Christmas in America

Well the journey to Tokyo was successful! I got to see Mt. Fuji for the first time, and even got a little bit of sleep. I was supposed to meet the Otsukas in Tokyo, and I had sent them an email informing them of my changed plans. Unfortunately they didn't get my email, so they ended up waiting for me for a while, but it worked out in the end. We met at about 10, and then got some breakfast. Since we were already in Tokyo we were planning on spending the day before returning to the Otsukas apartment in Saitama, about an hour away. Well we had a grand old time! We visited the Imperial Residence (just the outside). We visited a very tall building with a great view of Tokyo. We had lunch in a yummy ramen joint. We visited a Buddhist temple and a number of shops. Also, I managed to complete most of my Christmas shopping; I can't elaborate here for security reasons. We ended by visiting some of the most popular places in Tokyo and seeing the beautiful night scenery. As of this writing I am up to about forty straight hours with maybe only one hour of sleep. Needless to say by the end of the day I was a little bit fatigued, but I managed to make it back to tje Otsukas house where I finally have a chance to make up on this lost sleep. So Good Night!

Christmas in America

Well I made it out of karaoke with my sanity and most of my dignity intact. I was killing the Les Mis songs (in a good way) Yoshimi seemed to really enjoy them. Things hit a low point when I broke out Paper Planes and Always Look on the Bright Side, but I finished strong with Sweet Caroline. Interesting note, did you know that Japanese karaoke plays the actual music video for Call Me Maybe? I think that the Japanese just haven't figured out yet that it's about a gay guy. Anyways, now I'm waiting at Shinkobe Station after a thoroughly enjoyable night.

Karaoke

Well the stop to Kobe quickly turned into a disaster. Yoshimi was going to meet me in Kobe, and we were going to have dinner before I left on the overnight bus to Tokyo. I had asked Yoshimi to show me where the bus left from because I didn't think that it was the normal bus terminal. Yoshimi was confident that she knew where I should leave from. I was already running late, so we didn't have time for supper, but I still had plenty of time to make my bus. Unfortunately Yoshimi did not know from whence my bus was leaving, and we spent about an hour looking before we finally found the place. The bus was obviously gone by then, and after examining all my options, I realized that there was no way for me to leave for Tokyo that night. It was pretty late at this point, my bus was supposed to leave at ten, so it would have been very difficult to stay with a friend. After getting some supper Yoshimi and I decided that we would go do Karaoke all night and then I would catch the first Shinkansen in the morning. So here we are singing our voices hoarse. Yoshimi claims that she is not  a great singer, and shes not, but then neither am I, and we have had great success with a few songs. Our White Christmas was great, and California Dreaming was pretty great.

Christmas in America

Well I'm on my way to the good old US of A. It's going to be a whirlwind trip, but that's what makes it fun. I get to have Christmas with my family, go to one of my best friends weddings, and see lots of people. Actually one of the things I am most excited about is going to an English speaking church. It took me a lot longer to get ready than I thought it would, and  I have to bring a lot less than I wanted to, but at least I am on my way. I will have a short stop in Kobe before I jump on an overnight bus to Tokyo. We'll see how that goes. Well that's all for now.

The Adventures of Howard and Peter Part I

Quiz results:

I forgot to include the answer to the quiz question last time, so I will give you two answers here. Genki is a word that that technically means healthy, but when applied to students it means a little bit more. Basically, if students are Genki, they are outgoing and energetic in class, which is usually a good thing, because Japanese students have a tendency to be very quiet and reserved.

It looks like no one was able to correctly guess the answer for the last quiz, so I will give you another chance to guess the two types of candy in the local supermarket. I will tell you that so far, Hershey’s Kisses, Hershey’s Bar and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups have been guessed.

            When I was picked up at Yashiro I had been approached by a teacher from Kaibarra Senior high school and asked if I would participate in an English camp they were putting on at their school. I had agreed, and so I was scheduled to be at Kaibarra the 12^th and 13^th of Aug. Now as many of you have probably heard, there was a problem with my International Driver’s Permit that I discovered about this time. I’ll give you the whole story in case you missed it.

