Playing with Dolls! An IKEA Adventure

I made this Vlog recently from a trip I took to IKEA. Had a great time, and it's rare that I get to be this silly in public in Japan. Let me know what you think!

Himeji Castle and Gardens

I recently took a trip to Himeji Castle and it's nearby gardens, and it truly was a stunning experience. The castle was impressive, and could be seen from miles away. From the top, the view was breathtaking. On the inside was a museum chronicling the history of the castle. I'm really glad I made it there when I did, because they have since commenced a multi-year renovation project that will mar the picturesque view for quite some time.



After touring the castle, we headed next-door to the Himeji Gardens (姫路好古園 - Himeji Kōkoen). I have to admit, I'm far more awed by the beauty of nature than the beauty of the works of man (which are still awe inspiring), and so the Gardens were definitely the high point of my day. I put my footage of the Gardens to music, so I hope you like it. Make sure to watch in HD if you can!

Fireworks Festival....The Movie!

You may remember a post I made a couple months back about my reaction to the Takarazuka Summer Fireworks Festival, but if you need a refresher, click here. It truly was amazing, and I managed to capture all 45 minutes of its beauty on video. Here is a look at some of the highlights of that show:



I hope you enjoy!

Answering Questions

Today is a Q&A post, discussing some elements of teaching. Thanks go to Michelle for these great questions:

"How are classes going?"
Classes are going well. I've finally gotten into the swing of things...for the most part. There are some things you just can't ever be truly prepared for, which makes this job excellent for developing ad libbing, improv, think-on-your-feet skills. For example, one class that is usually very strong could wind up getting more tripped up on a lesson topic that the other classes had no problem with, and I have to quickly conjure up some new way of explaining myself, drawing on the board, pantomiming, cross-referencing a different concept, customized to the problem that this group is having.

I try really hard to involve as many elements of learning as possible into the lesson. I know that some students are audio-learners, some are visual, some are hands-on, some are logical, some need other ideas to connect to, and some just have to manage through a brick wall in their brain. So, my lessons are designed to cater to as many of those as possible, featuring worksheets, fill in the blank, progressively increased challenge, response to audio queues, student oral response, illustration, mathematical/logic based grammar equations, and cross-reference-able memory queues, to name a few.

"What is your biggest hurdle at school so far?"
One of my biggest challenges is the need for patience. I have been learning that slowly and painfully, but have made leaps of progress. Another major obstacle is thinking of meaningful content for my oral conversation class. I teach seven 1st-year English grammar classes a week, and those are easy to prepare for because there are a million grammar points to cover, and a million ways to cover them. However, I teach a single 2nd-year Oral Conversation class, which has no text, no syllabus, no curriculum, and no clearly defined set of goals other than "to encourage communication." On top of that, this particular class is especially difficult to reign in and get to focus, despite the fact that it is only 11 students. I have to prepare extremely interesting, engaging topics, while maintaining a relatively low level of English. Some of the more simplistic/"childish" subject matter that works for 1st-year students just doesn't interest the 2nd-years, yet their English skills aren't quite developed enough to discuss things like politics, history, and more intellectual culture, despite the fact that those topics would probably appeal to them more on the intellectual level.

"What level is your highschool - meaning what percentage of your students will go on to University?"
Well, it depends how you define University. If you mean 4-year college (四年制大学 - Private, National, and Public), then the answer is ~61%. If you throw in vocational schools and such, that number goes higher. More than 50% go to 4-year Private University. I'm not sure how that ranks my school nationally.

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That's about it for today. Also, I had reservations about even mentioning it on this blog, but I recently posted a video to my YouTube channel about the progress I've had in terms of getting in shape since coming to Japan. I've chosen not to embed the video on here, as dieting really isn't relevant to this blog. If, however, you would like to see the video (warning, it is 7:20 long), you can click here. In the future, I won't be mentioning YouTube videos that I've chosen not to embed, so if you are interested in other video content I might be posting, then:

You can check out my YouTube channel to see all of my videos, subscribe to my channel, post rating and comments, etc. by clicking here. (Note: you'll need to register for YouTube to post comments there, subscribe, and rate videos).

