English Camp!

Tamura is a special place for students to learn English.  I think you would be hard pressed to find another part of Japan with a student-to-ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) ratio as high as the one here.   As such, we can do some things here for students that you wouldn’t find in other parts of the country.  One of these things is English Camp.  English Camp is a two-day program that all the sixth graders in the town get to experience.  All students begin studying English in middle school, so one goal of the camp is to give kids a little bit of a head start in English study.  We also want the kids to start having fun with English, so we play a lot of games and crafts, and teach a little lesson about the most important American holiday (at least in the mind of a sixth grader), Halloween.  Yay candy!  Another goal of the camp is for kids to get to know students from other schools – when kids go to middle school, much like how we do things in the states, students from various elementary schools are combined.  We group students together that will be at the same middle school next year.  So not only are kids getting a head start on English and having fun at the same time, they are also meeting new friends and forming relationships they can look forward to next year.  We ran a total of four camps over the past two weeks, one for each of the middle schools in town. 

Day one of camp was always a little awkward to start.  Kids can be shy, especially when you put them in a group with a crazy off-the-wall American.  But we would always get over that quick enough.  Camps had anywhere from 70 to 170 kids, and we would break them into groups of 15 or so.  We started the day with simple introductions and then played some ice breakers and name games.  It’s fun being in a new country doing these sorts of games because they are all new to the kids here.  I’m used to kids being bored with ice breakers and name games back in the States, because they’ve seen them all already.  Kids over here are hesitant at first, but they get really excited about these games once they understand the rules.  I wonder what Japanese ice breakers look like, or if they even have an equivalent for that over here.  Some students did teach me a Japanese version of Red Light – Green Light a few days ago; they were excited to learn the American variant after teaching me how the Japanese play the game.  After ice breakers we would have to come up with our team name.  We gave each team a list of adjectives and a list of nouns.  They would pick their favorite from each list and combine them to make a name.  This led to some interesting names.  This year English Camp got to see the Big Bananas, Pink Monkeys, Dangerous Underpants, Cool Tigers, and Rainbow Kings, among others.  After choosing a team name students would have time to make a team poster.

The second part of day one was the infamous shopping game.  Each team was a different store (pet store, candy store, school supply store, etc.).  We took time to teach the vocabulary of what each store sold, and then we taught a simple shopping dialogue.  After some practice, we let the kids loose in our makeshift strip-mall, half the kids manning the stores, the other half trying to buy all the items on their shopping lists with the fake money we provided them.  It was a fun game, and a good way to get kids speaking English.  When we would teach the shopping dialogue, most of the students would be really nervous to try and practice.  But the chaos of the kids running around trying to get to each store provided the perfect cover for students to try the dialogue without being afraid of making mistakes.  I’m pretty sure everyone had it down by the end of the day, even the students that had been terrified to speak in English at the start of the day. 

Day two was all about Halloween.  At the start of the day we would have plenty of supplies set out and the kids would get busy making masks and decorating candy bags in preparation for the afternoon’s Halloween Party.  After all the sequins and stickers and pompoms and markers were cleaned up, we would spend some time practicing writing the alphabet; most students already knew the alphabet, but it was good for them to practice, and there were enough students that didn’t know much about writing letters that it was a worthwhile time.  But after lunch came what most of the kids would say was the highlight of camp: The Halloween Party.  All the teachers got dressed up in costumes and paraded around the students, with another teacher and myself giving energetic introductions of each costume.  We had a couple cowgirls, some Barbies, Pooh and Tigger, and I was (of course) Pikachu.   After the parade we would take some time to explain what happens on Halloween in the States, and then we got into a massive jonken (rock, paper, scissors) tournament.  Let me pause here at say a word about rock, paper, scissors.  It is way more popular over here than in the States.  Students are playing all the time; teachers will play with students sometimes to determine how big a homework assignment will be; they have different things you say depending on how many times you throw the same thing (e.g. both throwing rock, both throwing paper).  People take it pretty seriously over here.  Anyway, that to say that a jonken tourney in Japan holds a lot more excitement that a rock, paper, scissors tourney would in the States.  After that we would play one last large group game before ending camp.  That would be sharks and minnows, if the space allowed.  Again, here is a game that is old hat to any kid in the States, but is brand new to the kids over here.  Needless to say, they have a lot of fun with it. 

After the Halloween party we conclude the English Camp.  A quick note on meetings or programs in Japan: formality and structure is highly valued, even when working with 12-year-olds.  Before and after each section of camp it was imperative that someone would announce that we were officially starting or officially ending.  At the beginning of day one each teacher would have to give a brief introduction and say how excited they were about camp.  At the end both teachers and students would get up and say something about their favorite part of the camp.  There is a particular way to do everything in Japan, it seems.  Sometimes as an American the Japanese way seems strange or even inefficient, but what can I say?  When in Rome…

So we did it.  English Camp 2012 is done!  And this weekend comes the celebratory retreat to a nearby onsen, which you will probably be hearing about in a future post. 

This post was long overdue; sorry for that.  As you can see, though, I’ve been a little busy with English Camp the last few weeks.  And maybe a little bit of culture shock has left me without the energy necessary to bang out a new post.  That might be an interesting topic for a future post: culture shock.  Everyone experiences when they come over here, but for each person it looks a little different.  I’m still figuring out how it’s really affecting me, so maybe I’ll let ya’ll in on what it’s like.

(And thanks for the pics Ashley!)