            Since I knew that I was going to have to drive in Japan I had gone to AAA to get my International Driver’s Permit (IDP). Now as the name suggests, an IDP is not a license. If you drive in another country you need both your regular license, and your IDP. Japan is particularly strict about driving regulations, and driving without a license or IDP will probably result in a fine and imprisonment, and possibly deportation. So anyways, I told the people at AAA to set the active date of the permit as August 7^th or 8^th so that I could drive when I got to Japan. Unfortunately they decided to put August 31^st on the Permit, a mistake that I did not notice, until I was already in Japan. So in the end I had to wait until August 31^st to get a car and drive, and when I tried to contact AAA to have them send a replacement they simply told me that I should be able to drive with the one I had, which as I have already told you is a very bad idea, and when I tried to tell them that, they just ignored me. (Hold on a second, I need to get my paper bag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . okay, I’m calm now). The lack of a car was very inconvenient as I was supposed to be driving places, but fortunately my school was very kind and helped me out, although I felt bad putting an extra burden on them. Okay, back to the English Camp.

            On Monday morning the Kyoto-sensei (vice principal) drove me to Kaibarra. English camp was a lot of fun. We had about 25 students, a mix of Senior high school and junior high school students. For the most part they were very responsive and ready to participate. The first day we played quite a few games. I think that my favorite was the game where the ALTs were given a picture, for example a camel, and we had to describe it in English, and the students had to guess what it was. Besides myself there were Dana Warren, and Howard Tobochinik. I had met Dana on Facebook before I went to Japan, and I had met Howard on the train ride from Tokyo. The second day we helped different groups of students plan out and memorize lines for an English skit, but that wasn’t very exciting, so I’ll skip to the end of the day. After the conclusion of the English camp Dana drove Howard and me to several stores and then we went out to a sushi bar with a bunch of other ALTs from the area. If you have never been to a sushi bar you should try it sometime; it’s quite exciting! You sit at your table and a conveyor belt brings little plates of food past you. You can take whichever ones you want and eat them! After a fun time at the sushi bar we went to a festival in Kaibarra. We saw many people dancing while a Japanese band played traditional instruments. I got to try a yummy Japanese treat called shredded ice. After an exciting night I headed home to prepare for a trip to Yashiro the following day.

Tune in soon for the next episode of the Adventures of Howard and Peter. Join our heroes as they journey to the far off land of Yashiro, there to become English teaching masters. But will they be able to survive against the evil forces arrayed against them? Find out soon in The Adventures of Howard and Peter!

Quiz: The Japanese like their mascots, and it seems like most things have a mascot. The mascot of Hyogo prefecture is called Habatan. Can you guess what he creature he is? I will give you two guesses since I think that it is pretty tough.

Respond to this question and the candy question via email or Facebook. If you have any other questions to ask me, feel free to post them in the comments section.

First Weekend

            My first weekend in Japan was relaxing and much needed. I was able to do a lot of the cleaning up and organizing that I had not been able to do before and I spent a lot time washing many of the dishes in my kitchen. I did do some things that were to me rather exciting. I went for a walk on Friday and explored some of the neighborhood. I discovered the Japanese vending machines, which are everywhere, but which only contain drinks. I worked on some of my blog posts; always a pressing task! My exciting event Saturday morning came when I decided to make breakfast for myself. I discovered several truths during this time.

1.      Japanese bacon is weird and small

2.      Japanese bread is yummy

3.      Soy Sauce goes great with scrambled eggs!

I also found the candy section of the local supermarket, and discovered that Meiji chocolates are quite good. After breakfast on Saturday I decided to go for hike up the mountain right behind my apartment. I accidentally climbed the wrong mountain first, but eventually I found my way. The videos will give you more information about my hike, but I did find that spiders are everywhere in Japan, and I was constantly walking into spider webs in the woods. The video I took of the "peak," is the wrong peak that I accidentally climbed first. The pictures are the view I had from the "right peak." As I had not yet found a church I spent Sunday morning studying on my own, and I had a peaceful time of reflection. I also spent a lot of my time watching movies this weekend and I found out that Gods and General can really bring out those tears! I guess it’s because I admire Stonewall Jackson so much, but the two saddest parts are when little Janie dies and when Jackson himself dies. Anyways, I highly recommend the movie. I leave you with this picture, and the expectation of hearing about English camp next time. Make sure to check out the videos!

