To my fantastic students :-)

This last term was the start of various goodbyes. Third grade students prepare to leave and move onto High School, teachers will move around the place, and workers at the City office will also move on.

One group of students I will miss particularly is the third graders at one of the smaller school in Nanyo, Nakagawa. They were lucky in recent time to have had two fantastic English teachers who were very skilled and passionate about their jobs and English. Back in December the third grade students of this school were asked to write poems in English, inspired by a nationwide contest for third grade students around all of Japan, with some of the best poems being picked to be published in an anthology. Writing poems in any language is not an easy challenge but all of these students tried really hard, and I helped them with their grammar, translations and spellings.

I feel it was a fantastic thing for them to do, one they should be really proud of, and it was also a good way of getting to know the students better. Some of the poems were surprisingly deep and thoughtful, and a real insight into the psyche of young Japanese minds! They were all around the theme of thanking something, or somebody, or some place 'upon their graduation' from Junior High School, before they moved on to High School or employment. Consequently, because of the time I spent working with them, and the stuff I learned from them, I was able to make some really close connections to quite a lot of the third grade students, (actually remember some names for once! Remember I have seven school and the longest time I'm at any one of them at a time is three weeks, so learning and remembering around some 1000 students names is not going to happen anytime soon!)

Anyway, I revisted them back in January and was very sad to say goodbye to them. Then, the English teacher there tells me that one of the poems won the opportunity to be published in the national anthology of poems. It was a beautiful one about the mountains that sit at the side of the school by a student called Shinya.

'To our Iwabu-mountains'

Three years ago, you welcomed me in Spring.
In summer you were a suit of green.
You made me feel cool.
In Autumn you were wearing a costume
of vivid Autumn colors.
In winter you were wearing a blanket of white.
You are a wonderful work of art.
I'll never forget you.

(Despite the American spellings,) it is a beautiful poem and I'm very pleased that it was selected to be published in the book.

The English teacher told me afterwards that he was planning to have all the poems of the students made into a book as a memento for the students. He did a fantastic job putting it all together. Everything was in English, from beginning to end. He asked me to write a Foreword, and he himself wrote one in English too. The book looks so professional and he gave me one as thanks for all the help I gave to the students. It's time like those that make you see how satisfying teaching can be. I am immensly proud of those students and will miss them such a lot - as a will miss various other great students from all the school as they leave for high school and other things. I really hope their success at writing an English poem will inspire them to keep studying hard at English and instill in them a curiousity for literature and culture of other countries and langauges! Goodbye!!!!

Nakagawa 3rd grade - 2007/2008 - a great bunch of kids with some good English skills and nice enthusiasm!

An example of the attempts and drafts of the poems they wrote. It wasn't easy sometimes, but they worked hard and were proud of what they made in the end!

The finished book! How professional!

The finished poem - this was one of my favorites, and by a really nice student too.

Big feet just aren't welcome in Japan.

I don't know if I ever mentioned in my Christmas Travels that I happened to lose my trainers in Thailand - so, I was trainer-less for a few months in Japan after that event. Luckily due to the snow, I only really need my long boots, but I spent lots and lots of time, scouring Japan from Tokyo to Yamagata to find some shoes that fit me. Unfortunately - none did. Not even in Tokyo! Japan uses Centimetres for there shoe sizes - and the largest I could really find, were 28cm size shoes. I am 30cms. I am also a little funny when it comes to shoe designs! I might have been able to squeeze into a rare pair of 29cm shoes I might have seen, but most of the time they were horrible designs for some reason.

So in the end, I had to resort to drastic measures. I imported a new pair all the way from the UK. Scotland to be exact! Thank goodness for Internet shopping! Thanks to 'Schuh' - I had a new pair of trainers (nice design and perfect size) in a very short space of time! There was only a stupid import tax that I had to pay which bumped up the price, but at least I have some nice trainers at last! I'll take care of these for sure!

My beautiful new shoes (that fit!)

Kings of Neon II

At the end of February we had another Kings of Neon (see an earlier post back in December/November if you're interested about the first!). Another opportunity to have some fun dancing and throwing neon accessories around the place! We were all just as excited about the next Kings of Neon party, if not more and this time we maybe did a bit more preperation for it than the first one. The party was held in a slightly different, slightly bigger venue. My only criticism was that time passed far too quickly but we had a great time, it really warmed us up in the freezing (snowing) February weather.

Me and Siobhan were thinking very hard of ways to make our costumes. I found some stickyback neon vinyl which worked well as a kind of mask on my face, I made a T-Shirt saying NEON with metallic sprays and I customized my trousers with neon-coloured sello-tape in various zig-zags on one side. The final effect looked great I thought and it made a good impression at the party. Plus, I found an excellent neon magic wand at one of the 100 yen stores, which was the icing on the cake! Siobhan on the other hand used stacks of little stickers on her face to look like she was crying neon from one cheek right down her neck to her chest, she had customized a top with Kings of Neon all over it, and had some excellent tights and lots of vivid colours! Her hair was excellent, a few feathers and coloured pieces attatched to it, and an excellent colour masquerade mask that, once arranged around her hair, looked like it was actually part of her hair!

