Tokyo
Well, here I am in Japan then.
Tokyo was mostly ｆun, if totally exhausting. Didn't really see much of it as we were stuck in lectures most of the time (and pretty useless they were too...I'd rather have got more sleep). Was out every night drinking in Shinjuku, the area of Tokyo where we were staying, unfortunately mostly in British theme pubs because we didn't know what was a Japanese pub and what wasn't. Did however get to go to a very posh Japanese restaurant on the last night where we stayed until we were thrown out. Having no knowledge of Japanese I ordered what looked like a nice meal and got a bowl of stone cold ramen noodles with a nasty cold sauce on the side. At least beer has a universal taste.
Have been to lots of JET welcome dinners and drinking parties (called 'enkai') and made some good friends over extremely large G&Ts. Have also done karaoke more times in the last week than I have in my entire life. It's surprisingly easy after your fifth cocktail. And you voice doesn't sound too bad then either....I do a mean rendition if Paint It Black by the Rolling Stones. However, my excellent impression of Bob Dylan's 'Just Like a Woman' was a little overshadowed by the reaction to the lyric "and she breaks just like a little girl..."
The festivities are finally over, that is until Wednesday when Group B arrives (bringing the lovely Robin with it). Is probably a good idea to have a day or two off. Stayed out til 7am Sunday morning and was as horribly ill sunday: dizzy, lightheaded, nauseous, disorientated, hallucinating (slightly), and hearing things. Eventually – after reading the same page of my book several times, and having a totally unsuccessful nap punctuated by really freakish dreams -- I worked out that I was dehydrated. Drank four litres of Pocari Sweat (an unfortunately named yet popular isotonic drink) and fruit juice and water and lay down for the rest of the day having more crazy dreams and out-of-body experiences. Felt only slightly shitty this morning.
It's the summer holidays for all of August so I wont start teaching until the second term which starts September 1st when my first class will be English Composition. However, I still have to go in on-fri 8.30-4.15 as the teachers still work - lesson plans and so on, and alot of skiving from what I can see. I am desperately reading the textbooks I'll be teaching with and coming up with ideas for the weekly essay I have to set and then mark (that's going to be pretty cool actually: "this week class we will be writing about Wales' fantastic victory over England in the 2005 Six Nations Championship"...ho ho ho could have one Six Nations victory a week....). I'm also working on the introduction I'll have to give at the beginning of term - in Japanese, to the entire school at the opening ceremony. Oo-er.
My school is Kureha Senior High School, which is in a town called Kureha one train stop out from Toyama city, where I live in 4 room apartment which I'm told by the second and thirds years ALTs is extremely large for Toyama city centre. Kureha High is too cool for school. It has about 700 children aged 16-18, with two-thirds girls to one-third boys. It also has the only music department in the prefecture. Kids commute from all over the prefecture just for it. It is pretty amazing; it has about 10 baby grand pianos in individual sound booths and a mini concert hall.
I've met a few of the students already as they about a quarter of them still come to school (in their uniforms no less, which apparently they're quite proud of - wierdos) for school clubs and to study and so on. The student school day is pretty harsh actually. The day starts at 8.30am, but there will be before-school clubs for most subjects for an hour or two. Six 50-minute lessons in the day with only a ten minute break in the morning and a forty minute lunch break followed by after-school clubs and an hour or two of homework. Its common to see kids walking home from school at around 7pm while you're out drinking with your mates....
I have just read over this email and realised that it is terribly written and slightly incoherent. I blame the heat. I have a 15-minute walk to the train station in the morning and have been drenched in sweat every morning so far. In fact if the teacher's room wasn't air conditioned I'd be drenched all day. I hear it helps to wear a vest to hide the sweat marks (that would be my entire shirt...) but I'm buggered if I'm going to wear layers in this heat! The classrooms are not air conditioned so I hate to think what it'll be like in September. Nor are they heated in winter (average temperature 3c, hooray!).
That's really all I've got at the moment. I've just bought lunch from the combini (convenience store) around the corner - a very nice triple decker ham, salad and egg-mayo sandwich. On the front of the package it says in English: "Fresh Sandwich. This sandwich is fresh, homemade, and delicious. We want you to try to eat this sandwich". Aah, bless their little socks.....
