Woah! The 7th graders did some serious studying today! I was totally surprised! We could never teach them anything before because they were always so noisy. I was really happy. The 9th grade Master English class ended today. Everyone gradually got better. After school, I went to the CATV station to have a planning meeting about our English conversation TV show. We will record next week. I practiced volleyball with the 30-somethings in town tonight.
2004-11-29 Mon. Weather: Sunny Plan: Tani Ele./Opinion Sharing Meeting (Izumo)
This morning Signe and I went to the really small Tani Elementary School. All 11 kids in the school are really friendly. There are many smart kids. We practiced days of the week today. Even thought the pronunciation of "Thursday" is difficult, even the 1st graders did it well.
In the afternoon I went to Izumo with the ALT supervisor in Akagi, Mr. Osaka, for the JET Program Opinion Sharing Meeting. We talked about things like the town merger and our jobs next year, and shared our troubles at work with other JETs in the Unan/Iinan area. Afterwards, Mr. Osaka and I had coffee and donuts at Mr. Donut!
Today I went to Akana Elementary School. Akana Ele. is the largest elementary school in Akagi, but it only has about 80 kids, so I guess Akagi really is a small town. Everyone was really friendly today. I played tag with the 3rd grade girls at lunch today. I was playing with kids all day from morning to 3 pm, so I was really tired after school. This evening we went to Matt's (the ALT in Kakeya) place to eat dinner and watch movies. It was a good day.
Today was good except that I think I might be cathing a cold. My throat started to hurt last night. Today around noon, I has a headache... This sucks! Oh well, that's OK, I'll endure! Besides that it was a good day. Beacuse I spoke the dialog in a funny voice in the 9th graders class I think everyone had a good time.
The JET Program has a monthly self-study Japanese course. This year I am taking the advanced course. I sent in the first monthly test today. I will work hard to study Japanese this year as well!
Today was a compensatory holiday for the Culture Festa yeserday. I went shopping with Signe in Matsue. Christmas is coming soon, so we bought presents and cards for the family. Signe is making a really cool thing, who is it for I wonder? :) While Signe was shopping, I watched Hayao Miyazaki's new movie, "Howl's Moving Castle" at the SATY in Matsue. It was a really great movie. I don't think it was as amazing as "Spirited Away," but it was a really good story. I am definitely am going to buy the DVD when it comes out!
2004-11-23 Tue. Weather: Sunny Plan: Akagi JHS Culture Festa
Today was the fun Akagi JHS Culture Festa! Culture Festa is the Akagi JHS Culture Festival. In Japan, schools have culture festivals every year. These events are like an American Open House, but a culture festival is an all day event and the kids do plays and concerts. There is one more difference, it is entirely planned by the students. It was really fun. The most interesting thing was when 8th grader Azumi Miyazaki confessed her love to the math teacher, Mr. Matsushima, in front of the entire school in a WEDDING DRESS!!! Everyone, you did a great job.
This evening, I practiced volleyball with the 30-somethings of the Akana area. Next month we have a volleyball tournement. We'll work hard!
I went to Kijima Elementary School today. The kids there are always full of energy. Ms. Fujiyama's 4th graders are getting better than my 7th graders at pronouncing English. Of course they don't understand the grammer, but they can pronounce the sentences they learn. I taught the 1st and 2nd graders the "Good Morning" song. The younger students long to sing, so we alwasy sing fun songs. This morning the 6th grade boys were acting bad. They have been really troublesome these days. What will we do when they come to junior high school...
2004-11-19 Fri. Weather: Cloudy Plan: Sada Town Sada JHS International Exchange Festival
The Sada Town Sada JHS International Exchange Festival was as great as it was last year. Rob's (the ALT at Sada JHS) students are awesome! This year I was a group leader. I took about 15 students to various workshops. We did things like a trivia game, ultimate frisbee, and learning about other countries. I ate lunch with the 2nd 8th grade class. During the break I really had fun talking to a lot of the kids. I am looking forward to next year!
Today was a relaxing day, but the morning was stressful. We received a letter from the IRS stating that there was an error in our 2002 tax return and we owed them about $2400, but the thing is that we already paid the money 4 months ago. It actually was a mistake I made, so I paid the money, but now they want ANOTHER $2400. Good greif, this is annoying! This time it is the IRS's mistake, but to fix it I will have to fill out a lot of paperwork... So, this morning I FAXed an explaination of the issue and a copy of the cashed check to the IRS. After all that it was a good day.
It was a little busy today. This morning I posted yesterday's diary on the Internet. Afterwards, I had a 9th grade English class with Mr. Mochida from the High School. All the girl students like Mr. Mochida. In the 8th grade class Ms. Suyama did some pair work, but this time we made boy/girl pairs! Everyone did it! Boy/Girl pair work is a really great idea! The 7th grade Master class was a problem though. Most of the 7th grade boys are very bad students. What can I do?
