Toni's 10 Day Challenge

So I am painfully aware of how much I have been neglecting this blog since I came to Japan, but I plan to change all that starting from today! For the next ten days I will be posting lengthy blog posts about my first year in Japan. I have already begun to write my first post and hopefully will have it up when I get back from school today (9 hours time).
Comments welcome :)

Halloween Lesson in Tamba

So recently, I was asked to do a Halloween themed lesson at one of my elementary schools. It was only a couple of days in advance, but thanks to the local ¥100 store, I managed to find a few props, including a couple of costumes (capes, hats, masks). There was some kind of school outing that day, so only a couple of the classes were around. I ended up teaching fifth and sixth grades jointly. This is definitely the smallest school I teach at. But we had fun. After I gave my presentation, we had a Halloween costume race. This is a great idea for a cultural class given to ten-year-olds. Two kids, one from each grade, raced to see who could put on their costumes the fastest and when they were finished, the homeroom teacher was there, armed with a camera. So when they had finished, with maybe a minute left until the end of class, I turned to the kids and said. "I think one more." I then turned to the camera toting homeroom teachers, eager for the next snapshot and said "I think that sensei should have a go!" The cheering this got was epic. The teachers took their places at the starting line and I handed the camera to one of the students. To be fair on the teachers, they were great sports, posing for the camera in their undersized capes and masks. That's what I like about my elementary schools; you can just let loose and have fun!
By contrast, when it came to do my junior-high school lessons, it was decidedly more serious. The second-year students are a little less lively, though I knew they responded well to games. I tried to get a mix of different things in the lesson; history, culture, new vocab and games. The games were at the front of the class plan and I came up with the idea of making a Feely Box, like the ones my parents used to make for Halloween parties. The idea was, I would teach the class the words for Heart, Hand, Eyeballs and Brain and then get them to guess what was in the box. Thinking that that's what I really had in the box was enough to freak them out. I spoke to my parents about it the night before and they suggested lychees for the eyeballs, but being unsure where to obtain them, how to ask for them in Japanese or even how to spell it properly, I opted for grapes instead. The heart was easy: a hastily peeled tomato that I accidently took great chunks out of, but still felt gross, and then a washing-up glove filled with water and frozen for (duh) a hand. The brain was a bit trickier. How was I supposed to recreate the texture and general ickiness of the real thing? A damp sponge soaked in cooking oil later, I still wasn't convinced. But it turns out I needn't have worried. The class found it creepier than any of the others. So creepy in fact that when one lad recoiled his hand in shock, he accidentally pulled the sponge out of the hole. The magic disappeared fairly quickly after that when it became obvious that I didn't have real blood and guts in the box but some weird kitchen ingredients I had bought the day before. Still, it was fun while it lasted and there were a few flinches and screams that will keep me grinning all the way 'til Halloween!
And the best part: I'm doing it again tomorrow with the first-years!

It's all about FOOD!

I love my weekends in Japan. They are times when I can hang out in some of the most fantastic cities in the world. Sightseeing in Kyoto on Friday, shopping in Osaka on Saturday, party in Kobe on Saturday night. And if I'm feeling adventurous, I may stray further afield to Nara, Gifu, Tokyo and even all the way up in the Tohoku region (not an easy thing to do in one weekend!)

But whenever I come back from these places and tell my Japanese coworkers about it, I guarantee that this conversation will ensue:

Me: "Hi! I went to (insert Japanese city here) this weekend."
JapCo: Oh really? Did you eat (food these cities are famous for)?

From black beans to okonomiyaki, it seems that every single town and city in Japan boasts a famous food that you absolutely MUST eat when you visit. In fact sometimes when I've been out with Japanese friends, finding and eating this famous food is often first on their list of priorities. Which is probably why when I admit that I didn't try them when I went off sightseeing, they look disappointed and the conversation dies there before I can tell them about the other things I saw.

For a nation that boasts the lowest obesity rate in the world, it is astonishing how preoccupied they all are with food. When the Olympics ended this summer, British gold medalists appeared on daytime TV programmes to give interviews or hand out prizes on kids shows. What did the Japanese medalists do? They appeared on late night shows and were asked to eat increasingly bizarre foods while the panel of hosts "oohed" and "aahed" impressively. And when current celebrities aren't stuffing themselves, it's the regular hosts who regularly wolf down various foods while the audience and misc make the appropriate noises, as though food is an entirely new concept to them.

