My week in Summary

 So Works been going Ok. I think the last time I posted I was slightly frustrated over a single kid and his parentingly challenged mother, but I'm over it.

The pic to the side is actually the most recently taken photo of me. I went to an Oktoberfest party a fellow Co-net was throwing last night and that was the result. Toothpick was for picking up tiny sausages, I'm not sucking on a lollipop. Party was a lot of fun, and post Typhoon which wasn't all that bad except for the raining sideways while I wet grocery shopping bit.

 This pic was taken I think sometime last week. I can tell because my hair was fro-ing out and I had a huge zit, which I think I why I took this in the first place. Ugh zits, no one will kiss me when I'm pimply!

The above and right pics re both me with beer in hand. Above, after work one day, and I think that was my second. They work out to I think 1L which is maybe 2 full pints. Maybe.... They seem larger.

To the right is at the Oktoberfest party, with my shiny new haircut and H-ish looking ducktape suspenders. Im so sexy it hurts.

Anyway I couldnt find any German beer, and honestly until I checked at the party Heinekin was German in my head anyway. So it worked out, and It was a nice change from Japanese beer which is ok, but maybe less refined? I don't know really, but the Hein was smooooooth.

At said Oktoberfest there was soooo much meat, and by meat we had 5 varieties of sausage that didnt stop coming, and 2 whole chickens. There was a tiny bit of 'other' food, but who wants non meat based products when your at an Oktoberfest event anyways?

(PS the pumpkin bread.. Delicious!)










Other than that my weekend came full with a Typhoon, an overnight dance night + karaoke naps in Osaka. Not sure how worth the overnight in Osaka was but I had fun, and its nice to see friends.

One of those days I guess,

So, this is more of a vent post, and I'm glad this is the first one.

So, a little back story for the 1st post, is that I have this female highschool student who has been away all summer, so I havent had the chance to actually meet her until this past Tuesday. She comes in, we introduce, and I do the class. She seems nice, and seems to like the class. I had not weird feeling about it. I come into work today (thursday) and am told by my manager that the girl has dropped from the school because she didn't know that she was going to have a male teacher, and can't have a male teacher. Unfortunately at this point, the only foreign teachers are myself and Perry, both guys, so she has opted to quit. I tell my manager that I'm really surprised cause I thought she was really good in the class, but I guess at those teenage years some people are just weird when it comes to gender. WHATEV's

So thats incident 1 today.

The last class of the day I have 2 really nice but playful  maybe 7-8 yo boys. The always get and say the language so I cut them some slack if they are goofing. The mom of one of the boys kinda watches in on the class through the window and after asks me to be more strict on them speaking Japanese in class. I tell her its only really in activities that they might and its cause I make it a competition and they get excited. So anyway she's asked me to be more strict on the no Japanese rule or she might pull her kid. I'm just thinking Woah Woah Woah Woah Woah..... But I can't say anything to her. And what kinda sucks is that one kid is super shy and has actually opened up, so now I need to be Mr. Japanese police on them. ugh. Anyway not the worst that could happen but an annoying way to end what was a fairly decent day.

Anyway Just a vent post so I'll remember it down the road and laugh at that crazy <cough>.... ( I coughed cause my parents already noticed I swore in an early post)   :-)

Steve,

Another slack post, but its Tokyo!

So I decided to make this post less text heavy and more pictures/captions.

Enjoy!

 This is the last day before vacation. I'm just chilling with Ernie

 I went to a Gundam bar later that night with Michelle Chang and her finance  Joel. Nice bar, a little on the overly dorked side though :p

 I bought this both for the Tokyo trip, and so that people have a bed to sleep on if/when they visit.

 Im at Osaka train station, waiting on my bus to Tokyo. I got there early to make sure I could find my way with time to spare. Always be prepared!

One of the MANY stops we made on the 9 hour bus ride to Tokyo.

