Final farewells: The end is real

Last Wednesday was the Inagakuen closing ceremony. Kira, Aaron, Antoine and I all made our final speeches to the school in the morning. Kira and Aaron made their speeches mostly in Japanese with a little bit of English. Kira cried near the end of her speech, Aaron teared up a little. I made my speech mostly in English, with Japanese at the end. I didn’t cry, but I did start choking up. It got to the point where I skipped over a few of the lines I prepared and wrote down, and just went straight to the end. I mostly talked about how Inagakuen is such a special school, and how lucky I felt to have been able to stay there for five years.

I was expecting Antoine to make a long speech in Japanese, burt he actually mostly just shouted BONJOUR! and ran around the stage, and took pictures of the students before making a short farewell statement in French and Japanese.

After the closing ceremony, I made another final farewell speech to the staff of House 2, all in Japanese. In this speech, I actually mentioned that I was heading off to graduate school to study International Education Management. A lot of my co-workers think that means I’ll definitely be coming back to Japan afterwards. I’m not so sure that is actually going to happen, but if possible, I would love to come back and visit for the 2020 Olympics.

After making my speech, I actually went around the school to say some personal good-byes to some of the English teachers that I worked with, and I gave a few of the teachers some of my hand-knit scarves as a good bye present. When I gave my gift to Tsuji-sensei, she actually started to cry, then I started to cry. Overall, it was a very emotional day.

Basically, after saying good bye, I spent most of my time at work cleaning out my desk, and packing everything in boxes since 2 house will be renovated over the summer. Now that everything is moved into a temporary English office in 6 house, I’ve been spending most of my time packing, and bringing over things to leave for my successor when she arrives.

I’ve also been bringing so many things to second-hand stores, and just straight up throwing some things away in the trash. I feel a bit guilty for being wasteful, but at the same time, everything has to go, and the second-hand shops in Japan don’t always accept everything. It’s been stressful, but I think I can say that I’ve got it all packed and ready to go when I leave this July 31st!

Last week, some of my lolita friends threw me a good-bye tea party. It was technically a joint tea party with our friend Yumiko, to celebrate her birthday. I gave everyone a goodie-bag of accessories and jewelry that I know I’m not going to wear anymore. I also included some hand-knit accessories and some tea that I never drank. Everyone was glad about their bags, and I basically said, “I hope you enjoy your good-bye presents. Do not hand them back to me.” 😉

Included in each goodie bag was a personalized note for each of the girls who attended. I wrote Yumiko’s and Hina’s notes in Japanese. Hina opened and read her note before the end of the party, and started crying. At least I’ll see some of the girls one more time before I leave Japan.

In my free time this past week, when I’m not packing and making preparations to go back home, I’ve been playing Pokémon Go. Charlotte, Serena, and I were watching with jealousy as our friends back in America, Australia and New Zealand were able to start playing weeks ahead of us, but it finally became available in Japan last Friday. You’d think it would’ve been released in Japan earlier, considering this is the country where Pokémon is from. It is definitely an addicting game, that eats up my phone battery real fast.

I’m glad it came out before I leave Japan. I can get some of the playing out of the way before I have to start studying next month, and it actually makes my Japan experience just that more Otaku-like. Actually, the day it came out, Charlotte and I went to the park across the street from the school, and ran into some groups of our students also playing Pokémon Go. The students got real excited when they saw that we were playing it too, and we’d point out where in the park we saw certain Pokémon.

It just makes me that much more sad that I’m leaving, because this game is another thing that I could talk about and use to bond with the students, but now I’m leaving. 

Either way, I’m counting down the final days here in Japan. I’m actually looking forward to going home, but the reality of the situation hasn’t quite sunk in yet.

Anyway, I have two days left! I’ll let you all know how the transition home goes.

Sayounara.

Bittersweet and Awkward Good byes

As always, I’m really bad at writing consistently, but I think I have a good excuse. I’ve been busy with finishing up all of my financial aid paperwork for grad school, packing things and shipping them home, sorting clothes and other things in my house, and making multiple trips to second hand shops like Hard Off and Kinji.

It’s kind of frustrating when I pack so many things to get rid of, only to have the second hand shop refuse to take most things. Yet, on a good day I can convince them to take everything, even if they’re not going to buy everything from me. Also, in the past week, I’ve just been trashing more and more things, just so it’s out of the apartment.

Anyway, I officially move out of my apartment on July 31st, and I fly out of Japan on August 1st. I also found out who my successor is. I won’t write her name here though, but I do know she’s around the same age as me, and is recently married, so her husband is coming over with her. Since I have many random household items lying around, I’m just going to be leaving my old dishes, laundry items, space heater, fan, and bike for her to use once she gets here. She doesn’t arrive at Inagakuen until around August 5th I think, so I won’t be meeting her.

I’ve also been finishing up my final classes at Inagakuen. It feels so weird, because I know I have no more classes to teach, but it still feels like I’ll be coming back to these same students in  September.

