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Thursday and Friday
Thursday morning I decided to actually boil more water for a warmer bath, which was... semi-effective. I at least got the water to a comfortable temperature, but it took like an hour of boiling pots of water and dumping them into the tub. At least at work on Thursday they finally contacted the landlords to schedule someone to come try to fix the water heater, but of course that isn't happening 'til Saturday. Bathing for a week with no hot water has really, really sucked.
I got my first student renewal on Thursday too. Go me. That same student came in and brought me a ticket to go see some Turkish art exhibit at a museum in Ueno. Only problem is that the exhibit ends this Sunday. I really need to figure out a way to make some friends here so I have someone to drag to stuff like this; I could also stop by the science museum since I was given tickets to the current exhibit there as well, I guess.
In my evening classes, one of my students had gone to Hokkaido last week and came back with awesome omiyage -- not just a box of cookies which she shared with the whole class, but she also brought me a Hichori Morimoto stickerboard (basically it looks like a small poster, but is really a bunch of stickers), from when she went to a Fighters game at the Sapporo Dome. She doesn't even like baseball but she was very excited to talk to me about her trip!
After work I got katsudon for dinner, and stopped by Max Valu ostensibly to pick up laundry detergent, but in reality I picked up a whole ton of junk food, including the Pocky Halloween Pack, which is four boxes, one milk, one strawberry, and two pumpkin. PUMPKIN POCKY WOOOOO. I don't even like Pocky that much anymore, but you have to admit, pumpkin pocky is pretty cool. Plus it comes with a ghost mask which I think will fit one of my kid students.
Friday morning I had to get up early to go to the police station with Sam to help the detective in charge of traffic cases to write his official report about the accident. I had met this detective the night of my accident, but he spoke a LOT quicker this time. The weirdest thing is probably how little memory I have of the actual incident -- I don't remember what part of the truck hit me, or whether I was riding on the sidewalk or on the street, and so on... for those that know me, you know I have an uncannily accurate memory for events and can usually visualize a lot of things pretty clearly, but in this case... I'm glad I wrote that long entry about the truck accident, because god knows, I really blocked out a big chunk of that evening. I can still visualize seeing Rush Hour; I remember leaving Ario, I remember riding up Sangyo Doro. I sort of remember a moment of shock when I was hit by the truck, and I remember being on the sidewalk, and being in the ambulance, but... large chunks of time in there are simply missing, or they're just brief flashes of images. It's a bit weird. Anyway, the cop asked me a whole lot of questions I couldn't answer, even with a translator, such as "Do you think the driver should get a huge penalty for this incident?" to which I was like "dude WHAT? He already gets plenty of penalties, I thought..."
Sam and I went to Ario after that so he could help me translate some insurance papers I need to send in too. He got some super Godiva chocolate drink and I got omurice for breakfast (DUDE. It's like the BEST breakfast ever). Then we talked about baseball for a while, since that's sort of what we do. (It was funny explaining to the police guy that we basically became friends over the internet three years ago discussing the Mariners, heh.)
I went to work. We have this new system apparently for scanning students' membership card bar codes or something, which is pretty messed up. Thanks to me actually knowing some shit about databases, I was able to at least fix some of our problems, but in the process discovered that I am actually not in the database, and they still have all of my students assigned to Becky. WTF. I had a whole lot of paperwork and prep to do today and next thing I knew, it was 4:30ish and I was starving, so Eri and I went and got dinner. Then I had to come back and face the terror that is my class of 8-year-olds...
The week's lesson was on "What's your favorite ____?" "I like ______." So, to start off I brought out crayons and blank pieces of paper with ice cream cones on them and asked people to draw their favorite ice cream. So far, so good... except they wouldn't stop. They all insisted on drawing three of them, and then adding second scoops and cherries and all this other stuff to their drawings, and each time I tried to go "Okay, guys, SO HERE IS TODAY'S LESSON..." they would just ignore me and talk in Japanese about ice cream, so eventually I just gave up and got the two better students to say things like "I like chocomint ice cream." "I like green tea ice cream." and so on, ignoring the other two. I presented the rest of the lesson, which involved "what is your favorite game/comicbook/tv show?"
Me: "What is your favorite TV show? Do you like Pokemon?"
Boy: "Nani? Nani sore?"
Girl 1: "I like Pokemon!!!"
Girl 2: "I like... I like..."
Boy: "Nani nani nani. Wakaranai waKARANAIIIII."
Girl 2: "I like... [mumbled tv show too quiet for me to hear]"
Girl 3: "I like dorama."
Me: "You like dorama? What is your favorite dorama?"
Girl 3: "Hanazakari no kimitachi e."
Me: "Oh, Hana Kimi?"
Girls: "EEEEEEEHHH? SENSEI WA HANAKIMI GA SHTTERU NO?"