Whenever I turn on the TV, I can guarantee there's a cooking show on one of the main channels. One of the first questions I am always asked is "what Japanese food do you like?" And everyone is always impressed that I can cook for myself.

Now don't get me wrong, I like food and Japanese food is delicious, but I'd rather talk about the beautiful temples and buildings I visited. So please don't stop talking to me just because I wasn't hungry!

My First Enkai and Karaoke

I started school at the beginning of September, but for the first couple of weeks we had the Sports Festival. So I didn't really do any work. I just lounged around, helped to build tents, broke a tent, learned a new dance from the students and got sunburn.

As soon as it was finished, the teachers whisked me off for an enkai. I'd been told what to expect during this and what etiquette and behaviour was expected of me and I think I did pretty well. I don't know if I got lucky and was placed in a generally relaxed school, but a lot of things happened that night that I certainly wasn't expecting....

First off, one of the teachers brought with him a video of the highlights of the festival that day and, as there was a TV in the room, we hooked it up and I listened to them laughing and taking the mickey out of the students that messed up or looked silly (which I thought was quite mean).

Then it got weird.

While we were watching the students on the video making human pyramids, some of the teachers began to wonder if they could still do it too. Before I knew it, in the middle of this elegant party room was a human pyramid comprising some of the older teachers and the (female) principal on the very top!

After these rather astonishing acrobatics were over (seriously! One or two of those guys had to be my grandmother's age!) we headed off to a little karaoke bar on the other side of town. It was a nice little place, kind of like a lounge bar and there was already a group of tipsy middle-aged men there howling into a mike. The teachers took it in turns to sing slow love-songs (from what I could gather, still not having much Japanese under my belt, but the videos looked pretty sappy) and persuaded me to pick something from the English section. I was torn. I was actually quite a good singer, but I'd never done Karaoke before, so I was torn between following the trend and picking a slow song like they had done and hope I sounded okay, or do something totally different and possibly make an idiot of myself. It was basically a choice between showing off my voice or throwing myself in and enjoying the party for what it was.

I went for the latter and did something that, had I been in Western company, would have meant committing social suicide. I sang 'Wannabe' by the Spice Girls. And I brought down the house!

ALTS assemble!!

Yeah, it's been a while.
I figured I had better start updating this page for people who want to know a bit more about what I'm doing here. So, I'll start at the very beginning (a very good place to start...).
So, after an arduous twelve-hour flight (seriously, how does anyone sleep in those seats!?) we arrived in Narita airport, Tokyo.
It still hadn't sunk in that I was in Japan. I could have done a full loop and got back off at Heathrow for all I knew (or cared at the point in time, so jet-lagged was my brain). We got to the Keio Plaza hotel which is easily the posh-est hotel I have ever stayed in!

After we'd explored our rooms and nosied in our bathrooms (and pondered over the over-complicated toilet) we went out to explore Shinjuku.

That was when it hit me.

 

This guy was part of a dance-off between two (later four) teams dancing to various j-rock/pop songs and at the very end they all got together and had one massive dance. On the other side of the park was some sort of concert featuring a buff bloke and a girl with a squeaky voice. There was also free beer :) At least, I think it was free, I don't remember paying...

 

After about half an hour of happily wandering through the city, it occurred to me to ask the girls in front if they knew where we were going. They did. They brought us to the gorgeous Meiji Jingu shrine. There were a lot of foreign tourists there and the red-and-white donned shrine maidens spoke really good English. We stayed there for quite a while. However, it didn't occur to us to ask the girls in front if they knew the way back and when we lost them a while later, we had to find our own way back on the subway, thankfully with the help of another Japanese lady who spoke excellent English.

When I got back to the hotel later that night, after more beer and nibbles, I was buzzing and really thought there was no way I would sleep that night as I lay down on the comfy bed. When I opened my eyes seven hours later, my first thought was "Huh. Whaddya know..."