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.

First day of training! YIKES!

Hey guys,

Ok so today was the first day of actual training, and its seems like the vacation is over. We started at 10am, but in Japanese time, that is really 9:45am. Myself and Derek, the other NET in training got there a little early just to be safe, and we found an empty lobby room with shelves of indoor slippers, all bright aqua blue, or sea green, the perfect compliment to any black suit. Anyway the girls showed up shortly after, we all waited maybe a minute or 2 and then our trainer Rachael came down to greet us.

And then it began...

So Personally I didn't find training day1 too bad. We are supposed to be overwhelmed, we are supposed to make mistakes and we are supposed to fuck it up. So I tried to keep a calm head about it and take it all in, and go from there. Basically for the first day we found ourselves learning the basic body of the lesson, how to prepare, and whats expected during. We learnt and sang songs, and there are songs for everything! "Up up up up up stand up!" and the other most common, "Down down down down down Sit Down!"

Anyway the day went on, we were given chances to practice each section of the lesson ourselves with feedback from the trainers. The material itself isn't the hard part because that's already provided, it's the conviewing of it in the order that we are supposed to that is probably the hardest, But that will come with practice because it seems every lesson section follows a pretty simple formula. And I assume that all the other lessens for the other age groups with be somewhat similar. That being said, lesson planning that's a long long time to do, especially when you've never really done it. This I think is where most of us will feel the actual stress. But hey, others have gotten through and so will we. :)

Anyway That's my update.

(PS go to the flickr so see pictures of Okayama castle, from the day before)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/swongken/

 Hey everyone,


Before I get started, I have just made a Flickr Account so you can see some pictures to go along with what does and doesn't get put into the blog. Said Flickr account can be seen here: 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/swongken/


So today started out with a group consensus in going out and seeing some of the neighbouring areas. We decided on and went to Kurashiki. A very nice old town, with some very beautiful temples and shrines. A fair bit of shops and food stores as well as some touristy things like museums and tours. A very very nice trip for my first day in Japan. The majority of the photos from that trip can be found again here.


The rest of the day included me taking photos of novel but interesting things... like my toilet seat, the vending machines that are scattered EVERYWHERE throughout Japan and some bikes, that they don't lock up here.  


When it came to diner, we all went grocery shopping.... I bought Cup Noodles, spaghetti, and a corn dog. Woot woot!. Needless to say, I went to dinner at a nice small Japanese restaurant, where the owner/chef/waiter cooked fresh dumplins, and cooked real fresh food. It was nice.


We  ended up at Karaoke that night, and that was a lot of fun. The place we went to has a all you can drink for the time you reserve, and you can't really get much better than that.. Oh wait you can, they serve beef soup from a nescafe vending machine, free! I thought that was awesome.

First Entry, Getting here

Hey Everyone,

So I've made a blog, first time ever, to try and record and share some of the experiences I'll have while here in Japan. I'm new to the whole blogging thing so I'll probably end up ranting a bit, but thats what blogs are all about aren't they?

So as a first post, I guess I should talk a bit about the journey over here. Well as I'm writing this, I'm 29, Canadian and about to become a NET (Native English Teacher) for a company called AMITY, which is a branch off school of AEON. I had my interview on April 23, 2012, and received an offer which has me here about to work in a city called Itayado, which is a suburb of Kobe. Right now I'm writing from my hotel room during training week, so I have not yet had the chance to go my new apartment or meet my fellow staff. Who I have met, are the other 11 departees who all came from various places over the US and Canada. Everyone seems very nice and interesting and we are all excited to get our Japan on!

So yesterday (or 2 days ago/ friday) was the beginning of it all, with myself having a 3am wakeup to head to the airport in Toronto. My flight was a 7am to San Francisco, which as far as US airports go, is really really nice... (looking at you Miami). I met up with the only other Canadian on the trip, in TO and we were off. The flight was 5 hours westbound so we lost 3 hours and arrived shortly after 9am. Our transfer wasnt until 11:50 so it gave us time to wait for the other 4 recruits who were also connecting in San Fran, eat, drink and relax a bit. The flight following was the 11hour heading to Osaka Japan. The flight was huge, but suprisingly we were fed 3 times, had a large selection of movies, and television programs to watch, and overall wasn't that bad. Again we went west, so we lost hours until we time travelled into tomorrow (saturday). We landed at about 3:30 and had a 2 hour wait for the rest of the recruitees and our trainer to arrive at the airport before we departed on another 2hour ride to the training facility.

We arrive in Okayama roughly around 7ish PM, are given a brief tour of where to be for training  and where we are living and  told to have a good rested weekend, cause training starts on tuesday! I have the larget manual in the world to read :( sad face. Anyway as a plus, because the training group is so large this time, myself and Derek, the only other male in my group, are being housed in a Hotel 5 mins from the girls (who are in the normal Dorms). Because we are in a hotel, we have our own rooms/bathrooms, free wifi (in our rooms) an complimentary breakfast YEAH! :) happy face.

On discovery of the wifi I skype call my mom, and tell her I'm safe..... and realise her time (-1 EST) its 7am saturday morning, and I've been up at that point for 27 hours and counting. It wasnt bed time yet, because we were meeting up to grab some food and explore a bit. Both goals accomplished. I had a bowl of rice and some delicious beef for dinner probably around 9-10pm JP time, and was ready to crash. we all got back to our respective rooms and called it a night.

Which leads me to today, and the now... I have started my first rambling blog, I hope it does the job of keeping everyone up-to-date and informed of my travels, and that you all get sooooo super jealous and come visit me while im here :)

-Steve-