I Teach English, I Do!

Greetings all and everyone,
I've been teaching for about 4 weeks now, here's what I've been up to so far.

Up till now it's been all junior high. It started out with every school wanting me to introduce myself and my country to each class.

(each class) x (4 junior high schools) = Barry doing the same intro over and over and over...

My intro was basically a photo presentation of about 65 photos showcasing Ireland. They ranged from hurling to Guinness to dolmens to castles to cows with a few random celebrities and leprechauns thrown in for good measure.

After the first 2 weeks, when I'd given the presentation to just about every class, the real lessons started. My official role is as an ALT, or Assistant language Teacher, which basically means the Japanese Teacher of English (or JLT) is in charge and I do what they tell me. This could be anything from 'read this sentence 3 times then go back to standing there doing nothing' or 'this is what I'm teaching today. Can you put together some activity based on it that the students will enjoy?'
Most of the time it's fairly non-eventful and the JLT does most of the work.

Today was my first time teaching primary school, which is a totally different kettle of fish altogether! The teachers don't really speak English, therefore the students don't really learn English. The primary schools (I've got 8 of them!) don't get ALTs as much as the junior high schools, so when you're there they want to use you as much as possible. Fair enough.

I was really nervous about it because up until now I'd never run a whole class from start to finish to students who knew only really basic English.
I was pleasantly surprised by how much they knew. It was basic, but it was enough that if I kept it simple and made it obvious through gestures what I wanted them to do, then they understood.
I started with a cut down version of the photo presentation, just to introduce me and Ireland a bit and ended with the Irish flag. Taught them colours and did some activities involving running around and picking the right colour. So that was fun and they seemed to get a kick out of it.

Then I gave them a work sheet with a picture of Ireland and a map of the world and asked if they could find Ireland and circle it. The result was hilarious!
I knew they probably wouldn't know where it was, that's why I included a bigger picture for reference. One kid circled Africa. All of Africa!
The same kid then went on to circle Australia, Canada, South America (yes, all of South America!) before eventually circling both Ireland and the UK, which was close enough!

I wanted to show them how far away Ireland was from Japan so I asked them to find Japan and circle it, thinking they'd have some idea where on a map Japan is. Nope.

Before Japan I got Australia (lots and lots of Australia!), more Canada, Russia (yup, all of Russia!), China, Mongolia, France, Portugal, and then, eventually Japan!
I really expected at least some of them to know where Japan is and it was the funniest thing I've seen in ages to see them all immediately circling Australia!

At the bottom of the page I had uncoloured flags for Ireland and Japan and got them to shout out the colours before colouring them in.

I had 3 classes and did the entire school in that time. Classes 1 & 2 were in together, 3 & 4, 5 & 6. The school is out on an island so it's not too big, only 21 students.
I had lunch with them and one of the teachers in the classroom and then one of them grabbed me by the hand and led me out into the playground where they had a fleet of unicycles. So they unicycled around all shouting what I imagine was "Barry-sensei, look at me!"

It was kinda surreal but for a day I was really nervous about I ended up having a great time. Japanese kids aren't little shits, like Irish kids. They're great fun and they love being around foreigners. Being foreign here is great, you're an instant celebrity!
I actually can't wait for the next time I get to teach primary school, which isn't until the week after next.

Apart from that I'm still having a cool time. The weather here is great, it hasn't gotten unbearably hot and humid yet so it's like a good Irish summer without the constant rain.

We had a few days off last week so the weekend was 4 days which was great! We headed out to an island and hiked around a bit before retreating back to a bar on a beach where we BBQ'ed and drank cocktails and Guinness all night. Haven't had stout in ages and even the old bottled fizzy crap tasted good!
Everything tastes good here, so it's hardly surprising.

For those of you who don't know, there was a major fuck-up with my internet application. Their fault. And I have to start the whole application process again, which is going to take another 3 weeks. So I'm still using the internet at whatever school I happen to be in on whatever day. It sucks, but at least it's something.

Talk to you later so, keep it massive and may FUNK blossom wherever you tread.
BAM!

Earthquakes and Male Nudity

So I just experienced my first earthquake!
I was sitting in the staffroom of one of the schools and suddenly the school started shaking violently. It's difficult to describe, but it kinda felt like standing on a piece of wood secured at each side by ropes so you can't really get a solid footing.
The school shook a few times and then settled down to swaying gently. You could see the other school buildings rocking gently back and forth.
At first I was like "what the hell is happening!", then I remembered Japan is earthquake central and I'm surprised it hasn't happened before now!
It only lasted a minute and the worst was over in 10 seconds but it was a fascinating experience, made scary by the fact that it was my first one!

