I'm a superhero-otherwise known as a 'kids teacher'

My evil nemesis is a 5 year old little girl.

You already know a little bit about her as I have talked about her before, although I didn't quite get her name right. It's Minami not Manami although I could have been calling her 'little brat' for all the good it would do me. My AT (assistant trainer) has told me that you should always make sure that the kids have their nametag on before entering the classroom. Because, as he says, if you know their name then you can control them. Well apparently someone forgot to give Minami the memo. In most cases he is actually correct. Some kids get off doing their own thing, but once they hear their name they immediately turn obedient-sort of. If names are a children's kryptonite then I am dealing with an evil that has no such fatal flaw.

In an earlier post I described Minami as having the attention span of an ant and I stand corrected. She has the attention span of an electron - and some of the same attributes as well. She bounces around from one side of the room to the next like an uncontrolled fission reaction that would be likely to result in a small nuclear explosion inside the kids room if not checked.

The reason why I am teaching her is because the previous teacher hurt his back while teaching her. He's no lightweight either. He's a fairly hulking Brit who must be at least 6'5" and she is a very minute 5 year old. The only game that she shows any enthusiasm for playing is blast off because she knows she's going to get a ride. She's not supposed to, but I'm so happy that she's actually paying attention that I reward her a little. Then I tell her that now she has to blast off. So then she puts her hands above her head and makes every motion that she's about to do it herself and then at the last second she lunges at me.

You're supposed to do transition activities like blast off between the regular activities to keep the kids focused but with her the lesson is one big transition activity. I sometimes finally get her to sit down and take a pencil only to be foiled by some piece of fluff in the corner that catches her attention. God help me. I would hate teaching her if it wasn't for the fact that she's such a cute brat. Anyways we be both lived to tell the tale another day but who knows what will happen in future episodes of....Teacher Brendan vs The (Tsu)Minami!!!

BBB Productions presents...

As promised here is the premier release of BBB Productions. Movies can sometimes tell a story a lot better than pictures and they're pretty fun to make so I'll try to do more sometime in the future assuming that there are no bandwith issues.
I've added some music to the video to give it that much more of a Dance Dance Revolution feeling but if you recall the fact that there's actually no music whatsoever then maybe you'll understand just how strange this was to see. Also there were groups like this one gathered all around the park-some larger and some smaller. I guess it's the in thing to do after school. Beats smoking crack I guess.

Click here to see the premier of Dancing Japanese!

Maybe they import them from Eden

It's been staring at me from its place in the produce aisle for almost a month now. Tempting me buy it. Come on, it says, you'll never get this chance back in Canada. I may eventually take the plunge and buy it just so that I can say that I did. I am of course talking about the $5 apple.

I can't remember what apples cost back in Canada but I think you could usually get a bag of apples for about five dollars. I worked in an apple orchard for a couple months and it just blows my mind to think what one of those gigantic bins full of apples would be worth if each apple was worth five dollars. Now I will admit, they do look like five dollar apples. They are enourmous, perfectly round and totally without imperfection. They even come with their own individual styrofoam protection. But five dollars? I'll stick with apple juice thanks.

It's a similar story for almost all the other fruits and vegetables too. Maybe not quite as outrageous but still fairly pricey. I think it's not so much because of Japan's lack of agricultural potential but rather because the Japanese demand perfection of their fresh produce. Everything is humongous and perfect-and expensive. But you get what you pay for I guess. The grapes are practically the size of golf balls and the carrots are so big that they are sold 3 in a pack.

Groceries have probably been my biggest expense so far. I don't think I've ever spent $30-$40 on groceries and only filled 2 bags. Beef is quite expensive here which makes sense since they've banned all the beef from Canada so they're probably experiencing a bit of a shortage. Fortunately though chicken is as ridiculously cheap as beef is ridiculously expensive. I can buy 3 or 4 dinners worth of chicken for about 5 dollars-and we're talkin boneless chicken breast here not those stupid wings or legs.

Bread is kind of funny here because the largest loaf I can find is only 8 slices and it's almost always white bread. Wholewheat is nowhere to be found and you can forget about your 8 grains or flax bread or whatever it is you normally buy. You can buy all the alcohol you want right in the grocery store and you can drink it right outside the store if you want - you can drink anywhere.

