Archive for October, 2014
October 9, 2004 – Sideways rain
Posted by Barniferous in Kawasaki Nova, Life in Japan, Teaching English on October 9, 2014
Today was my last big topic voice class. I woke up early to transfer my resume presentation files to a disk. I then went through my usual routine of eating, showering, visiting, hanging out, and getting to work. When I got to work I realized that I had left my disk at home, and didn’t have enough time to go back and get it. Time well wasted.
Fortunately, in the 3 hours of preparation time, I managed to remember the key points. Without my visual aids I pulled a 90 minute presentation out of my ass. Overall it was well received. Resume voice allowed the students to practice past tense sentences for their accomplishments, and there was a lot of work with adjectives. The students were really surprised to learn that in Canada, you aren’t supposed to put information like your age, height, weight, and marital status on a resume. I was surprised that such information was common to include in Japan.
The other notable event today was my first typhoon. My students were explaining that it was the worst typhoon to hit the area in about 10 years. It was raining and windy when I got to work, but I had no idea what a typhoon could do until my dinner break came. I went outside with my umbrella into crazy winds so strong that the rain was coming sideways. My umbrella was instantly turned inside out and nearly pulled from my hands. When I walked around some corners, the wind was so strong it almost knocked me over. I had never experienced a storm so intense before!
Due to the strong winds and rain, several train lines shut down. This had a positive effect on NOVA, as students couldn’t really go anywhere, so they booked into any lessons that had space or hung out in the Voice classroom. Fortunately for me, Nanbu line was not affected so I could go home on my regular train.
My experience with the typhoon was relatively mild compared to other parts of Japan. There was property damage across the country and reports that two people died. Nature can really be terrifying at times!
October 8, 2004 – Researching bad resumes
Posted by Barniferous in Teaching English on October 8, 2014
On the Saturday coming up I will be doing a two period special topic voice on resumes. When my shift ended, I went to the internet cafe to do some research on good and bad resumes using www.monster.ca. After about 3 hours of research, copying, pasting (with minimal procrastination), I had plenty of material to build into a presentation.
October 6, 2004 – Last good kids class
Posted by Barniferous in Kawasaki Nova, Teaching English, Uncategorized on October 6, 2014
Today was the official last day of teaching my Wednesday kids class. Georgia will be taking over the class, so we did a team teach so she could get used to the kids. At the end of the class, I got them to pose for a group picture, and gave them all Canada pencils. I then told them in English (and basic Japanese) that today was my last day teaching them because I was moving to Shizuoka. They all looked really sad. This is the first group of kids that I actually connected with as a teacher, so it was sad for me too.
After my next class, one of the staff told me that some of the students from my class had left a message on the whiteboard for me. I went to the kids classroom and saw that they had filled the entire board with a goodbye message for me. (the picture is above)
For the first time in my year of teaching in Japan, I actually felt like a good kids teacher.
October 5, 2004 – A bomb with skull and crossbones
Posted by Barniferous in Drinking, Friends and coworkers, Karaoke, Lux on October 5, 2014
Today was another rainy day in Kawasaki. Lux is leaving for vacation to Canada for 3 weeks on Wednesday. Before she leaves, Zoe and I decided to take her out for dinner at Gyukaku. Yum!
After yet another fantastic dinner of grilled awesomeness at Gyukaku, we went out to karaoke at a place close to Noborito station on the Tama River. I can’t remember the name, but it was great! The song selection was huge; I sang the theme from Sesame Street, 21st Century Digital Boy by Bad Religion, and Sugar by System of a Down.
The drink menu was also huge, with a very long list of different cocktails available. The ingredients for each were all written in Japanese. I could only understand about half of the menu, but one drink caught my attention. The picture showed a clear, bubbly drink that looked like a gin and tonic. However, there was a picture of a bomb with a skull and crossbones next to the drink. Taking this as a challenge instead of a warning, I ordered the mysterious cocktail.
For the record, I have never tried drinking industrial strength drain cleaner before, but I am pretty sure that it tastes better than the bomb cocktail. Blerg!
October 4, 2004 – The heater is on
Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan on October 4, 2014
The temperature dropped about 10 degrees overnight, and it didn’t warm up at all today. I now have my heater on as I am typing this in my room. Since I don’t have internet in my room at the moment, I am creating blog updates on my PC, saving them to my memory stick, and then uploading them when I go to the internet cafe.
It was cold and rainy all day, so I really couldn’t be bothered to do anything other than watch a whole lot of CSI. I will try to do something productive tomorrow.
Probably.
October 3, 2004 – Mick Foley debates
Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan, Teaching English on October 3, 2014
Today I did my first level check, and it was fun! The student seemed really nervous, but I would probably also be nervous if I suddenly had to speak a second language to a native speaker for 20 minutes.
After work I went to the internet cafe “just for an hour”. I caught up on a lot of old email, and then found a streaming video of pro wrestlers Mick Foley and John Bradshaw Layfield debating about the upcoming US election. No chairs or elbow drops were used. It was refreshing to see two wrestlers sounding intelligent and well informed, which is much different than the characters they play in the ring. The WWE gets a lot of grief from people, but they do a lot to encourage people to vote.
I ended up leaving after spending four hours in the internet cafe. Stupid entertaining internet.
October 1, 2004 – New textbook
Posted by Barniferous in Kawasaki Nova, Teaching English on October 1, 2014
I was not at my best after last evening’s festivities. Thankfully, my hangover headache went away just before my group kids class started.
Today was the first day of the new NOVA textbook. The new textbooks are currently only available for low level students, but we did receive a set of good lesson plans to use with the existing outdated textbook for mid and high level students. The new plans are a big improvement over some of the teacher created lessons that are currently being used. This should greatly cut down on lesson prep time and open up a lot of old lessons for students who are stuck in level.
So far there is a mixed reaction to the new textbooks and lesson plans. Students are not used to the new method, and don’t want to pay for new teaching material. Teachers who have created some of their own good lessons are not keen to follow a script in the classroom. Nobody likes change, but I think that when people get used to the new lessons they will like them.
Drinking in Japan 
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