My town is extremely rural. There is almost nothing here. The fact that I don't have a driver's license compounds things greatly. I guess JET really doesn't take into account what you write in your application. Everyone in this town reccomends using a car, and they feel pity for me when they find out I can't drive. I do remember saying that I don't plan on driving in Japan. Perhaps they should re-write the question as "can you drive?" That aside, I've been biking everyday, so I guess I should be in better shape physically by the end of the year.
The three days in Tokyo went by fast. I made a few entries about my time leading up to now, but I haven't had a chance to post yet, because of the lack of internet in the town. I finally got my computer hooked up to the school internet, so hopefully, I can make more regular posts, albeit short ones.
There are only two computers in this town available for public use, both located in my town's city hall/board of education. The computers are so old, and slow - it feels like living in the mid 90's. To make things worse, email and blog sites are heavily blocked, so I haven't been able to post anything at all. Sending emails are difficult as well. The school blocks yahoo, which is my primary email. For people that want to contact me, send email to my uoft email - jonathan.lam@utoronto.ca, as I can check it anywhere anytime (it's not blocked - they probably have no idea what it is.)
Today was the first day of classes. In the morning we had a school assembly in the gym. The principal made a few opening remarks, and then it was time for my self-introduction speech (自己紹介）. I did my speech in English and then Japanese. The students and teachers seemed to enjoy it, and a couple of teachers were quite impressed. It felt pretty good.
Here's the text that I wrote, although the actual speech was a bit different, as I added some things and removed some things to keep the flow of the speech even.
Hi, nice to meet you. I am your new ALT. My name is Jonathan, but since it’s quite long, you can call me Jon for short.
I come from Toronto, Canada, and although I was born in the United States, my parents are from Hong Kong so that means I’m Chinese American Canadian. I’ve also studied a little bit of Japanese, so if you have any questions at all, please feel free to ask me in English or Japanese. Please don’t be shy, I enjoy answering questions.
Things I like are sushi, asari sakamushi, junior highschool students that try their best and study their hardest, and so on. Things I don’t like much are natto..I guess. My hobbies are skating and playing hockey. I also like baseball.
I’m looking forward to teaching English at Kannari Junior Highschool. Let’s do our best to learn English, and find out about different countries, customs and cultures. I think that if we can do that, the world would be a much better place to live in.
Thank you.
はじめまして。私はあなたたちの新しいALTです。名前はジョナサンです。でも、長いので短くしてジョンと呼んでもいいです。
私はカナダのトロントから来ました。アメリカで生まれたんですが、両親は香港からなので、私は中国系です。トロントは都会で人口が４５０万です。日本語も少し勉強してたから何か質問があれば、英語でも、日本語でも聞いてください。
私の好きなものはすしとか、あさりさかむしとか、頑張っている一生懸命勉強している中学生たちとかね。あまり好きじゃないものはなっとうかな。趣味はスケートをすることとか、ホッケーをすることとか、です。野球も好きです。
金成中学校で英語を教えるのを、とても楽しみにしています。一緒に頑張って英語を勉強しましょう。それから、いろいろな外国のこととか、別な習慣と文化とか、習いましょう。世界の全ての国のことがもっとわかるようになったらもっといい生活ができると思います。
では、これからどうぞよろしくお願いします。
I also attended my first two classes of the year. The first class was for first graders (一年生）. That is the equivalent of a Canadian seventh grader. They call them ichinensei here. The second class I attended was also an ichinensei class, but it was a lot smaller, as it was an elective English class. These students had an interest in English and so they chose to take an extra English class. For the first class, I did my self introduction lesson which I had planned this week. I used two large maps of the world and downtown Toronto which I bought at Chapters in Toronto. The kids really liked these maps as there were drawn depictions of famous buildings and things like that. I particularly like these maps because I can actually point out where I live, and where I went to school, etc. After my introductions, we had a short quiz that I wrote. The questions were quite easy, because most of these students are just beginning to learn English. Also, my JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) even asked me to give him the quiz earlier so he could translate the questions into Japanese for the students. I ended up translating them myself, and he was pretty happy about it. He even asked me to ask the questions in Japanese to the students. The students and teachers were pretty excited about it.
Two students ended up getting a perfect 8/7 on the quiz (I added a bonus question).
So far, the students are quite energetic here, and seem a lot more active in school then I ever experienced in Toronto. After school, they have club activities that they must attend, and they usually end up staying until 6 or 6:30pm. I've also been staying at school quite late, sometimes even later than 6:30pm (two days ago I left at 7:30pm), to help students, and prepare my lessons. Right now, I'm helping three girls practise for their English speech contest. They are very cute, but also quite shy. They try their best everytime, and I enjoy hearing them speak English. They smile when I wave to them in the halls. In fact, many of the kids here smile and get excited when they see me. It's a great feeling.
Today we spent an hour on the soccer field cutting the grass. I was wearing dress pants and a dress shirt (because of the assembly today), and I didn't know about the grass cutting, since nobody had told me, so I ended up just walking around the field taking pictures and talking to students and teachers. It's quite different here than in Toronto. There are no maintenance people at the schools. The teachers and students have to do all the cleaning and maintenance work. Good training for the students, but tough on the teachers. It was amazingly hot out there. I wore my sun glasses, and a few kids kept saying that I looked like some Korean star - in Japanese of course (I didn't know what it meant until a teacher told me).
I also experienced my first school lunch (給食）. It's amazingly cheap - only around 300 yen per meal, so I was definitely in. Today we had Japanese curry. It's the first time I've felt genuinely full after a meal since arriving in Japan. The great thing is, they have more than enough, so sometimes I might be able to get seconds. The strange thing is that they only serve milk - and it's quite a small carton.
In between writing this entry, I helped a student practise for an hour with her English speech. Soon, I'll be going to Tsukidate, a neighbouring town in Kurihara City for my 'welcome party'.
I'll try posting what I've written over the last couple of weeks soon.
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