RED SOX SWEEP THE WORLD SERIES

Another year, another win for the Red Sox! With a 4-0 sweep over the Rockies, the Red Sox won it all with the help of Matsuzaka and Okajima, great work guys! As for the Mariners thats another story waiting to be told next year, hopefully they will do better!

NEET

NEET? What is it? Its Japanese English! One day one of the teachers asked "what do you want to be in the future?". Most students gave the usual, "I want to be a engineer, doctor, teacher, etc" but one student wrote "I want to be NEET". I thought it was a mispelling of the word "neat" but it didn't make sense, so I asked my teacher. He said it is short for ... "Not in Education, Employment, or Training". Wow, I thought that is a neat answer.

THROWING THE FOOTBALL

Today was a continuation of mid term tests, so in the morning corrected some (better than final time when i have all 15 classes compared to 2 this time) and delivered some tests. Observed an math class, interesting how universal math is. Probably the only class you can take without understanding what the teacher is saying. Math is math wherever you are in the world. After class I went to grab some lunch at the cafeteria and ran into the soccer crew. One of the guys, Mr Sato, aka Kirin (looks like the comedian guy) wants to play football in college. He is pretty buff, but doesn't know anything about football. Suggested some positions, RB you are the man, WR you are pimping, FS you can run and kill, QB don't do it people want to kill ya. He brought his own ball so we were throwing it around with his soccer crew. Probably the first time any of them threw a football before, taught them some different ways to throw and showed them a couple drills. It was fun to throw in the sun rather than be in class.

NICE WEATHER

This week is mid-term week for the kids. Tests started today, Tuesday thru Friday. They have about 2 to 3 tests for 4 days. Talk about not fun. Anyways, good news for me, I get out around noonish to enjoy the day, if I had a car, so I will exchange that time to ride gracefully on my bright yellow bike in the perfect autumn weather. I love autumn here in Japan, why can't it be like this year round. Reminds me of the Seattle summers! It was so nice that I came back to my apartment to chill inside and talk to Ace and Ark back home, ha ha ha.

CORRECTING TESTS SUCK part II

About 130am, got the sports class done, not so bad, knowing that I wasted a bunch of time chatting with people. Tom, I be there for the cabin event, Amy I looking into the camera, Jimmy how was Transformers for the 3rd time? Aight back to work, two more classes to go. Looking at a 4am bedtime.

CORRECTING TESTS SUCK part I

Its about midnight, and I got 3 classes to correct by tomorrow morning! Lets see how much sleep, or how much I don't sleep tonite. Well the ghetto red pens are already failing. Correcting the sports class right now, and well, there grades aren't looking too hot. It possibly could be that cuz they just sleep in class and practice their baseball 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. I would get tired of everything too. Had some high scores in the 90s, then of course the lows around 25 out of 100. Hope they can pass the class. Got the Okinawan chillin music on, more posts to come on later.

SCHOOL THOUGHTS

Sometimes I have random thoughts about the Japanese education system ... dunno why, maybe because I am a nerd and enjoy analyzing things ...

ENGLISH
With all the 1st grade high school kids coming in with various English backgrounds (ie. high, medium, low level students, students who had good teachers and some with not so good teachers in their jr high days) How come there is no review course?? It definitely would help the kids grasp what they learned in jr high and apply it to the high school English courses. But of course things like that wouldn't work. So regardless the kids are just thrown into the fire to learn hard ass English just to pass an university exam. Learning English they don't know how to use or even understand. Where is the review class! Kids can't even write a sentence, how can you move to the next stage if they even haven't learned the basics.


DIFFERENT PACES
In America kids in high school and junior high can choose their own classes. Choose their own class levels and their interests. But as for schools in Japan, life up until university is a one class system. Students are stuck to learn the same thing as their classmates, the same 40 students throughout the year, and sometimes throughout their entire 3 year school tenure. The problem is if a smarter kid is in there, they are stuck with the same level as the other classmates and this is vice versa with lets say the not so smart kids, or the kids that just need to work a little harder in studying but are having a hard time catching up. Those who are advancing more quickly or not so quickly should be able to go to a different class more suitable for their level. In America level problem is sometimes adjusted by changing of the class at quarter or yearly break. But in Japan this can't be done, unless the student at the time of junior high graduation advances to a higher or lower level high school. But then the problem still exists within the high school for the following 3 years.

