Long Overdue Update

It’s been a little over two months since I’ve posted anything, and I didn’t even deliver on the vacation posts that I had promised! They’re still in my drafts folder just half way completed. I’m sure I’ll get around to it eventually!

So, I want to start off by saying that I’m sorry for being such a horrible poster over the last few months. I hope to get back into the swing of posting regularly, so please bear with me while I get used to things again.

Secondly, I want to give some general updates on my life and time here in Japan! I will (hopefully) give some more details in certain areas later, but for now I hope this will suffice!

Wake me up when September ends…

September was full of excitement and busy weekends. If you remember my talk last year about Sports Day festivals, you’ll know that every school is busy preparing for their own Sports Day and that I’m busy running around with the students and attending the events. Due to rain, we had to reschedule one or two of them, which really messed with my availability on weekends…but it was fun in the end and I enjoyed it a lot!

I also went camping in Ehime prefecture during September! The weather was nearly perfect, granted a bit warm. It was fun to cook outside and just enjoy the fresh air. The campsite was right next to the water, too, which make it the perfect location for relaxing and enjoying the view.

Aside from camping, I enjoyed some local trips to nearby places in the city such as Kochi castle and Harimaya bridge. It was nice and relaxing!

I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers

October was an outdoorsy sort of month. I visited two beautiful natural sites. The first was Muroto Cape. Though I’ve been before, this time was even more fun! The cape is covered with rocks, and I absolutely love climbing things…so I climbed them all. It was fun and slightly exhausting, and the views were incredible. I enjoyed the light breeze and the crashing waves as I wandered around the cape.

Then I hiked a trail in the mountains near my house which has 4 main waterfalls along it. The first one is quite easily accessible and takes minimal effort, but each consecutive waterfall gets further away and more difficult to reach. In the end I saw all four waterfalls, and they were all worth the trek.

November arrived, cold as frozen iron

Honestly, the first day of November felt quite cold, and my body struggled to get used to the cold, but before I knew it we were getting warmer temperatures again. I’m sure that December, January, and February will be a handful for someone who gets cold as easily as I, but November’s cold arrival melted into a chilly stay.

This month was full of events with my community, school, and visitors for the most part. Though I still managed to take a trip out of town. Lately one of my schools has had a variety of foreign visitors throughout the months of October and November particularly. We’ve had visitors from France, Sweden, and Germany. My students got to interact with foreigners who were not me, and who were not from America, which was a wonderful experience for them! Especially since our visitors spoke such limited Japanese that my students had to use the English they knew. One of the visitors also joined a teacher from my school and I on a hike in Tokushima!

Similar to the Sports Day for my schools which I mentioned in the September bit, there was a community sports day. The area where I live is split into 4 smaller villages which competed in the community sports day. My team was the smallest team, but we fought hard and came in 3rd place in the end. I enjoyed participating and hope to do it again next year! And hopefully I can be a more useful player next year, too. Because let me tell you, pushing a metal wheel with a stick while running a lap is NOT my forte, or so I’ve learned.

I was able to make a trip to Hiroshima during the 3 day weekend in November which was to commemorate Japan’s version of Thanksgiving. I made it in time to see the beautiful fall leaves, and I enjoyed eating some local oysters, which Hiroshima (specifically Miyajima island) is famous for. I went to see the stars from the mountains of Okayama on Friday evening, and took a ferry ride over to Miyajima island, Itsukushima shrine on Sunday. It was definitely a fun weekend filled with beautiful views.

And now?

Well, I have just under a month before I visit America! I’m looking forward to seeing my family and eating delicious food. I can’t wait, but I’m also excited to see what the rest of this year will bring!

In the meantime, I just took a trip to Naoshima art island this weekend for work, and I have plans to visit an onsen next weekend! After that I have the winter conference and closing ceremony for the year before hopping on a plane back home!

I’m sure there’s a lot I’m missing, and even details missing on the things I mentioned, but for now this should give you an idea of what I’ve been up to! Sorry for the major delay, and sorry for the fact that summer vacation posts still aren’t up!!

