Not Just Ninjas

You know the vice-principal, the guy at my school full of propriety and decorum who keeps everything running smoothly? He thought it would be funny to tell me all the bad words he knows in English today, so he put on his sailor’s cap, and started pointing at things around the office, spewing “Bitches!” and “Fuck You!”. I was a bit taken aback, but that’s okay… little does he know I taught my English club girls how to say turd yesterday. Whaat? Don’t look at me like that. I needed rhymes for bird, and “rd” is a legitimately difficult sound for my Japanese students to make. They should get something titillating every once in awhile for their efforts. Besides, it’s legitimate cultural exchange. Months ago one of my students taught me an equivalent word in Japanese, unko, which is used with abandon. A word that happens to sound just like anko, the heavy pasty brown bean paste inside of Japanese pastries. Make sure you don’t get those two confused. It could be messy.

*Thanks to the Flickr community for helping to photographically illustrate a point

Every semester, the teachers here are required to hold demonstration lessons. I’m not sure if the classes are being rigorously assessed, or if it’s just a general structured exchange of ideas, but the teachers can get really nervous about these lessons. As a JET, I’m kind of exempt from promotions and the like, so I’m usually pretty immune to the hysteria. At the most I catch second-hand jitters from my co-teacher. Last week, we had a team teaching demonstration for 8th graders, using a shiny projector and everything.

The goal for this lesson was to use the infinitive. We played a game where we gave the students 3 sentences about an object, after which they had to guess what we were talking about. For example: It’s in a house. It’s a room. We use the room to cook. What is it? We put the students in groups and armed them with dictionaries. The activity went smoothly, and the lesson was, as far as I could tell, a success.

But the most amazing development happened two days later, when I visited my other junior high. One of my teachers there had attended the class, and decided to do the same activity. Transferring the lesson between schools was easy, because everyone uses the same government approved textbook, and is on roughly the same schedule. Serendipity struck when my co-teacher forgot to gather together dictionaries for the students.

The 8th graders are only at the beginning of their second year of English study, and some of the words we were using in the lesson, like refrigerator and cell phone, haven’t been officially introduced yet. This means that they were at a loss when asked to come up with English words for these items.

A lot of Japanese schooling, and English teaching in particular, comes down to memorization and repetition, which can be an uninspiring method. Many students, if they don’t know the exact spelling, or the exact word they need just give up because they aren’t encouraged to problem solve in a foreign language. Death seems preferable to hazarding a guess in class and risking a wrong answer. That’s why I was so amazed with what happened next.

When confronted with translating “reizouko” (refrigerator) into English, one student wrote down “cold box”. I was so proud of this student for attempting to communicate even though he didn’t know the exact right thing to say. We made a big point of it in class… I told them how I have to make up words all the time in Japan, like when I use “fish zoo” as a proxy for “aquarium” because I don’t have the most expansive vocabulary. This kind of improvisation is essential if you actually have to communicate in a foreign language.

Preparing to teach the same lesson next period, my co-teacher was about to hurry off to collect dictionaries for the word game. Wait, wait, wait, what if we didn’t bring them again on purpose? How crazy would that be? She looked a little hesitant, but we agreed to forgo the dictionary crutch.

As the next class begain, we explained right off the bat that they may have to do some creative guesswork. The students, to my delight, rose to the challenge. When confronted with translating keitai (cell phone), the class en masse started writing down things like “handy phone”, “pocket phon” and “small telefon”. If I could understand what they were getting at, everyone got points for this kind of guesswork. I left school that day deliriously happy, relieved that there’s some room for creative thinking and problem solving in the English curriculum. My only hope is that this one lesson planted some small seed of innovation that the students continue to take with them for their next 4 years of English study.

