Prize Chest Haul September/October 2013

Prize Chest Haul September/October 2013

Motivate to Educate! 

That`s my favorite slogan from the English book we use at my school. Here`s my recent stash from the dollar store. More coming, because I have a big stash at my house that I will bring to the school when my prize chest gets a bit barren again. 

Prizes and stickers: Prizes are for when students get 6 stickers for doing their homework each class for 6 weeks, or 6 times if they do not do their homework. For the little kids I just give them small dried fish with almonds, but the elementary kids are really into these animals and bubble gum. I don`t know why they go cuckoo for the bubble gum, but they do, and it`s packaged in these funny square boxes in Japan. I had some fancier stickers but the kids love the strange puffy stickers from the dollar store. Who knew? Everyone was happy. When word got out that the other teacher had plastic animals in his prize chest, I was bombarded with questions of why there weren`t also plastic animals in my chest. So here they are kiddos! Enjoy! 

Come on Pig!

Come on pig! Hurry up and kill the mosquitoes in my room! So they stop screaming in my ears.

If you don`t know how to control mosquitoes at your place, get one of these! 

Vlog #5: At School

At the small eikaiwa school I work at. It's a relaxed place, we have a lot of students but I know almost everyone's name so far.

Cooking: Takoyaki

Japan living: what to do with local ingredients? Takoyaki was cheap and delicious.

Vlog Day # 4 Ballet School, Deliverymen, Creepy Neighborhood

Vlog Day #3 Biking and Ghosty House

Malia Earns her Flight Wings (or Desk Apple)

I think the previous teacher wrote "Bai Bai" Actually...

And then the little black marker was a student writing...

Then I wrote (Heart) you too!

I must say, before I left the U.S. I was pondering what other jobs might be open to a Japanese speaking person with a lot of people-experience through teaching. One job I considered was Japanese speaking flight attendant for Delta. That may have been exciting, but I decided I would rather have something a little more settled that would still allow me to be in touch with Japan and seeing the world (or Japan, at least) rather than just the world's airports in the world's biggest cities.

I'm very happy with my decision.

My work started at long last, just over one week ago. (Although I came to Japan 3 weeks ago) So far so good. Funds are tight but the necessities of life are pretty affordable. I should be able to start saving in no time if I stop train-traveling around, which I find is my biggest expense.

I work at a casual small-business language school, not a chain or corporation. I'm not an ALT. So my experience is different than other bloggers out there. I'm very happy. Of course, no place is perfect, but I've found myself an excellent fit. I get to see all ages and all personalities, every one of my students is so different- there is never a dull moment at my school. I'm on my feet all day. I don't get the vacations of ALTs, or the down time in the teacher's room... And even though although maybe one day I would still like the immersion into a Japanese school, but for now I am ever grateful to my school and to the city I'm living in. It was good to me in high school when I was an exchange student and it is good to me now when I am working-same city! I'm going out with one of my host family's tonight. Their ages are very close to mine... maybe 10 years old. Only 5-7 years older than my husband. We're in the same age group. Even though I'm in eikaiwa it's not corporate. Like I said, it's a small business and exchanges with my boss and co-workers are warm. We're paid fairly and it's good to be working with happy people.

For the first week I was training under the teacher who's leaving. Since I have experience with returnee students, middle, high, college, and adult students I was able to start out in those classes on my own from the beginning. All they require is patience and skill in moving from subject to subject and keeping the students talking (and knowing when to nix the Teacher Talking Time... because Teacher already knows English ;) ) All that ended yesterday when I took the reigns and did six classes or so... all age ranges. It was just fine. First week was a lot of planning and going to school early and staying late, but I think I've more or less got the hang of it. Just need to expand my repetoire of games for the kiddos. Usually we spend the last 5 minutes of our classes playing a game to leave them with a positive memory of English class.

Anyway, one of my little girls wrote "Bai bai" to the last teacher and "Malia-Teacher" on the white board in front of our school. It was a d'aww moment and my first little kiddo note about me. The picture is in the blog.

Peace.

Enjoying Local Trains

Do you enjoy watching the countryside flash by from the Shinkansen? Well, just imagine how much longer and more intimately you could enjoy it by spending much extra time heading to your destination on local trains~! I visited Tokyo, and money was tight, so I chose this route. One way on shinkansen runs about 105 dollars from where I live. Round trip for one person on local trains ran about 120 dollars or so. So I had a great savings of about a couple hundred dollars. Bus takes about the same amount of time and there' no transferring involved. Huh. Oh well it's a good experience. Enjoy this video I just compiled.

I'm no professional, just warning you.

Vlog Day #2

These videos probably aren't going to have a lot to do with teaching. The teaching is going to be much more basic... I'm still working on my online lesson (well, still need to get to it) and work starts on... this Saturday! I got my schedule. It's like high school all over again, except I'm the teacher. And I don't have to control 40 student classes, I think the max is 4 or so. Most are doubles or privates. So its more like my college tutoring gig except I get to make lesson plans from the books and incorporate my own topics into them.