 

Until next time!! xx

Why vs. How Come

You learn something new every day! Or at least I try to. It’s interesting for me (especially now that I teach English) to learn about different intricacies of English. Whether that’s a grammatical point or a new word, a difference in regional usage or anything else, it’s all interesting to me. It’s so much easier to explain a grammar point to your students when you’ve looked into it yourself. “Ms. Jessica, why do we use such and such here but not there?” That’s a great question! Let me get back to you on it… I like to be able to answer my students immediately if possible, but if I can’t then I can always look it up to tell them later.

Anyway, that brings me to my point! I was wondering if “how come” was grammatically correct, or if it was just a colloquialism. As it turns out, it is indeed grammatically correct and has slightly different usage from the word “why.”

Structure

First of all, when creating a question using “how come” vs. “why,” the word order in the question is different.

Why Questions – Why + aux verb + subject + verb + object?

Why are you eating pie?

The tense in this case is determined by the aux verb.

How come Questions – How come + sentence?

How come you aren’t hungry?

The tense in this case is determined by the main clause.

Meaning

Why Questions – When you want a reason for whatever piece of information you already know.

Why are you studying English? (I know that you are studying English. What is the reason?)

Why can be used in both formal and informal situations. It’s a very versatile question word.

How come Questions – When you want a reason for a piece of information which you are surprised by.

You’re already so good at English. How come you are studying English?

How come you aren’t in Chicago? (I thought you had a business trip.)

How come is used in a more friendly context and is used to express that the asker is surprised by the piece of information which they are asking about.

You shouldn’t use this in a more formal setting such as at work or in a presentation.

Conclusion

Basically, English is super versatile and has an abundance of ways in which to say the exact same thing, or the same thing with a very slightly different nuance. If you’re wondering how these translate into Japanese….

Why = なぜ？

How come = え、なぜ？

Yes, it’s the same thing…you just add some surprise to the second one.

Sorry for the potentially boring post! I found it interesting!

 

Until next time!! xx

Semester’s End and New Faces

So, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. Sorry about that! I’ve been pretty busy with end of the semester things, summer supplementary classes, office paper work, renewing my work contract, and preparing for the two new ALTs who are coming (or rather, recently came) to my town. And no, I don’t mean to the tiny village I live in, I mean the overarching town which encompasses many small villages including my own! Anyway, enough excuses, I’ll fill you in instead!

End of the Semester

As many people who read this blog regularly probably know, Japan’s school year starts in April and ends in March. This is quite different for my American self who is used to the school year starting in August and ending in May or June with a huge long summer break in between school years. Well, the system here includes more school days, shorter breaks, and a lot of activities even during breaks. We’ll get into that later, though.

So the semester ended, and we had a small ceremony to mark the end. Well, really we had multiple ceremonies! One was for the end of the semester, one was to review the goals of each grade and to see if they had been able to achieve them, one was for sports awards, and then we watched our music club do a taiko performance!

Summer Vacation

The students get a month of summer vacation! Well, 5 or so weeks, actually. But here’s the catch, they have a ton of activities and even some supplementary lessons, as well as summer homework. Not quite the care free summer vacation we’re used to in the US! Though elementary school students are entirely free, middle school students do a lot during their summer vacations, and high school students do even more. I had some summer homework when I was in high school, but only for some school subjects, and not nearly as much as these kids are assigned!

For the first week of summer vacation, I was coming to school to help teach summer supplementary lessons. For English, this time was used to do the summer homework which was assigned, to reinforce some of the grammar points which a majority of the students had struggled with, and to give the students an open floor opportunity to ask the English teachers any questions they may have and to get help on anything they don’t quite understand.

Even on days where they had supplementary lessons, students had club activities. They do badminton, softball, or taiko practice every day. Well, most every day. With the heat wave that’s been hitting Japan, we’ve cancelled practice due to safety reasons. Now that classes are over, I still look out the window to see students running laps, swinging bats, and catching balls. Looking across the field into the gym you can see students performing taiko on the second floor, while some of their classmates undoubtedly swing rackets in the main court of the gym just below.

Students do have some good things to look forward to, though! While I’m sure many of them actually enjoy going to their club practices (or else, why would they join in the first place?) there’re also summer festivals, fireworks, and other awesome events that happen in the summer time!

As for me, students not having class anymore means that it’s easier for me to take vacation days! I’ll fill you in on that later. For now, just know that I do have some awesome things planned!