Ok, ok. I’m totally guilty. I admit it. I leave stuff to the last minute. And as an ALT, this is a really easy trap to fall into. Most of my last minute lesson plans have actually gone pretty well, which only encourages my sloth. This is especially true at the elementary schools, where I am pretty much given free reign to plan lessons. Because I only visit each school once or twice a year, I am usually asked to pull the same 3 or 4 tricks out of my bag. This combined with frequent schedule changes and a language barrier means that, more often than not, I just show up with a few general ideas for what I’m going to do until I see what curve ball I’m thrown.

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t know the Left/Right Mouse game or the Weather Song. Can you explain them to me? You don’t know them either? Instead you want the Hokey-Pokey followed by Fruit Basket? And you have no chairs and would like me to throw in something about animals. No problem…”

Eikaiwa, on the other hand, is the one place I have complete control over the lesson, and thus preparation would not go to waste. I decided to go wild and try it.

As part of my contract, I teach several extra-curricular English lessons for adults in the evening, succinctly called eikaiwa in Japanese. I’m currently going through my second round of such lessons this year, and I wanted to see what would happen if I actually poured my everything into it. Maybe it was the fact that the course length was only 6 2-hour lessons. Maybe it was coming back from a yearly teaching conference that stoked my idealism, inspired me to Make A Difference. Whatever the reason, I have been preparing.

Last night in class we went over the restaurant scenario. In addition to going over catch phrases and the like, I explained how eating out in America is different than eating out in Japan. In Japan, you usually get up and take your bill to a cash register. In America, if you don’t pay for the bill at your table, you’re tackled for trying to eat and run. In Japan, you cut through the din of the restaurant and call the server over with a loud “Excuse me” when you’re ready to order. At home, you just kind of have to sit around and wait until your server gets to you.

The last time I taught this lesson in the fall, we did a little role playing, where I seated the students, gave everyone a menu (in Japan, only 1 menu per table) and took their imaginary orders. We went over tipping, and I gave each table a bill. In the intervening months, I spoke to a friend who did this same type of lesson, but brought some actual food and made a mystery menu, so that students ordering A would get a cookie and students ordering B got kimchee. I decided to steal this creative idea for this summer’s class and make my own International Cafe.

I don’t know what possessed me to cook four entire dishes for my students. Maybe it’s the lack of international food in Noshiro. Maybe I want my students to understand that salad doesn’t always have to consist of cabbage. Maybe I want them to appreciate that spice comes in other flavors besides wasabi. Whatever the reason, here’s how the class went down: I made up a spiffy menu, with treats from Ghana, Greece, America, and Thailand. In the background is a world map with each these four places marked with a star:

Students have to order something from the menu. If they want to know anything about what they’re getting, they have to ask me what’s in each of the dishes and what I recommend. Then… we eat! Behind the scenes, I made up plates of fried bananas, spinach salad, spicy sweet noodles, and pesto pasta. While they were waiting for me to assemble everyone’s dishes, students had to practice small talk at their tables, a skill we’d practiced in the first half of class. On a side note, this lesson also taught me that Japanese people consider raw mushrooms to be death incarnate. Oops! Watch out for the tiny slices of oblivion in the spinach salad, everyone!

After class, I ran armfuls of dirty bowls and utensils out to my car in the rain. My kitchen was a disaster area. I was exhausted. Actually preparing for class? Not a bad idea. I might even do it again. But for now, I’m off to attack the mountain of dishes in my sink.

Last Saturday was my school festival, which was really just “Let’s Celebrate our Unanimous and Inexplicable Love for Johnny Depp” day in disguise. This is quite possibly the best way to earn my keep for a day as an English teacher. I wandered the halls, I was seduced by tasty festival treats: cotton candy, hot dogs, and fried chicken bowls. I went from room to decorated room in a fascinated daze. They were like classroom sized dioramas of whatever struck the students’ fancy. One room was dedicated to Depp himself, and was a kind of Willy Wonka goes pirate kind of theme, complete with pirate ship, booty, candy covered walkways and golden chocolate bars. Down the hall, they were showing “Pirates of the Carribean” on a loop all day. The adjacent classroom displayed a showdown between good and evil Spiderman, with the webbed men hanging from the ceiling, strands of web streaming through the air. The final classroom recreated a very convincing Japanese shrine out of cardboard, including the huge red torii gate, the stone lions which flank shrines (here they were cute cats made out of layered styrofoam) and ema, which you could write on and hang on the wall. Other rooms were filled with class newspapers, which were painstakingly detailed by hand, with kanji characters flowing down the page, and elaborate designs behind them.

