The rest of last week

WED-Carly, Krysta (Carly's friend), and Katie (the new English teacher) went to Tokyo Tower. Carly didn't go because she was really tired. Originally we were all going to go to the hotel/bar that the movie Lost in Translation was filmed in, but we found out there was a $20.00 cover charge after 8:00pm to get in and we decided we didn't want to spend that much money, so that's why we opted for Tokyo Tower instead. These are some things I've learned about it: The tower stands 333 m meters tall, it's taller than the Eiffel Tower which is only 320 m high, and is used to transmit radio and tv signals. We went to the second observatory at 250 m high. It was really amazing to see the city lit up at night. I read that if you go in the day time you can see Mt.Fuji if it's clear out!

Krysta and I in front of the mini Toyko Tower in the lobby.

THUR-Carly, Krysta, and I headed off to Fussa station, which ended up being over two hours away on the train! Our destination: U.S. air force, Yokota air base. Carly and Krysta went to high school with this guy Chris who was stationed in Japan, so we went to visit him. After making it to the base, Chris met us and we had to get checked in. We had to give them our passports and they did full background checks on each of us. Then they took our picture and gave us a sheet of paper that was basically our permission slip to be there. The base itself was basically just like a small city, complete with four lane highways and street lights. There were small houses, apartment buildings, and the dorms for the soldiers. Chris showed us his room, which he gets all to himself. He said all of the soldiers get their own rooms, but two people have to share a bathroom, which is between the two rooms. The best thing about the base is that they have American things there, including fast food places like Taco Bell, Baskin Robbins, and Subway. They also had a grocery store with American foods, but it was closed when we got to the base, so that was a little disappointing. I did, however, manage to snag a bag of peanut butter M&Ms from there!

The air base.

SAT-Everyone went out to dinner for John's birthday at Sakura to eat okonomiyaki. I got to try two new things: sake (don't worry, I'm 20, which is the legal drinking age in Japan) and takoyaki (which is fried octopus.)


This is a picture of me helping to make the takoyaki. On the griddle was something that resembled a muffin pan. First the lady next to me in the picture put this kind of batter down in each little section. Then I put a piece of octopus in each one, as well as some other ingredients like lettuce and some spices. Then you turn them around as they heat up and little balls form. When they are brown you eat them. The octopus was better than I expected and it wasn't too chewy or anything. The inside batter stayed very moist. I liked it a lot.

Golden Week happenings!

I am so sorry I haven’t posted. I have been busy the last seven days except Saturday. I’ll probably post this in two separate posts since I’ve been doing so much. Today I’ll cover Friday-Tuesday.

Friday: The whole English department went out to dinner. We ate “shabu shabu” style (I will explain in a minute). Of course I forgot my camera, but I think Carly took a picture, so I will try to get that from her and post it later. We had our own separate room with four tables I think and there were probably 15-20 people or so that came. Before we went into the room with our tables we all had to take off our shoes. Inside we sat on these cushion benches around the tables. We all had to draw numbers and sit with random people, so we could all get to know each other. I ended up sitting by three of the people I knew and had worked with before, so that was nice, but also go to meet a few new people as well. Now, let me explain this “shabu shabu”. At each table there were one or two burners in the tables. The waitress came and put a big pot of broth on top of the burners and turned it on so it started to boil. Then she added some vegetables and mushrooms and lots of other things like that. After that she brought out these big trays of thinly sliced meats like beef and pork. What you do is pick up the meat with your chopsticks and dip it into the boiling hot water. Then you say “shabu shabu” as you move the meat around. It only takes about 20 seconds for it to get cooked since it’s so thin and the water is so hot. It was really fun and really good! After our meal they brought us out three tiny scoops of ice cream: strawberry, chocolate, and green tea. It was the perfect ending to a great meal.

This past weekend was "Golden week." This refers to the four holidays in a row that are celebrated in Japan. They are as follow:

April 29-Emperor's Birthday
May 3- Constitution Memorial Day
May 4-Nature Day
May 5-Children's Day

We had Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday off of work. Saturday I took the day to just relax. I think the most I did was run to the grocery store. The rest of Golden Week was quite busy!

