Dinner with new teachers

Today, I went out for dinner with two of the new high school teachers.

今日２人の新しい高校の先生と晩ご飯を食べた。

They are brand new teachers, just graduated from college.

今年の前に卒業した。

The one on the right is one of two new English teachers this year.

右のは新しい英語の先生。

This was my dinner! Look at all those bright, colorful veggies!

私の晩ご飯！明るい野菜があった！

It was a lot of fun getting to chat with these two.

話が楽しかった。

*  *  *  *  *

In other news, I had my first English club of the year today! I didn’t know it was even going to continue this year until yesterday.

今日英語の部活がはじめた。　昨日の前続くことが知らなかった。

I have 4 students this year – 3 girls and 1 boy.

今年４人　－　女３人、男１人。

We shared some things about ourselves and then we played Apples to Apples. Best English club game, EVER.

私たちは自分のこと教えてから、「Apples to Apples」と言うゲームをした。　英語の部活に最高ゲーム。

I had fun, the kids had fun and we all finished with a smile. Now I’ve gotta think of something good for next week.

私と生徒は楽しかった。　来週いいアクチビティが考えなければならない。

Fun times

This evening my neighbor R, who went boarding with invited me over after Eikaiwa (my adult English class). She bought some cake this weekend and decided to share it with me. (yum!)



After cake, we were talking and somehow parts of speech came up. She was surprised when I asked about it and I explained that usually in America we don't straight out study them, but we do things like mad libs that make us learn them. I was kind of explaining the game, but she didn't seem to be getting it, so I decided we should try it. The first one was the funniest and luckily she understood it pretty easily. (The next one was about the beach and required a lot more understanding of American culture). 

Here's what she came up with (the formatting is a bit weird): 


A CHARMING STORY WITH A HAPPY ENDING


Once upon a/an cell phone (NOUN), there were three little pigs. The first little pig was very pretty (ADJECTIVE), and he built a house for himself out of cds (PLURAL NOUN).


The second little pig was handsome (ADJECTIVE), and he built a house out of body soap (PLURAL NOUN). But the third little pig was very sweet (ADJECTIVE), and he built his house out of genuine boots (PLURAL NOUN).


Well one day, a mean old wolf came along and saw the houses. 'how! (EXCLAMATION!)' he said. 'I’ll move (VERB) and I’ll hike (VERB) and I’ll blow your house down.' And he blew down the first little pig’s butterfly (NOUN) and the second little pig’s surf board (PLURAL NOUN). The two little pigs ran to the third pig’s house. Thereupon, the wolf began blowing, but he couldn’t blow down the third little pig’s heater (NOUN) house.


So he drove (VERB - PAST TENSE) off into the forest, and the three little happy (ADJECTIVE) pigs moved to Chicago and went into the sausage business.

Giving credit: This came from the iphone app.

Searching for Gold

On Saturday, I was invited to go “gold mining” with people in town. This was translated by my JTE. It also included a bit of a historic tour of half of town (next year is the other half).

We started in the parking lot near our michi-no-eki. We did the greetings and heard a quick overview of what we’d be doing that day – most of which I didn’t understand at all, but I just smiled and nodded along, figuring that when we got to an important part of the day, someone would make sure I knew what I was supposed to do.
After the beginning intros, we headed inside and upstairs to the small town museum. I was surprised at how relaxed it was. My students who were along started picking up and touching stuff and they weren’t scolded and told to put things down. They were even allowed to take one of the things with us so that it could be used while we were out “gold mining” later that day.

This man was leading our tour, he used to be in my Eikaiwa class and is super friendly. I think he must be a pretty good teacher of all levels because all of my students seemed quite interested in the mini-history lesson he seemed to be giving about my town. In fact, they seemed to have longer attention spans than I did.
I knew that in the past, farming had been a major industry in town, because it still is. I also knew logging and woodworking had been because I had seen pictures. But I had no idea that gold mining had also been a major thing back in the day.

Here are some of the things they used to do in town. 

Could you imagine Snowshoeing or even having to go for long walks in the snow in shoes like these?



An old-fashioned Japanese type writer, because there are so many characters, they had to pick out the ones they wanted and then put them in the thing in the back that
picked them up. No wonder type writers and computers took so long to pick up here, if you had to do that every time you wanted to write a simple note, it’d be so much easier to just grab a pen and start writing.

And, of course, an old English book! So glad I wasn’t an ALT in those days. Though, I do think they might have done a better job of teaching kids simple words before they start to move on to tougher ones.

After our walk around the museum, we set off!



Apparently we have a suspension bridge in town. It was fun to walk across it with my students. It made me laugh a lot that they all came in red hats. They were three of my first graders. It was fun to talk with some of them in a non-school setting though.

I was glad to have not gone by myself though, between the red signs with a line and the signs declaring “danger,” on my own I would have guessed the bridge wasn’t safe for walking on and that it wasn’t ok to go on it. Instead, we had a good laugh at the kids adventuresome spirits and the moms being scared of how much it moved.

After a bit more driving and showing us a few more historic places (often from the bus), we headed out to start gold mining. My friend from eikaiwa showed us how to do it and we got to work. My students were so excited to try their hand at finding gold.

The adults, of course got to try too. I’m not sure any gold was found, but we all managed to get our fingers pretty cold in the November waters. By the time we finished, my fingers were like ice and one mom passed out hand warmers to all the kids. One of my students shared one with me and then proceeded to show me how to get it to warm up so it would keep my hands warm.

On the way home 3 of my students, one mom and I played shiritori. Shiritori is a word game where the word you say has to start with the last letter of the person before you’s word. I realized as we played that, while I have a lot of Japanese words in my head, I don’t have them connected by first letter, so some letters were incredibly hard to think of words for. It was an interesting realization as a Japanese learner.

I don’t think anyone went home that day with any gold, but it was a fun way to spend a Saturday morning.

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.”

Should vs. Had Better

Today, my JTE asked me the difference between these two ways to say the same thing. At first my response was they’re exactly the same. They do mean basically the same thing, but then I continued to ponder this. If they’re exactly the same, why does the students’ use of “had better” sometimes strike me as strange?

My thinking continued. Where do I hear “had better?” It seemed that I usually hear had better from older people. I was thinking like grandmother types. I continued to ponder. Does that mean it’s English that older people would use? Or does that make it English that you use to someone who is younger than you?

When do I use it? It seems like I would usually use it with someone if it were something that was super important for them to do or there would be bad consequences. For example, “you had better take your coat” (on a cold day). Except, I think I would still use should. Where would I use this phrase? In what contexts would I use this phrase? I’m still not even sure.

The eventual explanation I decided on, was that you’d use had better with people younger than you and should with your peers and for older people, I’d usually stick on an “I think” (i.e. I think you should . . .). Even that, seems a little funny, because I rarely choose to use “had better” and would use should almost across the board, with a few exceptions.

What do you think? Was my explanation right? Are my thoughts crazy? (probably!) Is there something I’m missing or an official explanation somewhere?