Me: "Isn't it over though?"
Boy, chiming in: "IKEMEN PARADAISU."
Me: "Wait, YOU like Ikemen paradise?"
Boy: "Hai. I like."
Girls: "EEEEHHHHHHHH?"
(Hanakimi is basically a dorama starring all of these cute young male Japanese actors, the plot being that a girl dresses up as a boy to go to an all-cute-boys school. Hilarity kind of ensues, but I only got up to episode 5 before moving to Japan and haven't caught up yet. Still, I can't imagine actually liking this show if you were a guy, but maybe I'm weird. Also, I suppose they're only 8. But still.)
I ended up giving up on my coherent lesson plan and just played Phonics Tag -- a game I invented where I put up words on the walls (like "at", "ed", "it", "on", "up", etc) and one student picks out corresponding cards and yells out a word like "IT!" and everyone else has to run to that word on the wall and tag it. This mostly resolves in the boy running over to the word first and/or the girls screaming and trying to avoid touching him, while also trying to tag the word. The good part is that this gets them tired enough to sit down and do workbook writing for a while, AND it prepares them for the phonics exercises. The bad part is that if I let it go on too long it eventually turns into Destroy Deanna's Classroom While Yelling Random Phonics, which is altogether much more fun for the kids but a lot less fun for me.
I had everyone write their name on the ice cream drawings and I collected them after the class and I'm going to make a poster of them, with the words at the top: "What is your favorite ice cream flavor?" "I like strawberry ice cream," or something like that.
Anyway, the rest of the day was pretty smooth sailing after that was over; the rest of my Friday students are really nice people and it's pretty small classes, too. I didn't even bother eating dinner after work for once since I was still full from my late late lunch, though I did have to walk home from the station since I got a ride to Akabane with Sam again instead of riding my bike. Oops.
Still can't decide what to do this weekend though. I won't get out of work tomorrow until 7; Sunday seems like if I want to do baseball I'm going to have to either go to Chiba or find a ticket reseller to go to Tokyo or Jingu. I've got tickets to the Giants-Dragons game on Monday already anyway so maybe I should just avoid baseball on Sunday, but of course it's not like I have much else to do or anyone to invite around. I'm sure I can come up with something though. Museums and maybe some exploring and stuff like that? We'll see.
There's a GEOS party on 9/30 that I don't think I'm going to go to. It's a going-away party for my head trainer, but I don't know her that well AND it costs 4000 yen AND that's the date of the last Fighters game in Kanto this year, so I don't want to skip it, and I also don't want to show up at the party all sweaty and horrible. So. Sigh. Meeting people is tough.
I got my first student renewal on Thursday too. Go me. That same student came in and brought me a ticket to go see some Turkish art exhibit at a museum in Ueno. Only problem is that the exhibit ends this Sunday. I really need to figure out a way to make some friends here so I have someone to drag to stuff like this; I could also stop by the science museum since I was given tickets to the current exhibit there as well, I guess.
In my evening classes, one of my students had gone to Hokkaido last week and came back with awesome omiyage -- not just a box of cookies which she shared with the whole class, but she also brought me a Hichori Morimoto stickerboard (basically it looks like a small poster, but is really a bunch of stickers), from when she went to a Fighters game at the Sapporo Dome. She doesn't even like baseball but she was very excited to talk to me about her trip!
After work I got katsudon for dinner, and stopped by Max Valu ostensibly to pick up laundry detergent, but in reality I picked up a whole ton of junk food, including the Pocky Halloween Pack, which is four boxes, one milk, one strawberry, and two pumpkin. PUMPKIN POCKY WOOOOO. I don't even like Pocky that much anymore, but you have to admit, pumpkin pocky is pretty cool. Plus it comes with a ghost mask which I think will fit one of my kid students.
Friday morning I had to get up early to go to the police station with Sam to help the detective in charge of traffic cases to write his official report about the accident. I had met this detective the night of my accident, but he spoke a LOT quicker this time. The weirdest thing is probably how little memory I have of the actual incident -- I don't remember what part of the truck hit me, or whether I was riding on the sidewalk or on the street, and so on... for those that know me, you know I have an uncannily accurate memory for events and can usually visualize a lot of things pretty clearly, but in this case... I'm glad I wrote that long entry about the truck accident, because god knows, I really blocked out a big chunk of that evening. I can still visualize seeing Rush Hour; I remember leaving Ario, I remember riding up Sangyo Doro. I sort of remember a moment of shock when I was hit by the truck, and I remember being on the sidewalk, and being in the ambulance, but... large chunks of time in there are simply missing, or they're just brief flashes of images. It's a bit weird. Anyway, the cop asked me a whole lot of questions I couldn't answer, even with a translator, such as "Do you think the driver should get a huge penalty for this incident?" to which I was like "dude WHAT? He already gets plenty of penalties, I thought..."