Sunday: I rode the train across Tokyo to Harajuku. The reason was because I wanted to get some pictures of the Harajuku girls. For those of you that don't know, in Japan there are these girls (and some boys, but I think mostly girls) that dress up in wild fashion or as comic book characters and stand around by the Meiji Shrine on Sunday afternoons. They look pretty crazy, but it's pretty cool. It was fun to walk around and see all their costumes. I got some pretty good pictures. On my way back home I stopped by SUBWAY! It was so delicious!

Subway where I ate in Harajuku. I've missed it!

Harajuku girls

Harajuku girls

Harajuku girls

Monday: We decided we wanted to go to Disneyland in Tokyo on Tuesday, so we needed to get our tickets for the park a day earlier. I was supposed to meet Carly and Krysta (Carly's friend that came to visit her here) in Shinjuku at 3:00. I made it to Shinjuku, but couldn't find them at the station! After standing around for a long time I just decided to leave. I headed to Asakusa and did some shopping for presents for people to bring back home. I found some pretty good things! I left there around 6:00 as it started to get dark and it was sprinkling. Thankfully when I got back to the apartments

Tuesday: Carly, Krysta, and I left our apartments at 6:15 in the morning! I think I got about 5 1/2 hours of sleep the night before, but I was pumped and ready to get to Disneyland. It was about an hour and a half long train ride to get there, but it was well worth it. We met Carly's friend Yoku (who is Japanese) at the park and went in. People were already lined up at 7:50 when we got there. Thankfully since we had our tickets we got through the lined pretty quickly. The day was filled with roller coasters, lots of window shopping, and some really good food. My favorite roller coaster by far was Space Mountain. It was so cool because you’re riding around in the dark with only the “stars” up above you for light. We also went on this one ride through a haunted mansion. The funniest part was that I realized when we got in there that the ghost story was going to be told in Japanese. I didn’t understand a word of it, but it sure was amusing.

One thing I noticed at Disneyland was that first of all, girls wore high heels! I would never in a million years wear those uncomfortable shoes to go walk around a theme park. I’m pretty sure when I was in Disneyland in California a few years ago everyone was wearing either flip-flops or tennis shoes. I guess this just proves how much more fashion conscious the Japanese are vs. Americans. Another thing I noticed was that a lot of the teenage Japanese girls (and boys) thought it was cute to wear little mickey mouse ears or cat ears on their heads. It really just made me laugh!

Around 4:00 we ate lunch/early dinner at the Queen of Hearts Banquet Hall. I had a delicious meal of some seafood. After that Carly and Yoko wanted to stay longer, but Krysta and I had both already been to Disneyland before, so we left a little early. All in all it was a fun time!

Disney land: This ride was "It's a small world after all." It was really obnoxious. We rode around in a boat and looked at these creepy little statues singing.

Bottom of the roller coast

Back: Carly (left) and Krysta (right)
Front: Yoko (left) and me (right)

Carly, Me and Krysta in front of the castle.

A day in Ueno

Tuesday was a national holiday here in Japan (although I admit I don't know what it was for). Anyways, I got the day off of work, so I did a little exploring! My original plan was to go to Ueno in Tokyo and see the Giant Panda at the zoo, however, I got a little sidetracked by this really cool shopping district in Ueno. It was just streets and streets of little shops with people everywhere. It was really cool. I picked up a few little gifts for some people back home and had a good time. Unfortunately, I stayed later than planned and didn't have time to make it to the zoo because it closed at 4:00. I found out the next day my trip to the zoo would have been wasted though because that day the giant panda got sick and was taken off display. THEN I found out Thursday that the panda DIED! So now I have missed my chance to see a panda bear :( I'm pretty bummed about it.

Ok, back to Ueno. After some shopping I found my way to the lake. It was so beautiful. I think it's honestly one of my favorite places in Tokyo. I heard some music at the other end of the lake, so I made my way following the sound of it as I went. I came across this concert going on inside this outdoor concert hall place. I didn't want to pay the 1000 yen (10 bucks) to go inside, so I just sat and listened to the music for a while. It was some hip hop group. Below you'll see a few pictures I took standing on the other side of the gates. I thought they turned out pretty cool.