No school event (not my school, anyway) is complete without some combination of male nudity and an uncomfortable homoerotic skit. Odd but true. The boys’ baseball team jogged in in their skivvies, and kissed each other on the lips on stage so everyone could laugh at them, and began a spirited dance routine. I have no idea what that was all about, but something similar seems to happen at every school function.

Immediately after the festival, we drove as fast as possible to Akita city, where we joined several other JETs from around the ken for an honest to God baseball game, Tokyo Swallows vs. the Nagoya (Nagano?) dragons. Despite their oddly un-intimidating mascot, the Swallows kicked ass. Meanwhile, I was blissfully discovering that the snack stands contained not just yakitori and ricke crackers, but also churros! No Mexican food available for hundreds of miles, but for baseball, churros? Why? For the remainder of the evening I did what I do at every baseball game… hang out and drink beer and schmooze with my friends and watch very little of the actual sport itself.

The next day was GAIJIN SUMOOOOOOO, a yearly event we do in our prefecture for charity. Twenty-four non-Japanese English teachers volunteered to wrestle each other after a quick lesson in the finer points of sumo. We’re hard core here, so they wore naught but the traditional sumo mawashi (diaper) for the fight. This year’s fight was in an actual sumo ring, and at the end, the winner went head to head with an actual sumo fighter. It was a pretty intense and amazing event… videos of some of the fights can be seen here. There were some pretty amazing upsets, and lots of scraped up toes, backs, and buttcheeks by the end of the day. Chris would not yield to my pestering, and didn’t compete this year, but after seeing the glory that comes from battle he has promised to participate next year. Here’s a little taste of the ringside action:

We then RAN home from sumo to join my adult English conversation class for an early Fourth of July blowout on the beach. This event was masquerading as an English class event, but really it was just an excuse to cook food I have been craving for a bunch of friends. I was adamant that we have buns to go with the burgers and dogs, and adamant that these burgers be cooked on a grill, components which are all too often missing in the Japanese version. Chris mixed up some patties with a little recipe magic from mom (thanks, mom!). They were received well.

I was worried about making enough food to feed 20 people, but my eikaiwa class saved the day; piles of yakisoba, watermelon, and corn braised in soy sauce were waiting for us when we arrived (despite my protests that soy sauce for the 4th is a bit non-traditional). We made sure to adhere to watermelon-eating protocol by having a seed spitting contest. And of course, no 4th is complete without some fireworks, readily available during the summer in this wet wet country.

Amazingly enough, everyone who said they’d be there was there, including our beloved Brits (a must for the 4th, don’t you think?), and some Canadians from down south. They were kind enough to inform us that not only were we celebrating the 4th early, not only were we celebrating Claire’s birthday (July 1st), but we were also celebrating Canada Day (also July 1st. Hooray!). Lucky for us that celebrating Canada Day is an awful lot like celebrating the 4th (minus the pancake breakfast). What a nexus of celebratory goodness.

Let’s imagine that you teach a class of 7th graders. They have just started studying English, and you’re only a few weeks into the school year, so they can say “My name is” and “I am from such-and-such a country” but that’s pretty much it. You’re given one hour to come up with a game to fill class time. Go.I was given these instructions and left to my own devices. What to do with a two sentence repertoire… hmm…

One of my pet peeves as a former-world-music-major-teaching-English-in-Japan is that usually only western countries are given any air time. Even though nations like Ghana or India have lots of English speaking citizens, they are rarely mentioned, not to mention the rest of the non-English speaking world. You would think from some textbooks that the globe contained only Canada, England, Australia, and America. My mission for this lesson? To add a few more countries to the classroom repertoire.