Today was a good day. I taught the 8th graders in 1st period. I was glad because the 8th graders are always smiling. During 2nd and 3rd period I went to Akana Elementary School because I am helping the 4th graders perform a play for the culture festival there. In the play we will be doing an English game. We practiced the entire 30 minute play today. Afterwards, I returned to the JHS. We has a very noisy 7th grade class today. I love the 7th graders but most of them are so noisy that it is impossible to teach them anything. :'(
11-15 Mon. Weather: Cloudy Plan: Oda Elementary School
Today I went to Oda Ele. Since the school has about 35 kids it really is a heartwarming school. The kids were energetic. I was surprised because even though it was a Monday everyone had lots of energy. I got paid today, so Signe is going to send money to America to pay loans and the credit card. It is a hassle, but we have to pay them every month. It's the same with everyone, right? :)
2004-11-11 Thur. Weather: Sunny Plan: Shimane Pref. ALT Mid-Year Seminar
Today was the first day of the Shimane Pref. ALT Mid-Year Seminar. Every year, all the ALTs in Shimane and some of the Japanese Teachers of English (JTE) come to Sun Lake Meeting Hall in Hirata City for a two day training seminar. I met with other ALTs that I haven't seen in a long time. In the afternoon we played games from Japanese culture. I played "Karuta." In the evening we talked with other ALTs and played fun games. The most interested game was called "Once Upon A Time." Thanks Emmanual!
2004-11-12 Fri. Weather: Sunny Plan: Shimane Pref. ALT Mid-Year Seminar
Today was the second day of the Shimane Pref. ALT Mid-Year Seminar. I had a presentation today. The theme was "How to teach High and Low-Level Students in the Same Classroom." All the seats in the room were used and a lot of people came, so I was nervous, but I did it. I think that most people got some useful information from my talk. Afterwards, some ALTs and JTEs gave me some good feedback on my presentation, but I believe that some people were not interested in it. Oh well!
This was a good day. In my free time I prepared my presentation for the Mid-Year ALT Training Seminar tomorrow. I am a little nervous about the presentation, but I will do my best. In the low-level 7th grade class the boys were being noisy, so I had to seperate them. After I did that they studied a little more seriously.
Today was a normal Jr. High School day. The 8th graders were energetic as always. The 7th graders were energetic, too. It seems that the 7th graders are gradually becoming serious about studying. During todays repetition practice I spoke the dialog in a funny voice and made all the students laugh. I think that they are slowly remembering some English. I started writing my application for the Prefectural Advisor (PA) position next year. I am writing it in Japanese and English.
It was a relaxing day today. In the morning I entered my diaries onto the Internet. Now, my Lifestyle Notebook diary and my Internet diary are the same. After that I worked on my Trev Report and sent it off. In the afternoon I taught at Tani Elementary School. We had all 11 kids in the school in the class today. I love this school. Everyone is like a small family. This evening Signe and I will be playing Pickleball together in the Tani Elementary School Gym.
Welcome once again to your monthly dose of my life! The Trev Report is
brought to you by your friends at the JET Program: Spreading
International Understanding to Japan, Today. And now on to this month's
news:
Trev's Lovelife
---------------
Signe and I have been talking about what we will do next Aug. lately.
Come Aug. 2005 I will either be working in Matue as a PA (se previous
Trev Reports) or staying here in Akagi as an ALT. Signe is also applying
to the JET Program, so she will either be placed near me or far away
from me. In any case I have been worrying too much about this lately,
especially since I have little control over the placement of people.
Besides that we are doing well. Signe's parents came to stay here for
three weeks this month and we took them many places around Japan. I write
about it in my daily bilingual blog at http://jumex.blogspot.com/ .
Trev's Work
-----------
Work has been keeping me busy lately. There have been lots of events
going on in the past few months, like Sports Days and Culture Days. My
most recent event was a Halloween Party for the local elementary school
kids. We carved pumpkins and made masks. It was a blast, and lots of
local ALTs came as well. It was a great turnout. A couple weeks ago I
went on a two-day cycling trip with the local elementary school kids
to a series of bridges and islands that connect the islands of Honshu
and Shikoku called the Shimanami Kaido. It was a really fun trip; I had
never done something like that with the local kids before. Besides all
that, I have been busy with the normal stuff like writing newsletter
articles, the English conversation TV Show, and classes. I am having
a great time here.
