EDIT: I haven't updated in forever, so to make it up, I am linking THREE completed galleries with stories throughout them! The first is the wedding of one Camille Ann Samms and one Jared Anthony Davis, and the second is me climbing Mt. Fuji just 2 days ago, and last my trip to Hakone after coming down Mt Fuji!! Still lots left to go though! I haven't finished the reception of said wedding, plus tons of other thing I took pictures of. Oh! Also on Monday I start my new job in Fujisawa as and Assistant Language Teacher with Interac at 3 real life Japanese Junior High Schools! According to the schedule I got today from one of my schools, my name is "Mr Demon Bizzel." So that'll be neat. Yeah I moved to Yokohama, so my new address is
1st House SHINSUGITA
ROOM#202
3-5-20 NAKAHARA
ISOGO-KU YOKOHAMA-SHI
235-0036
Just in case.
Hmmmm it's been a while. Here are some of the more notable things that have happened since I last posted. One of my man-to-man kids who is usually very quiet and curt, using "Ok" or "Nothing" to respond to much questions, despite, or perhaps because of, being really smart, burst into the teachers room asking for me, demanding 500 yen. Apparently there was a Spider man mask in the one of the claw machines. I had accidentally lent him 100 yen earlier so I guess he thought I was an easy mark. Anyway, 2 hours later when he had his actual lesson, I decided to do the "Asking to borrow stuff" lesson, and he was downright hyper, asking me in increasing better english to give him money OR go win the mask for him. Well right before I left for the night he ran back into the teacher's room to proudly display his SPiderman Mask, which was actually cooler than I thought it would be. An interesting snippet from one of my lessons: I don't think a tortoise can understand the hearts of humans. That's from a student doing one of the pet lessons, where, in the 'choosing a pet' role play, I often suggest compromises such as keeping a snake and mice, as food, or having a dog's equivalent biomass in hamsters. Another great quote from a student is "Do you know ninja?". I actually did a Voice lesson all about ninja, pirates, cowboys, knights and samurai, and explained the antagonism between ninja and pirates in the West, and was given a tutorial in how ninja throw shuriken (apparently held in a face up palm, while the other hand slides forward on top of it and flings it out). <Can't remember where that full stop goes>. I got to see the Chubu international airport when I got lost on my way to work at a faraway branch, but it was cool because I rode there in one of the promotional Pokemon trains. I also got to go to a neat restaurant themed like a prison or horror movie or something, and partway through they cut they lights and guys in masks ran around. One of them returned the peace sign back to me. The senior kids language for this month is all about countries, and since most of my kids know I'm from the Bahamas they keep asking where it is but unfortunately the NOVA kids books don't care for the little details so now most of my kids think I live in the ocean. I found and ate a bunch of stomatopods!(AKA mantis shrimp, thumbsplitters, or, as I always learned back home, snapping shrimp, though apparently that name is already taken, Just like Sea Cow is already taken for what other people call Sea Hares (I still call them sea Cows). Spinier than the ones back home though. Got to see a Dali exhibit at a museum here. Oh for a potential new kid student, the staff told me before the demo that she 'prefers women teachers,' and that I was 'the best choice' or something. SPeaking of the staff, they have a new catch phrase, "Come on baby!" which they actually picked up from a kinder student who suddenly said it while motioning during someone's class. SO now all the teachers are gradually teaching them new lines to accompnay it, such as "You have beautiful eyes," "You're not like other guys," and from me, "I like long walks on the beach." Not sure if they know what they're saying though. Now that I finally started swimming, my first time in the steam room another guy who was swimming decided for a conversation opener to ask me if I knew about a back problem he had "DO you know, herniated...uhh..." "Discs?" "Oh yes!". SO we had a lot in common there. ANyway, hopefully I can put some more pictures up soon.
I have added the first half of pictures from my latest trip to Osaka! Here!
Well it's taken me long enough.... Just been busy filling in SHift swapos and some overtime. Got up the rest of the Tokyo pictures that I felt were interesting enough that I took. Now just Nagoya, Kyoto, Kobe, and Nagoya again.. phew... Well let's see what I remember of interest from the last month... One of my worst kinder students last month was the best kid inb class one day. Even the other kids were surprised and when one asked, he said something something 'mother', so I assumed it involved a threat or something on the part of his mother for good behaviour. But like all good things, it came to an end the next week, FOr my Chibbiko, the little 1-2 years olds, one of them is so sweet when one boy was crying over not getting the banan-shaped rattle for the first time, she offered him her apple shaped one. Awwww.... I've gone out to the Gundam pods again, and also had a whole lesson talking to a student about DIsney. I also had a Voice lesson with three girls, one of whom said she wanted to go to Italy because "Italian men are good at talking." I neverquite was able to clarify that but it was apparent she wanted to go there for a boyfirend. She said she didn't speak Italian but that 'probably wasn't a problem.' SOmething about Italian men being romantic and funny . She also added maybe Mexicans were the same as Italians in this regard and that could work too.
