Legal Alien Status

            Before I left for Japan, everyone assured that time would fly, that I should treasure the time here because it will be over before I know it.  That all sounds well and good sitting on your couch in Lanesboro, Minnesota, but it doesn't really sink in.  Well, it sunk in today.  At the end of the first week, John and I went Tsu's City Hall, and registered ourselves as aliens.  We were told that we could expect our official registration in two weeks.  Well, when we walked out of the building two weeks ago, it seemed like two weeks was forever away, that we would never get those cards.  Well, we got those cards today!  It is finally  starting to sink in that we are going to be here for a while, and that it really isn't going to feel like very long.  It is an interesting realization to come to. 

My official Alien Registration Card!
Great pic, right?  

             Also, while we're on the topic of things happening faster than you expected, the old OBC teachers are leaving in a couple of days.  It is a subject full of mixed feelings for everyone involved.  For Angela and Peter (the old teachers) they are both super excited to go home, but at the same time, leaving this wonderful country has got to be difficult.  All of their students have been throwing them farewell parties, taking them to lunch, and giving them gifts during their last classes.  It has been interesting to watch.  It is mixed for John and I, as well.  Neither of us wants to see the old teachers go for a whole myriad of reasons.  As soon as they leave, we're sort of on our own.  I mean, Sarah is still here, but thats just Sarah, and you know how she is!  (Just kidding, Sarah!!)  Also, that means we won't have a safety net in any of out classes, and that our year is actually starting.  On the other hand, as soon as they leave, we get their bikes!  That isn't the only reason for being excited though.  We also get to move out of the guest house, and start our lives here!  It is a very exciting and sad week.

            Well, while these last two weeks have flown by, they haven't been empty.  We have been so busy, sometimes it feels like there isn't time to sleep!  John and I have almost completed the training stage of our time at OBC.  We spent week two introducing ourselves to the students we would be teaching during the first 20-30 minutes of each class.  It was pretty exciting, and was a good introduction to being in front of a class.  During the second week, I also had my first teaching simulation.  This was pretty interesting, because it involved teaching a whole lesson to a simulated class.  This would have been pretty interesting on its own, but I was also being observed by John and the rest of the Japanese staff.  The difficulty was increased pretty dramatically when I walked into the classroom and found out that one of the two women I was supposed to be teaching this lesson simulation to had ZERO English experience, and the other was barely above beginner level.  That was interesting, let me tell you!  Despite the difficulty involved in trying to teach a slightly advanced lesson on the problems and advantages with internet dating to two people with no English experience, the lesson went pretty well.  My bosses had great comments, and I think I learned a lot so it was good.

            The third was even more eventful, if possible.  During the third week, we taught everyone of the classes we would be taking over, and the old teachers just sat in the back of the class observing and taking notes.  It has been pretty exciting all around, and it has been especially fun to teach all these classes and start to get to know our students.  Most of the adult students are truly interesting and intelligent people who are studying English merely as a hobby rather than for any specific reason or need, so they genuinely want to be in class, for the most part.  The kids that we have are mostly here because their parents want them to be, but they are a pretty energetic and exciting group of kids.  All in all, teaching at OBC looks to make for a pretty exciting year!!

All the best!

Hanabi

On my eighth and night in Japan, I saw one of the coolest things I have ever seen.  Our boss, Naomi, took us to a friend's house in Ise, so we could watch the Ise fireworks festival.  The title of this post is 'Hanabi' and that means fireworks in Japanese.  So now you learned something and don't have to go to school tomorrow!

I'll get back to the fireworks later, I have a lot to talk about today!  Our first week of training was simple observations and lectures.  I say simple not because we thought it was simple at the time, but it seems simple compared to what we're getting into next week!  Last week, John and I learned all about the different books we would be teaching out of, what sort of classes we would be teaching and how old the students were going to be.  I was actually surprised to find out that a substantial portion of our students were going to be really little kids!  Elementary kids and the like, and many of them would be "zero-beginner" which means they have almost no experience with English!  We will also be teaching upper elementary, middle school, high school, and adult classes, and that some of these adult classes would be really low level beginner classes as well.  All in all it was a pretty busy and exciting week.  I spent tons of time at the OBC building, and we had lecture every day at 10:00 am, then an afternoon session with one of the current students, then we observed classes for the rest of the day.  It made for five really long days!  It didn't help that we stayed up super late every night, but it sure was fun at the time!

Friday was an exciting day for a couple of reasons.  It started by throwing a wrench in the whole "do the lecture thing in morning" plan, because we went to Tsu City Hall and officially registered ourselves as aliens!  We also got signed up for our National Health Care plan.  Its pretty cool.  Now, if I, say... fall off my bike and break my leg, it won't cost me very much money at all!  Right, Sarah?  Health care is cool.  It makes me feel all grown up to have my own health insurance.  Its weird.  Cool, but weird.

Today is Sunday, and tomorrow, Monday, is a national holiday of some sort which means OBC is closed, but Tuesday we start the second phase of our teacher-training.  Phase 2 means legit teaching.  Legit.  John and I are going to be teaching the first roughly 20 minutes of each class, introducing ourselves, and doing the warm up-review stuff, and then (fortunately for us) the old teachers will be taking over to teach the actual lesson.  We're going to do this for all the classes that we will be teaching for the next year, so next week looks like its going to be pretty darn exciting.