The game would be to find others from your country by using the key phrase “Are you from (country)?”. Every student was assigned one of 6 different country cards with a flag on it. The countries had to be easily pronounceable in Japanese, yet under-represented in the Japanese classroom. The flag had to be colorful and unique, to stimulate students’ curiosity about the world. And of course, the cultures represented had to be as varied as possible.

Let’s meet our finalists:

I made country cards with flags, and put in the name in English with katakana subtitles. In class, we did a quick sketch of the country locations on a world map, and then jumped into the game. The activity wasn’t a complete success; it was over a little too quickly, and didn’t give the students as much talking time as I would have liked. But nothing can describe the happiness that swelled in my heart when I heard a roomful of Japanese 12 year olds ask each other “Are you from Nepal?” and reply earnestly “No, I am from Panama.”

I just stumbled upon this wonderful article by Gene Weingarten in the Washington Post Magazine of April 8, 2007.  In January, the paper organized a “stunt” with Joshua Bell, the world-famous violinist, to play for an hour at a D.C. subway station during morning rush hour. The results are heartbreaking (in a good way) and I think you will enjoy this article, especially if you are a musician of any sort.

“It was a strange feeling, that people were actually, ah . . .”

The word doesn’t come easily.

“. . . ignoring me.”

Bell is laughing. It’s at himself.

“At a music hall, I’ll get upset if someone coughs or if someone’s cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to appreciate any acknowledgment, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change.” This is from a man whose talents can command $1,000 a minute.

Read more…

Spring here is an f’ing tease. The weather’s warmed slightly, but has refused to yield both a beautiful day and warmth at the same time. The cherry trees, early Spring bloomers which currently dictate all social engagements, are refusing to cooperate, and remain elusively free of flowers. My adult English class planned a flower viewing festival for tonight, but we’ve thrown in the towel due to rain.

Along with the start of the new school year, and the imminent cherry blossom season, I’d like to give a shout-out to my girl Momoko, a first year junior high student. Last week in class, all my students got their class folders, which they labeled with “English” in their favorite language. Momoko, already rearing to go with the English, thought she would go a step further and write “English File”, which, if you think about it, is a pretty awesome and motivated thing to do on the first day ever of language class. The spelling was a little haywire though, and with an accidental twist of irony, she ended up with “English Fail”. We got the spelling issue cleared up, and she’s now well on her way to greatness.

It’s been three weeks. But that’s because I was at the wedding. A Japanese wedding for one of my co-workers, where the bride wore white and red and pink and white. Where the guests laughed but didn’t smile. Where there was karaoke, but a suspicious lack of dancing. Where the guests get presents instead of the couple of honor. Oh yeah, and the cake was steaming, billowing clouds of vapor.

And then I was sick, for like 5 days of mind-altering I can’t even remember my name but somehow I have no visible symptoms sick. That was the week of sleeping and more sleeping.

And then I was in Kyoto, hunting monkeys, jumping from train to train, climbing castle keeps, hoping for cherry blossoms, getting a suntan, a suntan on the beach, sucking every possible drop of goodness out of the kansai region before heading back to Noshiro. A trip I won’t write more about here because, hey, a) and then b) there’s this podcast I’m supposedly contributing to now, where I’m telling everyone, anyone who will listen about the best and strangest parts of Japan that I can find. So I’ve got to keep something up my sleeve for you there.