This is a shoe store I found in Ueno. There were so many. It was like I was in heaven!

I think they were trying to spell Adidas?

A couple at the lake in Ueno.

Lake in Ueno.

Looking through the gates into the concert area.

My weekend!

So this weekend was definitely pretty fun. Friday night I went to an Indian restaurant close to my apartment and had some curry and nan. Below is a picture of it. And that was only about 3/4 of the nan (the bread) because I had already eaten some before I took the picture! I drank some mango juice with it and it was so delicious!

Saturday I got to hang out with some people from church. I met Aki at the train station in Matsudo and we rode the train to Takahama station where Hosana and her family lives. It was about an hour away from Matsudo. It was kind of crazy getting there and this is why. The fastest way to get to Takahama station is taking an express train. In Japan there is a "local train" and an "express/rapid train". The local train stops at every station and an express or rapid train only stops at the major ones. In order to get all the way out to Takahama we had to take a particular express train. Aki hopped onto it in Tokyo where he lives and rode it to Matsudo. The plan was for me to go to the last train car, find Aki, and hop in, all in about 30 seconds, which is how long the train stops at the station. I was so nervous I wouldn't find him, but thankfully I did and we got on the train and we were off! It was about an hour ride to Hosana's. I don't know if I have ever written about Aki before, so I should probably tell you about him. He is 26 and one of the guys that I first met at church. He plays the drums during the worship at church and wants to be a pastor, so sometimes he preaches on Sunday mornings. Anyways, he's super nice and we had a good chat on the train. Takahama is way out in the country and Hosana lives about 10 minutes away from the station, so when we got there we had to wait for Hosana to come pick us up. While we were waiting Aki bought me a drink from the vending machine. It was so good. It was like grape Jello in a can. You had to shake it up really good and it turns into partial liquid and you drink it. It was one of my favorite drinks I've had here. Below are two pictures I took at the station and the yummy jello drink.

An old Barber shop!

Aki at the station.

This was SOOO good!

Finally Hosana came and she drove us to her house. All the houses I've seen so far in Matsudo and in Tokyo have been tiny, but because Hosana lives in a small town out in the country most of the houses there were larger. Also at the party was Yuki, who is 19, and two 13 year old girls from the church that came to hang out for a while. Hosana's dad was at work, but her mom came home and we had a BBQ outside! We had a variety of different meats and grilled some vegetables. BBQ in America means we have hamburgers or hot dogs. Here it just means we are cooking outside on a grill. It was some really good food! After we got stuffed her mom brought out some yakisoba (noodles) and some sausages to cook. They had some really good sauce to put over it that just made it delicious. Also, at some point that night I tried tongue, although nobody could tell me from what animal the tongue was from. It had a very interesting feel in my mouth when I ate it!...

This is the group photo minus Leo. The two 13 year olds are on the outside, Aki is in the middle with his mouth wide open, and in the back from left to right is Hosana, Yuki, and Me.

After dinner another guy, Leo, came over. Then the boys-Aki, Leo, and Hosana's dad-went to the onsen (public bath). Us girls took the two 13 year olds home and then Hosana, Yuki, and I went to sing some karaoke! Here are some pictures of us at the karaoke place.

Apparently the sign above these creatures said to take a picture with them...So we did! This is me and Hosana.

Me and Yuki before we sang some karaoke.

We got back to the house around 11:30 I think. Shortly after that the boys returned from the onsen. Then we pretty much just sat around and talked for the next few hours. I was so tired though. I kept thinking we were going to go to bed because we had church in the morning, but everyone was still talking, so I went along with it. I got a good Japanese lesson from Leo at about 2am (I don't really remember much of it though! haha). Finally about 3:00 everyone decided to go to bed. Hosana's mom laid out some bedding for the boys in the dining room and us girls headed to Hosana's room. However, as the Japanese tradition goes, Yuki and Hosana wanted to shower before they went to bed. I said I was fine with showering in the morning, so I went to sleep. Yuki and Hosana finally came in around 4:30am!! It wasn't very fun to get up at 7:30 the next morning. I showered and got ready and went downstairs for breakfast. On the table was a salad (which I didn't eat because that just doesn't sound appealing to me in the morning), some different kinds of bread from a bakery, oranges, bananas, fruits, and yogurt. It was really good! Around 8:30 we headed to church. It was an hour long drive. Hosana's mom shared her testimony with us on the way, so that was definitely interesting to hear.

