CPR Certified

The other day at one of my middle schools I caught a bad migraine during the middle of first class.  I somehow managed to crawl through that and 2 more classes before dying in the health room.  Normally I try to carry two migraine aspirin on me because I know that I can get migraines randomly... at least, random as far as I know.

I managed to pick myself up for the last two periods when some firefighters came to the school and taught one of the 9th grade classes CPR.  I participated, and if I understood the teacher right, I'll be getting certification for CPR!  In Japanese!  So for a while, I'll be certified for CPR in both the states and Japan.  Right now there's no difference between the two countries, although I know that in the states they are quickly going towards getting rid of the breaths.  Not sure how I feel about that, because if the reason I heard for that is true, it's a little silly I think.  Supposedly they want to get rid of the two breaths because people in general aren't doing them correctly.  It makes sense, and doesn't at the same time.  Anyway I'm done digressing!

This is some place that you can do something at (vague description because I don't know if it's a shop/restaurant/barber/etc).  Not much explanation needed on why I uploaded it right!  This is in a city called Sendai, which is about 3 hours away from me.  Good old Japanese people and their use of Engrish!




I'll end by showing you two entries from my students' summer journals.  The randomness of the first one is great, while the feelings of the second one should be worth a literal lol.

I went to a bus stop.  I cleaned it.  I was sleepy.  I was tired.
――――――――
We played the last soccer game.  Our team lost the game to the Oshima team by a score of 9 to 2.  As long as I live, I’ll never forget how bitterly vexed I was.

心肺蘇生法【しんぱいそせいほう】 (shin/pai/so/sei/hou)   (n) cardiopulmonary resuscitation; CPR

Speech Results

Let's see if I can get this blog up and off before I have to get going today.

The Sendai speech contest went pretty good.  My student ended up getting 5th place in the recitation part out of 17, which was good enough for a certificate and recognition on stage.  She was happy she got that high, and I think she deserved it.  What was stupid is that I had to take paid leave in order to go to the speech.  I had to pay my own way to get there and everything else.  Actually I don't care about paying my own way, it's that I had to take paid leave when it was obviously a school event for which I spent a lot of time preparing for.  Good old Japanese education system.  It's full of so many holes it makes Swiss cheese look solid.

They're putting an air conditioner in my apartment in around 2 weeks.  Thank you landlord for installing it a few weeks after it'll be worthless for the good part of half a year.  At least I have it for when summer strikes!  I really hate the humidity...

I am a little jealous of the teachers in my textbooks.  Yeah they're all cartoons but all their students are sitting there listening attentively, all the students are interested in the teacher, and the lessons all go really smoothly.  I can't blame the students though, I didn't care about class when I was in middle school either.

So nice... sigh..

This is how I wish classes would go.  Everyone smiles and listens to what's being said, the students are interested in the teacher, and I'd rather go to work in the morning instead of sleep in.  The textbooks paint such a pretty picture, who wouldn't want to come over and teach English to all these bright and wonderful kids!

THE DEVIL CHILD

But this is how it is a lot of the time.  Students don't really talk much, and even if I address them in Japanese they run off.  It's like they know I've been to Fukushima and they don't want to catch radiation poisoning from me.  Ok that was a horrible joke, but explaining it any other way might make their apprehension my fault, and I sure as hell don't want to take the blame :)

Yay 5th

Here is a picture of my Japanese English teacher, my student and myself after she won 5th place.  I might be being too careful about this, but if somehow my student goes missing and they find a picture of her here, my ass is immediately a suspect, so yeah.  Getting 5th place out of 17 people who respectively won their speech contests is pretty good!  I'm happy.



Kentucky fried chicken is hella expensive here!

優秀賞【ゆうしゅうしょう】 (yuushuushou)   (n) award of excellence; merit award

Continuing Forward

Some interesting stuff this time around.

First off, I think I enabled it so even if you aren't a member of Blogspot you can make comments on my posts.  Not sure if anyone is really following, but if you are, and are reading this, and are too lazy to make an account, but still want to comment on my posts, NOW YOU CAN!  Bam!

The other day a student came up to show me a picture she drew.  It was actually pretty good, and I was going to comment on how well of a self portrait she drew, until she jumped in after I said "That's" and said "This is a picture of a pig rabbit!  Do you know what a pig rabbit is?"  That day I was very happy that she interrupted me.

The SY who got first in the speech contest a while ago is going to a city called Sendai next week.  Sendai is the biggest city in our prefecture and the speech contest there is a big deal.  Her English for the speech she's doing is amazing.  She actually corrects everything I tell her to and I think if she doesn't lose to her nerves she has a chance of taking first place.  Of course if she takes first place it will be all thanks to me.  They really should put my name on the trophy, in bigger letters than her name!  Ha, but I am looking forward to it, and am rather nervous for her.