I said my good-byes to my students at Okegawa high school a few weeks ago. I wasn’t sad, because I’ve only really known these students for about 3 months at most, so I didn’t really feel an attachment to them, but I am going to miss some of the teachers that I worked with. I also went to the Okegawa English department’s drinking party, and since I am leaving, I was given a good-bye present. They actually gave me a money envelope with 3,000 yen! Of course I stashed it away to use for moving expenses later this month.

Even though I finished up my classes at Okegawa two weeks ago, I got called back again last Wednesday so that I could make my final farewell speech to the staff at the morning meeting. It was very short. I basically just said that I was returning home, and that everyone was very kind, thank you. However, before I left, I had to say good bye one on one with the Principal and Vice Principal. Once I did that, I said my final good-byes to the English teachers (again) and then rode my bike back to Inagakuen.

Later that same afternoon at Inagakuen, there was a foreign language teachers’ meeting, and Kira, Aaron and I gave our good bye speeches to the staff, and we were each given a bouquet of flowers and a gift. The gift turned out to be Japanese geta. They’re beautiful, and I’m glad whoever bought them was smart enough to buy the large size. They just fit my feet.

Last Friday was our final Sogo Eigo class, which is the elective English class that’s focused on debate. We had a short end of term party for the students, and even had a mini talent show. Many of the students tailored their talents to me. Two girls did “quizzes” for their talents, and included questions about me. Two girls knew I really like the movie Frozen, and did a lip sync to “Love is an Open Door.”

I haven’t really started crying or tearing up much during all of these good-byes, but I actually tried really hard not to cry when another two of my students sang an Okinawa song for their talent. I’m actually really sad that I won’t be able to finish the school year with them. I know I’m technically not supposed to play favorites, but that Sogo Eigo class is my favorite class to teach, and has some of the best students.

All of my classes at Inagakuen have finally finished, and I’ve been cleaning my desk and sorting through things to leave for my successor for her to use when she arrives. I also have to pack everything in boxes and move it to either House 6 or House 4, since House 2 is being renovated, including the Foreign Language office.

Tomorrow is the closing ceremony, and Kira, Aaron and I are going to be giving our good-bye speeches to the whole school. I’m kind of mad at myself for not learning more Japanese than I have in the five years that I have lived here, but I guess it’s part of the circumstances of my job, and the people who I’ve made friends with here. Anyway, most of my speech will be in English, with some Japanese thrown in. Let’s see how well I can keep it together tomorrow.

Earthquakes and the New School Year

Well, first thing’s first. I’m sure everyone has heard of the large earthquake that hit Kumamoto prefecture last week. Kumamoto is all the way down on Kyushu, however, I live in Saitama on the middle of Honshu, so I wasn’t affected. I did feel some shaking, because it was a large quake, but it wasn’t large enough to set off my earthquake alarm. I also didn’t feel any of the after-shocks myself, though I know Kumamoto is still feeling them. As far as I know, all of the JETs in Kumamoto are safe and have been accounted for, and 12 of them have been evacuated. I am personally safe in Saitama, going through life as usual, and all of us here are hoping that Kumamoto’s after-shocks come to a stop soon, so that aid and recovery can start to come through.

Anyway, since I last wrote, I had just finished my spring break trip traveling the Chugoku region of Japan. Our school opening ceremony was actually on April 8th, but team-teaching classes didn’t start until the middle of the next week.

There were a few surprising changes when I came back to work. I didn’t realize that Kanda-sensei, the Vice Principal for House 2 was leaving, and came back to work to meet a new Vice Principal. He doesn’t speak English, but he seems nice. We do have another new Vice Principal in charge of the ALTs, and he is Suzuki-sensei (though not the same Suzuki-sensei from years ago). He is in house three and he seems to be a bit more laid-back, but I haven’t had a chance to get to really know him since he’s not in my house.

Of course there are some new English teachers, but I do not teach with any of them this year. However, two of them are in House 2. Yoshida-sensei, and Saito-sensei. Tokuyama-sensei is back in house 2 again, and she’s my advisor this year! It’s been really great to catch up with her, even though we aren’t team-teaching together.

Also, I am back Okegawa high school again for this academic year. I guess it was just easiest for the teachers making the ALT schedules. This year at Okegawa, I am teaching with Hayakwa-sensei again, who I taught with my first year at Okegawa. I am also teaching with a new teacher, Tokui-sensei. What’s interesting is that this year I am only teaching with two teachers, and I teach with only Tokui-sensei one week, and then only Hayakawa-sensei the next week, when I used to teach with a mix of three teachers every week. I have only had one full day of classes at Okegawa so far, with Tokui-sensei. So far, the students seem excited, and we’re using a sticker points system with the students to try and encourage them to volunteer more in class. I’ll be bringing my sticker supply over to Okegawa, since it looks like I’ll be using them more over there.