Now, back to the fireworks.  The day started off pretty normal, we woke up at noon after going out the night before and staying out till 4:00 am (gotta love the no bar close here!).  After that we took a train, my first train ride ever!! and went from Tsu to Ise to a friend of our boss's house.  We got there, and the house was beautiful!  It was right on the river over looking the location of the fireworks launching area, and we were at most, 1000 meters from the launch pad as I just decided to call it.  We got there around 5, and the fireworks didn't start until 7:30 or so, so we spent the first couple of hours attempting to socialize.  I say attempting because we were in a house owned by people that only spoke Japanese who were hosting two Americans (John and I) and about 8 Chinese friends who only spoke a little Japanese and mostly Chinese!  Fortunately, our boss's daughter was there, and she speaks decent English, so we were able to talk a little, but most of the conversation was done in a hodge podge of translated languages that nobody really understood at all.  It was a very international experience for me, to say the least.  The host family we stayed with was exceptionally gracious, they definitely kept us well feed and hydrated, that is for sure.  They had a wonderful barbeque, and cooked us all sorts of good stuff.  Everything beef, pork, chicken, scallops, shrimp, and mountain potatoes was sitting on our table.  They were big into the making us drink a lot of beer too, which we were all in favor of!  

Then the fireworks started, and my over-full belly was instantly forgotten.  This fireworks literally blew my mind.  They were bigger, louder, brighter and more colorful than any fireworks I have ever seen before.  The Ise fireworks festival is a sort of competition for Japan's fireworks companies, and each group got about 3 minutes to do their best and brightest.  The winner of that competition was most definitely the spectators, because each and every one of those 3 minute shows was more full of fireworks than the best grand finale that I have ever seen, and there were at least 15 of them.  It was amazing.  I might have already mentioned that but it is certainly worth repeating.  Amazing.  Sorry, I'll quit going on about if I can!  *blogger seems to be having difficulty with the videos of the fireworks that I took, but hopefully I can eventually get them posted.  

HOLY CRAP, JAPAN!

 When I was a junior in college, sitting in Dr. Richard Bohr's Japanese history class, it seemed like this moment would never come.  At first it seemed like the sort of casual remark professors throw out there all the time, 'Oh hey Andrew, you should really think about going abroad after you graduate,' or, 'You know, you'd make a really good teacher, why don't you think about getting into education after graduation?'  Then, instead of writing your history paper, you start thinking, maybe that could happen... maybe I should look into this?  Then before you know it, you're signed up for you second semester of Japanese language classes, you  have two job interviews for two different schools in Japan, and you're going to graduate in a couple of months, but it is still just something that you only might do.  Then it gets a little more real when you get accepted to a program, then a little more real when you buy your one way ticket to a foreign country, then a little more real when you graduate, then a little more real when you start packing, and you think, 'I can't believe this is actually happening!'  Then you get to the airport, and you spend 24 hours traveling and you go through customs and immigration, and it still hasn't really sunk in yet that you are actually there, that this is actually happening.  I figured, once I woke up the next day and looked out the window of my apartment that it would sink in.  


Well, I woke up that first day and well, it didn't really sink in.


During that first full day, my fellow newly arrived English teach John and I walked from our apartment to Gotemba Beach to join the teachers we would be learning from and eventually replacing at the Orden Bunka Center in Tsu for a beach barbeque.  We sat on the beach, ate delicious food and drank delicious beer for a couple of hours, and it still didn't really sink in that I was looking at the great Pacific Ocean from the wrong side!  Not even seeing a pair of freshly caught squid on the grill really brought home the fact that I was going to be in Japan for a whole freaking year!  


Well, that was Saturday, and its Tuesday night now, and I wish I could tell you that it has finally sunken in, but that would be a big 'ole lie.  John and I just finished our second full day of training, we have sat through several teaching lectures, observed several different classes, and are well on our way to official becoming teachers at the Orden Bunka Center, and I still can't wrap my brain around the fact that I will be here for more than a year.  That concept is as foreign as the country in which I'm writing this post.


Forgive me for a moment while I go all Minnesotan for a while here and talk about the weather.  Tsu is HOT!  Ludicrously hot.  Crazy hot.  Waaaaaaay hotter then I expected.  I knew I was moving south, and I knew Tsu was right on the Pacific, but I was totally unprepared for just how hot and humid this place is.  Tomorrow's forecast is 86 degrees F, with 80% humidity.  Minnesota is hot and humid in the summer, but this is just ridiculous.  It is so hot here, that we sit and sweat in our apartment with the air conditioning on high!


John and I don't yet have bikes, so we walk everywhere we need to go, so the heat and humidity make for pretty sweaty days.  Its so bad that we wear gym clothes to walk to work and change into work clothes when we get there because even early in the morning we'd sweat right through our clothes.  The plus side is the society has developed to the point where wiping one's self down with a towel is perfectly acceptable in public and fans are the new fun accessory.  So thats cool.