The Arrival

I made it.  Well, almost.  Right now I’m looking out the window of my sixth floor room of the Narita Crowne Plaza Hotel.  After breakfast we still have a three and a half hour drive to get to Tamura, but that’s not so bad.  Sunday morning I woke up around 7am EST, hastily shoveled some oatmeal down the gullet, and was driven to Cleveland Hopkins International by dad and sister.  There we met Adam and Hannah Hange, coordinators for the US side of operations for the program, at the Delta ticket desk.  After checking my luggage it was time for my final goodbye before heading through security.  But not so fast – I quickly realized I had left my phone in my pocket.  It’s not going to do me much good overseas, so I gave dad one last call; he came back and I got one more chance at goodbye, but then we were off and through security without a problem.  

I don’t understand why they tell you to get to the airport so early.  Three hours for international flights, is what they tell you.  So we were there three hours early, and we spent two hours sitting around waiting at the gate.  At least we didn’t have to worry about missing our flight.  The jump from Cleveland to Detroit went smoothly.  I sat next to a friendly veteran who spent four months in Japan back in the 70’s and was jealous of the adventure I was just beginning.  At Detroit we had a couple more hours before the next leg of the journey commenced so we took our time finding some lunch.  Adam and Hannah asked me what I wanted my last meal in the US and all I could think of was a burrito.  I don’t know why I thought Mexican would be a good idea before getting on a 747 for 13 hours, but we went anyway.  The burrito was really good, though, and I didn’t suffer too many adverse effects on the subsequent flight.  

Waiting to board the 747 in Detroit

Before boarding the flight I started to get excited about my journey.  Up till this point there had been a lot of nervousness – I was so focused on saying goodbye it was hard for me to look ahead and get excited about where I was going.  But being in front of the gate, seeing a crowd of Japanese all eager to get home, it gave me an image of something to look forward to, what I’m going to be seeing and living with for the next couple of years.  There was a large group of Japanese students returning from a rowing competition, if I read their matching t-shirts correctly, about the same age as the students I’ll be working with.  I think the hardest thing about this trip has been the sense of stepping out into the foreign, the unknown, but by shedding some light on what things will look like I’m able to get excited about what is coming. 

Our 3:30 flight began boarding around 2:45.  It takes some time to get 400 people situated on an airplane.  But then they realized that one of the light bulbs on the plane’s exterior was burnt out, so we all had to sit and wait while they replaced it.  How many flight mechanics does it take to change a light bulb?  I don’t know, but we obviously didn’t have enough of them – the repair took almost an hour.  I just felt bad for all the folks who missed their connecting flights in Tokyo just because of a light bulb. 

After the light bulb was fixed we were underway.  Two rows behind us was an American mom and her three small children.  You can imagine how that went.  I let you know it was an American family, because there were other children on the plane as well, but they weren’t nearly as loud and rowdy.  Other than that, there wasn’t much special about the flight.  We were flying west, so the sun was up the whole time, only just starting to set when we landed just after 6pm in Tokyo. 

Driving from Tokyo to Tamura, feeling "Happy Refresh!" with a Calpus I got at a rest stop.

Upon arrival we were met with a couple of small surprises.  First was immigration.  Adam and Hannah went through first just fine, but when I went through they pulled me aside into a small room with benches, took my documents, and told me to wait.  It wasn’t a big deal; they were simply making my gaijin (foreigner) identification card, something I was planning on doing later this week in Tamura.  After the machine spit out the card, they let me go through to baggage claim and customs.  I found Adam there pretty quickly, but Hannah was nowhere around.  I guess they got a little worried when they saw me pulled aside at immigration, and Hannah had gone looking for me.  She came back soon enough, so we got our bags through customs and met Okubo-sensei outside.  Normally they drive straight back to Tamura after picking up teachers at the airport, but since it was so late they decided to put us up in a hotel at the airport.  We got situated in our rooms in the hotel and freshened up before going down to dinner.  A quick word about the room, though.  The toilet was one of the most advanced pieces of technology I’ve ever sat on before.  It took a little guesswork and experimentation to figure out how it worked.  After a quick shower we met downstairs at the hotel restaurant for dinner.  I could get used to the food over here: Shrimp tempura with udon.  Oishi!  Sleep was next on the schedule (I think I almost nodded off once or twice during dinner).  I roomed with Okubo-sensei, and he showed me the complimentary Japanese pajamas provided in the room, so I had to try them out.  They worked great.  I only woke up once during the night wide awake, but luckily I had trusty David Copperfield next to my bed, and I was snoozing again in no time.  Now it’s 7:25 and almost time to rendezvous for breakfast before making the final leg of my journey and arrive at my new home.

Six Sundays

Six Sundays left in America.  Six Sundays of living in an English-speaking country.  Six Sundays of Eastern Standard Time.  Six Sundays of living one block away from the world's greatest bbq wings.  And I could go on and on to the point of nausea.  But you get the idea.

In six Sundays I will be boarding a plane bound for Japan where I will be living and teaching English for at least the next two years of my life.  And like every good liberal arts college graduate abroad I am starting a blog.  And like most every good liberal arts college graduate blogger, I will probably not keep up with it very well, but here's for trying.  I've fulfilled my obligation of starting a blog, who knows where it will go from here.

So Japan.  I'm going to be living in the city of Tamura.  It's pretty small, from what I've been told.  Every time I tell someone I'm going to Japan they always ask where I'll be in the country.  No one has ever heard of this place.  If you really want to know, feel free to open up a new tab and googlemap to your heart's content.  In Tamura I will be living in the same neighborhood as 10 other Christian American English teachers through the Wakakusa English Program.  We will be teaching at various junior highs, elementary schools, and English schools throughout the city.  Please follow the link above for more information on the organization. 

I've got plenty to do before I leave, like learning as much Japanese as I can, packing, and eating as many wings from La Nova as possible.  Any suggestions on things I should make sure to do here in America while I still have a chance would be very much appreciated!