Most of the first classes at Inagakuen have been going smoothly. My Sogo Eigo, English Conversation, Essay Writing, and English 2 classes are all using mostly the same beginning lesson plans from last year. We made a few improvements to the materials and all of those classes are going swimmingly. However, we have a completely new plan for the English 1 students. I’ve only had one class for English 1 so far, and it was definitely the guinea pig class. The beginning of the class went smoothly, but putting the students into their groups and handing out their materials and scripts was a bit of a mess. At least we have time to see what does and doesn’t work in the lessons so we can improve it for the next class.

For the new school year, the Inagakuen choir put on an opening concert at the Saitama Performing arts center in Yono-hommachi. All of the teachers were given free tickets, and I decided to go and see some last student performances for my last year at Inagakuen. The performance was really cute. There were two acts to their concert. The first half included traditional choir songs in Latin and Japanese. Of course, the students opened the show with the Inagakuen school song.

After the intermission, the second half of the show was the students’ rendition of the movie Sister Act 2, which was really cute. Many of the students had cute nun costumes, and the students who were playing American High school students made some interesting fashion choices (Mostly baggy sweat shirts, half of them with engrish sayings on them) The boys who played the monks wore these short, gray cloaks that made them look more like the hobbits in Lord of the Rings, than actual monks. Most of the songs the students sang were in the original English, although one of the songs they sang the Japanese version. They also got some audience interaction during the fundraising scene. Basically, there was a fake dollar included in the program that was handed out at the beginning, and the students came out with hats to collect those dollars. It was really cute. At the end of their mini-musical, the students got on stage for one final song, and even had some former graduated members of the music club to join the stage with them, and sing the final song together. It was really sweet. I am also really impressed with the choir. The students are better singers as a whole than my old high school choir.

I’m looking forward to how my classes will flow for the rest of this term, and Golden Week is just around the corner. I’ll see you then!

Skit Contests and the Last Debate

Classes are finished at Inagakuen, but this past Tuesday we held the final skit contest for the first year students.

During our last term, the first year students’ big English project with the ALTs was to write their own short skits and perform them in groups of three or four in front of the class. The group with the highest score/ best skit represented their homeroom in the final skit contest.

The students performed in front of the entire first year class in the volleyball gym. It was a lot of fun to watch. I think it’s a great project for the students, because even the students who aren’t in the English course at Inagakuen can still take part and enjoy it.

One of my favorite skits involved a boy who actually dressed up in all of his mountain climbing gear, and in the skit he meets Elsa and Olaf while trying to climb Mt. Everest.

Another favorite skit of mine involved some boys finding out that one of their friends is actually a robot. The robot, upon being found out, decides he must kill his friends to keep his secret, however, one of the other boys is secretly a Jedi, and uses the force to save his friends. It was pretty funny.

The skit contest finished before noon, and later around 2:30 in the afternoon we started the final English Conversation class debate tournament. Their was one team of four students to represent each  English Conversation class. There were two rounds, and four judges to judge four matches at once. Okachi-sensei had to step in as a judge at the last minute because Charlotte was sick with the flu and wasn’t in school that day. The motion for this debate tournament was: All high schools in Japan should adopt a 6-day school week. The students have been practicing debate with this exact same motion for the past term.

I felt kind of bad, because in the first round of the debate, one of the teams I was judging was a team of my own English Conversation students that I had taught that year, and yet they didn’t win. They tried very hard, but I felt that they didn’t hold their arguments well against the opposing team. Oh well, at least this didn’t affect their grades.

After two rounds of debate matches, we had to add up the scores, and watch the top two teams debate in a final round in front of all the English Conversation students in the large conference room by the English office. It was a good round of debate, and after handing out the certificate for the top two debate teams, it was time to finally release the students, since it was already 6:30 pm by the time we finished everything.

This academic year at Inagakuen has ended on a pretty high note. Tomorrow is the closing ceremony, and then spring break starts. I’m using my free time at work to prepare materials for next school year, and making sure my final scholarship applications are sent in before spring break starts.

After the closing ceremony tomorrow, I’m going to be taking a bus down and spending a few days around Hiroshima. Honestly, I just can’t wait for cherry-blossom season!

Okegawa: The Last Day?

So it is officially finals season, and my full classes are really winding down, and as such, yesterday was my last day at my visit school, Okegawa High School.

This past term at Okegawa High school, the three teachers I teach with, and I, tried making all of the first year students make short English speeches. Since their level is not as high last the student’s at Inagakuen, we didn’t hold the standards too high, but we did require the students to write their own speeches. They had to write about My favorite thing. They only had to have two reasons and two examples, only speak for one minute, and they were allowed to bring their scripts to the front with them.

It seemed very rushed, since the students re-wrote their scripts, practiced, and made their speeches over the course of only three classes, but I was pleasantly surprised. Many of the students were very energetic, and many of the students were actually better with their gestures and eye contact than many Inagakuen students. During our last full day of speech presentations in class, one of the student teachers, and the Vice Principal, came in to watch. After class, the Vice Principal came up to me and said he was surprised that the students were able to make an English speech, and he was impressed, and then thanked me, because he never expected the students at Okegawa to do this.

