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