 Morning provisions. Its a rice ball wrapped in seaweed, with beef in the center. Also comes in tuna, cheese, and some other flavours I'm yet to try.

 I made it! here I am in Shinjuku station (JR section) unwittingly about to take the wrong train to Tokyo...... good times!

 Ok so about 4 hours later.... everyone finds each other! there's Kalai and Sam, laughing at my travel misfortunes.... "Ohh haha that steve!"

 Harajuku! So the area itself is quite large but the fashiony street with the funny looking people dressed up is kind of localised to a small street. Kinda the equivalent to Kensington market except super nicer.

 The "Where's my wig" store or the "Oh wow, thats a drag queens heaven" store. take your pick. Funnily enough, almost no-where allows pictures to be taken in store. I was promptly told to put the camera away after taking this.

 Street in full swing!

 A shrine hidden behind the train station at Harajuku!

 Same shrine, quite lovely if you ask me, mhmm, it was!

 So lovely i took this picture!

 And that's me drinking a very large beverage. I believe it worked out to almost 2 litres. YUM!

 Just wandering the streets of Tokyo at night. I think this was Shinjuku,

 SKYTREE!!!!!! ok, so I was kinda meh about Skytree at the start cause it we basically have one in Toronto, CN Tower What WHAT! and we got there at 9:00 am. We had to line up to get a note which told us when we could come back and line up to buy our tickets.... We had to come back and join the 1:30 group, so we walked around, tried to go to a planetarium, went to starbucks.... came back and lined up at 1:30. We didnt get up until close to 3:30-4:00 but........

 Totes worth it. The Skytree was only completed earlier this year, and the lines to get in are crazy, so I guess we are fortunate to go up so early in it's history. The view was amazing an Tokyo is freaking big! Take that view there, and pan it 360 degrees. Its a LARGE city.

 Chillin out, maxing relaxing.

 More for Nicola and Michelle. SHAKEY'S PIZZA!

 This was dinner that night. Chicken and burger, with veggies, rice and soup.

 I dont remember why I took this shot, I guess I felt it very typically asian.

 I bought a book, it was wrapped in plastic. ITs the new Naruto Movie!

 I opened it to be slightly saddened..... Where are all the manga-ish pictures. It's not manga...it's a book :-\

 This isntantly made me feel better! Hot and Juicy! I didnt eat it. just thought it was neat.

 Later that night I went dancing with the girls! But oh no! No Dancing Allowed!!! Japanese police are currently enforcing and outdated law which was put in place during the post WW2 era to curb down the prostitution an solicitation that was rampant at the times. Why they've started enforcing it? who knows.

 So the above Picture is a train station in Tokyo pre-fireworks. The Right picture is a shot of said fireworks. They lasted 1 full hour! it was really amazing.

 That's my friend seal. He likes to swim upside-down. And I'm ok with that :)

And with the aquarium as the last stop on day 6ish ..

IT'S OVER!

I hope you enjoyed my Tokyo experience.

I've been slack I know

Ok so I've been slack,

I have been a little slack in the blog posts, but im still here and still safe.

Basically my last month has been mostly getting used to how the company and school run and operate things. I've been finding where things are kept, learning how to do my lessons and so on. Pretty standard and normal stuff when starting a new job. (The photo above is my school staff)

So that being said, I've also been kinda exploring a little on the weekends. Last weekend I went to Osaka, which is about 45 minutes by train, to kinda see the city and go watch the new Batman movie. It was good, but man movies are really expensive in Japan. Almost $24 just for entrance. We didnt have to go to Osaka to see it, but why not make a day of it, and that was a lot of fun, expensive but fun.

The rest of my weekends have been spent pretty much either in town (Itayado) or going downtown (Sannomiya). On friday night I actually met up with another NET Cheryl who I was in training with and we went to Sannomiya for a drink. We ended up finding a festival, which was super neat and super Japanese cliche. Everyone was wearing Yukatas,which are the more traditional style dress for guys and girls. And its pretty common to see people just casually walking down the street in one. They are usually worn for something or an occasion of sorts, and the best reason to describe it would be to equate it to your "Sunday best". In anycase that was a really fun surprise!