I was very proud when  heard that. I’m so used to doing speech and presentation projects with students at Inagakuen, it’s become pretty routine for me there. I’ve been visiting Okegawa for two years now, and this is the only time that we’ve tried this kind of assignment. I remember seeing the students’ nervous faces when we announced that we were going to make them do short speeches, but at the end, I think most of them seemed to enjoy it. I think part of it had to do was that the students’ were able to choose what they wanted to talk about, and it was also an assignment that went beyond just repeating new vocabulary words from their textbooks.

This past Wednesday was my last day of visiting Okegawa High school for this academic year. There were some make-up speeches that I had to see at lunch time and after classes, but since most of the speeches were finished, and we were coming up on exams, I just played English jeopardy with the students. It was a lot of fun for the students. I even got the students to make their own team names for the game. I encouraged them to make the craziest names they could think of. The most creative ones were Chicken banana sauce  and A Block of baby. There was also team Very Very Very Delicious. 

It didn’t really hit me that this was the last day at Okegawa until one of my co-teachers Tomita-sensei, told the students that this was their last team-teaching class, and at the end of class, all of the students said “Thank you” and one of the boys stood up on his desk to wave good-bye.

Also, I cleaned up my personal items from my desk, and I told my co-teachers that although I’m staying in Japan until July, I wasn’t actually sure that I would be coming back to Okegawa in April for the new school year. Depending on the Inagakuen class schedule for the ALTs, I may not be going back, it might be another ALT that gets sent to Okegawa. I said my tentative good-byes before I left Okegawa, and Naitoh-sensei made me promise that I would show up to the Okegawa Good-bye/Welcome party in April.

The most surreal part of the day was taking out my shoes from my shoe locker, keeping my indoor shoes in my bag, and leaving my locker empty. I wasn’t crying, or overly emotional, but it did feel weird. I guess it’s something I have to get used to the closer I get to the end of my contract. It’s the start of many good-byes I’m going to have to make.

Inagakuen: Winter Cup Champions!

Once again, I was there only ALT available to go to an English debate tournament with our school’s debate team. This time, the tournament was on Valentine’s day. However, I don’t usually do much to celebrate Valentine’s day except buy a lot of chocolate and eat it all by myself, so I wasn’t upset about it, like I was when I had to go to the last tournament on Halloween.

Anyway, this debate tournament, the Winter Cup, is always in February, and doesn’t count going towards nationals. However, Inagakuen still participates because it is close by, at Municipal Urawa High school, and is still good practice and experience for the students.

I felt a little bad in not helping the students do much preparation before  this debate tournament, but I can’t feel too guilty about it, because the students did most of their practices on Wednesday’s, which is when I go to my visit school, Okegawa.

Anyway, this time around, the debate motion for this tournament was: The EU should accept more refugees.

This is the first time that the students have debated a motion at an official match that isn’t related to Japan at all. It was a bit difficult for them to argue, but I heard from my advisor, Tsuji-sensei, that the German ALT actually gave quite a lot of information, and helped translate some articles from German into Japanese to help the students understand the situation.

Anyway, I judged three out of four rounds of debate. Most of the debate matches I judged were really good. Between each round, the students and judges would head back to the auditorium in order to receive information about the next round, such as which teams would debate against each other, and in which rooms. Whenever I would meet back up with the Inagakuen team, the students kept telling me they were winning each round they debated in. I was pleasantly surprised, because I knew that they did not have as much time to prepare to for this debate, and I thought it would be more difficult for them.

Then, after the fourth and final round of debates, everyone piled into the auditorium one last time, so that the officials could tally all of the wins of each debate team, and add up all of the “communication points” in case there were ties.

Before starting the last round of debate, they posted the list of the top ten teams. It was funny, because instead of listing an 8th or 9th place, they just skipped over and said that three schools tied in 7th place.

To our surprise, Inagakuen, along with two other debate teams, were in a three-way tie for “second place” and so had to janken to see which two teams would debate against each other.

The top ten teams before the final round

In the end, Inagakuen debated against Municipal Urawa team A. Inagakuen was on the affirmative side, and Municipal Urawa was on the negative side. It was a very close debate match. I’m glad I didn’t have to judge it, because I though the arguments on both sides were pretty strong.

At the end, it was announced that the five judges were split in their decision. 3 judges chose one team, and 2 judges chose another team of who they thought were the stronger debaters, and it was a lucky day because Inagakuen won first place! This is the first time we have ever received first place at a tournament this large! It most definitely makes up for not winning at nationals back in December (although the fact that we even got to go to nationals last December was a pretty big deal.)

I am so proud of my students. They have actually worked very well these past two years. After this great Valentine’s Day victory I am actually kind of sad that I won’t be here next year help coach them and see how well they do at the Inaho cup next fall.

Regardless, it was a great day for the students. They worked so hard, they deserved this win, and I’m glad that the last debate tournament that I went to ended with such a bang!