And now I’m here. Watching spring wrestle with winter for dominance in Noshiro. This means that I wake up to gloriously sunny (if slightly cold) weather, which is followed by snow at some point during the day, and then, inexplicably, more sun. The school year starts fresh on Monday; I’m in a suit for the first time since I began teaching in Japan, required costuming to welcome the new students to school. I just watched my first opening ceremony, which was an odd combination of the sober and the comical. The kids are all outside with their sports clubs in the sun, running through drills with a steady stream of “Gambare!” (“do your best!)”

And tomorrow I’ll still be here. Waiting for my first chance in weeks just to stop and do nothing and breathe, hoping for a weekend where I can lie in peace and revel in boredom.

A few things have been keeping me busy since returning from the Sapporo Snow Festival a few weeks ago. I’ve been working with a senior student at the high school for a speech contest that was held on Feb. 16th. The theme was, amazingly enough, “internationalization”. For most of the 15 year olds participating, this meant talking about their experiences as or with exchange students. Two of the speakers had spent some time in America… the take home message about that country was two fold:

1. “Americans are very religious and will hang a flag on anything”

2. “Some rude American boy addressed me as ‘Hey, Chinese!’ instead of
‘Hey, Japanese!’, or even, God forbid, by my actual name”

I have to say, I’m not exactly thrilled that this is the extent of what our country has to offer Japanese exchange students. Maybe the nicer fuzzy stuff doesn’t make for as good a story…?

Anyway, I’ve been preparing with my student, Tomatsu, for like a month and a half. We discussed ideas for his speech, which he wrote and translated into English pretty proficiently all by himself. We edited, worked on pronunciation, speed, inflection, emotion, and general public speaking skills. Not only did he work on these points, he worked on them every day. We would go over particularly difficult words or vowel sounds that don’t exist in Japanese, and I would see obvious improvement the next day. He has a great ear, and I am so impressed with his work ethic and desire to speak English well.

That’s why is was particularly great when he came home with a trophy. Third place, baby! Not bad, considering he was up against experienced competitors, many of whom go to the advanced English school in Akita city. I am so proud. Give it up for Noshiro, WOOOOT!!!!

The week after the speech contest, I worked all week at Junior High #2, where I had two astonishing moments in class. You’d think that the word “sweater” is fairly innocuous, right? We were teaching this word to a room full of 8th graders, when my co-teacher stops to discuss sweat, and sweater, and were they related?… a natural enough tangent. Then we start discussing the Japanese drink, “Pocari Sweat”, and my thoughts on the appropriateness of the name (um… a sports drink? Yum?). Then, in Japanese, this conversation, unbeknownst to me, takes a screaming 90 degree turn, and I hear the word “animal” in Japanese, and I’m thinking “what the heck…” and then I get this:

“Stephanie-sensei, do you know the Japanese drink, Calipis?”
<hesitant nod>
“Do you think that drink sounds like “Cow piss?”

Fabulous. How exactly does one professionally answer that question? The worst part was, in the States, class would have been over at that point. Talking about cow piss with 13 year olds in class would have been a great way to ensure mayhem. In my school, they just sat there politely and discussed it. Maybe “piss” has a different ring to it in Japanese?…

Later that week at the same school, I ran a class by myself, as my co-teacher had to go hunt down a missing student. We began with a game where every student (9th graders) had to think up a question to ask me; it could be anything, and points were awarded by difficulty of question. Usually for this kind of activity, students will parrot questions from dialogues in the book, like “What do you want to be in the future?” and “Which do you like better, dog or cat?” Then I get this gem:

“Stephanie-sensei. You look like you are in shape. How many times a week do you exercise?”

For a split second there, I swear I thought I was being hit on. I have to say, this question was a side splitter for me, as a) it was coming from a 14 year old girl that I see maybe once every other month and b) there is no way that she got that from the book, and that just tickles me pink.

Here’s a brief video of Steph teaching a class on Ghanaian music last weekend. The sound seems to be a second behind the video (a problem I seem to have with all the videos I upload to YouTube), but you get the idea.

[youtube 4cYuIucnWEc]