Hey Baby!

You go to Sapporo for a week of orientation and language classes, and you become an auntie.

Welcome to the world Vasyl Llewellyn -- officially the worlds cutest baby (at least until I start having my own kids). Haven't talked to the new parents (or grandparents for that matter) yet, but it sounds like everyone is doing well. Stupid time zones.

I'm really wishing I could fly over right now and go meet my new nephew...

Oh yeah, Sapporo was great.










More on that later -- maybe even some pictures.

Hello Sapporo

This is the view from my front door -- you can see the Bell of Espoire at the top of the hill in the distance.

Just a quick note before I head off to Sapporo for a week of training. Good to know that after a total of 4 days (two in Tokyo and two in Sapporo) of training, I'm considered qualified to teach kids from nursery school to high school. I think there are three days of Japanese language training too. Maybe I'll be fluent after that! Right.... Maybe I need to go drink my coffee and finish packing before my supervisor gets here.

That's right. My supervisor is taking me to Sapporo to make sure I get there alright. I get to make my own way back. But they've already gone and bought me a train ticket for Friday. Too bad, I would have liked to hang out in Sapporo for the weekend.

Funky Kids Television

My Japanese is nowhere near good enough to follow the dialogue on Japanese TV, but I still like to watch. Especially kids TV. It helps me with my reading and vocabulary. Yes, I am a geek. You try living somewhere where you can't read anything around you!

I found an article about this show, and now all the singing and dancing children on television make sense. The rest of the website (kids web japan) is pretty cool too. It's more fun than the grown-up version (web japan), which is also quite interesting. There are really fun (and useful) language lessons, including the Japanese writing system, and cooking classes. It's also a good way for me to find out what is popular with Japanese school kids, and maybe get kids interested in learning english by adding some Japanese pop culture...

First Day of School!

Yesterday was the first day of school for me!

Here I am, doing my jikoshoukai (self-introduction) lesson for the Grade 8 class. I covered all of the exciting stuff like: where I come from, what my hobbies are, what Japanese food I like to eat, family members... Yes, you are all famous in Kamikawa.

This is of course, for English classes at the Junior High School, but I was also there for the opening ceremony of the school. That means I had to do an introduction in Japanese too! Luckily, lots of other people are in the same boat, so I got away with borrowing an introduction from the internet. Hooray for technology!

The teachers are very good. Both of the English teachers speak really good English, and were very open to trying some of the games I suggested. The kids were pretty good too! I taught the Grade 9's today, and they were much quieter. I think a lot of that is because it is the first few days of school, and everyone is still on summer holiday time. Myself included!

After school, the teachers went out for the enkai (party). Nice dinner, speeches, drinking, and games. I won the "best" prize at bingo -- the electric bug zapper!

But of course, in Japan, no enkai would be complete without the ni-ji kai (second party). More drinking and karaoke! I left when that wrapped up around 11:30pm, but there was still a group headed for the next venue for the san-ji kai... I'm glad I went home though -- I was tired enough today as it was!

Bon odori dance

Tonight, instead of being a good little girl and going home to prepare for the first day of school tomorrow, I went to the last night of the Obon festival, the Bon odori. This is the dance that finishes off Obon, and sends the ancestors spirits home on a good note. I danced more than a few rounds and had a lot of fun. The first part of the evening is the family dance, and then everyone else joins in. The dance is basically a big circle dance, with a series of shuffling steps and some arm swaying and clapping. After a few tries I had it mostly figured out, but I was still upstaged by the trail of little kids who wanted to show me the right way to do it.