What I miss the most so far is our large and varied choice of cereals and our frozen vegetables. I could eat cereal 3 times a day and people here just don't seem to eat it. We have a tiny section in our supermarket for cereal but the boxes are small and expensive. And cooking frozen vegetables sure was convenient back home but you dont see them too often here. You can find some at the 99yen store but the bags are small and certainly not like the ones we have back in Canada that might last a person a month almost.

The supermarkets here do have some cool stuff though. I mentioned the alcohol which might be a bigger advantage if I was a bigger drinker, but they also have tons of different cold drinks. I've started drinking this cold coffee which is pretty addictive. Everyone here seems to drink ice coffee. It's not like Ice Caps or anything-it's literally cold coffee. In McDonalds they'll put ice cubes in it for you.

Japan is a good place to be if you are a smoker because you can smoke almost everywhere and a pack of smokes will only set you back 3 bucks. If you run out you don't have to worry because you'll probably come up upon a vending machine that sells 20 different kinds on almost every block. Vending machines are everywhere in Japan. There's one place in Ikebukuro that I wish I had gotten a picture of - up against a building there is one long line of vending machines that stretch off into the horizon (ok there is some exageration involved there.) The odd thing is that although I've seen more vending machines here than I have seen in my entire life, I've yet to see one that sells food. I'm talking chips, chocolate bars, gum, candy etc etc. I have yet to see a single one. However if you need smokes or drinks (including beer) then you're in luck.

Speaking of beer, the Asahi beer company (which seems to be the largest in Japan,) even designed their head office after a mug of beer.

Only in Japan.

let me get to sleep

Better than Riverdance

I finally got the 'tourist' thing out of me today. Had the day off so Adam, myself and a couple of girls from our apartment went to Asakusa to see the various temples and whatnot. It was fairly interesting but I have absolutely no idea what the significance of these buildings are so it really didn't mean much to me. They must mean something though because the place was a tourist trap. Far too many white people for my liking anyways. There were hundreds of little stalls all selling various overpriced souvenir type items that I had absolutely no interest in.

One of the odder (is that a word?) events of the day occurred even before we entered the temple area. Just outside is a place where people like to stand and get their pictures taken with the temples behind them. A group of japanese girls were standing together and getting their picture taken. Adam, who has no shame, gave his camera to one of our friends and then went up to the girls and asked them to pose with him for a photo. They were all tickled by this and seemed to enjoy it thouroughly. They then left only to return a minute later cameras in hand wanting to get their own pictures of this meeting of western and eastern civilizations. So we all jumped into the photo while my friend had to take pictures with about 8 different cameras.

It took me about 8 seconds to pick up on the trend of everyone giving the victory sign to the camera and start using it myself, probably for now and the rest of my life.
We saw another odd thing at the end of the day while walking through Ueno park (you can see the Ueno station at the top of my blog I think.) Around the main square of the park were groups of highschool students dancing. There was no music, just groups of people, still in their school uniforms practicing some kind of choreographed dancing that was something like a cross between the videogame Dance Dance Revolution and line dancing. I swear it was one of the strangest things I've seen in my life.

Fortunately one of my friends managed to grab a short videoclip of it with her camera so I'll try to host it here or at least email it to anyone who wants to see it. It's really quite interesting and is probably worth the download even if you have no male hormonal desire to watch dancing girls in school uniforms.

Hey Ya Hey Ya

Yet another first in my life. First karaoke.

I've always been a bit of a stick-in-the-mud and especially so when it comes to singing. So perhaps if I had known what the future was going to bring then I might have tried to avoid it. A couple of the staff (ie Japanese) at our branch were leaving because they were being transferred to another branch so some of the staff and some of the teachers went out for a bit of a drink after work last week. I didn't really have much to do so I said I'd go for a quick drink. The thing is though that when you go to a function like that there really is no such thing as a quick drink. If you go then you're there for the long haul.