I think it's become a tradition that I lose my camera in any foreign country I go over to teach English at.  Pretty sure I brought a camera over to Taiwan, just to lose it most likely in some restaurant.  After that I bought a camera in Taiwan that was cool beans.  Then I went to Korea and lost the camera I bought in Taiwan on a bus somewhere.  I then bought a new camera in Korea that was even cooler beans.  Now here in Japan I lost the camera I bought in Korea and I have no idea where it is.  I don't have any beans anymore.

Blueberries from Hilsboro, Oregon!

In a supermarket, another ALT I was with, Tara, found Oregon blueberries and pointed them out to me.  I did buy them, and will continue to.  Awesome way to support Oregon all the way from Japan!

Wonder how long the line is

This is pretty useful if you're a woman in this department store and your period decides to bust in out of nowhere (or bust out).  Other than that, I can't imagine they get all that much business...

Mt. Bandai camping are

Over the weekend I went on a camping trip to a place called Bandai... or at least that's what the mountain's name was.  The resort was awesome.  I don't really like hang out events with a large amount of people so I probably won't go again, on the off chance I decide to stay here 2 years... which I'm not planning to by the way.  But if I did, I don't think I'd go again.  That said, it was still pretty fun!

Red, green and some other colors lake... river?

We hiked up Mt. Bandai, but I only made it around 80% of the way up because I wanted to go to a museum that was around before they closed.  Bandai was a nice mountain, but it confirmed how much I hate mountain climbing.  I won't be doing it again.  Unless I learn how to fly.




I'm starting to really settle down here for the most part which is awesome for me, and it took about the amount of time I thought it would.  Good fun experience!  If for whatever reason you need something new to do and have a bachelor's degree, I suggest teaching English overseas.  I think a select few places have things like Summer programs and such.

I'm going to meet a 24 year old Japanese doctor tonight for drinking/dinner.  Hope it works out well.

ブタサギ (butasagi) pig rabbit

Speech Contest

Sometimes I wonder if the small/big things I do with people will be remembered by them in the far future.  10 years later, will someone remember a one-liner I randomly said that I don't even remember anymore?  Will they remember a random night, a conversation, or something I helped them with?

Near since the day I got to Kesennuma (the city I'm living in), I have been helping two middle schools with two students each for a speech contest.  That contest was yesterday (Wednesday) and the results are as follows (withholding names, sorry)... oh by the way there were 2 sections of the contest, the first was recitation, where students could pick a passage, memorize it and vomit it back to the crowd.  The second section was a speech section where students wrote their own speeches, translated them into English, and then puked them back on to the crowd.  And now for results!

Recitation
SY: 1st out of 25.
SH: 7th out of 25

Speech
TY: 2nd out of 5
OC: 3rd out of 5

This was really awesome as the student who won first actually wanted to win first.  She had a goal to go on to a bigger speech contest, which she could do if she won first.  Freaking sweet!  I felt a little bad for SH who got 7th, as they handed out trophies to the top 6.  As happy as I am that my students did well, I must say that these speech contests aren't so much determined by the work of the ALT(Assistant Language Teacher, aka me) but rather by the students' innate ability and motivation.  This is obvious by the fact that us native English speaking teachers don't see all that much improvement in the things we try to teach them.  That said, out of all the other ALTs, I had the most students win something, which means I am the best teacher out of all of us.  OH YES IT'S TRUE YOU PUNKS!!!

I am happy that it's over though.  I was staying up to 3 hours later than I am normally scheduled to in order to help with the contest.  It's over, and I can finally go home on time now!  I would post pictures, but you're not supposed to post pictures of students.  Maybe I'll black their faces out and post them later, if I'm not lazy.

On an even more exciting note, with the help of another teacher (Rachel) I figured out how to tether my phone, which means I now have INTERNET!  This has been the most exciting thing to happen to me since arriving in Japan.  Banzai!

優勝【ゆうしょう】 (yuushou)   (n,vs) overall victory; championship;

More Orientations

So I have internet for a few days because I'm in a dormitory right now.  I've been shipped down to a bigger city (Sendai) for another orientation.  It's only the first day but it's been pretty cool.  Well not really, the air conditioning is set seemingly on the lowest setting and I am sweating buckets.  Gotta dry clean my suit soon, it's gone like a week without any washing and I've been sweating in it.  Freaking gross but there is no time to get it dry cleaned since I've been needing it at least every other day.

On another note, all the new teachers played Jeopardy tonight at the orientation's dinner reception and I was able to put my team in second place as I was the only one who knew the last question, which was "what is the word for 'wisdom tooth' in Japanese?"  Oh yeah, that definitely leveled up my badassness.

