Work...again, and Golden Week

The past couple of days have been a little bit busy. I should have written about kids training...but actually there wasn't that much to talk about. It was a very long 1:20-9:00 shift, and a lot of information to take in. To be honest, after training, I wasn't so sure I wanted to teach kids. Eventually I'll have to, but I thought I wanted to teach kids more. But the new curriculum that Nova has come up with seems a whole lot more complicated. But the kids coordinator at my branch is pretty casual and cool, and tells me he doesn't really follow the lesson plan, which would be a lot less stressful. Anyway, I can only comment on kids when I've actually taught them. Japanese kids are probably the cutest kids I've ever seen. Basically everything in Japan is cute; the ads are cute and have little puppets, little songs, all kinds of cute things in them, company logos or images have cute little animals involved (Nova has an ugly pink bunny), the girls are cute :), well some of them at least. The language is also pretty cute, like "kawaii!" or "eto-"...So maybe that's why I think Japanese kids are the cutest. We'll see.

Anyway Saturday I thought would be a sucky day because I slept late Friday night (actually Saturday...around 5), but it turned out to be quite good. Once again because I had enthusiastic students, the first part of the day before the lunch break went by really fast. The second part is always a bit draggy, but its alright. I had some really interesting things said in some classes that day too.

For instance, I was teaching a lesson which taught language about describing pets. Anyway, the last activity got the two students to roleplay; one a university student with lots of time, the other working full-time with no free time and both of them were roommates. They had to discuss what pet they would want and why. The woman roleplaying the full-timer said something really funny, "I have no time...to take care of cat...the cat is get bored...the cat will die". When she said that last broken phrase, I burst out laughing! It was so ridiculously funny because she was trying to say that something bad would happen if no-one played with the cat, but she didn't know the vocabulary that might describe something bad. So she just said "will die". Hahahaha!!

Anyway, I also learnt a fair bit from my students in voice class. We started talking about Golden Week, which is basically a bunch of national holidays that are bunched together, so that, take a few days off from work, and people can have a whole 9 days off from work in a row. The first I heard of it was a student in a class who said he was preparing to bring out a samurai display in his house (that actually took ages for him to explain AND me to understand). I eventually asked why, and he with the help of the other students explained that there is a national holiday on May 5th every year called Kodomonohi (I THINK!), which means Children's Day, much like Father's and Mother's Day. May 5th is the one for boys, March 3rd is the one for girls. So for boys, typically a display of a samurai figurine or a real samurai helmet is put up in the house. Additionally, and this was the hilarious part, he explained that they also put out a carp outside the house. Now when they said carp, guess what I thought they were saying? Even if a native speaker said that, its difficult to distinguish between cup and carp. When I didn't understand, they said its like a fish. In my head, I was thinking of a cup shaped like a fish made out of clay! I was saying, they put this outside?? Then they confused me even more and said "It's like...like...like a flag". I went "Wha..?" I was completely lost. I cannot remember the details but eventually I figured out they were talking about a paper fish (carp) that is hung on a pole like a flag and when the wind blows on it, it looks very pretty. You might have seen them in Chinese movies or something. Anyway the paper fish are supposed to encourage the children to have good health. Cool.

Anyway, there are like 3 or 4 national holidays, and the rest, the government makes them up with no meaning behind them to make a week-long holiday, a.k.a Golden Week. One is the ex-empress' birthday, called Midorinohi (Midori means green apparently, like the drink!). Then Labour Day is also around that time at the start of March. Something is on the 29th of April but I can't remember. Anyway, I asked some of the students in voice what their plans are for Golden Week. The first student said he's going to Kyushu (the southern island of Japan) with some friends; ok get this: TO RUN from the northern part of the island to the southern part of the island and it will take about 6 days. They won't all run at the same time; they will rest and drive with the runners and stop on the way, but at least one person will be running. Now this kinda struck me as strange. People get a week off from work, and he goes running for 6 days. Some people in Japan are real exercise freaks, I've noticed when talking with students. This guy and his friends run at least 10-20km a day, 2-3 times a week. Scary stuff. Another student in voice said "I don't know because I'm actually leaving soon to go to Toronto." To study for 2 years, ESL and then technical college. Cool too. And the third student said he's going to Nikko (north of Tokyo, very beautiful) to ride his bike with his friends up Bandai mountain, and into Niigata. Far Out. I dunno what it is with exercise.

The rest of the working day went by pretty uneventful. I did go out to dinner with one of the teachers at my branch, met up with two mates of his in Shibuya for dinner, at a place called the Outback Steakhouse...kind of a Aussie themed restaurant, but in Japan, how Aussie can you get? I'm not even that Aussie. But it was the first full-on meal of meat that I've had, and it was good. Not that cheap though, but I'd just been paid on Friday :). Was a very good night; had some good laughs. I was surprised at the amount of people, because I hadn't been to Shibuya on the weekends, and at night. It was packed...and the 11:00 train home was packed too. It kinda sucked at the end because I was supposed to go see a student play at a cafe (he plays Bolivian music) but the dinner ran on, but when I got back at Tsunashima station, I bumped into him. Great guy, pity I missed out on some good music.

Anyway, that's heaps of reading. Enough for today, hope it was informative and good.