Talking to one of my teachers Iwabuchi sensei who came from Suma Nishi High School, a public high school near Kobe. He informed me that his school before was a pilot school of sorts in testing out the American style of class selection. Students don't study with their homeroom, they move to various classes in accordance with the class they selected. Iwabuchi sensei told me he much prefers the American system for good students, and it works very well. But for some other schools that system may not work very well. It was interesting to hear that they actually had an American style system, it was the first time for me to hear of it. It definitely would be interesting to go and observe.

NO TGIF THIS WEEKEND

How was the weekend? Busy I tell ya. First of all whoever heard of school on Saturday? Well, come to Asia or Japan, cuz they got it. So no TGIF love here, since thats right there was school on Saturday. The clicher it was a makeup day for a Wednesday earlier in the month where everyone got the day off for the school's founder day. But of course you can't get away that easily, so I had to teach 3 classes on Saturday morning, arrgghh. Then print out a lovely 500 tests for the 1st graders test on Monday.

Continued the day by meeting up with Daniel, Kayo, and Madoka for dinner at Blue Plate. Nice food, haven't been there for awhile so I forgot how it was. Madoka is heading out to Vancouver for one year. How cool is that. Going in opposite directions, I am sure she will have fun there. Caught up with Mike and the frisbee gang for a bit too and finished off the night with 3 hours of karaoke in the new improved VIP blue light Shidax room.

Of course if things weren't busy enough I had to finish up the 3rd graders test for Monday as I worked into the wee hours of the night, finishing up around 330am. Before that took a mini break to meet up with Daniel and get his lovely autograph for the photobook, and then caught up with Masa to help him out with his upcoming interview. Masa great guy, big guy and smart, heck even got 940 out of 990 on his TOEIC. Um, can't get much higher than that, thats already good. Even native English speakers can't get that high of a score, ha ha ha .

Then rolled in Monday today. First period all 500 of the 1st graders had to take my test. I wasn't so much nervous, I just wanted everything to go smoothly and be prepared. Got to use the broadcast room to announce the listening part of the test. It was kinda fun and there was no hiccups. Also stopped by the small room to give the listening test to 4 students. One of them had a hearing problem, but I didnt know which one, so it was a bit funny signaling with the teacher on which student it was. Anyways first test is done, but now the bummer, correcting all 500 of them!!! Also gave the 3-4 class their test. The mid term test was a bit too easy as all of them scored pretty high. So as directed, I was told to make a more challenging test, and boy did I. Muhhhhhhaaaa. Poor kids.

もうすぐ蒸し暑いくなる

Its starting to get humid and muggy, I figure another week or two til it becomes a sweatfest. Lucky I got the fan from Noriko just in time.

東洋大姫路高校

Toyodai Himeji High School : My new school where I have been working since April. About 1400 students! Many come by bike, bus, and train. Even some of the kids ride their bike up to 1 hour each way! Talk about being tough. A couple years back it was an all boys school until recently. There are just a handful of girls, where the boys make up about 80 percent of the school. In a class of 40, there are only about 6 - 8 girls. The school is part of a University in Tokyo called Toyo. Toyo is a pretty big and famous university and it is quite often where the main University school creates a sub high school in its name. Still researching why, because um yeah, Tokyo and Himeji are pretty far apart, and vastly different (3 hours train to Tokyo). But hell the baseball team is quite famous all over Japan. High school baseball is somewhat of a cult status at times, getting to the big game at Koshien Stadium is just like getting to the Super Bowl. Some baseball players from the school will eventually make it pro. Just like "Shiggy" Hasagawa of the Mariners from back in the days. Some of my teachers even taught Shiggy. The school is located in northern Himeji at the base of Mt. Shosha, where they filmed the movie, "The Last Samurai" with Tom Cruise. Kinda cool that you can hike from the back of the school to the top of the mountain in about 40 minutes. The school has a mixed bunch of kids, ranging from the brainy to the not so brainy, to the super sporty. Overall most of the kids are pretty cool and nice, and still the style as the norm for the wannabe cool girls are the short skirts. Which the teacher police always cracks down at times. Honestly I like the longer skirts. Anyways the staff and teachers are pretty cool and friendly too, and school is just a hop skip away from my apartment, so everything is pretty cool so far.

