Countdown to Christmas

So close and yet so far away. I feel like a kid all over again -- except this time it's not so much the Christmas that I'm impatient for, it's the heading home. Only 8 more sleeps!

The Grinch's small heart grew three sizes that day!

Fun times in pretend teaching land.

For today's conversational English class, I decided I needed to get my Christmas on. So I brought good old lappy to class and had my students watch "The Grinch who Stole Christmas". I was pretty sure the English would be too weird for them, but maybe it would give them an idea of what Christmas means outside of Japan.

Inside of Japan, Christmas traditions mean two very important things:
1) Eating Christmas cake on Christmas Eve.
2) Eating Christmas chicken on Christmas Eve.

Cristmas cake comes from the covenience store. Seven-Eleven starts giving away samples sometime in October or November. I'm a fan of the vanilla.

Christmas chicken comes from the Colonel. As in Kentuky Fried. Laugh and disbelieve all you want. It's true. People book in advance to go and get chicken from KFC. If I make it into the city, I'll try getting a picture of the Colonel dressed in full santa gear. It's creepy I tell you!

Another thing about Christmas in Japan: it's all about couples. Yup, it's a date holiday. I was at the movies last week, and there was an advertisement hawking jewlery or something. I forget. But the ad copy was "sweet love xmas for couples".

So, for my eikaiwa class, I started out by asking what the students thought of Christmas. The answers ranged from "the birthday of Christ" to "so-so". I think it was mostly an eye-opener for me. I hear all the Christmas carols (and my new favorite -- the Seicomart Christmas song) blasting here and it triggers memories for me of Christmases spent at my grandparents' house in Mudare, eating way too much, staying up way too late, trying not to fall asleep in church (or at least trying to get away with it), and a whole slew of other warm fuzzy memories. It's weird for me to think that people here get the same input and have no emotional response to it. And now I get what it means to say that Japan is a post-modern society... All the trappings with none of the meaning.

So we watched the Grinch be grinchy, the Who's singing despite his stealing all of their Christmas toys (I want a bamboozler!), and the Grinch's heart growing so big it breaks the heart viewer thingy.

The students enjoyed it, and could follow along even if most of the English was incomprehensible.

And I got to re-live childhood memories.



***

I went to san-nensei class today (Grade 9). They're learning about relative clauses, and using relative prepositions -- today we focused on "who". We started with a quiz.

This is the man who is the Prime Minister of Japan.

Once they figured out what a Prime Minister was, they were fine. (Shinzo Abe, if you don't know.)

This is the man who is the President of the United States of America.

They knew "Bush" and one of them know "George". Nobody knew the "W" part.

This is the man who is the Prime Minister of Canada.

Crickets.

Nobody knew. I was wholly unsurprised. I doubt if any of my teachers could tell me the answer either.

I gave them the initials.

My favorite responses from that?
Strong Horse.
Sparkling Heat.

Someone eventually guessed Stephen (actually Steve, but close enough, right?), and I did some drawing to get the Harper part in. But I really thing he should think about changing his name to Sparkling Heat. Might bring in a whole new demographic...

Mmmm...German sausage

Mmmm...German sausage
Originally uploaded by ...and....

Last weekend it was off to the big city for a german Christmas fest, an ugly Japanese proficiency exam, and two days of conferencing. Really -- the most fun was eating sausages with chopsticks.

Aside from sausage eating, it was good to get out of town for a few days. My job might not be particularily stressful, but living in a foreign language definitely takes a toll. And getting out of town to see some movies, drink some coffee at Starbucks, and interact with other native speakers is good for you.

Lets break it down.

Saturday.
"Studying" at nearly every Starbucks in Sapporo. Which basically just made my head want to explode. Lunch at the festival. Dinner and commiseration with other test takers at my favorite Mexican restaurant in Sapporo. An early night. Except for watching free soft core on the hotel TV. 3D, virtual reality aliens! It was too funny not to watch.

Sunday.
The test. Unlike any other big test I've taken, this one didn't start until ten-ish, and was really slow moving. For instance: we actually waited the full 20 minutes before the test started just in case some of those people who weren't going to show changed their minds. A three hour test took the whole day to write. No wonder I was tired afterwards. Some parts were good, some parts were bad. We'll see when I get my results in February. Dinner and commiserartion with other test takers at my second favorite Mexican restaurant in Sapporo.

Monday.
Slept in, read in coffee shops all day. It was fabulous. Took myself out to see "Children of Men", or as it's called in Japan "Tomorrow World". Not the best movie ever, but it was in English, and I like Clive Owen.

Tuesday.
Tried to do some shopping, but was disasterously unsuccessful. Have decided I don't really like shopping. So maybe this year nobody will ge a Christmas present. Met up with other ALTs for James Bond viewing. Definitely worth seeing. I can't remember the last Bond movie I saw in a theater and actually liked. And that new Bond -- me-ow! Finished the night with karaoke at Thriller and dancing by myself (and three other ALTs).

Wednesday.
First day of the conference. My hangover was happy things didn't start until 10:30, and further happy to find that the morning was all speeches that I didn't really need to listen to.

This year's conference was geared more to discussion and attempted to actually be something useful for ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers) and JTLs (Japanese Teachers of Language). We were put into discussion groups and talked about a variety of issues. It was much more interesting than having someone drone on and on with no actual knowledge of what our jobs entail.