Trev's Japanese
---------------
Although I write in my journal everyday and try hard to study daily,
this month I have been slacking a little because of all the extra things
we have been doing with Signe's parents around. Just today I feel that
I have finally caught up with everything, including the CLAIR Advanced
Japanese Language Course (which I should be working on at a rate of one
lesson a day) as well as putting my journals on the net at
http://jumex.blogspot.com/ . When I was at Mt. Tsurugi with Signe for
vacation a couple weeks ago, I bought a charm at the top of the mountain
for help in studying. I hope that pays off. :)
Trev's Computers
----------------
My most recent project on the computer has been my daily blog formatter
at http://trevreport.org/blogForm.shtml . It is really useful. I simply
fill out the form and hit submit and I get perfectly well formatted code
to paste in any blog I want. I DO have a little problem with overlapping
text in Firefox, but if viewed with any other browser there is no problem
with my CSS. The problem comes from an alleged error in the CSS spec
that Firefox implements as per the erroneous spec and other browsers
ignore the spec and fix the problem. I look forward to finding a workaround
for it. In the meantime, I am working on a perl script to autopost to
both live journal and blogger. I have successfully written code using
the AtomAPI to connect and post to blogger, but I am still having
trouble using Atom for Live Journal. There isn't much info out there on
it. With any luck I will crack it soon.
Trev's Anime
------------
AniKi (http://trevreport.org/aniki/wiki.pl?AniKi ) is going well, thanks
to a couple people that are adding context to it. Thank you to you guys.
As for watching anime stuff, I haven't done much lately. The most recent
thing I did was watch "Cashern" which is a live-action movie based on an
old anime. It was pretty good. I recommend giving it a chance if you see
it out there. I've been wanting to watch some anime, but I don't know
what I should watch, I have been so out of the loop these days.
Trev's One Point Japanese Lesson
--------------------------------
So you want to learn Japanese, huh? Great. How about a little lesson on
being polite.
Being polite is important in Japanese, especially when speaking to
superiors. The key to politiness is "longer is more polite."
For example, when you want to say "thank you" to a teacher, instead of
just "arigatou" you will say "arigatou gozaimasu." If you can say it
longer, do it. This is an important point that many Japanese learners
forget.
Some examples:
arigatou = arigatou gozaimasu - thank you
ohayou = ohayou gozaimasu - good morning
kudasai = onegaishimasu = please
That's all for now. Keep studying hard!
Well, that's about it for this edition of the Trev Report. I hope you
are all doing well. Drop me a line sometime, I love to hear from you.
Today was a very busy day. In the morning, I wrote my article for the Akagi town newsletter for November. The theme was "Going to an art museum." Recently, I went to the Ohara Museum of Art in Kurashika, so that was the easiest subjest to think of. In the afternoon I went to the CATV Studio one more time to fix the English conversation from yesterday. This month's theme is "Taking a phone message." We had to sync up the split screen phone conversation.
Eck! Today was a busy day. I taught five classes. We played a gesture game in the 9th grade class. Everyone's preformances were very good. The 8th graders were smiling as always. Today was the prefectural JHS volleyball tournamet, so unfortunately the 7th and 8th graders on the volleyball team were not at school. We couldn't introduce and new English in class, but the good news is that Akagi JHS won! After school, Ms. Kawashima and I recorded our monthly English Conversation TV Show.
2004-10-31 Sun. Weather: Rainy Plan: Vacation- Kurashiki, Okayama to East Iya Mountain Village, Tokushima
Yesterday we went to Kurashiki. This morning we visited the many art museums in Kurashiki. I got to see many great pieces of art. I bought an art print called "Belgian Girl in Kimono." After that we crossed the Seto Bridge over to Shikoku. That evening we stayed at an old thatched-roof house called "Chiiori." This old house is a very beautiful place. The staff told us lots of interesting stories about it.
2004-11-01 Mon. Weather: Sunny Plan: Vacation- East Iya Mountain Village, Tokushima
Today we went to lots of interesting places. First we climbed Mt. Tsurugi. The hike was really hard, but Signe and I did that dangerous task together. :) Afterwards, we went to the East Iya Vine Bridges. Signe's parents had a great time there. For me, the best part was staying at the beautiful "Chiiori." That old thatched-roof house is like a place out of old Japan. It really was amazing.
2004-11-02 Tue. Weather: Cloudy Plan: Vacation- East Iya Mountain Village, Tokushima to Hiroshima, Hiroshima
Today we left "Chiiori" in the Iya Vally and went to the city of Hiroshima. So, we spent most of the day in the car. In the morning we took Route 439 throughthe Iya Valley up to Kochi. Although that is a beautiful road, it is very narrow and winding. I was feeling a little sick. At the summit we ate Wild Boar Udon for lunch. It tasted great! After that, we took the expressway to Matsuyama in Ehime and then the ferry from there to Hiroshima. It was a good day.
We spent all dat exploring Hiroshima. We wnt to the Peace Park and the Peace Museum. Signe's parents thought it was interesting, but a little sad. The A-Bomb Dome was very powerful. We stayed at the World Friendship Center. It is an anti-nuclear center. The manager is an older woman from America. She taught us a lot of interesting information about nuclear troubles. Like the dangers of depleted urainium!