Summer Camp

I also taught at a one day summer camp for elementary school students! It was awesome! I didn’t speak a word of Japanese for the whole day (at least not to the students) and was able to communicate the rules of the game we were playing with them at my section of the camp, as well as practice vocabulary and talk about different things in English. At first, many of the students were quite nervous (speaking in your second language all day can be tiring and tough!) but seemed to loosen up more as the day went on. In the end, I think it was a major success! And I loved being able to interact with students in English that they understood. It truly boosts their confidence when they can understand what’s happening with no Japanese support.

Though I’d love to be able to do English class entirely in English, it’s not nearly as possible when you’re teaching new information as opposed to review, and when you teach a class for 45-50 minutes instead of 10-15. Either way, it was an experience which I can take a lot away from! And I hope to be involved again next year.

New ALTs

Alright, so, two of our ALTs left this year. We only have 4 in our BoE in general, and the one who just came in April will go back to the states soon to continue his studies. This means a few things. (1) I’m now the “most experienced” and most long term ALT at our BoE (YIKES!). (2) I spent a full day yesterday helping the new ALTs with moving in stuff. (3) I’m gonna have to do that again in April when the next new ALT comes…

Yesterday we had two new arrivals to my area of Kochi! The new ALTs are both quite young as they just graduated college. It was a long a stressful day for all involved, but I’m really proud of them for handling it as well as they did! They really held out and we got everything done that needed to be done. What exactly does that entail, you ask?

8:30 – I left the BoE in my village to go to the main office. There I met with a BoE representative who would go with me to pick up the new ALTs. Their supervisor had some business to attend to and wasn’t able to come to the airport. The new ALTs got on a bus to go to the airport.

9:30 – We left the main office for the airport. The ALTs got on their flight from Tokyo to Kochi.

10:30 – We arrived at the airport and prepared to greet the new ALTs

11:00 – The plane lands and the ALTs arrive in Kochi! We load their luggage into the car and begin our crazy day.

11:30 – But first, lunch! It’s going to be a long day for all and eating is the best way to prepare for that. We also had to lay out a game plan and do some general introductions. I don’t think the new ALTs would appreciate being thrown into the fire even sooner than they actually were in the end.

12:30 – First stop, town hall. We went to get their addresses sorted and printed onto the back of their residence cards. This is a longer process than you might think, and involved a lot of forms and a lot of Japanese!

2:00 – Setting up bank accounts is the next step! We started filling out stacks of paperwork, and banks here close at 3:00! That is to say, they don’t begin services anymore once it becomes 3:00. If you’re already in the middle of a service, they will certainly see it through. Opening a bank account takes about an hour or so here, though. And one of the ALTs wanted to convert some American dollars into yen! Around the end of this process, their supervisor arrives. She’s finished her meetings for the day and is able to come along for the rest of the necessary steps of moving in.

3:30 – The bank work is done! But while we were there we learned that the home addresses for the ALTs were somehow swapped…so we had to go back to the town hall to straighten it out. You know what that means? That’s right, more paperwork! At least they’d already done this once and knew how to fill it out this time around.

4:30 – Town hall stuff is finally finished! So it’s time to go get cell phone plans! I was without one for about a week when I came and it was quite frustrating not being able to contact anyone. Around this time, the supervisor for the new JETs tells me that I can go home. Well, if I go home, who’s going to translate for the phone plans? So, I stayed.

5:00 – We’re really getting started with this phone plan stuff! But it’s a long process to set up two phone plans with a translator. The two employees working with us were both 18 years old and had just graduated high school. One of them was the previous student of one of my friends! She was very good at English and was even able to help the new arrivals with some things in English. They were quite tired from the long day and I’m sure they were happy to have someone speaking English to them.

6:30 – Phone plans are set up, and both ALTs have working phones! Time to go see the apartments, drop off luggage, change, and head to the welcome party.

7:30 – Depart from Ino for the welcome party. It’s in the city and we’re all tired, so we don’t want to spend too long. But it ended up being a blast and we stayed for around an hour and a half or so in the end.

9:50 – Return to my car in Ino. Time to drive home to the mountains!

10:45 – Arrive at the office to drop off the key to the car. And now I get to walk home!

11:00 – Finally, I’m home!

It was a hectic and long day…and I’m so tired today as a result, but I’m so happy we got everything done!