In one of my Junior Kids classes, the children always try to complete the homework portion in class and answer in unison, "Nooo!" to my instrutions to go to the next segment. I've found a way to fix this by offering promises of "Number Ball Toss", a class favourite game, when we should go to the next section, which causes them to get ready right away, then I'll throw the ball once and yell "One! Okay Finished!" Then they realise they've been tricked, but I blamed the short game on the one kid who took to long to pack up her book. SO now that problem is under control. At another branch the Kinders scare me. WHen I came into class they were all crowded around one kid who had a cell phone out (which is weird by itself to me), and then instead of hiding it when I got there he tries to show me some photo of wat I think was a guy in a revealing singlet... thing. ANyway he was trouble and when I started to mention it to the staff afterwards she said that he showed her too and it was all very disturbing.
Some new good quotes from class include, "I'm scared that Americans maybe have
pistols", "My wife escaped 2 weeks ago. Today I rush to meet her." (Me)"What shape is the egg?" (Kinder)"Older Brother!" "I have specail power. Electricity run through my body." and "It's a me! Shintaro!" That last one comes from a Kinder whose name sounds like Luigi so he often makes Mario and Luigi references with his friend in class.
I'm very proud to have finally won something from a Japanese claw Machine or UFO grabber as they are called. Apparently I'm not the only person who can learn another language through video games, as a student told me they knew "Confused" from Final Fantasy games.
Well hopefully it won't be anothermonth until my next update.
See ya!
Due to popular demand, some of the photos from the monkey portion of the trip are up here, even though it's out of order. I will try to get some of the videos up too. Oh wait, here I got it to work. If you only click on one monkey video, make it this one. These are all okay too, I guess, but not as great as that one, in my opinion. Yep. The photos are going up slow due to a combination of 1 day weekends from Shift Swapping, Disgaea, and me finally enrolling in some Japanese lessons. Also, today, I finally got to play in those big Gundam pods. I went with a coworker, and got myself a GUndam card with my rank and score on it. Us and six other people at the arcade played together with people from other pods, presumably orbiting in space, on two teams, with headset voice chat. Although that was pretty much just used by the two of us for english. In other news, the other day I got on the train and sat down next to a girl with a sketchbook, who opened it up revealing tons of awesome drawings, then proceeded, in the 10 minutes that we on the train, to make another awesome drawing from scratch. It was really awesome. One of my particularly energetic kids in my kids classes last week for some reason decided to thoroughly coat his hand in saliva by licking it, for some reason, and of course looked super proud while doing it. He got less high fives after that. Hopefully I'll put up more pictures soon.
Now over here you can see when things start to get interesting. It opens with Brett arriving, and some things happen, and then we get to Harajuku! My one regret from my first trip to Tokyo is missing that. We went to a busy temple and on a boat ride leading up to that, but that's the bulk of what happened here. Plus Free Hugs. Also apparently my new haircut is both 'Kawaii' and 'Kakoii,' according to staff and students. Plus the kinder kids were rubbing my head instead of learning english.
Just got the first little segment of the trip, before we met up with Brett, posted here. Yeah I just realised you can zoom in on the pictures by clicking the little magnifying glass in the upper right hand corner of the picture frame, so try it. Also, don't forget you can add comments. Many, many more pictures to come.
Well just got back into full swing yesterday. Mom and Dad went back on Monday and got in alright. Brett left yesterday. Not sure if he made it yet. Well lots of things happened while they were all here. We went around to Tokyo, Kyoto, Kobe, and even Nagoya! In the midst of these travels we didthings such as feed monkeys on a mountain, get separated by the sliding doors on a train, eat Kobe beef, hug girls at Harajuku, get led around a temple by some college kids, attempt a tea ceremony (with video), see snow, eat beans used to scare away demons at a shrine, and cook our own food (several times). Anyway, when between me, Brett and Dad I there's almost 4,000 photos. So, there may be a stream of captioned ones coming out shortly, and I'll try to just use the good ones. Most of the story is gonna be on those, but I might write up anything noteworthy here.
