Japan meets the parents, Day 2 - Festival Time

We all packed up Sunday afternoon and went to a festival in Fujinomiya. It couldn't have been a more perfect day. It was sunny and cool but not cold. Not many clouds in the sky and Mt. Fuji was looking wonderful and clear. There were a ton of people there and we met up with some friends and found a spot to lay down some blankets and enjoy some good company. Dad and I went on a mission when we first got there to get some food for everyone. The lines were pretty long so we ended up just getting about 8 yakitori and taking them back to appease the hungry mouths. Mom and Dad got to meet all of our closest friends and see who we spend the majority of our time with. Caspian even got to come! He didn't enjoy the ride in his bag on the train or the bus but was very happy to get to come along. He sat very nicely in Kelly's lap and of course had several children come to see him with the usual exclamation of "Kawaii!" All in all, it was a fun outing and a good chance to relax and enjoy a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

Pictures on Flickr!

Unfortunately our camera was running out of battery so we didn't get many pictures. :( Our bad.

We were all pretty tired after the festival so for dinner we had Don Don and all retired early.

The parents seem to be enjoying their time so far. We're all kind of wearing each other out though. None of us are used to this much activity I think. And it hasn't really begun yet. Monday's post to come soon.

Japan meets the parents, Day 1

We've just about finished mom and dad's first full day in Japan. We did basically what we do on a normal Saturday: sit around, eat, sit around, sleep, sit around, eat, and sit around. And it won't be long before we go back to sleep. But it's been a fun day. It's good to have them here and doing some of our usual stuff. This was the official jetlag recovery day before we start doing a bit more traveling around after this. Here are some pictures:

Eating sushi at Kappa, the conveyor belt sushi restaurant. First real sushi experience for both. They did well!


Sleepily lounging in the living room after eating yakiniku (grill your own meat.)


And this is from last night, in Shinagawa on our way back from the airport. Their first meal in Japan.


We'll be putting some pictures up on Flickr too so check those out!

Trek to the airport

Well I'm about to leave in about an hour to go pick up my parents from the airport. I'm taking the local lines to get there to save money and then we're taking the shinkansen back to Fuji. Mom has been very excited about riding the shink so it should be fun.

We're looking forward to a fun week of being tour guides and giving my parents a bit of a taste of our life in Japan. I have some ideas of what we're going to do but a lot of stuff we'll just see what happens. We'll definitely be eating a lot of our favorite foods. :)

I'll post some updates through the week of how they're enjoying their stay.

Graduation

Well for the first time since I stopped waiting tables, I had to work on Sunday today. Today was graduation for the third year students. It was a very nice ceremony, extremely different from American high school graduations. There were definitely no beach balls or fog horns at this graduation. It was very structured and well-rehearsed.

The structure of the basic diploma handing out was this: There are 6 homerooms in each grade (at my school.) Each 3rd year homeroom teacher went up to the microphone and called out each of their students names one at a time and the student responded to their name with a loud "Hai!" (That means yes, of course.) At the end of each homeroom's names, the head student of that class went up to the stage and received the diplomas for their class. So there was no walking across the stage by each student. After all of the students names were called, there were a few speeches. One by the principal, one by the PTA head, and a few by some students. When everything was finished, the students all walked out while all of us teachers stood in a line and applauded for them. Many of them gave their homeroom teachers high fives as they walked by and several teachers and younger students cried, of course. It was a nice ceremony but a bit too cold in the gym. That's to be expected though. I was also very pleased to hear the normal graduation song being played as the students entered the gym. It gave me some sense of reality. And our band is very good. Small, but good.

I spent the afternoon signing graduated students' yearbooks, many of whom I never taught but wanted to talk to me and have English written in their yearbook. I wrote the same thing for pretty much everyone:

Congratulations!
I am very happy for you.
I enjoyed having you in class. (if I had them in class)
Good luck and have fun!
See you!
--Kory コーリー　(that's my name in Katakana)

I also had several students take pictures with me, which is always fun.