New English, New Term

Sorry for the long break. I’ve been super busy, and now with the start of the term, I will be even busier. However, I wanted to take the time to catch up a little bit.

Last month, I finished my Japanese course at Coto Language Academy. I actually made a few new friends there, and on my last day of classes, the language academy hosted an outing to the beer garden on the roof of the Mitsukoshi Department building in Nihombashi.

While I am far from being fluent in Japanese, I am glad I took the intensive course. Some of the material we covered in the first two weeks were things I had covered  before back when I went to Hollins, but I’m glad I reviewed it. I know that if I was thrown into a conversation at the same level beforehand, I wouldn’t have been able to produce the answers correctly on my own.

I actually feel kind of sad that my Japanese class is over. I felt like my ability to carry a conversation in Japanese was leveling up. I want to continue, because I felt like the small, conversation-focused classes were really working, but with the new term starting, I won’t have time to drag myself into Tokyo on weeknights just to study. I would definitely highly recommend Coto Academy though, if anybody is looking for a good Japanese language school.

Speaking of leveling up, I finally got back my JLPT results. I have failed N4. I wasn’t really expecting to pass, but now I know have to do that level again in December. I’m just going to have to study more.

After I finished my four weeks of the intensive Japanese course, I took a five day trip to Jeju island in South Korea. It was a great trip, even though it rained half of the time that I was there. I’m not going to elaborate much more here. My Jeju trip deserves it’s own post, which I PROMISE will be up by next week. I still need to upload my photos onto my computer.

In Inagakuen news, we have a new ALT named Serena. She is from Singapore, and is around the same age as me. She’s very sweet. She reminds me a lot of my friend Jenni from Holins.

Speaking of Hollins, one of my good friends from Hollins, Emma, now lives here in Saitama!She actually came here to visit me when I first moved here to Japan! Here’s the blog post from when she visited! https://jetsetvictoria.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/when-hollins-otaku-invaded-tokyo/

Now she works in Sakado-shi, and her co-ALT is our fellow JET, Jeremy, from Australia. I’ve been able to meet up with her a few times since she arrived here. I hope we can hang out some more. It’s just a tad bit difficult since she lives far away from me, but she does live close to Kawagoe. I foresee more trips to that city 😉

Emma also said that she met my former Vice-Principal, Mr. Suzki, at the JET Tokyo orientation this year. When she met him, she told him that it was because she knew that I was in Saitama, that she put Saitama down as her second choice when she applied for JET. Apparently Mr. Suzuki looked at her and said, “You mean the same Victoria from Inagakuen?” Emma also met one of our German teachers, Saeko Suzuki, at the orientation, and received her business card. When I met Saeko Suzuki back at Inagakuen after my study leave was over, she showed me the pictures of Emma with Mr. Suzuki on her phone. 

Last week, before we started the new term, we had our summer English camp! This year was a really good year. The students were especially eager to talk with all of the ALTs even outside of the workshops.

All of the ALTs ran their own workshops, except for Serena since she just arrived. She was able to just join in and observe different workshops so that she could a get a feel for how we interact with the students at Inagakuen.

In my workshop, I had the students play Guess Who? in pairs. I didn’t have the real game, so I made my own Guess Who worksheets on the computer, printed out copies, and laminated them before bringing them to camp. This way, the students could use markers, and then just erase the marks when they were finished. No more wasted paper! Which is great since I had to use the game for four different groups of students.

Anyway, I chose Guess Who? so that the students could have fun playing, but also practice using English to describe people. Before we started the game, I went over some vocabulary with the students. It’s actually very common for the students to say that someone has “gold” hair, since not many of them actually know the word “blond.” I also taught them the words for mustache, beard, curly hair, and mohawk.

Lastly, I wanted to quiz the students, and see if the knew the word “bald.” I asked all of them, “What is the word you use when someone has no hair?” In two of my classes, some students answered “skinhead.” I was not expecting that at all. I had to explain to the students that “skinhead” actually isn’t an appropriate word to use when describing a stranger, and that the word usually refers to someone who has a shaved head and is in a gang. That’s the best way I could describe it to them, since they don’t know all about the history of racial discrimination, violence, and the KKK, in the US.

Most of the first year students had a skit contest on the second day of English camp, which Aaron, Serena, and I helped run. The students had to get into groups of two or three and write and perform their own skits. They had to use English phrases such as: You can’t be serious and I wasn’t born yesterday. 

They were all really cute, but two of them really stood out to me. One was about a girl who went by the name Saliva. In the skit, her friends asks her Why are you called Saliva? She then explained that she got the nickname from when she was younger, when she used to talk a lot with her friends, but accidentally spit all of the time. The funny thing is this is the girl’s actual nickname in Japanese! Everyone used her new English nickname of the rest of camp after that.

The next skit, which actually one the prize for Best Skit, had three students. One student was a boy who was dating two girls. When they girls found out, the boy said, “Wait! I have an idea! Let’s all date together!” The girls then shouted, “You can’t be serious!” and then pushed him.