Quiz: Guess the two kinds of American candy in my local Japanese supermarket. I will give you a hint, they are both chocolate.

Update: I can't get the video to upload, so you are just going to have to enjoy the pictures for now.

Tamba/Tanba

Answer:

            The “Shinkansen,” is the bullet train. Supposedly it goes at 200 mph.

It looks like Dad and Katrina get credit for correct answers this week!

            Our journey from Tokyo to Hyogo Prefecture was rather exciting. I had shipped my last big bag to Hyogo because we knew that we would not have a lot of room for extra bags on our trip, and it was definitely easier only having two small bags. All 52 of the Hyogo ALTs took two buses from the Keio Plaza Hotel to Tokyo Train Station. It made for quite an interesting sight when we left the buses and started to walk through the train station in a long line. We boarded the Shinkansen (bullet train) at about 10:00 and headed for Osaka. The Shinkansen is a great way to travel, there is lots of leg room, and comfortable seats, but to me it didn’t really feel like we were going as fast as we were. In any case we made it to Osaka in about 3 hours and then boarded two more buses to travel to Yashiro which contains the Prefectural Education Center. We arrived in Yashiro and were split into two groups, senior high school and junior high school/elementary school. I went with the senior high school teachers into a large room in which were also many Japanese people. These were the representatives of all the schools that we were travelling to. We waited as the lady in charge read off each of our names and our school name and then looked around until some Japanese person started waving at us. It was all rather awkward, but it was pretty effective at getting us connected with the right school. The person I met was an English teacher named Ms. Onishi, or Onishi-sensei in Japanese (sensei means teacher. We got in her car and headed out for the one hour ride to Tanba (the spelling of Tanba is a little bit ambiguous in English, technically it is spelled Tamba, but the Japanese people seem to interchange the names, so I probably will too!) Unfortunately Onishi-sensei had not driven in Yashiro very much, and we got lost. L The good part about being lost is that you get to see a lot more of Japan, and Japan really is a beautiful. The bad part is that you are in a foreign country, and there is absolutely nothing you can do except pray. Fortunately we were not lost for very long, and after about an hour and a half we arrived in Tanba.

As soon as we got to Hikami high school I was taken in to see the Kocho-sensei, and the Kyoto-sensei (principal and vice principal). They are both very nice men and they were very excited to meet me. We drank green tea (it wasn’t very good), and talked as much as we could, in their minimal English and my nonexistent Japanese.

Japanese Culture Break!

All Japanese people study English in school, and have done so for quite a long time, so probably anyone who has been in school in at least the last 50 years has some knowledge of English. The problem they face is that they learn English grammar and writing, but very little speaking. The reason Japan introduced the JET program 26 years ago was mainly to improve Japanese speaking ability. The Kocho and Kyoto-sensei both have a decent grasp of English, it is just difficult for them to speak it.

At the end of this meeting I was introduced to Kido-sensei, another Japanese English teacher who was supposed to take care of me, and help me adjust to life in Japan. She is a new teacher herself, only having started this year, so she has been a little bit stressed out, but she did a great job helping me get adjusted to life in Japan. I spent the rest of the week getting settled in, and figuring out what my work would be like. The Japanese use the yen, and it definitely takes some getting used to, to switch to a different currency. There was also the fact that I couldn’t really speak to anyone except for the English teachers. However, I was invited to have lunch with some of the teachers one day, and they introduced me to the wonders of Donburi. Donburi is a Japanese food that comes in a packet. You put the packet in boiling water for a few minutes, and then dump it onto rice. There are many different kinds of Donburi, but they usually contain some sort of meat and vegetables in addition to yummy sauce. There were many things to get used to in Tanba, and while it wasn’t really an easy time, I have been having a lot of fun in a new place.

Coming soon: Which side of the Mountain?, Drink till you drop, and The Most Interesting Man in the World!

Quiz: “Genki,” is a word that is often used to describe Japanese students. Some of them are “Genki,” and some are not. What does “Genki” mean?

Remember: no looking up the answer, and respond via email or Facebook.