As far as work goes, its been really good. At the moment I'm still finding the hardest classes the Baby classes. And Baby class means children 6months - 1.5 years. These kids are still uncontrollably drooling.. These classes are done with the mommys present, so its not bad, and you're more actually teaching the mommys the class with the babies jut interacting when they want to. Its fun..just not my best or favourite. I am though, really liking the older groups of classes, so both the floor classes where the kids are around 5-6 and they know things and can actually enjoy the class, as well as the table classes where the they are able to kinda talk and make conversation. Those are fun. :-)

Other than that, The Olympics have been going on and I've been getting a lot of Judo, and soccer feeds. I've been keeping up to date on everything else via facebook news feeds and am really glad that Team Jamaica is cleaning up where they should be :-D.

(Neat clothing store name )

(I went to china town with Cheryl and Michelle)

(America town in Osaka)

As a final note on this one, we are having our first week off, break next week, and I will be meeting some of the other NETs from training and will be going to Tokyo! I'm excited to say the least it should be a lot of fun, and lets hope I dont get lost at the bus station!.

 -Steve-

Day 1 and 2 in Kobe,

Ok so I arrived into Kobe yesterday. It was kinda nice that mine and Cheryl's stop was the 2nd on the train and we only had a 30 min ride to get to our final destination. Some of the other NETs had a 4-5 hour journey until they got to their respective cities.

So Cheryl and I get off at our stop and we were told, if no one is there, just wait because the managers might be running late, and they will be showing up soon. We'll 15 secs later, I see 2 japanese ladies literally running up, waving. I turned to Cheryl and said I think they are our managers :) And that is my first introduction to my new manager.

So we all walk a bit through the subways until the 2 parties split up. I say my goodbyes to Cheryl and her manager, and now we are off. Manager tells me her motto at the school is that teachers must work hard, but also must have fun. If the teachers are having fun, then the students will also have fun... I'm loving my placement already. So talk about the other teachers a for a bit, she gives me a brief run down of my co-NET Perry, who so far is a pretty good guy but I'll get to him a little later.

We get off the subway and meet up with Perry (my co-NET), and Alex (my outgoing NET) and go straight to my apartment, which is literally 5 steps from the subway. I go up take a look, change out of my suit, and we all head to the school, where I met Rikako a JT (Japanese teacher) and then we head to lunch. We had ....okonomiyaki.....?... It's kind of a pancake, made with random ingredients like peppers, onions, pork, noodles, or anything else that you want to put in. So you basically get an omelette/ pancake hybrid.. if that makes any more sense. Anyway it's good!

So we go back to the school after that and I pick up my remaining suitcase that was shipped off, and Alex takes me back to the apartment to give me the basic run-down. She gives me a brief tour of it all, heads off to an internet cafe for 45 mins to allow me to decompress a bit, and then we head off to a giant beach party in Kobe (Perry is already there). Up until this point, my experience in Japan has been the stated 99% Japanese and 1% other. Well this party seems to be the Gaikokujin (foreigner) hotspot. It was about a 1:1 ratio of Japanese to Gaikokujin, and this place was packed. It felt kinda weird cause it felt like I was back in good old multi cultured Toronto, but really I was on a beach in Japan.

So as the day became night, and my sobriety quickly dwindled, more and more NETs and other ESL teachers from other companies came, I was able to meet a lot of new people, all very cool, all with their own stories, and all very friendly and welcoming. So overall it was a very very good first day.

And now day 2

Day 2 was a much slower day. Alex had told me she had made plans to go to Kyoto, so she wasn't going to be around, and I wasn't really sure what Perry was up to. So I spent the majority of the morning just arranging my room, seeing how much space I had to put things where, and such. Perry knocked on my door at about 3 and asked if I wanted to go for food, so we walked a bit and went to a sushi place, that serves your food conveyer belt style. It was fun, I was adventurous with my food and had some raw foods I'm unable to identify.