The evening was a dinner and date auction. For the children. I spent 5000 yen on the worst date ever -- he didn't even come and introduce himself to me! To be fair, he did apologize the next day. Think that I should have really gone up for auction -- I'm sure I could have made much more money... Nijikai was fun too, but ran out of money. Ouch.

Thursday.
Last day of the conference: workshops and idea sharing. Lots of great ideas, but as always, it may be difficult to put them into practice. My JTE prefers the "uncreative use of the textbook" to creative use of the textbook.

After the conference, I went to a highly recommended (all my gajin friends go there) hairdresser in Sapporo and got a much needed haircut. Pictures to follow. Or you can just wait two weeks to see it for yourself.

Then it was back home. I tried catching the early train, but there was an accident along the line. So all the trains were delayed heading back my way. Ugh. I ended up on the last train home, the one that doesn't get in until 11pm. Discovered it had NOT stopped snowing since I left home. And everyone had moved their cars around. So again, mine was stuck way out in the parking lot, all by it's lonesome. Except for all the snow. It wasn't too TOO bad though. I was able to 4WD it out of there. Mwah hah hah. 10 points for freaking out the neighbors.

Friday.
One day of school to round out the week. I got to help teach in one class (yay!) and grade recitation tests in another (boo!). I still hate recitation tests. It doesn't teach anything about communication. But that's a whole other rant posting.

The evening was my office bonnenkai. I was exhausted, but ganbatted until the end. Snuck out at the end of the nijikai to say hi to my friends at my favorite bar, and ended up being joined by the rest of my office. It was fun times as usual. Made a deal to take one of my co-workers to the gaijin bar in Asahikawa. While trying to convince him that he could learn English if he actually tried speaking in once in a while. So now we have a bargain. He only speaks English, I only speak Japanese. And we will actually correct one another's mistakes. We'll see how it goes.

Saturday.
Snow shovelling. One hour. Onna no matsuri = Women's Festival. Basically a party with all the women I know in town. Eating, drinking, gossiping. All the good stuff. We made takoyaki and ordered in pizza. Stayed at the bar for forever. More fun times.

Sunday.
Snow shovelling. One hour. Finished. The car is freed from it's snowy bonds. I am dismayed to find my downstairs neighbor has shovelled the snow from his walkway onto mine. Really hoping that was a one time thing. Rounding the day off with playing with paper for HAJET. Which is really what I do best. And watching TV on the internet. Thanks to the sister.


Enjoy the rest of your weekend.


Two more weeks!!! Eeeee!!!

Weather Woes

You crazy Canadians and your bad weather are great for making conversation in Japan. Instead of last year, when all I had to report was unseasonably warm temperatures and a lack of snow, this year I get to talk about -40 and snow in Vancouver. Well, I hope you're all keeping warm out there. Thanks for making me feel warmer, even when I can see my breath in the halls at school and spend my nights huddled next to the heater.

It also makes for fun demonstrations of things like "block heater". You try explaining that to someone in Japanese. Fun times, ne?

If you're interested, the weather here isn't nearly that cold. However, it has been snowing continuously since the night before last. That's a lot of snow. My friends down near Sapporo don't have anything that is sticking around. I may have problems finding my house tonight.

And with that thought in mind I'm taking off to Sapporo for the week. Sunday is test day, Wednesday and Thursday is the annual mid-year conference, and Monday and Tuesday I'd much rather take off than come to work. Just as well -- turns out I don't have classes either day.

Please enjoying a good week.

日本語能力試験・Japanese Language Proficiency Test

This year, I decided to sign up for the foreigner living in Japan rite of passage -- the JLPT. Also known as the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. If you want a job outside of the JET program (where I've heard from a number of sources the preference is actually for people with little or no Japanese language skills), you need to take this test. I'm not planning to stay in Japan much longer, but I figured I would like to have some kind of certification to put on a future resume. And it would give me a "carrot" to encourage me to study Japanese. Which despite having ample time at my desk in which to study, never quite seems to happen.

Long story short, that hasn't really worked. So here I find myself with mere days before the test date, and I'm cramming away. I wanted to challenge myself, so I signed up for Level 3. Which covers basic Japanese grammar, and about 300 kanji. The kanji aren't really the problem. There's a whole lot of grammar out there.

I started out with lofty aspirations. After coming here with practically no Japanese, I had made big strides, and was able to understand people at work and generally make myself undestood. Let's be realistic here though -- I am nowhere near to actually speaking Japanese, but I've come a long way from stepping of the plane and not understanding anything around me. The wonders of immersion. I figured if I kept up what I was doing, I could write this exam, and feel really good about reaching this level after a year and a half of Japanese study.

I wasn't planning for it to be something that I ended up cramming for. That makes it feel like Japanese High School and University Entrance Exams. The reason that high school students at hundreds of schools in Japan weren't taught required subjects, and now face not being able to finish high school. The things that Japanese students commit suicide over if they aren't being bullied, and the generally accepted reason (at least in the ALT community) for the lack of communicative English in Japanese schools. Students are too busy studying for these exams to have time to practice speaking English. It would detract from studying English!

So, now I feel like I've stepped into that world. Instead of learning the language, I'm cramming away. I know that in the long run, this test doesn't really mean anything, but that doesn't mean I'm not disappointed in myself for treating it like an entrance exam.

Back to cramming.