After church I was so tired, so I went home and slept from 4:30 in the afternoon til 8:30 at night. I got up for a few hours and then went back to sleep at midnight.

Teaching English

By the time the students reach Senshu University Junior High school they have already been exposed to English in a variety of ways. Most students study English in their elementary schools and even if they haven't, English can be seen everywhere from t-shirts, to signs, to advertisements. For example, at the top of a menu in a restaurant it might have "Drinks" for the title, and then go on and list the drinks all in Japanese. In a coffee shop it might even say "coffee shop" instead of using the Japanese word "cohe." Concerning verbal English, kids might hear an English translation on a train or listen to American music. Avril Lavigne, the Foo Fighters, and Evanescense are just a few artists that many kids in Japan are familiar with.

The junior high is consisted of 7th, 8th, and 9th graders. 7th graders are put in classes of up to 42 students in a classroom. 8th and 9th grade classes are split up into groups of approximately 20. Each classroom has a native English speaking teacher, a Japanese "team teacher" who speaks English fluently, and when available, an intern (currently me and Carly). Usually it's the native English speaker who does the majority of the lesson planning and teaching. So I'm sure you're asking how exactly we teach Japanese students English? Well, first of all, you should understand that the kids take an English grammar class as well as a separate English conversation class. The conversation classes are the ones I help out with. The grammar classes are actually all taught in Japanese by Japanese teachers (doesn't make much sense does it?). In the conversation classes, which I'll be describing here, all of the instruction is given in English and the Japanese team teacher is there to translate in Japanese when necessary. Each student comes to our conversation classes twice a week, 50 minutes each. The purpose of the oral conversation classes (OC) are for the students to become comfortable speaking aloud in English.

Usually at the the beginning of a class we will start with a little warm-up to get the students ready to learn. For example, this week in the 8th grade classes we worked on the differences between F and V. After a demonstration of how to position your mouth correctly to pronounce the sounds, the teacher read aloud words like "vine" and "fox" and the students had to write down the letter they heard. After the warm-up the native English speaking teacher, team teacher, and intern will model the day's activity and then the students will break up into pairs and practice speaking with their partner. In the 9th grade classes, since they are getting ready to go to Nebraska this summer, we have what is called "bio-data questions." Each day we give them a new question for them to learn. For example, a question might be simply, "What do you like to do for fun?" or "Where were you born?" The questions continue to get harder as the school year goes on. Each day the kids will practice asking their questions to one another. Usually all of that will take up the majority of the class period. At the end if there is time we may review with the kids.

We do a variety of activities to keep the students awake and on task. This week we taught the 9th graders about American money. We did a short quiz as a group to review and then the kids did a fun game to help them practice the values. One thing that I noticed about Japanese kids is that everything is decided by "janken" (rock, paper, scissors). For example, when playing a game all of the kids will janken to decide who goes first. If there are any disputes, then a quick rock, paper, scissors game will quickly dissolve it.

Like I mentioned, the majority of the teaching is done by the native English speaking teacher. The intern and Japanese team teacher are basically there to assist. We walk around and check the kids' work and make sure they all understand the material. We might also pass out the papers or write answers on the board for the class. During the demonstration of the speaking activity the team teacher and intern are important to help the native English speaking teacher model the proper way to say the words and complete the activity.

Of course as interns we also get to do all of the "dirty work" or behind the scenes stuff. This year the school got brand new projectors for the teachers. This is great because then they don't have to write everything out on the board, but can just show the worksheet to the class using the projector or prepare materials for a powerpoint and teach using that. Of course this means a lot of things need to be scanned and it's the interns job to do most of that! We also do a lot of organizing, sorting, cutting, and laminating throughout the day.

Some students playing connect 4 before class.

One of the classrooms.

Crazy week, ending with a rain day!