Sam and I went to Ario after that so he could help me translate some insurance papers I need to send in too. He got some super Godiva chocolate drink and I got omurice for breakfast (DUDE. It's like the BEST breakfast ever). Then we talked about baseball for a while, since that's sort of what we do. (It was funny explaining to the police guy that we basically became friends over the internet three years ago discussing the Mariners, heh.)
I went to work. We have this new system apparently for scanning students' membership card bar codes or something, which is pretty messed up. Thanks to me actually knowing some shit about databases, I was able to at least fix some of our problems, but in the process discovered that I am actually not in the database, and they still have all of my students assigned to Becky. WTF. I had a whole lot of paperwork and prep to do today and next thing I knew, it was 4:30ish and I was starving, so Eri and I went and got dinner. Then I had to come back and face the terror that is my class of 8-year-olds...
The week's lesson was on "What's your favorite ____?" "I like ______." So, to start off I brought out crayons and blank pieces of paper with ice cream cones on them and asked people to draw their favorite ice cream. So far, so good... except they wouldn't stop. They all insisted on drawing three of them, and then adding second scoops and cherries and all this other stuff to their drawings, and each time I tried to go "Okay, guys, SO HERE IS TODAY'S LESSON..." they would just ignore me and talk in Japanese about ice cream, so eventually I just gave up and got the two better students to say things like "I like chocomint ice cream." "I like green tea ice cream." and so on, ignoring the other two. I presented the rest of the lesson, which involved "what is your favorite game/comicbook/tv show?"
Me: "What is your favorite TV show? Do you like Pokemon?"
Boy: "Nani? Nani sore?"
Girl 1: "I like Pokemon!!!"
Girl 2: "I like... I like..."
Boy: "Nani nani nani. Wakaranai waKARANAIIIII."
Girl 2: "I like... [mumbled tv show too quiet for me to hear]"
Girl 3: "I like dorama."
Me: "You like dorama? What is your favorite dorama?"
Girl 3: "Hanazakari no kimitachi e."
Me: "Oh, Hana Kimi?"
Girls: "EEEEEEEHHH? SENSEI WA HANAKIMI GA SHTTERU NO?"
Me: "Isn't it over though?"
Boy, chiming in: "IKEMEN PARADAISU."
Me: "Wait, YOU like Ikemen paradise?"
Boy: "Hai. I like."
Girls: "EEEEHHHHHHHH?"
(Hanakimi is basically a dorama starring all of these cute young male Japanese actors, the plot being that a girl dresses up as a boy to go to an all-cute-boys school. Hilarity kind of ensues, but I only got up to episode 5 before moving to Japan and haven't caught up yet. Still, I can't imagine actually liking this show if you were a guy, but maybe I'm weird. Also, I suppose they're only 8. But still.)
I ended up giving up on my coherent lesson plan and just played Phonics Tag -- a game I invented where I put up words on the walls (like "at", "ed", "it", "on", "up", etc) and one student picks out corresponding cards and yells out a word like "IT!" and everyone else has to run to that word on the wall and tag it. This mostly resolves in the boy running over to the word first and/or the girls screaming and trying to avoid touching him, while also trying to tag the word. The good part is that this gets them tired enough to sit down and do workbook writing for a while, AND it prepares them for the phonics exercises. The bad part is that if I let it go on too long it eventually turns into Destroy Deanna's Classroom While Yelling Random Phonics, which is altogether much more fun for the kids but a lot less fun for me.
I had everyone write their name on the ice cream drawings and I collected them after the class and I'm going to make a poster of them, with the words at the top: "What is your favorite ice cream flavor?" "I like strawberry ice cream," or something like that.
Anyway, the rest of the day was pretty smooth sailing after that was over; the rest of my Friday students are really nice people and it's pretty small classes, too. I didn't even bother eating dinner after work for once since I was still full from my late late lunch, though I did have to walk home from the station since I got a ride to Akabane with Sam again instead of riding my bike. Oops.
Still can't decide what to do this weekend though. I won't get out of work tomorrow until 7; Sunday seems like if I want to do baseball I'm going to have to either go to Chiba or find a ticket reseller to go to Tokyo or Jingu. I've got tickets to the Giants-Dragons game on Monday already anyway so maybe I should just avoid baseball on Sunday, but of course it's not like I have much else to do or anyone to invite around. I'm sure I can come up with something though. Museums and maybe some exploring and stuff like that? We'll see.
There's a GEOS party on 9/30 that I don't think I'm going to go to. It's a going-away party for my head trainer, but I don't know her that well AND it costs 4000 yen AND that's the date of the last Fighters game in Kanto this year, so I don't want to skip it, and I also don't want to show up at the party all sweaty and horrible. So. Sigh. Meeting people is tough.