親知らず【おやしらず】 (oya shirazu)    (n) wisdom tooth

Pretty sure this should have been posted back on Sunday.  It's been a while because I don't have internet and I'm not sure when I'll be able to get it since I guess the tsunami took out some of the wires for it that are needed in my apartment.  Hopefully I should have it soon, unless my supervisor doesn't know what he's talking about.

I got to my city Kesennuma on Wednesday and the next few days were spent getting all the things done needed for new life assimilation.  Bank account, phone, alien registration card, shopping, car and other random things.  Of note, I am getting my car Tuesday possibly and it will be the first car I've ever personally owned and bought woohoo!  It's a cheap one at around $1,200 but it works.  Also I bought a smartphone which is the first one of those I've ever had.  Thank you Japan!

Yesterday I got to take my first real shot at Pachinko.  Pachinko is a game where you try to get these BB gun bullet-like balls into certain areas on this pin filled obstacle course.  It is mostly all luck and not very fun if you get the newer machines where you just hold a circular lever down while the balls come out.  Tara, another ALT (assistant language teacher, the jargon for my job) and I both decided to donate 500 yen (roughly $6.50 USD) to this new experience.  We ended up at a machine that featured big breasted girls skiing down mountains and fighting robots in swimming pools while dressed in bikinis.  Within maybe 5 minutes we had exhausted all our pachinko balls, smiled at each other and walked out of the parlor.  One of the attendants came out telling us to come back in for some reason, which we did, and when we sat back down he pressed a button that gave us a steady stream of pachinko balls to play with that lasted for around 20 straight minutes.  We didn't know what we were doing or how much we were winning, but at the end we had quadrupled our money!  We went from 500 yen each to 2000 yen each ($25)  I got a new wallet and a free drink with cookies plus my original 500 yen back.  It was a sweet experience, but not sure I can go back and try again.  I came out ahead, and that's not likely to happen again with those types of gambling games!

I'm meeting my schools for the next two days (Monday August 8th, Tuesday the 9th).  Should be interesting.  Hoping the English teachers I'll be working with are awesome.  If not I will still be stuck with them for a year!

恵み【めぐみ】    (n) blessing; grace;

Getting Ready

Over the past few weeks I've been in contact with people from my city, figuring out what I should be doing, what I should bring and how life works over there.  They've all been really awesome and answered my long list of questions without telling me to shut up so I'm very appreciative.

I need to pick up some casual work clothes and take pictures of a bunch of things like buildings and such.  Also need to pick up some omiyage (presents) for the teachers I'll be working with.  After that it'll just be meeting up with people, saying goodbye and getting ready finally.

So far everything is in order!

耐久【たいきゅう】 (taikyuu) - endurance; persistence;

Road to Japan: Recap of Previous Years

Kyoto
So, to remind myself, the first time I went to Japan was during my time at Mt. Hood Community College with Chiko Sensei’s (RIP) class. It was fun and I went to Kyoto. Met a lot of cool people, all of who I lost contact with after about a year. It was for 3 weeks between June and July of 2003.

NOVA
The next time I went to Japan was with a company called NOVA. NOVA was an Eikaiwa (English conversation school, lit. English conversation). Lucky me, I arrived right as the company was going bankrupt, and experienced it first hand, missing paychecks and living 4 months off something around $2,000. I was in a city called Fujisawa and worked in a city called Futamatagawa. I met some cool people there too, again, none of who I really talk to anymore, but such are the consequences of distance. I was there from August to November of 2007.

Korea and Again Japan
I spent a year in Korea teaching, then worked for a year trying to decide what I wanted to do. I tried going back to school for a few things that put me to sleep faster than anesthesia. To date, I’ve settled on nursing. Still semi-feeling the sting of not being able to spend a year in Japan, I thought I’d try my hand at going back. It proved to be a difficult endeavor. I tried applying for the JET program with a friend, but neither of us even managed an interview. I applied to a lot of places after this with either no reply or replies but no interview. I finally got some interviews but they were again for Eikaiwas, and I felt that if I was going to go back, I wanted to teach at a public school. I applied for Interac, an ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) program, got the interview, and not much more. Bastards. After applying to Interac but before getting to the interview, I applied to the JET program again. My application this year was worse than last year’s, the attempt was a total blind dart throw… that managed to hit bullseye.

JET Interview
I got the interview which was awesome. Going into it, I had a bad cold that left me coughing every five seconds. I mega overdosed on cough drops in order to completely redecorate my throat with menthol. The interview consisted of 3 people, a former JET, a Japanese man who I think worked for the embassy in Portland, and some other guy who I don’t remember. The cough drop party worked for the most part and I got through the interview. A month and a half later, I got an email saying they had hired me. Sweet! To be honest, I was more or less considering JET as my last attempt to get to Japan. Lucky it was indeed, my last attempt.

節約【せつやく】 (setsuyaku) – Economising; saving