Since I'm doing shift swaps in anticipation of Mom and Dad and Brett coming down next week, I have got to go to the Tajimi branch I have heard so much about. On the train ride there I was sure I missed the stop because we went all the way up to the mountains, through them, and into the countryside. The first time I have seen the continuous sea of buildings broken other than when I went to Kyoto or Tokyo. I know, in an intellectual manner, that I live in Nagoya city, and work in Kasugai, and sometimes go other cities on my weekend, but for all intents and purposes I feel like just moving around in one big giant city, since most of my train trips just have a constant background of buildings. Apparently at some unknown point on my morning commute I pass between 'Nagoya' into 'Kasugai', but it's seriously just one mass of apartments and hotels and shops and malls. I used up a bit of money in Tokyo, but was well aware of it, knowing I had all thse traveler's cheques sitting around at home. Apparently my bank, or at least that teller that one day, wouldn't cash them since they're 'not mine,' as they aren't signed as coming from my account, despite saying "Pay to the order of; Sean Davis" on them. So I had to borrow money to get to work to Tajimi that day, which was interesting because I though it would just be a few yen more than my regular fare, as it was just a few stops past. Luckily I borrowed 200 more yen from my roommate for an unknown reason that morning, as what I had envisioned being enough for trips to and from work and lunch, was EXACTLY able to get a one way ticket to work. I had to borrow from a coworker at that branch to come back, and then borrow more from a neighbor, but payday was Monday so that's over with. At Tajimi itslef I had a blast though, in one day had probably my best ever man-to-man (Or man-to-boy) kids lesson with a really cool kid, and my best "voice' lesson, with maybe a dozen adult students pretty much asking rapid fire questions about the Bahamas and laughing, and one student not believing we ate grouper. Conch, as always, was major topic of discussion. There was a bit of questioning as to how to pronounce it. I told them how WE say it, and reasoned since we are the country who apparently likes conch the most we should use that. One of them, partially helped by his digital dictionary, brpught up on his own "Can't conch also be used to refer to people?" whereupon I brought up conchy joes.
Well lots of other cool things have happened back at regular work, but one of the better ones was in a lesson on animal rights, one of the students with a bit more character had a recurring theme of "Humans first!" and dared the other students to diagree with him (jokingly), causing them to shrink back at first. Still haven't finished Zelda despite being at the final Boss, due to, in order of appearance, :roommates addiction to the tank game on wii play, coworker coming over to check out the wii, coming home late, roommate sleeping early to go snowboarding, snowboarding equipment in room the next day. Tomorrow, I'll finally save Zelda. Probably.
Just a sampling of some recent occurences at work. Today, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis was brought up, though technically not by me. A fellow instructor was talking about long words in lessons, and mentioned antidisestablishmentarianism, and was mentioning one being longer, and as they looked at their pocket dictionary I blurted out pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. Later in a Voice lesson (large group free discussion) he wrote out the word and had students try to pronounce it, and a few students came upafterwards to hear me say it. Today was the second time all my students in my kids class yelled out "Happy New Year" before the class. Interestingly, I guess some of them have forgotten the standard "Hello <name>", "Hello, Sean", "Please come in", <high five> and it's variations for the differet levels, as a few just went, "Hello , Yuka," "Hello, Yuka", <High five>.
The "Happy New Year" kids got extra high fives. I also had a really witty, or perhaps just really humourous, student today. We did "Polite requests," and she was the first to add, of her own volition, the whole idea of saying "You look great today," or "How are you Sweety," to improve her odds of borrowing a car. Of course, when it was used on her, she would respond, "You look good today," "Yes I'm always good". Anyway the topper was unintentional actually, as when I gave the situation of "Asking your boss, the presidnet of Toyota, to borrow his car," she made the request "I want to ride in your truck when I die," before realising she wanted to say "Before I die". Well it doesn't come out very well when written in hindsight, but this was the first lesson where I had difficulty and a slight falter in keeping laughter in, although all the students were laughing so it was okay. A good day.
Just got in tonight, spent the last few hours sorting thought the 560+ pictures I took, got it down to a mere 200 something you can see here, in eight simple to use days. I also put up some in the Nova and Nagoya sections that I hadn't posted yet. Tokyo was awesome, I stayed with my friend Brian from Messiah in ISogo near Yokohama. He started Nova about the same time as me. It's late so I may add to this later, but most of the pictures speak for themselves. Well, their captions do at least. I had to take down some other pictures , including my trip to the robot museum, so I may rotate them through or something. I still have them all here, plus tons more. Happy Belated New years!
<Super-Update> I put the albums I took down on facebook for now, and they can be accessed by clicking hopefully. An Izakaya, Wii, Christmas in Japan, Burkina Faso, And My Trip to Sakae, now in Two Parts. Unfortunately, they don't have the captions there, unless I feel like copying them all over to Facebooks format, one by one.