JUST CRAZY!!

Just a while back there was the crazy killer on the Virginia Tech campus. The student got the gun across the street from campus, ordered the bullets on Ebay, during the melee had the time to go to the post office to send an express mail to NBC News, in the package was videos and photos of why he was out to get everyone. He said he was bullied , and this was his revenge, to get back at the rich kids. Yeah, WTF!!!!! Just crazy I tell ya. The gun laws are really fucked up in America, who are you really protecting? Why everyone gotta have the "right to bear arms"? Where is the right to walk down the street peacefully? Yeah, people always gonna get angry and fight and shit, but I take my chances with a wussie with a knife any day over a wussie with a assault rifle. Heck can't even go into malls now a days, even the crazy people know to go there and bring their guns. At least while living here in Japan, shootings arent that common. Mostly the gangsters are shooting each other. Too hard to get bullets, they gotta save em. Reminds me of that Chris Rock episode where he tells people its not the guns, its the "bullets!". If each bullet costed one million bucks, ya think that dood is gonna shoot it? Hell no! He gotta save it! Anyways, thats my rant, guns suck!

FIRST CLASS

Started work at my new high school in Himeji called Toyo Himeji High School, just over a week ago. But really didn't get to any classes til today. Honestly a bit nervous, but not too much, because well thats just me. First class was the 3-1 class, the brains class, where most of these kids will go to a good University and are the best of the best of the 3rd graders. Wow! Their English was really good, and Yoshikura Sensei had the whole class taught pretty much all in English! The one rule was to only speak English, so this will be very interesting, but I think the kids can do it. They all gave good answers about their dreams and hobbies. Very interesting to see compared to junior high school where sometimes I was happy that the kid even answered with a word. But then that first class was probably the best, the rest is WIP, work in progress for all the other classes, as probably the rest of the kids can't speak very well. But I will do my best to make these kids my little evil English project. The 2-4 class I also visited today, the have class two times a week with me, but doesn't mean they are twice as good. They either signed up to learn more English, or their friends signed up to, or they just didn't like math or science either. But the kids were nice and friendly and I think they showed me some hope to work with. So I am crossing my fingers. And hey they got their own motivation, they are going to do a 1 week homestay in Australia in June, how cool is that. Overall a good class day. Then even took out some time to visit some of the clubs around school, soccer, boys softball, badminton, basketball, and the really cool one Japanese archery called "Kyudo" the way of the bow. Kids were really nice and invited me in. The backdrop was full of cherry trees with the pedals flying off the trees as the kids shot the arrows. Kinda gave me a Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon moment, haha. Anyways back to school, more stories coming soon!

A WALK UNDER THE CHERRY TREES

before they bloom

LAST CLASS

最後クラス

ONE LAST CLASS PICTURE

GRADUATION DAY 卒業式

one last song 最後歌

GOODBYE

さよなら

COLLAGE

A farewell collage I made for Kobu Jr High School. Worked their for the past 6 months in Nishinomiya. Went to all their events ranging from sports day, super sports day, karuta, speech contest, teacher softball game, music concert, etc. Printed out about 200 photos, cut and used about 100, took about 2 days, and slapped them in a frame until 4am in the morning. But it was fun! Gave it to the school president Nishiuchi as a graduation present, I would say she was pretty happy.

THE ROCKY BALBOA GYM

Mr. Sakamoto, mystery guy, and Ken at the World Training Center gym in Nishinomiya. Really nice guys, be sad to miss em all. Everyone at the gym was very friendly and nice. At the beginning I compared the bling bling Konami Center gym ($120 month) to this gym ($60 month). Cheaper it was, so I opted for the down and dirty Rocky Balboa style gym. Literally the carpet was coming up, with floor boards showing through, there were huge holes in the seats as if Wolverine came by, the weights were brown and rusty. But hey I liked it, just gotta push iron no matter what it looks like. And the dudes there were huge! "gotsui" ごっつい they say in Japanese. It was fun times.

PINK?

Just some random apartments I found around Nishinomiya. Love them pink and green. Don't you want to live in a pink one?