Eventually about 10 of us showed up. Most came straight from work but a couple of teachers were on their day off and showed up already fairly inebriated. Drinks were ordered for everyone and most people got some kind of food and shared it around. In Japan, once you've started drinking it's very hard to stop. The reason for this is that you aren't supposed to refill your own glass-it's polite for someone else to do so for you. So as soon as you have finally managed to down your last glass, someone is there with a gigantic wine-sized bottle of beer to fill it up again. It's also easy to get alcohol. Usually you have your own little room and a phone that you use to order food and alcohol. So you just pick it up, talk to the staff and right away someone is at your door with more beer.

Once everyone had eaten and consumed copious amounts of alcohol, someone grabbed the remote, turned on the TV and started off the karaoke. I was actually surprised to find that karaoke really is fun! Even I, after I had drunk enough, managed to belt out the lyrics to Hey Ya and Wonderwall. Anyways I had fun and I may even go again someday.

I guess it's better than handling rattlesnakes

I'm now two full days into my new career as a teacher of small children. I'm still trying to decide whether or not I'm better or worse off for it. At least I can certainly feel empathy for all those teachers that I had over the years. Not so much because they had me, because I think I was a fairly good kid to a certain extent, but rather just for having to teach kids in general.

You may have gotten the impression that I don't like teaching kids and that would be incorrect. It's actually a fair amount of fun. A kids class is basically 40 minutes where you can shut your brain off for once and just be a kid like all the others. The problem with that is that being a kid is draining. Maybe you've forgotten, but it actually takes a heck of a lot of energy to be a kid. Maybe that's why you can see a kid running around like a crazy banshee one moment, and then be dead to the world the next.

Fortunately it can only get better (or easier at least) from here on in. One of the more difficult parts right now with teaching kids is that you're not quite sure what you're doing next. The lesson plans are completely different from the regular lesson plans. And then there's the fact that you're doing a lot of kid things like playing games or singing songs. Now I may only be 25 but it's still been quite a long time since I was a kid in the literal sense of the word and I've forgotten or never learned quite a lot of the songs. That means a lot of preparation before the begining of class where I go to the Activity Glossary and basically learn how to do the games or sing the songs (how many of you can honestly say that you know what comes after the second line of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star?)

The kids themselves are decent. I've always heard stories about how well behaved and polite Japanese students are towards their teachers and I can tell you now that this is 100% not true. Well not exactly anyways. They're polite enough and so far they haven't behaved badly but they certainly don't sit there like perfect students. For instance today I had one student called Manami who is probably about...5 or 6 years old. Now it would only be slightly generous to say that she has the attention span of an ant. And not a sensitive ant at that. She was fun to teach but also frustrating because you couldnt control her. She walked straight into the room and grabbed a marker and started doodling on the board rather than sitting on the floor and getting out her homework. It took about 5 minutes to finally get her started. Later we played a game called "Blast Off" where you crouch down, hold your hands together over your head like a rocket, count to 5 and then jump up and blast off. Only in her version of Blast Off, when we got to 5 she would leap at me like a leopard, wrap her arms around my neck and I would have to blast off with her attached to me. She was in a Man-to-Man class rather than a class with other students and I have a sneaking suspicion why.

So far getting jumped on seems to be the rule rather than the exception. I had another one-on-one student, different girl but same age. We were playing a game that involved putting a group of cards at one end of the room. We would stand at the other side of the room and I would tell her a card. Then after a "1....2....3....GO!" we would rush to the other side of the room and turn over the cards until we found the right one. After she identified the card she would then jump on my back and I would have to piggyback her back to the other side of the room. As hard as I looked, nowhere in the Activity Glossary could I find the step that detailed piggybacking the student back to the original start.

Anyways so far so good. It's fun but tiring. There are 3 levels of students: Kinder, Junior and Senior. So far I like Kinder and Junior the best. Seniors are a little better behaved in that they aren't running around all over the place but they are also starting to get to the age where they are a little more sullen and too cool to participate fully in the lesson. Kinders and Juniors may be little Tazmanian Devils but at least they are enthusiastic. I think I shall sleep soundly tonight.

let me get to sleep

Maybe I should have been a shirt editor instead

When it comes to fashion, so far I've found the Japanese style to be a little peculiar. It's been said that the Japanese are about a year or so ahead of the trends in North America when it comes to clothing and fashion and whatnot. Let me tell you I have seen the future and it is frightening.
Japan loves its suits and uniforms. Anyone who isn't working for a pachinko parlour or restaurant usually wears a suit. As far as I know, all students wear uniforms to school. At the same time, the casual attire appears to be an assortment of garments that have been thrown together at random. This means that on any given day, 50% of the people you see will be wearing a suit and the other 50% will look like they have been gobbled up and spit out by a goodwill store.