Ok, so I promise I will be more diligent in writing in this for the rest of the trip! It's been a pretty crazy week. School started up again on Monday for the new school year. It was so cute to see the new 7th graders in their brand new uniforms and shoes. The week has gone by pretty smoothly. One of the English teachers I worked with left, so they hired on a new one, Ms. Marich. She is really nice. Tuesday Carly's eye hurt and was burning and watering, so she stayed home and I went to work alone. It was really busy trying to do two people's work, but it turned out to be a pretty fun day. I helped out in classes all day and then had to teach the ESS (English speaking society club) after school alone. There are only three kids. They are all 8th graders I think. We had a few papers with some short skits on them, so the kids and I acted them out. It was really fun.

On Thursday John, two of his Japanese friends, Carly, and I went to Shinjuku in West Tokyo to a Mexican restaurant!! It was so good. I got a chicken quesadilla that was pretty much amazing. After dinner we walked off all the food we just ate and went to Harajuku and then to the train station. It took us about 45 minutes on the train to get back to Matsudo, then about 25 minutes walk back to our apartments. All in all I probably walked around 3 or 4 miles in one evening. It was great though and it made me miss home and going to Mamasitas in Bennet!

Friday is our long day because I have to help out with 3 classes in the morning, have lunch, and then help out with 3 more classes in the afternoon. It's really hard to do that many classes back to back. Every other day I normally help out with 2-4 classes, but they are spread out through the day so it doesn't seem to be that much. However, on this particular Friday we got out of school early. Forget snow days, in Japan we get RAIN DAYS! It rained for almost 3 days straight and the courtyards at school had puddles everywhere because there was so much water. Apparently they shut the trains down if there is too much rain. Almost all of the kids (and teachers) from the school take the train, so they let everyone leave early so they could all make it home. I guess last year they didn't let the kids go early enough and one girl couldn't go home because the trains were down. I will admit it was nice to have the afternoon off!

The Mexican restaurant we ate at in Shinjuku. YUM!

My chicken quesadilla.

Ayako, Mami, Me, and Carly outside the restaurant.

This is an example of how the Japanese use every inch of space. This is a house that was squished in beside the street here. Crazy, huh?

This is how much it has to rain before they let school out early.

Even though the rain is a bit annoying when you have to walk 1/2 mile back home in it, it does brighten the scenary. This is at the sports park near my apartment.

Japanese fun

Well, I was all ambitious and have been running the past two weeks, and now I think I'm going to have to take a small break because I hurt my foot! The whole area around my big toe and the one next to it is really tender to touch and it doesn't feel that great walking on it, so I'm thinking running might not be a good idea! I don't exactly remember when it started hurting, it was more of a general pain after my last run. I'm thinking I should have invested in better tennis shoes than what I found at Wal-mart.

In other news, this is my last week of "spring vacation." I'm actually ready for work to start up again because I'm running out of things to do and lack of funds prevents me from going into Tokyo too much. Monday I did manage to have a pretty great day though. I met Hosana, a girl from the church I've been going to, and we did lots of exciting things. We met in Kashiwa, only about 10 minutes away from Matsudo. First we went out to lunch. It was so nice to be with someone that could help me read the menu! I got some chicken, rice, and soup. It was really good. After that we did some shopping. I ended up finding a nice spring jacket for only 1500 yen (about $15.00). Although my big puffy winter coat was great when I first got here while it was cold, it's too heavy now that it's warming up outside. After we had walked around for a while we went to starbucks and had some coffee and talked for a long time. Then Hosana asked me if I would like to try karaoke! I was nervous at first, but decided to go for it. Karaoke is very different here-it's not in a bar and you're not singing in front of lots of people you don't know. What you do is go in and pay for a room for however long you want. Ours cost about $7.00 for one hour. Hosana and I went into this room that had an L shaped couch and a table in the middle of the room with a TV in front. It was less than 10 feet x 10 feet, so pretty small. Then you choose your song and you just sing!! It was really fun. The only singer that we both knew was Avril Lavigne so we sang a ton of her songs. It was really fun and I want to go again! By the time we were done there it was getting late so we parted ways, but it was definitely a lot of fun and it was nice having someone to hang out here!

This is a bad picture because it's all fuzzy, but at least you can see how small the room was and what it was like.

Hosana and I