New ALT Guide

The supervisor for the main office asked me if I would be willing to help make a guide for the process of moving in new ALTs. It should function in a way that, even without my constant interpreting, the new ALTs and supervisor should be able to handle setting up their new accounts and address among other things. We’re hoping to have it finished within this next year, but I’m not sure exactly how to go about it as I have never done such a project before. Time to get thinking!

Upcoming

I have some events coming up, including fireworks this Sunday, vacations throughout the summer, and conferences on teaching. Hopefully I’ll keep you properly updated!

Thanks for reading!

 

Until next time!! xx

Speech Competitions

Yesterday we had the 8th annual speech competition at my school! While the prefectural competition isn’t until October, we hold one every year where all of the students at my school must compete to see who will represent the school at the prefectural level.

We welcomed two guest judges, an ALT from a nearby town and a judge from the prefectural tournament. We were able to get a lot of good insight and opinions from these two and decided on a first and second prize for each grade! I’d like to tell you about one skit in particular which, while it wasn’t chosen as the winner, was the true winner in my heart. They got a special mention due to their incredible creativity and hilarious delivery.

We set the stage with two middle school boys who decide to spend the Saturday at the mall.

A: Let’s go to the game center!
B: Yes, let’s! That sounds fun.
A: Oh, look! That game looks fun. Let’s go play games! Come with me!
B: Okay! Let’s go.

Suddenly the boys spot a blonde beauty from behind. She’s wearing a school issued skirt and has long blonde hair spilling down her back.

A: Oh my gosh! Look at that beautiful woman!
B: You should go talk to her!
A: No, I can’t do that. You should talk to her!
B: No, you do it!
A: No, you go!
B: Okay, let’s decide by rock paper scissors.

The boys prepare themselves for a battle in rock paper scissors. The situation is quite intense. Rock Paper Scissors Go! Go! Go! They play the same move five times in a row before deciding that they should just go talk to the girl together.
They walk over.

A and B: Hello. What’s your name?

The blonde beauty turns around and…it’s their friend! Who is also a boy!

A and B: Oh my gosh! No!

The boys fall to the ground. The third boy comes over to comfort them.

A and B: GO AWAY!

And that was seriously the best skit I’ve ever seen in my entire life… I wish you could have actually seen it because just the description doesn’t do it justice.

 

Until next time!! xx

Borrowed Words in Japanese

You may know that Japanese has 3 different alphabets. These alphabets are called hiragana, kanji, and katakana. Rather than alphabets, they should actually be called divisions of characters. While hiragana and katakana both sit at decently low numbers (46) there are slightly over 2,000 which are used regularly.

Of these three character subsets, katakana is used to denote a word which was borrowed from another language. This applies to names as well! Originally, when I began learning Japanese, I assumed that these words, in general, were English words. Apparently Japanese people do, too! You can’t imagine how many things people end up saying which don’t make sense because of this assumption…

Anyway, as a weird habit, I now attempt to learn the origin of katakana words that I come across so that I can tell my friends and students where those words originated from if they ask! I guess it’s not really my responsibility to have that information memorized…but it’s interesting to me! Let me give you a few words which are not English which are used often as borrowed words – as well as their origins.

コンクール(konkuuru): concours – origin: French, meaning: contest, competition

ピーマン(piiman): piment – origin: French, meaning: bell pepper
pimiento – origin: Spanish

アルバイト(arubaito): arbeit – origin: German, meaning: part-time job

Though, it’s important to note that you can also refer to a part time job as a パート(paato) or “part.”

These, among many others, are mistaken as English words. Imagine how confused you’d be if someone came to the grocery store in America and asked if there were any piiman.

Anyway, the reason I wrote this post is because I keep seeing the word コンクールin the hallways of my school and couldn’t stop thinking about how close, but how far it is from the word contest.

 

Until next time!! xx

Update

So, yesterday was a busy day. Let me tell you a bit about it.

I got up and called my supervisor, asking if it’d be okay to take my personal car into town since I had quite a few errands (or at least some important time restricted errands) and it’d be easier if I could just keep on my way after work. I had a half day, so it was perfect for running errands, but having to take the company car back to town just to return in the same direction seemed a bit excessive.

She said it was cool, so I went to school and taught my 4 classes in the morning.