*Update* (most of the inofrmation is in the captions for the pictures, but here's an overview)
SO pretty much it was awesome. When I got in from the 6 hour train ride, the first thing we did was stop by Brian's place to drop off my stuff and pack up the Wii for transport to a Christmas party we got invited to by his coworker. This is the second Christmas party I got invited to by a coworker named Emily, and at both it was another person who was the host, and both times he made chili, and both were great. We had KFC, a traditional Christmas food in Japan (seriously), and the Wii was source of much shouting and moving. Despite this, I was able to finally get some Smash Bros in when we found a Japanese copy of Melee laying around, and tested out the Wii's backwards compatibility. This was cut short by everyone except the two Smash Bros./ Pokemon fans in the room. We both played Pikachu. In bringing the Wii, I forgot to bring my Secret Santa gift, which kind of evened out, but I was able to finally deliver it later in the week at a New Years party at their apartment. Anyway the next day I slept in way too late, which became a source of amusement as Brian would test just how long I could sleep in. The answer is very much. Anyway, that day we were able to get around to a few big spots such as Shibuya and Akihabara. We even met up with the people who we would eventually spend (almost up to) New Years Eve with, the same people whose Secret Santa I still hadn't delivered, and one of which plays Smash Bros. On New Years, we were treated to some home made soup which we later properly realised was called Ozoni, and yakisoba. I attempted to make some Johnny cakes to bring, but was foiled by my nemesis, Japanese language and it's twin, my inability to visually discern between salt and sugar. I brought Pokemon bread instead, which probably went over better anyway. While the Wii was invited, I was more occupied with my DS as our host just opened Pokemon Diamond, so we had to tackle the more important matters, such as trading. For New Years Day, we went to the church in Yokohama that Brian had helped out at last summer, had a service in Japanese (I could kinda sing along at least), and had an awesome New Years brunch with traditional Japanese New Years foods, and different configurations of the ingredients to my favourite food, daifuku (rice dough and sweet red beans), which I have since made myself just tonight. This time Brian had to nap in from coming down with something, so I used the opportunity to try to catch up in Zelda. Anyway the next few days I kinda wandered off by myself around Tokyo since Brian was still a bit under the weather. I ended up at a few parks, a temple, Tokyo Tower, AKihabara, Shinjuku and other places during these days. On the last full day, I attempted Johnny cake again, this time possibly using too much baking powder, since it's never supposed to be that fluffy... Well we went out to eat anyway, to a yakiniku (fried meat) all you can order 2 hour deal, which was awesome. And finally, I returned. SO it was really super fantastic, my only regret is not going to Harajuku early enough to see hordes of crazy dressed fashion people. But I got to meet someone else with pretty much exactly the same interests in video games and stuff with me, see a dancing monkey, eat okonomiyaki, home cooked and fair variety, go on top of Tokyo, and play with fire, so it's okay.
I just realised my "Christmas in Japan" post doesn't really contain any references to Chrsitmas... and since yesterday for me was CHristmas, I'll do that now! I made a new Christmas album! My Chrsitmas was me getting up early for an earlier work shift, and possibly making pancakes. I cannot recall. Sometimes I make pancakes, and sometimes I get a rice cake wrapped in.. egg, maybe.. from the train station. Well work was cool, very light since there were more of us at work than usual, and way less students than usual, so everyone had several free lessons, which were actually worse because there was tons of paper to shred, and no working shredder, so a free lesson means any office work such ad stamping, shredding paper etc needs to be done. So I am bad at shredding by hand and get a big blister, though not molten-sugar-blister big, and try using gloves afterwards. But the day was really cool, and students gave me delicious treats, and then by chance I went along to a Christmas party at the house of a coworker who switched branches right after I got here, coincidentally, under mysterious cicrumstances. Well, I got to play monoploy, which by itself makes an awesome Chrsitmas, but also got to play it with another mechanical engineer, and talk to some of the rare Japanese people who HAVE been to the Bahamas, sing the 12 days of Christmas, eat chili and fried potatoes. AND walk away with an amazingly bright new pin. And that is how Christmas is celebrated by all Japanese.
I put more pictures in the Nagoya section mainly showing food again starting here, and another addendum to the ongoing Sakae saga. I finally got some Thai food in Japan! I did actually go to a restaurant. The portions are smaller than in the USA, as expected, but also the Pahd Thai didn't seem as peanutty as I've had in THE USA either, and the Thai Iced tea is totally different than I was expecting, which I should have expected. Instead of the super sweet stuff with cream you get in the states, I got something closer to traditional cha, so clearer, weaker, not so sweet. Still awesome to be eating THai food. Also, I struck up a conversation with a Thai lady eating there. Of course, it was in Japanese, the closest thing to a common language between us, since she could speak it really well and I could say "Thai food delicious!" ANyway that was cool. Got together a Cristmas Eve meal, although the store was sold out of the cheaper apple cider, so I made do with this. Well, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!