Apparently it hit Shikoku, one of the other main islands, and we just caught the tail end of it.

I was in Shikoku a few days ago. The local International Association organised a day-trip over there and it absolutely rocked! Myself, 3 other foreigners and about 11 Japanese packed onto a bus at 7:30am and were immediately offered beer.
We passed over the Seto-Hashi which is a huge bridge that crossed the Seto Inland Sea from Honshu over to Shikoku. The view was amazing and there were all these smaller islands dotted around the place.

Our first stop was a town called Kompira where there's a mountain with steps going all the way to the top. There's shrines and temples the whole way up and it's pretty mind-blowing. Every few hundred steps there's this beautiful temple and a shit-load of kick ass Japanesey stuff. We spent a few hours climbing up and the view from the top was amazing.
On the way down we happened to see a traditional Japanese wedding which was taking place in one of the temples. It was great!
Once we reached the bottom I had potato ice-cream. Yes, potato and green-tea are just a few of the insane varieties of ice-cream available in Japan. They're both great too!

Next stop was an onsen, which is a natural hot spring. Japan is volcanic (and is prone to earthquakes which makes it a big disaster area really!) so there's loads of these natural hot springs all over Japan.
This one was particularly cool. It was half way up a mountain in a beautiful scenic valley covered by forrest.
We arrived at the reception and had to get a lift up to the onsen. And of course, Japan being a big ball of craziness, the 'lift' was actually a garden shed on a conveyor belt! So we all crowded in to this garden shed which trundled up the mountain and deposited us at the onsen.
Before getting into an onsen you have to strip off and scrub yourself with soap so as to keep the onsen water clean. It was a little weird getting naked with a bunch of guys and hanging out in a naturally heated rock pool up a mountain but sometimes you just have to do these things! The view from the onsen was fantastic. It was a lovely sunny day and we were soaking in naturally heated water overlooking a beautiful valley. Kick ass all round!

That night when we got back we headed to Fukuyama, a city only 10 minutes away by train, had a meal and went drinking. It was an absolutely kick as day!

We've got a few days off over the next few weeks so I'll probably be heading to Hiroshima and Osaka for a bit. I'll let you know!

Rock is the Beautiful

Greetings all and everyone,
Japan still continues to amuse and amaze. It's the land of the crazy and the nonsensical and it shouldn't work. It just shouldn't, but in whatever crazy mishmash of insanity they've got going here, well it just does.

There's this teacher at my main school who sits at the desk next to mine called Tanabe Sensei who's really frakking nice. He doesn't speak a whole lot of English and I speak even less Japanese but he just makes an effort to talk to me with what little English he can. He's always really friendly and has coffee with me all the time. We can hardly talk to eachother but he tries.
Last week he insisted that I come to his house for a welcome party. I was thinking "what the hell are we going to talk about - and HOW!" but he's just such a decent guy that I couldn't refuse, and I'd have been a complete shite if I did.

Anyway, he picked me up near my apartment today and drove out to his place, about 15 minutes drive away. I was both looking forward to and dreading the evening. Looking forward to it cause I'd been invited by a Japanese person to have dinner and drinks in his house with his family, and dreading it cause there was a very good chance we'd just be sitting looking at eachother saying, "so..." all night.
As it turned out his wife had much better English than he let on and she was also ridiculously gorgeous.
They had this really cute but expressionless one-year old who just stared at me the whole time like most of the elementary school kids do. They said she was usually really active and hyper but she was totally shy around me. They wanted a photo of me holding her but she switched on major waterworks every time they put her anywhere near me, oh well!
It was a kick ass evening though, they were just so freaking cool and decent. My beer glass was never more than 20% empty. Really nice people and I've been invited back even though I forgot I was wearing the bathroom slippers and walked back out into the kitchen with them on! Shock horror!

All the foreigners over here have taken to cursing like bastards. There's no-one to keep them in check so they can swear as loud as they want and no-one will understand anyway, so hey, why not be as profane as you can possibly be? There's this English guy called Stuart who does a 30 minute slot on a radio show in Fukuyama every Saturday informing the Japanese of what's hot in the English charts and he says "That's all for now. Goodbye, cunts!" at the end of his weekly broadcast and there's no-one to tell him not to!
Fantastic!

Still don't have my own internet. I've been on to people AGAIN about this but you try calling a Japanese telecommunications company and see how far you get. Fingers crossed though!

In other news, last week I was out on island schools. The first one had only 14 students. My first class was 2nd year and one of the students was sick so the total number of students was ... 1!

