Japanese Lessons!

Exciting news!  I just observed a friend's private Japanese lessons, and if all goes well, I should be starting lessons of my own as soon as next week!  The lesson was quite interesting to watch, and it was a major confidence booster, because I actually understood a fair bit of what was going on, despite the fact that it was picking up about 2 lessons after where I stopped studying at SJU.  I have to call Ishikawa-sensei and have a longer conversation about what I want to get out of my Japanese lessons, and where I would like to start in the textbook, and that should happen relatively soon.  After that, we will decide when I can start, choose a day and time, and then I will officially be studying Japanese in Japan!  I'm very lucky, because Ishikawa-sensei lives fairly close to my apartment, and I can get to her house by bicycle relatively easy.  I could also take a train (and when it gets colder I probably will) because her home is quite near the next station down the line.  It will only cost about 150 yen to get there from OBC, and that is less than 2 dollars.  Life is good.


Apart from that, life in Japan has settled down quite nicely.  Work is going really well, and I am starting to get more and more comfortable living in this country.  At the beginning of October, our teaching schedules got solidified for the next six months or so, and I really enjoy almost all of my classes.  As soon as I finish writing this, I will be going back to OBC for the second part of my teaching day, and my first class will be two junior high kids, one boy and one girl.  This class might be my most difficult class, but not for the reasons you would expect.  The kids are both very smart, and their English comprehension is quite good.  The problem is one of motivation.  The girl is very busy with her school sports clubs (a common problem with Japanese school age kids) and she usually shows up to OBC about 15 minutes late.  The boy is self-described as timid, shy, and quiet.  It was actually kind of funny, I asked him to describe himself, and he got out the Japanese-English dictionary and specifically looked up the word timid.  Timid and self-aware seems like an uncommon characteristic for a 12 year old boy.  Both of the kids will do everything I ask them to do in class, and they usually do the work correctly, but as soon as I ask them to be loud, creative, or anything besides just sitting there, I hit a wall.  We're working on it though, and I am trying to make them do more creative activities and get comfortable being silly.


My last two classes today are both low level adult.  The first adult class is one man who just recently got married, and a woman of about 50 years or so.  They make a pretty decent class, and they seem to get along with each other as well as can be expected given the age gap.  Both of them are learning English as a hobby, so they both enjoy coming to their lessons, which is always nice.  My last class of the day is interesting.  It is two women a little older then me, maybe 25 years old or so.  They are easily my least punctual class, and sometimes they show up as much as a half hour late, or they don't come at all.  When they do come though, they are my noisiest adult class by far.  They are both super excited to come to OBC, and they love to talk, both in English and Japanese.  Sydney, skip this next sentence please!  It doesn't hurt that they are both pretty cute!  Sorry Sydney, I love you!!  That class always makes for an interesting end of the work day.


Outside of OBC, I've been doing as many things as I can.  I have sort of adopted a new habit of saying yes to everything I can.  So far, it has worked out pretty well.  In the last couple of weeks, I have gone to Osaka and Nagoya, I have gone surfing, I went to a theme park, and too many other small adventures to count.  In some ways, it feels like I'm not really doing anything worth writing home about (which is why I haven't posted anything in so long) but when I stop to think about it, I have been all over Mie and I have done a lot of really wonderful things lately.  Life in general is pretty wonderful over here, and it is finally starting to feel like I live here.  That on its own seems like a pretty grand accomplishment!