When browsing the department store clothing section, you are apt to see some very interesting clothes. For some reason if a shirt has writing on it then it is written in English. I have no idea why, perhaps it's just a fascination with the language. The most interesting part is not the language it's written in but rather what is being said. The fact is, it's impossible to understand what message the shirt is trying to get across. The message is usually gramatically incorrect and even if it isn't then it's guaranteed to make absolutely no sense whatsover. For your enjoyment I've provided some examples of what I'm talking about:

Shirt #1
Shirt #2
Shirt #3
Shirt #4

On a completely different note, it looks like the ship is starting to go down for english teachers in Korea. It certainly doesn't paint a rosy picture anyway. I would suggest that it probably isn't a good idea to get involved with the law in Korea or even Japan for that matter. The concept of rights can be viewed completely differently over here even though they are both democracies.

let me get to sleep

Pics pics galore!

Well maybe not quite galore. In abundance perhaps or copious amounts maybe-but not quite galore. So I just finished my first full week of teaching. I'm not sure if that makes me a veteran or not. Wednesday I have to head to another branch for a day of kids training and then I get to start teaching kids. Little kids. Which means playing games and singing ridiculous songs and stuff like that. Hopefully I enjoy it-the teaching I mean.

Sunday night after coming home from work, a couple friends and myself headed out to the local community centre to play some indoor soccer. One of the teachers has a contact who rents one of the gyms so we got to play two hours of soccer in an awesome gym for only 300 yen each. Talk about a great deal. That's a heck of a lot better than paying approximately $10 for one hour of soccer back home in Toronto. Anyways it was all good fun and I found out that I definitely need to start running again so as to get a little stamina back. After the game we got together for a team photo. My roommate Adam is crouching behind me and on the right is Jamie, a teacher who lives right beside us. In the back row from left to right are, some white guy, Jason, Crazy Kevin and Felsy the nextdoor neighbour.

Last night I went back to the community centre with Jamie for an aikido lesson. It was fairly interesting but in the end I don't think it was really for me. If I was going to do something once a week I'd rather be playing soccer.

Here are a few more pictures of Hibarigaoka. I took them from the top of a large department store right next to the train station. The first picture shows the train station itself and kind of the 'main square.' This is where all the bus routes begin and all of the taller buildings are kind of built up around the square. The second picture is overlooking the train station. I live out there somewhere in all that big jumble. The third picture is of the Parco department store. My school branch is here up on the 5th floor of the building. So I never have to go far if I feel the need to buy something. The last picture is of the train crossing that I have to cross every day to get to work. The Parco building is just on the other side. The only reason why I bothered to take this picture is because you never see these back home. But they're all over the place here as most of the trains are above ground. During the peak periods of the day, the barriers will hardly reach the top before the warning bells start to go off again. The Seiyu department store in the background is where I took the other pictures from.

This is the funniest thing I have seen since I got to Japan. Ben my roommate gets the credit for finding this gem. Unfortunately it was kind of tough to take a good picture of it. Those of you from Toronto may find more humour in it than others. I don't know why, but the idea of a submachinegun-toting, mask-wearing panda defending the homeland against SARS from behind a fort made of laundry bags makes me laugh like crazy.

By the way if you happen to be visiting Japan right now then you could be forgiven for thinking that there is some kind of mass pandemic going on in the city. When I first got here it seemed like 50% of all people were wearing those masks over their mouth and nose. My first thought was that people sure must get sick a lot here, but then I discovered that it's the middle of hay fever season right now and the pollen from all the cedar trees surrounding Tokyo really hits the Tokyites hard. I think they also wear them when they're sick though and I think some people wear them to prevent getting sick. It's quite strange really-especially when coming from Toronto, the first thing you think when you see those masks is SARS. I doubt a Westerner would ever wear one of those things even if we were sick-too concerned about our image.

On a completely unrelated note...