Loads of people put in a great effort to have some fun dressing up and the night was a great laugh and good fun!

Hopefully there will be another one soon - its getting to become the trademark event of Yamagata 07/08 - just a shame the guys who keep setting it up will be leaving this year, I don't think I have the skills or ability to set up an event like them!

A bit of dinner beforehand

My LEG - customized!

Cherie truly is a queen of neon!

Me and some fans of mine!

Julia, my amazing dancing partner, is in full swing!

They must have all caught on to the fact that I was taking a photo!

The Joy of Teaching Nursery Children (or, There's no rest for the wicked!)

I remember, back in my first month of living in Japan, the first teaching job I had to do was two 40 minute sessions at a kindergarten in Nanyo. This came as a bit of a shock to me, having been told I would do elementary schools and kindergarten schools a little later into my stint as the Nanyo ALT.

But nevertheless, I went forth and had some fun with little 3-5 year old in pink (for girls) and blue (naturally for boys) ponchos. In the boiling heat I was absolutely exhausted and sweating profoundly by the end of the first session, but somehow managed to pull through with the second one.

Teaching such young kids is great fun and I do enjoy it. And Japanese kids are extremely cute. All I'm really doing is playing a few games with them and singing some songs. They're fascinated simply by the fact that you're a foreigner and I'll probably be the first interaction they get with a western English speaking foreigner. We learn a few numbers, or a few colours - my last session was about animals and we learnt English animal noises too. (Do you know that in Japanese, mice go 'chu chu' and frogs go 'gero gero'?!)


So having done a full long term of Junior High Schools - I was invited back to the same kindergarten school, Tsubame, and also had another visit to Akayu Nursery school in January. The BoE gave me a three week holiday, whilst most other JETs had a two week holiday - this extra week was to allow some time for those special visits! All I can say is, to my mum (and all the other teachers of 3-5 year olds out there, I don't know how you do it everyday for 7 or so hours, and that I'm glad I only have to do it about once every term!

The kids hang on my every word!

We do a little song and dance.

Ikebana!

A few months ago, after the Mid-Year Seminar where we took part in a few cultural activities, me and a friend who lives in the neighbouring town wanted to try our hand at some Ikebana, Japanese flower arranging. Unfortunately for one reason or another - it wasn't possible until January to start, but we really enjoy it now. One of Rebecca's teachers found an Ikebana teacher in her city and we go every Thursday evening. The teacher, Murayama Sensei, is THE nicest -Japanese person we have met in our Japanese life. He is a very softly spoken, smiling person. He can't speak much English, except for 'Thank You, Goodbye, Hello' (and a little later he had the confidence to say 'Very Good' to us!) but otherwise the lessons work as both a Japanese lesson and an Ikebana lesson!
We go to his little flower shop and there is just me and Rebecca in the lesson which is great because we have plenty of time to work out what he is explaining. He begins by drawing a picture on the board and explaining the rules and philosophies of the school of Ikebana that he teachers. These are all like aesthetic rules and principles, for example having stems and branches curve upwards to the sky, rather than bend downwards to the floor. A focus is always important, and you must always have a strong foundation in the form of 'sen', typically three tall and straight flowers or branches that shoot straight up within the composition. Then we get down to creating the drawing with the flowers he prepares for us, and he adjusts it afterwards and explains better ways of doing things. Following what he teaches us about our first arrangements, we have to pull it all down, and do it again!

Often times we don't quite understand the whole jist of what he's saying, I do quite well understanding, and for the bits I don't I act confident enough to try and pretend I do (which is usually blown by Rebecca saying 'What is he saying?', after which I reply saying '...I don't know!')

But the lesson are very quiet and relaxing, and we often have quite a laugh between the three of us, Rebecca usually laughing at at least one of the types of flowers he provides us, or collectively we laugh at the various attempts to make a nice looking Ikebana arrangement!

The more you know however, the more difficult it gets, but the final arrangements are typically beautiful. Unfortunately, our Japanese classes have started up again now that spring is here, and our teacher only teaches on the same day as our Japanese lessons, so we have to finish them at the end of March, but maybe next year we'll start up again!

This is the first 'freestyle' design was made. A circular composition with roses as the focus point.

One of my favourite arrangements we made. In the 'Shoka' style.

Another favourite of mine with a Autumn/Spring blended theme to it! The branches shoot around the daffodils to encase and protect them.

We worked with some beautiful tulips all the way from Shizuoka prefecture near Tokyo!

A little blog teaser...

Hi everyone! Don't be disapointed in a lack of updates from the land of Japan! I've been a bit busy, plus, its been a strategic plan of mine, to hold of updates to my blog because as of monday I'm not teaching for a while. It's the end of the school year - spring holiday. Unfortunately teachers in Japan don't get the holidays off (if that was the case in England, then I doubt we'd have any teachers at all!) - this means that I get to stay in the city office all day long with not much to do.

So expect lots of blogging updates over that period! See you soon!