Japan! (Finally)

Konnichiwa from Japan! 

It is officially my 65th day in Japan and I am blogging for the first time here. It is a bit overwhelming to consider detailing all that I've experienced since coming here, so I won't go into all the details, but hopefully from here on out I'll do better at keeping you all up-to-date.

A rough outline:

-August 2nd: Arrival in japan

-August 3rd-5th: JET orientation in Tokyo. We were staying a really nice hotel in Tokyo, the Keio Plaza, where the orientation took place. This means, I barely left the hotel except one or two quick trips to the convenience store (conbini) and one day where I walked around the neighborhood for about an hour to check it out and buy a watch. The orientation was full of workshops, seminars, loads of speeches and ceremonies, and parties, all of which was quite overwhelming with jet lag. 

-August 5th: Travelled to Nara with the other new Nara JETs from our Group B arrival and orientation (about 15 of us) on the shinkansen (aka the bullet train)! As you know, it goes REALLY fast. I actually had to pull the blinds downs on my window for the part of the trip because I was feeling a bit nauseous and I don't generally ever get motion sickness. When we arrived in Nara, exhausted after the long orientation and being jetlagged and waking up at about 4:30 a.m., we had a short orientation specific to Nara. Then our supervisors showed up to meet us for the first time and we had to all introduce ourselves in Japanese. I can't really explain how uncomfortable I felt at this point. I was so exhausted, physically and mentally, experiencing all the stress of being in a new country where everyone speaks a language I don't understand, dressed very formally, incredibly nervous about meeting my supervisors and making a good impression after learning so much (but also so little) about Japanese customs and expectations, and now was going to have to introduce myself in Japanese for the first time ever. Our supervisors came in the room, we survived the introductions, and within 10 minutes I was in the backseat of a car with one of my awesome new supervisors (I have two), Masako. Still a bit formal and nervous, I felt immensely relieved. It turned out, of course, that they were really nice and seemed to want more than anything to make sure I was comfortable and get me home to my new apartment so I could rest and relax. 

After I began to settle in and unpack, I went out to dinner that evening with three other girls who live in my building. We have a really unique (for the JET program) situation here in our part of Nara City, Saidaiji, as there are six JETs living in one apartment building. Three of us are new and three are continuing. 

-August 6th-31st:

Starting August 6th, and continuing for the next three weeks, I worked each day from about 8:00-3:00 at the Board of Education in Nara City Hall. The other Saidaiji JETs and I would all sit in a one small room and work on lesson plans and just talk about life in Japan. In the first week, we met our other supervisor, Tsuruta-sensei, signed our contracts, and made lots of formal introductions with the office staff, the superintendent, and the some of the schools we would begin working at in September. During these weeks, we also spent a lot of time going on errands with one of our supervisors, Masako. Also, the clarify, Masako is more like our 'daily life' supervisor. She is always available and helps us out with all of our daily life issues. Tsuruta-sensei is more like our work supervisor, she works at the Board of Education and handles the scheduling and more formal issues. There is a lot of cross-over though and both are supervisors for our jobs and generally available to help with what ever we need. So, Masako helped us set-up cell phones, internet, rent, bank accounts, and more. I forgot to mention that the day I arrived in Nara she also took me to the grocery store and walked around with me for about an hour explaining everything and answering all my questions. This was so amazingly helpful as grocery shopping in a foreign country can be hugely stressful as many of you know. Especially when it is so difficult to even read words in Japanese in order to look them up. 

During these few weeks, we also went to many seminars with our supervisors for elementary school teachers. Japan is in the process of promoting an English education system in elementary schools called 'Hello English.' Beginning in 2011, english education will be mandatory in elementary schools, whereas now english education starts in junior high. Right now, many of these schools have english programs, but now they all have too and they are trying to make the programs more standardized.

-September 1st-today:

The 2nd term for the school year began September 1st. My base school is Miato Junior High school, but I also often teach at Miato Elementary school. They are a model school for the prefecture in which the government is testing new methods such as integrating the two schools, so currently they share some teachers. For example two junior high school english teachers and I go teach at the elementary school, and the computer teacher from the elementary school team-teaches with home room teachers at the junior high school. 

I teach 5th and 6th grade at the elementary school. The classes are team-taught by a junior high school english teacher (Ogita-sensei for 6th grade and Nakasuka-sensei for 5th grade) and I along with the homeroom teacher. In most classes the homeroom teacher doesn't actually teach much during the english lesson because most don't speak much english. I actually prefer those classes because three teachers is a lot for one class! 

I teach 7th and 8th grade at the junior high school, which is actually called 1st and 2nd grade here. Instead of 1st grade through 8th through 12th grade, they have 1st-6th grade at the elementary schools, 1st-3rd grade at the junior high schools, and 1st-3rd grade at the high schools. For 7th and 8th grade I am team-teaching conversational english with Ueda-sensei. Students have this class 1 hour every week, and they have 3.5 hours/week or english lessons focused on grammar and vocabulary. The conversation classes are actually another 'experiment' so-to-speak. The students don't receive grades for the class and there is no curriculum. We are free to do what we want to get students actually speaking. It has been interesting trying to think of ways to motivate them. The easy way is prizes, which we do, but both of us want to find ways to actually motivate students to want to learn for more lasting reasons than getting a prize at the end of class or the term. Whatever we can do to actually get them speaking is a start though.

On Mondays, starting today, I will visit other schools around Nara, primarily elementary schools. Today, I visited Tsubai elementary, the oldest elementary school in Nara, established in 1872. That actually doesn't sound that impressive when you consider that Nara is about to celebrate its 1300th anniversary next year...It was a lot fun though and the school is located in the middle of the old part of the city.

Well that is all I'll update for today, need to finish my laundry and get to bed. Next time I'll share more about what I've been doing outside of classes as well as what its like working in a Japanese school and learning to live in Japan. 

Take care,

Katie

P.S. Here are the few photos I've uploaded so far.  They're all from August, and there are none from school yet. Hopefully I'll get a lot more uploaded in the next couple weeks!