Also, this year for the English camp drama, the students performed a very abridged version of the play Wicked. Kesha wrote the script before she left Inagakuen. Kira and I don’t think Kesha has actually seen the play before, and that instead, she just listened to the soundtrack and just pieced the story together from there. It actually made many of the lines sound strange, and didn’t make much sense. However, there wasn’t a lot of time to revise the script before camp started.

However, we are taking this play to the English Drama Competition in November, so the play is going to be heavily revised so that the timeline flows easier, and makes more sense to the students. Many of the students have heard the Japanese music for the play, but not all of them have seen it. Of course, a lot of the story is based off of the original Wizard of Oz and the majority of Japanese high school students are not familiar with that story at all. If they can’t understand the story behind the play, they’re not going to be able to act it out well.

Anyway, now this week is the first week of classes, although we don’t start team teaching our regular English 1 and 2 classes until next week.Tomorrow will also be my first time to go back to Okegawa High school since July. I hope the students still remember my name!

Winter Kanto Cup and Setsubun

This past Sunday The Inagakuen English debate team competed at the Kanto Winter Cup debate tournament. It was held at the same place as the Inaho cup back in November, Municipal Urawa High School.

The debate topic this time was: Japan should drastically reduce the amount of non-renewable power plants.
I judged two rounds during the competition. Salimah was the other ALT who came along with the team, and she also judged two rounds.

Inagakuen won their first round of the day, and then won their second round before lunch. They were on a roll right until the fourth round. For the fourth round, Inagakuen was placed against another team that had also won all three rounds beforehand. Luckily Inagakuen won! It was the first time since I came to Japan and started helping the Inagakuen debate team that they have won all four rounds before the finals.

Inagakuen was one of three teams that had won four out of four rounds, and placed in the top two. It was also the first time that they got to compete in the final fifth round in front of everyone in the auditorium.

Inagakuen competed on the negative side of the debate. They did not win first place, but it is difficult to debate on the negative side of this topic, and to keep debating for five straight rounds.

Either way, this is a HUGE step for the Inagakuen debate team. The students put in so much work and it paid off. I’m really proud of them. For me, it was more satisfying to see my students win second place at the debate tournament, than it was to hear that Seattle won the SuperBowl 😉

Also, today is known as Setsubun in Japan, which marks the start of the spring season. Most of the Setsubun celebrations are geared towards younger children. Usually, an adult will wear an ogre mask, as kids chase the ogre around and throw dried beans at him. While throwing the beans, you’re supposed to shout ONI wa soto, fuku wa uchi which translates into, Leave ogre, come in Good luck. You are also supposed to eat as many beans as corresponds to your age for good luck.

While I did not participate in any of the above traditions, I did take part in one Setsubun tradition today. It is traditional to eat a really long sushi maki roll and to try to eat it all by yourself in one sitting.

This is the one I bought for my Setsubun dinner. I managed to eat it in one sitting, but it started falling apart in my hands as I was getting near the end of the roll. I got a tuna sushi roll, and it tasted all right, but there was some wasabi, but not too much that I couldn’t stand it.

Now, I need to go back to packing for my trip to Sapporo this week! I’m so excited, I can’t wait!

Students . . .

This past week was the Saitama English Drama competition. Sadly, Inagakuen did not win. Kesha was the only ALT to accompany the students to the competition. All of us wanted to be there and support the students, but it’s next impossible to let us all go when the competition is in the middle of a school day.

Inagakuen put on a cute little production of Charlotte’s Web. I spent a bit of extra time during lunches and after school, coaching Satomi, who played Charlotte. Even though Inagakuen didn’t win, Tamaki, who played Wilbur, got a special award for Best Speaker. We’re all waiting to see the video of their full performance. Either way, I am proud of them. I helped them practice when I could, and the student’s improved their speaking and acting by leaps and bounds during their two months of practice leading up to this competition.

Also, this past week, in my Oral Communication One class, we had some visitors. The visitors were University students who came here to study Japanese, and they are all teachers in their own country. One was from Sweden, one was from Vietnam, one from Indonesia, and two from China. Each of these student teachers gave a short presentation about their home countries, and the students asked questions. The majority of my students in this class are really good at English, but they act super shy. When Andreas, the man from Sweden, asked the students, “Do you know about the Nobel prize?” everyone just stared back at him, silent. He assumed that meant they hadn’t heard about the Nobel Prize. Yet, when it came time for the students to ask questions, some of the girls asked if he had ever been to a Nobel Prize ceremony, and if he personally knew anyone who won it.

During each of the presentations, Tsuji-sensei and I basically did what I call a “clown act.” We used our exaggerated gestures and chipper voices to try and perk the students up in order to get them to respond, even if it was just to get them to answer yes or no questions. Also, whenever one of the student teachers finished with “Are there any questions?” Tsuji-sensei and I had to press the students by saying “You have one minute to think of at least two questions,” before we started calling on students. This is actually a pretty regular occurrence in many of my English classes, yet some of my best students are in this class. At least they are more talkative than the Oral Communication One class I taught last year.