So all in all it was an easy day despite the fact that I was at work on a Sunday. So I'm one day into my six day work week. No classes this week. Just a lot of test grading as this week is exam week. We also have junior high entrance exams to grade this week for the students who are trying to get into our school for the new school year. I'm assuming I'll be grading the English part. I hope.

Marathon Day

Today was Marathon Day for Yoshiwara High School. We all went to the Fuji sports complex where it was taking place. The route was basically around the track once and then out of the stadium, around the stadium, around the tennis courts, down the street, around the baseball field, back down another street, through the parking lot and back into the stadium. The girls had to run the route two times and the boys four times. My predecessor ran last year so a lot of people expected me to run but I most certainly did not.

My jobs were pretty simple. My main job was to take a marker and mark students' hands when they ran by at the end of one of one lap. This was to make sure nobody hid and only ran one lap or something. So I made marks on people's hands, wrists, forearms, and unfortunately one shirt. I promptly found that girl after the race and apologized for putting red marker all over her gym shirt.

My other job was to shoot the starter pistol at the beginning of the boys' race. Our Kocho-sensei (principal) usually does it and today he came and asked me if there was a specific word in English for the gun. I told him it's called a starter pistol and then went on to tell him that I used to watch my dad shoot them off at the beginning of races. So he decided that because of this, Andrea and I were going to do it today. So Andrea started the girls, and I started the boys. It was pretty fun and made me feel important.

After the girls' race many of them ran up to me to tell me what place they finished. Some of my favorite students (i.e. the ones who talk to me the most) finished as well as 4th to as low as 200 somethingith. But I told them all that they did a great job and was sure to smile and give them a thumbs up because they all like that. (If only it were this easy to make girls like me when I was in high school.) :)

With the boys, one of the students in the class I work with the most got first place which was amazing. First place out of 240 or so boys is pretty good. His name is Shuhei Baba so I think on Monday I'm going to call him IchiBaba. "Ichiban" means "number 1" in Japanese, so I think it's a pretty good play on words, which is not easy to do in Japanese.

I also may have accidentally committed myself to running in next year's marathon. The girls were all wanting to know why I didn't run and I made excuses about how I wasn't in shape which they didn't understand, and then how I have bad knees which they didn't understand, and then how I just plain didn't want to run which they didn't care. So finally I said "next year...maybe." Well they have limited English so they understood the "next year" part but not so much the "maybe" part. And they all got very excited. So I guess I need to run tomorrow and start training.

Here are some pictures from the event:

The students in the stands awaiting their fate.


The "opening ceremony"


Pre-race stretching


More "stretching"


The girls waiting at the starting line.


Andrea starting the girls.


The boys at the starting line.


Me following in my dad's footsteps (apparently) and starting the boys.


As a result of my "hard work" at the marathon, I got released from work an hour early today.　おつかれさまでした！　やった！

Long Sunday Walk

It is a beautiful day outside today! It has been very cloudy and rainy over the past few days and then last night it was extremely windy all night. So the result of that combination is that the rain and clouds formed a new layer of thick snow on Mt. Fuji and then the wind blew away all of the clouds so we can see it. Kelly went to go do some strawberry picking with the girls today so I took Caspian for a walk to enjoy the nice weather. We ended up taking a longer walk than I think I've ever taken with him. Maybe the longest he's ever taken. We walked down the usual path and then kept going and went along a trail that goes next to Fuji River (or at least what I think is Fuji River, known as Fuji-kawa.) I didn't have the good camera but I took some pictures of some of the cool shots with my iPhone. Here are my favorites:

I hate that I got my fingertip in this one, but I like the picture anyway.


Here is a shot of the same thing but different angle. Lots of snow on Fuji san.


River, factory, mountain.


Lots of blue...


Caspian wouldn't pose, but I wanted to put one of him on the walk anyway so Kelly would believe I took him. :)


The river


Three things Fuji has a lot of: paper mills, Pachinko parlors, and Mt. Fuji.

The week to hereafter be referred to as: THAT WEEK.

