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.

Superstitions and Earthquakes

Ok, because work today was so interesting, I'm writing two entries for one day.

My last class today was a voice class, so we talked about superstitions. I tried testing them on common Western superstitions and one or two of them had heard most of the superstitions before. So I asked them to tell me some Japanese superstitions, which turned out to be really interesting.

1. When children lose their milk teeth, they throw their bottom-row teeth over the roof of the house, and their top-row teeth, throw them under the house. This is to help the new teeth grow strong upwards (to the roof) and downwards (to the ground). :| I thought this was pretty funny! I asked them if it happens now and they said because there are so many apartments, it wouldn't be good to throw teeth over the roof just in case it didn't make it.

2. Whistling at night brings bad luck. They said this is a good way to teach children to be quiet at night.

3. (I knew this one already) If you sneeze, someone must be talking about you. Apparently one sneeze means someone is saying something bad. Two sneezes means someone is saying something nice!

4. When you see a hearse, you must hide your thumbs otherwise you can't see your parents just before they pass away. That was a weird one.

5. Cutting your nails at night is bad luck. Its got something to do with cutting nails in the dark being dangerous, maybe.

6. When you hear thunder, you must hide your belly button because the thunder might take it away. So the act of putting your hand on your stomach is to kind of warm you up, as thunder indicates it might be getting cold outside...

So that was cool, I probably learnt more in that voice class than they did :).

The class before I had three students. One of them was named Saeko. If you can get this, when I said her name for the first time in the class, I almost started laughing; I had to keep a straight face or there would be some heavy explaining.

AND!!!!!

Today was the first time in my life I've experienced an earthquake! It was awesome!!! It was a little one though, as I found out from my voice students after it happened. I was sitting in the teachers' room when the room started shaking very strangely and the walls started making some noise. It only lasted maybe about 5 seconds, and after that some really small tremors could be felt. And Olivia, if you do read this, it did feel a bit like fainting!! I was so excited that that was what we talked about for 40 minutes in voice next. I also found out that the Tokai region (around Mt. Fuji, Shizuoka, and quite near Yokohama) there is supposed to be a massive earthquake (Magnitude 8, and shaking level 7, which is the strongest, no Richter scale here) every 150 years. The last time it happened was in 1853, so guess what? Some of my students told me to be prepared...as if I can be prepared?! And I also found out the last time Mt. Fuji erupted was in 1707, but there's no cyclical activity with Mt. Fuji I think. But an earthquake might be able to wake it up, although that's one of the last things I want to happen while I am here. All the same, I'm pretty excited about experiencing my first earthquake ever. We started talking about fault lines and cracks and plate tectonics (although I didn't use that term...too much explaining to follow). Japan is sitting very close to a fault line, but apparently most earthquakes are caused by many cracks already in the plate, rather than plates rubbing against each other. Anyway, enough earthquake education. My anticipated worst day (Tuesday is the worst coz I finish at 9) ended up being quite a good day! :) Out.

Dreams

Its Tuesday morning, well 11:40 actually. I thought I should share something with you.

I had a really weird dream last night. It was about work.

Ok, for some reason there was some work function that a whole bunch of us were going to. I being the newest member joining whatever (maybe it was Nova) was like a special guest or something. We were in some function room and I remember some dude introducing me to a whole bunch of other people, like maybe 50 or so. There were some people who came and said hi. I only remember one guy saying his name was Hawthorn. Weird. Then we were all watching TV which surprisingly looked like something I had watched before. Sonic the Hedgehog and some other people were fighting this bad guy...and they couldn't win. Then this huge ship filled with employees flew past the bad guy, who shot some homing missiles at the ship. The first one was blown up by the laser on the back of the ship but the second one destroyed the ship and killed all the employees. This was all something we were watching on TV.

I turned to one of the guys at the work function/party and asked him if he knew all those guys who died and he just smiled a sad smile. Then one of the guys from my work (who really works in the Tsunashima NOva branch) Andrew, dressed up in a giant bear costume and had some little kids throwing stuff at him. They turned out to be flies which Andrew had to whack. I wasn't sure if he was whacking the flies, or the children :). At this time I also realised that for the work function, I had worn some really strange clothes. I had a blue shirt and tie on, and some light grey pants (don't know where I got them from), and realised I had brought a black jacket so I said to one of the guys that I'd look like an idiot if I actually wore my jacket. Even though I was cold. I also looked at my shoes and noticed I was wearing my beige slip-ons and white socks. How awesome... anyway the dream kinda ended there.