Later in the week, one of our past students, Ryusei, came to visit Inagakuen. He used to be in my English Expression class last year. He was a little shy, but really good at English. He looked so different! He had all these new earrings, had his hair cut and dyed, and was wearing a very stylish sweater. He looked very grown up without his high school uniform. He came to visit me, Kira, and Aaron, and to say good bye to his old homeroom teacher before he leaves for America this next week. He is going to be studying at a small college in California. I know he told me the name of it, but I can’t remember it, oops!

I’m only 24 and yet I feel like I’m getting old when I see my own old high school students coming back to say hello after they graduated, especially since they look so grown up! It’s only been a couple of months too!

Anyway, now that the last English high school competition has passed, I no longer have to spend an hour or more after work helping students to memorize scripts. The exam season is upon us, and we are preparing exams for some of our classes, or at least preparing lessons, games, and exercises to help students review for their upcoming tests. Once exams start, there isn’t much for us ALTs to do, since we don’t actually teach classes or administer tests during the exam period. It’s actually relaxing to wind down after such a busy fall term.

Even though this month has been busy, I have managed to catch a few breathers and have some fun here and there. I went to the Ashikaga wine festival again this year. I didn’t drink as much this year as I did last year. I learned to better pace myself. I got another souvenir wine glass to add to my, now actual, collection. I also got another wine festival pin marking it as the 30th anniversary of the festival. The weather this year was a lot better than it was last year. It was super sunny and warm. I could actually take off my Northface jacket, and lie comfortably in the sun. There was also no wind, so that made it so much more comfortable. I went ahead and got the red wine as my entrance wine again this year. I can’t help it, it’s the only one that comes with camambert cheese on the side. There’s no contest.

Also, this past weekend, I took part in the Harajuku Fashion Walk. There’s a fashion blogger who started organizing these fashion walks, for Lolitas, cosplayers, and other outrageously dressed people to form a group and parade around Harajuku. I know many people reading this might think, “But isn’t Harajuku already famous for that?” Well, yes, but the amount of people coming out all dressed up in the famous Harajuku styles is dwindling. The shops are still there selling clothes, but the police have cracked down on the people who take up space on the pedestrian bridge that leads to the Meiji Jingu Shrine.

Anyway, the dates and times for these fashion walks are always posted online, and anyone who hears word about them, and wants to come, can just show up. There’s always someone there to take photos. I wore a lolita outfit with a strawberry skirt.

The outift I wore to the Harajuku Fashion Walk

It was a lot of fun! I remember when I first visited Japan as a Freshman at Hollins, and took a picture with some visual kei cosplayers in Harajuku. This was back in 2009, when there were more of these fashionable fold just hanging around Harajuku on a Sunday afternoon.

Taking a picture with cosplayers, four years ago.

The Fashion walk ended with a big group photo session on the same bridge, and this time many tourists stopped to take pictures of us. I even had three separate people ask if they could take pictures with me. Honestly, this little turnaround felt really cool.

Here’s a picture of all the people taking pictures of us.

 

There was also a man who takes photos of every Harajuku Fashion Walk, and if you look closely, you can find me in some of his photos. Here’s a link so you can take a look. I think I look alright, but there is one photo where I know I looked up and started to wave, but my head is completely cut out of the photo. I had a lot of fun at this event, and I would definitely want to go again.

http://www.japanesestreets.com/reports/2828/20th-harajuku-fashion-walk
Also, right as everyone was dispersing, I actually ended up bumping into two Inagakuen students! They were surprised to see me in my lolita dress. They had just come from a big French exam at Aoyama University, and they weren’t sure of what to think when they saw me. Today at school, the same students kept giggling when they saw me, or when anyone asked them what they did this past weekend. Hey, teachers have lives outside of school too!

 

 

 

The Busy Bees of Autumn

As always, fall term is always the busiest for us ALTs. We just have so many things happening at once! This year, some of our normal fall events occurred in the same weekend! These past two weeks, I made sure I was loaded up on orange juice and vitamin C supplements, because I was scared that if I got too stressed out, I’d fall victim to a cold.

However, my busiest fortnight has finished, and everything turned out great!

First of all Inagakuen’s own student, Takuma, won the Saitama prefectural English speech contest! Aaron went to accompany him to the tournament, so the rest of us ALTs were back teaching our normal classes at Inagakuen. We heard the news when the day’s classes were over. the good news broke the monotony of marking papers, and we all clapped out of excitement. We are all really proud of Takuma, because we all watched all of the hour he put into his practice, and how nervous he was about his presentation. It also doesn’t help that his schedule is swamped with English debate and English drama. This boy is like an English superstar at our school. Now he gets to go on to the Kanto region speech contest.

