End of the School Year

This past week was the last week of school before spring break and the start of the new school year in April. It’s been predictably free for me—ever since 3nensei students graduated on March 13 (leaving a gaping hole in the middle of my heart), I haven’t had much to do besides teach a few “fun” review classes for ichi and ninensei. So to fill up my time when I’m not looking up new recipes or planning my next trips, I’ve been going to other teachers’ classes to watch.

Today I went to an ichinensei Japanese class and a ninensei math class. Both of the teachers are fairly young and have adopted fun teaching practices that I haven’t seen much of in the older teachers. The Japanese teacher brought individual whiteboards and whiteboard markers for the students to use while we discussed grammar in groups, and the math teacher timed us to race to complete the math problems. We worked on dividing and multiplying fractions and doing 3-step problems with mixed numbers. For example:

1/2 + 3/4 ÷ (-2/3)

(It’s -5/8, by the way.)

I missed five out of 40 problem, which I guess isn’t too bad considering I haven’t studied this stuff in 15 years. I was also happy to hear the math teacher say two things I really didn’t expect: 1) It doesn’t matter how you solve the problem, as long as you get to the right answer; and 2) Math isn’t about memorizing; it’s about thinking. Somehow in my head I thought Japanese education was all about playing by the rules and going by the book, so it was pleasantly surprising to see how wrong I was. I still think Japanese teachers work too much – being at school from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. every day is just a little extreme – but it’s good to know that they’re still passionate about helping kids learn.

By the way, they’ve made the announcements for next year’s leaving and staying teachers. The three English teachers I work with now are all staying, but my favorite, the kind, helpful head of the English Department who has been here since I first started in August 2010, will leave. The librarian, a first-year math teacher, two of the disciplinarian heads, and the sexy gym teacher who just started last year, are also all leaving. I wonder who will come take their places . . . even though, in the long run, these changes don’t affect me too much personally, although they do affect the ALT who will come after me. After turning 30 on August 2^nd, I’ll be returning to the U.S. for good to start all over again.

Or at least until another traveling bug hits me. 

Conversation about Work

Me: I really like working at this school. I'm going to miss everyone when I go home.

Mr. S.: I've been teaching JHS for 16 years and I've never heard students say they love their ALT like these students love you. You love them, so they love you.

Food Glorious Food

I started running sorta-kinda regularly in January as part of Jaimie’s 2012 New Year’s Self Improvement Plan, and bought a pedometer to measure my progress. This pedometer doesn’t only measure steps but calories burned as well. Did you know you have to run 5,733 steps (something like 3 ½ miles) to burn only 248 calories?! That’s so depressing. One of my friends is training for a marathon and says that he burns 800 calories in a 10K run. That’s running 10K just to burn off one school lunch (great for the growing teenagers served—bad for the rest of us). I never knew you needed to spend that amount of energy just to burn so few calories!

But I’ve been doing pretty well running a couple times a week and trying to eat well. Because school lunch is loaded with so many calories, I try to eat only half or ¾ of it, except on curry days when I eat all of it because it’s so good! I’m biking to school as often as it doesn’t rain, and I go to track and field practice after school when I can, too, where I can do fun things like jumping hurdles and doing chin-ups.

I bring all this up because after making such an effort to Improve Myself, I had a good week in there when all those efforts went completely to waste.

Wednesday, February 29 was the last day of my Tamamura Japanese class. We had all worked hard for the past ten or twelve weeks, so to celebrate our last day we had an international party where everyone brought food from their country. There was American macaroni and cheese and chicken pot pie, deep-fried vegetables and sauce from China, Mexican taquitos (yes, I brought those), and a ton of Japanese food. Plus dessert – cupcakes, cheesecake from Costco, muffins . . . it was a veritable feast! And we all feasted like there was no tomorrow!

Two days later Mark had a Milkshake Murder Mystery Party for his 25^th birthday. It’s just as its name implies: we all played a part in a murder mystery (I was poisoned by the Mayor just an hour in—thanks, Will) and drank as many milkshakes as possible at the same time. Again, the spread was incredible: pizza from Costco (thanks, Graham & Sam!), roast chicken (also from Costco, Chris and Hannah no okage), Emma’s delicious eggplant parmesan, and all kinds of other assorted deliciousnesses. It’s impossible to look all that goodness in the face and not enjoy it. Even when I was full to bursting, I couldn’t help having another ice cream sundae, especially with all the cherries and bananas and chocolate sauce lying around . . .

The day after Mark’s party, I left early in the morning to go to Shizuoka Prefecture with 11 of my teachers from school. We took a bus for the four-hour ride south, stopping several times along the way for snacks and breaks. Lunch was a seven-course delight of Japanese cooking: thin fried fish, assorted vegetables, rice, miso soup, green tea, and I don’t remember what all else.

Lunch: I should have opened the lids before snapping the picture. 

When we arrived at the ryokan we were staying at, we changed into yukattas and sandals (there’s a word for them, too) and went to soak in the outdoor onsen before dinner. The rooftop bath had a spectacular view of the ocean and the sun sinking behind the clouds. Then it was dinnertime.

I had never seen so much beautifully arranged food in my life! A whole fish was the resting place for slices of sashimi and various other seafood, as well as rice, soup, salad, pickly things, and other food that was very good but whose names I don’t know. We ate and drank for two hours, then went back to one of the rooms to drink more and eat snacks! I was exhausted after so much hot tubbing and eating, that I went straight to sleep on my futon.  

Our seven o’clock breakfast was almost as elaborate as the meal the night before. There was fried fish and a salad and miso soup with a giant crab claw in it, plus rice and tea. It hadn’t even digested properly when we sat down at a Chinese restaurant in Yokohama for lunch just a few hours later. And even though it was delicious, and I kept eating, I felt vaguely sinful . . . 

Oh, that week of gluttony! What an unfair world we live in, where there is too much food for me and not enough for everyone else! It’s back to running again . . .