Thanks to porn king for provoking the last lengthy post with his message. Who knew that the big players of the adult entertainment industry took such an interest in international affairs? If you're curious about something or there's something you'd like me to write about then definitely drop me a message.

On a completely unrelated note, I just taught the cutest little girl of all time yesterday. Her smile just lit up the room. I think I probably could have taught that class for 8 hours straight. I hope I have a daughter like that someday.

Can't we all just get along?

It's definitely a change to be surrounded by people who don't like you. I'm not referring to myself personally but rather the country of Japan as a whole. I know we Canadians like to consider ourselves superior to Americans sometimes and we tend to refer to them the same way as the rest of the country does to Torontonians. And I'm sure Americans have quite a few problems with Canadians; Iraq, missle defence and border security to name a few. But on the whole we really get on quite well with each other.

So it's really quite jarring to realize that none of your neighbours like you. In fact they dislike you. I've seen evidence of this almost every day I've been here, long before the anti-Japan prostests by the Chinese popped up a couple of days ago. Japan seems to be constantly in disputes with its neighbours and the roots of these disputes usually stem from pre-WWII history.

I have exactly two english newspapers in my apartment right now and between them I can find about ten articles regarding asian relation conflicts. In one article, S. Korea and Japan are fighting over ownership of a small territory between them. In another, N. Korea is demanding the return of human remains of people that we're allegedly 'kidnapped.' In another, Japan and China are fighting over oil and gas drilling rights on a piece of ocean between them. More often than not, the country who happens to have a conflict with Japan will use the 'history' card invoking the crimes of WWII and before.

The current conflict with China is a whole other story. A lot of Japanese actually agree with China in that they don't want Japan to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. They think that that will just make them even more reliant on the United States. If you read the papers fairly regularly then you are probably more familiar with this conflict than I am. I have however been picking up some of the nuances of the Nippon-Sino relationship in general though. One country is really as bad as the other. China refuses to acknowledge any progress that Japan has made post-1945 and Japan refuses to remember anything that happened pre-1945.
One of the root causes of the current protest isn't so much over the fact that Japan is being considered as a permanent council member but rather over the fact that Japan is releasing a new history textbook in its schools that whitewashes the crimes that were commited by Japan in the early half of the 20th century.

While China certainly has a right to be upset over this, I suspect that the government's reasons for promoting and encouraging this prostest are less than honest. In order for a communist government to stay popular it needs to stoke the fires of nationalism. In order to create a nationalistic fervour you need an enemy and Japan's past and it's inability to accept responsibility for the things it did makes it an easy target.

I think things will probably get worse before they get better. I can't understand why this problem seems to be contained to the Pacific. I think that most of Europe has forgiven and forgot Germany and they played a big part in two World Wars. It's interesting how the conflict always filters down into everyday situations. I was teaching one class to a student about talking about music. At the end of every class there's some kind of roleplay or activity to bring the whole lesson together. At the end of this particular class the activity was to choose a statement about music and explain whether she agreed with it and why. She chose 'Music has the power to change the world.' When I asked her why she believed this she told me about how Korean pop music is so popular in Japan right now and it gives the two countries an opportunity to interact and share common interests. So maybe there is still some hope left.

I'm in electronic heaven

Before I left to go to Japan I heard that you probably wouldn't get your electronics any cheaper than back at home but what you would be able to do is buy things that won't come out in North America for another 6 months. Well according to my initial research, it turns out that I can have my cake and eat it too! I found that I can buy a 60GB Apple Ipod Photo for 41,500 yen or approximately $460 CDN. According to the Futureshop website, these Ipods are currently going for $569 plus tax!!
I also checked out Sony's MP3 player. I could get a 20 GB Sony NHD-1 (1st generation) in Canada for $399 plus tax or I could buy a 20 GB Sony NHD-3 (3rd generation) for about 31,500 or $320 CDN. I love it!! I'll bet if I go to Akihabara (Tokyo's self-proclaimed "electronic town") then I could buy one for even cheaper!

By the way...

The fact that those two girls happened to walk into the picture of Shinjuku station while I took it is completely coincidental. I have not been filling my camera with pictures of girls in school uniform!

