3 YEARS LATER : 3 WEEKS TO GO

It's that old saying "time flies", and sure has, it was like yesterday at the Seattle airport saying goodbye to my friends and family in Seattle. But in just 3 weeks I will be saying goodbye to my friends and students in Tatsuno, Japan. Just trying to take it easy. 3 of 4 elementary schools done, 3 junior high classes done, kamae center done, elementary school teacher party done, ticket home done, cleaning and moving and getting a new job coming up... camera has been working overtime lately

THICKET

Its been awhile since seeing some good "engrish" (English spelled with a new flavor). So how about this find of a thank you ticket or maybe its a "thank you thicket". But heck the food was good and we got 10% off, I will take a thank you "thicket" any day.

TAKE NOTE

Take note to clean the air conditioner. I noticed at school that the principal was cleaning the A/C units. So when I got home I decided to do the same. Nasty! Maybe because I never had a A/C unit back home, but now I know what to do regularly. You don't want that nasty stuff going up in your lungs.
nasty dust after how long???

NBA FINALS and WORLD CUP

A busy month in sports seeing the Miami Heat!!! Win the NBA Finals over the Dallas Mavericks storming back from two games down to win four in a row! Wow, Dwayne Wade is the man bringing his team back from near nothing. Then in World Cup the Japan team aka "Samurai Blue" bowed out were they couldn't even muster a victory in their group. Too bad also for the neighbors across the sea, Korea with Mr. Ahn. Darn. A suprise though is team Ghana! Gotta root for the underdog, they are quite an exciting team.

ONLY 3 YEARS AGO ...

Sorting through my stuff to move found some old pics of when I first came to Tatsuno, Japan 3 years ago ... oh how 懐かしい, なつかしい, natsukashii ... nostalgic, memories ... 私は時々懐かしい日本生活 ... 思い出す...

TATSUNO HIGH SCHOOL

Friday Tatsuno High School's culture fesitval. Kim was nice enough to invite me and Daniel to take part, or just walk around and cause some havoc. Luckily the nice teachers at my school let me take the day off to hang out at HS. I always heard that the HS culture festivals were alot different than the JHS ones, so I wanted to check it out for myself. The JHS culture festival is pretty tame with it being only a half day or so, where as the HS one is two days long. JHS contains alot of chorus singing which isn't so exciting after you see 3 to 5 classes, none of that at HS. At HS there were plenty of rock bands, dances, skits, and other various things all around school such as games and tea ceremony. My favorite part was the food court though, nothing like kids cooking up a good meal. Different classes had different food booths ranging from hot cake, ice cream, french fries, tacoyaki, soba, and more. Daniel was working the rounds by using his old students to hook up the food, good work! Then met some of Kim's cheeky students who carefully coded colored drinks with personality descriptions. There were tame ones such as if you choose "pink" you were girly. If you choose "yellow" you were dark skin. Then there was the "purple" which they recommended that we try. A little fishy, especially afterwards when they said that personality meant that you were a bit angry because you were sex deprived, naughty little kids. Walking around met tons of old students, maybe about 10% or more were from my JHS, it was so great to see them all! Especially the kids from 3 years ago when I first came to Japan. It felt like it was a great closure to my stay in Tatsuno. I was so happy, and even got to name an "action" boy in my short time there. With two empty cups in his hand flying over his pants, I knew his nickname had to be "superman".
gym
friend, Cookie Monster, and Yumi
Masanori and the other boys
rockin
Tomomi and the "the most beautiful girl in tatsuno nishi chu"
Kim and her flower
me and Nishimura my bball boy
"Habatan" made from cans
Maki showing me how to make some tea
Daniel makes his tea

SWEATING LIKE A DOG ...

Today gathered enough energy to go up to the gym to play some bball with the locals. Played and sweated like I never have before, well its been a year since I met mr. humidity and oh is the humidity back. Just 7 minutes of basketball is equal to 30 minutes of sweating back home. I was in a puddle of sweat in no time, and the lucky thing about humidity is that you only have to work half as hard to get that hard earned sweat out to burn those calories. Ah and on the other end, I finally gave in the A/C demon. I was trying to hold back and not use it, but dang it's getting hot. Oh how cool it is!

THIS IS A PEN

It's always interesting to teach in Japan because even the little things are quite a bit different. A long while back I was telling my 1st grade kids that, "This is a pen." . Shortly after I recieved numerous confused looks. I wondered why until my teacher told me that I say "a" differently to how the kids are taught. Seems to be that in Japan students are taught "a" (あ) with the use of the "ah" sound. But the "a" sound I was using was the "e" (え) sound. Just thought it was interesting as I was reviewing the 1st graders lessons. Well this time around I will tell them that there are two ways to say "a".

So I was discussing the "a" with one of my teachers and mentioned complete sentences, including particles. Then the teacher pointed out that in spoken Japanese language they don't need to include the particle but written wise they do. So sometimes it seems to be that skipping of particles has overflown into English study when the students come up with a sentence such as, "This pen" rather than "This is a pen". Interesting to anlyze how these mistakes come to be and how to correct them. This would probably go to my Master's degree thesis section.

I WENT TO SAN FRANCISCO

The other day I went to elementary school and one of my students was trying to tell me something, so then she went to one of the teachers and brought back a note saying, "I went to San Francisco". How cute, Mutsuki was really excitied to tell me that, so I had to take a picture. She also said she liked big hamburgers the best.

ENGLISH MEETS MY STUDENTS

I like it when the kids are creative. Giving them cool stuff to do sure beats those boring grammar sentences.

(A)It's 50000 dollars (B)No way! (A)Everything is too expensive in this store! (B)No, it isn't you are just poor.


(A)Big burger please! (B)I'm sorry. (A)Why do you apologize? (B)Because big burger is sold out.


(A)Did you enjoy your meal? (B)Oh.. I am sorry. (B)I threw up all the food I had eaten. (A)No, kidding!!

WHO'S BAD?

When the famous Japanese music group SMAP first see their idol Michael Jackson on TV. And of course Michael never heard of these guys before, talked a bit, and then was amazed at the big screen in the back of the set as he wandered around aimlessly.

RICE SEASON

Just like BigFoot, I have been trying to track down the elusive rice planting machine. One day the field is bare, then another its all planted. So luckily when I got out of school I witnessed the mysterious rice planting machine, finally caught on camera.

RAIN RAIN RAIN

The other day it was raining cats and dogs! In Japanese they say "dosha buri" which means like buckets of water. So its rainy season they say, but funny the last two years I didn't see that much rain in June. But I ain't complaining the weather is still great, it's not so humid and "mushi atsui" yet. But maybe it's building up with the rain, oh no!

SAMURAI BLUE!

Samurai Blue is the Japan teams motto this year for the World Cup games. But after watching a crushing defeat the other day from the Aussie's 3-1, the only blue I felt was from the sadness of the loss. Darn, better luck next match! Two more games to go Croatia and Brazil! A must win on both!

ROCKIN AND ROLLIN

Well got an unpleasant wakeup call around 5am this morning. Alot of shakin and rattlin, it was an earthquake, kinda used to it now but no matter how many time you go through it, its scary shit! You don't know how strong its gonna be or how long its going to last. Just have to wait it out, and boy was it a long one, shakin the bookshelf, desks, everything. As long as stuff doesn't start flying out the windows I presume it would be ok. Checked the news and it was a 6.2 from way down south, pretty far, maybe at least 3 or 4 hour drive. Mmmm.. I hope I can just survive before the end of my contract, this chopstick housing got me worried sometimes, ha ha ha. Crossing those fingers!