Fun in English class

Today in English class, we talked about what "cross your fingers" means. 

英語の授業に「cross your fingers」について話した。

Of course, this was the result: 

もちろん、生徒たちはこのようして見た。

Of course, this is more of what I'd think of. 

実はこのイメージが考えている。

HEC Replacement Therapy, part 2

After camping at the beach, we headed into Sapporo to go hang out around the beer festival.

R was of course rolling her eyes at the cameras coming out.



Camera war! I think we were both going for the same shot and then shot each other instead, when we realized the other would be in the background.



N, the creeper.



Not sure what L & N were doing, but it was cute.



Being creepy again.



I think she hurt her finger.



H taking her own self-portrait.



Here’s mine.



Another fun shot.



In the end we did get to meet some HEC students, they were doing their own HEC replacement therapy with their ALT – an English dinner at a burger place in Sapporo. It was fun to talk to them and even crazier to find that their school is bigger than my town!



It’s sad to see so many of my friends leaving Hokkaido and moving all over the world and to have to say goodbye. Even so, I’d love to travel all over the world and visit all of them in the future.

Another reason I hate Katakana

Today, I discovered another reason to hate katakana.

Katakana (カタカナ) is the Japanese alphabet for loan words, words that come from other languages. banana becomes ba-na-na (バナナ), pineapple becomes pine (パイン). Sometimes this makes learning Japanese really easy, because it's just a very broken up way of pronouncing English. On the other hand, it makes my students believe that we will understand them when they speak Katakana English to us (not true).

But, other times katakana words come from other languages. Stapler, for example becomes ホチキス Ho-chi-ki-su, from the name of the guy who invented it. Part time job becomes アルバイト, a-ru-ba-i-to, from the German word for it.

Even other times, Japanese is put into katakana, because it looks cool. I think these are the most difficult words, because I sit there sounding them out trying to figure out what English they could be and they're not (I'm as bad as all of my kids, I expect katakana to always be English words). The Japanese words are the hardest, because they're not usually in the dictionary like that.

So today, my students are supposed to be practicing "Do you . . ." sentences. I look over one's shoulder and he's written "Do you play fagot?" I ask him what he means (assuming it's a mis-translation) and he says it's a katakana word and does the motion to show me it's an instrument. We can't figure it out and even the teacher is thinking I might be crazy for not knowing this word, but I know that this word cannot be what he means. I'm not completely sure of it's meaning in English, but I know it's a pretty bad insult.

After class, my teacher pulls out her dictionary and looks up what he means, bassoon, it comes from the word in German. She also looks up fagot and is surprised to find that it's such a terrible word in English.

Yet another reason why I dislike katakana.

iPhone antics

Today, I headed in to see what the "Qualification Acquisition club" (such a difficult name!) was up to. There were two students and they were both drawing. I started to talking to them about what they were up to this weekend, their favorite kanji, etc.

When we got to  a word I didn't know, I whipped out the trusty iPhone to look it up. I did and then my student wanted to see it, since she's a high school student and not with a group of crazy students, I decided to let her.

She kept trying to use her finger nail to do things (as did I when I first got it). I explained that you had to use your finger.

Her next question was if it could read finger prints. I told her no, it moved by heat. And when I hadn't wanted to stop what I was doing I had once used my toe to pause/quiet it. Another time, when it was cold and I didn't want to take off my glove, I used my nose.

Next, she wanted to know if a cheek or a chin would work, I told her probably the chin would, but the cheek might be too big. Then she asked about an elbow. I said I didn't know, so we tried it. We rolled up our sleeves and found out that you can control an iPhone with an elbow (in case you wanted to know).

One of the most hilarious moments I've had in that club. My student was laughing so hard and so was I. Great end to a tough day.

A strange day

Yesterday, my students and I celebrated Halloween. We played a game with skeletons and put on masks. A little different from Halloween at home, but still tons of fun.

The room we were in had nice, big windows. As I looked outside (this one is not actually from that window), it looked like Christmas.

Such a strange mix of weather and holidays we had yesterday.

More English learning laughs!

My first year high school students are currently working on skits. Today, they were working on them during class. I was helping a group of four girls. We were chatting a bit (with very limited Japanese/English). All of a sudden one of the girls reaches into her pocket (she’s wearing a skirt). I tell them I’ve never had a skirt with pockets (might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s been a VERY long time if I have). This is one of the reasons I hate dressing up, is the lack of pockets. The girls were amazed and one asked the others (in Japanese, so this is my understanding of the conversation – mostly from gestures) where you carry your handkerchief. She considers the pocket in their jacket, but can see that I’m obviously not wearing a jacket (and rarely do). Then they think of the bathrooms that have automatic hand dryers (not at school). They continue with this line of thinking to decide I must blow on my hands to dry them. When I showed them that I just dry my hands on my pants, they were utterly confused.