The second island was even crazier. There's no cars and the streets are barely wide enough for bikes. Cats everywhere. The school is made almost entirely out of wood and there and total of ... wait for it ... 8 STUDENTS!
3rd year has 1 student and the poor guy used to live in the States and Tokyo. Then his lunatic parents decided to move to a remote island in the middle of nowhere where he's the only kid on his class. He's a really nice kid too so I feel bad for him. He doesn't seem too put out by it but it's got to suck.

Speaking of 'not being put out by things' the Japanese seem to have drawn a pretty shitty lot in life. Don't get me wrong, Japan is great - if you're not Japanese.

It's great to be a foreigner in Japan because they just love us. The kids stare at you like you're Brad Pitt or the reincarnation of Buddha and the adults will go out of their way to help you with anything, but being a legitimate Japanese-born citizen dooms you to life of slave labour as long as you live.
For example, there was a 2 week break in between the end of 1 school year and the start of another at the end of March. Every teacher was in school every day. They had nothing to do but they all had to be there bright and early every morning. And it's not voluntary, they have to be there. And the longer they stay each night the more chance they have of getting promoted. It'd ridiculous.
And the same goes for summer holidays. They have the last 2 weeks of July and all of August off but they'll all be in school every day - doing nothing - but there nonetheless.
As Stuart put it, "It's great to be a foreigner in Japan but I wouldn't wish being Japanese on my worst enemy."

Still though, they all seem to be happy as Larry so maybe I'm missing something.

Either way, I'm going to bed so talk to you all later.
BAM!

Teaching stuff about stuff

Ahoy there! I'm back so soon! Sciving the internet from yet another staff room. This is my first day at this school and I'm here tomorrow too.
Next week I'm out on an island for Monday and Tuesday and another one for Wednesday and Thursday, then back local for Friday. I'll certainly be seeing a lot of the country anyway!

There's this teacher in the school I was in for the last few days who sits at the desk next to mine in the staff room. He can't speak much English and I can't speak much Japanese but he's just a really nice guy and is always making an effort to talk to me. They're dead nice over here. Everyone is extremely helpful and friendly and will do anything they can to help you with absolutely anything.

So far I've been teaching in junior high schools and I don't have any primary schools till mid-June. The little kids around my area are hilarious though. You can see some of them staring cause they've never seen a foreigner. Lots of them say 'Hello' and then collapse laughing when I say hello back to them, like it's the funniest thing they've ever heard! Sometimes I reply in Japanese, just to confuse them! They also find this hilarious. I think it's more of "oh my god - the foreigner can speak - and it spoke to me!"
I love it though. I'm a celebrity just by walking down the street and I make people collapse with laughter just by saying hello. It's great!

Still alive, still no internet!

Greetings all and once again, apologies for not keeping in touch but it's bloody difficult when you don't have your own internet (still!) and there's no internet cafe anywhere near me.

So what have I been up to since I last checked in? Quite a bit actually. It's Sakura season over here at the moment. That's Cherry-Blossom. There are cherry-blossom trees all over Japan and they bloom for about 1 or 2 weeks every April. The whole country is covered with them and the Japanese use it as an excuse to go a little it nuts. They're usually very business-like and withdrawn but totally let loose (relatively speaking) when the Sakura bloom.

I met a few English guys who're also teaching over here and they introduced me to Machiko, a completely bonkers Japanese woman who worked as a Catholic nun in England for 28 years. Anyway, she speaks really good English and organises stuff for all the local foreigners every now and again. She was having a dinner party at her house last Friday but when I got home that day from wherever I was I saw a note in my letter box saying it was cancelled, but that there was something else on instead and to bring food and warm clothes.
I was to meet her at the train station in half an hour so I legged it to the local supermarket not having any idea what kind of food to bring since I don't really know what the Japanese do at these occasions, and to be honest, I didn't have an iota of what kind of occasion I would be attending anyway! So just to be safe I loaded up on biscuits and chocolate to give out after whatever it was.

So I'm there at the station and Machiko cycles up and then leaves. Before she leaves she introduces me to her friend, Yoko, who introduces me to here husband. "This is my husband" she says, "Please call him Mr. T."
'Mr. T' was this small 50 year old Japanese guy with a big mustache and a jacket that had a paragraph of English on the back. Needless to say it was complete gibberish and mad absolutely no sense whatsoever.
So I'm left with Yoko and Mr. T, both of whom have only basic English and they tell me to get in their car. I'm thinking "what the hell, what else have I got to do?" so into the car I got. They drove up to this hill-top near the city where a load of Sakura trees were in bloom and some people were drinking and bar-b-q-ing. We waited there for about 45 minutes and absolutely nothing was happening. We were just sitting there not being able to say much to each-other and I'm still wondering what the hell is happening. Eventually a few car loads of people arrived, both foreign and Japanese, and we spent the rest of the evening eating and drinking on a Sakura-covered hilltop overlooking Kasaoka city and the bay. It was pretty freaking great!