Wow, this has been quite a week. Probably one of the busiest and most stressful since I got here. Here it is:

Monday - This was the day of my observation by the people from the Shizuoka Board of Education. Ashley Harvey, the JET ALT Prefectural Advisor and Yasuo Suzuki the Japanese supervisor of ALTs both came to the school to observe a few of my classes. So I had class 2nd period with our Elective English class. They were doing their final presentations on their high school life. Some good presentations. This class is not the strongest at English but they try really hard. Then 3rd period we had an observed lesson for our 2nd year International course class. This was with me, Andrea, and Dobashi-sensei. They are working on presentations about various countries around the world and we did a sample "bad" presentation to show them what not to do. Then we observed them while they did group work. Right after that class was my observed OC I class with Hara-sensei. It was a lesson on small talk. It was one of the shyest classes but it went pretty well. They did good. Then me and Andrea had lunch with Ashley and talked to him about all kinds of things. After that was a non-observed first year International course class where we taught them English terms for origami. Finally we had a meeting with Ashley, Yasuo-sensei, and the entire English department during 6th period. I got a lot of great feedback and tips about the classes. It was really good to have a productive meeting full of compliments, advice, tips, and constructive criticism. It was just like an Adam Hester post-run through notes session. So...that was just Monday.

Tuesday was a relatively slow day. Two classes but my first period English II class really annoyed me. They were not well behaved and I had to stop and actually make this comment in the middle of an activity: "Okay, I want you all to stop. Please move back into your rows (they were sitting in groups.) There are too many people talking and not enough people writing." I hate being an adult sometimes. So we finally got through the lesson. Then there was another first year International course lesson later in the day.

Wednesday: This was THE day. 1st period: 3rd year International course final speeches. We gave them a choice to either do a speech or write a paper. There are 36 students and 6 people did a speech. So the speeches ended pretty quickly. They were pretty good. One was great. After they finished we had all 36 students stand and say what their post-graduation plans are. 2nd period: OC I lesson. Careers. A decent lesson with a decent class. 3rd period: A new English II lesson. A lesson on how to order pizza in English. It was fun and the students liked it but it was one of those lessons that requires the ALT to be a big time entertainer so it took a lot of energy. 4th period: a break. Lunch: A curry filled donut. Better than it sounds. 5th period: Another OC I career lesson. Good class. Went well. Getting very tired. 6th period: Another OC I career lesson. Bad class. Lots of talkative boys. Absolutely love the girls in front for participating. They are wonderful to me. Very, very tired. Cleaning time: Stood there staring off into space. Finally all classes are over but guess what: I have to have an OC I lesson plan done for Thursday by the end of the day and I'm not ready! So I stay at work an extra hour finishing the lesson plan and finally get home at 5:40. I had planned to cook. We got take out Don Don instead. The Kaki Fry Bento was especially good. That's a bento with fried oysters. Very good. While Kelly gave Caspian a bath I fell asleep with my head on my computer. In bed by 9:45.

Thursday: It's only Thursday?!?!?!?!?!?! One class! We can do it. New OC I lesson. I get to work early and explain the lesson to all necessary parties. Everybdy is like, "what?" We do it anyway with loads of fast-paced preparation the hour beforehand. My class goes okay. Sasaki-sensei said, "Not bad for not having a meeting about it." I was like, "Bleh." We got through it. That's what counts. No more classes for the day. I read and corrected six 16HR student diaries. Then I proofread a teacher's essay for a grant application and graded some 3rd year International course papers. Remember those? Yeah, they are hard to read. I only got through about 8. Finally the day was over. I came home and cooked some delicious (if I do say so myself) Buffalo chicken bites and garlic mashed potatoes. We watched LOST and now I'm writing this and listening to music. Current song: How to Disappear Completely by Radiohead. I feel that.

Tomorrow: One class. Elective English. Two presentations, a video, and goodbyes. Following that I will finish grading 36HR papers and call it a week. I think I've earned some internet at work time. Agreed? Agreed.

Can't wait for the weekend! What's that? Laundry needs to be done? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!