Learning Japanese

I made a regular video blog, embedded below. Here, I discuss the different elements I am using to further my Japanese language education. As many of you know, my goal is complete fluency, so really getting the most out of this immersion experience is a high priority for me.



Edit: I apologize to anyone who saw the original posted video. Its audio ended up going way out of sync when it actually uploaded to YouTube. I've since fixed the problem and re-uploaded. Let me know if there are still any problems with it. Thanks!

Arriving in Japan - A Video Montage

I finally got around to making a video. No talking in this one, just some video I took of my journey here, a meet-up with my old Tokyo friends, and my prefectural orientation. Hope you enjoy!

First Weeks - First Drop in the Bucket

So, I've been promising photos and video for some time now, and I've finally got the first mini-gallery going. I assure you, this is only a drop in the bucket. I'm really excited about getting some of this video content I have edited, but that's going to require a hefty bit more of sitting at the computer. In the meantime, please enjoy some of these pictures of my departure and first couple days in Japan by clicking here.

I'm Alive, I Promise!

I'm really sorry for having not posted in a while. Classes started, as you heard, and then life got really really busy. I teach 17 lessons every week, 7 of which are unique lessons, meaning they require completely different subject matter, lesson plans, worksheets, etc. Then add the fact that I don't have a book to teach out of, don't have a curriculum to follow, and don't have any experience teaching English. Oh, and I'm pretty much 100% responsible for generating this content on my own.

1. That means I first have to think up a topic to teach that is of appropriate difficult level, which is not even consistent among students of the same grade level.
2. I then have to outline a 50 minute lesson plan and run it by my Japanese-English teachers.
3. I then must generate worksheets (almost always from scratch) that are dynamic and engaging enough to capture students attention while being sufficiently well laid out so as to not require significant explanation. These worksheets must also anticipate student confusion points and clarify them appropriately.
4. I must devise activities that incorporate the lesson material, including new vocab, new grammar, and new sentence structure, and integrate these activities into the lesson.

All of this has to be done in such a way that it won't put students to sleep, which is hard to avoid when some of their heads are down before I even enter the room. Then, once I get to the classroom, I have a huge burden on myself. I have to fluidly adapt to both the students AND the teachers. Each teacher has a different style, so some will translate what I say word-for-word, some will only translate when prompted by me, some will walk around and keep the students in line, and some will walk around and help students one-on-one with trouble points. As for the students, ability levels can vary within a single grade level, as a mentioned, but also vary widely in the same classroom. So, while some students have finished the worksheet a couple minutes after they get it, others are a struggle to get to even write their name at the top. Then there are the points that I assumed would be easily learned, and end up being extremely difficult, and the things I anticipated to be difficult that end up being quite easy. Then, I have to keep things moving at relatively the same pace so that classes doing the same lesson as each other progress at the same rate.

In addition to work, I try to make it to the gym 3-4 times a week. On Thursday evenings, I have a one-on-one Japanese language/conversation lesson with a sweet older woman at the local International Friendship Society. On weekends, I am usually tied up with traveling with friends, new acquaintances, etc as I explore the different elements of this new world. During the time that I'm actually at home, which rarely exceeds more than two or three waking hours in a day, I'm usually pretty tied up with house chores like laundry, vacuuming, cleaning, trash organizing, yard work (haven't made much progress here), etc. I really feel like I have lived more in this past 2 months than I did in the past 2 years.

So there, I just managed to combine a recap of my past few weeks with an excuse for why it's been a few weeks since my last recap. I also wasn't lying when I said I had a load of pictures and videos to share, and the content is only building so I really gotta purge it out to you on cyberspace ASAP. No joke, I have several hours of HD video alone (which I'll obviously have to parse through as I can't be posting that much onto the internet).