So the next day I headed in to Okayama city since they have this traditional Japanese garden called Korokuen. It's regarded as one of the top 3 gardens in Japan and I really wanted to see it while the Sakura were in bloom. I have to say it was pretty sweet! The weather over here is pretty warm and sunny at the moment, although not overtly 'hot'. It was a glorious day to spend strolling about a traditional Japanese garden!
I've also been to several Japanese castles. The grounds of them are amazing, you could stroll around there for hours just going "wow, look at this", "wow, look at that!"
The castle in Okayama is pretty cool but there's another city called Fukuyama nearby and their castle kicks ass!
There's also a trip planned for next Saturday week to an onsen (natural hot spring bath) on the island of Shikoku so that's cool. May the prancing about naked commence!

I started school this week so up until now I've just been getting everything set up and settling in. The place is pretty cool. Last week I was brought about to all my schools (I have 12!!!) and introduced to all the principals etc. Horribly formal, stifled occasions but despite the language barrier they were all really nice.
I have a different school every day, although sometimes I'm at the same one for a few days in a row. 5 of them are out on islands and I have to get a ferry across to them. The islands are great, I've taken about 400 photos of just about everything since I got here but you'll have to wait till I get my freakin' internet for me to upload them.
I'm using one of the school computers at the moment which technically are only used for 'research' so I'm typing this on my laptop and copying it over quickly into Bebo via USB drive. The lengths I go to just to say herro!

I started school on Monday but didn't have any classes until today. So I was basically just sitting there for 2 days pretending to have something to do or reading a phrase book. They asked me to introduce Ireland to the students and tell them about where I'm from so I put together a slide-show of something like 70 photos of everything from aerial photos of Ireland to Celtic jewelry to cows to Guinness to hurling and presented it to them this morning. I had 3 classes and had to do the same thing for all of them. And I've another after lunch! Also, I imagine I'll have to do the same thing at all 11 of my other schools!
I got a picture of the Ogham alphabet off the net and taught them how to spell their name in Ogham, so that was cool! I taught 3 classes of Japanese kids Ogham today - and that was just before lunch!

I can't stress enough how much it sucks not having the internet. It's majorly frustrating on the communication and just-looking-stuff-up-for-the-hell-of-it fronts and also cause I'm several weeks behind in Lost and 24 and I haven't seen any of the new Doctor Who! Yahoo said it would be 2 or 3 weeks until they connected the broadband. It's now been 3 or 4 and I haven't heard anything.

So you're going to have to do without regular contact for the next while but fingers crossed I should have the net soon. I've been saying that for a while but it couldn't possibly be much longer... right?

In the meantime I've uploaded a few photos. Only 5 for now but I have literally hundreds coming soon!

Okay, I'm off. Talk to y'all soon I hope.

May FUNK blossom wherever you tread.

Elfpan's Japoo Update!

Greetings my friends, comrades, associates, well-wishers and polar bears.

I now know where I'll be living and working in Japan. It's a city called Kasaoka which is in Okayama prefecture. It's meant to be a pretty cool place and it's not far from Okayama city too. It's in the southern part of Honshu, the main island, and is on the coast which is great!

There's a bridge over to Shikoku which is one of the other main islands and there's loads of smaller islands around too.
It's within a few hours of several ski resorts and other large cities such as Hiroshima, Kyoto and Osaka. Nice!

The climate is warm most of the year round and it doesn't rain much. Sounds pretty sweet to me!

I'm heading off on March 16th and expect a buttload of crazy photos too!

Elfpan in Japoo

It's official! After more than year of listening to me gibbering on about it everything has finally fallen into place and soon I shall be pissing off to lands afar. Probably mid-March.

I'm not sure where exactly I'll be based yet, all of these details will be finalised in the next few weeks. The main thing though, is I have the job! I'm going to be teaching English to teensie tiny little Japanese kids. And quite possibly some older ones too. I'll also be muddling my way through indecipherable food labels, trying not to eat anything I'm allergic to and generally living on the equivalent of an alien planet.
By Voyager standards anyway.

So make the most of me while you can.
That means you, ladies.
Better get as much Barry-love as you can squeeze in while my frame of reference is still limited to Caucasians!