Archive for category Teaching English
April 8, 2004 – Sprinting in a suit
Posted by Barniferous in Kawasaki Nova, Keikyu-Kawasaki NOVA, Teaching English on April 8, 2014
Today was a chaotic day. The fun all started at 4:00am, when I was woken up by some drunk gaijins playing soccer in the street right outside my window. There is no grass anywhere nearby, so the sounds of the soccer players and the ball were bouncing off all the concrete. After about 5 minutes of listening to kicking and bouncing, I went outside and asked them very nicely to move their game, which they did. It took me about an hour to get back to sleep.
Before work I tried to get some Playstation time. While playing, I spilled a 600ml bottle of Coke on the floor. My lightning fast video game reflexes allowed me to pick it up very quickly, which caused Coke to spray everywhere in the room. I got Coke on my futon, couch, clothes, Playstation controller, CDs and stereo.
I got everything cleaned up and expected that the rest of the day would move along smoothly. WRONG. Just before leaving Hello House I got a call from work telling me that due to some scheduling issues, my first 2 lessons would be at Kawasaki NOVA and my last 3 lessons would be at Keikyu Kawasaki NOVA. There are 10 minutes between lessons, and walking from one school to the other takes about 5 minutes. To avoid a big rush, I left for work extra early, went to Keikyu Kawasaki NOVA and planned all my lessons. After that I went to Kawasaki NOVA and got those lessons ready. Everything was organized and there would be no panic.
At Kawasaki NOVA I taught one lesson then a Voice class, before quickly leaving the building and walked the 500 meters to Keikyu Kawasaki NOVA. When I arrived I saw that the schedule had changed, and I was now listed as having “break”. I asked the staff to confirm, so they called Kawasaki NOVA and found out that I was now on the schedule there, and had one minute to get back. Since we are fined for being late for lessons, rushed out the door and sprinted back to Kawasaki NOVA, wearing my suit and wondering how I was going to find out who I was teaching and how I would somehow pull a lesson out of my ass with no planning.
I dodged and weaved my way through the dense foot traffic and managed to get back in 3 minutes, panting and sweating. When I got inside I learned that I didn’t actually have a lesson after all. I got to spend the rest of the class period filing in the teachers room before once again leaving for Keikyu Kawasaki NOVA to finish my last two lessons. Good times!
(2014 Update) This is a good example of how disorganized the large NOVA schools could be, especially when they shared teachers with a nearby satellite branch. My job satisfaction increased a lot when I later transferred to smaller schools.
April 3, 2004 – How to call in sick
Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan, Teaching English on April 3, 2014
Today was a good day for two reasons. The first was that I got to work an early Saturday shift. The early shift runs from 10:00am to 5:40pm, leaving the entire evening free. My usual late shift is a standard 1:00pm to 9:00pm. If there is anything fun happening on a Saturday night, I always show up about 3 hours after it starts.
The second good thing was a fun special topic voice class. Inspired by my recent cold, the topic was when and how to call in sick to work. We ran through new vocabulary for some common medical conditions and had a discussion on which ones would keep you home from work. Fun fact: Japanese people rarely miss work (or English lessons) for illness. We then worked on the dos and don’ts of calling in sick when you aren’t actually sick. Some examples:
- Do have a reason that will make your employer want you to stay home – explosive diarrhea for example
- Do sound sick on the phone
- Don’t make up an illness that should have you in the hospital
- Don’t use your day off to go somewhere public where you will be seen
It was a lot of fun for both myself and the students.
The only bad part about the day was that I was stuck on the smoking floor of the internet cafe. I now completely stink like cigarette smoke.
March 31, 2004 – Daytime cold medicine rules!
Posted by Barniferous in Teaching English on March 31, 2014
My cold is getting worse! Before work I took some Life Brand daytime cold medicine shipped from Canada. Life Brand is the generic house brand available at Shoppers Drug Mart. I am pretty sensitive to the “daytime” ingredient (pseudoephedrine). This turned me from a regular English teacher into Energy Man, the most energetic English teacher in the whole country. I was speaking about 100 km/h and wildly gesturing in every direction for the duration of my 5 lessons. An English lesson with Energy Man is not something that people will soon forget.
Unfortunately for me, the cold meds wore off on the way home, killing Energy Man and leaving a sick English teacher to survive the rest of the train ride. Daytime cold medicine rules! Crashing after daytime cold medicine wears off does not.
(2014 Update) Fun fact: Daytime cold medicine in Canada still contains pseudoephedrine. In the USA, this has been largely replaced with a different ingredient that you can’t make crystal meth with.
March 27, 2004 – Falling asleep at the controller
Posted by Barniferous in Kawasaki Nova, Life in Japan, Teaching English on March 27, 2014
Tsutaya in Numazu
Saturdays at Kawasaki NOVA are brutal! It is by far the busiest day of the week, and I work 8 lessons instead of the 5 I usually work during the week as a “part time” employee. The schedule was completely filled with students.
After work I checked out Tsutaya, a huge nationwide chain that rents and sells movies, music and games. I picked up some used games for my Playstation 2: Metal Gear Solid 2 and Biohazard (Resident Evil 1). They were super cheap! Naturally, I ended up falling asleep at the controller.
(2014 Update) I didn’t have a picture of the Tsutaya in Kawasaki, so I have linked a picture of the Tsutaya in Numazu. Not that it makes a lot of difference…
March 20, 2004 – Time flies
Posted by Barniferous in Teaching English on March 20, 2014
I think the 10 minutes between classes is getting shorter every day. Today I had my ass handed to me by a very busy schedule.