*EDIT: And a reminder, I love comments! Comment me, let me know what you think of all this stuff I talk about, let me know what you want to hear more about or see more of, and feel free to ask questions! The more I know that people are reading this stuff, the more I want to keep up with postings!*

First Classes

My first classes have finally begun. Last night was my one night school. I very badly misjudged the student's abilities at that school. I thought I was going way way out of my way to be overly simplified and slow in my speech, however, it turns out even simple sentences like "I like cooking" were going over some students' heads. I'm going to have to really change my game plan for the night schools if I'm going to have any hope of being successful with them.

Today, I had my first classes at my base school. I used some of what I learned last night to fix some of the more mechanics-based problems with the lesson, improved my visuals, and prepared my wording a little bit better. However, when I pitched the lesson to the co-teacher, I was met with great concern about the difficulty of the lesson even after my improvements. Despite that, I went ahead with the lesson as-planned, and it turned out to be a perfect success! It was just challenging enough without being misunderstood. We had just enough time to go through all of the content I prepared. The student interaction was as good as I could have hoped for and was positive. Many of the students even took initiative to relate later parts of the lesson to earlier parts. I was really surprised that my translation game, which was designed to be overly difficult and make the students realize that participation and effort were often more important than rigid grammatical perfection, was met with great accomplishment. Some of their final sentences matched my answer key exactly!

I absolutely love the feeling I get when I see that the work I've done has made real progress toward a student's education. I hope this continues!

Chilling with the Band

Last weekend, I went to a monthly party held at the local okonomiyaki shop. It was my first chance to meet young Japanese people in my area (where most everyone is highschool age and younger, or 30+). Everyone was really nice, and I managed to keep contact with a couple of the people I met there throughout the week. One girl, who works at the shops near my station, plays in a band called Brownsugar, and she invited me to see their performance last night.

I headed to Suma Beach, near Kobe, around 3 o'clock. The venue was a beachside grill and bar, with a stage for DJ'ing and nightly live performances. When I first arrived, I was introduced to the band and several other friends of the girl who invited me. Throughout the evening I met probably 30 different people. The performances started around 5 and were pretty eclectic and...well....weird at first. However, they got better as the evening went on, and I have to say that Brownsugar was by far the best act of the night.

There were small fireworks getting set off on the beach throughout the evening, and the whole beach was pretty alive with young people. After things wound down there (which happens really early in Japan, although things start early too), I was invited to join the band and friends at an izakaya that took us well past last train. From there, we went and bought fireworks and set them off at a nearby park. It was a really fun time hanging out with them, and they were all great people. I'm not going to lie though, managing the language barrier was really really hard. Admittedly, the biggest challenge was starting/joining a conversation and showing that I could somewhat understand and communicate. I have to imagine I'm a huge pain, as conversations can sometimes slow to a crawl with me as we attempt to simplify somewhat complicated concepts enough to mutually understand each other.

In any event, I had a really good time, and it was a really wild experience. It's also totally not like anything I've ever done before.

One of the most interesting people I met throughout the evening was a Brazilian Japanese guy named Fabio. (For those who don't know, Brazil has the largest population of Japanese emmigrants of any country in the world. Over the last couple generations, there was a flow of people migrating back into Japan, the country of their parents and grandparents. As a result, Brazilians make up the 3rd largest foreign resident population in Japan, after Korea and China.) Anyway, he has been living in Japan for a while, and I would say he's probably the kind of fluent I hope to be in a year or so. However, because Japanese is his second language, and not his home country, we ended up having a LOT in common, and he was very capable of speaking my level of Japanese, so that we pretty much 100% understood each other. It was also really interesting because unlike any other foreigners I've met here, English isn't our common language, Japanese is. In that way, I almost see him as one of the most valuable friends I've met so far, as we are very close in linguistic ability, and yet forced to communicate in Japanese and not fall back on our native tongue.