Japan in colour

As promised here are a few shots of Japan. I took some of them today on the way to work. Basically this is what my neighbourhood looks like. These pictures were taken fairly close to the train station so it's fairly busy. I live about 10 minutes away from here and it's all residential area so the streets aren't nearly so busy.
Hopefully in the next couple days I'll get some more of me and the apartment and the built up area around my home train station.

The first few pics are of the busier part of my area. It really is a perfect storm of cars, bikes and pedestrians. I'm surprised I haven't seen an accident yet.

Hibari streets #1

Hibari streets #2

Hibari streets #3

This next picture is of the Shinjuku subway station. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe it's the busiest subway station in the world as it processes 3 million people a day. I think the entire Toronto subway system only processes 1 million people a day-and this single station does 3 million! It was actually quite amazing to see. I'm not sure if this picture quite captures it but when you look down this long corridor you can see nothing but peoples' heads all the way off to the horizon.

Shinjuku Station

let me get to sleep

Time to scratch off another accomplishment on life's "To do" list

I can tie a tie.

Yes after 25 years or approximately 1/3 of an average lifetime I can now say that I am among the tie tie-ers of this world. I've worn a tie to work now for about 6 days and I didn't need the instructions after the first couple of days but things didn't really fall perfectly in place until today. Up until today my abilities were acceptable but nothing to write home about. Then this morning it just 'happened.' And because I'm so generous I'll tell you the secret right now so that instead of staring at yourself in the mirror like a tool you can spend the next few years of your life finding the cure to cancer or something useful. Form the knot right up by the neck rather than further down and having to slide it up.

That is all the worldly wisdom I shall be dispensing for today. Come back again in 25 years and I'll tell you the secret of matching your socks to your trousers.

Today I learned the importance of researching the background of your student before you pick out your lesson. The profile for one of my students today had no information except for the fact that they had done some travelling in the US and several other countries. Thinking that they were obviously quite a seasoned world traveller I decided that a lesson on checking into hotels would be appropriate. I picked out the lesson, prepared it and then headed to class as soon as the bell rang. And whom did I find sitting across from me when I walked into the classroom?
A 12 year old girl.

Fortunately I have no problems adapting and thinking like a 12 year old. We changed the lesson and talked about our favourite videogames, animated movies and homepages instead.

let me get to sleep

Who knew earthquakes could be so anti-climatic?

While I was eating my breakfast yesterday morning my flatmate got up and said, 'Did you feel that earthquake this morning?' My only response was, 'What earthquake?'

That's right. I've been here for only two weeks and already I've slept through two earthquakes. It's as if I'm the guy from Polkaroo who always misses Polkaroo whenever he stops by. 'Oh no, you mean I missed him again??' I swear I would still be sleeping happily even if the walls were to collapse around me. I'd wake up in a pile of rubble saying, "What earthquake?"

Apparently these were both fairly big ones to. According to my roommate the walls were shaking and the hanging lamps were swinging a bit. I actually did feel a bit of a tremor later yesterday morning for a couple of seconds. It must have been an aftershock though which to me doesn't count. I saw later that night on the news that there was an earthquake in Chiba that morning so that must be what was felt. Tokyo and the surrounding cities are built up around a large harbour on the Pacific. It's like a giant upside down "U." We're out on the west side and Chiba is on the peninsula that runs down the east side. They showed some footage from a convenience store camera and it was quite cool. Food and videos and what not were flying off shelves that were shaking back and forth like crazy.

Unfortunately it rained again for the second straight day so I wasn't able to get any pictures. I'll try sometime when I'm on my way to work. Instead my Aussie roommate Adam, Jamie a Brit from nextdoor and myself decided to go to the local gym. It's a very nice gym and it felt awesome to be able to work out for the first time in about 4 months. The membership is about 6500 yen per month which is fairly reasonable. It's not much different than any other gym I've ever been to, except for the fact that you have to take off your shoes before you enter the change room.