Well, had my very first earthquake yesterday. I was in the middle of saying, "In basketball, a three-pointer is..." when apparently someone started jumping on the roof, then began jumping on the ENTIRE roof, and I found this was called an earthquake. It was really quick, and my student wasn't even phased, just asking, "SO what's a three-pointer?", as I looked around and just said "Earthquake?". Then I explained three-pointers. I had a lesson on bad luck, and an extremely quiet and polite woman, when thinking of things that are bad luck, demonstrated pointing the middle finger, and it was just amusing that she just kept it up for the next minute or so while talking about how it is bad luck, and just held it while changing the subject too. In a very interesting lesson on declining invitations/ cancelling plans, I had one student invite the other to their grandmother's 100th Birthday party, so after she explained it, the other student, smiling, said, "Wow, that sounds terrible!" We all laughed, but it wasn't until after that he realised he wanted to say 'terrific', I just thought he was being honest. His excuses ranged from being alleric to raw food served at the party, "If I drink a little, I fall down instantly, I don't wanna bother you," I have no car, I have no gift, I'm broke, I have no clothes but the ones I have on, it's too cold. What was great is thatthe other student matched each one with, oh I'll call you a taxi etc. Just put up a short little photo tour of my way to work... kind of, that starts here. Well I haven't updated recently, and that is due to this. Also, it's Christmas time apparently, since I did a 'future plans' lesson, and on 'planning next week', someone mentioned Christmas, and I was about to correct them, until I realised that Christmas IS next week. That means I need to get ready! Also, Wii online, so w6649739601759787@wii.com is a new email for me!
Well I finally took my Wii problem to the more Japanese capable coworkers I have. I had tried calling th esupport number on the Wii prize receipt, but from what I could make out, it was a recording giving an alternate number perhaps? Well someone who could recognize more than numbers called and discovered that it was just telling the working hours to call back at, and so soon enough I found out the Wii never arrived because they had my apartment number at #01 insted of #701, possibly because the Japanese don't cross their 7's. Well apparently it's coming tomorrow morning, so I've been Wiiless for two weeks in vain... maybe. I still haven't brought my hopes back up to full strength, just in case. I do remember saying my main worry was that the address I gave them/ they took would be wrong....
VITAL AMAINATO UPDATE
The sugared beans I thought were grapes, and then thought were soybeans? Yeah, I thought it was strange when my coworker contended they were all soybeans, since they were all totally different... thanks to another Voice session completely about food (todays was all japanese sweets), I discovered there is pretty much every type of bean BUT soybeans in there...
Well, I also added some more food pictures, since there no end of that. My roommate finally loaded all the pictures he took at Nintendo World while he was there with me off his phone, but since he was scared he'd get in trouble for it (WHich is ridiculous since people walked up to the presentations with their phone cameras) and the camera wasn't very good, there aren't any really worthwhile ones, except maybe this and some videos he took.
Well, you tried hard. Here are the answers to last week quiz. Good job somegirl and AliasFatale! A's for effort!
I had Follow-up training today, and somehow, I got the same trainer again from my initial training, who I had said looked and sounded like Alec Baldwin, but with a bunch of new fellow trainees, all of which I somehow knew in a different way. Today's food could be the gomuku udon I had, with green peppers and egg and mushroom, or the Crunky candy I got. I had a convenience store adventure, or at least one that started there, when I decided to buy this and follow the instructions, as you can see by browsing forward through the photos. It's much more common to see rbots and things interspersed with candy bars than I thought.
Well I had some yakisoba and okonomiyaki today, which I kind of knew what it was before, but hadn't tried it yet, so added that to some strawberry chocolate and a new form of all-powerful Mocchi for my "Food I had no idea what it was" for the day. I can't believe it's taken me this long to post a picture of the Nagoya Golden Dolphin, in his 'No Smoking Fish, drawn by a three year old' incarnation. He dominated conversation for the first week or two of my stay here. I added two new drawings from my classes, or practice for pictionary as I think of them. Some words, such as unavailabe or unattended, are just never easy for me to get across. Also, a quick rundown on what all Japanese women love: Johnny Depp, Stitch, and Jack. Stitch in particular shows up in lots of lessons on women's pens or bags or pencil cases. More popular, I daresay, than even WInnie the Pooh, and that's saying a lot. Lastly, a picture of the machine that know how to give good products AND service. 8 more fruit left to go!