After school, I was invited to practice with the badminton club. When I arrived, they were stretching. One of the girls started pushing on her friend (apparently to help him stretch). He started screaming, “Ahhhh! Ahhhh! Ahhhh! Scream! Ahhhh! Ahhhh! Ahhhh!” I’m sure they thought I was the worst ALT ever, laughing while a kid is screaming, but I could tell he was not seriously hurting. He then wanted to know if he had used the wrong word and I had to explain that we don’t usually stop screaming to say “Scream.”

English Class today

Today I got to visit what is probably my favorite school, mostly because when I go, I get to spend the entire day at the school and really get to know the kids (which is incredible). The students are one sixth-grade boy, two third graders (girl and boy), three third graders (2 boys and one girl), two second grade girls, and two first-grade girls. They are an insanely fun group.

I was informed about the English lesson moments before going into the classroom. The teacher wanted me to pronounce the cards with the animals on them and then read the story. That got my brain going. If I was going to read this story, which the students weren’t likely to understand all the words to, how was I going to keep them engaged? (Keeping students engaged is always a big question for me, because it cuts down on management problems).

We got into the classroom and I asked, “How are you?”, “How’s the weather?”, “What’s the date today?” (the regular set of questions). As usual, most of the students do not know the month to be able to say the date. I have one third grader who seems to be particularly gifted in English who can almost always answer the question (maybe he studies at home?).

Then we pronounced the words, kids repeated (pretty standard way to start). After some questioning of students on the words, we moved on and played karuta. Karuta is a game I was introduced to in my high school Japanese class. The teacher calls a word and the first kid to slap the flash card wins it. The kid with the most cards at the end wins. We played a few rounds, with me being silly at the end and calling random non-animals (like carrot) when there was only one card left, to see if they were really listening.

After Karuta, came the story. It was about animal noises. To solve my earlier problem, I decided to pass out the cards with the animals. Each student was responsible to hold up her/his card when she/he heard the animal’s noise.

Please remember that as they were being asked to do this, most of the animal noises that we use in English are different than the ones that Japanese people use for animal noises. So as we went through the story, a few of the students held their animal up for every noise, until they got it right, and a few actually tried hard. They stayed engaged the whole time though. That was the best part; I didn’t lose any students while reading a story which most students didn’t understand.


My view a couple of mornings ago.

Confessions of a Janken player

“You’re a strong Janken player” is what one of my students said about me (as translated by the English teacher). The funny thing is I have learned how to win or lose at Janken in Japan on purpose.

Janken, for those of you not in Japan, is Rock, Paper Scissors. Japanese people have an incredible chant that goes with it, I don’t completely have it down and I’m pretty sure I’m mis-pronouncing the words when I do say them.

Different from home though, is the fact that EVERYTHING can be decided by Janken here. Which team are you on for a sports game? Janken. Who just won the card in the game we’re playing as a class? Janken. I’ve even heard rumors that it’s used in Japanese business meetings (obviously I’m not present, so I’m not so sure).

Anyways, I figured out that I can decide whether to win or lose when I was first playing with students shortly after arriving. It was about a week after school started and all the elementary students from my four small schools came together at Shimokanayama Elementary, for a grand total of 29 students.

On this day, we had a big tournament where each time you won, people hooked onto your back and you kept going with this train of people behind you. Well the first few times I didn’t really have the chant down and I didn’t know when to show my symbol. So somehow, I ended up with paper. Then I realized I was winning each time. My elementary students were always playing rock first.

I thought, there’s no way, someone has to play something different. But can I win the whole thing only playing paper? Sure enough, who was the winner? Me. So in a battle against teachers and students, the foreigner who was playing for the first time in Japan won. Awesome!

Today, we played a game that used it as well. It was a game where we had flash cards laid out and the two teams were starting at either end of the line, when they met they had to say “Dom!” then Janken (used as a verb here). The loser went back, their team started from the beginning, and the other team continued. The goal was to get to the other end.

I based what I played on where we were in the line. If I was less than half way through, I would play paper and win, if more than that, I would play scissors and lose, giving the students who aren’t native English speakers a fair chance. Most of the time this theory worked. My team never did get to the other end, but I did find a few students who played something else and won or lost when I wasn’t expecting to.

At the end of class, students share their impressions. One girl commented that I am a “strong Janken player.” I had to laugh on the inside because she must have just met me each time when I was “winning” rather than “losing.”