let me get to sleep

I'm a bowing machine

The above title is probably something that The Vapors were kicking around before they finally settled on "I'm Turning Japanese" as the name of their big one-hit song. Both are a fairly good description of myself these days. Now don't get me wrong, in most respects I'm still a stupid, ignorant foreigner but when it comes to bowing it's amazing how easy it is to do it and not even realize you're doing it. I'm not talking about a full fledged bow here but rather a slight head dip forward of the shoulders and a little nod of the head. The annoying part is not that I find myself doing it but rather I can't seem to stop. Not around Japanese anyways. Around Westerners I feel no such urge...so far. My classes usually end up going something like this:

Myself: My name is Brendan. And you are?
Student: My name is Hiroko. (bow)
Myself: Ahhh. Nice to meet you, Hiroko. (bow)
Student: Nice to meet you too. (bow)

This process is then repeated for each student in the class and is often done again at the end of the class. Multiply that by 6-8 classes a day and that's one heck of a lot of bowing. Fortunately I haven't started bowing when answering the phone.

I do have a cell phone now but I'm not sure how much talking I'll actually do on it. Contrary from North America and maybe everywhere, in Japan you don't actually get charged for any received calls on your cell phone. I think us Westerners are so enthralled by this luxury that we just wait for people to call us hence nobody ends up calling anybody. If there is any kind of communication it is usually by email between phones. I have the slowest thumb of all time so it usually takes me 10 minutes just to write a two sentence message.

Since today is the begining of my weekend (I get Monday's and Tuesday's off) I was going to head out with my camera and get some good pictures of the cherry trees before all the blossoms fall off. Unfortunately it has been raining all morning so i may try tomorrow. I'm also going to try to get some pics of my place and neighbourhood so everyone can see what this place looks like. So check back soon for lots of pics!

That's "Professor" Brendan to you

12:41am
Just got back from "dinner" after a tiring but good day. I finally finished OJT and am now a 'qualified' english teacher. It's a pretty intense experience. In three days you go from having never taught a class before to being a regular teacher like everyone else. A little too intense if you ask me-it would have been better if the training was at least twice as long. But I don't think I suffered for it. I came out of my last class feeling like I was a pretty damned good teacher. That may possibly because the guy I trained with was a real dunce and so I looked good as a result. He's a good guy though and after a bit more practice I think he'll do great-some people just have a lot of problem hiding their....dunciness.

The first day I taught the first half of one lesson. The second day I taught 3 full lessons. My first full lesson was with the older text that we hadn't practiced with and the first thing my "big boss" said to me when I came into the room was "I'm going to observe Brendan." So that added a lot of pressure to things. Usually you're just observed by your trainer or one of the other teachers who have worked long enough to know how things are supposed to be done. Anyways all the lessons went quite well. Today's lessons were two sets of lessons back to back. I don't know how anyone can possibly do eight in a day. There's only 10 minutes of prep time between each lesson and half that time is spent writing observations about the previous lesson.

I had a funny lesson today involving 'describing appearances.' I had three girls (ie. women) and at the end of the lesson for a bit of fun I got them to describe each other. Then after they completed that I told them to describe me. They all just looked at each other and then started giggling. Perhaps it was just my swollen head but I'm sure a couple of the descriptions were 'you have cute blue eyes' and 'you look kindly.' Now I'm not sure what that last comment means but I'm sure it must have been some kind of compliment. I was too embarrased to correct any grammatical errors and just wrapped up the lesson instead.

On the way back home I got a call from my roommate saying that a bunch of "us" were at a local "ikazuya" near the station. I'm not sure if that's spelled right but it's basically a bar/eatery. So i turned around and headed back since I needed to get some food into me anyways. I was going to stop at the 711 for ramen but I thought this would fill me a little more. When I got there there was about 7 of us from my apartment complex. I sat down (took off my shoes first) and ordered some food but nothing to drink because I had already gone out for an eki biiru (station beer) after work with some of the guys from work as a celebration of the completion of OJT. I've never heard of "station beer" before but it basically consists of going to the department store beside the train station, buying a beer, and then drinking it outside the station by some big carved rock(our bar.)

Anyways things were going splendidly and then this one Japanese guy walked in. Now I've often heard about how people will just walk up to your table in the middle of the restauraunt or whatever but I've never seen it happen. So he sat down and we talked to him, mostly in broken Japanese. Then one of his buddies from work came along. Then an other one. And they kept coming until there was at least 5 or 6 japanese drinking at our table. They were quite friendly and outgoing. I had thought that the Japanese were quite a timid people but obviously not after drinking. The naked guys running around in the park at Kuchi-jogi last weekend is a testament to that. But that's a whole other story.
Anyways we're not sure but we think the Japanese got their beer put on our tab because the cost of the food and drinks ended up coming out to 19,000 yen or approximately $200.