Then I went to town – first to get a new pair of glasses since mine recently broke. Well, they’re bent really badly and slide off of my face or sit lopsided. Not entirely destroyed like you might be thinking, but not exactly usable beyond the necessary use of driving (while constantly pushing them back onto my face).

While my glasses were being prepared, I ate something for lunch. I just walked next door to Coco’s Western restaurant and ordered a large meal…I was hungry! I ate, and went back to pick up my glasses.

After I got my glasses, I went to the driver’s license center to set an appointment for a driving test. I showed that I had all of the documents so that they would set a date. I only had options on Mondays and Tuesdays which is quite frustrating since I have Wednesday half days, but I had to settle for a Monday time slot. My test is scheduled for June 25th, Monday. The process consists of 3 main parts, (1) an interview to get insight on my driving in the states (2) a written test and (3) a practical (driving) test. I am not sure if I need to do my interview and written test on a separate day, so I’ll have to look into that later.

Anyway, ever since last week, my car has been overheating. I was trying to figure out the issue, and every time I would have an opportunity to call my mechanic, it was after hours. So I finally call him yesterday and tell him what’s going on. I’d been paying attention to the signs and could tell him exactly what was happening, as well as when and (to the best of my knowledge) why. So he checks it out. The pressure cap on the coolant was busted. But why? Well, that’s because the motor on the fan died, so it wasn’t moving. Which means everything was getting insanely hot…and the broken pressure cap resulted in my coolant literally boiling…and now the engine may be damaged. So my car is in shop and I’m waiting for the prognosis. This kinda sucks…

In brighter news, I received plums from a friend! She gave me a whole bag of them! I’m not sure I can eat them all on my own…

Also, I have volleyball practice tonight! We have a practice match with another school. I recently bought proper gym shoes and knee pads. I was sick of getting bruises and other injuries from diving so… I guess this means I’m getting serious about a PTA sport. Oops. I can’t help it! If I’m going to do something, it’s hard for me to hold back.

Oh, and tomorrow I have a nomikai (drinking party), but no car to get there…so that’s awesome. I’m gonna ask a coworker to take me to the city. It’s seriously inconvenient not having a car…I have to think so much more about things before doing them.

Sorry for not posting for a week! And I’m also sorry that my post after a week is just a rant on my life. Japan is an awesome place and I love living here, but I think it’s important to recognize that life still happens no matter where you are. I’d like to show some mundane life as well. I hope you don’t mind!

 

Until next time!! xx

Lunch with the Little Ones

Today I ate lunch with my 1st and 2nd grade elementary school students at my smaller school. That means there were 7 students in both grades combined. It’s quite a small group!

During lunch, the kids asked me a million questions and told me about a bunch of different things, as kids like to do. Which do you like better, cats or dogs? I have a loose tooth! Did you know that we went on a field trip with elementary school students from other schools? I’m friends with some of them! I wish they went here. Hey, we all came from different nursery schools. Look, I drew that. Do you know what this is? How do you say this in English? Do you like milk? Did you know the karaage is curry flavored? I was shocked! I thought it was going to be normal karaage. Hey, guess what!

Every once in a while, I wouldn’t understand a word or a piece of dialect that they would use, and they’d get confused why I didn’t understand. Finally, one girl asks “are there things in Japanese that you don’t know?” Of course! So many things… I told her that I was still learning and that I wasn’t very good at Japanese. She didn’t believe me but she accepted that there were words that I wasn’t going to know and that there was no way around that.

Honestly, this is the first time a younger elementary school student has ever understood that Japanese isn’t my first language and therefore there are some words that I won’t understand. It was a great experience! But at the same time, I feel like I need to study so that I don’t lose in language ability to 7 year olds… Sure, they’ve been speaking the language longer than I have and it’s their native tongue but I can’t help but feel competitive! As much as I say I should “study,” what I really mean is I should study but I’m not going to…

Anyway, I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to the fast speed and ever changing topics of small children speaking to me in a foreign language…

 

Until next time!! xx

Anastrophe

Today is an English lesson in a blog post. Don’t worry, that scary sounding word in the title is actually much simpler (and more familiar) than it may seem. I’m sure you’ve used this grammar (or rather, figure of speech) at some point in your life. So what is it? What does it do? And why do you care?

What is it?

An anastrophe is a figure of speech in which the word order is changed from the natural subject-verb-object, to object-subject-verb, for example.