I had another dream, not sure whether it was before or after the one above but I had actually come home for a visit, back to Kew house. I remember walking around my house and finding Arthur, Andrew and my brother in the bathroom. They were all sitting around the sink, and Arthur was sticking diamond-shaped material onto his tie, apparently trying to make a tie; probably a Make-Your-Own-Tie kit (which I'm sure doesn't exist). He was laughing and saying "I don't know how to do this!". I then went to my room and Amanda and someone else were chilling out there. I remember speaking to Amanda and talking about her going to America. She then said that she had planned a farewell at the restaurant that's on the Yarra (near the Boulevard...where you can go and hire small rowboats, in Kew). That's an idea! I remember saying "You've planned so far ahead!" And boom, the dream kinda ended there.

I'm surprised I remembered so many details...weird. Hope you enjoyed the adventure in my head. :)

Why is shopping so hard?

Its been a couple of working days and one free day.

Friday I woke up kinda early around 10...hahaha, to go to Yokohama station and do some shopping and looking around there. Also joined the local dry cleaning area, they gave me this membership card which says in English "Let's cleaning!" hehehehehe, I'll take a picture of it when I can. So I went to Yokohama and walked around the areas. There's always the 7 floor Yodobashi, full of electronics but I resisted the urge to walk in and spend a couple of hours in there :). Instead I walked further out from the station (I'm still a little bit scared of walking too far from the station, particularly when its only me and my awesome sense of direction) and walked into this department store which Geoff had told me to go see. I can't remember the name, except that the letters were in green and it ended in "ie".

Anyway, this place was quite large, had about 8-10 floors, thankfully and also unfortunately the first 5 floors were all women's clothes. I don't get it, I see men wearing semi-trendy things...where do they get them from?! I'm a Nova teacher though, I only shop at UNIQLO, hehehe. So it all seemed overwhelmingly women's clothes until about the 6th or 7th floor. I also ran into a floor which was all electronics, and spent a fair bit of time there :). This was also the place where I'm gonna be buying all my blank DVDs!!! Previously I hadn't found a place where they sell cheap DVDs, the general price seems to be about $1AUD per DVD; these must be the decent quality ones. Anyway, I found a spindle of 50 for around $25AUD so I'm happy. The top floor was all music, and I think there was a music school inside as well. THIS WAS WHERE I SAW THE ROLL OUT KEYBOARD!!! Ok, its not that cool, but at the same time it is. Taking a picture would have been ideal, but I don't like revealing my foreigner status everywhere I go, so whipping out a camera in a department store to take pictures of merchandise is the quickest way to getting strange looks. Anyway some of my Nova students reckon I look Japanese. So this keyboard...there's a plastic box on the right hand side which possibly retracts the rubber keyboard, but it was layed out on display. The box has a built in speaker and the keys are all rubber. Its pretty hard to play because the sensors are not everywhere on the key, only in a certain spot so the sounds don't always come out. So you can just roll it up like a long rubber mat! If it was any better, and maybe a little cheaper (around $200), I might've gotten one just coz its so convenient and cool. I still might, if I'm stupid enough, or rich enough :)

Ok so Friday I bought a couple of things, by the time I got back I was so sore and tired carrying around stuff I'd bought during the day (Em/Fando, its London all over again). I got home around 6:30-7:00 and just spent the rest of the day in. Besides most of the things that people do at night are go out for dinner and/or drink.

Saturday was a pretty good "Monday". Good days at work are when I don't have to teach lower levels, just because I find it easier to interact and teach the more advanced level students. And ENTHUSIASTIC students. People who are really interested in learning are really easy to teach, you don't have to struggle to get them to interact in the lesson, which is also harder with lower levels because they are a bit shy about using their English. Oh, strange fact: when one Japanese person in the workplace can speak better English than others, none of the others will even try to speak Japanese for fear of being compared to or appearing inferior. Oh well.

Today (Sunday) was a much harder day. Out of 8 lessons, 3-4 were level 7B (2nd lowest level), and not as many students were enthusiastic today. But my last class ended well because I didn't really teach the lesson very much; the student instead had lots of questions to ask about language in the workplace, because he's going overseas next year to work in different countries. It was great, we talked about casual and informal language, polite and impolite, direct, indirect, etc.

Went shopping after work and found that some things are ridiculously expensive, or maybe I'm just not looking in the right places. I bought 1 clove, that's right, 1 clove of garlic for $2. Three tomatoes for around $3.50, and I can't find any NORMAL mushrooms!!! There were some weird-looking mushrooms (giant ones with stalks as thick as a chair leg, and others that looked like flowers, or poison depending on how u see it) so I didn't buy any for fear of making a big mistake if I decided to make an omelette later on. 3 onions for around $3.50 as well...I'm starting to think I won't cook, maybe its cheaper just to eat out! :):) Anyway tomorrow promises to be a good, short day. Start at 1:20, finish at 5:40. My roommates have been asleep since about 9:00pm, its crazy. Simon apparently hasn't had much sleep the past couple of days, and Joash probably still has a little bit of jetlag.

I'm off. Hope everyone and everything is well :)