Author's note: When you see an asterisk, kindly scroll to the bottom of the page to read more about the subject at hand.*
Daniel here. I realized the other day that I have yet to blog about my job. Sure, I've given you all updates and shown you some cool pictures, but the last time I actually relayed information to you, it was before classes had even started. Well, here goes.
My job has been excellent. I work at a junior high school with kids in the American equivalent of 7th, 8th, and 9th grades. They're awesome. They always get really excited when they see I'm helping teach their class, they help me with my pronunciation, and they teach me cool Japanese phrases to balance out all of the formal textbook language I've been learning**. In return, I try make their English classes not terrible. I enjoy moderate success.
I also help with the English Club, which has been my favorite part of my job so far. The kids in the club are really eager to learn English, and I get full reign over the club. This means I've been able to teach them cool English phrases like "what's up" and "dude." You know, the basics. We're having a Halloween party this week and they're making skits in English to perform, then we're going to watch a spooky film in English (I think Corpse Bride). Unfortunately, due to strict Japanese privacy laws, I'm not allowed to post any pictures of my students or refer to them using their actual names. Don't worry, though - when you come to visit, I'll introduce you.
My co-workers are pretty great, too. I have five JTEs that I work with, and all of them speak very good English and have travelled to English-speaking countries (it's amazing what a difference this makes). They've been extremely welcoming and straightforward (this is awesome in a society where it's considered rude to tell someone, for example, exactly how many questions you want on a quiz or what subject you want the questions on.) I've had a great time in the office with them, but more importantly I've enjoyed my classroom time. They all know how to utilize an ALT very well, so I get a lot of interaction with the students.
My classes follow a textbook, New Horizon English, but I get a decent amount of say in what the lessons actually look like. This is also really cool, since most junior high ALTs show up to class and do what they're told. For example, a few weeks ago, I got to introduce famous Americans to my class, and my JTE let me choose whomever I wanted. (In case you're curious, I did Walt Disney, Hillary Clinton, Mark Twain, Steve Jobs, and Jackie Robinson. All the important ones.)
Outside of school, Jorden and I have been keeping busy. We've officially upgraded our Japanese learning to "triple-threat" status. We take once-weekly lessons with a gal, Yoko, who walks us a through a Japanese textbook*** and works on grammatical points with us. Then every other week we've started meeting with a co-worker of mine who polishes our conversational Japanese (again, the language they teach in textbooks can be really ridiculous). Finally, the Japanese governmental department that hired us sends us monthly workbooks wich have been really helpful with vocabulary building and sentence structure.
But don't go thinking we're just bookworms. We're plenty of other stuff, too. Recently we've picked up the traditional Japanese art of watching Jack Bauer save America from terrorists. We've also connected with our fellow JETs. Jorden and I attended a Halloween party the other night, which only confirmed my hatred for Halloween parties****. Then we went to a much more enjoyable house party the next night, where we indulged in red wine, fried noodles, and The Game That Offends Everyone (surprisingly more enjoyable than the name would have you believe). Though we've yet to meet friends who we can really open up to, the JETs here in Ishikawa are amazing, welcoming, and downright hilarious.
We've been exploring our new city more and more each day, too. Kanazawa has been a great place to live, with enough to keep us plenty entertained. My personal favorites so far have been Ro-Man-Yu, the huge new-and-used store a few kilometers^ from our house, the hillside walking paths where we can look out over the city, and the super-narrow roads which make you feel like Luke Skywalker flying through the Death Star trench whenever you ride your bike.
The weather's been turning here, which has made for delightful weekends and evenings. Gone are the days where you practically had to have an IV put in to keep up with the amount of water you lost through perspiration. My co-worker who I mentioned earlier, the one who's been teaching Jorden and I conversational Japanese, offered to take us leaf-viewing next weekend. We're going to drive up into the mountains and take a peek at nature slowly dying while we eat rice balls and say things like "wow, look at those hues." I'm really excited for it^^.
To help further illustrate things, I've included some illustrations. Enjoy!
Me enjoying an overpriced cup of coffee and working on Japanese.
A rose garden in the nearby park. I pass through here on my way to school.
More of the cool rose garden.
A fancy house in our neighborhood.
These corner mirrors make it slightly less death-defying to ride around on the narrow streets.
Fairly common sight - an empty lot in a neighborhood that someone cultivated.
Some of my students passed me on my way to school.
The Sai River. It's way more impressive when it rains.
Our campus has a strict "no dogs, no whipped cream" policy.
More of the Sai River behind my school. When it rains this thing starts raging.
There's no privacy law against protecting the identity of my co-workers! This is Mr. Suzuki, one of my JTEs, and I at a conference.
Me, Jorden, and a drunk Japanese photo-bomber at the aforementioned Halloween party.
The dinner Jorden made me while I was writing this very blog!
That's all for now! Thanks for reading!
-The Adventurers
*There you go. See? Easy enough.
**Yesterday, for example, one of my JTEs told me that my textbook taught me the equivalent of "Greetings, good sir. Could you please relate to me the whereabouts of the nearest grocery store?" When it taught me how to ask where the grocery store is.
***As in, it's about Japanese and it's freakin' written in Japanese. It makes reading really slow, but I feel like a champion whenever I turn a page.
****Can you say "super-crowded dark room with crazy-loud music and tons of drunk people in costumes" in Japanese? I can't, which is why Jorden and I chose to leave early.
^That's right. Kilometers. Turns out the metric system is ten times better than the SI system (or roughly 11.2366 times better, if we're using SI units).
^^Since we don't have a car, trips out of the city are fairly rare for us. It's always a treat to get to see more rural Japan.
