The day-to-day events.

As most of you know I currently work at Tokyo International University in Saitama Japan. This is a very small private university which focuses on 5 areas of education; School of Language Communication (SLC), School of International Relations, School of Economics, School of Business and Commerce, and the School of Human and Social Sciences. Within the School of Language Communications there is a new program called the Global Teaching Institute which is where I and 9 others were hired to work within. As a teacher in the SLC I am teaching freshman students in their first year of college. There are 16 sections that these students are placed into based on their proficiency of the TOEFL (or Test of English as a Foreign Language) score. Students pay about 670,000 Yen a year for tuition. If you don't know what the current exchange rate is, that's about 67,000 a year. Just for tuition. This is a commuter campus, which means there are NO dorms. Students either live at home with their parents and travel anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours, one way, by train, bike or walking EVERY day, or they have to pay extra for an apartment nearby. Yes, I live in the same complex as some TIU students. Suffice it to say, these students' parents are paying a premium for them to come to the school....a school for many, was not their first choice. Be that as it may, they are now in my class and I'm having a blast making them crack up every day.

I am teaching the Section 1 and 2 students. These are the students who have the lowest test scores and generally also the lowest speaking and listening skills. People ask me "So how do you teach students who can't speak English when you can't speak Japanese?!"  The answer is, it's not easy, but with patience and a sense of humor it is an adventure! These students reading and writing skills are better than their speaking and listening, so if all else fails, I write it down and they look up the words they don't understand in their dictionary. Since we are trying to get away from the translation method of teaching Japanese speakers to speak English that can be a bit of a conundrum. I want them to try and figure out how to say what they want to say, but you can only spend so much of a class period waiting for an answer to formulate.

Those who don't know, the reason we are trying to get away from the translation method is because translating Japanese to English is one of the MOST difficult languages to translate correctly. The Japanese language is so vastly different from English that there is almost never a direct translation and many English words to not translate into English. What you end up having to do is sum up what you want to say in Japanese into something that is accurate in English. So it's almost like teaching an adult to speak. Not a new language, to just speak. Period.

Back to school... My schedule is as follows...Monday.Wednesday and Friday I teach Section 2 and 12 Listening. Tuesdays and Thursdays I teach Section 1 Reading. Those are the only classes I teach more than once in a week. I also teach Speaking to Section 2 and 12 and Writing to sections 1 and 11.

Additionally I go and sit in the English Lounge Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for an hour and a half each day to help students practice speaking English, I have Office Hours Monday, Tuesday and Friday from 5-6 we have a staff meeting every Friday at 3 and occasionally I got to the Freshman Seminar group on Fridays with the students I will be chaperoning in May. Once the real English Plaza opens at the end of May I will also be throwing in some hours to tutor students and help to design a schedule for other faculty members to tutor students and run a study hall that my Plaza partner are putting together. At some point in the next year I'll need to start doing research for the paper that I'm required to have published before the end of my contract AND finally in May I start my graduate level courses to maintain my teaching license in Oregon. Try and draw that schedule....I dare you. It took my several frustrating days and many many hours before I finally was able to put it together to make sense. I still don't know that I have enough hours in the day to do all of it, but we'll see how it goes.

So that's me for now. It's April and I've been here almost 3 weeks now and I'm sure I'll discover very quickly what I'm able to handle.

Survival of the quickest.

I believe that Darwin wasn't really talking about birds...it was an analogy and he was in fact thinking light years ahead of his time when he came up with this idea of "survival of the fittest."  He was thinking to a time when 25 million people would live in an area so small, they would be living on top of each other, literally.

Picture this, a paved 2 way road, 12 feet across that has no sidewalks and needs to allow cars, bikes and pedestrians to move from place to place. Now, where I'm from the order of right-of-way is pedestrians, bikes and then cars. Sort of makes sense....but here in one of the most populous countries in the world. Watch out, because if you expect to be given right-of-way as a walker, you just became filler for that pothole you just tried to avoid. Cars do not stop for people and bikes expect you to get out of the way. In a land where they drive on the other side of the street, they also expect you to duck and run if you see a car coming.

Survival of the fittest just became a reality for me in this urban jungle. Lions and tigers and bears oh my? Forget it. I'm worried about teeny tiny cars that my nephew could probably push around his yard in a real life game of Cars.

from a shoebox to a hat box...

Ever shared an office with 9 other people? Even if you love them all, which I do...when even one person is having student conferences, another is having conversations with other teachers to collaborate on lessons and the rest are plugged in trying to work, it's chaos at it's best. Better learn to work in a tornado quick.

The Shoebox a.k.a The Apartment

Okay. I'll be fair. It's bigger than a shoebox....it's more like the size of a large office. Well no not a large office because frankly I've seen offices twice the size of my apartment. Alright then it's the size of my college dorm room, plus my next door neighbors closet....yeah that sounds about right, and if you never lived in a dorm well it's about 250 square feet, if that helps.  It's sort of like living in a camper trailer. I walk in the door and need to take my shoes off, I don't want to be charged a fee for scuffing up the hardwood floors with my giant, very non-Japanese sized feet. I can put my purse and coat on my washing machine, I trip over the other 4 pairs of shoes I have at the door, fumble for the light switch because it's pitch black in my apartment (unless I have the curtains open) pass by the sink that reaches the tops of my thighs, my back hurts already, the door to the my toilet room and shower/bath room (which I have to duck through everytime I take a shower because I'm afraid I'll hit my head )and go into the main room. Really I should say "main room" because it's the only room. I have a computer desk only slightly smaller than my "dining room table", two smallish chairs, a closet that would be the envy of no-one,  anywhere, and the ladder that goes up to my loft bed. Yes ladder, I am once again 10 and I climb a ladder to get to bed at night. In between the computer desk and that ladder I have 3 steps ( I have freakishly long legs for Japan remember). I have managed to get a carpet, 85cm x 185cm. Yes, that's right I'm already operating in the metric system, it's also about 800m to the school from my apartment, which takes roughly 6 or 7 minutes.  It only took me a train 3 stops away (roughly 15 minutes) a 30 minute walk and a search through Viva Homes (superstore) where everyone is running around as if there is a fire sale going on before I found the rug, coffee pot and power strip I needed before I began the 30 minute walk back to the station, this times my arms loaded with items and then an hour going back and forth on 4 different trains trying to get back to my station. The Saturday schedule is difficult to figure out to say the least. 