Well, for now, enjoy Vlog Day #2. I'm still getting used to this Vlog thing.

Around my New Home: Japanese Apartment Tour!

I really apologize for the fidgeting. I don't know how to do video editing (so more than one take is out of the question). But in the future I hope to learn those things. I have a feeling there are going to be too many things going on for that though.

Japan Living: Caring for Tatami

Caring for your Washitsu

A tatami-floored washitsu with a tokonoma (the recessed area with traditional item display) visible in the background.

Source: http://litlotrs.blogspot.com/2007/01/mans-home-is-his-shiro.html

If your accommodation in Japan has a Japanese style room, then it is worth it to know how to properly care for these reed and rice straw mats, for your health and for the health of those who will be living in the same residence once you have left.

Caring for Japanese Tatami, published on the Iwate JET website:

http://iwatejet.com/node/177

The site offers some helpful tips about ow to keep your tatami room clean and healthy so you can enjoy the relaxing scent of this traditional Japanese flooring.

Most important (Summary) :

-Futons should be folded and removed from the mats during the day, and if possible, dried outside, since futons themselves can mold just as easily as tatami (and beaten from time to time)

-They can be vacuumed, wiped with a damp cloth. This should be done following the grain of the matting to prevent damage. This should be done regularly since dirt and dust aren't good for the tatami or for you

Learning Japanese: Resources

Chances are if you are teaching English in Japan, you may be wanting to learn a little bit of Japanese yourself. Since my husband is coming with me to Japan, and he has no prior knowledge of Japanese. So, I am guiding him to some resources which may be helpful to others as well.

1) If you are complete beginner, please send me an e-mail and I can send you the PDF file of exercises and basic Japanese phrases and grammar constructions that I created for a beginning Japanese class.

2) If you have a basic Japanese language background that has covered a variety of topics: self introductions, giving directions, body parts and symptoms, home visitng, etc. etc... I thoroughly recommend the text that the department of Japanese uses at my university.

It is called Aozora. It's intermediate-advanced listening/speaking communication but if you are in Japan you probably have enough exposure to take something from it.

You can access the listening files for FREE at http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/AozoraSound

The listening files alone are a great resource, but the text includes complete transcripts of the dialogue and organizes the vocabulary. I found it to be a great text. In fact, our classes largely just followed the flow of the text with extra activities and assignments thrown in.

3) Yahoo Jisho usually fulfills all my needs for dictionaries, if you do not have your own swanky pocket dictionary: electronic or otherwise. And if you have an iPhone you have access to endless Apps. Language learning does not have to be expensive.

Doing Low-Carb in Japanese Cuisine

My favorite Bento-Cooking Site:

http://www.justhungry.com/japanese-food-and-beverages-diabetics-and-low-carb-eaters

This blog is for those out there who just don't feel good on carbs or suffer from a variety of metabolic syndromes such as Diabetes, Insulin Resistance, PCOS, and general syndrome X issues.

Since I just returned from Japan, my experiences are fresh in my mind. I've been studying for so long there are not many cultural things that are shocking to me anymore, but one thing that shocked me (that did not shock me during my youth when I did not realize that carbs were negatively effecting how I felt) was the amount of carbs and in the inaccesibility of proteins that complicated folks such as myself need. Meals are large and abundant in noodles, rice, and starches without having much for someone who needs a cushioning protein in order to make energy. So I'm leaving this post here to help me and others who have this issue survive in Japan. It is possible but you have to get creative, and I will surely continue to loose weight as the heaviest staples in Japan give me crazy sugar spikes and the scary low-blood sugar crashes that surely contributed to my feeling insane the last time I went. With my new awareness of how these foods affect my system, I did just fine this time.

So that is a link I would like to rely on and keep stock of protein choices I have found in Japan.

Protein choices:

-tofu

-egg (hard boiled, tamagoyaki)

-fish cakes

-meats (hot dogs, ground meat patties, sizzled meats, ham)

-katsus aren't bad

And that blog was really good for talking about carb choices for those of us (considering even the buckwheat options probably contain a portion of white flour) who are a bit sensitive to white flours and white rice. It's like putting jet fuel in my system. It's hard to find a carb that looks like it recently came from a plant without being pulverized into refined flour.

Vegetables can always be relied on for your main carb, when coupled with small portions of rice.

Real Live Classroom Videos

People can't take shots like these in class anymore, it's illegal because of the issues of people not wanting to be broadcasted, but these must have been taken before it was banned. These classroom shots are a great resource.

Thank you Daniel-sensei!

http://www.youtube.com/user/danierusensei

Life as an ALT Vlog

I've been researching and reading accounts of American ALTs since I first started studying Japanese in high school. Meaphe's V-log on youtube, although containing a lot of face time, is pretty useful at showing the scene without requiring reading and imagination, although some of it functions a little bit that way since a lot of the stories are just recounted orally. However, I say a job well done and commend her for putting herself out there like that.

Meaphe on YOUTUBE:

American, in Japan, Vlogging Daily

http://www.youtube.com/user/meaphe

Sorry, I wanted to embed it but you'll just have to go to the link.