Second, Halloween came and went. Kira managed to find a cheap pumpkin (for less than 3,000 yen) and on the Monday before Halloween, we had the students carve out the pumpkin during English lunch. The week leading up to the carving, we had a large poster in the hallway with four different jack o’ lantern designs that the students could vote on. We cut the pumpkin open for the students, but then we let the students scrape the guts out of the pumpkin and draw on the design. We decided to do most of the cutting for them so as to avoid any liability with accidents.

We held a Halloween party for the students after classes on Halloween day. Kesha couldn’t stay for very long because she had Japanese class. We handed out the students their own trick or treat bags, and had them trick or treat to different classrooms. We each had our own activity for the students to complete before we gave them candy. Kira’s activity was the “touch and feel” game with the fake body parts.

My activity was a ghost hunt, where students had to find paper cut out, or lollipop ghosts hidden around the room. I gave the students one flashlight per group, turned off the lights, and told them to go find a different amount of ghosts. I would change the number of ghosts the students had to find, depending on the number of students. The students actually had a lot of fun with that activity, but if I were to do it again, I wouldn’t do it by myself, because it took so long to re-set the room and re-hide the ghosts between each group of students, and at one point I had three groups of students backed up, waiting to go trick or treating at my room.

Lastly, I just want to pint out that I made my Halloween costume this year. I was inspired by the popular internet video What does the fox say?  I knit my own fox ear hat and tail, and dressed head to toe in orange.

What does the fox say?

The weekend after Halloween was SUPER BUSY! Saturday was the Inaho Cup debate tournament. Salimah and I went as judges. We each judged two rounds of debate, and observed one of the Inagakuen debate teams when we were not judging. Some schools, like Inagakuen, have two debate teams. Some of them even have 3. Basically, the debate club members are split into different groups of four students, with the groups being designated as either A,B, or C teams. The A teams are the higher-level, or second year students, the B teams are the first year students, and the C teams are the lower-level students usually. The debate officials do their best to make sure the teams are evenly matched to ability levels. The Inagakuen A-team ranked 16th place, but the Inagakuen B-team was really lucky in winning most of their rounds, and ranked 6th place at the end of the tournament! If they keep this up, they’ll rank among the top schools in Saitama for English debate.

The day after the debate, on Sunday, was the International Fair. This was my third year in a row working at the International Fair, but was my first year working on an activities display related to my own culture. My first year, I was assigned to help with the New Zealand display. My second year, I was assigned to help with the Chanukah display. This year, I helped with the Halloween display and games. I worked on the Halloween display with Mike and Anna, who are other American ALTs in Saitama. Mike and Anna were dressed up as Harry and Hermione, and I reprised my fox costume.

We had the same touch and feel body parts game for our Halloween display, and we also had handouts in English and Japanese about the origin of Jack o’ lanterns. During my breaks, I wandered around the fair, and just ate a lot of food! I was a bit disappointed that the Peruvian booth didn’t sell home-made alfajores this year. I was looking forward to them. However, there was delicious Brazilian barbecue, and one of the Russian booths had a delicious borscht soup. I also ran into a Russian woman who is good friends with my former Japanese teacher. She not only made some delicious baked Russian goods for her group’s stand, she also performed two traditional Russian dances on the center stage of the fair.

The fox and the dancer

The following Wednesday and Thursday were the two days of the Saitama Skills and Development Conference. All of the Saitama JETs gathered in Urawa to exchange lesson plans, teaching ideas, and attend workshops on different skills and activities that can be used in an ESL classroom. Of course, everyone’s part of SDC is meeting up together for a few responsible drinks at the end of each day.

Then, this past Saturday was the first ever Saitama JET scavenger hunt. Everyone participating in the event gathered in Omiya around 2 o’clock. We were given our list of tasks, and then set loose to complete as many as we could before 6pm. I was on a team with two other people named Claire and Jason. Claire is a first year JET from Sydney, Australia. Jason is a JET from America. This is his fourth year on JET, but his first one in Saitama. He used to be placed in Miyagi prefecture. Our team name was Team Supreme Awesomesauce.

We had a lot of fun on the scavenger hunt, even though our feet were hurting by the end of it. A few of the items on our scavenger hunt list required us to be creative, and had us find a few places in Omiya that we didn’t know existed. We managed to find a cat café across the street from a love hotel, and we also found out that there is a small and free zoo in Omiya park! I’ve been here for three years, and this was my first time finding it! They had a bird enclosure and monkeys in this zoo! I’m definitely going back to these places soon.

Jason, Claire, and I, acting like monkeys in front of the monkeys.

The scavenger hunt also tested our limits of our Japanese ability. There were a few times I had to stop passersby and ask them to take a picture of our whole team in Japanese.

It was definitely a lot of fun, and I would do it again. It was great getting to know all of the new JETs, and discovering parts of Omiya that even I didn’t know about.

The busy season isn’t over yet though. We still have the English drama to prepare, and I am still meeting students to practice their Oral Communication presentations. I hope I don’t wear myself out before December rolls around.

Before I sign off, here’s a photo of when we had to re-enact a wizard style duel for the scavenger hunt.

Wizard duel!