(2014 Update)
Typical NOVA lessons were 40 minutes long with 10 minute breaks in between. In the 10 minutes between lessons teachers had to return to the teacher’s room, give rankings and write comments on all students, pass along the files to the next teacher or refile the student folders, check the schedule for changes, and then get ready for the next lesson. Bathroom breaks usually meant writing up comments or refiling student files later.
Most teacher’s rooms were narrow closet like environments with a bunch of people moving around quickly trying not to knock each other over. In large schools like Kawasaki there were not enough seats for all teachers to sit down between lessons, so many comments were filled out while standing and trying not to be in the way.
I liked most of the people at Kawasaki NOVA, but hated the pace of work some days.
March 19, 2004 – Australian English is just wrong
Posted by Barniferous in Teaching English on March 19, 2014
Holy crap the kids group was good again! In this case good is extremely relative, but they were still putting forth an effort. I found that the best way to get results was to time them on their activities. Everyone really wanted to beat the clock.
During the workday, I got into a lengthy, pointless, but very fun argument with other teachers over the correct pronunciation of words and letters. The Australians, in particular, did things very differently than the correct Canadian pronunciation. Seriously, who pronounces the letter “H” as “hate-ch”. We also had disagreements over Z, Adidas, Semi, and a few others.
After work the discussion continued over beers (like most good discussions), and I learned that in Australian English, to “knock off work” is to go home. This simply makes no sense, and it is no wonder that their country is overrun by kangaroos.
(2014 Update) In case my sense of humour doesn’t come across well written, I would like to state for the record that I love Aussies and their unique pronunciation and slang. It it always a surprise how two countries with similar roots can speak English so differently. And now any Aussies reading this are laughing at “roots” 🙂
March 14, 2004 – Too many foreigners in Japan!?
Posted by Barniferous in Teaching English on March 14, 2014
I worked overtime at Oomori school today. This was my first time teaching outside of Kawasaki (not counting a few post training classes in Yokohama). It is amazing the difference that a more relaxed schedule and less teachers makes in creating a totally different work environment. Seeing different students is a nice change too.
Since NOVA schools are basically just glass boxes next to each other, it is easy to see and hear what is going on in nearby classrooms. During one of my lessons, the neighbouring classroom’s teacher was doing a lesson about good and bad things about Japan. When asked “what is bad about Japan”, his student responded “There are too many foreigners”. She was also of the opinion that Japan was a dangerous country, but did not offer an opinion if the danger was due to the abundance of foreigners.
To be fair, there are likely about 1.5 – 2 million foreigners living in Japan. Most people would consider that number to be “a lot”. If you asked me to make sandwiches for 2 million people, I would say that the number is “too many”. However, compared to the 125 million ethnically Japanese people living in Japan (98.5% of all residents), 2 million is a pretty small number.
I also question the wisdom of complaining about foreigners while you are talking to foreigners in an English school that proudly advertises that all of it’s teachers are foreigners. But that’s just me 🙂
March 13, 2004 – The Great Sasuke is not always a great topic
Posted by Barniferous in Kawasaki Nova, Teaching English on March 14, 2014
The Great Sasuke
Yesterday in voice class I had some success with the topic of “The Great Sasuke”. Masanori Murakawa, aka The Great Sasuke, was a Japanese professional wrestler turned politician. Sasuke was elected to the Iwate Prefectural Assembly in 2003, and refused to remove his mask when serving in office. In fact, he rarely (if ever) removes his mask in public at all. I got the students to discuss if they thought it was okay for an elected official to wear a wrestling mask while on the job. From there the students came up with a list of appropriate and inappropriate accessories for a politician, including jeans, sombreros, Elton John glasses, etc. The topic went well and the students got some good practice agreeing and disagreeing.
Today I attempted the same topic again with four different students. 3 out of 4 were really enjoying the topic, and the other student started giving answers like “I don’t care”. At one point I asked him a question and he looked directly at me, didn’t say a word, then started playing with his cell phone. I have never had such a strong negative reaction before. Maybe my student was actually Sasuke without the mask?
(partial rewrite of original post)
March 12, 2004 – (not the cat)
Posted by Barniferous in Kawasaki Nova, Teaching English on March 12, 2014
My kids class wasn’t terrible today for a change. Also, the boys managed to finally win one of the group games. In a class of 9-12 year olds, the girls usually do much better with everything.
Somehow the boys learned the word pussy (not the cat) and were using it in class to try to get a reaction from me. I can assure you that I didn’t teach it to them!
March 9, 2004 – Access restored!
Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan, Teaching English on March 10, 2014
FINALLY, I have access to my website again. Unfortunately, due to a few weeks of not typing, I have forgotten most of the interesting happenings. Fortunately, Nothing very exciting happened so you didn’t miss anything! Here are some highlights and lowlights in no particular order.
- I got a TV from a guy who is moving out for only 1000 yen. Now I can watch Japanese TV in my room!
- I will be switching from part time to full time May 1st if all the paperwork goes through
- I walked 1/3 of the way to Kawasaki station for something to do. Walking through the not so major streets of any city is a great way to really learn about life in another place.
- My group kids class learned the word “penis” and used it in class a lot. Note: They didn’t learn it from me!
- I went to Yodabashi camera, which is a HUGE electronics chain (think Future Shop but about 6 times bigger). It was crazy!
- One of my M2M kids students thought it was funny to throw things at my groin in class. Being that he didn’t succeed, I can appreciate the humour in that.
Drinking in Japan 
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