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.

Living Language Learning: Penpals

I credit my success at becoming relatively fluent in French and Japanese, during high school (when we had relatively little contact with native language speakers outside of class) with my choice to have pen-pals. Pen-pals really opened the world to me and allowed me to experience warm interactions with speakers of the languages I was studying. Thus, given the opportunity, I hope to acquaint students of mine with this website to help them get in contact with other speakers of the target language who can acquaint them with the reality of daily life, culture, and natural language. There was nothing like writing letters in English and translating them into Japanese and French for my pen-pals. It was an immense learning experience and I am thankful for it everyday. I was able to enjoy the French countryside in Normandy with a good friend, host my friends in my home, and hear many stories of many different lives all around the world. Receiving colorful pictures, mail, and letters brought joys to my day when I picked them up at the mailbox and read their contents. I hope there will always be people interested in penpals.

Please, have a look!

Pen-Pals from Any Country you can Imagine!

www.studentsoftheworld.info

I was inspired when my Japanese teacher announced she would have us partner with a class in Japan to exchange letters. Ultimately, since it was made an assignment and only required letters be turned in about once per year, I gave up and moved on to seek out other pen-pals. And I sure am glad I did.

For teachers, this can be an excellent recommendation for students, especially if they come asking on how to go about finding a pen-pal.

Feast or Famine

I think it's safe to announce that:

*drumroll*

My job search is over! (for at least a year, but likely longer than that!)

After facing some setbacks with my school and some companies! (Including ones that I trekked all the way to Japan to see!) I was successfully hired after a skype interview at a small, informal, but very warm English school in the town were I lived for my first study abroad. So advice to all the hopefuls out there, dreams will come true, just be patient! (Moral of the story: try to interview in your home country, unless you really have the itch to travel, enjoy the travel but if you're not there for an extended time, don't expect anyone to hire you because you went to see them, but also don't be discouraged if a door slams shut in your face-the universe has something better in store.)

I really do dream of working in the countryside one day (the place where I'm going to is suburban/medium-large, but some areas of the town feel small), but I declined a job as an ALT in Nagano, just because the opportunity to be near friends and in a central area of Japan (Aichi) is too good to pass up.

And on the website I'd definitely recommend, www.gaijinpot.com, a similar small, warm, and personal eikaiwa school requested I contact them. Not that it's a job offer, but it made me happy all the same to be contacted.

I will be going back to Aichi-prefecture, sometime in September with work starting in Fall! After my long job search, it doesn't even feel real! But it is!