After lunch we had head to a going away for a couple, it was at a waterfall, stream thing down by the subway, behind a parking lot, very random, but very cool. I had more food there, as well as more beer, and had another good day.

And training is done!

So I left off yesterday heading out to my last day of training,

So the day started off with myself and the other NETs (native english teachers) waiting in our respective group rooms for the kids to arrive. We had about 6-7 come, so each group of us had 2 kids to demonstrated our lesson plans. My group had Sota a 5ish year old boy, and Tomoko a 5-6 yo girl... 

Now we were warned that Sota was a little shy and is usually very unresponsive to new people. And boy oh boy was he unresponsive. CUTE ....but unresponsive. He sat quietly in his own world for the 1½ hours. Tomoko on the other hand was very talkative, and engaging. She surprised us all during our demonstrations, and was soo super cute!!

So it was really good to work with the children cause we were forced to simplify our language, we had to use our gestures and at the end of the day... we taught those kids! :-D

so that was the first lesson, we had 2 more to do, both of which where with our peers roleplaying the students. The 1st of the 2 was a Baby class, and I can safely say I was one hot mess! I was completely unprepared firstly, but that was because most of the night was spent prepping for the 1st demo with the kids. Secondly I was having one of those moments where everything that could, would go wrong. So I got'er done, and that was that. The 3rd Lesson was a repeat lesson of the Junior High lesson. That one went really well, and flowed smoothly. I was pleased with that one. And the feedback we received afterwards was pretty positive :)

So the rest of the day included business talk, scheduling and final wrap ups.... So my 1st class of the week will be a Baby and Mommy class >_< im a little nervous. lol

After we ended for the day, we where taken to diner by our trainers, and then we all went to Karaoke, karaoke was good and it was nice to have a last night with everyone. I left a bit early cause i was hitting my exhaustion point, but we all had a good time :)

and now I'm off once again, things packed up and ready to go on the train to my new apartment in Kobe Itayado,

Okayama it was fun,

Before the Last Training Day

Ok...

So I haven't posted in a couple of days pretty much because training has been one interesting and busy as fucking hell week. To give the short version of it all, we have been all doing 8 + 1(lunch) hours a day of training, plus another 3-5 hours of homework lesson planning a day. thats 12-14 hours on average. Granted im usually on the lower end of that scale cause im awesome, but its a lot of work.

We have everyday been taught how to lesson plan and teach a new age group type of class, and every following day we have had to lesson plan for the previous + new group so our schedules looked like this:

Tuesday -  learnt 2-6yo lesson plan [LP] (probably the most common age group from my school)
Wednesday - Taught 2-6 LP, learnt 6-12 LP
Thursday - Taught 6-12 LP, Taught 2-6 LP learnt 12-15 LP
Friday- Taught 12-15 LP, Taught 6-12 LP, learnt Baby LP (6mth - 2 years... i know right)
Saturday (today and still to come) - Teach 2-6 LP to a real Japanese class, Teach Baby LP, Teach 12-15 LP.

To make it easier, we weren't doing new LP's when we repeated a age group, but instead improving on the ones that we taught before and redoing them. But each new LP included new props, new sequencing, and new stresses. Again nothing unexpected, but it was a lot of long days and a fair bit of vending machine coffee (which you can get hot or cold out of the machine).

Which leads me to today. Today we are about to teach out first set of real Japanese kids using the very first lesson plan we started on Tuesday. So we've been critiqued, we had our corrections and now we get to test and apply.. YAY!... wait sorry im in Japan.. YATTA!!

So thats all you get for now, I'm carrying my camera to training today to get some pre and post stress pics and to hopefully sneak a pic of the kids I'll be teaching. Till then .. :p


Steve.