January 29th, 2007
Holy crap, my students say the funniest things sometimes. Today I had to deal with the Ninensei…again…they’re the most loud and rambunctious group. They never pay attention, are incredibly self-absorbed and they make teaching a certain nightmare not worth reliving. Which is why I’m glad that I’m occassionaly able to blog about it. I guess it’s my way at getting back to them for being so irritating!
So I have this one student with ADD. Yes, it’s quite obvious he has ADD, he literally cannot sit still. Somedays, it’s really bad and I wonder if anyone snuck sugar into his lunch, the kid is literally leaping off other students. On the positive side, he’s also the most enthusiastic and participating kid. So when you say, “what is this word” and everyone is grumbling something incoherent, he’s the one going ALIEN!!!! He also doesn’t care about making mistakes (really rare in Japan; mistakes are frowned upon and punishable by death 
) and when he gets the answer wrong, he keeps trying until he gets it right. Which is nice to see, really. But he has ADD, so when he’s not being helpful, he’s just another distraction.
Today, when the teacher was trying to teach, he shouted, in the middle of class, “I AM CELIBATE!” I did a double take. “Excuse me???” No one else understood what he said. I don’t think he even knew what he said, I mean, he said it in English. No one also couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t stop laughing afterwards. I apologized to the teacher and later explained to her what the meaning of Celibate really meant…(trust me, I’ve had more awkward conversations with her) 
.
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September 30th, 2006
So today was sports competition, which meant that all the kids involved with sports (more than half the school) would be competing against other schools in the region. This also meant that I had no idea what the hell was going on. All I knew was, I had better show up to some sports meet unless I wanted to be in big trouble for taking Saturday off. So I did what I thought was best, I woke up at 6AM and got to school at around 7:30 AM. I didn’t see any other students around and that worried me. Luckily, Kyoto Sensei and some other teachers were in the office, so they definitely spotted me coming to work (it’s all about appearance). I still had no idea what to do, so Kyoto Sensei offered me to go with him to the volleyball tournament. I wanted to see the baseball game, but since I had no f*ing idea where that was, what the heck, I joined him…and that’s when the fun began!
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September 29th, 2006
This is a phrase one needs to get used to when teaching in Japan. You see, a lot of the times, teachers forget that you DON’T speak Japanese and you’re NEW to the school, so they forget to tell you about events that are happening. It all started when I was teaching at my Heart Attack School (the very next day). It didn’t go so bad the second time around, really. I only had 3 classes to teach and they were all in the morning: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd periods. That means I had 4th, Lunch, 5th, and 6th periods off. Half the teachers were also gone that day, because half the school went on a field trip. I just sat at my desk in the teacher’s room, staring into space during 4th period and lunch, but then I got waaaaaaaay too bored (and hungry…still fasting, remember?) so I asked Kocho Sensei if I could leave to go teach at my base school. Yeah, it would have been smarter to just go home, but I’m not a jerk and I’m sure the students could use my help (whether they like it or not!!!). So, I walk on over to the JHS and find that most the students and teachers are in the Gym. I ask the English Teacher what’s up and she’s like,
“Oh, what’re you doing here?”
“I got off early, what’s going on here?”
“Ohhh! I forgot to tell you! By the way…”
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September 28th, 2006
I call one of my elementary schools, that I teach at, the “Heart Attack School”, because I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack every time I go there. It’s always for a different reason though, this time was particulary special though. You see last week, I missed my train and came to school a little bit late. I wasn’t so late that I missed my first class or anything, but I did miss the morning meeting they always have and one teacher even commented, “we were worried you weren’t going to make it!” This was very bad. Punctuality is excruciatingly important in Japan and I had made a major mistake by showing up late. But today, I was going to make it up by finally handing out my Omiyage. Read the rest of this entry »
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