What does it do?

When using an anastrophe you can emphasize a word which would normally be lost in the sentence. This can make your point stronger and really draw the attention of the listener to a specific word. Common examples of this are Never have I ever done such a thing and This I have got to see. In both of these scenarios, we are emphasizing the first word of the sentence.

Why do you care?

Rather than why you do care, I’ll tell you why you should care. This can be a very useful literary tool. In the above examples, we can really express how important a thing is to us. In the phrase Never have I ever you can express your near disgust that someone would even insinuate that you’d do such a thing. Although, this phrase is also used in a popular game played innocently by middle schoolers, or as a drinking game by adults.

Otherwise, sentences like This I have got to see really show your interest, enthusiasm, or absolute marvel at something that is about to occur.

Or, you could just use it to sound like Yoda all the time.

Funnily enough, anastrophe’s and Japanese do not have the same word order. English is SVO (subject verb object), anastrophe’s are OSV, and Japanese is SOV.

I hope you learned something! And if not, I’m sorry for wasting your time. I just found this interesting and wanted to share! I had never really realized that this was a proper phenomena in the English language before now.

 

Until next time!! xx

Empty School

Even the most busy ALT’s have slow days…and today is one of them for me!

Today the school is mostly empty. Almost all of the teachers are here, but even a number of them are missing. And the most strange thing of all is that there are only students in one of the three homerooms.

Today is the last day of the 4 day field trip to Tokyo for my 2nd year junior high school students, and is a work experience day for my 3rd year junior high school students. That means that the only students in the school are the 1st years! It’s pretty strange walking around such an empty school.

For lunch, I’ll be eating with my first years, which I had planned to do even if the school was full. It’s a chili day for lunch! And I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve been hungry ALL THE TIME lately, and ended up sleeping for 11 hours last night. I’m not sure what’s gotten into me, but spring has never been my season. It’s when I’m generally the most exhausted all the time.

Rainy season is also beginning soon, which means I’ll be carrying an umbrella with me everywhere I go. Typhoons will come after that, and during that time, even an umbrella can’t help you!

Someone send help! There’s not much to do other than prepare for next week with so few students. It’s going to be a long day here…

 

Until next time!! xx

Earthquake Drills and English

Growing up in Indiana, I have experienced a number of fire drills, tornado drills, and even shooter drills. However, Indiana is not on a fault line and, therefore, we don’t get earthquakes. That means that earthquake drills are a learning experience for me in general – let alone the fact that it’s in my second language.

Earthquake Drills

Okay, please don’t ACTUALLY try to fight an earthquake…

So, today we had an earthquake drill at school. The announcement came on for the earthquake, and everyone was supposed to grab their helmets and crawl under their desks, being sure to protect their necks, heads, and other vital organs. We sat under the desks while listening to the sounds of windows crashing and people screaming (yeah, it’s intense). After it finished, the vice principal came over the loud speaker to give the next set of directions – stay in place while the teachers venture out to check that everyone is okay. After that step is done, everyone gets out from under their desks, puts on their helmets, and goes out to the school grounds to assemble and await further instruction.

Many people probably know this, but in Japan you take off your shoes before entering a home. The same is true for a school. Students remove their shoes, place them in small shoe cubbies, and wear indoor shoes at school. Obviously during a disaster, one would not take the time to change their shoes before leaving the building. This means that everyone must wear their indoor shoes OUTSIDE.

Students are required to buy school issued shoes (usually like this, but some schools use running shoes instead). Teachers can wear whatever shoes they deem fit.

English

On a separate note, one of my students told me today after class that she wants to have English conversations with me. I told her that it was fine and told her when I was free during the day. She said “of course, I can only do really simple conversation” which I’m unsure about – she’s a very bright and driven student. I told her that it was okay if it took her time to formulate a response or if she said something slightly incorrect. The most important thing is that you’re able to convey what you want the other person to understand. Language is a tool for communicate – and while I love using correct grammar, etc., I think that the most important thing is that you’re able to converse and communicate.

Anyway, that was just my happy teacher moment for the day! I love it when kids seek out extra study time. It means that they’re truly interested in the topic and want to improve. It makes me happy that someone is interested in my language like I’m interested in theirs!

 

Until next time!! xx