This entry marks the beginning of an attempt to change my daily routine here. On the days that I have no pressing plans after work, I will stay in the office until the Japanese staff leaves (which is consistently a pretty long time), and study Japanese or write an update . . . as I am now doing. Reason being is that I get no internet here and the staff is busy trying to close up, so I won’t have any distractions from taking care of things that require more attention than facebook and internet antics.
Life since my last update, life has been pretty good. Last weekend I got to enjoy a three-day weekend and made good use of it. On Halloween I went to another school’s Halloween party and had a great time. I enjoyed meeting different staff and students and getting to know them a bit. Most of them were really nice and helped me have a good time. It was also cool to see what another school looked like and I was made really jealous by how much bigger a lot of the classrooms were than ours at Nakayama and that their AC was stronger. My envy isn’t very far reaching though. I like my staff and students too much to care bout room size or AC output.
After the school party, some friends and I headed to Tokyo to meet up with other friends and do some partying there. It was a pretty good time as ended up in a club that had good music, but was packed like sardines. I have to be sure to avoid clubbing here for big party holidays. Its as if there are no fire capacity laws here and I am getting over the fact real quick -_-
On Monday I headed to a city at the base of Mount Fuji with my head teacher to catch some different views of the fall leaves. It was absolutely breathtaking. I have never experienced the sight of fall leaves on this grand of a scale before. You know the colors I’m sure, and the sight stretched on for as far as the eye could see from the spots we stopped at. I will never forget the beauty of that day. I hope to share it with you sometime in some way.
On Tuesday, I went to Kamakura once again and was able to catch the “Grand Buddha” amidst perfect weather this time. I got some great pics and it was a good afternoon. Walking around the town afterward and having dinner was nostalgic for some reason though. I felt the same way I did as the times I walked the streets of Julian or Colonial Williamsburg. It was kinda cool. Imma have to go back next month to see other shrines and see how that feels lol.
Work has gone really well this week. It has been pretty “go go go” the whole time, but I am in good spirits and have been getting my rest. Relations with my co-workers and a large proportion of my students feel as if they are getting better and it makes me really happy. I am so thankful for the state of my life right now and I plan to keep working hard in order to feel like I have earned this sense of satisfaction. I know I am far from being a good teacher, and I will continue to strive for being the best I can possibly be. I want my students to be the most accomplished of any that study the language. I will do my best and we shall see how I do.
A freakin cute thing happened today though. I was teaching my 6-7 year old class and I was at the part of the lesson where we were going over letters. For kids that young, we have a letter song to help them remember letters and their specific sound in a somewhat enjoyable fashion. Ex: “I says ih ih ih, I says ih ih ih, I says ih ih ih, I is found in . . . (and choose a word the starts with I).” Well I was at a loss for a word they would understand and as I was searching my brain for a good choice, one of my girls said “igirisu.” Igirisu is the Japanese word for England and the phonetic start is exactly the same as “I”. I was overcome laughter and congratulated her on her creativity. It was an exceptionally cute teacher moment.
For the oncoming weekend I have no plans beyond hip-hop and living life to the fullest. I’ll let you know how it goes ^_^
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