First real day of work tomorrow.

let me get to sleep

Don't be a stranger....

If you want, feel free to leave me a comment. In fact I'd love to get feedback-it makes me think that someone might actually be reading this! I'm not a 'diary' person so I don't get much satisfaction in writing stuff down just for the sake of writing it down. But please please if you know me or I know you then put down your name when you post so that I know who in the heck is commenting!! We're all friends here so no more annonymous comments please (unless you're a stalker.)

Bill Murray you ain't seen nothin....

Konnichiwa everyone. How sad it is that I've been here over a week now and the first time I use that word is in a blog to a bunch of (mostly) Canadians. Don't get me wrong, I have been using broken Japanese (hereafter known as 'Japenglish') for quite a bit of my travels, but I haven't really come into a situation where it would really be appropriate (for instance I have yet to really meet any of my Japanese neighbours.)

I actually hadn't planned on writing anything so soon after arriving because I didn't think I would have much access to the internet and I didn't know how badly I would be hit by cultureshock/homesickness and I didn't want any of those feelings to bias how I write. As it turns out my roommate has an internet connection and I seem to be managing pretty well so far so therefore I am updating my blog as soon as I am.

I'm trying to think of how I can possibly recount my entire past week's activities without going into one long essay that people will get tired of reading after 2 paragraphs. I may try to seperate it into more than one post over the period of a couple days. The flight was awfully long at 15 hours-the farthest I've ever gone so far. It was when I reached the airport terminal and heard the announcers over the PA that I came to the full realization that that charming language that always followed the english announcements on the plane was now the language and I wasn't likely to hear anything else for the next year. The next leg of my journey involved a painfully long (2 hour) bus ride across the city where I met a representative of the company. We eventually got everything sorted out and I was guided home by a fellow teacher who happens to live in my building.

All I can say is thank God I had a guide and my heart goes out to anyone who didn't. The streets of Tokyo are far and away beyond anything I had imagined. My neighborhood is a actually just a little outside the main city of Tokyo although there is no real border or any kind of seperation between the two. In my neighbourhood there are few buildings above three storeys high. Now I admit that I have some kind of unhealthy fascination with streets. Everywhere I go it's the first thing I notice. Some of you may remember all the complaints I had about the streets in England. My neighbourhood is something else all together. All the streets are little more than a single carwidth wide and there are no sidewalks. There are no streetname signs and as far as I can tell no discernable stop signs. The roads twist and turn and intersect with each other at weird angles. It's both charming and disturbing at the same time. I haven't seen a car/bicycle/pedestrian accident yet but surely they must happen all the time-there just isn't enough room for everyone!

I'm currently living with both a Brit and an Aussie. Both are very cool guys and have been more than helpful. There are actually quite a few teachers in the apartment that I'm staying-I'd say five different apartments' worth at least. Everyone seems quite cool and hangs out with each other. On Sunday we all went to Kuchi-jogi for the cherry blossom festival thing. The cherry blossoms hadn't really come out yet but there was a ton of people who were all sitting on tarps that they had brought and eating and drinking (and drinking and drinking.)

Now for a piece of current news-I just had my first full day of training today. It went pretty well. I'm kind of exhausted because the training is fairly intense. There's only three days of on the job training (OJT) before they throw you out to the wolves. I actually taught half a class today. It went fairly well I think. I was super nervous at first (think important job interview x 50) and I forgot a few things that I had learned but the two girls I taught had obviously done this before so were kind of used to the routine so we didn't get too lost. After managed to get rid of the nerves things went pretty well and I found that I actually really enjoyed it. Loved it even. The students were very enthusiastic and quick to laugh. My biggest worry wasn't that I wouldn't be able to do the job but rather whether or not I would like it. Fortunately that doesn't seem like too big a deal now and now that I've passed that initial teaching "hurdle," hopefully I can go into my next lesson without the stagefright

Let me get to sleep