It didn't go how I thought it would last week. They have been doing it a certain way for 2 years and they don't really want it to change much. Every time I try to stretch my teaching wings here, it seems someone is there trying to cage me back up.

Anyway, It may be a while before I post again. I've got a lot of cleaning and packing to do before Friday. That's when I head to Osaka and who knows where, after that. I'll be gone until the 18th or 19th. Then a couple more weeks of summer vacation and then 2nd term starts at the beginning of September.

Good luck to all my teaching buddies back in Cherokee who are starting a new school year!

Me on a webpage!

Oh yeah, I forgot. This is me with one of my elementary principals. We are at the Furosatomatsuri. It's a tea festival. In the picture, you can see the kanji (Japanese character) for tea made with tea bushes. It's pretty cool. Good luck reading the page! ;)

http://www.city.mitoyo.lg.jp/forms/info/info.aspx?info_id=4004