Tokyo was mostly ｆun, if totally exhausting. Didn't really see much of it as we were stuck in lectures most of the time (and pretty useless they were too...I'd rather have got more sleep). Was out every night drinking in Shinjuku, the area of Tokyo where we were staying, unfortunately mostly in British theme pubs because we didn't know what was a Japanese pub and what wasn't. Did however get to go to a very posh Japanese restaurant on the last night where we stayed until we were thrown out. Having no knowledge of Japanese I ordered what looked like a nice meal and got a bowl of stone cold ramen noodles with a nasty cold sauce on the side. At least beer has a universal taste.
Have been to lots of JET welcome dinners and drinking parties (called 'enkai') and made some good friends over extremely large G&Ts. Have also done karaoke more times in the last week than I have in my entire life. It's surprisingly easy after your fifth cocktail. And you voice doesn't sound too bad then either....I do a mean rendition if Paint It Black by the Rolling Stones. However, my excellent impression of Bob Dylan's 'Just Like a Woman' was a little overshadowed by the reaction to the lyric "and she breaks just like a little girl..."
The festivities are finally over, that is until Wednesday when Group B arrives (bringing the lovely Robin with it). Is probably a good idea to have a day or two off. Stayed out til 7am Sunday morning and was as horribly ill sunday: dizzy, lightheaded, nauseous, disorientated, hallucinating (slightly), and hearing things. Eventually – after reading the same page of my book several times, and having a totally unsuccessful nap punctuated by really freakish dreams -- I worked out that I was dehydrated. Drank four litres of Pocari Sweat (an unfortunately named yet popular isotonic drink) and fruit juice and water and lay down for the rest of the day having more crazy dreams and out-of-body experiences. Felt only slightly shitty this morning.
It's the summer holidays for all of August so I wont start teaching until the second term which starts September 1st when my first class will be English Composition. However, I still have to go in on-fri 8.30-4.15 as the teachers still work - lesson plans and so on, and alot of skiving from what I can see. I am desperately reading the textbooks I'll be teaching with and coming up with ideas for the weekly essay I have to set and then mark (that's going to be pretty cool actually: "this week class we will be writing about Wales' fantastic victory over England in the 2005 Six Nations Championship"...ho ho ho could have one Six Nations victory a week....). I'm also working on the introduction I'll have to give at the beginning of term - in Japanese, to the entire school at the opening ceremony. Oo-er.
My school is Kureha Senior High School, which is in a town called Kureha one train stop out from Toyama city, where I live in 4 room apartment which I'm told by the second and thirds years ALTs is extremely large for Toyama city centre. Kureha High is too cool for school. It has about 700 children aged 16-18, with two-thirds girls to one-third boys. It also has the only music department in the prefecture. Kids commute from all over the prefecture just for it. It is pretty amazing; it has about 10 baby grand pianos in individual sound booths and a mini concert hall.
I've met a few of the students already as they about a quarter of them still come to school (in their uniforms no less, which apparently they're quite proud of - wierdos) for school clubs and to study and so on. The student school day is pretty harsh actually. The day starts at 8.30am, but there will be before-school clubs for most subjects for an hour or two. Six 50-minute lessons in the day with only a ten minute break in the morning and a forty minute lunch break followed by after-school clubs and an hour or two of homework. Its common to see kids walking home from school at around 7pm while you're out drinking with your mates....
I have just read over this email and realised that it is terribly written and slightly incoherent. I blame the heat. I have a 15-minute walk to the train station in the morning and have been drenched in sweat every morning so far. In fact if the teacher's room wasn't air conditioned I'd be drenched all day. I hear it helps to wear a vest to hide the sweat marks (that would be my entire shirt...) but I'm buggered if I'm going to wear layers in this heat! The classrooms are not air conditioned so I hate to think what it'll be like in September. Nor are they heated in winter (average temperature 3c, hooray!).
That's really all I've got at the moment. I've just bought lunch from the combini (convenience store) around the corner - a very nice triple decker ham, salad and egg-mayo sandwich. On the front of the package it says in English: "Fresh Sandwich. This sandwich is fresh, homemade, and delicious. We want you to try to eat this sandwich". Aah, bless their little socks.....
posted by Geoff at 5:06 PM
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