But really I love it. I have a lot of fun walking around, getting lost on the trains (as long as I don't have anywhere to go) and searching for just the right item in just the right store. 

All I need now is a couch and I will be perfectly cozy in my cupboard under the Japanese sky. 

...and in another country across the ocean.

It's the little things...Oreo cookies, Skippy peanut butter, Hello Kitty, McDonalds and Starbuck. These are some of the things that make me feel like maybe I haven't moved so far from the country I've called home for 34 years. But then there are all the signs I can't read, the orientation meetings I sit through with very little understanding about what is being talked about, the teeny tiny cars driving on the wrong side of the road (oops the left side of the road) and all the umbrellas! The umbrellas! I really know I'm not in Kansas, errr Oregon, anymore when I look out onto the sea of umbrellas! No Goretex to be seen, not a wet head, or soaked coat in sight, nothing but a sea of bobbing umbrellas. These are just a few of the things that remind me daily I'm in the opposite side of the world from everyone I know and love, but it's all worth it because everyday I wake up and I'm excited that I'm here.

P.S Those umbrellas don't do you any good when the wind is swirling around you and pulling it out of your hand. You'll wish you'd grabbed your jacket on the way out of the door when that happens.

Welcome to Japan

My first day in Japan, after my first night in Japan in our lovely modern hotel in downtown Kawagoe, was the day I was awakened to the fact that I was, indeed "not in Kansas anymore".

We all woke early for a more traditional Japanese breakfast, it was already very warm and extremely humid, and then went back to our rooms to put on our business attire. As I left my room I hung the "Do Not Disturb" sign on my door. I don't care to have someone clean my room every day I am in a hotel. I can hang up my towels and use the same sheets for a few days ( I do at home don't I?) and since we were going to be there for two weeks I took my own toiletries so I didn't need those replaced either.

We left the hotel, walked about 10 minutes to the train station, rode the train a couple stops and walked about 15 minutes to the University. This first day was a meet and greet we'd be sitting and standing and sitting and standing and bowing and shaking hands and sitting and standing. No biggie, we expected it. As we are standing in the courtyard to go into our next meeting one of the lovely ladies who worked in the administration office comes out and is looking for...yours truly, I have a phone call. A phone call! Of course I am immediately alarmed. Those who know me will not be surprised that before I left the United States not only did I register my trip with the State Department, I also compiled a list of all the phone numbers and locations where I would be and left it for my mother in case anything should happen and she needed to get a hold of me. Naturally, if I have a phone call in a country I just arrived in I'm not thinking this is a good thing.
I followed the woman from the office in and picked up the phone..."Hello?" I said with much trepidation...and who do I hear on the other line? The HOTEL!! They were calling me because they weren't sure if they should clean my room or not. Apparently the sign I hung on the door turned sideways when I shut the door behind me and because of that they needed to check in with me about whether or not to clean it. I thanked them for calling me and told them that no they didn't need to.

I walked back out to the courtyard to join my group and of course they were all just as curious as was about why someone would be calling me at school. I relayed the story and among the slack jaws in disbelief and laughs our wonderful and fearless leader (who is Japanese) looked at me shook his head with a little laugh and said "Welcome to Japan".

A whole new world...beginning with books.

Among the meetings with fellow faculty members, participating in seminars, writing lesson plans, anticipating, parading in front of yet another audience of people to be introduced as the "direct imports from America" (obviously still in America, date of exportation will be the end of March) there is much reading to be done.

On my coffee table at this moment there are 5 books about Japan, two of them are actual travel books because there is quite a bit of really good information in most of them and each has their own particular feature that is better than others. Currently I have the DK Eyewitness Traveler (great photos and section by section information on the country) and the Fodor's ( honestly I haven't read this one yet). The only other travel book I've looked at was the Lonely Planet guide before I left for our 2 week trip to Japan in June. That book had some great information about cultural traditions to be observed if you don't want to look like a clod. I also have two history books on Japan "Japan: A concise history" by Milton W. Meyer and "Japan: A Modern History" by James L. McClain. Why two different history books you ask? Something you should know about me, I approach history spherically. One source is never, ever enough. Believe it or not, these books are actually not dry! I know you won't really believe me if you don't know me, but for those of you who do, as a social studies teacher and fan of history and reading, you know I like a read that moves along. The day I begin to rely on one source will be the day....nope, that will never happen.  The last book I have currently is "Introducing Japan" by Donald Richie, which is more a coffee table book, but it too has some wonderful pictures and additionally has useful and interesting text to accompany them.

I knew that learning about Japan was going to complex and a process. The history of that country doesn't span a couple centuries, it expands through several millennia! I might feel it is a daunting task but I am not kidding myself, I'm not going to learn all of it, I simply want a better understanding of the long history of the country and how their culture was born.  I look forward to making it through these books, I'm moving slowly but enjoying it immensely.